Microsoft partners with Signal to roll out Skype Private Conversations with end-to-end encryption

Microsoft has teamed up with Signal; a protocol for the private messenger to bring an experimental feature called 'Private Conversations' with end-to-end encryption on Skype app. However, the end-to-end encryption is only available between one-on-one contacts but not in group chats.  The end-to-end encryption feature will cover chat, files, and audio messages, but not audio or video calls. The private conversations feature is an additional layer of security for conversations since already offers some degree of encryption to protects chats. To start a private conversation, users need to click the '+' and select New Private Conversation and chose the contact with whom you'd like to start the Private Conversation with. An invitation will be sent to your contact asking to accept your invitation which is valid for 7 days. Once the contact accepts the invitation, you can start having a conversation. However, the chat will be available on that specific device and If you'd like to move the conversation to a different device, you would need to resend the invitation. To end the private chat, you need to go to the chat header, scroll down and select End Private Conversation. Deleting the Private Conversations is similar to a regular chat. Additionally, the Private Conversation will have a lock icon next to your ...

Nokia Asha phones might return as HMD Global files trademark

HMD Global just trademarked "Asha" with the EU Intellectual Property Office. Asha is the Nokia's former feature phone line-up with a touchscreen display and support for services like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. Nokia's Asha series, compact smartphone-like phones with attractive designs were the cheapest alternatives to the actual smartphones back in the day, but it wasn't a great success for Nokia compared to their smartphones. We hope HMD wouldn't go the similar feature phone route with Asha series, For one, the new application specifically mentions that "Asha" can be used for smartphones which confirms that the series would indeed include smartphones. With Google working with Micromax for launching low-cost Android Oreo (Go Edition) phones for Rs. 2,000, it could be possible that HMD might use the Asha series to introduce low-cost Android phones. HMD itself is said to be working on Nokia 1 which is said to be Android Go edition phone, so it is possible that HMD would tag them under the Asha series. Source | Via

GoPro HERO6 Black waterproof action camera gets Rs. 8000 price cut in India

GoPro introduced HERO6 Black action camera along with GoPro Fusion at an event in San Francisco back in September. It was launched in India for Rs. 45000. Today the company has announced a Rs. 8000 price cut for the action camera in the country, so you can get it for Rs. 37,000. Last month the company announced price cuts for HERO5 Black and HERO5 session in India that are now available for Rs. 27,000 and Rs. 18,000, respectively. Highlights of GoPro HERO6 Black  Powered by GoPro’s Custom-Designed GP1 Processor 4K60 and 1080p240 Video QuikStories Enabled, GoPro App Compatible Most Advanced Stabilization of any HERO camera All-New Touch Zoom 3x Faster Offload Speeds via 5GHz Wi-Fi Waterproof to 33 Feet (10m) Compatible with Karma and Existing GoPro Mounts Improved Dynamic Range and Low-Light Performance RAW and HDR Photo Modes Voice Control in 10 Languages GPS, Accelerometer and Gyroscope Wi-Fi + Bluetooth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcNl237RKnQ At the CES earlier this week GoPro introduced Mobile OverCapture editing experience for iOS devices for its Fusion 360 Camera. This is available in an update to the GoPro App. This lets you turn your Fusion spherical media into traditional 1080p video that you can share with others. You can Pan, tilt and zoom to frame the best parts ...

Intel details performance impact post security patches, says chipsets incur 6% performance drop

Intel today announced that the security patch fixing Meltdown and Spectre patches incurring 6% performance drop in most modern CPUs while the impact is bigger on older chipsets. The company further says that performance impact should not be significant for average computer users. Intel added that it didn't receive any reports of the exploits obtaining customer data, but said that it will continue to patch things. The performance impact of the mitigation on 8th generation platforms (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake) with SSDs is small across a variety of workloads and the expected impact is less than 6%, but in some cases, the impact might vary up to 10% depending on the nature of use cases.   The performance impact on 7th generationGen Kaby Lake-H mobile platforms is close to 8th with 7% drop on the SYSMark2014SE benchmark. As for the 6th generation Skylake-S platform, the impact might be slightly higher ranging from 7% to 8%, but mostly in-line with 7th and 8th generation platforms said Intel. The company said that in the coming week it will offer a representative set of data for mobile and desktop platforms that were launched within the past five years. The company assured that it will work on creative solutions with our industry partners ...

Facebook overhauls news feed to highlight posts from friends to improve social intercations

Facebook today announced that in the coming weeks it will be overhauling its news feed to highlight posts from friends, family to improve social interactions. It also mentioned that it will emphasize more on 'meaning posts' rather than promotional posts from brands, businesses, etc. Facebook said that it will use signals to how people react to, comment, share posts to determine how high they appear in News Feed. With this update, the news feed will prioritize posts that will spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people. Through its News Feed values, Facebook will prioritize posts from friends and family over public content, consistent. [HTML1] What this means to Pages and public content creators is, given the limited space in the news feed, Facebook will show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses. This might take a toll on the Page reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease and the impact will vary from Page to Page. The factors that vary the change in page reach depends on the type of content they produce and how users interact with it. While the pages whose content would prompt conversations between friends will have a lesser effect. People who regularly follow certain pages for the posts ...

OnePlus 6 with Snapdragon 845 to launch by the end of Q2 2018 confirms CEO

OnePlus in an interview with CNET has just confirmed that it will begin talks with U.S carriers to break into the mainstream. The company's Pete Lau said that it is the right time and opportunity for OnePlus to scale up and also mentioned that the next OnePlus flagship to go official towards the end of Q2, which is sometime in June. A potential deal with carriers in the US would put the company is the big radar and would bring the company a higher-profile distribution partner and better sales. OnePlus 5T is the fastest- and best-selling product since its launch in November, while OnePlus 5 is the previous best selling model claims Pei. He further mentioned that next flagship (OnePlus 6) with Snapdragon 845 would launch by the end of second quarter of 2018 in line with the OnePlus 5's launch last year. OnePlus has been largely successful in selling its products through its online website and it is only recently the company began partnering with carriers in Europe. Lau said that he isn't sure of launching a second phone in 2018, but the company did manage to do so in the past two years with the OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 5T. In the interview, he further mentioned ...

Xiaomi suspends Android Oreo update for Mi A1, plans to release again within couple of weeks

The Mi A1 was launched under Android One program with a promise to provide android Oreo update within 2017, Xiaomi started the Beta testing for Oreo based ROM in mid December and started rolling out Android Oreo update to Mi A1 on 31st Dec as it promised.  Soon after updating the phone, users started complaining about performance issues including, Unresponsiveness of camera app Unresponsiveness of dialer app Battery drain while Bluetooth turned on Swipe on fingerprint sensor gesture not working Unresponsiveness of Recents app button Unresponsiveness of ambient light sensor Xiaomi has acknowledged a couple of issues and posted a workaround for unresponsiveness of dialer app on Mi Community, the dialer app was getting hanged and there was significant response delay while making a call. As per Mi Community admin MyJio app was causing the delay, the post says, We just dropped an Android Oreo update for Mi A1 a few days back. We stumbled upon an issue where users are not able to call and dialer app is getting hanged or there's an unusual delay in making the call. Upon researching we found that MyJio application is causing ANR when a call is being made or received and hence the issue. The issue ...

LG trademarks ‘LG Icon’ for smartphones and ‘Iconic’ for smartwatches, may stop annual flagship smartphone launch cycle

By now it is known that LG is planning on rebranding its G-series flagships to change its strategy and better compete with Samsung and Apple. Now the company has trademarked the 'Icon' for smartphone and 'Iconic' for smartwatches according to the database of European Union Intellectual Property Office. While LG might not be using the Icon series flagships right away, it intends to save it for a later date. Along with Icon, the company also trademarked LG Aicon, and LG Aiconn. That's not it, LG has also filed to trademark the name LG Iconic for a smartwatch. Brands often file trademarks but that doesn't necessarily mean they will be using it. In the case of Icon and Iconic, both these names sound really interesting for flagship high-end phones and smartwatches.   This change is very much needed for LG considering the downfall of its smartphone biz which has been posting losses for 11 straight quarters. While rebranding wouldn't change things as the company needs to focus on their promotional strategies, its a start for now. Answering to the when the next high-end flagship would be coming question, LG Electronics Vice Chairman Cho Sung-jin on Wednesday during a press conference at the CES show has said, "We will unveil new smartphones when it is ...

Honor View 10 Review

Soon after the launch of Honor 7X , which is one of the best smartphones under Rs. 13,000 segment, Huawei's online brand Honor launched the Honor View 10 in India this year with Artificial Intelligence. Equipped with Neural Processing Unit (NPU) it enables deep learning based on user behavior for a seamless experience. The Honor View 10 comes in Midnight Black and Navy Blue colors and is priced at Rs. 29,999. Let's check out how good is the phone. Unboxing https://youtu.be/_q5-XcDexMU Box Contents Honor View 10 smartphone in Navy Blue color 2-pin Huawei fast charger (5V-2A / 9V-2A) USB Type-C Cable SIM Ejector Tool User guide Display, Design, and Hardware In line with the current trend, Honor launched its latest flagship with 18:9 FullView display as one would expect. As per the spec sheet, the Honor View 10 sports a 5.99-inch (2160 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 18:9 FullView display with a pixel density of 403 ppi. It has a 78.6% screen-to-body ratio. The display is bright and vibrant, the text is sharp and viewing angles are as well. We've noticed slight blue tint on the screen, which is evident especially in the white background. As it has an LCD display, the sunlight legibility is excellent and fully readable under ...

Android Oreo adoption rate climbs to 0.7%, Nougat hits 26.3%

Google is out with Android distribution numbers for the month of December and the Oreo adoption now hit rate to 0.7%, which also includes the recently rolled out Android 8.1 Oreo as well.  The Oreo adoption is now 0.7% which is 0.2% increase from last month. The Nougat (Android 7.0 and Android 7.1 Nougat) adoption rate has now jumped to 26.3% from 23.3% in November which is a steady growth. Android 6.0 Marshmallow adoption rate has again fallen and is now at 28.6% down from 29.7%. The Lollipop operating system adoption now stands at 25.1%, which is again down from 26.3%. The KitKat OS now stands at 12.8% down from 13.4% which is a fairly decent downfall. Though the operating system is now outdated, Jellybean is currently at 5.6% down from 5.9%. Gingerbread and Ice cream sandwich constantly are at 0.4% and 0.5% respectively. Like always all the data is collected before the 7-day period ending on January 8th, 2017, according to Google. Source