Another phone with camera slider showcased, this time from Lenovo

The list of smartphones with a slide-out camera is getting bigger by the day. It all started with the vivo NEX and Oppo Find X and now we are hearing that the Honor Magic 2 and the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 are adopting the slide-out mechanism as well. It seems that Lenovo has been bitten by the periscope-like camera bug as well - the company's vice president just shared a video on Weibo showcasing a still unannounced Lenovo smartphone with extremely thin bezels, small chin and pop-up cameras in Find X style. Moreover, the video reveals that the phone will make use of an in-display fingerprint...

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Independent Strategy Analytics survey shows the Sony Xperia XZ3 has the best display

Sony has once again tapped Strategy Analytics to conduct an independent testing of the Xperia XZ3 screen. That's the new P-OLED screen with 1,440 x 2,880px resolution. For the competition, SA gathered what it considered the leading phones on the market. Here's the roster below. Note that the testing was done between August 21 and 23 so the Galaxy Note9 was not available yet. Sony Xperia XZ3 • Samsung Galaxy S9 • Apple iPhone X Sony Xperia XZ2 • LG V30 • Huawei P20 Here's what the 202 consumers that participated saw. The devices were concealed to eliminate...

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YC-backed travel startup Duffel inks $4.7M round led by Blossom Capital, but stays coy on the details

A new London-based travel-industry startup is slowly coming out of stealth mode, but although it’s releasing it’s funding round, it’s keeping the actual product close to its chest. For now.

Y Combinator-backed travel startup Duffel says it is working on “a new way to book travel online, aiming at the booking experience “end to end”. A hint at what this might mean is the fact that the team contains alumni from GoCardless and is objectively very experienced in the FinTech world.

So far, that’s all we’re getting. But what we do know is that Duffel is today today announcing an investment round of $4.7 million.

Blossom Capital is the lead investor in the round and has built a syndicate with other major investors: The Crankstart Foundation and Index Ventures. Crankstart is the charitable investment vehicle of Michael Moritz.

It’s also revealed that it’s currently participating in the Y Combinator S18 Cohort.

The UK headquartered company was founded by two former early GoCardless employees: Steve Domin and Tom Bates, as well as Vincent Pastor. Steve and Tom join the list of GoCardless-alumni startups, which include the founders of Monzo and Nested. They say the money will be used to expand their engineering team in London.

Steve Domin, founder of Duffel said: “We are building a platform from scratch that will completely redefine the nature of travel experiences booked on web or mobile. The travel industry hasn’t evolved its technology to service the demand and behaviours of its most important customers and the providers – airlines, hotels, transport companies – and their customers are hurting as a result. Travel agents still work on terminals that look like they’re from the 70s and travel buyers still have to browse 10 websites before finding that perfect fare. This shouldn’t be the case any more and we’re planning to solve this issue from the ground up.”

Commenting Blossom Capital founder Ophelia Brown said: “The Duffel team have very ambitious plans to completely reinvent the travel space, so we are very excited to support them in their mission. Similar to payments, before the emergence of next-gen companies like Adyen or Stripe, this is an industry that hasn’t witnessed innovation in decades, still running on antiquated rails and infrastructure. We see huge opportunity for innovation in this multi-trillion dollar industry.”

This is the second firm London-based Blossom has invested in straight out of Y Combinator. Recent investments include Fat Llama, an online marketplace for renting belongings like audio, video, sound and DJ equipment.

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HTC U12 life hands-on review

The U12 Life, which is HTC's fancy way of denoting its lite devices, lives up to its name. It is a solid mid-ranger, equipped just well enough to go against some current popular competitors from the likes of Xiaomi or Nokia.

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Alexa routers are a thing now

Some things are inevitable — stock market fluctuations, thunderstorms, your favorite band reuniting to offset poor financial planning. And then there’s Alexa. Amazon’s smart assistant is slowly making its way onto every aspect of of the smart home, and Google’s own offering isn’t too far behind.

As far as these things go, routers make a lot of sense. They’re a key part of stay connected, and in the case of mesh ones, they’re everywhere. So why not have them do double duty, right? Clearly Huawei and Netgear were struck by the same thought, and Amazon was more than happy to oblige. 

Both companies debuted a take on the concept this week at IFA. Huawei’s AI Cube, which despite not being a cube at all, is the more straight forward of the two offerings. The device looks remarkably like a Google Home (and, by extension, a Glade air freshener, but I digress) and does LTE via a 4G SIM card, along with both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

The fabric bottom of the router is a larger speaker so Alexa can talk back, featuring a “400ml sound cavity and an aluminum diaphragm.” The “AI” appears to refer to the Alexa functionality. No word on what specific router skills Alexa will have here, but speed readings seem like a pretty good start.

Netgear, meanwhile, beat Huawei to the draw by a day with the Orbi Voice. The addition to the popular line takes advantage of the fact that mesh routers are designed to be placed throughout the home to help cover WiFi dead spots. It’s a bit like putting Echo Dots everywhere, except they’re helping keep your network covered in the process.

No word on price for the Huawei, but the Netgear’s gonna run you $300. Either one seems like a pretty solid addition for those looking to Alexa up the place.

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Oppo F9 Pro now on sale in India in various online and offline stores

Oppo released its gorgeous mid-ranger, the F9 as the F9 Pro in India just last week. Pre-orders started the minute the device was announced and today the smartphone can be found in online and offline stores. Unlike some smartphones from the company, the F9 Pro can be found in more than one retailer - Amazon India, Flipkart and PayTM Mall. All prices seem leveled off and just to remind you, the handset ships with only one storage configuration - 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage while color variants are Sunrise Red and Twilight Blue. The asking price is INR 23,990 ($338) and all the online...

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Apple will require all apps to have a privacy policy as of October 3

Apple is cracking down on apps that don’t communicate to users how their personal data is used, secured or shared. In an announcement posted to developers through the App Store Connect portal, Apple says that all apps, including those still in testing, will be required to have a privacy policy as of October 3, 2018.

Allowing apps without privacy policies is something of an obvious hole that Apple should have already plugged, given its generally protective nature over user data. But the change is even more critical now that Europe’s GDPR regulations have gone into effect. Though the app makers themselves would be ultimately responsible for their customers’ data, Apple, as the platform where those apps are hosted, has some responsibility here, too.

Platforms today are being held accountable for the behavior of their apps, and the data misuse that may occur as a result of their own policies around those apps.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, was dragged before the U.S. Senate about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data from 87 million Facebook users was inappropriately obtained by way of Facebook apps.

Apple’s new requirement, therefore, provides the company with a layer of protection – any app that falls through the cracks going forward will be able to be held accountable by way of its own privacy policy and the statements it contains.

Apple also notes that the privacy policy’s link or text cannot be changed until the developer submits a new version of their app. It seems there’s still a bit of loophole here, though – if developers add a link pointing to an external webpage, they can change what the webpage says at any time after their app is approved.

The new policy will be required for all apps and app updates across the App Store as well as through the TestFlight testing platform as of October 3, says Apple.

What’s not clear is if Apple itself will be reviewing all the privacy policies themselves as part of this change, in order to reject apps with questionable data use policies or user protections. If it does, App Store review times could increase, unless the company hires more staff.

Apple has already taken a stance on apps it finds questionable, like Facebook’s data-sucking VPN app Onavo, which it kicked out of the App Store earlier this month. The app had been live for years, however, and its App Store text did disclose the data it collected was shared with Facebook. The fact that Apple only booted it now seems to indicate it will take a tougher stance on apps which are designed to collect user data as one of their primary functions going forward.

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