Asus Zenfone 4 Pro Android 8.0 Oreo update starts rolling out

Asus has just started rolling Android 8.0 Oreo update to  Zenfone 4 Pro (ZS551KL) just like it promised. The company rolled out the update to the regular Zenfone 4 back in December. The Zenfone 4 Pro update brings the build number V15.0410.1802.34. The new Android 8.0 Oreo update for the Asus Zenfone 4 Pro brings an updated interface, tons of new features like swipe up to access installed apps, power consumption improvement, brings "Long screenshot" function, substitute Cast function for PlayTo function, and much more. Asus also mentioned that Oreo update for every Zenfone 3 and 4 models will be rolled out by the second half of 2018. Upgrade to Android O, Power consumption improvement Adds "Long screenshot" function, Substitute Cast function for PlayTo function After OS upgrade, launcher has some important changes - swipe up to all apps, all app icon could be changed, Background limits Android Oreo helps minimize background activity in the apps you use least, With your permission, Autofill remembers your logins to get you into your favorite apps at supersonic speed, Android Oreo recognizes text when you tap or select, then recommends a next logical step via a suggested app, Picture-in-Picture, Press the notification dots to quickly see what's ...

Apple partners with Ito World to display nearest bike-sharing stations in Maps

Apple today inked a deal with Ito World to display nearest bike-sharing stations in Maps in over 175 cities across 36 countries. The feature is already live on Maps and will help you find the nearest station by typing “bike sharing” in the search bar or the name of the service. Ito World is very popular in leasing out licenses and normalize bike-sharing data to a bunch of companies earlier. With this move, it takes just one step for Apple to integrate support for hundreds of bike-sharing services. However, this isn't the first time Apple has integrated bike-sharing data, but this sure is the biggest improvement over existing data. For now, Apple doesn't share the number of available bikes or empty docks but might bring such functionality in the future update. The service will now give you the address, name and contact information for the service. A simple “bike sharing” search in any city lets you find the name of the service and the location of the closest station. Apple Maps supports Citi Bike in NYC, Ford GoBike in San Francisco, BIKETOWN in Portland, Santander Cycles in London, bicing in Barcelona, BIXI in Montreal, CityCycle in Brisbane, nextbike in Germany, Austria, Croatia, Switzerland, the U.K., and dozens of ...

Apple acquires Next Issue Media’s digital magazine service Texture

Apple today announced that it has acquired the Next Issue Media LLC's digital magazine service Texture. The service gives users unlimited access to their favorite titles for one monthly subscription fee. The move from Apple comes with an aim to tackle fake news and pave the way for trusted information. Keeping this in perspective, it can be understood that Texture will continue to operate as is with no changes. It will continue to offer apps for iOS, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire and Windows 8 and 10. However, the financial terms of this deals are not disclosed, but Apple is expected to close the deal very soon as it acquired the full company, including employees. Before rebranding itself to Texture, it was called as Next Issue Media and was a joint venture of Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp., Rogers Communications, and Time Inc. The company raised a total of at least $90 million. The company was around since 2010. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said: We’re excited Texture will join Apple, along with an impressive catalog of magazines from many of the world’s leading publishers. We are committed to quality journalism from trusted sources and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed and engaging stories for ...

WhatsApp for iOS extends ‘delete for everyone’ duration to more than an hour

WhatsApp for Android earlier this month got the new extended time for 'Delete for Everyone' from 7 minutes or 420 seconds to 4096 seconds which is about 68 minutes and 16 seconds. Now the company has rolled out the same for iOS. WhatsApp with V2.18.31 for iOS and Windows phone also gets the new 1 hour, 8 minutes and 16 seconds for deleting a message. [HTML1] Apart from just extending the "delete for Everyone" extension, WhatsApp has also implemented a new feature “Block revoke request” which when a user deletes a message for everyone, WhatsApp sends to the recipients a new message having the same ID of the message that the user wants to revoke. This wasn't the case before, previously, when WhatsApp received this particular message contained the revoke request, the app checked if the ID of the message was present in the database: and if it was found, WhatsApp directly deleted it without checking any other important information. The company now has tweaked this algorithm. It now checks the database having the same ID of the received revoke message request, it checks the data of the message saved in the database. It will now perform the operation if the date of the saved messages ...

U.S. president Trump blocks Broadcom’s acquisition of Qualcomm citing national security concerns

Broadcom has almost reached a dead-end with its pursuits to acquire Qualcomm as Trump's government has prohibited the take over with regards to national security. White House has ordered Broadcom immediately and permanently abandon the proposed takeover of Qualcomm. Further to the order, the Presidential order has also said that all of Broadcom’s director nominees are also disqualified from standing for election as directors of Qualcomm. As for Qualcomm, White House ordered to reconvene its 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on the required 10-day notice period, is March 23, 2018. Stockholders of record on January 8, 2018 will be entitled to vote at the meeting. The move comes after Committee on Foreign Investment in the US alerting both the companies that it believed the takeover would pose too great a security risk. CFIUS says that it believes that if Broadcom acquires Qualcomm, it would likely cut costs of the American company and weakens its ability to compete against Chinese companies like Huawei and others. It would also let the Chinese have an advantage with the  5G wireless and leave Americans vulnerable. Broadcom is also ordered to give the CFIUS panel a 5-day notice before it relocates to the USA. Not so surprisingly, Broadcom said that it is reviewing the order ...

Vivo X21 with full-screen notch display, in-display fingerprint sensor to be announced on March 19

2018 is the year of notch in smartphones, after Apple introduced its iPhone X with a notch last year. Vivo has sent out invites for the announcement of X21 smartphone, successor of X20 that was introduced back in September last year. The company also confirmed in the invite that it will feature an in-display fingerprint sensor that first made its debut in the X20 Plus UD earlier this year. The teaser shows minimal bezels below the screen and the notch houses earpiece, camera and the sensors. Vivo is partnering with Qualcomm for the SoC, but it is not clear if it will use the same Snapdragon 660 SoC from the X20 and the X20 Plus UD. It will also partner with JBL, A-Maps and several other brands. A recent video of the phone revealed dual rear cameras arranged vertically arranged. We should know more details about the X21 in the coming days, ahead of official announcement next Monday. Source 1, 2

OPPO R15 with 6.28-inch FHD+ 19:9 full-screen display teased in images officially ahead of announcement

Last week OPPO teased  its upcoming R15 and R15 Plus with a notch display in image and a video that confirmed the design of the phone. It also confirmed that it will have a 6.28-inch 19: 9 full-screen AMOLED Super-V display with 1.78mm narrow frame and 90% screen-to-body ratio. Today it has listed the R15 on its site in Red, Blue, White and Mirror Red colors.  It also confirmed that it will run ColorOS 5.0, which should be based on Android 8.1 (Oreo) and also confirmed 6GB RAM and 128GB built-in storage for the phone. OPPO has also posted two new commercials for the R15 featuring Hong Kong singer and actor William Chan. [embed]https://shopfs.myoppo.com/hd/2018/R15/videos/tvc-1.mp4[/embed] [embed]https://shopfs.myoppo.com/hd/2018/R15/videos/tvc-2.mp4[/embed] OPPO R15 rumored specifications 6.28-inch (2280 × 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 19:9 AMOLED display Octa Core Snapdragon 660 14nm Mobile Platform (Quad 2.2GHz Kryo 260 + Quad 1.8GHz Kryo 260 CPUs) with Adreno 512 GPU 6GB RAM, 128GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD Android 8.1 (Oreo) with ColorOS 5.0 Hybrid Dual SIM (nano + nano/microSD) 16MP rear camera with dual-tone LED Flash, secondary 5MP camera 20MP front-facing camera Fingerprint sensor Dimensions: 155.1 × 75.2 × 7.4mm; Weight: 175g 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS, USB ...

Huawei P20 Lite press images, specifications, price surface ahead of March 27 announcement

Huwei P20 Lite image and specifications surfaced last month after the phone got certified by the FCC  and a press render of the phone surfaced  last week, now an online retailer in Poland has listed the phone with all the images, detailed specifications and the price ahead of the official announcement on March 27th. The Nova 3e that will launch in China on March 20th will come with a 24-megapixel front camera, but the P20 Lite has a 16-megapixel front camera. It also confirms Face Unlock and a 3000mAh battery with support for 9V/2A fast charging. It also shows 3.5mm audio jack, USB Type-C Port and loudspeaker grill on the bottom along with antenna lines. Huawei P20 Lite rumored specifications 5.84-inch (1080 x 2280 pixels) Full HD+ 2.5D curved glass display with  toughened glass protection Octa-Core Kirin 659 processor (4 xA53 at 2.36GHz + 4 x A53 at 1.7GHz) with MaliT830-MP2 GPU 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD Android 8.0 (Oreo) with EMUI 8.0 Single / Dual SIM 16MP rear camera with LED flash, secondary 2MP camera 16MP front-facing camera Fingerprint sensor Dimensions: 148.6×71.2×7.4mm; Weight: 145g 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS / GLONASS, NFC, USB Type-C 3000mAh (typical) / 2900mAh (Minimum) battery with fast charging The Huawei P20 Lite ...

Toshiba dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses, a wearable Windows PC announced

Toshiba today introduced new dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses for enterprise customers, which is a wearable Augmented Reality (AR) solution that combines dynaEdge DE-100 Mobile Mini PC with Windows 10 Pro and dynaEdge AR100 Head Mounted Display (HMD). Toshiba says that the AR solution provides Document Viewing, Live Video Calls, See-What-I-See, Photo/Video Capture, Alerts/Messaging, Workflow Instruction and Barcode Scanning capabilities making it ideal for a variety of uses cases, including Maintenance, Remote Expert, Manufacturing, QA Inspection & Audit, Logistics, Training and Knowledge Transfer. The wearable Toshiba AR100 Head Mounted Display weighs about 50 grams and can be used with either the left or right eye based on your preference. It has an integrated micro display that provides a viewing experience equivalent to a 4.1-inch display seen at 14 inches and has an integrated touchpad, GPS, three-axis accelerometer with a gyroscope for head tracking, 5MP POV camera, speaker and dual noise-canceling microphones for voice communications. It offers Lens-less Frame, Safety Frame, Safety Helmet Mounts and Headband offering flexibility and comfort demanded by enterprises deploying wearable solutions. The AR100 HMD is developed in a partnership with Vuzix Corporation. The Toshiba’s wearable dynaEdge DE-100 Mobile Mini PC has a five-button, on-device navigation system to enable up/down, left/right toggles as well ...

Staqu introduces AI-powered Smart Glasses in India that can help identify threats like intruders and criminals

Gurgaon-based Staqu today has launched the AI-powered Smart Glasses with inbuilt camera in India. It comes with speech and image recognition combined. The company says that it can identify potential threats to the civil society, such as criminals, intruders or terrorists. The Staqu AI-powered Smart Glass's built-in camera can capture input to trigger Facial Recognition, and once the face is identified within the given databases, the Smart Glass projects the results on the glass screen. The entire process will happen in real-time as the user simply glances over the vicinity. According to the company, the Glasses will work even in wild scenarios as it fuses together speech and image recognition to utilize a hybrid identification technology and uniquely identify anyone. The information is streamed in real-time from a centralized server, and these glasses can further be controlled from the centralized administrative portal, and specific recognition targets for each glass can be set remotely. According to a ET report, Staqu will be starting a pilot of its smart glass platform with Punjab Police and will work very closely with them to identify to help identify criminals. It will be  provided on a yearly license-based model to customers. Commenting on the new announcement, Atul Rai, Co-Founder & CEO of Staqu said: At Staqu, ...