Tech Digest daily roundup: Virgin, O2 customers face 11.7% price hike
Customers of Virgin Mobile and O2 face hefty price hikes on their phone bills from April. The increase of 11.7% for airtime for many customers is in large part due to the rate of inflation, which has soared in recent months. Price comparison site Uswitch.com said regulator Ofcom should offer customers the chance to change provider. Virgin Mobile says customers were given a 30-day opportunity to leave penalty-free in January. All affected Virgin Mobile customers will face the full 11.7% rise – the 7.8% current rate of inflation as measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI) plus 3.9%. BBC
Tesla is under scrutiny amid reports of unexpected braking in its vehicles, adding to an ever-growing list of safety troubles for Elon Musk’s electric car giant. US regulators are launching a formal investigation into 416,000 Tesla cars over reports of “phantom braking” activated by the driver assistance system. The review covers 2021-2022 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in the US after 354 complaints were lodged about the issue over the past nine months. It’s the latest setback for Tesla, which is facing an investigation into its autopilot software after a series of crashes and has issued 10 recalls since October. Telegraph
Samsung is teasing the announcement of a new Galaxy Book laptop at an event on February 27th coinciding with this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). In a small animation released alongside the invitation, a laptop can be seen unfolding itself, before being joined by a collection of other Samsung products, including a smart watch, smartphone, and a tablet. The event will be streamed on Samsung’s YouTube channel at 1PM ET / 10AM PT on February 27th. The Verge
The first few months of each year see most Android phone brands launch their flagship handsets, and following on from the Samsung Galaxy S22, and getting in ahead of the Xiaomi 12, OnePlus 10 and Realme GT 2, is Oppo’s device. This is the Oppo Find X5 – not the Find X4, despite this phone being a successor to the Find X3 series. It seems that Oppo has done what several Chinese phone companies have done, in skipping the number ‘4’ which is unlucky in the country, even though the brand released the Oppo Reno 4 with the same number. Oppo has sent around an invite for the launch event of the Oppo Find X5 ‘series’ – the latter word suggests we’ll see many phones, perhaps a Lite, Neo and Pro like last year. Tech Radar
The owner of Facebook has suffered another setback after Google said it would stop advertisers tracking users across apps on Android phones, following in the footsteps of Apple. Google said it wanted to “raise the bar for user privacy” by changing the way marketers could collect data as people move between apps on phones that use Android, the mobile operating system it owns that works on about two-thirds of mobile devices around the world. The Times
It is “too early” to identify the culprits behind a small wave of unsophisticated cyber attacks that targeted Ukraine on Tuesday, according to a state security official. Ilya Vityuk, who heads Ukraine‘s security service cyber department, told journalists that their only suspect was Russia, although this wasn’t a formal attribution. He said officials detected “a trace of foreign intelligences” in connection with the attacks, which are ongoing although no longer impacting online services. Sky News
