Microsoft unveiled its latest Lumia 640 and 640 XL smartphones this week at Mobile World Congress 2015. The new devices offer 5-inch or 5.7-inch HD displays, respectively.
Prices start at $154 for a basic Lumia 640 model with 3G connectivity and rises to about $242 for a 640 XL with LTE capabilities.
Buyers of both new smartphones will be able to upgrade their devices to Windows 10 after its release later in 2015 and both will be available in single-SIM or dual-SIM versions.
BlackBerry has launched a surprise smartphone, the Leap, at Mobile World Congress 2015. This new smartphone, which replaces the traditional BlackBerry physical keypad with a touch screen, is designed to get the company’s devices into the hands of younger mobile professionals.
The Leap, which was announced March 3, includes a 5-inch HD display with 1280 x 720 resolution and the latest BlackBerry 10 OS 10.3.1 operating system. The Leap will retail for $275 unlocked when BlackBerry releases it in April.
The integrity of Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security encryption is the focal point for a newly discovered vulnerability known as Factoring attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys, or FREAK, that could potentially enable attackers to decrypt secured data traffic.
The flaw is actually inside the open-source OpenSSL cryptographic library for versions prior to 1.0.1k, and it has already been patched in the upstream open-source project.
Google is developing an Android payment platform to make it easier for developers to enable mobile payments in third-party applications and retail services.
The company will soon launch Android Pay, a mobile payment framework designed to let application vendors as well as brick-and-mortar companies build a secure payment service on top of Android.
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of products at Google announced the company’s plans at Mobile World Congress on March 2.
Several media reports quoted him describing the technology as an Application Programming Interface that developers can use to enable mobile payments from within apps and on cash registers at physical stores that support Near Field Communication.