Construction giant Dewalt has entered the smartphone market with a tough Android-powered handset designed for building industry workers.

The £379 (108,184.39 Naira) device is designed to survive a 2m drop on to concrete and can operate in temperatures ranging from -20C to 60C.

Rival firm Caterpillar has already established itself as a brand in the physically tougher smartphone sector.

The so-called "tough phone" market is flourishing.

"Lots of people in the trade and construction industries, as well as outdoor sports enthusiasts, have realised that just having a thicker case isn't going to see them through," said James Booker, purchasing manager at UK firm Tuffphones.

Caterpillar's Tough Smartphone. 

To be certified as a "tough phone", handsets have to undergo more rigorous physical tests, including being subjected to tumbling - turned over and over inside a device for long periods of time, Mr Booker explained.

They also have to be water and dust proof.

Because they are sturdier, they can also incorporate a bigger battery, he added - the Dewalt phone claims to offer up to eight hours of talk time.

"One of the main things about traditional smartphones is that they are svelte and slim - there's an obvious correlation with how large a battery they can get in there," Mr Booker said.

While most of its specifications are fairly standard for the sector, Dewalt's MD501 phone comes with in-built QI wireless charging, which is unusual, he added.

Its touchscreen is made of commercially manufactured Gorilla Glass - a highly robust but thin type of glass that works with gloved hands.

The handset is a collaboration with Global Mobile Communications, a rugged phone specialist.

The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Google in its 11-year legal battle with an authors group. 

The Court said it would not hear an appeal from the Authors Guild, which claimed Google breached copyright laws by scanning books without permission.

The technology giant began the process in 2004, so it could include extracts in a searchable database, and it was sued by the Authors Guild in 2005.

The Supreme Court's judgement is the final ruling on the matter.

Google's database of books lets people search through millions of titles and read passages and selected pages from them.

While some of the books in the database are old titles that are no longer protected by copyright, millions are more recent publications.

The Authors Guild had argued that the project undermined authors' ability to make money from their work.

Google said its database was a "fair use" of protected works, describing it as "a card catalogue for the digital age".

The firm could have faced billions of dollars in damages claims from authors if it had lost the case.

The Authors Guild said it was "disappointed" that the Supreme Court would not hear its appeal.

The organisation's president Roxana Robinson said: "We believed then and we believe now that authors should be compensated when their work is copied for commercial purposes".

A Google spokeswoman said: "We are grateful that the court has agreed to uphold the decision of the Second Circuit which concluded that Google Books is transformative and consistent with copyright law."

Hackers have again demonstrated that no matter how many security precautions someone takes, all a hacker needs to track their location and snoop on their phone calls and texts is their phone number.

The hack, first demonstrated by German security researcher Karsten Nohl in 2014 at a hacker convention in Hamburg, has been shown to still be active by Nohl over a year later for CBS’s 60 Minutes.

The hack uses the network interchange service called Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), also known as C7 in the UK or CCSS7 in the US, which acts as a broker between mobile phone networks. When calls or text messages are made across networks SS7 handles details such as number translation, SMS transfer, billing and other back-end duties that connect one network or caller to another. By hacking into or otherwise gaining access to the SS7 system, an attacker can track a person’s location based on mobile phone mast triangulation, read their sent and received text messages, and log, record and listen into their phone calls, simply by using their phone number as an identifier.

Nohl, who is currently conducting vulnerability analysis of SS7 for several international mobile phone networks, demonstrated the hack for the CBS show. He tracked a brand new phone given to US congressman Ted Lieu in California from his base in Berlin using only its phone number. Nohl pinpointed Lieu’s movements down to districts within Los Angeles, read his messages and recorded phone calls between Lieu and his staff.

The biggest issue for consumers is that there is little they can do to safeguard against this kind of snooping, short of turning off their mobile phone, as the attack happens on the network side, regardless of the phone used.

Nohl said: “The mobile network is independent from the little GPS chip in your phone, it knows where you are. So any choices that a congressman could’ve made, choosing a phone, choosing a pin number, installing or not installing certain apps, have no influence over what we are showing because this is targeting the mobile network. That, of course, is not controlled by any one customer.”

Hackers have proven that they can break into SS7, but security services, including the US National Security Agency, are also thought to use the system to track and snoop on target users. 

According to a new report by Ming-Chi Kuo, a renowned Apple analyst, who claims that the iPhone will be seeing a whole new design in 2017, dropping the iconic aluminum casing for an all-glass enclosure with AMOLED screen. This follows on from another of Kuo’s reports in late March, where he first suggested Apple will return to an iPhone design akin to the iPhone 4. It does not seem like the iPhone 7 for 2016 will be seeing such a major overhaul, breaking Apple’s tick-tock pattern of a significant chassis redesign every other generation.

Kuo believes that Apple will be moving to an all-glass enclosure, dropping aluminum completely as it will no longer appear modern or fresh in 2017. Apple’s smartphone competitors are also adopting aluminum designs in droves, making it more likely Apple will want to differentiate with entirely new materials.Kuo does not elaborate on how Apple will make the next iPhone entirely out of glass, so currently the specifics of the drastic redesign will have to be left to the imagination. Apple used glass for the iPhone 4/4s front and back, but this was sandwiched together with a stainless steel band. It’s currently unclear how an iPhone could be constructed primarily out of glass.

The new glass phone will also feature a new AMOLED display panel, which will be thinner and lighter to compensate for the slight weight increase of glass compared with metal exteriors. Kuo does not believe that drop test issues will be a roadblock in Apple’s decision making, given the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s already relied heavily on glass front and back. Last week, Apple reportedly reached a $2.6 billion agreement with Samsung to supply OLED panels for iPhone displays.

It definitely seems like Apple is saving a major new iPhone form factor for 2017, which leaves Apple’s 2016 iPhone 7 refresh somewhat in question. Leaks to date have shown very modest changes for the iPhone 7, with a design largely the same as the existing iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models. It certainly looks like Apple’s next big refresh for the iPhone will not come to light this year, perhaps earlier in 2017 if not the fall. So far, the biggest new thing for the iPhone 7 appears to be the addition of a dual-camera for better pictures, although rumors have indicated this will be exclusive to the 5.5 inch iPhone 7 Plus.

Samsung has unveiled its two latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 and GS7 edge. Rumors about the GS7 and GS7 edge hit the Web months ago. However, Samsung did keep a few surprises under wraps.

We will, together, unwrap these surprises....

1) Galaxy S7 and GS7 edge digital camera

The GS6, GS6 edge and GS6 edge+ all have 16MP cameras. The new GS7 and GS7 edge have 12MP digital shooters. So, you ask, why is a reduction in megapixels a good thing? Simply put, megapixels aren't everything when it comes to digital cameras, and at a certain point, the lens, aperture and shutter speed begin to carry as much if not more weight.

The cameras on the new GS7s are the "first dual pixel sensor 12MP" smartphone cameras ever, according to Samsung, which means every pixel they pack is used to focus. That leads to quicker, more effective autofocus. Samsung says the GS7 cameras focus "two to three times faster" than the GS6 shooters. The GS7 camera aperture (F1.7), leads to 25 percent less exposure time than the cameras on the GS6s (F1.9), according to Samsung, which should result in crisper, clearer images. The camera pixels themselves are also larger in the GS7s (1.4μm) than the GS6 phones (1.12μm), Samsung says, and they take in more light and help capture quality images in dimly lit spaces.

2) Galaxy S7, GS7 edge and microSD memory cards

The Galaxy S6 was the first Galaxy S smartphone that didn't have a slot for expandable memory, and though this wasn't a deal-breaker for most folks, it was a disappointment for many. Samsung reversed course with the GS7 and again included a microSD slot. The company also figured out a way to include the memory card, the memory-card and SIM card slots on the GS7 are one and the same. The GS7 phones currently support memory cards up to 200GB, though Samsung says they could be updated to work with higher capacity cards as they're released.

3) Galaxy S7, GS7 edge and 'Always on Display'

The two new GS7 smartphones have a new "Always on Display" feature that does just what it suggests and lets you quickly view a variety of information without ever touching your device to wake it. The feature isn't unique — Motorola's latest DROIDs have similar "Attentive Displays". (The GS7 devices both run Android v6.0.1 "Marshmallow.")

The customizable Always on Display can also use a motion sensor to wake the GS7 devices and display the date, time and message alerts; a calendar; or a personalized screen. And it has two different light levels so, for example, if you place the GS7 on your bedside in the dark, the Always on Display dims accordingly.

4) Galaxy S7 and GS7 edge are water resistant

Samsung has sold various water-resistant and ruggedized phones for years. It even makes a bulked-up version of the GS6, the GS6 Active, that's basically a GS6 with body armor. While the GS7 phones are not ruggedized like the Active, they are just as water-resistant.

Samsung is careful to stress that while the GS7s are protected from water, they're not waterproof. The new phones have an International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) protection rating of IP68, which means they offer "protection from contact with harmful dust" and are "protected from immersion in water with a depth of more than 1 meter,"according to CNET. But you should by no means try to take underwater photos with a GS7 — or if you do, don't go crying to Samsung when your phone croaks.

5) Galaxy S7 edge's enhanced 'edge screen'

The curved displays on Samsung's edge phones are designed to provide quick access to information, apps and contacts. Not surprisingly, the GS7 edge has some new edge screen features.The edge panel now takes up more of the display when opened; it is 550 pixels instead of 256 pixels, or more than double the width of the edge panel on past Samsung edge phones. The larger size lets you view two side-by-side columns of apps or contacts instead of just one. And the new GS7s also shows certain information horizontally down the column so you don't need to hold the phone in landscape orientation to see it. 

6) Galaxy S7, GS7 edge have big ol' batteries

Both of the new GS7s have significantly larger batteries than their GS6 counterparts. Poor battery life is the GS6 edge's Achilles heel, and these larger power packs should address that issue.

The GS7 has a 3,000mAh battery (which is about 18 percent larger than the GS6's 2,550mAh battery) and the GS7 edge has a whopping 3,600mAh battery (20 percent larger than the 3,000mAh GS6 edge+ battery). There is a downside to packing such large battery packs into phones, and I'll get to that in the next section, but they should also mean longer battery life.

7) Galaxy S7, GS7 edge and faster wireless charging

Like the GS6 and GS6 edge phones, the new GS7s support both Qi andAirFuel Alliance wireless charging standards. However, the new phones power up faster wirelessly — you can charge a dead phone to about half capacity in 30 minutes, according to Samsung … if you use an appropriate wireless "fast charge" accessory, such as the company's new wireless charge pad, which props the GS7 up at about a 40-degree angle, so you can see the Always On Display features. The Galaxy S6 edge+ fully charges wirelessly in about 120 minutes, according to Samsung, so the new phones should wirelessly power up about twice as quickly.

There's a lot to like about these two new phones, but they're not perfect.

Here are a few reasons why Samsung might have missed its mark with the GS7s.

1) Bigger battery means heavier GS7

The GS7s both received battery upgrades, and that's certainly a good thing, but those larger power packs mean the devices are heavier than their GS6 and GS6 edge+ counterparts. The weight difference between the GS6 edge+ (153 grams) and the slightly smaller, yet still heavier GS7 edge (157 grams) is a just 4 grams. However, the GS7 (152 grams), which has the same size display and is actually a bit thinner than the GS6 (138 grams), is more than 10 percent heavier. And it's 15 percent heavier than the GS6 edge (132 grams).

The weight difference between the GS6 edge+ and GS7 edge isn't particularly noticeable, but people who upgrade from the GS6 or GS6 edge to the GS7 will definitely feel some extra heft.

2) Galaxy S7, GS7 edge look very familiar

The two new GS7s phones look nearly identical to the GS6 and GS6 edge+. That's not necessarily a bad thing (the GS6 is a genuine looker), but there's something disappointing about a new smartphone that looks just like your old phone.

3) Galaxy S7, GS7 edge only available with 32GB storage

The new GS7 phones support memory cards, but they're available only with one internal storage option: 32GB. If you don't want to purchase a memory card — or have to remember to carry one around in your wallet or purse — and 32GB of on-board storage isn't enough, the GS7s might not be right for you.

Whatsapp, which was acquired by Facebook and is becoming the fastest growing communication company in world, has come up with a new feature on their app. This feature is known as End-to-End Encryption. It has been integrated into the latest versions of their app. When end-to-end encrypted, your messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents, and calls are secured from falling into the wrong hands.

Let us see some of the Merits of this new feature. 

• Security by Default

WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is available when you and the people you message use the latest versions of our app. Many messaging apps only encrypt messages between you and them, but WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even Whatsapp. This is because your messages are secured with a lock, and only the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read them. For added protection, every message you send has its own unique lock and key. All of this happens automatically: no need to turn on settings or set up special secret chats to secure your messages.

• Speak Freely

Whatsapp Calling lets you talk to your friends and family, even if they're in another country. Just like your messages, Whatsapp calls are end-to-end encrypted so Whatsapp and third parties can't listen to them.

• Messages that Stay with You

Your messages should be in your hands. That's why Whatsapp doesn't store your messages on our servers once we deliver them, and end-to-end encryption means that Whatsapp and third parties can't read them anyway.

• See for Yourself

Whatsapp lets you check whether the calls you make and messages you send are end-to-end encrypted. Simply look for the indicator in contact info or group info.

 When it comes to information security there are about as many opinions on the subject as there are network hosts in any given organization. Everyone has his own definition of “secure” yet it's such a difficult thing that cannot truly be quantified. So, when management, auditors, business partners, and customers come asking about how secure your environment is, what do you, what do you say? How do you even define the word? It's a really tough thing but one thing is for sure it's different in every situation.

What “secure” means to me is:

• The information risks have been identified.
• The risks have been prioritized.
• Management is on board with the risks and has allocated the appropriate resources to address them.

Security is not a state of compliance. It’s not situation where everyone is happy with the current level of perceived security. Nor is it the fact that no known breaches have occurred. This latter part is where many organizations end up getting themselves into trouble. Everything is quiet and humming along and the assumption is that all is well as long as no issues are being detected. That's hardly ever the case. In fact, in so many situations, businesses are notified by third parties that they have actually been breached.

 Perhaps the greatest challenge with security is assuming that someone else is taking care of all the right things. It's no different than those committee meetings that we are all subjected to where everyone assumes that everyone else has things under control. There has to be some accountability when it comes to security. Perhaps that accountability comes in terms of a third party auditor or consultant telling you where things are at - including the things you don’t want to hear. Perhaps it comes from vulnerability scanners and related security tools - as they are always getting better at uncovering new issues and providing the latest intelligence. Perhaps it's because you and your team of IT and security professionals are getting better - knowing what to look for and how to better address the security issues as they arise.

 At the end of the day, only you will know what “secure” means in the context of your business based on your own unique governance and compliance needs and especially based on your business's bottom line. After all, security is not the primary goal of pretty much every business. Instead, the goal is acquiring and retaining a customer and ensuring the appropriate shareholders are being taken care of. If you can keep that in mind and keep your finger on how security impacts your business and your unique situation, you're going to be well ahead of the curve.

Perhaps, most importantly, keep in mind that you don't have to be at the front of the herd and have the top level of security. However, you do need to be at least in the middle of the pack and not stand out. The last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself. Secure or not, you’re definitely a target.