WeChat now available on Nokia Asha Smartphones

Tencent announced that WeChat, a leading innovative mobile social communication application, is now available on the Nokia Asha touch family of smartphones.

WeChat for Asha smartphones comes with its signature 'Hold-to-Talk' feature, which allows users to send voice messages over a mobile or data network. Users can also chat with a maximum of 40 friends online through WeChat's group chat feature.

Designed to easily chat with friends or to connect with people from all around the world, WeChat enables users to add friends through various methods including connecting via phone books and WeChat ID.

As a precautionary measure to safeguard the privacy of WeChat users, only friends who are granted permission to connect will be able to communicate to the users. Against the backdrop of security and privacy concerns on social media, these measures leave users with a peace of mind, and ensure that users are sharing and interacting only with fellow users who are trusted contacts.

The application is available for download in Nokia Store and official WeChat website.

Music, lighting can be used to trigger mobile malware

Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have uncovered new hard-to-detect methods involving music, lighting or vibration that criminals may use to trigger mobile device malware.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) presented the research at the 8th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS) in Hangzhou, China

"When you go to an arena or Starbucks, you don't expect the music to have a hidden message, so this is a big paradigm shift because the public sees only emails and the Internet as vulnerable to malware attacks," said Ragib Hasan, assistant professor of computer and information sciences and director of the UAB SECuRE and Trustworthy (SECRET) computing lab.
"We devote a lot of our efforts towards securing traditional communication channels. But when bad guys use such hidden and unexpected methods to communicate, it is difficult if not impossible to detect that," Hasan said.
A team of UAB researchers was able to trigger malware hidden in mobile devices from 55 feet away in a crowded hallway using music.
They were also successful, at various distances, using music videos; lighting from a television, computer monitor and overhead bulbs; vibrations from a subwoofer; and magnetic fields.
"We showed that these sensory channels can be used to send short messages that may eventually be used to trigger a mass-signal attack," said Nitesh Saxena, director of the UAB Security and Privacy in Emerging computing and networking Systems (SPIES) research group and assistant professor in the Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research (CIA-JFR).
"While traditional networking communication used to send such triggers can be detected relatively easily, there does not seem to be a good way to detect such covert channels currently," Saxena said.
Researchers were able to trigger malware with a bandwidth of only five bits per second - a fraction of the bandwidth used by laptops or home computers.

Nokia Lumia 925 to arrive in India

Nokia seems all set to launch the much-anticipated Lumia 925 in India as the company has put it up on its online website and has also reduced the 920 version’s price. The latter was introduced in the country with a retail tag of around Rs 38,200, earlier this year.

For those who are contemplating buying the new handset as soon as it hits availability status, we have listed its specifications to give them a fair idea about what’s in store. Offering a multi-touch real estate of 4.5 inches, the device’s AMOLED ClearBlack PureMotion+ HD screen can render clear visuals in 1280 x 768p resolution. Its aspect ratio is 16:9 and the pixel density is said to be of 334ppi.

Compatible with micro SIM cards, the smartphone in question drags along an 8.7MP PureView camera as well as a 1.2MP front-mounted webcam. Its multitasking properties can be attributed to a 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and the responsibility of coughing up talk time of about 12.8 hours in the 3G mode is shouldered by a 2000mAh battery.

As far as the 920 is concerned, this gadget based on the Windows Phone 8 platform gains steam from a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor too. Graced by a 4.5-inch PureMotion+ HD touchscreen, it has been accessorized with an 8.7MP PureView camera as well as a front snapper. The device is loaded with all the common connectivity features and brings 1GB of RAM, 32GB onboard memory and a 2000mAh battery amongst a number of other components.

The Nokia Lumia 925 smartphone’s price details are under wraps for now, but the 920 carries a retail tag of Rs 32,639 and can be purchased for an even lesser amount through online retailers such as Flipkart, Infibeam and more.

Samsung Launches Galaxy Star for Rs. 5240 - Cheapest Phone from Samsung

After the launch of the Galaxy S4 which is a massive upgrade from the Galaxy S3, the South Korean mobile handset maker Samsung Electronics today launched its cheapest Galaxy series phone 'Star' priced at Rs 5,240.

'Star' is the cheapest device in Samsung's Galaxy range and competes with the likes of Nokia's Asha range of smartphones as well as similar offerings from domestic firms like Micromax and Karbonn.

Samsung Mobile Country Head Vineet Taneja stated : "Galaxy Star is a device that provides superior value to consumers based on its features, intuitive performance and design features. We want more and more feature phone users to upgrade to the Samsung Galaxy Star,"

The Galaxy Star specifications include a single core 1 GHz processor paired with 512 MB RAM. The internal storage is 4 GB, and a microSD slot for expansion which can be done up to 32 GB. It has a 3 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, which results to a 133 ppi pixel density, and a 2 megapixel camera and a 1200 mAh Li-on Battery . The Galaxy Star comes with Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 out of the box.

With this device, Samsung now has a portfolio of 15 smartphones, priced between Rs 5,240 and Rs 41,500.  Though smartphones comprised a small chunk of the overall handset market at about seven per cent, the high-end category grew at a robust 35.7 per cent to 15.2 million devices in 2012 from 11.2 million units in 2011.
Given the strong growth in the category, handsets makers are introducing products that are affordable. This is also aimed at helping feature phone users upgrade to smartphones, it said.