Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro to be announced in China on March 18, will have more surprises says Redmi GM

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro made a global debut in India yesterday when everyone expected it to be introduced in China first since it got certified by TENAA recently. Today the company confirmed that the phone will be introduced in China on March 18th, few days after it goes on first sale in India on March 13th. We already know the complete specifications of the smartphone, but the Redmi brand president Lu Weibing when mentioning the differences between the Redmi Note 7 and the Note 7 Pro in China such as Snapdragon 660 vs 675, Samsung GM1 sensor vs Sony IMX586 48MP sensor, 6GB + 128GB version compared to 4GB/6GB + 64GB and P2i nano coating for water resistance, he also said that there will be more surprises in the Chinese version. Will the company upgrade the secondary camera? Will Chinese version come in new colors? We will have to wait for couple more weeks to find out. Source 1, 2

Samsung Galaxy S10 Hands On and Photo Gallery

Much to our anticipation, the South Korean giant Samsung recently launched its Galaxy S10 flagship smartphone at an event in San Francisco recently. This 10th gen Galaxy S device from Samsung's stable ticks all the boxes of what we expect from a flagship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSKhn1xBHjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQfEcYZoQG4 Marks 10th year in Samsung’s S series Since it marks the 10th year in Samsung’s S series, the Galaxy S10 series of smartphones is more important than ever. This top end Apple iPhone rival is the first Samsung phone with an in-display Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner that reads the 3D contours of user’s physical thumbprint for improved anti-spoofing. In line with 2019 trend On the design front, Samsung has ditched notch and waterdrop designs only to go with the hottest screen trend of 2019 - the hole-punch selfie camera. On the bottom, there is a thin chin, but this doesn't take the overall premiumness of the device, which is exquisite. There is a curve towards the slim metal edges on each side just like the glass panel on the back. Retains not only the audio jack, but aesthetics of the Galaxy S series! The Galaxy S10 measures 7.8mm in thickness and weighs around 157grams. In the era of audio jack ditching, Samsung decided not to leave the jack ...

nubia Alpha Smartwatch Phone Hands On and Photo Gallery

ZTE's nubia brand at the MWC introduced nubia-α, a wearable smartphone with a curved wrap-around OLED screen, here we have the hands on and photo gallery of the device. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kJbb1N9ltg It has a 4.01-inch flexible OLED display from Visionox, which the company says is up to 230% larger than standard wearable displays.  The wrap-around screen has an Panoramic aspect ratio for a more immersive and complete experience and the  display is coated in strong, heat-resistant Polyimide. It is made of 11 layers which ensures both vibrance and durability over time. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform, has 1GB of RAM, 8GB of onboard memory. It is also water-resistant. It also has eSIM support for 4G, native voice calling in addition to WiFi and Bluetooth. You can use the built-in speaker and microphone or use Bluetooth headset to attend the calls. On the front there is a 5-megapixel camera with 82-degree wide-angle lens and f/2.2 aperture. The company has added clever UI shortcuts, so in order to take a picture, you just have to tap on the screen and long press records a video. It has exercise and health assistanct, sleep and run tracking and music playback. On the back there is heart rate sensor. It packs a 500mAh battery, that ...

Apple AirPods 2 with wireless charging case, Siri integration said to go on sale on March 29

Apple is rumored to be holding a special event on March 25th where it is expected to make announcements regarding its new Service based offerings. Sources from internal operations of suppliers in the Asia-Pacific market now suggest that AirPods 2 might be added to the list of announcements on March 25th and would hit the stores on March 29th. Even though no hardware announcements are expected at its March 25 event, it might be introduced with just a release. This means that March 28th would be the last day of the "life cycle" of the original AirPods. The AirPods 1 are rumored to be taken off the stores on March 28th, in a move to prep for AirPods 2 sale. The new generation AirPods will come with wireless charging case and Siri integration. This development falls in-line with noted analyst Ming-Cho Kuo who predicted that the new AirPods with wireless charging case will debut in Q1 2019. After AirPods 2 launch, Apple would bring an all-new design model” that will be introduced in Q1 2020 and these new refreshed models are expected to drive strong sales growth for AirPods. Kuo notes that fewer than 5% of iPhone users currently own AirPods, and with over 1 billion iPhone ...

Google Chrome working on back/forward cache to speed up web browsing

Google Chrome developers are experimenting on a new 'back/forward cache' that would make loading the previous page instant since if you close a web page on the browser, it has to load most of the page again which is time-consuming.  Chrome engineering manager Addy Osmani, on the Google Developers site, mentioned, "we are exploring a new back/forward cache to cache pages in-memory (preserving JavaScript & DOM state) when the user navigates away. This is definitely not a trivial endeavor but if it succeeds it will make navigating back and forth very fast." This means when you click on a link on a page, this feature will keep the original page frozen in memory. If you press back, the frozen page is instantly resumed. The Chrome team estimates this could "improve performance up to 19% of all navigation" on the Android version. This doesn't mean that Chrome is the only browser to be working on this, Firefox back in 2005 has used back/forward caching to some extent since Firefox 1.5, but it seems to be disabled for HTTPS sites. Safari has also had a variant of it since 2009. Since this feature is still in the early stages, and there is still security and compatibly issues to figure ...

YouTube disables comments on videos featuring kids; introduces new comment classifier

With an aim to improve child safety on YouTube, the company over the past week, we disabled comments from tens of millions of videos that could be subject to predatory behavior. These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors. It said that it will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months. YouTube added that it will broaden this action to suspend comments on videos featuring young minors and videos featuring older minors that could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior. However, a small number of creators will be able to keep comments enabled on these types of videos. These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior. YouTube ensures that this does not affect the monetization of videos. It has a new comment classifier in place and will detect and remove 2X more individual comments. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges targeting any audience are also against the company's policies and said that it will continue to take action. Source

Samsung now allows remapping Bixby key on Galaxy Note 9, Note 8, S9 and S8 series

Samsung has finally decided to allow users to remap the Bixby key on its flagships S10-series that allows you to launch a third-party app using the key. Since it is a software feature, Samsung has rolled the same to remap the Bixby key feature on the Galaxy Note 9, Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S9/S9+ and the Galaxy S8/S8+. Once the update is installed from the Galaxy Store, just go to Advanced features in the Settings app and then to Bixby key. You will be presented with two options. You can either set a third-party app to launch with a single or double press of the key. This means you can remap either a single or double press, not both. The option you don’t select will continue to launch Bixby Home. A long press will always bring up Bixby Voice. This doesn't let users completely disable the Bixby key entirely and never open Bixby Home, but still a positive feature. It also doesn't let you map the key to launch Google Assistant. Samsung is making sure that Bixby Home doesn't get shut out by users for good. As said, it is available now for the Galaxy Note 9, Note 8, Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy ...

Facebook said to be in talks with crypto exchanges for listing its crypto coin for WhatsApp

Facebook, Instagram, Signal are said to be planning to roll out new cryptocurrencies over the next year which are aimed at allowing users to send money to contacts on their messaging systems like Venmo or PayPal that can move across international borders. Facebook is silently working on a coin that user of WhatsApp could send to friends and family instantly, according to a latest report from The New York Times. The social media giant has held conversations with cryptocurrency exchanges about selling the Facebook coin to consumers. On the other hand, Telegram which was an estimated 300 million users worldwide is also working on a digital coin. Signal, an encrypted messaging service has its own coin in the works. So do other big messaging applications South Korea and Japan, Kakao, and Line. If had the right idea, Facebook and Telegram could make the digital wallets used for cryptocurrencies available, in an instant, to hundreds of millions of users. Most of the companies are said to be working on digital coins that could exist on a decentralized network of computers, independent to some degree of the companies that created them. Like Bitcoin, the new cryptocurrencies would make it easier to move money between countries. The current ...

Nokia 9 PureView to go on sale in the US from March 3rd, $100 off for limited period

HMD Global at the MWC 2019 event has introduced the Nokia 9 PureView smartphone with Penta cameras. The main highlight of the smartphone is its 12MP Penta rear cameras, two RGB and three monochrome lenses to collect up to 10-times the amount of light than a single color sensor, with ZEISS Optics. Developed in cooperation with multi-sensor camera company Light. The device would be available in the USA starting from March 3rd.  As a part of the introductory offer, the company is offering a special limited offer where it is offering the phone at $599 (Rs. 42,432 approx.) which is a solid $100 discount off the usual $699 (Rs. 49,650 approx) for a week. The offer runs between March 3rd to 10th, but from March 11th, the price will go back up to $699. If you are planning on getting the phone, the $100 discount is as good as it can get. The Nokia 9 PureView will be available to buy both at Best Buy (in-store and online), Amazon, and B&H starting on March 3rd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpqtWqcbKNA The Nokia 9 PureView captures HDR shots using five cameras simultaneously with up to 12.4 stops of dynamic range and a full scene 12MP depth map and fuse it ...

Twitter confirms to be working on ‘Hide Tweet’ feature

Twitter confirmed that it is developing a new "Hide Tweet" feature which will give users an ability to protect their conversations. This new option is found in Twitter's code and appear in the list choices when you click the “Share” button on a tweet. "Hide Tweet" might work as an alternative to muting or blocking a user, while still offering some control over a conversation. 1/8 Thanks to Jane and @MattNavarra for starting the conversation about the this feature we are developing! We wanted to provide a little more context on it. https://t.co/Ws2rJfa8sl — Michelle Yasmeen Haq (@thechelleshock) February 28, 2019 Apart from "Hide Tweets," the company seems to be working on another feature, “View Hidden Tweets.” This allows a user to unhide those tweets that were previously hidden by the original poster. When reached out for a comment on this post, the company's spokesperson confirmed the feature is something the company is actively working on. However, this feature has concerns attached to it as it would allow users to silence anyone- not just for themselves, as is possible today with muting and blocking — but for anyone reading through a stream of Twitter Replies. It also requires the user to click to view the ...