Mobiles @ NCSU

One out of 10 Americans owns a smartphone but has no other Internet service at home, with the poor far more likely to find themselves in this situation than those who are well off, according to a Pew Research Center report released today.

"10 percent of Americans own a smartphone but do not have broadband at home, and 15 percent own a smartphone but say that they have a limited number of options for going online other than their cell phone," Pew Senior Researcher Aaron Smith wrote. "Those with relatively low income and educational attainment levels, younger adults, and non-whites are especially likely to be 'smartphone-dependent.'”

Pew said that 7 percent of Americans are in both categories—a smartphone is their only option for using the Internet at home, and they have few easily available options for going online when away from home. Pew refers to these Americans as "smartphone-dependent."

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Google announced today that it is officially switching to a human-driven app review process for the Google Play store, a move intended to "better protect the community" and "improve the app catalog." Google's "team of experts" will be checking apps and updates submitted to Google Play for violations of Google's developer policies and giving developers specific feedback on what they need to fix before their apps will be listed.

Google says it began this review process "several months ago" and that "there has been no noticeable change for developers during the rollout." Today's post simply serves as an official announcement of the new policy. An improved review status page will give developers "more insight into why apps were rejected or suspended" and will allow them to "easily fix and resubmit their apps for minor policy violations."

Apple has had a team of real humans evaluating third-party app submissions since the dawn of the App Store, but the Android Market (now Google Play) was more permissive—aside from some automated malware scanning, Google didn't do much to make sure apps worked like they were supposed to and did what they said they did. The Google Play store had apps that did more things, but the quality and security of those apps could be all over the place. Google's app review process will ostensibly fix that problem.

I've been struggling to write about last week's historic net neutrality vote for a few days now. I've already written so much about the subject that finally seeing the vote to reclassify broadband as a Title II service was almost like a distant happening, a lull before the next vicious battle. People who care about consumers can only luxuriate in victory for so long before Verizon files a lawsuit.

But then MWC kicked off at full speed in Barcelona: the new Samsung Galaxy S6, the new HTC One M9, some mid-range Lumias, an ultra-encrypted Blackphone. There's a weird Sony Android tablet that looks like Clié's Revenge. And Google's Sundar Pichai took the stage this morning to talk about Google's plan to run its own tiny mobile carrier "in...

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BARCELONA, Spain—At Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm is showing off Sense ID, a new technology that brings ultrasonic fingerprint scanning to mobile devices. The main advantage of ultrasonic fingerprint scanning is that because it uses sound waves, it doesn't require direct contact with your finger. This means the ultrasonic sensor can be underneath the device's front cover glass or potentially underneath the display itself.

While digital fingerprint sensors have been around for years, they were popularized in the mobile space by the iPhone 5S with Touch ID. The Touch ID sensor, along with the various other fingerprint sensors that have appeared in smartphones over the last couple of years, are all based on capacitive technology. Capacitive sensors work in much the same way as a touchscreen. When you place your finger on the reader, the pattern of ridges, whorls, and minutiae points create electrical circuits that can be read and recorded. This method works just fine, but it has limitations. Your finger needs to be in direct contact with the sensor, and if you have contaminants (water, lotion, dirt) on your finger, it may not work.

Qualcomm

Because ultrasonic fingerprint recognition uses high-frequency sound waves, it can penetrate through a variety of obstacles: the aforementioned contaminants, glass, metal, plastic, and more. In theory, ultrasonic scanners can also penetrate a lot deeper into your finger's dermal layers than capacitive, which means it's possible to extract more biometric data. The ultrasonic waves are produced by a piezoelectric transducer, much like ultrasonic medical imaging devices. (Qualcomm isn't releasing much in the way of technical details right now, so we don't know exactly how deep Sense ID will be able to penetrate. You probably won't be using it to scan any internal organs... not yet, anyway.)

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Are you interested in tying down your furniture to a technology "standard" that's far from standard? Then you might be interested in some new products that will be on sale at Ikea in North America and Europe this spring. The Swedish furniture company has partnered with the Wireless Power Consortium, building Qi wireless device chargers into a line of lamps and other small pieces of furniture like bedside tables. You can also buy a small Ikea-designed pad to add Qi charging to any surface.

For those who've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of wireless charging, the partnership is good news. However, the problem remains the same: two incompatible standards (the other is backed by Power Matters Alliance) remain at a stalemate. A number...

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