Portronics Charge Clamp car smartphone Holder launched

Portronics has launched a dual purpose car accessory 'CHARGE CLAMP' which is a wireless mobile charger and mobile holder. This mobile holder makes it easy for the users to find the secure places in the car to keep the phone and also use the media player or GPS in-hands-free mode. Charge Clamp is a premium Universal mobile Holder with a cradle to hold any smartphone up to 9 inches and charge wirelessly. It is flexibility, thanks to movable hinges giving you the ability to hold the product anywhere in your car dashboard or windscreen and tilt it towards yourself depending on your convenience. You can zoom it out, rotate it fully, tilt it sideward up to 45 degrees and pivot it from one side to the other 180 degree. The latch given at the base of Charge Clamp helps to ensure the suction cup at the bottom holds the mobile holder firmly on the car’s surface. You can easily pull the smartphone from the top and the clamps automatically loosen up to ensure that the pull out is smooth. To charge wirelessly, simply connect the USB cable from any car charger up to the Charge Clamp. It has a power rating of 5V/2A or 9V/1.67A ...

Nokia 7.1 with 5.84-inch FHD+ 19:9 HDR PureDisplay, Dual rear cameras with ZEISS optics launched in India for Rs. 19999

HMD Global just launched the Nokia 7.1, the company’s latest mid-range Android One smartphone in India. It was introduced last month and packs a 5.84-inch Full HD+  19:9 screen with a notch, 80% screen-to-body ratio, has support for HDR and also supports SD to HDR real-time conversion. With HDR10 support; 1 million: 1 dynamic contrast ratio; 500-million pixels processed per second providing smooth and accurate HDR video.The display also adapts to indoor and bright outdoor sunlight. The company calls it PureDisplay. It runs on Android 8.1 (Oreo), and recently got Android 9.0 (Pie) update. It is powered by Snapdragon 636 with 4GB of RAM, has 12MP (RGB) + 5MP (Monochrome) dual rear cameras with ZEISS Optics and fast accurate autofocus. The 8MP AI enhanced front facing camera supports facial recognition.  It has a 6000 series aluminium frame and uses dual-anodised diamond cut coloured edge. It packs a 3060mAh battery with support for USB Type-C fast charging that can charge the phone from 0 to 50% in just 30 minutes. Nokia 7.1 specifications 5.84-inch (2244 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ HDR 10 display with 19:9 aspect ratio, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection 1.8GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 636 14nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 509 GPU 4GB LPPDDR4x RAM ...

Android Auto update brings improved media browser, search, message previews and more

Google has announced new Android Auto features including easier access to your favorite content with improved media browse and search features, plus new ways to stay connected with visual message previews and group messaging. You can try out these new features with media apps—like Google Play Books, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, and Spotify. Popular messaging apps like Messages, Hangouts, and WhatsApp also work with new messaging features. Google says that support for more apps will come in the next few months. Thanks to the new updates, you can now spend less time browsing and more time enjoying the content. An improved layout, featuring large album art views, lets you quickly identify and select something to play. it also brings improvements to the voice search experience. Just say “OK Google, play 80s music” or “OK Google, play Lilt” to view even more categorized search results from your app right on the screen. When new text messages arrive, Android Auto can show you a short preview of the text when your vehicle is stopped. This message previewing capability is purely optional, giving you the ability to choose what’s most important—privacy or convenience. In addition to SMS messaging, Android Auto now supports apps that use ...

Casio PRO TREK Smart WSD F-30 rugged Wear OS outdoor watch with GPS announced [Update: Available from January 18]

Update - November 30, 2018: Casio has announced that the  PRO TREK Smart WSD-F30 smartwatch will ship from January 18, 2019. It will also release the WSA-BX1 extra-long cloth band, an optional accessory for the WSD-F30. Earlier: Ahead of IFA 2018, Casio has unveiled its third generation Outdoor Watch in the PRO TREK series dubbed as WSD-F30 with water resistance and is also built to military standard specifications (MIL-STD-810G) so that it can withstand a variety of rugged activities. It has a 1.2-inch (390×390 pixels) dual layer display with monochrome and color LCDs. It enables use of offline maps and GPS log recording for up to three consecutive days, says the company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46BNVTWx_7E It comes with Extend Mode which enables use of offline color maps and GPS for up to three consecutive days on just a single charge. In Extend Mode, time and measurement data is continuously shown on the monochrome display, and a color map can be displayed with a push of button. Extend Mode also conserves energy by switching the operating system to energy-saving stand-by mode on a schedule set by the user. It also ensures optimal power management based on the activity plan, allowing the user to track his or her current location on ...

Microsoft introduces new Office icons part of bigger design overhaul

Microsoft back in 2013 has updated the Office icons and after five years, the company is again transforming office into a collaborative suite that lets you work together in real-time from almost any device. The company is changing the official icons for Office 365 again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YplAU5myNP4 The company says that it has used gestalt principles to further emphasize key product changes. While each icon has a unique and identifiable symbol, there are connections within each app’s symbol and the collective suite. The company has removed a visual boundary: the traditional tool formatting. Whereas prior Office icons had a document outline for Microsoft Word and a spreadsheet outline for Excel, it now shows lines of text for Word and individual cells for Excel. These icons embody the collaborative nature of the apps they represent. It also changed the letter-to-symbol ratio. Traditionally, the letter occupied two-thirds of the icon, and the symbol took up one-third. It has changed this ratio to now emphasize the symbol because while the letter represents the tool itself. The new icons will begin rolling out across platforms in the coming months, starting with mobile and web. Source

Swiftkey for Android gets native Search integration

Swiftkey for Android is getting brand new features one of which makes it easy and quick to share anything you want from the web. In just a few taps, you have access to search results that you can easily screenshot, crop and share. To use this feature, simply open the Toolbar by tapping the “+” on the top left, select the search icon and type what you’re looking for into the box right there in the Toolbar. If you type a search term, you’ll have instant access to rich search content from Bing; if you type in a URL, you’ll be taken to that webpage. This feature is currently available in 11 countries including US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Brazil, India, Italy and Spain.   Colleen Hall, Senior Product Manager at SwiftKey said: We’re always looking for ways to make typing and messaging faster and smarter for our users. By having search right there in the keyboard, users can browse for information and share it with their contacts without leaving the conversation, whether that’s for quick fact-finding, checking the local weather or sharing news headlines and images in a message. Source

Google explains how it achieved Portrait mode on Pixel 3

Similar to last year, Google again is describing how it achieved Portrait mode on the Pixel 3 smartphones. Google says that Portrait Mode uses a neural network to determine what pixels correspond to people versus the background, and augments this two layer person segmentation mask with depth information derived from the PDAF pixels. This is meant to enable a depth-dependent blur. PDAF pixels capture two slightly different views of a scene. With Portrait Mode on the Pixel 3, Google says that it is fixing these errors by utilizing the fact that the parallax used by depth from stereo algorithms is only one of many depth cues present in images. Google says that it has built its own custom “Frankenphone” rig that contains five Pixel 3 phones, along with a Wi-Fi-based solution that allowed it to simultaneously capture pictures from all of the phones. With this rig, Google computed high-quality depth from photos by using structure from motion and multi-view stereo. However, even though the data captured from this rig is ideal, it is still extremely challenging to predict the absolute depth of objects in a scene a given PDAF pair can correspond to a range of different depth maps. To account for this, Google instead predict the ...

YouTube rolling out Instagram-like Stories widely

YouTube has announced that it is rolling out YouTube Stories to all eligible creators with 10K+ subscribers. You can add text, music, filters, YouTube stickers, and more to make your story uniquely you.  To create a story, just open the YouTube mobile app, tap on the video camera icon, and select "Create Story." https://youtu.be/qM-dOYiyvCA The company is also including the ability to add comments to Stories, so the entire community can be a part of the conversation. Subscribers can comment, thumbs up and thumbs down comments, and you can heart comments. All of the comment moderation tools that are available on video uploads will also be available on Stories. You can now also respond directly with a photo or video for the entire community to see. Once posted, Stories are available in the mobile app for 7 days so that subscribers have a chance to see it. Stories may show up to both subscribers on the Subscriptions tab and non-subscribers on Home and in the Up Next list below videos. Source

Xiaomi Redmi 5 and Redmi 5A Android 8.1 Oreo beta update starts rolling out [Download Link]

Xiaomi announced the list of phones eligible for Oreo and Pie updates last month and said that devices are supposed to get Android Pie/Oreo update before the end of this year. Except for Redmi 5, all the devices launched by Xiaomi in India this year have already received Android 8.1 (Oreo) update. To recall, Redmi 5 was launched earlier this year with MIUI 9 on top of Android 7.1.2 (Nougat) and was recently updated to MIUI 10 Global Stable based on Android 7.1.2. Xiaomi launched Redmi 5A last year on this day with MIUI 9 based on of Android 7.1.2 (Nougat), the company recently released MIUI 10 Global Stable ROM for the smartphone. Earlier this month, Redmi 5 and Redmi 5A both the smartphones received Android 8.1 based MIUI 10 China Beta ROM and now, the company has started rolling out MIUI 10 Global Beta ROM based on Android 8.1 (Oreo) as we earlier reported. [gallery columns="2" link="file" size="medium" ids="269813,269814"] The new update comes as MIUI Global Beta 8.11.23 and also brings November 2018 security patch to both the devices along with the Android version upgrade. Other devices like Redmi Note 5 Pro have also received November security patch with the same update. Xiaomi has also enabled ...

Honor 8C Benchmarks and Gaming

Huawei's Honor brand today launched the Honor 8C smartphone in India today. We already brought you the unboxing and first impressions of the smartphone, here we have the benchmarks and gaming performance video. The phone is powered by an Octa-Core Snapdragon 632 14nm SoC that has Quad 1.8GHz Kryo 250 (A73-based) Performance + Quad 1.8GHz Kryo 250 (A53-based) Efficiency CPUs, better than the Snapdragon 630, however it has Adreno 506 GPU, same as Snapdragon 625 and 450 SoCs. It comes with 4GB of RAM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0491XhZ7Cg AnTuTu Benchmark 7 It scored 1,04,243 points in the AnTuTu Benchmark 7 which is on par with the Snapdragon 636-powered smartphones. Geekbench 4 Single-Core It scored 1261 points in the Geekbench 4 Single-Core benchmark and is once again on par with the Snapdragon 636-powered devices including the Redmi Note 6 Pro. Geekbench 4 Multi-Core It scored 4573 points in the Geekbench 4 Multi-Core benchmark and lies just behind the Redmi Note 6 Pro. Basemark OS II In Basemark OS II benchmark it scored 1861 points. These are just synthetic benchmark scores. For the price of Rs. 11,999, the performance is good. We will bring real life performance test results in the complete review soon.