Motorola expands retail footprint in India with 50 Moto Hub stores in Mumbai

Motorola has been expanding its retail footprint across India rapidly. Earlier this year it opened 50 new Moto Hubs in New Delhi and it opened 25 stores in Kolkata recently. Today  the company has announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in Mumbai with a focus of strengthening retail store in the western region. The Moto Hub store will house the entire portfolio of Motorola devices, including the online exclusives such as Moto X4 and Moto MODs as well as accessories like on-ear and in-ear headphones, moto shells and covers. Few months back Motorola announced a strategic partnership with Poorvika Mobiles across 43 cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Karnataka and with Big C and Lot Mobile stores across 55 cities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Motorola Moto Hubs are now present in 8 states in the country, with 25 Moto Hub stores in malls across 10 cities. The company already said that it is planning to open 1000 new Moto Hubs in top 100 cities in the second phase of retail expansion. Commenting on the launch of new stores, Sudhin Mathur, Managing Director, Motorola Mobility India said: Offering premium customer experience has been a key pillar of our strategy and strengthening retail footprint in Mumbai is a ...

Microsoft achieves first human-level Chinese to English machine translation using AI

Microsoft has announced that it has created first machine human-level Chinese to English translation. It is one of a kind Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered machine system that can translate sentences of news articles from Chinese to English with the same quality and accuracy as humans. Researchers from both USA and Asia said that their system has achieved human parity on a commonly used test set of news stories named newstest2017 which was developed by a group of industry and academic partners and released at a research conference WMT17 last fall. Post the tests, the company says that the results are accurate and on par with human-level. The team said that they have hired external bilingual human evaluators, who compared the Microsoft’s results to two independently produced human reference translations. The company is calling it a major milestone in one of the most challenging natural language processing tasks. The team used the dual-learning method meaning that a sentence which is sent to translation from Chinese to English, was also translated it back from English to Chinese. This method made sure the translation accurate, and it allowed the system to refine and learn from its own mistakes. Xuedong Huang, a technical member in charge of Microsoft’s speech, natural language, and machine translation efforts said: It ...

Google Home will now let you set location-based reminders

Not so long ago, Google announced that location-based reminders feature is coming to Google Home. And, just like it promised, this feature is now finally rolling out to Google Home devices. Setting up reminders on Home device is easy, and all you got to do is just tell Assistant you want to be reminded of something when you are in a certain place. Since this is a location-based feature, you won't be reminded on your Home device, instead, you will get the reminders on your phone as you reach the specified location. You can specify a particular location or something more general. Reminders on Google Home will be synched with your Home devices and you will get the notification about the reminder as you reach the destination. [HTML1] This is a neat little feature to have and above all, it is convenient to set reminders and get notified later when you are near the location. This feature has started rolling out to Google Home devices and should be available in USA and UK.

Google opens up Maps API for game developers, Resonance Audio for AR and VR experiences

Google with an aim to bring more real-world games like Pokemon Go, is opening up its Maps API for game developers to build their games. For an open-world game, developers first need to understand the physical environment around their players. With Google Maps APIs developers can take advantage of the tired and tested model of the world in building their games. Maps offer real-time updates and rich location data which makes it easier for developers to find the best places for playing games. Furthermore, it is bringing the Google Maps to the Unity game engine and has turned the buildings, roads, and parks into GameObjects in Unity, where developers can then add texture, style, and customization that will match with the game. https://youtu.be/MJPvtx1zymk Game developers will now have access to 100 million 3D buildings, roads, landmarks, and parks from over 200 countries that they can use to deliver rich gaming experiences. Developers who sign up will have access to real-time Google Maps data and will be a part of the new Utility tool which is one of the most popular game engines in the world. This makes it easy to incorporate this mapping data into a game. Google has already partnered with game developers, and the first wave of games ...

Xiaomi Redmi 5A Lake Blue variant launched in India; sales cross 5 million units since launch

Xiaomi launched the Redmi 5A back in November last year in India. It launched the Rose Gold variant of the smartphone last month. Today the company has launched the Lake Blue variant of the phone in the country. Earlier this year the company said that it sold 1 million units of Redmi 5A in one month of launch.  Today the company in its forum post confirmed that it has sold 5 million or 50 lakh units in just 3 months of launch. This is a huge feat since it took 6 months for the Redmi Note 4 to sell 5 million units in the country, that too with the help of its offline partners. This is the reason it increased that price of the phone back to Rs. 5,999, as it had said at the launch. Apart from the color, other specifications are similar, including a 5-inch HD display, quad-core Snapdragon 425 SoC, MIUI 9 based on Android 7.1 (Nougat), 13-megapixel rear camera with PDAF, LED flash, 5-megapixel front-facing camera, dedicated SIM slots, unibody design with matte finish and a 3000mAh built-in battery. All the four color variants of the Redmi 5A went on sale today at 12PM, exclusively on Flipkart as well as Mi.com online starting at Rs. 5999. Next sale will happen on ...

Broadcom withdraws its proposal to acquire Qualcomm

U.S. president Trump earlier this week ordered Broadcom to stop its acquisition of Qualcomm citing national security concerns. Following the president's order, Broadcom today has announced that it withdrawing its proposal to acquire Qualcomm and it has also withdrawn its slate of independent director nominees for Qualcomm's 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. This marks the dead-end of the drama that is going around Broadcom and Qualcomm for the past few months. The Presidential order also said that all of Broadcom’s director nominees are also disqualified from standing for election as directors of Qualcomm. Broadcom in a statement said that it is very disappointed with this outcome, and will comply with the Order. Broadcom will continue to move forward with its redomiciliation process and will hold its Special Meeting of Stockholders just as planned on March 23, 2018. It also thanked for the efforts of Qualcomm and Broadcom stockholders throughout this process. Broadcom said that it appreciates U.S. Treasury Secretary and CFIUS chair Steven Mnuchin for his statement about how it doesn't intend to make any other statement about Broadcom or its employees including its U.S employees. Broadcom in a statement has said: We thanks the independent nominees who stood for election to the Qualcomm board, not only for their time and effort but also for their unwavering commitment to act in the best ...

Honor 7X Android Oreo with EMUI 8.0 starts rolling out to beta testers

Though Honor 7X was launched with Android 7.0 Nougat, the company quickly announced that it will roll out the Oreo update soon. Before the official roll out, the company has a habit of making the update available for beta testers for feedback.  Not so long ago, Huawei announced that it need beta testers for the first glimpse of Oreo and EMUI 8 on the Honor 7X and today it has mailed the users who signed up for the beta; FUT (Friendly User Test) saying that the update for the Oreo beta would be rolled out by the end of the week. The company says that it will be a staged roll out throughout the day and everyone should have the update before the end of the week. The Android 8.0 Oreo update for Honor 7X brings EMUI 8.0 with a bunch of new features including A.I enhancements, floating navigation dock, screen resolution adjustment, fingerprint gestures, dynamic wallpaper, navigation bar customizations, intelligent split-screen interface, simplified one-hand operation and smart view on landscape and easy switch. Since the company mentioned every beta tester would get the update by the end of this week, you shouldn't be waiting long. Source

Google open-sources semantic image segmentation that powers Pixel 2 Portraits

Pixel 2 has one of the best cameras on a smartphone and Google is using its AI to make the images look so good. In a blog post today, the company announced that it is open-sourcing a portion of this AI; a piece of software that underpins the Pixel’s portrait mode. Google said that it is open-sourcing the semantic image segmentation model, DeepLab-v3+ which is an image segmentation tool built using convolutional neural networks. It is a machine learning method that shines with its abilities to analyzing visual data. Image segmentation analyzes objects within a picture and splits them apart thus creating a portrait with depth effect, dividing foreground elements from background elements. Google uses this algorithm to power the portrait mode images on the Pixel. Portrait mode shots are becoming popular even among budget and mid-range segment phone especially since Apple introduced the feature back in 2016 on the iPhone 7+ and the same was later bought to Pixel 2 series. However, Google just uses a single camera sensor to achieve portrait shots. Opening up the technology behind Google's stunning single camera portraits, the company is offering a chance for developers to implement the split image segmentation for their products. Source

You can now talk to Google Assistant in Hindi on Android, coming to iPhone soon

Google introduced Hindi support for Google Allo over a year back and Google Assistant for JioPhone that was introduced a few months back comes with support for both English and Hindi. Earlier this year Google silently introduced Hindi support in Google Assistant on Android  smartphones in India for few selected Hindi queries. Today it has officially rolled out the feature for all users on Android phones 6.0+ (Marshmallow and above) and it will soon be available to Android 5.0 Lollipop, iPhones as well as Android Oreo (Go edition) devices. It is powered by machine learning and is built on search, natural language understanding, computer vision, and understanding user context to understand intent behind words to handle follow-up questions and complex, multi-step tasks. "And it'll get better over time -- with your permission, it can learn your preferences, your likes and your dislikes -- all done in a private, secure way that puts you in control," says Google. Developers and businesses can also build Actions for the Hindi Assistant through the developer platform Actions on Google. Once an action is built, you can just say “Ok Google, talk to…” and access the service or content straight through your Google Assistant. Some examples of questions you can ask your Google Assistant: “Sabse kareeb ...

Xiaomi Mi Body Composition Scale launched in India for Rs. 1999

Xiaomi has launched Mi Body Composition Scale in India. It was introduced  in China last year as the Mi Smart Scale 2 and is the successor of the Mi Smart Weight Scale that was introduced back in 2015. The Mi Body Composition can analyse 10 type of physical data such as weight, BMI, muscle mass, basal metabolism, visceral fat grade, bone mass, water, body fat rate, body size and body score. Xiaomi Mi Body Composition Scale features and specifications Made of ABS material for better durability and good impact resistance  Features hidden LED numerical display and the strong tempered glass offers high light transmittance for the main panel Stainless Steel 303L electrode pad offers a more accurate measurement To prevent slip and fall, the polished glass features anti-slip finish to ensure sturdy grip needed, even for wet feet Can analyse 10 type of physical data including weight, fat percentage, body water percentage and more. Weight range - 5 kg - 150 kg Dimensions: 300mm x 300mm x 20~14.75mm; Weight: 1.6 kg Produces accurate stats via a series of complex algorithms and advanced Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA). Syncs your data to Mi Fit app via Bluetooth so that you can track your weight using easy-to-read graph Automatically identifies ...