Is Your Android Battery Healthy? Here's How to Check

Saving battery life is an important concern for most Android users. But beyond conserving juice in day-to-day use, have you ever thought about preserving the overall life of your phone’s battery?

Over time, batteries wear out, as we’ve seen recently with the iPhone slowdown case. They can’t hold a charge like they did when new, so you get less usage even when they’re fully charged. Thus, you might wish to check your phone’s battery health and get some help preserving it.

Thankfully, while you can’t do this natively in Android, there’s an app that makes it easy.

For this task, you’ll want to download the free app Accubattery. It’s not the only battery monitor on Android, but it’s a great one for the job.

Once installed, the app will walk you through a brief introduction to what it does, including research on battery lifespan. They’ve found that by only charging your battery to a maximum of 80 percent (instead of 100 percent), you can increase its longevity by quite a bit.

Eventually, you’ll hit a slider where you can set a charge alarm. The app recommends setting this at 80%, but you can select a different level if you like. After this, it performs a quick calibration and you’re ready to go.

To get results, you’ll need to use your device as normal for a while. After some time, Accubattery will collect information about your phone’s battery (and your usage) and display stats in the app. This will appear after just a day or two of use, but you’ll get better results after using it for weeks and months.

Inside the app, you’ll see information about how long your battery will last on the Discharging tab. This also includes details about your average battery usage, usage per app, and more.

Use the Charging tab to see how quickly your device charges, and the Health tab to review the wear on your battery and see how it compares to a brand-new one.

What is 802.11ax Wi-Fi, and what will it mean for 802.11ac

Each new Wi-Fi standard has brought significant improvements in performance, with the most recent, 802.11ac, offering an impressive theoretical maximum rate of 1.3Gbps.  Unfortunately, these gains have not been enough to keep pace with demand, leading to that exasperated cry heard across airports, malls, hotels, stadiums, homes and offices: “Why is the wireless so slow?”

The IEEE is taking another crack at boosting Wi-Fi performance with a new standard called 802.11ax or High-Efficiency Wireless, which promises a fourfold increase in average throughput per user.

802.11ax is designed specifically for high-density public environments, like trains, stadiums and airports. But it also will be beneficial in Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, in heavy-usage homes, in apartment buildings and in offices that use bandwidth-hogging applications like videoconferencing.

802.11ax is also designed for cellular data offloading. In this scenario, the cellular network offloads wireless traffic to a complementary Wi-Fi network in cases where local cell reception is poor or in situations where the cell network is being taxed.

Excitement surrounding the new standard is high. Even though the 802.11ax is not expected to be finalized until early 2019, the vendor community is chomping at the bit. Pre-standard chipsets have been shipping since last year and the first 802.11ax routers are currently hitting the market.  In a typical Wi-Fi deployment scenario, early adopters are comfortable using pre-standard products, which readily win certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance after they fully comply with the standard with a firmware upgrade.

What problem is 802.11ax trying to solve?

The fundamental problems with Wi-Fi are that bandwidth is shared among endpoint devices, access points can have overlapping coverage areas, especially in dense deployments, and end users can be moving between access points.

The current solution, based on a technology from the old shared Ethernet days called Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA), requires endpoints to listen for an all-clear signal before transmitting. In the event of interference, congestion or collision, the endpoint goes into a back-off procedure, waits for the all-clear, then transmits.

In a crowded stadium, a busy airport or a packed train with hundreds, even thousands, of end users attempting to stream video at the same time, the system loses efficiency and performance suffers.

The good news is that 802.11ax promises improved performance, extended coverage and longer battery life.  802.11ax can deliver a single stream at 3.5Gbps, and with new multiplexing technology borrowed from the world of LTE cellular, can deliver four simultaneous streams to a single endpoint for a total theoretical bandwidth of an astounding 14Gbps.

How does 802.11ax work?

The 802.11ax standard takes a variety of well-understood wireless techniques and combines them in a way that achieves a significant advance over previous standards, yet maintains backward compatibility with 802.11ac and 802.11n.

802.11ax delivers a nearly 40 percent increase in pure throughput thanks to higher order QAM modulation, which allows for more data to be transmitted per packet. It also achieves more efficient spectrum utilization.  For example, 802.11ax creates broader channels and splits those channels into narrower sub-channels. This increases the total number of available channels, making it easier for endpoints to find a clear path to the access point.

When it comes to downloads from the access point to the end user, early Wi-Fi standards only permitted one transmission at a time per access point. The Wave 2 version of 802.11ac began using Multi-User, Multi-Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO), which allowed access points to send up to four streams simultaneously. 802.11ax allows for eight simultaneous streams and makes use of explicit beamforming technology to aim those streams more accurately at the receiver’s antenna.

Even more importantly, 802.11ax piggybacks on MU-MIMO with an LTE cellular base station technology called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). This allows each MU-MIMO stream to be split in four additional streams, boosting the effective bandwidth per user by four times.

The way Network World columnist Zeus Kerrevala explains 802.11ax, early Wi-Fi was like a long line of customers in a bank waiting for one teller. MU-MIMO meant four tellers serving four lines of customers. OFDMA means each teller can simultaneously serve four customers.

How is 802.11ax different from 802.11ac?

802.11ac operates in the 5Ghz range only, while 802.11ax operates in both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz ranges, thus creating more available channels. For example, early chipsets support a total of 12 channels, eight in the 5Ghz and four in the 2.4Ghz range.

With 802.11ac, MU-MIMO is limited to downlink transmissions only. 802.11ax creates full-duplex MU-MIMO so that with downlink MU-MIMO an access point may transmit concurrently to multiple receivers and with uplink MU-MIMO an endpoint may simultaneously receive from multiple transmitters.  

802.11ax supports up to eight MU-MIMO transmissions at a time, up from four with 802.11ac. OFDMA is new with 802.11ax, as are several other technologies, like trigger-based random access, dynamic fragmentation and spatial frequency re-use, all aimed at improving efficiency.

Finally, 802.11ax introduces a technology called “target wake time” to improve wake and sleep efficiency on smartphones and other mobile devices. This technology is expected to make a significant improvement in battery life.

When will we see 802.11ax products and adoption?

Quantenna Communications was first out of the gate, announcing the first 802.11ax silicon in October 2016.  The chipset supports eight 5GHz streams and four 2.4 GHz streams. In January 2017, Quantenna added a second chipset to its portfolio with support for four streams in both bands.

Other Wi-Fi chipset vendors have followed suit. Qualcomm announced their first 802.11ax silicon in early 2017, followed by Broadcom and Marvell.

The first 802.11ax router was introduced by Asus last August. Using Broadcom silicon, the Asus router has 4×4 MIMO in both bands and achieves a maximum throughput of 1.1Gbps on 2.4 GHz and 4.8 Gbps on 5 GHz.

Huawei has announced an 802.11ax access point that uses 8×8 MIMO and is based on Qualcomm hardware. And in January, Aerohive Networks announced its first family of 802.11ax access points based on Broadcom chipsets. These are expected to start shipping mid-2018.

The IEEE approved 802.11n in 2007 and 802.11ac in 2013, so they’re sticking with the six-year interval when it comes to 802.11ax. A draft 802.11ax standard is expected to be published in the first quarter of 2018, with the final standard wrapping up in Q1 2019.

Interim Wi-Fi certification of 802.11ax gear by the Wi-Fi Alliance will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, with volume production of 802.11ax products expected to ramp up next year.

In terms of mass adoption, we’re probably talking 2020, but forward-thinking IT execs, especially those running high-density Wi-Fi networks, should launch 802.11ax pilot projects this year.

Equifax Identifies 2.4 Million More Affected by Massive Hack

The company's forensic investigation revealed the new identities on top of the 146 million affected in the attack that exposed victims' personal details, including names, birth dates and social security numbers.

"This is not about newly discovered stolen data," said Paulino do Rego Barros, who took over as interim chief executive last year at the scandal-hit credit agency.

"It's about sifting through the previously identified stolen data, analyzing other information in our databases that was not taken by the attackers, and making connections that enabled us to identify additional individuals."

Equifax said the newly identified consumers were not previously informed because their social security numbers -- which appeared to be the focus of the hackers -- were not stolen together with their partial driver's license information.

Equifax said it would notify these consumers and will offer identity theft protection and credit file monitoring services.

The Atlanta-based company, which tracks consumer financial data to help establish credit ratings, is now facing state and federal investigations as well as class-action lawsuits over the breach.

While the breach was not the largest in history, it has been considered among the most damaging because of the sensitive information held by Equifax and the potential for that data to be used in identity theft or other crimes.

Creepy New Android Malware Can Secretly Record Conversations & Steal Your Photos

RedDrop wants your files, but not the way that most of today's malware does. It's not out to encrypt your files and force you to fork over a payment in order to unlock them. Instead, RedDrop wants to steal all the information it can from your phone..

Researchers at U.K.-based Wandera say that RedDrop targets sensitive data like your contacts and photos. It also gathers information about your phone, from the apps you have installed to the WiFi networks you're near. The most frightening thing about RedDrop, however, is that it can hijack your phone's microphone.

That allows it to eavesdrop on conversations you -- or anyone else -- might be having near the infected device. A lot of that audio won't be of any value, but something sensitive is bound to come up eventually. Confirmation codes for banking or transaction details, for example.

Even if that never happens, RedDrop has a backup plan for making money off its victims. It racks up charges by stealthily communicating with a premium-rate SMS system. Messages are erased from the infected phone as soon as they're sent, making the malicious activity that much harder to track.

RedDrop's creators have cast a wide net. Wandera has already discovered more than 50 Android apps infected with the Trojan. Fortunately, they're all being served from third-party app stores based in China. Worryingly, Wandera says that "RedDrop is one of the most sophisticated pieces of Android malware that we have seen in broad distribution."

If you stick to installing apps from Google Play, you don't need to worry about RedDrop eavesdropping on your conversations or stealing your files. Not yet, anyway. Malware authors do manage to avoid detection by Google every now and then, so it's important to not let your guard down.

Security and Privacy Tips for Cryptocurrency Holders

The cryptocurrency trend is definitely a big boom in today’s financial market. More and more people are starting to treat digital currencies seriously, as they are now a great alternative for managing your personal and professional budgets. And because the stakes are getting higher, there is an increasing need for cybersecurity measures.

If you’re a cryptocurrency holder, you probably love what you’re doing. You’re grateful because you have the opportunity to invest, trade and save a lot of money by leveraging your digital coins.

However, what would happen if one day all your coins were gone? You’d likely blame the hacker at first, but it is partially your responsibility to protect your investments.

Here are some security and privacy tips that will add a significant layer of protection to your cryptocurrency funds.

1.    Secure Your Wallets

The first and most important way to protect your digital currency is to choose a secure wallet. That means you should find a company that offers more security measures than the “normal” wallet providers do. For example, wallets that use encryption to protect the private keys can be much better and safer. Moreover, you can encrypt your data using different crypto encryption providers.

2.    Secure Your Devices

It takes just one security vulnerability for your PC, mobile or tablet to be hacked. I’d suggest you take advantage of a premium antivirus, set your firewall settings to maximum security and take advantage of an antispyware software to regularly check for malicious software. You can also consider using a secure operating system.

3.    Back Up All Your Crypto Data

Your crypto data is really the most important element of your entire operation. If you ever make the mistake of not backing up your data, you’ll regret it forever. When your PC gets hacked, or when your laptop gets physically stolen, you can always buy another one. However, when a hacker steals all your cryptocurrency funds because they’ve gained access to your data, you’re in a sticky situation. To avoid this, store your crypto data in an offsite place. Use a colocation server, a thumb drive and an encryptedexternal disk.

4.    Dedicate One Device to Cryptocurrency Only

The best way to add an extra layer of security to your cryptocurrency wallets is to base all your cryptocurrency activities and operations on a single device. You should have a personal PC/phone and a cryptocurrency PC/phone.

Do your best to keep your work device as private as possible by using dedicated IPs and private servers that keep your location, name and activity anonymous.

5.    Don’t Keep All Your Funds in One Wallet

Most of you know the saying “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”. This advice is actually very concrete and worth following when it comes to our cryptocurrency operations.

That is why you should have two digital wallets that serve different purposes. Through the first wallet, called the “hot wallet,” you will perform all your trading and transactions. The other wallet is called the “cold wallet” or the “cold storage,” and it is the wallet that stores your savings. Back up both your wallets’ private keys and store them offline.

6.    Avoid Public Wi-Fi

Public Wi-Fi is definitely a no-no for all cryptocurrency holders that want to keep their funds safe. There are many hackers that attack their victims through public Wi-Fi, so you must pay a lot of attention whenever you connect to the web using your phone, laptop or tablet.

Better, don’t connect if you’re not sure. Moreover, make sure that you don’t lend your phone to unknown people. If you’re a student who lives on campus, do not lose sight of your smart devices.

7.    Regularly Look for Intrusions

When you install a clean version of an operating system, you will be able to note the default programs that run in your Task Manager under Processes. Note down that list and know the number of processes that your PC usually opens.

Great hackers are always working silently. They might have infected your PC already and be waiting for the perfect moment to strike. That’s why you should regularly check for new processes that start when your PC starts. If you find something unwanted, you should take action and remove it immediately.

8.    Enable Strong Authentication

If your wallet allows it, enabling two-factor (strong) authentication is absolutely essential to your crypto security. Strong authentication provides an extra layer of security beyond your username and password to protect against account hijacking. 

9.    Use Your Common Sense and Stay Safe Online

Lastly, yet most important, you should always use your common sense to stay safer online. Whenever you have suspicions about a link, email, invitation or process that runs under your Task Manager, it’s to better follow your instincts and use common sense.

Takeaways

Securing your cryptocurrency funds is probably the most important thing that should concern your mind right now. Unless you believe you’re super protected, start taking action and dedicate your time to optimize the level of protection of your crypto operations. Good luck and stay safe!