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China attacks Apple for allowing Hong Kong crowdsourced police activity app

Apple’s decision to greenlight an app called HKmaps, which is being used by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong to crowdsource information about street closures and police presence, is attracting the ire of the Chinese government.

An article in Chinese state mouthpiece, China Daily, attacks the iPhone maker for reversing an earlier decision not to allow the app to be listed on the iOS App Store — claiming the app is “allowing the rioters in Hong Kong to go on violent acts” (via The Guardian).

HKmaps uses emoji to denote live police and protest activity around Hong Kong, as reported by users.

The former British colony is a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China that’s been able to maintain certain economic and and political freedoms since reunification with China — under the one country, two systems principle. But earlier this year pro-democracy protests broke out after the Hong Kong government sought to pass legislation that would allow for extradition to mainland China. It’s policing around those on-going protests that’s being made visible on HKmaps.

The app’s developer denies the map enables illegal activity, saying its function is “for info” purposes only — to allow residents to move freely around the city by being able to avoid protest flash-points. But the Chinese government is branding it “toxic”.

“Business is business, and politics is politics. Nobody wants to drag Apple into the lingering unrest in Hong Kong. But people have reason to assume that Apple is mixing business with politics, and even illegal acts. Apple has to think about the consequences of its unwise and reckless decision,” the China Daily writer warns in a not-so-veiled threat about continued access to the Chinese market.

“Providing a gateway for ‘toxic apps’ is hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, twisting the facts of Hong Kong affairs, and against the views and principles of the Chinese people,” it goes on. “Apple and other corporations should be able to discern right from wrong. They also need to know that only the prosperity of China and China’s Hong Kong will bring them a broader and more sustainable market.”

The article takes further aim at Apple — claiming it reinstated a song which advocates for independence for Hong Kong and had previously been removed from its music store.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment.

A few days ago the company was getting flak from the other direction as Western commentators piled on to express incredulity over its decision, at the app review stage, not to allow HKmaps on its store. The app’s developer said Apple App Store reviewers had rejected it citing the reasoning as “the app allowed users to evade law enforcement”.

Yet, as many pointed out at the time, the Google-owned Waze app literally describes its function as “avoid police” if you take the trouble to read its iOS listing. So it looked like a crystal-clear case of double standards by Cupertino. And, most awkwardly for Apple, as if the US tech giant was siding with the Chinese state against Hong Kong as concerned residents fight for their autonomy and call for democracy.

We asked Apple about its decision to reject the app at the App Store review stage last week. It did not provide any comment but a couple of days afterwards a spokesman pointed us to an “update” — where the developer tweeted that the iOS version was “Approved, comming soon!” [sic].

At the time of writing the iOS app remains available on the App Store but the episode highlights the tricky trade-offs Apple is facing by operating in the Chinese market — a choice that risks denting its reputation for highly polished corporate values.

The size of the China market is such that just “economical deceleration” can — and has — put a serious dent in Apple’s bottom line. If the company were to exit — or be ejected — from the market entirely there would be no way for it to cushion the blow for shareholders. Yet with a premium brand so bound up with ethical claims to champion and defend fundamental human rights like privacy Apple risks being pinned between a rock and a hard place as an increasingly powerful China flexes more political and economic muscle.

Wider trade tensions between the US and China are also creating further instability, causing major operating headaches for Chinese tech giant Huawei — with the Trump administration pressuring allies to freeze it out of 5G networks and leaning on US companies not to provide services to Chinese firms (leading to question marks over whether Huawei’s smartphones can continue using Google’s Android OS, and suggestions it might seek to deploy its own OS).

The going is certainly getting tougher for tech businesses working from East to West. But it also remains to be seen how sustainable Apple’s West-to-East democratic balancing act can be given heightened and escalating geopolitical tensions.

Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/09/china-attacks-apple-for-allowing-hong-kong-crowdsourced-police-activity-app/

TikTok parent Bytedance is reportedly working on its own smartphone

It’s been a busy couple of months for Bytedance, one of the world’s most valuable startups and the operator of globally popular video app TikTok. The Beijing-based company has continued to grow its list of apps to include the likes of work collaboration tool Lark, an instant messenger called Feiliao as well as a music streaming app, and now it appears to be taking a bold step into the hardware realm.

Bytedance is planning to develop its own smartphone, the Financial Times reported (paywalled) citing two sources. A spokesperson from Bytedance declined to comment on the matter, but the rumor is hardly a surprise as smartphone pre-installs have long been a popular way for Chinese internet companies to ramp up user sizes.

There’s also urgency from Bytedance to carve out more user acquisition channels. After a few years of frantic growth, Bytedance failed to hit its revenue target for the first time last year amid slowing ad spending in China, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Some of Bytedance’s predecessors include selfie app maker Meitu, which builds smartphones pre-loaded with its suite of photo editors and recently sold this segment to Xiaomi as the latter tries to capture more female users and newcomers, including Snow-owned camera app B612 and Bytedance’s Faceu, close on Meitu’s heels.

Others have taken a less asset-heavy approach in the early days of the Chinese internet. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — known collectively as the BAT for their supremacy in China’s tech world — all worked on their own custom Android ROMs, which come with extra features compared to a stock ROM pre-installed by a phone manufacturer.

Alibaba’s ambition also manifested in a $590 million investment in Meizu in 2016 that saw the eommerce giant take up the challenge to develop a tailored operating system for the handset maker. More recently in March, WeChat owner Tencent teamed up with gaming smartphone maker Razor on a number of initiatives that cover hardware.

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, plans to launch a free music streaming app

There were early clues to Bytedance’s smartphone endeavor. The company confirmed in January that it has acquired certain patents and some employees from phone maker Smartisan, although it said at the time the deal was done to “explore the education business.” That was a curious statement as Smartisan’s business has little to do with education. At the very least, the tie-up confers hardware development capability on the mobile internet upstart.

Indeed, a source told the Financial Times that Bytedance founder Zhang Yiming “has long dreamt of a phone with Bytedance apps pre-installed.” Nonetheless, this is tipped to be an uphill battle, at least in China where smartphone sales are cooling and competition intensifies between entrenched players like Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Apple.

Bytedance has built a leg up away from home, thanks to its empire of mobile apps. The company is one of the few — and many would argue the first — Chinese internet startups that manage to gain a meaningful foothold globally. TikTok has consistently topped the worldwide app ranking in the last handful of months, though it’s also encountered a few stumbling blocks in some of its larger markets.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission imposed a fined on TikTok for violating children’s privacy protection law. The government of India, which has driven much of TikTok’s recent growth, also took issue with the app to temporarily ban it on account of illegal content.

While the US market may be difficult to penetrate given Washington’s concerns around the security threat that Chinese companies may present, India is now crowded with Chinese brands. A research done by Counterpoint found that in the first quarter, Chinese manufacturers led by Xiaomi controlled a whopping 66 percent of India’s smartphone market. That means Bytedance, alongside its potential ally Smartisan, is not only up against local rivals in India but also the familiar faces from its home market.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/27/tiktok-smartphone/

Huawei unveils the P30 and P30 Pro

Huawei unveiled its brand new flagship phone — the P30 and the P30 Pro — at a press conference today in Paris. In many ways, this year’s update is a continuation of the P20 series — but everything has been upgraded. I played with both devices for a bit; here’s my experience.

While Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has switched to a hole-punch design, Huawei is keeping the good old notch for its flagship device. But this year’s notch is a lot smaller. The company has switched from an iPhone X-like notch to a tiny little teardrop notch.

The P20 and P20 Pro were the last flagship phones to feature a fingerprint sensor below the display, on the front of the device. With the P30 series, Huawei is removing that odd-looking bezel and integrating the fingerprint sensor in the display.

The company could have used that opportunity to make the phones smaller. But Huawei opted for taller displays instead. The P20 and P20 Pro had 5.8-inch and 6.1-inch displays, respectively, with an 18.7:9 aspect ratio. The P30 and P30 Pro have gigantic 6.1-inch and 6.47-inch displays, respectively, with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio.

The P30 Pro is still narrower than the iPhone XR, but it won’t be for everyone. It definitely feels too big in my hand, for instance.

The industrial design of the P30 series is in line with the P20 series. The phones feature glass on the back with colorful gradients. The frame is made of aluminum. Overall, the devices feel slimmer on the edges thanks to curved back and front glass. The company has flattened the top and bottom edges of the devices as well. Everything feels solid in your hand.

The P30 and P30 Pro are now closer when it comes to features. They both have an OLED display with a 2340×1080 resolution for instance. You no longer have to choose between an LCD and an OLED display.

The two biggest differences you can spot is that the P30 Pro has a Samsung-style display, slightly curved on the sides — the P30 display is completely flat — and Huawei is bringing back the headphone jack, but only for the P30. It doesn’t really make sense to segment the lineup this way, but maybe Huawei considers you have enough money to buy wireless earbuds if you’re in the market for a P30 Pro.

Both devices come in five colors — Breathing Crystal, Amber Sunrise, Perl White, Black and Aurora. Amber Sunrise is a red to orange gradient color, Breathing Crystal is a white-to-purple gradient, Perl White is a white-to-slightly pink gradient, Aurora is a blue-to-turquoise gradient.

You’ll be able to buy the P30 for €799 ($900) with 128GB of storage and the P30 Pro for €999 ($1,130) for 128GB of storage — there are more expensive options for the P30 Pro with more storage. The phones will be available in Europe and Asia today, and probably won’t be released in the U.S.

Four camera sensors, because why not

When it comes to cameras, Huawei has always been one of the leading smartphone manufacturers. There are only four brands that ship cameras that perform so well — Apple, Samsung, Google and Huawei.

It’s going to be hard to comment on the quality of the photos after so little hands-on time, but the P30 Pro now features not one, not two, not three but f-o-u-r sensors on the back of the device.

  • The main camera is a 40 MP 27mm sensor with an f/1.6 aperture and optical image stabilization.
  • There’s a 20 MP ultra-wide angle lens (16mm) with an f/2.2 aperture.
  • The 8 MP telephoto lens provides nearly 5x optical zoom compared to the main lens (125mm) with an f/3.4 aperture and optical image stabilization.
  • There’s a new time-of-flight sensor below the flash of the P30 Pro. The phone projects infrared light and captures the reflection with this new sensor.

Thanks to the new time-of-flight sensor, Huawei promises better bokeh effects with a new depth map. The company also combines the main camera sensor with the telephoto sensor to let you capture photos with a 10x zoom with a hybrid digital-optical zoom.

The telephoto lens uses a periscope design. It means that the sensor features a glass to beam the light at a right angle. Huawei uses that method to avoid making the phone too thick.

On the P30, the cameras are more or less the same, but a bit worse:

  • A 40 MP main sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilization.
  • A 16 MP ultra-wide angle lens with an f/2.2 aperture.
  • An 8 MP telephoto lens that should provide 3x optical zoom.
  • No time-of-flight sensor.

More than hardware specifications, Huawei says that software has been greatly improved to enhance the quality of your photos. In particular, night mode should be much better thanks to optical and software-enabled stabilization. HDR shots and portrait photos should look better too.

On the front of the device, the selfie camera sensor has been upgraded from 24 MP to 32 MP. And you can capture HDR and low-light photos from the front camera as well.

Below the surface

Huawei has upgraded its homemade system-on-a-chip with the Kirin 980 that you can find in the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. It runs Android Pie 9.1 with Huawei’s EMUI custom Android user interface.

In addition to 40W USB-C charging, Huawei is integrating wireless charging for the first time in the P series (up to 15W). The P30 Pro has a 4,200 mAh battery. You can also charge other devices with reverse wireless charging, just like on the Samsung Galaxy S10.

The P30 Pro is IP68 water and dust resistant while the P30 is IP53 resistant.

You won’t find a speaker grill at the top of the P30 Pro because the company has removed the speaker. Instead, Huawei is vibrating the screen in order to turn the screen into a tiny speaker for your calls.

A note on the Huawei FreeLace wireless earphones

Huawei is also launching new in-ear earbuds today. The FreeLace looks more or less like the BeatsX with a cord behind your neck. You can disconnect the cord and plug your wireless earphones directly into your smartphone to pair them — no Bluetooth pairing required.

That hidden USB-C port is also how you’re going to charge the earbuds. For five minutes of charge time you get four hours worth of playback. They’ll be available in four colors — Graphite Black, Amber Sunrise, Emerald Green and Moonlight Silver.

The earbuds are magnetic so you can wrap them around your neck. When you disconnect them, it automatically answers your calls, play your music. When you connect them again, it hangs up or pauses your music. The FreeLace earbuds will be a separate accessory for €99.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/26/huawei-unveils-the-p30-and-p30-pro/