Smartphones, tablets and even wearable devices are slowly becoming embedded within the every day lives of most Americans. Today's mobile devices are nearly as powerful as the laptop and desktop PCs of only a few years ago, and that power continues to grow almost every single day as device manufacturers develop new products. Here are some of the top headlines in the ever-changing world of mobile technology from the past week alone.
Apple has recently walked away from the United States Patent and Trademark Office with a grand total of 33 newly granted patents, many of which could solve issues within the video conferencing industry. Problems that exist with the quality-to-bandwidth ratio of transmitting audio and video data may be alleviated by Apple's new scalable video coding (SVC) technique, which splits code into two layers that later recombine for vastly improved quality. Additionally, a multi-view camera system was also patented by Apple, which allows members of a video conference to view an entire room with ease.
When it comes to smartphones however, it appears that Chinese smartphone manufacturers are rapidly gaining the upper hand on the market. A tracking report carried out by the International Data Corporation found that the total worldwide smartphone market grew significantly, with Chinese companies like Huawei and Lenovo claiming a larger chunk of the total market share. These two companies combined control slightly more of the market than even Apple does, at just over 12 percent.
Meanwhile, mobile surveillance has quickly become a valuable asset in the vehicle transportation sector, as recorded video footage is powerful evidence in the case of any kind of disputes. One of the most recent trends that is proving incredibly effective in this market is the use of Wi-Fi to retrieve such video footage. Because this does not require manually collecting tapes or creating backups by hand, the data can be collected on the fly without having to interrupt shipments or passenger transport, while still maintaining the security and safety benefits of video surveillance.
Of course, it is also important to remember that with more mobile devices, there are more oportunities for flaws. One such flaw in Android phones is an issue with the certificate verification, which exposes the phones to dangerous malware attacks. Hackers are able to get around a key security sandbox on Android phones to gain accesss to typically off-limits data caches, which store everything from emails to payment information that a hacker could fraudulently use. What's worse is that this hack has existed since around 2010, and has only now received widespread attention.
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