OPPO is testing 5G on Find X2 at Hyderabad R&D facility ahead of India launch soon

OPPO's upcoming smartphone Find X2 series has been in the limelight for quite some time now. If you are unaware, the company had planned the launch at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, but following the conference’s cancellation due to the Corona outbreak, the date has been postponed to March 6th. Back in 2018, OPPO launched its ambitious Find X with a motorised module equipping a selfie camera to avoid display notch. In the latest development, the OPPO India has tested 5G internally at their Hyderabad R&D center by conducting various drills, including Whatsapp video call, cloud gaming, movies download, and more on Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset. It's worth mentioning that Tasleem Arif, VP & Head India R&D, OPPO, has tweeted on his official account showcasing 5G sign on the top right of the device. Another FIRST for @OPPOMobileIndia Our Hyderabad R&D center to conduct Whatsapp video call displaying 5G band & speed and demonstrating fast movie downloads & cloud gaming feature on #Snapdragon – all at our 5G Lab! Thank you @qualcomm_in for your support! #5Gtesting #innovation pic.twitter.com/tWZnbbAMO1 — Tasleem Arif (@tasleemarifk) March 4, 2020 Moving on, OPPO has confirmed that the phone will feature 6.78-inch (3168 x 1440 pixels) 3K OLED 513PPI screen with a ...

Apple announces iPhone 11 Night mode challenge winners

When Apple announced their iPhone 11 series of smartphones, it was clear that Apple had stepped up their smartphone photography game by a sizeable amount. To showcase the prowess of the iPhone 11's capabilities, Apple created the Night mode photo challenge, where users could submit night mode photos that were clicked on the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max. Yesterday Apple announced the winners and one among the 6 winners is an Indian named Mitsun Soni. The panel of judges for the competition included Malin Fezehai (US), Tyler Mitchell (US), Sarah Lee (UK), Alexvi Li (China), Darren Soh (Singapore), Phil Schiller, Kaiann Drance, Brooks Kraft, Jon McCormack and Arem Duplessis. The 6 winners represented countries from Russia, India, China and Spain. Mitsun Soni from Mumbai, India was one of the winners, clicking a night scene of a beautiful red tree under the night sky. View this post on Instagram   Showcase: Night mode Presenting the 6 winners from the Night mode Community Challenge. Click the Newsroom link in our bio to learn how their photos will live beyond Instagram. #NightmodeChallenge #ShotoniPhone by... - 1. Konstantin C. @chalabov - 2. Andrei M. @houdini_logic - 3. Mitsun S. @mitsun - 4. Yu ...

Twitter for Android customisable timeline with pinned lists rolling out widely

When you begin to follow a multitude of accounts on twitter, it can start to become a little overwhelming with many topics. In June of 2019, Twitter began testing a feature called Lists on their mobile app that allowed users to split their timeline with different pinned lists. The feature has been in iOS for a quite a while, and now Twitter has announced wide-rollout for Android users too. Got an Android? You’re now in it to pin it.https://t.co/N4gFkbaAG7 — Twitter (@Twitter) March 3, 2020 [gallery link="file" columns="2" size="large" ids="306503,306502"] Twitter initially added the ability to create lists of your favourite topics that help organise a user's various account that they follow based on interests. Twitter later added the ability to pin your top lists, so they can be accessed quickly. In September 2019, iOS users could see their pinned lists right in their timelines, appearing as tabs that could easily be accessed via a swipe. Yesterday Twitter announced that the feature is coming out of beta for Android and is rolling it out widely to all stable users. To enable it, users must swipe right on their timeline to bring up the menu. Click on lists and the icon to pin each list will ...

Google I/O 2020 cancelled due to coronavirus concerns

Google has cancelled its I/O developers' conference for this year that was supposed to take place at Mountain View, California from May 12th to 14th due to coronavirus concerns. The company said that "it's sad that we won't be able to gather as a developer community but your health and safety is our priority." The company said that it is exploring new ways to connect and support the global developer community and will offer more details on google.com/io. We are exploring new ways to connect and support our global developer community. Stay tuned. More info soon → https://t.co/mSTQKlTa90 (2/2) — Google Developers (@googledevs) March 3, 2020 Also, guests who registered for the event will automatically enter the drawing for I/O 2021 tickets next year. Google has also announced that it will give $1 million to local small businesses and schools for STEM research and coronavirus protection. This is not the first global event that has been cancelled this year. MWC 2020 Barcelona, Facebook's F8 developer's conference, Game Developers Conference were some of the events that have been cancelled. Even though the event has been cancelled, it will likely have online streaming explaining the new features that will be introduced in Android 11 along with the ...

WhatsApp Dark mode finally available for all Android and iOS users

WhatsApp for Android got dark mode feature in beta back in January, and it has been in the works for iOS for more than a year. Now WhatsApp has announced the roll out of dark mode for all the Android and iOS users. This lets users choose from light or dark theme. The dark theme is more like dark gray unlike pure black available in some apps. Chats appear with dark background, and your messages are shown in green bubbles. WhatsApp said that when designing dark mode it spent time researching and experimenting with a focus on two particular areas: Readability: When choosing colors, we wanted to minimize eye fatigue and use colors that are closer to the system defaults on iPhone and Android respectively. Information Hierarchy: We wanted to help users easily focus their attention on each screen. We did this by using color and other design elements to make sure the most important information stands out. Users on Android 10 and iOS 13 can use dark mode by enabling it in system settings. Users on Android 9 and below can go into WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Theme > select ‘Dark’. The WhatsApp for iOS v2.20.303 update also brings new ...

Realme 6 series and Redmi Note 9 series India launch events cancelled due to coronavirus concerns, will have online launch

Last week realme announced an event in India to launch the realme 6 and realme 6 Pro smartphone on March 5th. Today the company has decided to cancel the event due to coronavirus concerns in the country. The company will still offer live stream of the event, in which the CEO Madhav Seth will give live speech at the Indira Gandhi Stadium in New Delhi. In light of current reports of #coronavirus impact & related advisory by health officials to maintain social distance as a precautionary measure, I'm calling off our biggest event. Will still give live speech in stadium with you watching #realme6series event online. #HealthFirst — Madhav 5G (@MadhavSheth1) March 3, 2020 The company sold launch event tickets at Rs. 599 starting from February 28th and said that it will include goodies worth Rs. 2500 and complimentary snacks, in addition to entry for the event. realme CEO said that it will offer full refund for the tickets and will also offer a free realme Band for those who bought the tickets. Providing full refund of ticket value. I know how excited you were for #realme6series launch, so as a special gesture will be giving a #realmeBand to every single person who booked a ticket. Details ...

Black Shark 3 Pro 5G gaming phone with 7.1-inch Quad HD+ AMOLED 90Hz display, Snapdragon 865, 12GB RAM and Black Shark 3 announced

Black Shark just announced the Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro smartphones in China, as it had promised. The Black Shark 3 features a 6.67-inch FHD+ display and the Pro version has a 7.1-inch Quad HD+ screen. Both these have 90Hz refresh rate and world's highest touch sampling rate of 270Hz, and the company says that single-finger touch response delay is as low as 24ms, multi-finger touch response delay is as low as 28ms. These have screen pressure sensitivity 3.0, and the number of pressure-sensitive sensors increased to 4, and the pressure-sensitive area increased by 48%. These have MEMC intelligence Motion compensation technology as well. The phone is powered by Snapdragon 865 with up to 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and features "Sandwich" liquid cooling system, double-sided liquid-cooling covers key heat sources. Heat dissipation area is increased by 100% and the heat dissipation capacity is increased by 50% compared to the previous generation, says the company. It has Black Shark GameEngine and SolarCore intelligent game acceleration engine so that the games load faster, complex scenes run more smoothly with minimal power consumption for the best gaming experience. It has a new symmetrical design and the company says it is extremely comfortable to ...

HMD Global schedules an event on March 19 in London, Nokia 8.3, Nokia 5.3 and more expected

HMD Global has scheduled an event on March 19th in London to introduce new smartphones. There is a new separate event since there is no MWC this year. Last year at the MWC the company announced Nokia 9 PureView, Nokia 4.2, Nokia 3.2, Nokia 210 feature phone and Nokia 1 Plus Android Go Edition phone. At the London event later this month the company is expected to introduce Nokia 8.3 5G phone. Thie could be the phone that was teased back in December with ZEISS optics that will also offer 4K UHD ultra-wide video support, side-mounted fingerprint scanner and triple rear camera setup. Alongside, the company is also expected to introduce Nokia 1.3 and Nokia C2 budget phones, Nokia 5.3 and few feature phones such as Nokia 400 4G and see the revival of Nokia 5310 XpressMusic with large stereo speakers. There are also reports of 007 kevlar cases for Nokia 7.2 and 6.2 being introduced. We should know more details about the phones in the coming weeks. Source

Samsung invests $220 million in Vietnam to build R&D centre

Samsung Electronics has announced that it is building a $220 million dollar research and development centre in Vietnam aimed at enhancing the companies research capabilities. However, news has surfaced that Samsung had to cancel a ceremony related to the launch of the centre was cancelled, likely due to coronavirus outbreak. The new R&D centre is expected to finish constructions by the end of 2022 and will employ anywhere between 2200 and 3000 people. The main purpose of the plant would be to advance research in areas like artificial intelligence, internet of things, big data and 5G. Samsung is one of Vietnam's biggest single foreign investor, with a total of nearly $17 Billion invested. Smartphones and parts produced by Samsung contribute to Vietnam's exports that are worth about $51.38 billion. The coronavirus outbreak continue to affect the industry with many plants and industries struggling to ramp up its output. Samsung's Mobile device factory in Gumi, South Korea shutdown last weekend as a one of its workers tested positive with Coronavirus. Vietnam had also recently put up travel restrictions coronavirus-hit areas of South Korea, suspending their visa-free travel temporarily. Source

OnePlus Snowbot Battle will let anyone control 5G-powered Snowbots in global snowball fight

OnePlus today announced world’s first 5G-powered interactive snowball fight, which will take place starting 9th March 2020 for more than 70 consecutive hours in Finland. The experience will allow anyone from around the world to control the OnePlus Snowbots in a live snowball fight. OnePlus says that this will demonstrate the true 5G potential and how this can change the way people interact with smartphones, OnePlus developed custom-made snowball-firing robots: Snowbots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BlzzKny0TI The Snowbots will be operated through OnePlus devices with a 5G network, brought to the remote Lapland region by Finnish operator Elisa, allowing thousands of community members from across the globe to experience a seamless and lag-free offline-to-online gaming experience like never seen before. The OnePlus Snowbot Battle, hosted in Ruka-Kuusamo area, Lapland, Finland, will start on 9th March 2020 at 12:00pm GMT with a special Human vs. Robots event, that will see a selected number of people join in teams to play against the 5G-powered Snowbots operated by users from all across the world. From the evening 9 March to 12 March, the Snowbot Battle will run 24 hours a day, allowing everyone to join a team in the ultimate snowball fight. With the spirit of bringing its community together to experience ...