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Nokia Lumia 530 review: not quite an upgrade

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Here at TechCentral, we have long been fans of Windows Phone. We think it’s the perfect platform for new smartphone users or those people that want a no-fuss operating system. And Microsoft’s newest, the Nokia Lumia 530, is a great entry-level Windows Phone device for budget-conscious consumers. 
 
The 530 has much to live up to. Its predecessor, the Lumia 520, was the best-selling Windows Phone device in its category in South Africa and worldwide. 
 
The Lumia 530 resembles the 520, but it’s edges are more rounded. The phone still has a 4-inch liquid crystal display, but the screen quality has been upped ever so slightly — 480×854 pixels for a pixel density of 246ppi, up from the 520’s 480×800 pixels and 233ppi. It is also a little heavier and slightly thicker than its predecessor, but weighing in at 129g, with a girth of 11,7mm, this phone isn’t going to weigh heavily in your pocket. 
 
The capacitive buttons on the Lumia 520, just below the screen, have been made part of the display, providing a much cleaner look to the phone’s front panel. The buttons and 3,5mm audio jack remain untouched, but Nokia removed the dedicated camera button on the side of the phone, which is a pity in our view. 
 
The phone has a 1 430mAh battery (same as before) that will deliver talk time of about 13 hours. Battery life under normal usage conditions should last just more than a day. There’s a 1,2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor powering the device. It’s enough grunt to ensure Windows Phone runs reasonably smoothly. 
 
 
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Compared to last year’s model, the Lumia 530 has been trimmed in two important areas. Firstly, the internal flash storage has been cut from 8GB to just 4GB, though this can be expanded by way of a microSD memory card up to 128GB. Secondly, the 530’s video recording capabilities are not as good — the 520 was able to shoot video at a respectable 720p at 30fps, but it’s only 480p, also at 30fps, on the new phone. The camera keeps a 5-megapixel sensor, although its now a fixed-focus shooter — the Lumia 520 had auto focus. There is no rear flash or front-facing camera either, but this is not unique to entry-level smartphones. 
 
We can only imagine that Nokia has pared these features in an effort to bring down the 530’s price. The 520 was introduced last year at R1 899; the 530 costs R550 less, even though the rand has weakened substantially against both the dollar and the euro in the same period. 
 
As with other Lumia phones, this one features an array of brightly coloured and replaceable back covers, available in bright green, bright orange, white and dark grey. 
 
Basic connectivity options are supported, including 3G cellular and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. The phone can be used as a hotspot. It also has full GPS support. 
 
The Lumia 530 comes with a number of applications, including Facebook, Skype, MixRadio, Office and OneDrive. Users get 15GB of free OneDrive storage when they sign up. 
 
Considering its price, it’s hard not to love what the entry-level Lumia 530 has to offer. If you have a Lumia 520, though, the upgrade might not seem as appealing as it would have been with an improved camera and video recording capabilities. 
 
The Lumia 530 has a recommended retail price of R1 349. There’s also a dual-Sim version for sale online. The Orange store has it for R1 435.  — © NewsCentral Media

Nokia Lumia 530 review: not quite an upgrade

Here at TechCentral, we have long been fans of Windows Phone. We think it’s the perfect platform for new smartphone users or those people...

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Asus Zenfone 6 review

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Key Features: 6-inch 1,280 x 720 pixel IPS screen; 16GB storage; 2GB RAM; 2GHz Intel Atom Z2580 CPU 
Manufacturer: Asus 
 
What is the Asus Zenfone 6? 
The Asus Zenfone 6 is the largest model in Asus’s new phone line-up – a set of phones out to establish Asus as a real phone brand. It gets you a 6-inch screen, and both a better processor and camera than the slightly smaller Zenfone 5. 
 
We think the Zenfone 5 phone is pretty great, especially as it starts at just £150. The Zenfone 6 is a slightly tricker proposition as its size introduces a few usability issues, and it costs a fair bit more at £250 without 4G. But it’s ultimately a solid phone in almost every respect, and a good deal if you don’t mind about having a brand on the back your friends might turn their noses up at. 
 
 
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Asus Zenfone 6 – Design 
The Asus Zenfone 6 is a huge phone. There was no way around this one really – you can’t make a phone with a 6-inch screen and make it small. 
 
As you have probably guessed by now from the score, we quite like the Zenfone 6, but this size is something you should consider seriously before buying. It means that when you hold the phone in one hand, you need to grip it with your fingertips and there’s really no room for manoeuvring the thing unless you get a second hand involved. 
 
It’s more of a handful than a naughty three-year old with a sugar high and soon-to-be-diagnosed ADHD. 
 
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The only way Asus could have made this slightly better is by trimming down the screen bezels as much as possible, a bit like the LG G3. We wouldn’t expect this from a company that’s pretty new to phones, and sure enough the Zenfone 6’s are pretty ordinary, resulting in a width almost 6mm greater than the Galaxy Note 4. 
 
Yes, that phone has a smaller 5.7-inch screen, but it’s one of the few genuinely desirable big-screen alternatives out there. The Zenfone 6 isn’t exactly light at 196g either. 
 
Aside from the largely unavoidable size issue, the Asus Zenfone 6 design is mostly a complete success. The look isn’t showy but has just enough little Asus inflections here to give the phone something bordering on an identity. 
 
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ou get a shiny bit of metal below the screen bearing a neat-looking finish of concentric circles - an Asus signature - a small Asus logo on back and front, and a simple, curved plastic rear. 
 
In the Zenfone 5 we complained that the hardware soft keys looked a bit toy-like, a bit too large. However – strangely enough – they’re actually a bit smaller in this larger phone, giving them a more refined and sophisticated look. 
 
The Zenfone 6’s design is not dynamic or particularly different. But from a company whose previous ‘phones’ like the Padfone 2 have been as ‘out there’ as the professor from Back to the Future, that’s no bad thing. 
 
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We should also note that Asus has put some clear thought into making the Zenfone 6 as usable as it can be. Where in the Zenfone 5 the power button sits above the volume rocker, here it’s below, keeping it within reach of your thumb. It’s hardly a eureka moment, but it’s reassuring. 
 
Build quality of the Zenfone 6 is commendable, even though the whole rear of the phone is a fairly standard moulded piece of plastic. It feels tough, there are no wide seams or creaky bits and the front of the phone is covered with Gorilla Glass 3. 
 
This is the kind of toughened glass used in a great many high-end phones, and means you don’t really need a screen protector unless you really want to sell it on in perfect condition in a year or so. It’s highly scratch-resistant, and while it’s used in quite a lot of lower-cost phones these days – even the Motorola Moto E – it’s good to see Asus managed to fit such a large pane of the stuff into the budget. 
 
 
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As well as looking and feeling really rather good, the Zenfone 6 is also a bit more flexible than an obvious rival on price, if not size: the Nexus 5. There’s a microSD card slot under that back cover, which is a great addition in a phone that really should be used as a little video buddy. If that isn't one of your primary considerations, why not get something smaller? 
 
There are 8GB, 16GB and 32GB versions of the Zenfone 6 in existence, but the one we get in the UK at present has 16GB. There’s no 4G option at the moment, though. Given the £249 price, this is an issue.

Asus Zenfone 6 review

Key Features: 6-inch 1,280 x 720 pixel IPS screen; 16GB storage; 2GB RAM; 2GHz Intel Atom Z2580 CPU Manufacturer: Asus What is the Asu...

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The Success Key of BlackBerry in Indonesia

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Compared to all countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia does have the largest number of BlackBerry users. So what makes this phone so successful? 
 
There are about three million BlackBerry subscribers in Indonesia. This figure is believed to still be growing along with the incessant activity of RIM's marketing partners in Indonesia. Indonesia itself has a mobile market with a rate of more than 180 million subscribers. 
 
Behind the success of the BlackBerry was not spared from the habits of the users in Indonesia. It is utilized RIM to continue to aggressively promote their products. 
 
"The people of Indonesia is fond of texting. So they get a better experience with the fuel features, email and social media. That's what makes the BlackBerry sold in Indonesia," said Francois Mahieu, Senior Director, Head of Product Management Asia Pacific Rim. 
 
In addition, RIM also implement their various strategies such as building community, providing a diverse selection of products, or offer efficiency and durability of products that claimed to be the best in its class. 
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The Success Key of BlackBerry in Indonesia

Compared to all countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia does have the largest number of BlackBerry users. So what makes this phone so succ...

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Shellshock makes Heartbleed look insignificant

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Somehow there always seems to be another Internet security disaster around the corner. A few months ago everyone was in a panic about Heartbleed. Now the bug called Shellshock (officially CVE-2014-6271), a far more serious vulnerability, is running uncontrolled over the Internet. It's never a good time to panic, but if you're discouraged I don't blame you; I know I am. 
 
In retrospect, the grave concern over Heartbleed seems misplaced. As information disclosure bugs go it was a really bad one, but it was only an information disclosure bug and a difficult one to exploit. The sky's the limit on attacks with Shellshock and it's so easy to exploit that it's already being widely-exploited according to research firm Fireeye, which says they have already observed several forms of attack: 
 
Malware droppers 
Reverse shells and backdoors 
Data exfiltration 
DDoS 
Of course it's not just Fireeye; everyone is reporting widespread sightings of exploits. See Kaspersky, Trend Micro, HP Security Research and many others. 
 
Speaking of HP, their TippingPoint unit states that their network IPS has been updated to recognize known attacks using Shellshock. A vigorously updated IPS, deployed not just at the perimeter but also at critical points within the network, may be the only effective systemic protection you have against Shellshock for now. HP is not the only IPS around of course. And remember that an IPS is more of a protection against known exploits than against the vulnerability generally. 
 
This particular bug has been in the Bash shell for over two decades. The implications of this are really bad. First, it means that an extremely important and popular program either went unscrutinized or poorly-scrutinized. Surely there are many other such problems out there. Don't be surprised if several of them have been used carefully and surreptitiously for targeted attacks for years. In fact, don't be surprised if Shellshock has been used in the past. 
 
All sorts of horrible scenarios are possible with Shellshock. It's not just limited to web server attacks. Fireeye shows how different Internet services, even DHCP and SSH, can be exploited to perform the attack, as long as Bash is the shell, and it usually is. They demonstrate automated click fraud, stealing the host password file, several DDOS attacks using the server and several ways to establish a shell on the server without any malware running on it. 
 
Another nasty aspect of this bug is that so many *NIX servers are out of sight/out of mind. There is (usually) no automatic update process that runs periodically. This was true of Heartbleed as well, but OpenSSL has nowhere near the ubiquity of Bash, and even where OpenSSL is present it doesn't necessarily work with critical information.. 
 
The open source software community also inspires little confidence with the way the initial updates proved inadequate. The release of the initial Shellshock bug was withheld until a patch was available, but it wasn't long before further research showed that additional related vulnerabilities exist and that they needed patches as well. (Current Bash versions address all known vulnerabilities — and, tautologically, none of the unknown ones). 
 
Of course, reactive patching like this is a loser's game. As Heartbleed and many earlier vulnerability crises have shown, a proactive auditing policy and procedure is required if you want to be prepared for cases like these. Proper implementation of such a policy would give you a current and precise inventory of software on your network. You really want to have this, because attackers who have penetrated your network probably have one too. You need to react at least as quickly as they do. 
 
This is hard work and the sort of best practice with which everyone agrees, but for which few have time. And even it is largely just a better way to be reactive, although it does have the added advantage of helping to find unauthorized software on the network. The less you know about what software you are running and where, the longer it will take for you to deal with crises like Shellshock. And more will come. And if your slow reaction leads to damages to customers or third parties they can justifiably say that you didn't do everything you could to protect your systems.

Shellshock makes Heartbleed look insignificant

Somehow there always seems to be another Internet security disaster around the corner. A few months ago everyone was in a panic about Hea...

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Why Americans expect privacy: An open letter to FBI Director James Comey

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There is no doubt there are bad people in this world. All one has to do is turn on the evening news or open a Web browser. Last week's shocker was the beheading of Colleen Hufford in an Oklahoma food processing plant. 
 
This follows the worldwide news of the beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines by the radical Islamic State terrorist group. 
 
Of course, beheadings are only one form of deranged, twisted, and criminal behavior mankind is capable of. One of the curses of our humanity is that we can be both amazingly wonderful and amazingly horrible. 
Civilization and society were created, in large part, to protect the wonderful from the horrible. This is why we have law enforcement and national security. There are bad people out there, and some good people dedicated their careers and their lives to protecting the rest of us from the evils men do. 
 
Unfortunately, security comes with a price, a bargain, a trade-off. Those who seek to protect us from bad things have to get ahead of the bad things in order to spring into action. As Ben Franklin said, "Distrust and caution are the parents of security." 
 
Scientists describe "chaotic dynamics" as the state of mostly unpredictable linked events sensitive to various initial conditions. In other words, we're all running around, doing our own thing, expecting a level of freedom and security, and living our lives. 
 
Taken from the macro level, looking at the nation as a whole, law enforcement and our national security infrastructure has to somehow drill through all those chaotic dynamics and find the next terrorist cell and prevent it from bombing a marathon, destroying a building, blowing up a bridge, poisoning a water supply, or any of the other nightmare scenarios that keep security professionals up at night, wracked with worry. 
 
Technology provides a way to drill through that chaos. Given a highly communicative population, most now equipped with digital nodes attached to their bodies (or stuck in their pockets), combined with the ability to store, scan, process, and retrieve vasts amounts of data in near real-time, our national security agencies have the technical capability to find a needle in a haystack -- as long as they're allowed to scan the entire haystack. 
 
This is where wiretaps and metadata and PRISM and the NSA all come in. Up until the events of September 11, 2001, most law enforcement was generally content with catching criminals after they'd committed a crime. Oh, sure, if they knew of a potential murder, law enforcement would do its best to prevent it, but the real focus was collecting evidence after a crime, tracking down the bad guy, and creating a legal case. Your basic Law & Order episode, on a national scale. 
 
But then the planes hit and we all asked, "How could this have happened?" While there were certainly clues about the attack ahead of time, our national security command and national command authority did not react in time to prevent the attacks. Thousands died. 
 
And the game changed. Now, we wanted to get ahead of the attacks. We wanted to be sure we could predict them, see them coming, and stop them before they happened. We couldn't just gather evidence from a crime scene, we had to get all Minority Report on the country and somehow predict future crimes, or at least future terror activities. 
 
The result was taking the signals analysis and data munching capabilities of the NSA and setting it loose to scan as much information as it was legally allowed to scan. We've all heard the stories since Edward Snowden stole his treasure trove dumped it into the hungry arms of a desperate-for-a-hot-story press. 
 
So now we have claims of American national security agencies spying on Americans. In a very few cases, this is justifiable, and that's where the FISA courts come in. But added to those cases are the super-secret National Security Letters, where ISPs have to share information but can't tell anyone, and all of the information requests sent to our biggest information hoarders: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and so on. 
 
All of this is pretty much old news. We've been talking about the NSA and Snowden for more than a year now. What is not old news is how Americans are reacting to all of this. 
 
Put simply, most folks are pissed. 
 
That's because most Americans believe in the whole freedom thing. They believe in privacy. They believe in protection from unreasonable search and seizure. These values have been inculcated in all of us since our diaper days. To many people, America IS freedom and privacy. 
 
Or, at least, it should be. 
 
Americans so believe that these rights are inalienable -- and are so used to practicing their freedoms -- that when it seems like such rights are being abrogated, they simply engineer around the problem. 
 
That's why Silent Circle built the Blackphone and why Apple and Google are starting to build encrypted infrastructure where they are algorithmically incapable of providing customer data to law enforcement. 
 
It's not that Americans don't want to catch the terrorists. They do. Americans, absent the tempering hand of the criminal justice system, would probably catch, hang, tar, feather, cook, and fling terrorists into the ocean. Americans do not like being "effed" with by anyone who might harsh our buzz or kill our families. 
 
But Americans are also realists and we know full well our government is made up of... flawed people, to put it kindly. Yes, our government servants are -- in the main -- exceptionally hard and dedicated workers. But there are others who flaunt the system and play at the fringes of what's right and wrong. 
 
We are not that trusting. We don't trust that the government won't scan our metadata or our conversations and send the information to the IRS, to insurance companies, to over-zealous local police forces. 
 
We don't trust that our leaders won't use these powers for political gain, like the case where the IRS supposedly treated potential nonprofits inappropriately and with some degree of prejudice. 
 
We don't trust that allowing digital eavesdropping to protect against terrorism won't open the doors to allowing digital eavesdropping to collect an errant car payment or call down stormtroopers just because someone in their family downloaded a music track. 
 
And so, Americans want their privacy. Americans demand their privacy. If the government is going to put that precious right on the chopping block, Americans will take it back. 
 
Their outrage has fueled changes in product and service offerings by the phone makers. Apple and Google have started modifying their hardware (or hardware reference models in Google's case) to create devices that can't be tapped and where data can't be turned over to law enforcement, because that data has been rendered unreadable from end-to-end. 
 
There is a disconnect, however, and that's why I've written this article. Some of our national security leaders, so worried on our behalf about our security, have missed the other side of the issue: American's sense of right and trust. 
 
Director Comey, this was evident in a recent statement you made about Apple's and Google's attempts to build systems that thwart law enforcement observation. As reported in HuffPo, you stated: 
 
"I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the content of anyone's closet or their smart phone. The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened — even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order — to me does not make any sense." 
Of course it makes sense. The notion that you doen't understand the motivation to build in this privacy itself makes little sense — unless you suffer from that peculiar sort of tunnel vision Washington insiders get when they live in the bubble for too long. 
 
Look, I've gone on record often enough outlining why our national security apparatus needs to monitor signals intelligence and the challenge of stopping another Boston marathon bomber or another 9/11. And, as a proud member of the FBI's Infragard program, you know I'm dedicated to protecting America's infrastructure. 
 
But we have to be capable of holding two opposing concepts in our minds at once. On the one hand, we need surveillance and security to protect our citizens. On the other hand, we're America in large part because we distrust and protect ourselves from surveillance and unreasonable invasions of privacy. 
 
You, Director Comey, of all people, should understand this. You were the Justice Department official who stood fast against domestic surveillance back in 2004 when then Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital. It was one of the most politically brave actions we've ever seen coming from a career Washington bureaucrat. 
 
Serving America requires meeting both challenges. This is not easy. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." 
 
This stuff is in our DNA. It is incumbent upon our leaders to understand and handle the balancing act freedom and security require. As JFK said in another context, we do these things, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." 
 
If anything, this is going to be one of the biggest challenges and biggest accomplishments of this century. In order to protect America from terrorists, we must protect all of America, not just our people and our infrastructure, but our ideals. If we don't balance freedom and security, if we don't understand why Americans demand privacy, then we're giving up some of our essential nature, perhaps the essential nature of what makes America truly American. 
 
Director Comey, I'll leave you with one final thought. Americans are very, very good at solving problems. Doing what is hard isn't really hard for us. Balancing liberty and security is our thing. It's what we do. We are America. 
 
P.S. I fully understand the grace and uniqueness of America. Here, we have a place where columnists like me can speak truth to power in articles like this with no fear of reprisal. Many of our international friends don't quite understand all the freedoms we Americans take so for granted, but like the one that lets me write this article and speak out, all our freedoms must be protected so this amazing, great, and complex nation can continue to be the beacon of light it has so often been over the years.

Why Americans expect privacy: An open letter to FBI Director James Comey

There is no doubt there are bad people in this world. All one has to do is turn on the evening news or open a Web browser. Last week'...

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1¢ storage for the enterprise

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There's no magic behind Google's 1¢ pricing: buy in high volumes; use high-capacity disks; automate management; and store objects, not files. Now a company called Cloudian says they can do the same for the enterprise. 
 
How? 
Of course they use commodity servers and high (4TB) capacity disks in 24TB and 48TB servers. That's enables low hardware costs. 
 
Cloudian also supports Amazon's S3 interface and offers a single pane of glass to manage all Cloudian hardware. Monitoring, fault detection, alerting, on-the-fly provisioning, billing, QoS and administration are standard. 
 
And, of course, Cloudian stores objects, not files. Think of objects as smart files: the file metadata is stored in the object instead of in a file system, so there is no file system bottleneck. This makes it easy to use objects in a scale-out cluster, which further reduces costs. 
 
Another advantage: data chunks can be farmed out freely, so that if a disk fails, the lost chunks can be recreated from dozens of disks at very high speeds. That's a great way to reduce vulnerability to correlated failures. 
 
Cloudian also support inline compression and configurable erasure cosing. The former reduces storage costs by shrinking objects, while the latter gives granular control of redundancy overhead. 
 
The Storage Bits take 
Making enterprise object storage competitive with Google is no small win. Which means IT pros can choose a private cloud - with the added performance and security benefits that entails - for the cost of Amazon or Google. 
 
A couple of caveats though. Cloudian's pricing assumes expected street prices, a not unreasonable 20 percent compression ratio and the use of slower erasure coding instead of costly replication. Nothing unusual, but your mileage may vary. 
 
Cloudian's pricing should also light a fire under server vendors to match them. That will benefit all storage consumers, while also reminding the cloud vendors that competition is coming from all sides. 
 
Comments welcome, as always. How do you handle objects where you work?

1¢ storage for the enterprise

There's no magic behind Google's 1¢ pricing: buy in high volumes; use high-capacity disks; automate management; and store objects...

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