Android Weekly: Galaxy Fold Details, a 4000 mAh Battery Charged in 17 Minutes, and More

This week saw a lot of Samsung news (as usual), with more details about the Galaxy Fold starting to trickle out. Xiaomi also showed off its 100w charger that can juice a 4,000 mAh battery in just 17 minutes. And more!

Samsung News: Watching the Fold Fold

Let’s start with the Samsung stuff this week, shall we?

• Samsung showed off how it tested the Galaxy Fold’s seam durability. It can fold 200,000 times. [Android Police]
• All versions of the Fold will reportedly ship with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. Not surprising. [Android Police]
• The Fold will be released in 15 countries in Europe starting at €2,000. That’s so many €. [Android Police]
• The Galaxy A90 was teased, with Samsung saying it will have a “Notchless Infinity Screen.” Curious! We’ll find out more on April 10th. [The Verge]
• If you can’t wait for the A90, however, the A70 was released this week. [Samsung]
• NBC used a Galaxy S10+ to shoot an entire episode of The Tonight Show. I wonder how much Samsung had to pay for that? [Engadget]
• The March security update was pushed to the S10. That’s…pretty much up to date! [9to5Google]
• The Galaxy A6+ Android Pie w/ One UI updated started rolling out. [XDA Developers]
• The Galaxy Note Fan Edition also started getting Android Pie with One UI. Hey, that rhymes. [XDA Developers]
• Sprint’s S8, S8+, and Note 8 are all getting Pie with One UI. [Android Police]
• In slightly weird news, some Samsung device owners were concerned when the “Notification” app got updated. Yeah, it’s nothing. Just a Samsung thing. [Android Police]
• If you’re not into the S10’s hole punch camera cutout, a new app called Energy Ring may change that. It moves the battery indicator to around the camera. So clean. [Android Police]

I’m honestly kind of shocked to see this much talk about the Galaxy Fold. I don’t see Samsung moving a lot of Fold units this year—and I don’t think it expects to, either—but the fact that it’s being talked up this week proves that the company believes in this foldable design overall. Still, $2,000 is a lot of money for a phone (or for anything, really), so unless a more affordable way to manufacturer foldables comes out, they’re still not going to have much of a future.

Google News: YouTube’s Monster Mobile Traffic

Google I/O is getting close, and the schedule is out. YouTube draws a crazy amount of mobile traffic. You can use Google Assistant to get a Play Store refund. Wait, did you know you could use Google Assistant to get a Play Store refund?

• Google I/O starts on May 7th with the opening keynote at 10:00 AM PST. Get hyped. [9to5Google]
• Need a refund for a Google Play purchase? Just as Google Assistant! [Android Police]
• The Pixel Launcher in Android Q is testing Digital Wellbeing integration to let you pause apps directly from the home screen. Also, did you know you can pause apps with Digital Wellbeing [XDA Developers]
• YouTube accounts for 40% of all mobile web traffic. Out of all the websites on this planet, YouTube gets nearly half the traffic. It boggles the mind. [9to5Google]
• Google Fit got some nice enhancements that bring back elevation data and sleep tracking info from third-party apps. [Android Police]
• Android Auto was also updated with support for widescreen display. You can run two panels on the same screen! [9to5Google]
• When Google announced the Pixel Slate, there was a $599 version with a Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM. But that version never actually made it to release—and it likely never will. [9to5Google]
• Advanced call blocking abilities may be coming soon to a Google Phone app near you. The phone tweaks are the main thing I miss about using the PIxel line. [Android Police]
• YouTube TV is now available in every US TV market. [Engadget]

There are two main times of year I look forward to: Christmas and Google I/O (which is kind of like Google Christmas). Even though I’ve moved away from covering just Android and Google products, I’m still “an Android guy” in my heart of hearts, and I look forward to I/O every single year. This year is no different.

Google I/O is the time of year when we get a glimpse of everything Google has planned for Android, Chrome, Chrome OS, and beyond. It gives all users something to look forward to in the coming months. All of the company’s coolest innovations and ideas are shown off at I/O.

And I love it so much.

Other News: Xiaomi’s Crazy 100w Charger

Have you ever had a dead battery and thought to yourself “man, if only a way existed to charge this battery completely in like 17 minutes”? If so, Xiaomi has some good news for you.

• Xiaomi showed off an insane 100w charger that will charge its 4,000 mAh battery to 100% in just 17 minutes. I can’t fathom how hot it gets in the process. [Liliputing]
• Xiaomi also teased its foldable phone in a new video. What if—and hear me out here—it can fold and get a full battery in 17 minutes? [The Verge]
• The Huawei P10 and Honor 8x are both getting Android Pie. [9to5Google]
• Also! The P30 and P30 Pro were officially announced. [XDA Developers]
• In other Huawei news, the CFO didn’t even carry a Huawei device, but an iPhone instead. 🤔 [9to5Mac]
• There’s a new scam that allows advertisers to run ads in the background on your phone. They make money, and your phone’s battery gets crushed. If only you could recharge it in 17 minutes—then everyone would win! I think? [The Verge]
• Substratum Lite was released, which is faster, smaller, and more stable. If you’re into those things. [XDA Developers]
• Last but not least, WhatsApp beta offers Dark Mode. That’s the new hotness, apparently. [XDA Developers]

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Update WinRAR Now to Protect Your PC From Attacks

Do you have WinRAR installed on your Windows PC? Then you’re probably vulnerable to attack. RARLab patched a dangerous security bug at the end of February 2019, but WinRAR doesn’t automatically update itself. Most WinRAR installations are still vulnerable.

What’s the Danger?

WinRAR contains a flaw that would let a .RAR file you download automatically extract an .exe file to your Startup folder. That .exe file would automatically be started the next time you sign into your PC, and it could infect your PC with malware.

Specifically, this flaw is a result of WinRAR’s ACE file support. An attacker simply needs to create a specially crafted ACE archive and give it the .RAR file extension. When you extract the file with a vulnerable version of WinRAR, it can automatically place malware in your Startup folder without any additional user action.

This serious flaw was found by researchers at Check Point Software Technologies. WinRAR contained an ancient DLL from 2006 to enable support for ACE archives, and that file has now been removed from the latest versions of WinRAR, which no longer support ACE archives. Don’t worry—ACE archives are very rare.

However, unless you’ve heard of this “path traversal” flaw already, you may be at risk. WinRAR doesn’t automatically update itself. We’re also extremely disappointed that WinRAR’s website doesn’t highlight information about this security flaw and instead buries it in WinRAR’s release notes.

WinRAR reportedly has 500 million users worldwide, and we’re certain most of those users haven’t yet heard of this bug and updated WinRAR.

While an update was released back in February, this story is still picking up steam. Security researchers at McAfee had identified more than 100 unique exploits online by mid-March, with most users attacked being in the USA. For example, a bootlegged copy of Ariana Grande’s album “Thank U, Next” with the filename “Ariana_Grande-thank_u,_next(2019)_[320].rar” available online is being used to install malware via vulnerable versions of WinRAR.

How to Check If You Have WinRAR Installed

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How to Schedule An Email in Outlook

There are many reasons you might want your email to arrive at a particular time, like wanting your mail at the top of someone’s inbox when they start work. You can do this in Outlook by scheduling your messages.

Before we go any further, we need to add a couple of caveats. First, sending an email at a particular time does not guarantee that it will arrive in your recipient’s inbox at that time. There are many steps between you sending an email and the email appearing in someone’s inbox. While you can generally assume that a message sent at 8:30 am will be in someone else’s inbox within a minute or two, don’t rely on it for critical delivery. The second caveat is that this only works for the desktop Outlook client, not the Outlook web app.

How to Schedule a Message in Outlook

With that out of the way, let’s schedule a message in Outlook. The good news is that you don’t need a 3rd party add-in to do this; it’s baked right into the Outlook client. Create your new mail as normal, then in the ribbon click Options > Delay Delivery.

This opens the Properties windows. We’re looking for the “Do not deliver before” option.

Set the date and time you want your mail to be sent, and click the Close button. And that’s all there is to it. Send your message, and it will sit in your Outbox until the date and time you chose. Outlook will then send the message.

An important thing to remember: Outlook can only send emails when it’s open. If the date and time you’ve chosen rolls around and Outlook is closed, Outlook won’t send the message until the next time you open Outlook. But if you work in Outlook all day and you want to schedule a message within working hours, this isn’t a problem.