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Sonic Mania plus soft-launches on Netflix in the Philippines

Eesha Chakraborty — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 14:34:07 +0000

Sonic Mania Plus has been soft-launched on Netflix in the Philippines. This soft launch, exclusive to Netflix subscribers in the Philippines, grants early access to a game lauded for its faithful homage to the classic Sonic titles while injecting new levels, characters, and features for a fresh spin.

The game meticulously recreates the spirit of the original Sonic games, complete with vibrant 2D worlds, iconic stages, and even retro animations that evoke a sense of playful time travel. Sonic Mania Plus adds its unique flavour with brand new levels to explore, challenging players to their platforming prowess.

Adding to the excitement are two new playable characters joining the fray: Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel. Each boasts its unique abilities, offering players fresh perspectives and gameplay styles to master. Whether you prefer the classic speed of Sonic, the aerial acrobatics of Tails, or the brute strength of Knuckles, Sonic Mania Plus expands the roster with options that cater to diverse playstyles.

But perhaps the most enticing aspect of this soft launch is the complete absence of in-app purchases and pesky ads. As a Netflix subscriber, you can dive headfirst into the world of Sonic Mania Plus without any additional financial hurdles, allowing you to focus solely on enjoying the pure, unadulterated platforming experience.

However, it’s important to remember that this is a soft launch, meaning the game might still be undergoing some fine-tuning. Minor bugs or glitches are to be expected, but these shouldn’t significantly hinder your enjoyment. Consider it an opportunity to be part of the game’s development journey, providing valuable feedback that can help polish it before its global release.

With its faithful recreation of the classics, exciting new features, and complete lack of monetization, it’s a must-play for any fan of Sonic or simply anyone seeking a joyful and nostalgic gaming experience. For those seeking more information or simply wanting to stay updated on the global launch date, several options are available.

The official Facebook page serves as a hub for news and announcements, while the official website provides detailed information about the game. Additionally, players can visit the respective store pages on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store for Android devices to learn more.

PUBG New State launches in India, Check file size & system requirements here

News Desk — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 06:04:03 +0000

PUBG New State has arrived, and it brings a slew of new features to the table, including a near-futuristic setting that should be a lot of fun to explore. The game features a slew of intriguing new mechanisms that will undoubtedly shake up the battle royale model, allowing players to engage with the game in new ways and experiment with fresh approaches to combating familiar problems.

The game is now available for download on the Google Play Store, so Android users can start playing PUBG New State right away. To get the game, simply go to the game’s page on the Google Play Store and install it.

The game introduces a number of new elements, including the Trunk, which allows players to store various items in the trunks of vehicles and carry them throughout the area. In essence, this allows players to carry significantly more treasure than before, but it also increases the probability that opposing players would benefit from it if they are able to take possession of the vehicle. PUBG New State will also be a visual treat, with ultra-realistic graphics that take advantage of technology like “global illumination” to become the gold-standard in terms of graphics on mobile, according to Krafton.

The file size on iOS is 1.5 GB, whereas the install size on the Store page is 1.4 GB. This is merely the initial download size; the game will take up more space as updates, patches, and other downloads become available. As a result, it is recommended that users leave extra storage space free for future upgrades.

System Requirements:

Because the game is a huge step up from PUBG Mobile and BGMI, it requires substantially more powerful hardware to perform smoothly. The game’s official system requirements are as follows:

64-bit processor (ABI arm64 or higher)
RAM: 2 GB or more
Android 6.0 or higher is required.
Vulkan 1.1 or higher / OpenGL 3.1 or higher

Joker Virus ALERT! Delete these 8 apps now from your phone

Sneha Sengupta — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 11:59:06 +0000

Google Play Store comes under malicious attack by an anonymous person using their devices to control the operation of the space. Joker virus is a prominently known malware that surpasses the stringent security check of the Play Store.

Belgian Police introduced the total quantity of applications that were attacked by the Joker virus. The virus replicates the blueprint of other popular apps as a result pranking the user to conceive the same.

The Belgian authorities highlighted the eight Play Store applications that fell into the vicious trap of the Joker virus. Several applications in the mentioned list used the common names that made it difficult to trace the exact location of the bot as the users considered it to be the created application from a genuine source. This list was initially revealed by the Quick Heal cybersecurity agency.

The following are the eight applications that were attacked with the malware:

Auxiliary Message
Element Scanner
Fast Magic SMS
Free CamScanner
Go Messages
Super Message
Super SMS
Travel Wallpapers

The Joker virus effectually clinches in the information retrieved from the device through SMS messages, contact lists, and information sourced through the victim’s devices. The virus is counted under the Trojan virus that arrives in the form of an advertisement on websites, also victims often subscribe to the premium services without getting absolute knowledge of the same.

Google bans 8 cryptocurrency apps from Play Store: Here’s why

Vandana Nampoothiri — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 06:49:22 +0000

Google banned as many as eight cryptocurrency apps from its Play Store following a report by cyber security firm Trend Micro published on August 18.

According to the report, cybercriminals exploit netizens’ increased interest in cryptocurrency mining by developing malware and Android apps.

“We recently discovered eight deceptive mobile apps that masquerade as cryptocurrency cloud mining applications, where users can earn cryptocurrency by investing money into a cloud-mining operation. However, upon analysis, we discovered that these malicious apps only trick victims into watching ads, paying for subscription services that have an average monthly fee of US$15, and paying for increased mining capabilities without getting anything in return. We have reported our findings to Google Play, and the apps have been promptly removed from the Play Store,” the company said in the report.

The apps that were banned are:

BitFunds – Crypto Cloud Mining
Bitcoin Miner – Cloud Mining
Bitcoin (BTC) – Pool Mining Cloud Wallet
Crypto Holic – Bitcoin Cloud Mining
Daily Bitcoin Rewards – Cloud Based Mining System
Bitcoin 2021
MineBit Pro – Crypto Cloud Mining & btc miner
Ethereum (ETH) – Pool Mining Cloud

According to Trend Micro, two of these were paid apps, wherein users had to be $12.99 (approx Rs. 965) to avail of the services.

The company further added that there are 120 similar apps still available online. These apps do not have cryptocurrency mining capabilities. Instead, they deceive users into watching in-app ads.

The report also mentioned the steps to recognize fake cryptocurrency mining apps:

Carefully read the app’s reviews. Fake apps will receive numerous 5-star reviews once they are released online. Pay more attention to 1-star reviews.
Try to enter an invalid or wrong cryptocurrency wallet address. According to Trend Micro, if a user encodes an invalid wallet address and the app accepts it and is able to perform follow-up operations, there is a high probability that the app is fraudulent.
Restart the app or phone while it is in the process of mining. If a device is restarted after mining starts and the mining application is killed in the background, the system will forcibly clear the counter, resetting it to zero.
Confirm if there is a withdrawal fee. The transfer of cryptocurrency requires a handling fee, which is relatively high compared to what is typically made from cloud mining. Hence, free withdrawals are very suspicious.

Best alternatives for Google Play Store; From Ebooks, PDFs to softwares you can download anything for free now!

Shreejit Shelar — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 17:22:15 +0000

Android Market for applications is widely dominated by Google Play Store. While this application is pre-installed in your brand new smartphone, downloading a few apps can be a pricey affair for some.

Well, you must be bored of looking at the paid apps developed by Google! Do you seek an alternative? You are definitely in the right place; and here are the best alternatives to the ‘Play Store’.

(Disclaimer: Kindly note that these applications are illegal and should only be used for trial purposes only. Also, we do not recommend or encourage using second-party applications. The following list is only for educational purposes and written just for illustration. We are not responsible for whatever you do with your knowledge and whatever consequence you face. Piracy is a crime and we don’t encourage it. We respect the app developers and suggest you to buy the apps from Google Play instead.)

Best alternatives for Google Play Store:

Blackmart:

It is also known as the king of the android market and the best store to download nearly all free and paid apps. The app is also highly customized and user-friendly, having categorical divisions of Android Apps just like you see on the Play Store. Blackmarket also allows a variety of sorting options allowing you to select the best for your smartphone.

1Mobile Market:

1Mobile Market relatively boasts a big collection of paid and free apps and new apps are added there manually. The application is available on Google Play too, but that version is comparatively different giving limited access to only free apps and always redirects you to Google Play to download them.

We are actually talking about the secret version of it available exclusively on their website and inside the lite version as a free upgrade. Once you download this version, you will get rid of all the limitations. You can browse paid apps and download them directly to your device.

Mobogenie Market:

Mobogenie is slightly similar to 1Mobile. It had a lite version on Google Play and a pro version with additional features until a few months ago. But, it was removed from Google Play as it violated numerous policies. Currently, the full version is available on the Mobogenie website only.

Apart from applications, Mobogenie also offers you paid ebooks for free, paid music for free, paid movies for free, and also allows you to download youtube videos to your device. It also includes a built-in file manager and junk cleaner. Basically, it is an all-in-one package.

GetAPK:

Yet another app that serves all your needs. The app lacks proper coding, making it difficult for users to find and not so user-friendly. Despite its shortcomings, it is still one of the best applications because it keeps nearly all versions of the app, apart from the current update. So, if you need to downgrade an app to its earlier version, this app is the best app for that.

Downloading a file can be rather complex. The APK files are uploaded by many app team members, and they keep adding it as soon as newer updates are released. This also makes it easy to find newly updated apps.

4Shared (Free/Pro):

4Shared is quite famous to search and download just about anything. The application hosts an excellent catalogue and apart from the free/paid android apps, it also offers windows softwares, pictures, videos, music, pdf files, ebooks, and a lot of other stuff.

The files here are uploaded by the users only and shared over the 4shared cloud with the other users.

This app is also legal and available as a download on Google Play Store. This is because the app does not promote piracy in general, it publicly hosts the files uploaded by users and makes them available throughout the cloud.

This new app by Google runs even without internet connection!

Shreejit Shelar — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 14:08:07 +0000

Tech giant Google has launched a new app called the ‘WifiNanScan’. This new app enables the user to connect devices without an internet and Bluetooth connection.

In simple terms, even if there is no network in the phone, all the work related to Wi-Fi will be done with the help of this app. Yes, that’s right, the new application will help the apps to search for nearby objects and users faster than Bluetooth even at a distance.

The company has reportedly claimed that with the help of the Wi-Fi Aware system, you will be able to book movie tickets and seats in any restaurant without an internet connection and you can download this app from the Google Play store.

Wi-Fi Aware Explained:

Developed by Google, Wi-Fi Aware is a Neighbor Awareness Networking that helps connect one smartphone to another without an external device. This protocol works with all devices in the OS version with Android 8 or above operating system, suggests 9 to 5 Google’s report. It provides the facility to discover and connect directly to each other without any type of connectivity between them.

The new application is available on Google Play Store and its description explains the basic functions. It reads:

“The WifiNanScan app measures the distance between two smartphones using the Wi-Fi Aware protocol (also called Neighborhood Aware Networking(NAN). It’s designed as a research, demonstration, and testing tool for developers, vendors, universities, and more. With this app, it is possible to obtain a distance measurement with a precision of about 1 meter with phones up to 15 meters apart. Developers, OEMs, and researchers can use this tool to validate distance/range measurements enabling the development of peer-to-peer ranging and data transfer, find my phone and context-aware applications based on the WiFi Aware/NAN API.”

Following are the benefits of this App:

1. With Wifi Aware, a user can send the document to the printer safely. All this will happen without any network login.

2. Wifi Aware also enables a user to book seat booking and movie tickets in any restaurant without an internet connection.

3. Check-in and roll call can be done automatically at school.

4. Checking-in without any ID at Airport Security, Custom, Immigration can also be done with Wifi Aware.

5. Most importantly, this app works from a range of 15 meters.

Google is acting like a ‘super-regulator’ says Indian fintech lenders

Devanshu Singla — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:53:49 +0000

Google reviewed hundreds of money loan apps from its online Play Store in India, and immediately removed those who were found breaching user safety policies from the Play Store. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had ordered Google to take them off the app store.

Earlier, Google had said Play Store would only allow personal loan apps that demand borrowers to repay loans after 60 days or more, adding that its policies need instant loan apps to disclose the minimum and maximum periods of repayment, the maximum annual percentage rate, and a representative example of the total loan cost.

Indian fintech lenders seemed unhappy with the internet giant’s latest directives to provide credentials, and they have written to the Google mentioning the names of Chinese apps that have a week to 14-day products while its rules of not allowing lenders giving short-tenure loans of less than 60 days. Digital lending companies believe Google is acting like a super-regulator, seeking details that even the banking regulator does not ask for.

“We have written to Google on the need for uniform regulations among fintech players, Google says you can’t have a lending product which is less than 60 days while all these apps had 7-14 day products,” a member of FACE (Fintech Association for Customer Empowerment), told ET.

The member, on the condition of anonymity, further stated that a majority of these apps are China-led companies. “We have approached Google on why these China-led apps are allowed to run while we have such restrictions. We have also written to Google with names of these Chinese-led companies,” the financial daily quoted him as saying.

Ludo King announces new features as it crosses 500 million downloads

Devanshu Singla — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 08:50:03 +0000

Ludo King has gained massive popularity over the last year and in December 2020 the app crossed 500 million downloads worldwide. Ludo King was developed by Indian studio Gametion Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Gametion said that, over the last nine months, Ludo King’s Daily Active Users (DAUs) increase from 15 million to 32 million daily, while its Monthly Average Users (MAUs) rose from 110 to 142 million.

Gametion Technologies has announced a range of new features for the game.

The company has come up with a new ‘Quick Ludo’ mode along with a five and six-player online feature. The six-player feature was initially available in the offline multiplayer mode only.

The Quick Ludo mode will allow the players to fast finish the game in a shorter time frame, around 5 minutes.

Vikash Jaiswal, the founder of Gametion Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and creator of Ludo King, said,” With these features, our players will have a thrilling gaming experience. The 6-player mode will help bond with family, friends, and their extended family group. In 2021, our aim is to widen our user base globally with our new in-app features and gameplay.”

Ludo King is currently played in 30 countries and is available in 14 languages, the company said.

Bumble, OkCupid, Grindr etc can affect millions of Android users: Here’s how

Sarthak Yadav — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 07:53:25 +0000

Some of the popular dating, travel and video calling apps on Google Play Store are vulnerable to a known bug CVE-2020-8913, which can be exploited by hackers and can inject malicious codes as well as steal personal information or spy on users, researchers at Check Point found. It is found to be in the Google Play Core library that is used by app developers to send updates with new features to their respective apps on Android phones.

Apps such as Bumble, OkCupid, Cisco Teams, Yango Pro, Edge, Xrecorder, PowerDirector, and Grindr can affect millions of Android phones users.

If not fixed, they can wipe clean all sensitive information such as login details, passwords, financial details from the applications on the phone.

The bug was discovered several months ago by researchers at Oversecured and they notified Google to kill the bug in the Play Core library and the company duly updated the library.

An advisory was sent to all application developers to upgrade to the latest version of the Play core library but very few such as Viber and Booking have complied with the request, while Cisco Webex Teams, Ynago Pro, Grindr, OkCupid, Bumble, Edge, Xrecorder and PowerDirector, and many other, which form 8% of the total apps on Google Play Store are still using the old Play Core library with vulnerabilities.

Aviran Hazum, Manager of Mobile Research, Check Point, said “We’re estimating that hundreds of millions of Android users are at a security risk. Although Google implemented a patch, many apps are still using outdated Play Core libraries. The vulnerability CVE-2020-8913 is highly dangerous. If a malicious application exploits this vulnerability, it can gain code execution inside popular applications, obtaining the same access as the vulnerable application. For example, the vulnerability could allow a threat actor to steal two-factor authentication codes or inject code into banking applications to grab credentials. Or, a threat actor could inject code into social media applications to spy on victims or inject code into all IM apps to grab all messages. The attack possibilities here are only limited by a threat actor’s imagination.”

Pre-registrations for FAU-G are open on Google Play Store

Sarthak Yadav — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:25:34 +0000

FAU-G mobile game has finally arrived on the Google Play store, it has now been put up on the Google Play store for pre-registration. The developers are restricting themselves to Android, for now, as pre-registrations have not appeared on Apple’s App store yet.

FAU-G, short for Fearless and United Guards, anticipated to take on PUBG Mobile India, was announced just two days after PUBG was banned along with 117 other Chinese apps in September. FAU-G is being heavily promoted as a patriotic game that highlights the contribution of the armed forces.

The users who have pre-registered will receive a push notification letting them know the game is available for download. Eligible devices will have the game automatically downloaded and installed. The size of the download and other details about the version have still not been revealed. But the listing gives a brief about the storyline and the gameplay.

FAU-G is being developed by Bengaluru-based nCore Games in collaboration with Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar. The first teaser went live on October 25. PUB-G is trying to bring down the India-China tensions in order to secure the necessary approvals for a comeback, FAU-G has been building on the anti-China sentiment right from its first teaser. The teaser appears to emulate the Galwan Valley skirmishes between India and China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers and led to an unknown number of Chinese casualties.

FAU-G also aims to tap into the sentiment of “atma nirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India), a phrase popularised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “nCore Games” has said that 20 percent of the net revenue generated from the game will be donated to Bharat Ke Veer, a trust set up by the government for the families of soldiers who are killed in the line of duty.