Tech Roundup: Huawei Android Ban, OnePlus 7 Pro & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

1. Google abruptly rescinds Huawei's Android license and halts its access to Google Play Services and the Play Store, dealing a huge blow to the besieged phonemaker following the U.S. crackdown on Chinese technology companies amid escalating trade war between the two nations; leadings chipmakers Intel, Qualcomm and Broadcom follow suit by immediately cutting off dealings with Huawei until further notice. (Huawei is second largest smartphone brand after Samsung - the others being Apple, Xiaomi, vivo and OPPO, and while the development won't however affect smartphones sold in other countries, removing access to Google apps will significantly curtail its growth prospects.)
2. San Francisco bans the use of facial recognition technology by police and other city department, becoming the first U.S. city to outlaw a rapidly developing technology that has alarmed privacy and civil liberties advocates.
3. U.S. Supreme Court rules that consumers can sue Apple for its App Store monopoly, in what's a setback for the iPhone maker and opening the floodgates for potential antitrust lawsuits. (With App Store being the only option for users to download iOS, arguments like "if you don't like it, you can jump ship to Android" doesn't hold water. At least on Android, you can download apps outside of Google Play or even side-load them, but Apple's walled garden makes choice impossible. It's definitely good thing for security, but when Apple also happens to be owner of a platform where others come to sell products that are in direct competition to the Cupertino-based company, the idea of Apple taking a 30 percent cut (and 15 percent for renewals) seems a little too anti-competitive.)
4. Gmail for Android and iOS gain Tasks integration, more than a year after Google released a standalone Tasks app.
5. Spotify and Tinder brings lightweight versions of their apps Spotify Lite and Tinder Lite to India; the music streaming service also begins testing its own version of the Story format called "Storyline" that lets artists share their own insights about their music directly with fans.
6. Twitter said it has fixed a bug with iOS app that accidentally collected location information (at zip code or city level) of some users even when those accounts did not opt in to location data sharing, after which it shared with an unnamed third-party in unauthorised manner. (Twitter has also said, "We have confirmed with our partner that the location data has not been retained and that it only existed in their systems for a short time, and was then deleted as part of their normal process.")
7. Facebook brings back "view as public" timeline feature more than a year after it turned off last September after bugs in it and a video uploading birthday feature were exploited to steal users' access tokens, potentially affecting some 50 million people. (A separate View As Specific Person feature was not reactivated.)
8. British online delivery service Deliveroo raises US$ 1.53 billion in a fresh round of funding, with Amazon leading a US$ 575 million investment as it prepares to take on Uber Eats and Just Eat.
9. Disney readies to rival Netflix and Amazon Prime afresh weeks after announcing plans for Disney+ streaming service; takes full control of video streaming platform Hulu from Comcast (Disney previously had a 30% stake in Hulu).
10. Google takes on Pinterest and Instagram; merges Shopping (in Search) and Shopping Express into a unified Google Shopping experience where shoppers can discover and compare products, then checkout instantly using their Google account; will begin featuring Discovery ads on Gmail, YouTube and homepage of its smartphone app worldwide later this year, it said on Tuesday, giving the search engine a huge new supply of ad slots to boost revenue.
11. Google Trips gets a web version as Google unifies all its travel offerings (Google Trips, Google Flights, Google hotel search) under one hood called Trips.
12. Google brings YouTube Premium and Music streaming service to Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, and Romania.
13. Apple Pay now accepted for iTunes, App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud purchases in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, Ukraine, and the UAE
14. Uber begins rolling new rider preferences for its higher-priced luxury car service, Uber Black; add a "quiet car" mode for riders who want to discourage chatty drivers.
15. All language editions of Wikipedia get blocked in mainland China since April; comes after Turkey blocked the website in 2017.
16. Google's Titan Security Key, which offers hardware-based authentication to Google accounts, suffers from a Bluetooth vulnerability that allows attackers in close proximity to take control of the device; offers free replacement for affected devices.
17. WhatsApp says it's patched a critical security vulnerability which allowed attackers to secretly infect phones with malicious spyware by just calling phone numbers over an in-app audio call.
18. Popular social video app TikTok had the most App Store downloads for the fifth quarter in a row, with more than 33 million installs in Q1 2019; WhatsApp had the most on Google Play, with nearly 199 million installs.
19. Social interest platform Pinterest reports Q1 2019 revenue of US$ 202 million (up 54 percent YoY), net loss of US$ 41.4 million (down 21 percent YoY), as global MAUs climbs up 22 percent YoY to 291 million.
20. Facebook-owned Instagram to down Instagram Direct, the standalone Instagram direct messaging app that it was testing to rival Snapchat.
21. Amazon unveils an upgraded US$ 50 Fire 7 tablet with faster processor, doubled storage (16GB), and hands-free activation of Alexa, available for pre-order now, and to begin shipping June 6; partners with local travel service ClearTrip to add a flight-booking option to its payment service, Amazon Pay, in India.
22. Amazon begins selling Google's newly announced Pixel 3A and 3A XL smartphones, making it the first the retail giant has sold a Pixel phone directly on its storefront. (Amazon also began selling Chromecast late last year, and YouTube app is expected to return to Fire TV later this year after a long period of standoff between the two companies. Amazon, for its part, will add Chromecast support to its Prime Video mobile app.)
23. Chinese handset maker OnePlus takes on flagship phones from Apple, Google and Samsung; launches OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro smartphones with upgraded fast charging, a telephoto lens, and a faster processor.
24. New report from Reuters finds that Indian political parties use unofficial clones of WhatsApp like GBWhatsApp and JTWhatsApp to circumvent WhatsApp's forward restrictions, and "easily send forwards to up to 6,000 people a day, as well as video files containing political content which would be far bigger in size than allowed on the official WhatsApp service."
25. Popular Indian ride-hailing service Ola enters credit card business; inks a deal with state-run SBI and Visa to issue as many as 10 million credit cards in the next three and a half years.
26. Facebook tweaks its News Feed algorithm to leverage new signals such as user surveys to prioritise updates from friends users care about the most and links that are relevant and worthwhile.
27. Google keeps a record of all purchases linked to users' Gmail accounts in a page called Purchases; says, "To help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings and subscriptions in one place, we've created a private destination that can only be seen by you. You can delete this information at any time. We don't use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes the email receipts and confirmations shown on the Purchase page."