smartphones

“I always say to people, when you’re giving your kid a tablet or a phone, you’re really giving them a bottle of wine or a gram of coke,” she said during her talk at the Highgate Junior School conference in the UK.

The technology was first shown off in 2015, when Israeli start-up StoreDot demonstrated its FlashBattery at the CES tech show in Las Vegas.

Chief executive Doron Myersdorf told the BBC it is now expected to enter production in early 2018.

However, Ben Wood, a technology analyst at CCS Insight, said he had doubts about the claims.

Mr Myersdorf said he could not reveal which manufacturers were signed up to use the technology.

Experts at Newcastle University analysed the movement of a smartphone as the keyboard was used.

They say they cracked four-digit pins with 70% accuracy on the first guess and 100% by the fifth guess.

The team of cyber-experts claim tech companies know about the problem but can't figure out what to do about it.

Dr Maryam Mehrnezhad, from the university's school of computing science, said: "Most smartphones, tablets, and other wearables are now equipped with a multitude of sensors.

The US Governors Highway Safety Association estimates that there were 6,000 pedestrian deaths in 2016, the highest number in more than 20 years.

In the last six years, fatalities have grown at four times the rate of overall traffic deaths.

The report says a number of factors are to blame, including mobile use.

It was, of course, the iPhone. There are many ways in which the iPhone has defined the modern economy.

There is the sheer profitability of the thing, of course: there are only two or three companies in the world that make as much money as Apple does from the iPhone alone.

There is the fact that it created a new product category: the smartphone. The iPhone and its imitators represent a product that did not exist 10 years ago but now is an object of desire for most of humanity. There's the way the iPhone transformed other markets - software, music, and advertising.

The worst thing about smartphones is that other people can use them everywhere. While you might be a considerate phone owner - ensuring your headphones are plugged in, your keyboard clicks muted and your camera not pointed at anyone who wouldn't like it, not everyone holds themselves to the same standards.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center identified gender disparities in device ownership and noted that more men than women have smartphones in about half the countries examined. This gender divide for smartphones tends to be deepest in developing countries, though a gap between the sexes also exists in wealthy nations like Canada and the U.K.

Overall, researchers found a gender gap in 19 of 40 countries surveyed. The most significant disparities appear in Mexico, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.

Researchers from Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Canada have revealed a bendable Android device called ReFlex.

The experimental smartphone is equipped with a 720p flexible OLED touchscreen from LG, with bend sensors and haptic feedback monitors on board.

The prototype handset, which runs Android 4.4, offers a glimpse at a next-generation smartphone interface with more than a hint of sci-fi about it.

Video footage (above) shows the research team playing Angry Birds with a bendy control system, launching their irate avians by flexing the device.

Do you struggle to recall what life was like before receiving the all-in-one communication, entertainment and source-of-knowledge device that fits in the palm of your hand?

Could there be a connection?

Leading Australian chiropractor Dr. James Carter has warned of an increase in "text neck" from children as young as seven due to hours spent looking at smartphones and tablets.

"Instead of a normal forward curve, patients can be seen to have a backwards curve," Dr. Carter told the Daily Mail Australia.

"It can be degenerative, often causing head, neck, shoulder and back pain.

"Many patients come in complaining they have a headache, but we actually find text neck is the cause of it. They often fail a simple heel-to-toe test and tend to fall over."