iOS beta hints at dual SIM iPhone

Apple released the fifth beta of iOS 12 a few days ago. 9to5mac discovered strings in configuration files that reference dual SIM devices. You should expect at least one new iPhone model with two SIM trays.

Apple is said to unveil three new iPhone models in September. In addition to an updated iPhone X, the company should announce a bigger second generation “iPhone X Plus”.

Apple also plans to bring the notch to more devices with a replacement to the iPhone 8. This iPhone will feature a 6.1-inch LCD display with a notch as well as a single camera on the back of the device. It should be as expensive as the iPhone 8 today.

There have been rumors in the past that Apple was looking at selling iPhones with two SIM cards. It was unclear if Apple wanted to put a normal SIM tray and a second e-SIM card like on the Apple Watch.

But according to these configuration files, this model will let you add two physical SIM cards — there are references to “second SIM status” and “second SIM tray status”.

Apple could limit dual SIM support to some models in particular. For instance, it could be limited to the rumored iPhone X Plus, or maybe the high-end OLED models.

Many users don’t need two SIM slots. But it’s an essential feature for some countries. For instance, in India, cell carriers are regional companies. If you travel back and forth between Delhi and Mumbai, you need two SIM cards and two plans.

Frequent travelers could also use a second SIM slot to avoid expensive roaming fees. It’s usually cheaper to buy a local SIM card. By using two SIM cards, you get the best of both worlds because you can still receive two-factor text messages, keep your phone number for iMessage and more.

isDualSimDevice https://t.co/FdACoaDbpO pic.twitter.com/CP4anunomf

— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) July 31, 2018

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iOS beta hints at dual SIM iPhone

Apple released the fifth beta of iOS 12 a few days ago. 9to5mac discovered strings in configuration files that reference dual SIM devices. You should expect at least one new iPhone model with two SIM trays.

Apple is said to unveil three new iPhone models in September. In addition to an updated iPhone X, the company should announce a bigger second generation “iPhone X Plus”.

Apple also plans to bring the notch to more devices with a replacement to the iPhone 8. This iPhone will feature a 6.1-inch LCD display with a notch as well as a single camera on the back of the device. It should be as expensive as the iPhone 8 today.

There have been rumors in the past that Apple was looking at selling iPhones with two SIM cards. It was unclear if Apple wanted to put a normal SIM tray and a second e-SIM card like on the Apple Watch.

But according to these configuration files, this model will let you add two physical SIM cards — there are references to “second SIM status” and “second SIM tray status”.

Apple could limit dual SIM support to some models in particular. For instance, it could be limited to the rumored iPhone X Plus, or maybe the high-end OLED models.

Many users don’t need two SIM slots. But it’s an essential feature for some countries. For instance, in India, cell carriers are regional companies. If you travel back and forth between Delhi and Mumbai, you need two SIM cards and two plans.

Frequent travelers could also use a second SIM slot to avoid expensive roaming fees. It’s usually cheaper to buy a local SIM card. By using two SIM cards, you get the best of both worlds because you can still receive two-factor text messages, keep your phone number for iMessage and more.

isDualSimDevice https://t.co/FdACoaDbpO pic.twitter.com/CP4anunomf

— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) July 31, 2018

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Google is reportedly planning a censorship-friendly search service for China

Google’s search service could be poised to make a dramatic return to China next year, according to an explosive report from The Intercept.

Google yanked its search service from China in 2010 in the face of pressure over censorship, but now the publication reports that it has developed a censored version that could launch in the country in six to nine months, according to information supplied by a source within Google. The alleged product would block Western services already outlawed in China, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and also scrub results for sensitive terms, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, and international media including the BBC and New York Times.

Google didn’t deny the report in a statement:

“We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The Google insider claims that the search product is codenamed Dragonfly and that knowledge of it is limited to a handful of high-level Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai. The company is said to plan to operate a joint venture in China with an unnamed local company.

The Intercept said its source got in touch out of concern that the project “will set a terrible precedent for many other companies who are still trying to do business in China while maintaining the principles of not succumbing to China’s censorship.”

There’s been plenty of speculation over the years that Google will re-enter China with a meaningful product. That has tended to focus on the Play Store, but it looks like the search product has already gained considerable momentum. The Intercept reports that it has been demonstrated to Chinese government officials, with Pichai himself having attended at least one meeting with authorities.

Internal documents seen by The Intercept show that an Android app is the initial focus, but there could be scope for a desktop version and more further down the line. The current concern, according to the publication, is ensuring that the service gains Chinese government approval and is good enough to compete with what is already available to internet users in China.

The Intercept’s report comes less than a week after Facebook briefly received approval to operate a subsidiary on Chinese soil. Its license was, however, revoked as news of the approval broke. The company said it had planned to open an innovation center, but it isn’t clear whether that will be possible now.

Facebook previously built a censorship-friendly tool that could be deployed in China.

While its U.S. peer has struggled to get a read on China, Google has been noticeably increasing its presence in the country over the past year or so.

The company has opened an AI lab in Beijing, been part of investment rounds for Chinese companies, including a $550 million deal with JD.com, and inked a partnership with Tencent. It has also launched products, with a file management service for Android distributed via third-party app stores and, most recently, its first mini program for Tencent’s popular WeChat messaging app.

The Intercept suggests that these dealings are a prelude to introducing Dragonfly in a bid to capture a chunk of the 700 million internet user market that grown quickly since Google’s search business left the country.

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Four million people are using Apple’s OS betas

For the past few years, Apple has made early versions of its operating systems available to those willing to brave the bugs. Through its beta software program, anyone willing to deal with spotty battery life or a crash or three could load up pre-release builds of iOS, macOS, watchOS, or tvOS.

Ever wonder how many actually take advantage of it?

According to Tim Cook on today’s earnings call, over four million people are currently running on the betas.

Alas, that’s as detailed as he got. He didn’t break down which platforms had the most beta users (though I’d bet iOS or macOS lead the way), nor what percentage of that beta group was developers (accessing the beta to debug their apps before the update) vs consumers (who just want to poke around the new goods early.)

For reference: as of February of 2018, Apple had 1.3 billion active devices across Apple TV, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Mac. So if each of the users Tim Cook mentioned is running a beta OS on one device, that’s around 0.3% of active devices running on a beta.

While that percentage might not sound huge, having four million people happily stress test your software before you officially ship it is a rare stength that few other companies can claim. Still, Apple has had a few rather glaring bugs slip through the cracks; from the annoying but forgettable bug that borked the letter “i” in iOS for a few days, to more severe security issues like the root user bug discovered in macOS at the end of last year. Could Apple be doing more to encourage pre-release bug hunting?

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Apple Pay is finally coming to CVS and 7-Eleven, and will soon expand to Germany

Longtime Apple Pay holdout CVS will finally be adding support for Apple’s mobile payments platform this fall, along with 7-Eleven, Apple CEO Tim Cook said this afternoon on the company’s earnings call. The news is particularly notable because CVS was one of the first major retailers to snub Apple Pay, choosing instead to launch its own barcode-based mobile payments solution “CVS Pay” back in 2016, following the failure of the retailer-backed Apple Pay rival CurrentC.

CVS Pay had become the first mobile payments solution the pharmacy chain adopted, after having purposefully avoided support for Apple Pay or any other rival NFC (tap to pay) technologies at its register. The company believed there was value in offering its own end-to-end solution to customers that combined both payments and loyalty, it had said.

In addition, CVS had earlier backed an Apple Pay alternative called CurrentC, which was developed by the merchant consortium MCX led by major retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Rite Aid and others. The QR code-based payments solution was designed to challenge Apple’s potential dominance in mobile payments. Many of the retailers even blocked Apple Pay at their stores in advance of bringing CurrentC to market.

However, CurrentC eventually failed and the technology was sold off to JPMorgan Chase in 2017. Some of its backers – like Best Buy and Rite Aid – had also relented, by allowing Apple Pay into their stores. But CVS did not. It instead moved forward with its own solution.

That it has now decided to also support Apple Pay is a major win for Apple, as is the addition of 7-Eleven to the list of retailers that will soon offer Apple Pay at checkout.

The retail expansions weren’t the only big Apple Pay news announced on the call.

Cook also said that Apple Pay would launch in Germany – but didn’t offer a timeframe for this launch. And he noted that Apple Pay saw more than 1 billion transactions in the 3rd quarter of 2018. That’s triple the number from a year ago, and more mobile transactions than Square and PayPal, he noted.

With the expansions, Apple Pay’s global traction is growing. The news follows a new forecast released this week by Juniper Research which now estimates Apple’s Pay will account for 1 in 2 contactless mobile wallet users (in OEM-provided wallets) by 2020.

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Apple nears a $1 trillion market cap as it clears another quarter ahead of expectations

Apple is inching closer and closer to becoming a $1 trillion company today after posting third quarter results that beat out what analysts were expecting and bumping the stock another few percentage points — which, by Apple standards, is tens of billions of dollars.

The company’s stock is up around 2.5% this afternoon after the report, which at a prior market close with a market cap of around $935 billion, is adding nearly another $20-plus billion to its market cap. A few quarters ago we were talking about how Apple was in shooting distance of that $1 trillion mark, but now it seems more and more like Apple will actually hit it. Apple is headed into its most important few quarters as we hit the back half of the year, with its usual new lineup of iPhones and other products and its accompanying critical holiday quarter.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the numbers:

• Revenue:  $53.3 billion, up 17% year-over-year compared to analyst expectations of $52.34 billion.
• Earnings: $2.34 per share compared to analyst estimates of $2.18 per share.
• iPhones: 41.3 million, up 1% year-over-year though revenue on the iPhone line was up 20% year-over-year. Analysts expected 41.79 million iphones sold.
• iPhone average selling price: $724
• iPads: 11.55 million, up 1% year-over-year but ahead of analyst expectations of 10.3 million.
• Macs: 3.7 million, down 13% year-over-year and behind analyst expectations
• Services: $9.6 billion, up 31% year-over-year.
• Other products: $3.7 billion, up 37% year-over-year.

So in all, the shipment numbers were hit or miss at a granular level, but at the same time the iPhone is generating a lot more revenue than it did last year — implying that there might be a shifting mix toward more expensive iPhones. Apple’s strategy to figure out if it could unlock a more premium tier in consumer demand, then, may be panning out and helping once again drive the company’s growth. It’s then pading out the rest of that with growth in services and other products like it has in the past few quarters as Apple heads into the end of the year.

In the past year or so, Apple’s stock has continued to rise even though there may have been some dampened expectations for its latest super-premium iPhone, the iPhone X. Its shares are up more than 20% in the past year, and in the second quarter the company announced that it would return an additional $100 billion to investors in a new capital return program, which at the time also sparked a considerable jump in its stock. Apple hasn’t delivered a product that has entirely changed the market calculus like it did when it first started rolling out larger iPhones, but its strategy of incremental improvements and maneuvering in Wall Street continues to provide it some momentum as it heads toward $1 trillion.

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Google’s Clock app can now wake you up with music from Spotify

You probably never think about the Google Clock app on your Android phone. And unless you are one of those happy early risers, it’s not exactly an app that brings you joy. But every day, it wakes you right on time, with either some annoying chirps or other sounds that, over time, will stress you out. But stress no more. Google today launched an update to the Clock app that now lets you choose any song or playlist from Spotify to wake you up.

This works for any Android phone running Android 5.0 (Lollipop and up) and you don’t even need a premium Spotify account to use it. Just a free one will do just fine. This new feature will roll out globally over the course of this week. So if everything goes to plan, you’ll be able to wake up to the soothing sounds of your favorite metal band by next Monday, if not before.

Now, you may think that it’s a bit weird that Google is using Spotify here. Doesn’t the company have its own music service? Or maybe even two, in the form of Google Play Music and YouTube Music? And of course, you would be correct, because it’s a bit odd to see that Google is supporting a competitor here. But then, Google’s plans for its music services feel about as coherent as those for its messaging services (remember Allo?).

YouTube revamps its Red subscription service to offer standalone music streaming

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