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Nuance has updated its Swype keyboard for Android to version 1.8 with several new features that includes free Material design themes along with a Bumblebee theme that has high contrast yellow and black colorization, intuitive Emoji support in 8 languages, floating keyboard, better text correction and lots more new features.
Even its competitor SwiftKey got Material Design themes few months back, but those are paid. Check out the complete change log below.
New features in Swype v1.8 for Android
Intuitive Emoji support in 8 Languages: English (+UK), FR, IT, DE, ES, KR, CN
3 New FREE Themes: Material light, dark, & high-visibility (Bumblebee)
Floating keyboard: Move the keyboard anywhere
New languages: Vietnamese Telex, German CH, Italian CH, Burmese Zawgyi, Sinhala
Korean Initial Consonant Input added: enable in Settings
Added a return key to apps that supply a smiley by default
Performance improvements related to connected services
Many bug fixes
Download Swype for Android (Free with in-app purchases) - Android
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Instagram has updated its Android and iOS app with a new video feature. Now videos shared on Instagram will bring endlessly continue to loop which essentially means that they will be replayed automatically.
The 15 second or less videos on Instagram will play all over again and again, without an option to pause it. They will start again from the beginning as soon as they finish and keep doing it until you pass them. Prior, to the update they played once and stopped until started again. Instagram has promised that endless looping of the videos will not cost you additional bandwidth.
The latest feature will be helpful for advertisers as 300 million users on Instagram will keep seeing them at the time of scrolling through their feed. The continuous looping of videos is similar to six seconds Vine videos. Facebook owned Instagram started video sharing in June 2013 as a competition to Twitter's Vine.
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Huawei today announced that it has launched its new Research & Development center in Whitefield, Bangalore. The one million sq. ft. campus built on a 20 acre land will accommodate up to 5,000 engineers and includes an R&D Block, customer experience center, large cafeteria, multilevel car park and residential block for expat employees, said the company. Huawei has invested over US$ 170 million (Rs. 1051 crores approx.) in building the new campus in Bangalore.
It's first overseas research and development center being set up in Bangalore in 1999. Today it has over 2700 engineers, out of which more than 98% are local employees including leadership roles. It is also the largest and the most important R&D center of Huawei, outside of China. It also celebrates 15 years of operation in India and has launched Huawei – 15 years of enabling digital India campaign. Huawei is partnering with leading mobile service provider in India to build India’s 1st 4G LTE commercial network.
The India R&D center plays a key role in component development and delivery center of Huawei for the global markets and has ownership of almost all software platforms, components and products being developed in India. India R&D center is engaged in ...
Yahoo Mail for Android has been updated with a couple of features. The company has taken a cue from Google and added features like notifications, package tracking that are offered by Now cards.
Yahoo Mail will now offer users with real time updates for package shipments from Amazon, eBay, Nordstrom and more. In addition, it will provide flight notifications that now support Orbitz and CheapTickets. Other features includes the ability to personalize Yahoo Today with new edit options. Users can add their favourite sports team in order to get regular updates about it. The Mail app will also allow users to customize and read daily horoscope. Finally the app is getting bug fixes and performance improvements.
Yahoo Mail added the track you package feature to iOS last month. The Mail app received major update in October with themes, conversations and more.
Play Link - Yahoo Mail
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Last year Opera introduced Sponsored Web Pass that lets operators team up with advertisers to sponsor mobile internet access for a limited time, free of cost. Few months back Opera and Idea Cellular teamed up with Quikr who sponsored for mobile data for Opera customers using Idea connection in India. Now Opera has teamed up with FreeCharge, an e-commerce player who has sponsored free data for Vodafone and Idea subscribers using Opera Mini web browser.
To access free internet, Idea and Vodafone subscribers just need to open the Opera Mini browser, go to the Speed Dial start screen and click Vodafone Internet Pass / Idea Web Pass to select Get Free Browsing by FreeCharge. Users can enjoy free internet browsing for up to 5MB on Vodafone and 10MB on Idea network for an entire day.
With Opera Web Pass, mobile operators can package their data offerings based on time, such as one hour or one day, or on content, such as access to a specific news website. This now move would allow non-data users to enjoy internet on their mobile phones, while also giving an opportunity to advertisers to gain instant connect with consumers using the mobile platform.
More than 35 million web-pass ...
Yesterday, Canalys report stated that Micromax pipped Samsung to become India's top smartphone vendor. However, a latest report from Counterpoint is stating that Samsung is still the top smartphone maker in the country for Q4, 2014.
The report revealed that Samsung tops the Indian charts with a market share of 27.4 percent. Micromax came in second with 19.4 percent market share. The report said that the homegrown smartphone makers shipments grew 75% Y-o-Y but declined sequentially. Intex took the third spot with a 6.5 percent share, followed by Lava with 5.1 percent and Lenovo at number 5, thanks to the Motorola acquisition. The data for is Q4, 2014 from October to December. Xiaomi smartphone shipments grew almost 250% Q-o-Q but the vendor failed to make it to the Top five smartphone vendors during the quarter
Overall smartphone shipments stood close to 22 million during the fourth quarter, reaching a record level crossing 80 million units for the first time and contributing close to 32% of the overall shipments in the calendar year 2014. India is the third largest smartphone market in the world, shipping almost twice as many smartphones shipped in Japan in 2014.
Under Armour has acquired two of the important health and fitness apps. The fitness apparel company has acquired MyFitnessPal for $475M and Endomondo for $85M.
MyFitnessPal is a popular diet tracking app that allows you to log calories, record exercise, and compete with your Facebook friends to lose weight. Started in 2006, the social fitness app has 45 million active users is widely used by personal trainers and other fitness professionals. It works with various health trackers like Fitbit, Jawbone and Garmin.
"Under Armour's demonstrated global leadership in health and fitness innovation is greatly enhanced with the addition of Endomondo and MyFitnessPal, as we continue to redefine and elevate the Connected Fitness experience for millions of people around the world. Similar to MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal have established track records of unmatched equity, expertise and passion in the fitness and nutrition space, and they are ideal partners to enable Under Armour to provide data-driven, proactive solutions to help athletes of all levels lead healthier and more active lifestyles."
said Kevin Plank, Chairman and CEO of Under Armour.
Endomondo, also a social fitness app lets people track workouts, analyze their performance. Founded in 2007, the company has approximately 20 million registered users primarily concentrated in Europe. ...
ASUS has introduced ZenPower, the company's first 9600mAh portable power bank in Taiwan. It was originally introduced at the CES last month only to selected media and competes with Xiaomi's 10400mAh power bank. It even looks similar to the Xiaomi Mi power bank. It weighs 215 grams and is 18mm thick, slightly lighter and thinner than the Mi 10400mAh power bank that weighs 250g and is 21.6mm thick. Other dimensions are almost similar.
The Asus ZenPower has three 3200mAh batteries, compared to four 2600mAh batteries on the Mi 10400mAh pwer bank. It has 11 layers of protection, compared to 9 layers on Xiaomi's Mi power bank. It has a full USB port with 5V/2.4V output, a micro USB slot for charging, a power button and four LED lights.
The Asus ZenPower comes in black, white, gold, blue and pink matte metallic colors with rubber sleeves in black, gray, red, yellow and green colors. No details about the pricing or global roll out yet.
Source
Celkon has launched Millennia ME Q54, the company's latest smartphone in the Millennia series with a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, targeted at selfie market. It has a 5-inch FWVGA screen, powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and runs on Android 4.4 (KitKat). It has a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash as well. It comes with dual SIM support and 3G connectivity.
Commenting on the launch, Y Guru Chairman and Managing Director - Celkon Mobiles, said:
We have started the New Year on a very positive note and this is our 2nd offering this year. We will continue to grow manifolds with many such value-for-money offerings in the pipeline.
Murali Retineni, Executive Director-Celkon Mobiles said:
We at Celkon believe in products which are packed with cutting edge features and are affordable to all. In continuation of that, we are today pleased to announce the launch of yet another powerful and latest feature loaded model Millennia ME Q54. This phone provides a unique take-away for all categories of people. Gaming aficionados can revel in their experience with the gravity sensors while selfie lovers can take best selfies with the 5MP front camera. We hope this all-in-one model will be most suitable for customers who do not want to ...
Lava Iris X8, the company's upcoming smartphone in the Iris X series has been listed on Flipkart. It has 5-inch HD screen, is powered by a 1.4 GHz Octa-Core MediaTek processor and runs on Android 4.4 (KitKat). It has a 8-megapixel rear camera with dual LED flash and a 3-megapixel front-facing camera. The front camera doesn't have LED flash like the Iris X5 that was launched last year. The design of the smartphone is similar to earlier Iris X series smartphones.
It has dual SIM support and 3G connectivity, similar to other smartphones in the Lava smartphones. It packs 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage with expansion slot and a 2500mAh battery.
Lava Iris X8 specifications
5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display with Asahi Dragontrail glass protection
1.4 GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592M processor
2GB RAM, 16GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 32GB with MicroSD
Android 4.4 (KitKat), upgradable to Android 5.0 (Lollipop)
Dual SIM
8MP rear camera with dual LED Flash, BSI 3 Sensor
3MP front-facing camera
3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio
Dimensions: 70.9x143.4x8.6mm; Weight: 160g
3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS
2500 mAh battery
The Lava Iris X8 comes in Black and White colors and is priced at Rs. 8,999. Lava has started teasing the smartphone on the website, so the launch might be few ...
During last night's 100 days of Honor event in London, the company introduced the Huawei Honor Holly smartphone to the European market. With the event focused around Honor fans, the company announced the handset is launching with a retail price of £109.99 but fans have the chance to reduce the price through the unique "price hacker" promotion.
The price hacker promotion is really simple - the more users who make non-binding registration for the handset, the lower the price drops. The promotion lasts for twenty days at www.hihonor.com/pricehacker and lasts for 20 days before the final price is set on 23rd February; following the announcement of the price, a limited number of units will go on sale for four days at that price on a first-come first-served basis. Once the four-day sale ends, the handset will raise in price but the firm's UK PR told us last night that the final price is still likely to be less than the £109.99 starting price.
Honor Executive Vice President for Europe, Lars-Christian Weisswange, said at the launch:
"We want to be the leading Android brand and offer the best user experience. Whether its health or e-commerce, we want our devices to meet the customer requirements."
"Honor ...
Three UK already confirmed to be stocking the Galaxy A3 and now the network has revealed they will also be selling its bigger sibling, the Galaxy A5, on pay monthly contracts and pay as you go in the UK. Both the Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A5 are part of Samsung's new A series which gains inspiration from the Galaxy Alpha and brings an all-metal clad body.
The Galaxy A5 sports a 5 inch 720p Super AMOLED display offering 294 pixels per inch density and is powered by a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 processor with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. Like other Samsung devices, the storage can be expanded by up to 64GB thanks to the built-in microSD card slot.
On the back is a 13MP autofocus camera with LED flash which can shoot Full HD 1080p video whilst the front facing 5MP snapper should be good for selfie-lovers. Naturally the Galaxy A5 is a connectivity-laden handset sporting LTE Cat 4 (offering 150Mbps download speeds), NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band Wi-Fi and an FM radio. The whole package is powered by a 2300 mAh battery that Samsung claim offers up to 15 hours talk time and all of this is based inside a handset weighing ...
Samsung launched the Galaxy A3 smartphone in India last month for Rs 20,500 along with the Galaxy A5. The phone sports a full metallic unibody design. We have seen the unboxing of the phone now lets take a look at the hardware in this photo gallery.
The Samsung Galaxy A3 has a 4.5-inch (960 x 540 pixels) qHD Super AMOLED display and is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor. Running on Android 4.4.4 (KitKat) out of the box, the phone has 1GB RAM, 16GB internal memory, expandable up to 64GB with microSD.
It has a 5MP front facing camera along with the proximity and ambient light sensors and earpiece.
At the bottom, the phone has a the traditional home button that is seen on Samsung devices along with the capacitive touch buttons on either sides.
At the back, the phone has 8MP camera with LED flash on the left and loudspeaker grill on the right side. The Duos branding is also seen at below.
The volume rockers are present on the left side. The phone measures 130.1 x 65.5 x 6.9mm and weighs 110.3 grams.
On the right side of the phone there are primary nano SIM slot, a hybrid SIM / microSD slot ...
HTC's upcoming flagship phone One M9 has been leaked again. This time the phone that is expected to be announced on March 1st at MWC, is spotted in the Dot View case model from HTC.
The leaked image shows the camera and LED flash placement on the One M9. Previous leaks had shown that the phone has rear camera that has a square module than a round one which is seen for the dual camera. The Dot View case looks similar to the ones seen last year and is expected to come in yellow and turquoise colors.
Leaks from last month had showed HTC might launch the One M9 in two variants and also it will have the BoomSound speakers at top and bottom of the display. HTC One M9 is expected to sport a 5-inch 1080p display, a 20.7-megapixel rear-facing camera, an UltraPixel front-facing camera, Snapdragon’s next-generation 810 processor (with 8 cores), 3 GB of RAM, and a 2,840 mAh battery.
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An unidentified smartphone from Sony has been seen on the GFX benchmark. The listing shows the mid range device that has a model number - E2003/E2033.
As per the benchmark listing the phone will sport a 4.6” display with a 540 x 960 resolution, a quad-core 64-bit MediaTek MT6752 with an ARM Mali-T760 GPU, 1GB RAM, a microSD memory card slot to complement the 8GB of internal memory. It will run on Android 4.4.4 KitKat and have a 5MP shooter at the back that does Full HD video recording, a 2MP front-facing camera and also support 4G LTE.
Xperia E4, a budget smartphone from Sony had leaked in December and is touted to be unveiled at MWC. The E2003/E2033 mid ranger might also be announced along with the Xperia E4 at the event.
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We have seen ample amount of leaks and reports about the upcoming Galaxy S6 smartphone from Samsung. A latest leak shows the Galaxy S6 in schematics giving details about the dimension of the phone.
The Galaxy S6 will be 6.91mm thin as per the schematic images. Full dimensions of the phone are said to be 143mm x 70.8mm x 6.91mm thin and the thickness is similar to that of the iPhone 6 which measures 138.1mm x 67mm x 6.9mm. It looks like Samsung has reduced the thickness of the Galaxy S6 since the Galaxy S5 measures 142mm x 72.5mm x 8.1 mm.
Another leak shows the phone is encompassed in a case designed by Verus. As per the images, the phone has a camera bump on the back along with the LED flash and heart rate monitor to the side of the camera sensor. We can also see separate volume up and down buttons buttons on the left hand side.
Samsung Galaxy S6 will be launched on March 1st at MWC in March. It is expected to have, Samsung Galaxy S6 is said to come with 5.5-inch QHD display with 1440×2560 pixels resolution, Snapdragon 810/Exynos 7420 chipset, 20MP rear camera, and 5MP front facing camera. An earlier ...
Nuance has updated its Swype keyboard for Android to version 1.8 with several new features that includes free Material design themes along with a Bumblebee theme that has high contrast yellow and black colorization, intuitive Emoji support in 8 languages, floating keyboard, better text correction and lots more new features.
Even its competitor SwiftKey got Material Design themes few months back, but those are paid. Check out the complete change log below.
New features in Swype v1.8 for Android
Intuitive Emoji support in 8 Languages: English (+UK), FR, IT, DE, ES, KR, CN
3 New FREE Themes: Material light, dark, & high-visibility (Bumblebee)
Floating keyboard: Move the keyboard anywhere
New languages: Vietnamese Telex, German CH, Italian CH, Burmese Zawgyi, Sinhala
Korean Initial Consonant Input added: enable in Settings
Added a return key to apps that supply a smiley by default
Performance improvements related to connected services
Many bug fixes
Download Swype for Android (Free with in-app purchases) - Android
Google has updated Maps for Android with new features. The company is adding integration for Local Guides service that has users reviewing local businesses and share them with others.
Google renamed the City Expert program to Local Guides last month. It is a platform where Google asks users to provide more high-quality reviews and add photos about places. The move from Google is to compete with the likes of Yelp, Urbanspoon, and others. Users who are contributing to Local Guides are rewarded by Google for their reviews. Guides climb the ranks by the number of reviews they add and a local badge appears after completing 50 reviews.
At this point of time, it looks like Google is interested in number of reviews and not the quality of it. Interested users can sign up to the Local Guides page here and start reviewing. The latest update bumps Google Maps to version 9.4. Last month Google Maps received voice lane guidance in 20 Indian cities and prior to this Maps for iOS and Android were updated with Material Design.
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Microsoft has updated Office Lens for Windows Phone that allows users to convert pictures of paper documents into PDF files. Users can also convert Word and PowerPoint files to PDF with Office Lens.
The Office Lens app is updated to version 1.4.3727.0. Users will have to click a photo of the document that needs to be scanned via their Windows Phone and then click Save followed by the PDF option. A PDF file is automatically saved to your OneDrive, so you can access it on any device,
"PDF conversion by Office Lens includes OCR (optical character recognition), so you can extract text information from pictures. You can search the content in a file with the text and you can also highlight or copy part of the page (depending on the capability your PDF reader app)."
posted Office on company blog.
In addition, Office Lens has also introduced a new feature called as auto-classifier. Built using machine learning technology, it analyzes what you have captured and automatically switches to the best mode. Launched in March last year, Office Lens enables Windows Phone users to go paperless by converting images of whiteboards and documents into Word and PowerPoint files, and saves the images to OneNote. In December Office Lens ...
SwiftKey keyboard for iPhone has been updated with an array of features that enhances the user experience. The popular third party keyboard is getting highly requested emoji feature which lets you express better while chatting.
SwiftKey has added support for an emoji keyboard so users will not have to bounce between full keyboards to use emoji symbols. The app will remember the emojis used most often by users, and predict them going forward. This is similar to the way SwiftKey keyboard learns and predicts words and phrases. User will simply have swap to emojis using a button in the bottom left corner of the screen and choose from over 800 different emojis.
In addition, SwiftKey is getting a gesture typing feature called as "Flow" on the iPad. It allows users to drag your finger on the screen to connect letters together to form a word instead of selecting individual letters. You can switch back and forth between using Flow and tapping on the QWERTY keys.The Flow feature is already available on the iPhone. Moreover, the app also includes keyboard click sounds that can be turned off from Settings.
Finally, SwiftKey is now available in 11 additional languages, including Bulgarian, Turkish, Croatian, Greek, Hinglish, Icelandic, Indonesian, ...
Xiaomi introduced the Redmi 2 smartphone, the second generation budget smartphone in the Redmi series in China last month. The Redmi 2 packs a faster 64-bit Snapdragon processor and also comes with 4G LTE connectivity, compared to the Redmi 1S that has Snapdragon 400 SoC and 3G connectivity. We managed to get one from China, here is the unboxing.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9is2F2-UtOI
Box Contents
Xiaomi Redmi 2 in Dark gray
2-pin charger
Micro USB cable
2200mAh battery
User manual
Coming to the specifications, the Redmi 2 has a 4.7-inch HD screen similar to the Redmi and Redmi 1S, but this looks better and has narrow bezels compared to its predecessor. It runs on MIUI v6 on top of Android 4.4 (KitKat) and is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (MSM8916 ) 64-bit processor with Adreno 305 GPU. It has Dual SIM support with 4G LTE support in both the SIMs that includes TDD B40 2300MHz and FDD B3 1800MHz bands for India.
The design of the smartphone is similar to the Redmi and the Redmi 1S smartphones. It has a 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. It has 1GB RAM, 8GB internal with expansion slot, but the company has promised to release 2GB RAM variant with 16GB of internal storage.
The ...
