Apple's proprietary SMS equivalent, Messages, may have all kinds of bells and whistles - including special overlays and stickers, thanks to iOS 10 - but the service may not be the best choice for completely discreet chats.

Contacts reached via Messages, previously known as iMessages, are logged by Apple, which allow the company and law enforcement to access who've you texted in the past, according to a report by The Intercept.

The report is based on a document provided to The Intercept by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Electronic Surveillance Support Team, which details to law enforcement what kind of information can be successfully subpoenaed from a suspect's iPhone.

While the logged information can't extract the actual contents of the message, it can still divulge the phone numbers of those a Messages user attempted to contact - as well as the time and date of the message and potentially eve location, via an IP address.

iMessage, MyMessage

The reasoning behind the bookkeeping is Apple's servers need to check to see if a text sent through Messages is being sent to another Messages user, enabling all the special features of the service.

Any Messages user has seen this for themselves when conversations on the app come up in one of two colors. While texts between mutual Messages users are blue, missives sent to non-Apple owners wind up green, indicating normal SMS services are in use.

Apple says these logs are deleted after 30 days, though any repeated interaction with new members in your contacts list - or any other iOS app with similar access to the servers - may refresh the saved information.

It's not uncommon for phone carriers to have contact information on record and available to investigators who show up with a warrant.

However, Apple's particular insistence on privacy in the last year, on top of promoting Messages as a superior take on conventional SMS texting, is worth noting in light of this news, especially when compared to a growing list of competing messaging services like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and Allo.

• How to use Google Allo - The Big G's take on iMessage

If you're an AT&T customer, you may be getting some money in the mail soon. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today that an investigation found the telecom guilty of allowing unauthorized third-party charges for fake services.

The investigation was carried out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) during an investigation of two Ohio-based companies for drug-related crimes and money laundering. The DEA discovered that some AT&T customers, mostly small businesses) were being charged $9 per month for fake directory services for landline telephone service.

"A phone bill should not be a tool for drug traffickers, money launderers, and other unscrupulous third parties to fleece American consumers," said Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc. "Today's settlement ensures that AT&T customers who were charged for this sham service will get their money back and that all AT&T consumers will enjoy greater protections against unauthorized charges on their phone bills in the future."

What happens now?

Under the terms of the settlement, AT&T will pay $6.8 million to affected customers and a $950,000 fine to the US Treasury. Additionally, AT&T will suspend billing for nearly all third-party products and services for wireline bills and will adopt a process to obtain explicit consent from customers prior to allowing third-party charges. It's worrying these safeguards weren't already in place.

The FCC announcement doesn't mention when affected customers should expect to receive payment. If you're an AT&T customer, you may want to look at your bills since January 2012 to see if you can find any bogus $9 charges you never signed up for.

This isn't the first time AT&T was found guilty of allowing unauthorized third-party charges. In 2014, AT&T agreed to pay $105 million in fines and refunds to wireless customers who were charged for unauthorized third-party subscription and premium text messaging services.

Source: FFC (PDF)

A wireless future

A few years ago it seemed that wireless charging was the next big thing. The idea was simple: you'd put your phone on the bedside cabinet and it would recharge, no searching for and fumbling around with cables required.

But for some reason it hasn't become mainstream yet – once again, the predicted uptake in a new technology has stalled, despite Samsung's top-end S6 and S7 models allowing you to charge off any wireless base station.

However, wireless charging is still only just getting started – and rather than writing it off as a passing fad, it's actually time to start getting excited about wireless all over again.

Wireless charging's big problem

Many people have used wireless chargers in the past, but they've tended to head back to using a good old cable pretty quickly, because of one rather fundamental issue: wireless isn't fast enough.

Ultra-fast wired charging for Android phones is now very common, enabling you to almost fully replenish the battery in half an hour or so. We've started to expect speed. By contrast, most of today's wireless chargers will take hours to refill a phone, particularly one with a large battery like the 3600mAh Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.

However, from a technical perspective at least, this problem has already been solved.

The most common wireless charging standard in phones is Qi (pronounced "Chee"), and version 2.0 of it allows for up to 15W power transferral, three times the 'standard' amount of 5W, which is what Samsung's Fast Charge wireless charger offers at the moment.

If you own a top-end Samsung from the last year or so, there's a good chance it'll already support faster wireless charging – the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S7 family do.

If you have your eye on a Samsung wireless charge pad, though, make sure you buy the one labelled Fast Charge (£40, $41.99, AU$99.99), rather than the normal pad. It outputs at up to 9 volts 1 amp, for 9W of power rather than the usual 5W. Samsung says it'll charge your phone from flat in 120 minutes.

To get the full potential out of the Qi abilities of the top Samsung phones, though, you need a third-party Qi pad. There are a few 10-15W charge pads available, such as those from Choetech and Tenergy; that's right, they mostly come from Chinese brands no one has heard of.

However, in March 2015 LG Innotek announced a full-fat 15W wireless Qi charger, which LG says will charge a phone from 0% to 50% in 30 minutes, not far off what a fast wired charger can achieve.

This is what we need, and what we want. It's just a shame that, as the company that continues to pack wireless charging into many of its top phones, Samsung didn't get there first.

LG's own LG G5 doesn't even offer wireless charging, after all.

Wireless wars

At this point, we need to step back a bit. We've given you a very simple view of how some elements of wireless charging lag behind others, but Qi is just one of several current charging standards.

There's a war going on, and it's a bit VHS vs Betamax. Qi, the bookie's favourite, was devised by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), but coming up on the rails is the AirFuel Alliance, which also wants to offer the de facto wireless standard.

This alternative alliance is the ward of a couple of wireless charging technologies, not just one: PMA and Rezence, which you might also see referred to as A4WP, the original body that devised it.

Before we drown in acronyms, the important thing to note here is that while Qi uses inductive charging, the combo of PMA and Rezence means that AirFuel comprises both inductive and magnetic resonance charging respectively.

At a very basic level, inductive and magnetic resonance charging involve comparable concepts. There's a wire coil in the charge base that creates an electromagnetic field, stimulating current in a second coil in the phone/device, which is used to charge the battery.

However, while inductive wireless charging is picky about the position of the coils/phone, resonance charging is less so. Its 'throw' is wider, and a single pad can even be used to charge two phones at once.

Inductive charging's effective range is around 5mm, maxing out at around 40mm in the latest iteration. The coils have to match up closely.

With greater range, and claimed theoretical power transferral of up to 50W, resonance-based Rezence sounds like a dream technology, but right now it's problematic.

You can't buy a resonance pad yet, and while there are claims it can be more efficient than Qi, as the WPC notes in a late 2015 document "no real-world, public data exist for resonant charging efficiency".

The tech has some major backers, though. WiPower is a third, resonance-based wireless charging standard, owned by Qualcomm. I didn't mention this in the same breath as AirFuel and WPC because it simply conforms to the Rezence standard.

WiPower is already baked into several very popular Qualcomm chipsets too. It debuted in the Snapdragon 808, and was subsequently used in the Snapdragon 810 and 820. We may not be able to use it yet, but millions of phones theoretically support magnetic resonance charging.

Qualcomm's big claim for WiPower (and hence Rezence) is that it's the first wireless charging solution in production that will work with metal-bodied devices – at the moment full-metal phones have to use a charging case, rather than an inbuilt coil, in order to make use of Qi charging.

Wireless charging, then, is a glorious mess right now. And to throw in another complicating factor, Qi designer WPC claims receivers (the parts in phones) are ready for resonance charging, and have been for three years:

"All Qi receivers (phones, sleeves, backdoors, and charging cards) that have shipped in the last 3 years and continue to ship, can be charged in inductive mode as well as resonant mode," says the WPC website. They just need a compatible resonance charge pad, none of which are available yet.

The takeaway: we aren't even necessarily going to need new phones when wireless charging clicks into a higher gear, just a new charge pad.

Wireless charging in the home

Wireless charging is still 'in progress', but that hasn't stopped some companies from trying to add a friendly lifestyle angle to a technology that threatens to become an off-putting torrent of trademarks.

IKEA started making wireless charging furniture and lamps in 2015, and now offers a surprisingly wide range of products that includes plain pads, bedside tables and lights of various shapes and sizes.

The glaring issue with such a bold attempt to make wireless charging mainstream is that no iPhones natively support wireless charging. Much like NFC-based wireless payments pre-Apple Pay, this is a bandwagon begging for Apple to jump onboard. With faster charging now possible, maybe it's time.

To address this lack of support, IKEA makes a range of Qi-enabling phone covers for iPhones and popular Android handsets. However, all of IKEA's charging hardware uses the older 5W max output version of Qi that's a lot slower than a wired charger.

You could argue, though, that it doesn't matter so much if you just want a bedside table you can rest your phone on as you go to sleep.

FoneSalesman's FurniQi range has followed IKEA's lead by building 5W Qi into a small bamboo table, proving that it's more than just a fad for a single brand.

Wireless charging on the high street

Qi dominates the reality of wireless charging in the home at present, but you can actually find some rival PMA points on the high street. PMA is, as mentioned above, similar to Qi in that it's an induction-based technology.

Starbucks sided with the PMA standard rather than Qi for its experiment with in-cafe wireless charging, perhaps because it afforded the coffee giant an extra up-sell angle: there's a PowerMat PMA dongle that just slots into the charge sockets of iPhones and Androids.

There are 10 Starbucks sites in London listed as having PMA sockets in the Powermat app, which lets you find your nearest wireless charge socket. It's a free download if you want to check it out yourself.

An app called Aircharge Qi shows charge locations for Qi pads out on the street and, no great surprise, there are far more of them. And they are spread far more widely.

McDonalds 'restaurants', Ibis hotels and EE shops are just a few of the many places you'll find Qi points in the UK. There are probably far more than you'd imagine, and you can use many of them for free.

Qi charging needs to get up to speed in several respects, but it's no longer a 'future' technology, given how many outlets are offering it to bring free charging to phones.

Frankenstein radio waves

There are several promising futuristic alternatives in this field, though, and a top contender is RF charging. As with induction charging, there's a transmitter and a receiver, but instead of using an electromagnetic field to transfer energy, a radio frequency signal is the power 'source'.

RF charging's lead benefit is that it can supply energy to a whole area, for greater range than resonance or inductive charging. You might have a bowl or drawer in which your device(s) would be placed, for example.

At present this technology is geared towards low-power devices, as the power transferral is, relatively, so low. However, it could make an interesting solution for wearables with small batteries.

Look into ambitious start-ups and the research undertaken at universities across the world and you'll find a handful of comparable longer-distance wireless charging projects that appear to border on fantasy at first glance. Energous's WattUp claims to offer a charge radius of 15ft using its application of RF charging, for example.

Granted, it'll only supply 1W at 10-15ft, and 4W within 5ft, but it's a world apart from the range Qi offers, even if it is ultimately wasteful in its current form, as much of the RF signal that's transmitted is effectively lost.

• Want to know more about long-distance wireless charging? Then check out: No strings attached – why our smartphones will soon be charging by themselves.

The conundrum, regardless of the standard used, is how to focus longer-distance wireless charging. Recent research by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona into doing just that was published in the June edition of Advanced Materials, and referred to experiments with magnetic resonance charging.

"Enveloping the two circuits with metamaterial shells has the same effect as bringing them close together; it's as if the space between them literally disappears," writes the author in the article's abstract.

To explain that a bit better: the wireless power transmitter and receiver can use 'antennas' of a sort to boost efficiency and range, and that can only mean good things for wireless charging using existing methods.

The future of wireless charging is something of an amorphous cloud right now, but it's still an exciting future. We'll get there – it just might take a while longer that we thought.

Edward Snowden hasn't owned a smartphone since he began leaking classified NSA documents that exposed the United States government's global surveillance program. That may change soon, as Snowden is now working on a cellphone case that would detect and fight against government snooping.

The case, which Snowden refers to as an "introspection engine," would work by using a phone's SIM slot to monitor and shut down a phone's radios in the event of unauthorized access. The phone case would feature a simple monochromatic screen that alerts users when their phone is broadcasting any signals it isn't supposed to. The case will even be able to disable all radios on a phone to prevent governments or blackhat hackers from finding your location.

Snowden is collaborating with American hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang on the project. Huang holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering at MIT and is best known for having hacked the Xbox.

So far, the phone case is in its design stage but Snowden and Huang plan on creating a working prototype within the year. Their plan is to work with supply chains in China to build iPhones modified with the case to offer to journalists and news organizations. The introspection engine's code will be open sourced, meaning anyone is free to modify and scrutinize the device.

Life or death

While most citizens won't require the level of security that this phone case provides, journalists and political dissidents will undoubtedly find it useful.

"One good journalist in the right place at the right time can change history," said Snowden speaking to a crowded MIT Media Lab via video stream. "This makes them a target, and increasingly tools of their trade are being used against them." Snowden cites the story of Marie Colvin, an American war reporter that was murdered by the Syrian government. Colvin's family claims she was being tracked via her electronic communications and as a result, was killed by a targeted bombing.

"Our approach is: state-level adversaries are powerful, assume the phone is compromised," says Huang speaking to WIRED. "Let's look at hardware-related signals that are extremely difficult to fake. We want to give a you-bet-your-life assurance that the phone actually has its radios off when it says it does."

Airplane mode on our phones claim to disable all communication radios like Bluetooth and WiFi, but the feature has been hacked and spoofed in the past. Snowden and Huang's phone case will ensure a phone's radios are in fact completely disabled.

The science behind the phone case is solid, but it's unclear whether consumers would want to use a device just to ensure that Airplane Mode really disables all communication. However, the phone case could proof invaluable to those looking to black out communication for their own safety.

For a full look at how the phone case will work, check out Snowden and Huang's paper, Against the Law: Countering Lawful Abuses of Digital Surveillance.

Top image credit: Edward Snowden and Andrew Huang

The accelerometer. The gyroscope. The proximity sensor. The heart-rate monitor. There are already all kinds of sensors packed into our phones, and phone-connected wearables, collecting data about what we're doing and where we are at any given time.

Scary or fantastic, this is just the beginning. Our phones are going to pack in more and more sensors – and this means they'll be able to play an ever-greater role in our healthcare, as the benefits of the various technologies are fully realised.

By being able to sense the environment, monitor our vitals and use frameworks like Apple's CareKit, your phone will provide your doctor with more – and more accurate – information than ever before.

Sounds great, right? But while our phones will become one of our greatest healthcare allies, there are corresponding fears that our data could be stolen, and our medical records compromised.

So exactly what's in the pipeline? How important will our phones become to our health? And what action is being taken to secure all that personal data?

Sensing our environment

Right now there's a lot of buzz around sensors and devices that track the quality of the air around us. These kinds of environmental sensors aren't particularly new – they've been around in some form or another for years – but as they shrink down to smartphone size they'll provide new kinds of information to medical professionals.

Devices like Canary £159 ($179, around AU$305) and Emerald Air are already using sensors to serve up information about the air quality in your home. But it's not just one or two data points – the amount of information being collected is vast.

Mateusz Zelek, CEO and Co-Founder of Emerald Air, told TechRadar: "[Our] device lets you monitor temperature, humidity, pressure and air quality in your life environment. It detects over 600 harmful substances released from furniture, paints, carpeting, air conditioning and human metabolism, which irritate your eyes, skin or just make you sick."

Dr Stephen Daniels, creator of the Cair sensor ($130, around £88/AU$186), says there's been a boom in devices built for this purpose because "the awareness of the effects of poor air quality on health and wellbeing is becoming even more understood".

The Cair sensor is aimed specifically at those with asthma and allergies, measuring particulate matter (size and other attributes), volatile organic compounds, humidity levels and temperature.

But it's when the data from the sensors is analysed, and combined with additional cloud-based data, that the system becomes even more useful.

Dr Daniels explains: "All the sensors are cloud-connected and the algorithms that create the alerts for each user are performed in the loud. These algorithms also grab external data such as weather, pollen counts, pollutant levels and so on, and use them in the analysis."

If keeping ourselves healthier and better informed is our ultimate goal, then the obvious next step for these kinds of sensors is smartphone integration.

After all, wouldn't it be more useful to find out what the air quality is like when you're out and about during the day, at work and spending time outside, rather than just when you're sitting in your house?

Dr Daniels told us he's keen to develop new ways to integrate the Cair sensor further into smartphone architectures, although exactly how this will work isn't yet clear.

In order to really help users the sensor would need to be either embedded into smartphones – perhaps on the underside of your handset, in the way cameras are now – or worn as a watch or other wearable that could send real-time updates directly to your phone.

The real benefit would be if these air quality sensors were able to work with GPS to measure air quality based on where you are, using data about upcoming hazards and problems, and crowdsourcing this data to provide others with more useful information and updates.

What our sweat can tell us

The next focus for smartphone health integration is digging deeper into the new kinds of information that can be collected. While the step-counting and heart-rate monitoring that many devices now perform are useful, our phones will increasingly be capable of collecting data that's even more useful.

Earlier this year, engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, developed a new sensor that can measure the metabolites and electrolytes in sweat.

By combining these readings with skin temperature data, the sensor is able to alert the user to all kinds of issues, like fatigue, dehydration and dangerously high body temperatures.

"Human sweat contains physiologically rich information, thus making it an attractive body fluid for non-invasive wearable sensors," says principal investigator Professor Ali Javey. "However, sweat is complex, and it is necessary to measure multiple targets to extract meaningful information about your state of health."

The more data points that can be measured, the more meaningful the information that can be gathered.

Like sweat, our breath can also provide useful insights into our health. Devices containing sensors that analyse the composition of your breath are already available for athletes and health professionals, and could feasibly be coming to smartphones too.

For instance, Cosmed's K5 can measure metabolic parameters including oxygen consumption, ventilation, heart rate and energy expenditure all from sensing your breath – and could easily be plugged into a phone in the future rather than a bulky backpack.

Breezing ($350, around £238/AU$462) is a small handheld device that measures the composition of breath using indirect calorimetry – the measurement of oxygen consumption rate and carbon dioxide production rate – and is designed to give users a better understanding of their health and help them lose weight.

The data gained is used to gauge measurements such as Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) and Resting Energy Expenditure (REE), which when paired with the app can tell you all kinds of things about your current state of health – and its compact nature points to a place in your phone in the future.

All in the mind

In the future our phones won't just be able to keep tabs on our physical health – they'll be able to monitor our emotional wellbeing too.

There are generally two ways to collect emotional data: sentiment analysis software (working out what we really mean by what we say) and biometric data from wearables – and emotion-tracking wearables are already hitting the consumer market.

Feel is a wristband designed to give you a better understanding of your emotions and stress levels, using sensors that record biometric data such as blood volume pulse and skin temperature. This data is fed back to the app, which will then suggest actions you can take to elevate or alleviate certain moods.

However, current emotion-sensing tech is only really possible when sensors can be placed against your skin for an extended period of time, which means these sensors won't be coming into your phone in the next year at least as brands work out how holding your handset more briefly can give the same insights.

In time, a wearable like Feel could send information about your emotions to your device, which could then be paired with data from other sensors in order to better understand what it is that makes you think and feel a certain way.

For example, an emotion-reading sensor might tell your phone that you're stressed, enabling your handset to then use its other sensors to paint a more accurate picture of possible causes.

Perhaps you get stressed when air quality is low. Maybe your commute is the time when you appear to be the most sad. Or perhaps you're happiest when in a certain location – although you'd probably be able to work that one out for yourself.

This information could in turn be used by your phone to suggest certain actions – perhaps telling you there are tickets left for a concert near to you if it senses you're really low on the train home from work. It sounds like science fiction, but the pieces are coming together quickly.

Should we be worried?

It's clear what the medical benefits of many of these future sensors are for the consumer. More sensors mean that apps, and increasingly machine-learning software, will be able to provide us with more accurate, useful and contextual information about ourselves and the world around us.

But the more information that's collected, the more marketers, retailers, healthcare companies and others will want to get their hands on it.

As we explored in our feature on the sensors currently in our phones, the most malicious use of your data is often for marketing and advertising purposes.

Mike Feibus, principal analyst at FeibusTech, told us: "For the most part, those who watch us are in it for the money […]. The most common thing going on in our phones is for marketing purposes. They'd like to understand where we go, what we like. Then the information feeds targeted ad campaigns."

What this means for us as consumers is that we need to exercise caution, and take the protection of our data seriously. Whether that means creating stronger passwords, or adding two-stage authentication, we need to make sure we've left no digital door unlocked.

But what if being sensible and aware isn't enough? Could something as innocuous as not bothering to read allthe terms and conditions attached to a new sensor enable brands to access our medical information?

If, for example, your data was stolen and your health insurance company got hold of it, your policy could be cancelled. Or if an employee saw your private medical history, it might dissuade them from keeping you on.

Yes, these examples sound extreme, but a number of companies are already setting up corporate wellness programmes, and are requiring their employees to share wearable data. So while this sort of data gathering may seem rather Orwellian, it isn't hard to believe it'll become standard practice for companies keen to get a better understanding of who they're employing.

And what about giving your data to small start-up companies because you want to be an early adopter of the next big health trend? The Internet of Things space is becoming increasingly competitive, so getting a product into your hands before someone else does might be more of a priority for companies than ensuring your data is safe.

What happens if that firm goes out of business? Or if you want to delete your information one day? As we demand more from our phones, we'll also need to demand greater transparency about who has access to our personal data, and how it's used.

Policy-makers, meanwhile, will be expected to create guidelines and laws regarding what is and isn't ethical when it comes to our sensitive information.

All this is still a long way off, however. And providing that safeguards are in place and we're aware of what can and can't be done with our data, smartphone and wearable sensors will one day be capable of providing us with vast amounts of information that will help us to improve our physical and mental health.

The trial of Google vs Oracle, which began in 2010, is finally over. After two weeks of deliberation, a jury found Google's use of Oracle's Java application program interface (API) as "fair use."

For those unfamiliar with programming, APIs are a set of protocols and tools that allow different pieces of software to talk to one another. It's how websites can integrate buttons to share articles on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, for example.

Android became an immense success over the years, with over 1.4 billion activated devices around the world, while Oracle's Java licensing business tanked. Oracle argued it deserved part of Android's success since Google used its code. According to ArsTechnica, Oracle could have asked for as much as $9 billion in damages if it won.

During the trial, Oracle argued Google copied parts of its Java API packages and related code in order to take a "shortcut at Oracle's expense."

Oracle attorney Peter Bricks claimed Google "copied 11,500 lines of code" during closing arguments. "It's undisputed. They took the code, they copied it, and put it right into Android," said Bricks.

Google's victory means software developers who believe programming language APIs are fair use can breath a sigh of relief. If Oracle had won, developers using the Java APIs would have had to license its use, bringing the app economy crashing down. It would've been a serious blow to open source software development.

However, APIs are still protected by copyright law under one appeals court, though Google's victory now sets a precedent against that protection. It's likely we'll see a continuing battle over whether APIs can be copyrighted at all.

Oracle has vowed to appeal the decision. "We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market," said Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley. "Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Google's illegal behavior."

Researchers at Michigan State University in the US have managed to break the fingerprint protection on Samsung and Huawei phones using a standard inkjet printer together with special ink and paper.

The process takes less than 15 minutes, the academics say, and it could open the door to hackers wanting to get at the data on your smartphone - provided they can get a copy of your fingerprint, of course.

With a high-res fingerprint copy and the special conductive ink and glossy paper used by the researchers, a Samsung Galaxy S6 and Huawei Honor 7 were fooled. An Apple iPhone 5s couldn't be tricked in the same way says the report.

Hack to the drawing board

While we've seen fingerprint protection technology hacked in the past, previous techniques have relied on 3D printing and special moulds; this new method is a lot quicker and cheaper.

The goal of the research is to "raise awareness of the vulnerability of fingerprint authentication and help develop ways to prevent such attacks" according to the team behind the new report.

There's no need to panic just yet, especially as handset makers are refining their security procedures all the time, but don't assume the fingerprint unlocking feature built into your phone is necessarily foolproof.

• Lower-res fingerprint sensors on phones can be duped by fake clay fingers

FBI demands and a special iOS

Apple's refusal to comply with a court order to provide the FBI with a backdoor into the iPhone has opened a new chapter in the debate over security vs privacy.

Throw in a scathing letter by Apple CEO Tim Cook, and you have the recipe for an unprecedented face-off between a tech company and the government. This is a new stage in what is already a heated battle between Apple and the Bureau, the outcome of which will set the stage in the war over encryption for years to come.

Here are five things you need to know about Apple's fight with the FBI.

1. What the FBI wants

Essentially, the FBI wants to crack the passcode on an iPhone 5C used by one of the shooters in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack. The FBI doesn't have the PIN, and after 10 failed attempts the agency fears the phone will wipe what data is on there – a standard iPhone security feature.

On Tuesday, a judge ordered Apple's "reasonable technical assistance" to do three things: bypass or disable the auto-erase function on the phone, enable the FBI to electronically input passcodes from another device hooked up to the iPhone and ensure the phone's software doesn't impose time delays between passcode attempts beyond what's incurred by Apple's hardware.

In other words, the FBI wants to unlock the iPhone by brute force by attempting many, many passcodes until it hits on the right one, without having to manually input them and without a delay after every incorrect attempt.

2. The special version of iOS

To get around the three things listed above, the FBI basically wants Apple to make a special version of iOS for the recovered iPhone.

The court order maintains the software would have an identifier for the phone coded by Apple so that it would only work on that specific device. This special version of iOS would be loaded via Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode, recovery mode or "other applicable mode available to the FBI."

The FBI needs Apple to make the firmware because, before the update kicks in, the device will verify that it has a valid signature from Apple. If it doesn't have the signature, then the firmware won't take.

The court order indicates that this special operating system would be loaded onto the iPhone 5C at a government facility or at an Apple facility. If it takes place at an Apple location, the FBI would have remote access to the device so it could try passcodes on it.

3. What the FBI is asking for is possible

There has been debate about whether what the FBI is asking Apple to do for is even possible, and my research indicates that it would be difficult for Apple to accomplish it on a locked phone running a more recent version of iOS.

However, according to Trail of Bits, what the FBI is asking for is technically possible due largely to the fact that the iPhone it wants to access is a 5C.

This device doesn't have what's called a Secure Enclave, the "single most important security feature produced by Apple," writes Trail of Bits. The Secure Enclave is a separate coprocessor within the A7 chip, found on iPhones with Touch ID. The iPhone 5C is not one of those iPhones.

When a passcode is entered on an iPhone that has a Secure Enclave, that passcode attempt is "tangled" with a key from the Secure Enclave, and not even Apple knows that key. So even if Apple created a new version of iOS to circumvent the other security features, if the device has a Secure Enclave, it would be virtually impossible to crack.

However, no Secure Enclave means that all you have to contend with is the passcode protections in the software itself, which takes us back to the FBI wanting a special version of iOS in the first place.

Cook's refusal and tech world reactions

4. Why Tim Cook is refusing to comply with the court order

Cook wrote an open letter to customers lambasting the FBI's request for Apple to take what he called "an unprecedented step" that would threaten the security of Apple's customers.

You can read Cook's letter in full here, but it's important to point out why he is refusing to comply.

Cook wrote that even though the FBI says it wants to use the special version of iOS on just the one iPhone, the software would "undeniably create a backdoor," and, like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, it'd be difficult, if not impossible, to control once it's made.

"Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices," Cook wrote in the letter. "In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks - from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable."

While Cook wrote he believes the FBI is acting in good faith, he says the software it's asking for is "too dangerous to create."

Just as importantly, it would set a precedent for future demands by the US (or any nation's) government for Apple (or any tech company) to create backdoors that put customers at a risk for attack, and that's not something Cook is willing to take the lead on.

5. What the tech world is saying

A growing number in the tech community are speaking out about Cook's letter and the situation at large, and most are supportive of Apple's decision.

Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp, took to to Facebook to laud Cook's letter and called for resistance to the FBI's demands.

"We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set," Koum wrote. "Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake."

T-Mobile CEO John Legere was asked on CNBC where he "comes down" on the situation: "[Cook is] in a really, really difficult spot. Obviously what we've got is an unheralded situation where he's being requested to help authorities deal with the security in the device … I wouldn't know how to advise him, but I understand both sides of the issue. And I think it's groundbreaking."

Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak said he believes Steve Jobs "would have gone for the privacy" when asked by CNBC what he thought the late Apple co-founder would have done.

Everyone (including myself) was waiting on a reaction/response from Google, and we finally got one in the form of tweets from CEO Sundar Pichai late Wednesday afternoon.

Pichai sided with Apple, calling Cook's letter "important" and writing that, "[f]orcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users' privacy."

He warned that requiring companies to hack their customers' devices and data could result in a "troubling precedent," and that thoughtful and open public discussion should take place about the issue.

After a conspicuous silence, more voices joined the chorus of support on Thursday.

Facebook said in a statement that it "will continue to fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems."

"These demands would create a chilling precedent and obstruct companies' efforts to secure their products," it said.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey offered a brief message of support in a tweet, while Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith also added to the conversation on Twitter.

"In a world where we need to keep both the public safe and privacy rights secure, backdoors take us backwards," Smith wrote, including a link to a statement on the Reform Government Surveillance site. Microsoft is a founding member of RGS. Smith didn't mention Cook, and CEO Satya Nadella offered nothing more than a retweet of an earlier Smith post.

Apple plans to appeal the judge's order, but as the FBI's options to access the iPhone have seemingly run out, we're likely to see further public debate between the two entities, privacy and security advocates, and members of the public who, ultimately, have a massive stake in what's decided.

Lead image credit: Valery Marchive (LeMagIT)/Wikimedia Commons

Following Tim Cook's letter slamming the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's demands to create a backdoor into an iPhone, Google CEO Sundar Pichai weighed in on the situation in a series of tweets Wednesday.

Though succinct, Pichai conveys that he stands with Apple's CEO.

"Important post by @tim_cook," he tweeted. "Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users' privacy."

Pichai acknowledged that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face "significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism," and said that Google builds secure products to keep user information safe, but also hands over data "based on valid legal orders."

"But that's wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent," he went on, referring to a court order demanding Apple create a special version of iOS that would allow the FBI to access an iPhone used by one of shooters in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack.

He concluded: "Looking forward to a thoughtful and open discussion on this important issue."

Pichai's tweets come after a day of debate as to whether Apple is doing the right thing by refusing to comply with the court order.

Cook wrote in an open letter that doing so would create a master key to encryption that could be used repeatedly, on any number of devices, putting users private data at risk. Cook called the implications of the government's demands "chilling."

Google had remained silent for most of Wednesday, a silence that some, including NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, saw as Google picking a side that wasn't "the public's."

However, Pichai's warning that forcing companies to hack users devices could set such a precedent is encouraging for users of Android and the tech world at large.

• Google has some interesting ideas on the future of passwords

We've known that Apple Pay was due to launch in China for a while now, but according to a China Guangfa Bank social media post spotted by Tech In Asia, the mobile payment service will be launching in the country on February 18.

The post revealed that China Guangfa Bank credit card customers can now view Apple Pay's Chinese launch date when selecting Apple Pay availability in their accounts.

Though Apple Pay is only available to American Express customers in most of the countries it has launched, China follows the Unites States and Canada in that the majority of its banks will support the payment system.

Banking on success

19 banks have already signed up, including the aforementioned China Guangfa Bank, ICBC, Bank of China, Bank of Beijing, Bank of Shanghai, China Citic Bank and more.

Full details of Apple Pay's first proper rollout in Asia, including app the banks which will support it, are available on Apple's Chinese website.

In the Chinese mobile payment arena, Apple will be competing directly with Alibaba Group Holding's AliPay and Tencent Holdings' WeChat Wallet.

• techradar's in-depth guide on how to use Apple Pay

This week we discovered that everything can change in an instant. One minute you're the hot favourite for the top political job; the next, you're regretting those tweets in which you called everybody losers. And it's the same in tech. This week we saw Apple knocked from its perch as the world's most valuable company, and we saw a family favourite go to a very dark place indeed. It's Week in Tech!

Google is good, Apple is doomed

Something interesting happened in the world of tech: Alphabet, Google's parent company, became more valuable than Apple – which means it became the world's most valuable company. We're using the past tense because Apple quickly recaptured the lead, which is based on share valuations rather than anything sensible, but it's still significant: Apple has been far ahead of Google since 2010, and most of its valuation is reliant on a single product, the iPhone. Alphabet is much more diverse, which means it's less exposed to shocks should one of its key products hit some obstacles.

Apple's March event: what to expect

Apple's next big launch event will take place on March 15, and while it won't be about the iPhone 7 – that's set for an Autumn reveal – we should see some interesting new devices. Multiple reports say there will be a 4-inch iPhone 5SE to replace the iPhone 5S, a four-speaker iPad Air 3 to update the main iPad range, and new Apple Watch bands. An updated Watch may be on the cards too, but if it happens it'll be a tweaked S model rather than a brand new version. As always we'll have the full details as soon as Tim Cook shows them off.

LG G5: launch date and new leaks

The LG G5 launch is so close we can almost touch it: the firm has confirmed a February 21 event at MWC 2016, and a bevy of new leaks suggest it will have some pretty tasty features. There are two rear cameras, a removable battery, a metal design and – most intriguingly of all – a "mysterious hardware expansion slot". That's not its official name, but it'd be great if it was. We've collated all the latest rumours and renders, and put them on our LG G5 page for your excitement and delightment.

Could you be the most beautiful phone in the world?

Well, no. But the new Vaio Phone Biz more than compensates for its awful name by being the best-looking Windows Phone ever made. And while that may sound like faint praise, akin to "the world's most sarcastic Yorkshireman" or "least irritating YouTube vlogger", the Biz really is rather pretty. Vaio used to be Sony's high-end brand, but the computing and phone arm was sold off and is now its own company, fully independent of the Japanese giant. If its designs stay as interesting as this, the Vaio name could be destined for greatness once more.

Microsoft: the future of phones and football

You don't need a Windows Phone to benefit from Microsoft's technology: it's coming for your iPhone and Android, and for your face. First we discovered that Microsoft had bought Swiftkey, the predictive keyboard developer, and then we saw Microsoft's vision for "immersive sports entertainment": using Hololens to watch the Super Bowl. And the two stories are more connected than they seem. The Swiftkey keyboard is great, but what Microsoft is really after is the developer's artificial intelligence smarts – smarts that could one day help Hololens decide what to show you, or help power virtual assistants.

D'oh, d'oh good

The internet is pretty good, but when it comes to finding the perfect Simpsons image to illustrate your meme it's not great. Hurrah, then, for Frinkiac, a Simpsons-specific search engine. As Stephen Lambrechts explains: "Pulling images from the first 15 seasons of The Simpsons (because we all know that absolutely nothing memorable has occurred in the seasons since), Frinkiac finds stills using the indexed subtitles of each episode." With three million stills in its database, even Homer should be able to get decent results.

Nintendo: Splatoon saves the day

Nintendo's financial results have been published, and while they're mainly what we expected – the Wii U hasn't suddenly rocketed to the top of the console sales charts – there's some good news among the numbers. With 40.6 million copies sold so far, the superbly entertaining Splatoon has outsold the PS4's Bloodborne and the Order: 1886 combined. As Hugh Langley reports: "Splatoon isn't the only one going strong. Super Mario Maker, which launched in September, has sold 3.34 million copies, while Mario Kart 8 has sold 7.24 million since May 2014. But it's Splatoon that should have Nintendo and its investors celebrating today… That a brand new IP has been so successful less than a year after launching is worth shouting about. The result of this, I hope, is that Nintendo will feel more confident in creating new IPs in the future."

True Detective… Pikachu?

Were you disappointed with season 2 of True Detective? So were we, until we discovered a dark and gritty police procedural in an unexpected place: the Nintendo 3DS. It turns out that Detective Pikachu is pretty dark stuff. Hugh Langley: "…we discover that Pikachu was once happy, munching on apples and bouncing around without a care in the world. Then one day he was in a car accident which killed his owner, leaving the little yellow guy wandering the streets, catcalling at women and yelling at cars… Without a translation we're not sure what he's saying. Something about waiting for a "real rain" to come and wash the scum off the streets, probably."

It's the news you've all been waiting for, the next round of new emoji are about to grace our smartphone screens with a selection of 74 amazing icons now confirmed for your enjoyment.

Express yourself in all new ways with the help of emoji such as 'potato', 'green salad', 'glass of milk' and 'Modern Pentathlon'.

Okay so 'Modern Pentathlon' may not get a lot of use, but we can see 'bacon' (which was confirmed for this update along with 37 others last year) being one of the firm favourites in the Unicode 9.0 offering, which is due for release in mid-2016.

Take a look at the full list here, and tell us which ones you're most looking forward to using. It's 'selfie', isn't it? You disgust us.

• 2015's word of the year was an emoji

Battery life is the only real problem left to overcome in smartphones, as while screens and processors are improving every year battery technology isn't, which is why most handsets struggle to last much more than a day.

That could all change before too long though, as a new study published in the Nature science journal points to batteries which have the potential to offer five times the energy density of the lithium-ion units we're using currently.

This possibility is opened up by the development of lithium-oxygen batteries. These were previously hard to create because the lithium superoxide used by them was thermodynamically unstable.

However, it's been discovered that crystalline lithium superoxide can be stabilised in a battery by using a suitable graphene-based cathode.

Not here yet

Don't get too excited yet, as Larry Curtiss, one of the co-authors of the study, notes that "a lot more research is needed." But says that "this discovery really opens a pathway for the potential development of a new kind of battery."

This isn't the first new battery tech we've heard of, from a modest 40% boost in performance promised by future Sony batteries to week long life there's a lot of research happening.

But so far none of it is ready for commercial use and most of it looks to be years off. So the future might have a lot of juice, but for now you'd best keep track of your charger.

• Insanely fast charging could be coming too

Your phone is your bank

Think about your bank for a moment, and all the cool, innovative things it does. Not coming up with much other than 'it's got an app and I don't have to use that keypad thing anymore?'

It's not surprising. A bank is an institution that's thrived on being dependable, a safe haven for your cash. But we live in increasingly fluid times when it comes to privacy and on-demand content - so why hasn't banking caught up with the smartphone revolution yet?

You're probably horrified at the thought, instantly panicking about hacking and security and losing your phone and those terrible people that have scanners in their bags. But much like Netflix consumed Blockbusters, banks in the future will have to be all about the digital age or start losing customers - and this change seems about to appear.

Welcome to the world of 'challenger banks' - a new breed of financial institutions for the average consumer that will start popping up in the next few years thanks to recent relaxations in getting a banking license in the UK.

I spoke to James Nicholson, lead app engineer for one such challenger called Mondo, who believes real change is coming. Before Metro Bank launched in 2010, there hadn't had a new bank in the UK for over 150 years, such was the difficulty in taking on the established brands... but that could be about to change dramatically.

Bank to the future

Mondo definitely isn't banking the way you'll be used to. It's smartphone first, meaning it does things simply and in a way that just seems to make sense. Transactions ping onto your phone the second they're made, you can append receipt images, check out the location of your transaction - all the things that, once you see, you can't believe aren't part of every banking app.

When you hear Nicholson's sales pitch for this new bank, it feels like it's designed for millenials used to on-demand content, and the lack of questioning which bank I use, of the status quo, suddenly makes me feel rather ashamed.

The new service is completely based in an app that freezes a card with a tap (quite literally, icing up on your smartphone screen) should you misplace it, with a simple poke again to reactivate when you find it in that pair of jeans you wore at the weekend.

Your bank gathers so much data on your spending habits, but doesn't turn that around to work for you, something Mondo wants to change.

Its mission statement is that banking should be easy, a service that's transparent and isn't trying to convince you that every misstep should be penalised, a service that can use the reams of data flying in and out of your phone to save you cash.

"As Mondo customers spend over time, and once we have our banking licence to become a full current account bank, there will be stuff like 'Your water bill is unusually high, maybe you've sprung a leak?' or 'You forgot to tap out on the underground – tap here to get a refund from TfL,'" says Nicholson.

There's a lot we consider immobile in the banking world: overseas charges, penalties for going overdrawn or having a cheque bounce. Mondo (and others) want to change that and disrupt the market.

But Nicholson goes even further, pointing out that banks aren't making use of the staggering amount of technology we carry around. "If we're both in London, great; if I'm in NY and my card is used in China, don't allow it!" says Nicholson.

The whole thing seems blindingly simple: easy transactions that show up with the logos of the merchant rather than a string of unintelligible numbers and letters in a statement. It's something Nicholson agrees with, saying that nothing Mondo is doing is revolutionary - it's just applying today's technology to an archaic system.

"But the compliance and risk teams are paid to shoot those ideas down. So very quickly you reach this stalemate where banks have loads of great ideas and implement none of them. The innovation team get their bonuses, the risk team get their bonuses and nothing changes."

Hacking the bank

It's hard to imagine a bank holding a hackathon to get developers to add new features to the platform - a recent event brought 50 such coders in, and created projects like a 3D map of where a night out took you based on transactions or scraping loyalty cards to instantly show the balance of your Nectar account when you shop at Sainsbury's.

It's publishing the APIs needed to start coding for the platform, so developers can get their hands on them and start creating more innovative ways to see our transactions.

But even the word hackathon leads to big questions of security: how do you convince users to trust a new bank enough to switch their current account, and with it control of a key part of their life? What if those APIs can be used to secretly steal your cash? Mondo feels more like a clever app than a bank, which will inevitably lead to worries about hacking and theft.

Questions about customer support, security and long-term viability of a financial service obviously circle as well, but Nicholson states that these are all covered in the application for a banking license, needing to rigorously prove the robustness of the system in many ways before it's granted.

To many seeing this project for the first time, it's hard to work out how Mondo will convince people to 'try a bank'. Nicholson thinks its current scheme will be enough to get people started - while Mondo is still applying for a banking license, the only way to use it is by charging a pre-pay card with cash and connecting to that to an app.

Apparently the system takes 30 seconds to get into, and you can then instantly load your virtual card onto Apple or Samsung Pay. Then by using current technology users will be able to verify themselves to move towards an actual bank account - using biometrics like TouchID, selfies, voice recognition or even tapping your passport's NFC chip on an Android phone to prove you are who you say.

None of this is new though - the many outlets offer a fee-free travel card, Apple and Samsung Pay feature up to the minute transaction data and loads of other financial services have jumped on the smartphone bandwagon - Nicholson's view of banks as dusty, outdated services may be a bit harsh, especially since contactless payment has come to our smartphones.

But there's no bank that's bringing it all together in the way Mondo is, and even the questions about security and long term viability don't seem to have dampened Nicholson's enthusiasm for projects likes this, with over 17,000 signed up on the waiting list to be an alpha tester before Mondo launches (the aim is for this to be by early 2017, depending on license approval).

Nicholson admits that the relaxation of the licensing process means we'll have loads of other banks to choose from at the same time, so maybe we'll become as relaxed about our banking as we are with our privacy online, willingly jumping around to whichever service offers us the most benefit, feeling as safe as changing our phone contract, to see banking start offering the benefits these always-on pocket-dwellers can bring.

• Sweden is the world's first cashless society

LG announced today that it will soon be launching its own mobile payment system, dubbed LG Pay. While LG Pay will compete with Apple, Android, and Samsung's own payment systems, LG's model is currently planned to be available only in South Korea.

This news confirms a rumor that sprung in October that LG was going into the mobile payments game. The announcement was made via an official Facebook post, showing off the partnership with electronics manufacturer CEO, Juno Cho, standing with the CEOs of the banking firms involved in the program.

The two partners, Shinhan Financial Group and KB Financial Group, are based in South Korea just like the Seoul-based LG Corporation. While this may cement LG Pay as a Korean-exclusive service, a report by TechCrunch says that more details will be revealed in the coming weeks, to include any possibilities of an international launch.

Mobile payment platforms such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, and the relatively recent Samsung Pay have appeared over the past couple of years to offer an alternative to carrying around cash and cards. Banking services have also been putting out mobile payment apps of their own to compete, greatly expanding options for the shopper on the go.

• Want to know more about Samsung Pay? Here's everything you need to know.