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The new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max will use eSIM technology to allow users to use two phone lines on a single device. You could have a work or personal number, or an American and Canadian number if you travel across the border frequently. The reprogrammable SIM card is "soldered onto the iPhone's motherboard directly," and measures just 6 millimeters by 5 millimeters," reports Ars Technica, citing GSMArena.com. From the report: These handsets will have a new "dual SIM dual standby" option, one of which will be a nano SIM. In other words, they will have two distinct phone numbers. (Chinese models will have two SIM slots instead of the eSIM option.) Since their debut in 1991, traditional, physical SIM cards have decreased dramatically in size. eSIMs have already been around for nearly a year, since they were introduced into the Apple Watch and Google Pixel 2, among other devices.

At a press conference in Berlin, LG announced their newest flagship smartphone, the LG V30. The V30 doesn't feature a removable battery or a secondary display like its predecessor, but it does feature faster performance and a significantly redesigned build construction that puts in more in line with Samsung and Apple's offerings. PhoneDog reports: A bigger device with beefier specs, the LG's V series took more design cues from the G series this year more than ever. As expected, LG got rid of the secondary display in favor of a single 6-inch LG P-OLED display (not Super AMOLED, although practically the same with rich black and vibrant colors). The V30 switches out its secondary display for slimmer bezels, which may prove to be a smart move considering how popular the concept is this year. Specs look pretty solid, although there were reports that the device would feature 6GB of RAM rather than 4GB. The bread and butter of the V30 are its sophisticated audio and its dual rear camera set-up. Speaking of the back of the device, another small advantage that LG may have over the competition is the center placement of its rear fingerprint sensor, which has been a bit of a pain point for Samsung this year with the S8 and the Note 8. The LG V30 is set to release on September 21 in South Korea, with releases in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe following shortly after. LG also has yet to announce a price for the V30, although rumors peg it to be around 800,000 KRW in South Korea (which equates to about $699 in the U.S.). For those interested, GSMArena has a full spec sheet available for the LG V30. Some of the noteworthy specs include a 6-inch LG P-OLED display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and QHD (1440 x 2880) resolution, Snapdragon 835 processor with 4GB RAM, dual 16-megapixel/13-megapixel rear-facing camera sensors, headphone jack, 32-bit/192kHz audio, wireless charging and Android 7.1.2 Nougat.

Samsung may only be in the planning stages for its Note7-disabling update in South Korea, but over in the U.S. things are in full swing. The company announced earlier this month that such an update would be sent out to all remaining Note7 units in the US starting on December 19. And now it's time for the first of the big four carriers to push the software to devices it's sold. From a report: That carrier is T-Mobile, which is starting the rollout today. The update will prevent the handset for charging, and will display a notification with information about Samsung's Galaxy Note7 recall and the steps needed to return the device. The build number for the update is N930TUVU2APL2.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Apple isn't telling you everything about its phones. Few weeks back, GSMArena reported that the 32GB iPhone 7 and 7 Plus had significantly slower storage performance than the 128GB and 256GB models of the device. In a new video, Unbox Therapy's Lew Hilsenteger conducted a series of speed tests that confirm the discrepancy in storage speeds between the different configurations of Apple's phone -- and it turns out the 32GB iPhone is about eight times slower than the larger capacity storage version of the device. For his first test, Hilsenteger used the free PerformanceTest Mobile app to compare the read and write speeds of the iPhone. While there was little difference between the read speeds of the 32GB and 128GB models, there's a huge disparity when it comes to write speed. The 32GB iPhone writes at 42MB per second, which is nearly eight times slower than the 128GB version's 341MB per second. Hilsenteger then performed a real-world speed test, which included transferring movies from a MacBook to the iPhone using a USB cable. While the 256GB model took two minutes and 34 seconds to complete the 4.2GB file transfer, the 32GB iPhone 7 needed a total of three minutes and 40 seconds for the same transmission.

An anonymous reader writes: The new hip thing to do if you're a developer of a messaging app is to encrypt everyone's messages -- everyone's doing it! WhatsApp announced earlier this month all messages being sent through the service will now be end-to-end encrypted. Today, Viber has announcd it is doing something similar. All messages being sent through the latest version of the app will be end-to-end encrypted. To confirm messages are being encrypted, a padlock icon will appear in the chat UI. The latest version of the app is already available in the iOS App Store and Android Google Play Store. Viber is one of the largest messaging platforms with over 700 million users. Hidden chats can also be found in the new update. Users can hide select chats with people and access/display them with a PIN or Touch ID.

ourlovecanlastforeve writes: Nestled into GSMArena's report on the Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus [ Note: an update that the story reports has since been pulled.] is this tasty bite: "...you'll find out that your Chrome homepage has been changed to Bing." Then it's casually dismissed with "Thankfully though, you can easily get rid of Microsoft's search engine by using Chrome settings." as if this were the most normal thing to have to do after an OTA update. Is this the new normal? Has Microsoft set a new precedent that it's okay to expect users to have to go searching through every setting and proactively monitor network traffic to make sure their data isn't being stolen, modified or otherwise manipulated?

SmartAboutThings writes: Jolla is another rising star in the tech world, having recently expanded its smartphone sales into more countries across the globe. Jolla's Sailfish OS is based on the Linux kernel, and considered by many to be a direct successor to Nokia and Intel's MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone. Its software is based on the open-sourced components of MeeGo. Now, the company is ready to start production of its first tablet. They're crowdfunding it, and they blew past their $380,000 goal in about two hours.

The tablet has a 7.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It's powered by a 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel processor, comes with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot, 2GB of RAM and a 5MP rear camera. Judging by its size, we can see this will rival the iPad Mini the new Nokia N1. While there aren't too many Sailfish-specific apps available, as with the phone, Jolla's tablet will be compatible with Android apps.

zacharye writes with an excerpt from BGR: "One reason for Nokia's surprisingly strong share price rebound over the past two weeks is the success of its new Asha feature phones in Asia. According to our sources in Delhi, the Asha 305 sold out in several stores soon after its debut even before the marketing campaign kicked in. Is it a coincidence that major Asian newspapers like The Philippine Star and Singapore's The Sun Daily describe Nokia's new Asha models as 'smartphones'? No. Nokia has done its very best to dress up its cheap new feature phones as something far more aspirational — to the extent that devices like Asha 305 are now widely depicted as smartphones across Asia and Africa. This is a critically important maneuver.." Of course, maybe they are smartphones; the Asha appears to be speced better than the HTC Dream (1Ghz processor, albeit with only 128M of RAM), and they've added a lot of new features to Series40. But then it's still Series40 with JavaME.

New submitter Steve Max writes "Editor Paul Ockenden wonders, 'Has anyone else noticed what's been happening to top-end smartphones recently? They've started to get big – really big. But do people really want that at the expense of carrying around such a huge, heavy lump of tech in their pocket?' The trend for bigger and bigger screens is clear, but is it what consumers want? Is it what you want?"

New submitter Steve Max writes "Editor Paul Ockenden wonders, 'Has anyone else noticed what's been happening to top-end smartphones recently? They've started to get big – really big. But do people really want that at the expense of carrying around such a huge, heavy lump of tech in their pocket?' The trend for bigger and bigger screens is clear, but is it what consumers want? Is it what you want?"

New submitter Steve Max writes "Editor Paul Ockenden wonders, 'Has anyone else noticed what's been happening to top-end smartphones recently? They've started to get big – really big. But do people really want that at the expense of carrying around such a huge, heavy lump of tech in their pocket?' The trend for bigger and bigger screens is clear, but is it what consumers want? Is it what you want?"

Ian Lamont writes "Investigators have duplicated an online banking hack using a 2003-era Nokia mobile phone. Authorities had been aware for some time that European gangs were interested in buying the phone, and were finally able to confirm why: It can be used to access victims' bank accounts using "special software written by hackers." The hack apparently works by letting criminals reprogram the phones to use someone else's phone number and receive their SMS messages, including mTANs (mobile transaction authentication numbers) from European banks. However, the only phones that work are 1100 handsets (pictures) made in a certain factory. Nokia had claimed last month it had no idea why criminals were paying thousands of euros to buy the old handsets."

prostoalex writes "Gary Krakow from MSNBC is impressed with Motorola's C116 phone only to find out that that the phone is not available in the US. The reason? 'A very, very basic GSM handset that handles incoming and outgoing calls as well as SMS messages, the C116 is sold all over the world -- except for the United States. It's not sold here because it's too cheap!' The phone is targeted for emerging markets, where people don't like to tie themselves into monthly contracts, and with little value proposition presents little interest to US wireless operators."