Reliance Jio reportedly in talks with Xiaomi to sell Mi TVs and smartphones on its retail platform

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

LG posts its biggest-ever revenue, highest yearly profits in 8 years in 2017; narrows smartphone losses in Q4 2017

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, ...

Fitbit to end support for Pebble smartwatches on June 30

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 ...

Qualcomm inks $2 billion sales MOUs with Lenovo, Xiaomi, Vivo and OPPO

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 ...

Google Chrome 64 for Android brings white navigation bar, blocks auto-redirect pop-ups and more

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. ...

Xiaomi Mi 6X with 6-inches FHD+ 18:9 display, dual rear cameras live images surface

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 surpasses Samsung to become top smartphone vendor in India in Q4 2017: Reports

Xiaomi has finally surpassed Samsung in the last quarter of 2017 claiming the top smartphone vendor in India title. The company has shipped over 8.2 million units in Q4, 2017 while Samsung despite the annual growth of 17% Samsung retained the second spot with 7.3 million smartphones shipments according to Canalys. Another report from Counterpoint Research claims that Xiaomi has 25% market share and Samsung has 23% share in the Indian market followed by Lenovo, Vivo and OPPO grabbing 6% share each. It claims that smartphone market saw 12% growth with feature phones growing an astonishing 55% during Q4 2017, thanks to Jiophone that gave Jio 26% market share in the feature phone market. The overall smartphone market in India grew 6% with 30 million units, according to Canalys report. Vivo, OPPO, and Lenovo have comfortably cemented their position in top five. Xiaomi and Samsung combinedly own more than 50% of the market share with Xiaomi at 27% and Samsung at 25%. Samsung's inability to retain its Rs. 15,000 market share is the main reason for the company to fall back. On the other hand, Xiaomi with its success story continuing in India which is now the second largest smartphone market will have far-reaching implications for its worldwide strategy, ...

Vivo X20 Plus UD with in-display fingerprint sensor announced

Vivo has announced X20 Plus UD with in-display fingerprint sensor in China, as it had promised.  The smartphone shares similar specifications as the original X20 Plus, but it has in-display fingerprint scanner instead of fingerprint sensor on the back so that users unlock the smartphone through one-touch fingerprint scanning directly on the display. It uses Clear ID FS9500 optical fingerprint sensor from Synaptics. At the announcement during CES 2018 Vivo said that its In-Display Fingerprint Scanning Technology outperforms other authentication solutions available for full-screen smartphones in many aspects. [embed]https://1253128055.vod2.myqcloud.com/db0c6f87vodtransgzp1253128055/0abac96c4564972819127244660/v.f40.mp4[/embed] Vivo X20 Plus UD  specifications 6.43-inch (2160 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 18: 9 Super AMOLED display Octa Core Snapdragon 660 14nm Mobile Platform (Quad 2.2GHz Kryo 260 + Quad 1.8GHz Kryo 260 CPUs) with Adreno 512 GPU 4B RAM, 128GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD Hybrid Dual SIM (nano + nano/microSD) Funtouch OS 3.2 based on Android 7.1.1 (Nougat) 12MP rear camera with LED flash, f/1.8 aperture, OIS, secondary 5MP camera 12MP front-facing camera with soft LED flash, f/2.0 aperture In-display Fingerprint sensor Dimensions: 165.2 × 80.02 × 7.35mm; Weight: 183.1g 3.5mm audio jack, ES9318 DAC 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 ac (2.4 GHz + 5 GHz), Bluetooth 5.0, GPS 3905mAh (typical) / 3800mAh (minimum) battery with fast ...

Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ Unpacked 2018 event set for February 25 at MWC in Barcelona

Samsung has finally sent out invites for its Galaxy Unpacked 2018 event during MWC 2018 in Barcelona where it will unveil its flagship Galaxy S9 series of smartphones. This was already rumored, and February 25th is a day ahead of the expected date that will clash with HMD Global's event. The invite says The Camera. Reimagined. and Samsung says that the event will showcase the next generation of Galaxy devices that reimagines the camera and redefines the way you share your moments. Most of the specifications of the S9 and S9+ are already out in open, both the phones are said to sport 5.8-inch and 6.2-inch curved-edge Super AMOLED Infinity displays respectively. They will be powered by the Snapdragon 845 in the US market and Exynos 9 Series 9810 chipset for the Asian markets, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage. It is expected ot run Android 8.0 Oreo with Galaxy Experience U.I on top. Recently leaked retail box shows key camera specifics including a super-speed Dual-Pixel 12-megapixel camera with OIS, an F1.5/2.4 variable aperture,  IP68 rating, Stereo speakers and earphones tuned by AKG and 3000mAh battery on the S9 and 3500mAh on the S9+, respectively. Samsung is also said to have trademarked the ‘DeX Pad’ docking station accessory for Galaxy S9 so ...

iOS 11.3 to bring new Animoji, Health records, Battery status, ARKit Improvements and more

Apple today announced iOS 11.3 and previewed some of its features. The update will bring four new Animoji - lion, bear, dragon and skull for the iPhone X, ARKit 1.5 to developers to offer even more immersive AR experiences to recognize and place virtual objects on vertical surfaces like walls and doors, and more accurately map irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables for next-generation AR apps. It will also brings Business Chat for users to communicate directly with businesses right within Messages. It will launch in Beta with the public availability of iOS 11.3 this spring, with the support of select businesses including Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo. Regarding the new Business Chat, Apple said: With Business Chat, it's easy to have a conversation with a service representative, schedule an appointment or make purchases using Apple Pay in the Messages app. Business Chat doesn’t share the user’s contact information with businesses and gives users the ability to stop chatting at any time. As promised, the update will add new features to show battery health and recommend if a battery needs to be serviced. This feature will be available in Settings -> Battery for iPhone 6 and later. As promised, it will also be possible to disable Apple's ...