| Huawei working with British spy service to prove its 'kit' is clean Aug 6th 2012, 11:28  Since Huawei's president formerly served as a senior engineer in the People's Liberation Army of China, it's unsurprising that it's raised the hackles of the US and other countries. It's been blocked from a variety of prime, security-sensitive contracts on suspicion of espionage, but the Chinese company seems bent on proving its honorable intentions, and has opened a "Cyber Security Evaluation Center" in Banbury, UK to do exactly that. According to the Economist, the company will work closely with GCHQ, the British signals-intelligence agency located in nearby Cheltenham, to persuade the UK and other governments that its equipment is trustworthy. It even has security-cleared staff, including some from the British agency, to shake down the gear and ensure it can't be exploited by spooks or crooks. Huawei already has hefty backbone contracts in Canada and New Zealand and is becoming one of the world's largest suppliers of telecom infrastructure, on top of its high ranking as a handset maker. It might hope this new approach will let it break its US and UK market logjam -- but it has a lot of pent-up distrust to overcome. Filed under: Cellphones, Networking Huawei working with British spy service to prove its 'kit' is clean originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  TechEye |  The Economist | Email this | Comments | | Voice assistant 'Nina' lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password Aug 6th 2012, 10:38  Voice recognition technology from Nuance is all over the place -- in everything from Smart TVs to Beemers. But today, in response to the growth of device-specific voice assistants like Siri and S-Voice, the company wants to take things down a different route: launching a mobile SDK for iOS and Android that any third-party app can employ. Baptized "Nina," the voice assistant won't only be able to understand instructions, but will also identify the speaker using vocal biometrics. That means Nina could potentially pay a bill, arrange a bank transfer, book a vacation or even interact with government services without ever requiring you to enter a password. The video after the break shows just how intimate things could get -- assuming you're able to find a spot where the two of you won't be overheard. Continue reading Voice assistant 'Nina' lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Software Voice assistant 'Nina' lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | Next-gen Xiaomi Phone outed by certifications ahead of launch, will again come in three variants (updated) Aug 6th 2012, 10:09  Having seen the next-gen Xiaomi Phone's more colorful yet rejected designs, we're rather baffled by these dull-looking certification images of the real deal. According to a filing from the good old TENAA, this new device from Xiaomi goes by the codename "2012051" and packs WCDMA radio, but that's pretty much it in terms of specs. Eagle-eyed readers may have already spotted the striking resemblance to the original Xiaomi Phone (aka MI-One Plus), but it appears to be getting an extra front-facing camera and, for some reason, a smaller speaker grill on the back. But wait, there's more! We dug up two additional models in the China Compulsory Certificate database: there's the "2012052" also with WCDMA radio, plus the "2012053" with CDMA2000/WCDMA dual radio. Bearing in mind that the current Xiaomi Phone has three variants, our guess is that its successor will follow a similar pattern: the WCDMA flavor may again have a 1.5GHz version followed by a slower and cheaper version (much like what the Youth Edition aka MI-One is to the MI-One Plus); and depending on Xiaomi's arrangements with China Unicom and China Telecom, the CDMA flavor for the latter may or may not be launched alongside its WCDMA cousin. Let's hope for the best when this alleged quad-core phone gets announced next Thursday. Update: Another possibility is that the design pictured above only applies to the lower-end model, which may just pack a dual-core chip (hopefully a Snapdragon S4). We shall see. Filed under: Cellphones Next-gen Xiaomi Phone outed by certifications ahead of launch, will again come in three variants (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | TENAA | Email this | Comments | |
