Xiaomi Mi 5X aka the Mi A1 for the Indian market might be getting a successor dubbed as Mi 6X, unsurprisingly. The phone leaked in case renders a while ago and today it has again surfaced in hands-on live images revealing the design in its full glory. Going by the looks, the Mi 6X looks to be having iPhone X-style vertical dual-rear camera arrangement.
Furthermore, going by the images, the Mi 6X might be sporting a 5.99-inches Full HD+ 18:9 display and if rumors are to be trusted, the Mi 6X will be powered by the Xiaomi's own Surge S2 chipset which is expected to be announced at the MWC 2018 event next month. The Surge S2 is an Octa-Core chipset clocked at 2.2GHz with Mali-G71 MP8 GPU with support for UFS2.1 and LPDDR4 memory.
The international variant; the Mi A2 will also be powered by the same chipset. However, it is unclear if Xiaomi would launch the Mi 6X as Mi A2 under the Android One program like it did with the Mi 5X last year.
Nothing much is known in terms of specifications, but there are reports which claim that the company would at least tease or showcase the phone at the MWC ...
Xiaomi Mi 5X aka the Mi A1 for the Indian market might be getting a successor dubbed as Mi 6X, unsurprisingly. The phone leaked in case renders a while ago and today it has again surfaced in hands-on live images revealing the design in its full glory. Going by the looks, the Mi 6X looks to be having iPhone X-style vertical dual-rear camera arrangement.
Furthermore, going by the images, the Mi 6X might be sporting a 5.99-inches Full HD+ 18:9 display and if rumors are to be trusted, the Mi 6X will be powered by the Xiaomi's own Surge S2 chipset which is expected to be announced at the MWC 2018 event next month. The Surge S2 is an Octa-Core chipset clocked at 2.2GHz with Mali-G71 MP8 GPU with support for UFS2.1 and LPDDR4 memory.
The international variant; the Mi A2 will also be powered by the same chipset. However, it is unclear if Xiaomi would launch the Mi 6X as Mi A2 under the Android One program like it did with the Mi 5X last year.
Nothing much is known in terms of specifications, but there are reports which claim that the company would at least tease or showcase the phone at the MWC ...
After being in testing for quite some time, first Chrome update of 2018 is here. The Chrome 64 for Android brings white navigation bar, new APIs for developers to use and the biggest of all is that it blocks annoying auto-redirect pop-ups. Though the feature is listed as official by Google, it is still not enabled by default for some reason.
If you are a long time smartphone user, then you must be knowing about the annoying redirecting ads which certain websites follow. These redirects take you to a fake virus warning or other similar pages. This is mainly because the ads are breaking out of their frame and forcing the main parent page to the page of their desire. This type of ad behavior severely affected most ad networks including Google Adsense.
Google finally announced a solution of blocking the frames from redirecting the parent page on the browser level. However, Chrome 64 was supposed to turn on the feature according to the official changelog, but the function doesn't seem to be enabled for everyone.
But, the feature can be turned on manually. You just need to copy the "chrome://flags/#enable-framebusting-needs-sameorigin-or-usergesture " in the Chrome address bar and then tap the highlighted drop-down menu where you have an option to enable. ...
At the Qualcomm, China Tech Day event in Beijing, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Vivo, OPPO have shown interest in Qualcomm to support the 5G initiative named as "5G Pioneer" in China and introduce 5G New Radio (NR) standard-compliant commercial devices expected as early as 2019. ZTE Corporation and Wingtech Technology have also extended their support.
These companies will work on accelerating the availability of commercial 5G premium devices as early as 2019. The company mentioned that the 5G had reached unprecedented interest in China and research conducted by Qualcomm tells that 60% of Chinese consumers are likely to purchase 5G smartphones when available.
During the partnership, Qualcomm in addition to its leadership in semiconductor solutions, the company will also provide manufacturers with the platform needed for the premium tier and global 5G commercial devices. With 5G, Qualcomm is focusing on transformative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) apart from just mobile applications.
Apart from the 5G initiative, Lenovo, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo have also signed Memorandum of Understanding with Qualcomm to purchase Qualcomm Technologies’ RF Front End (RFFE) components valued at $2 billion, in the aggregate, over three years.
Qualcomm's RFFE components consist of system-level modem-to-antenna RF front-end platform solutions, which are design with an aim to enable ...
Fitbit today has made it clear once and for all that it will end support for Pebble smartwatches on June 30. Fitbit acquired Pebble along with smartwatch team and assets related to their software platform back in 2016. The company will put an end to most of Pebble’s features including App Store, the forum, cloud development tool, voice recognition features, and SMS and email replies.
Pebble's core Apps for iOS and Android will still function for now and the notifications which are a main feature of smartwatches will also work as long as the core apps are functional. As a part of the appreciation, Fitbit is offering $50 off on a Fitbit Ionic smartwatch to Pebble users who still own a device with a valid serial number.
To redeem the offer, users who have purchased Pebble device prior to December 7, 2016, and opted in to receive Fitbit's marketing communications, will receive an email with additional details. For users who have purchased after December 2016 need to register here for the Pebble discount updates. Fitbit says that Pebble users can expect the same level of experience they had in 2017 until June 30th, 2018.
While the Pebble devices and mobile apps will continue to work after June 30, 2018, Pebble services will end their support ...
LG Electronics has reported revenues of 16.96 trillion won (US$ 15.3 billion) for the fourth quarter that ended December 31, 2017, which is up 14.8% compared to the same quarter last year. For the whole 2017 it reported record 61.4 trillion won (US$ 55.4 billion) revenues, up 10.9% YoY and profits of 2.47 trillion won (US$ 2.23 billion) – the highest profit since 2009 – up 85% from 2016 due in large part to strong performance by premium home appliances and TVs.
It reported operating income of 366.8 billion won (US$ 330.9 million) for the quarter, down 35.2% for the same quarter in 2016.
Mobile Communications sector reported a quarterly revenue of 3.07 trillion won (US$ 2.77 billion), up 9% QoQ and 3% YoY due to steady sales of increasing sales of V30 and Google’s new premium OLED phone Pixel 2 XL. The sector posted a operating loss of 213.2 billion won (US$ 192.33 million), compared to loss of 459.3 billion won a year ago.
"Loss narrowed QoQ and YoY by increasing premium product sales and
improving business structure, despite marketing expense for V30 and
component price increase, said LG.
For the whole 2017 it reported 11.67 trillion won (US$ 10.52 billion) revenue, despite a challenging marketplace and strong competition from Chinese brands, ...
Reliance Jio is said to be in talks with Xiaomi for exclusive rights to sell smartphones and TVs in India similar to what it has with Apple. If everything works out, Jio will exclusively sell Xiaomi phones and TVs through the Jio retail network and the Reliance Digital chain of stores, according to a new report from ET.
There is also a possible arrangement to provide Xiaomi's B2B products like smart point-of-sales devices to Jio retailers digitalizing Xiaomi's supply chain. The company is also looking into bringing more Xiaomi products in India, said the executives. The proposed deal falls in line with Xiaomi's move to making the regulatory filing, indicating its intentions to bring products that are beyond smartphones, including for the B2B segment.
In the same regard, senior executives of Xiaomi and Reliance Jio is said to have met several times in the last few weeks. With Jio on the verge of rolling out its Jio broadband service, Xiaomi's smart televisions are a compelling offering and will be bundled with the service at a compelling price. Both the companies are also looking into expanding their partnership with exclusive smartphone models, claims the report.
Source
After Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and Madhya Pradesh, Xiaomi is all set to open a new Mi Home Store in Kolkata in South City Mall tomorrow, January 26th. This will the company’s twentieth Mi Home Store in the country, after five stores in Bengaluru, two stores in Chennai, Pune, New Delhi, Mumbai, and one in Hyderabad, Gurugram, Noida, Pune, Bhopal and Thane.
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Mi Home Store will let customers experience as well as buy smartphones, power banks, headphones, fitness bands, air purifiers as well as other ecosystem products that are launched in India.
It recently started taking pre-bookings for smartphones at Rs.500 and it is offering Mi Earphone Basic Matte worth Rs.599 with every pre-booking that can be collected along with the smartphone at Mi Home.
Xiaomi already said that it expects to open 100 Mi Homes across India in the next two years.
Huawei Deutsche Telekom and Intel today announced that they have collaborated to achieve 5G NR Interoperability and development testing, a multi-vendor interoperability based on 3GPP R15 commercial system which will accelerate 5G commercialization.
The test is based on Huawei's 5G commercial base station and Intel's third generation 5G NR Mobile Trial Platform (MTP) and it is a step forward in the commercial launch of Huawei and Intel solution supporting millions of devices in 2019. The development was initially started by Huawei and Deutsche Telekom in 2015 which later was benefitted by Intel's 5G NR platform.
Three companies have jointly verified the fundamentals of the new 5G 3GPP NR standard, including new synchronization, coding, frame structure, and numerology components underlying the interconnection of the NR-compliant terminal and network. The test configuration used is based on the largest C-band cell bandwidth defined by the 5G NR standard. The first 5G NR standard was successfully completed on December 21, 2017, at the 3GPP TSG RAN meeting in Lisbon, Portugal.
Arash Ashouriha, Senior Vice President Technology Innovation of Deutsche Telekom said:
After delivering leading contributions to the 3GPP’s work on 5G standards, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei and Intel moved swiftly to jointly verify implementation progress through standards-based interoperability testing. The success of our test is ...
Reliance Jio unveiled JioPhone, the company’s first VoLTE feature phone back in July last year and started pre-bookings for the phone in August. It launched Rs. 153 plan exclusively for JioPhone users offering free voice calls and 500MB data per day with 28 days validity offering 14GB data. Earlier this month the company increased the data to 1GB per day offering 28GB data.
Today it launched a new plan exclusively for JioPhone users that lets them to enjoy free voice calls and unlimited data (1GB at high speed) for 28 days at a price of Rs. 49. It has also introduced affordable data add-ons at Rs 11, 21, 51 and 101.
The company said "This Republic Day will mark an acceleration towards achieving the vision of Digital Freedom for the 50 Crore feature phone users of India." Reliance Jio said this will be achieved in three ways – Connectivity, Data Affordability and Device Affordability.
Reliance Jio said that its network is expected to cover 99% of India’s population this year, and India’s 4G coverage will be more than 2G coverage in the country. After a huge demand for pre-bookings, Reliance Jio started sales of JioPhone a few weeks back. Now you can get it at your retailer as ...
Amazon Alexa picks up a new skill. It can now play 'Mann Ki Baat’ Indian radio programme hosted by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is developed by the Asian News International (ANI), India's premier multimedia news agency.
Mann Ki Baat is an unique initiative that was started by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi back in 2015 to reach masses across the country through Radio directly and empower on topics such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, demonetization and the Digital India vision. The skill is available on all devices with Amazon Alexa such as the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus and Alexa-enabled smart speakers such as Harman Kardon Allure and Eufy Genie.
Users can also listen to all 36 previous episodes using simple voice commands. The company also mentioned that latest episodes will also be available within few hours of its telecast. Users need to enable Mann Ki Baat skill by going to the Skills section of the Alexa app or just by saying "Alexa, enable Mann Ki Baat."
Once enabled users can start listening to episodes by using commands like "Alexa, open Mann Ki Baat" and then Specify the month and year to select the Mann Ki Baat that you wish to listen to.
Ishaan Prakash, Editor Live Operations, ANI said:
We are heading to a future where voice ...
There are very few smartphone makers who cater to all the three segments - Entry-level, Mid-range and High-end. One such company among them is the Huawei's online brand Honor. A couple of weeks before the launch of Honor 9 Lite, the company pulled the wrap off its flagship smartphone in India dubbed as Honor View 10 equipped with Artificial Intelligence. Last week Honor launched the Honor 9 Lite with brilliant build quality, quad-camera setup and Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. We got hold of this device for more than a week and here is our review.
Unboxing
https://youtu.be/CS6XRoBGp5w
Box Contents
Honor 9 Lite in Midnight Black color
2-pin charger (5V-2A)
Micro USB Cable
SIM Ejector tool
Quick Start Guide, Warranty information
Display, Design, and Hardware
The Honor 9 Lite sports a 5.65-inch (2160 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 18:9 2.5D curved glass display featuring a pixel density of 428ppi. There is no information about the Corning Gorilla Glass or any kind of screen protection though. In our observation, the screen is vibrant with punchy colors, has good viewing angles and texts looks sharp too. The sunlight legibility is good when the brightness level is set higher.
The Honor 9 Lite smartphone comes with an ...
Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, the company’s next flagship smartphones in the 'Galaxy S' series have finally surfaced in press image ahead of official announcement at the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona next month, thanks to @evleaks. Only the front part of the smartphones have been revealed, which look similar to the S8 series with Infinity display, minimal bezels and a bunch of sensors on the top.
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Recently leaked retail box revealed key camera specifics including a super-speed Dual-Pixel 12-megapixel camera with OIS, an F1.5/2.4 variable aperture for the S9, but the S9+ is said to feature dual 12MP rear camera with fixed aperture.
Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ rumored specifications
S9 – 5.8-inch Quad HD+ (2960 × 1440 pixels) Super AMOLED Infinity display with 570ppi, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection
S9+ – 6.2-inch Quad HD+ (2960 × 1440 pixels) Super AMOLED Infinity display with 529ppi, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection
Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 GPU / Octa-Core Samsung Exynos 9 Series 9810 processor with Mali G72MP18 GPU
S9 – 4GB LPDDR4x RAM with 64GB storage (UFS 2.1), expandable memory with microSD
S9+ – 6GB LPDDR4x RAM with 128GB storage (UFS 2.1), expandable memory with microSD
Android 8.0 (Oreo)
Single / Hybrid ...
Google Files Go that was launched back in December last year has now received a significant update bringing features like open files in other apps, SD card support and more. Files Go app basically lets you free up storage on your phone that is occupied by junk files.
The first addition with the new update is support for SD cards. Google says that since many users use SD cards to back up necessary files and data, with one tap, you can now see and filter the files stored on your SD card. Another addition to the Google Files Go is the inclusion of tablet support allowing you to manage storage or transfer files between your small and big screen Android devices without using any data.
Google further added open files in other apps feature which lets you customize which apps open your data with the new “Open with” flow. This will allow wider controls on different file formats including PDF files. This will further let you filter the files to save the space. The update has just started rolling out, so might be a while before it reaches everyone. You can download the Google Files Go app from PlayStore here.
Source
Google just launched Bulletin hyperlocal and community news app for Android. The app is designed with an aim to inspire users to share hyperlocal stories on a community platform right from your phone. Google also hopes that the app highlights the inspiring the stories that aren’t being told.
The bulletin stories are open for everyone to read, but then there will be some sort of moderation before the story goes live. Users have the flexibility to share stories in the form of text, images, videos similar to a blog post. The news will be shared other members of the community almost instantly. Users will also be able to share the links to stories via message, email, etc.
Since it is a Google product, not much is required except for a working Google account and a smartphone in terms of setup. The app is free to use, however, Bulletin availability is currently limited to Nashville, TN, and Oakland, CA. If the testing phase goes well, we can expect the app to release officially for public very soon. Users can also request early access by signing up for the Bulletin Pilot program here.
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Twitter feed doesn't show images in full on the news feed, and the company thinks that it can be challenging in rendering a consistent UI experience and the photos more often than not are framed awkwardly. Today Twitter is solving the problem by using neural networks for smart auto-cropping of Images.
The company previously used face detection to focus the view on the most prominent faces in the pictures which had its own limitations when presenting images. Now with neural networks, Twitter will focus on “salient” image regions. In general, people tend to pay more attention to faces, text, animals, but also other objects and regions of high contrast. This data can be used to train a neural network to identify what people might want to look at.
The basic idea behind this is to use these predictions of the neural network to center a crop around the most interesting region. However, doing a pixel-level saliency analysis of all the pictures uploaded to Twitter can be a lengthy process so to address the concern, engineers developed a smaller, faster neural network that can identify the gist of the image. Secondly, Twitter is said to have developed a pruning technique to iteratively remove feature maps of the neural network ...
Samsung ended the Oreo beta program for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ in India and UK earlier this month, now the company has announced to its beta testers through 'Samsung Members app' that it is ending the beta program in the USA from yesterday, i.e January 26th.
Samsung had released the 7th and final Oreo beta firmware for the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ last week. Since the company is ending its beta testing, we can expect the final roll out very soon. The announcement states that there will no further beta releases, no further responses to feedback. However, communication will still be open to beta users.
Though Samsung says that it will make sure to roll out the update as soon as possible, it still didn't mention any time frame as of now. That said, it shouldn't take long, since the beta testing is now concluded, the next pit stop will the official stable release of the Oreo build.
Samsung in the previous beta notice that it posted in the app two weeks ago mentioned that " we will do out best to distribute the official S/W version in January as soon as possible."
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Xiaomi just announced Mi Box 4 and Mi Box 4c, the company next-generation smart TV box with support for 4K HDR videos. It comes with the same AI-based PatchWall interface as the predecessor that learns your viewing habits and offers content based on your liking
The Mi Box 4 also comes with multi purpose Mi Remote Control with PatchWall artificial intelligence voice system, which also has infrared in addition to Bluetooth to work with most appliances such as setup box. It has Mi Touch that replaces traditional navigation buttons so you can use gestures to control your TV. The Mi Box 4c comes with the standard infrared remote.
Xiaomi Mi Box 4 specifications
60fps 4K (3840 x 2160) HDR output
1.5GHz Amlogic S905L quad-core Cortex-A53 64-bit processor with 750MHz 3+ 2-core Mali-45 GPU
2GB RAM and 8GB flash storage
Xiaomi’s proprietary AI-based PatchWall interface
Dolby Digital Plus +DTS- HD audio dual decoding
Mi Bluetooth voice remote control
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1+ EDR
HDMI 2.0a x 1 port, USB 2.0 x 1, 3.5mm audio output x 1,
H.265 4K2K at 60 fps, H.264 4K2K at 30 fps, MPEG1 / 2/4, VC-1, DivX4 / 5, up to 1920 x 1080P at 60fps ; Support for HDR10
Xiaomi Mi ...
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is back again with a trio of new investor notes that offers new light on the upcoming iPhones; the iPhone X, X Plus, and an entry-level 6.1-inch iPhone. The Analyst previously stated that Apple likely to introduce two new iPhones with OLED panels and an iPhone with an LCD display.
Starting off with the entry-level iPhone, it is said to sports a 6.1-inch FHD+ 18:9 LCD display with ultra-slim bezels. Kuo predicts that it will pack a 2,850 to 2,950mAh rectangular shape battery that is nearly 8.5 percent larger than current iPhone X. Taiwanese manufacturers; Pegatron, Foxconn, and Wistron will be the key assemblers of the 6.1-inch iPhone, with 60 percent, 30 percent, and 10 percent allocation of EMS respectively.
It is already known that Japan Display will supply around 70 percent of LCD“Full Active” LCD technology panels for the 6.1-inch iPhone that only require ultra-slim 0.5mm bezels on all four sides. It looks like the 6.1-inch iPhone is shaping up to become a low-cost iPhone X with an aluminum frame, lack of 3D Touch, single rear camera, and 3GB of RAM.
Perhaps this is the first time we hear more details about the 6.5-inch iPhone and second-gen iPhone X. According to Kuo, the 6.5-inch ...
Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are a month away, and the details regarding the flagship started flowing in. We have recently seen the retail box leak of the Galaxy S9 revealing quite a few details and today we hear yet another interesting feature, the 'Intelligent Scan' which combines Face Unlock and Iris Scanner.
An APK teardown of the most recent Settings app from the latest unreleased Android Oreo beta for the Samsung Galaxy Note8, has revealed the 'Intelligent Scan' that is currently in works for the upcoming S9 and S9+. The feature reportedly said to combine both Face Unlock and Iris Scanner to improve accuracy and security even in the low or bright light conditions.
https://youtu.be/TS68C4MMogQ
The Galaxy S8, S8+, and the Note 8 feature the Iris scanner bio-metric security feature for the entry of passwords. However, nowhere in the software of the said phones mentioned the said feature indicating that the that the strings found in the APK teardown refer to a feature that will be seen on Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. Like the standard iris scanner, the Intelligent Scan can also be used to unlock the Galaxy S9/S9+ as soon as you turn on the screen.
It can also be used to verify app logins provided the app supports ...
HTC has filed a patent for a mobile VR headset with magnetic phone case according to the documents listings found in the database of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The VR headset is said to be bundled with a magnetic phone.
The company originally filed the patent in July 2016 with the United States Patent. However, the patent was rejected last November for failing to explain the nature of the device, and its working, i.e., the features of the VR headset that allow it to be categorized as a new invention. HTC then following some modifications and now received the approval from the USPTO earlier this month.
The creation of the device is described as an “accessory and lens system” consisting of two parts, a protective case to house a smartphone which has a rear magnetic plate and a foldable dual-lens setup that can be magnetically attached to the accessory. Once the smartphone is removed, it can be folded out to a small VR module reliant. Users can still slide in the phone into the device from the bottom and hold it in one or two hands while experiencing VR content.
The foldable nature of the VR headset should make it extremely compact and easy to transport. While the build ...
