Sunday, August 11, 2019

Jio Phone 3, GigaFiber Plans Expected Today, How to Watch Reliance AGM Live

The 42nd Reliance Industries AGM starts at 11am IST. It will be live streamed on YouTube via the Flame of Truth and Jio channels. https://ift.tt/2Kvmis6

Aadhaar Pay regains tempo, clocks 200M transactions in July

Aadhaar-based payments make customers who do not have smartphones or who are uncomfortable using cards, transact digitally https://ift.tt/2yY6jMh https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Ant Financial may set terms for Zomato's $500M round

Zomato will have to find a lead investor that Ant doesn't view as a competitor, given that it has a right to veto the deal https://ift.tt/2OQNEx3 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Xiaomi bets on offline stores to grow in small towns & rural areas

These stores will help the company reach its target of driving 50% of sales through the offline channel by year-end, said Xiaomi India managing director Manu Jain https://ift.tt/2KEVqon https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Defcon has a prototype secure voting machine for hacking, funded by a $10M DARPA project aimed at developing an open source voting platform on secure hardware (Lily Hay Newman/Wired)

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Defcon has a prototype secure voting machine for hacking, funded by a $10M DARPA project aimed at developing an open source voting platform on secure hardware  —  At this year's Defcon hacking conference, Darpa brought the beginnings of what it hopes will be impervious hardware.



Huawei Mate 30, Mate 30 Pro launch date set for September 19, to be powered by Kirin 990 SoC: Report

Huawei is expected to soon announce its upcoming Mate 30 series of flagship phones and if a new report is to be believed, this could happen on September 19. As per the site @hi-tech, the president of Huawei Consumer Business Software, Dr Wang Chenglu, has confirmed this development. The company executive also apparently mentioned that the new phones would be powered by the unannounced Kirin 990 processor, which is touted to be better in terms of power efficiency. The alleged chip being used on the Mate 30 series comes as a surprise since the smartphone maker was rumoured to announce the HiSilicon Kirin 985 SoC. However, it could be a case of simply renaming the same chip for marketing reasons. 

In addition, Chenglu is also said to have revealed that the upcoming Mate 30 lineup might not come pre-installed with Google Play Services. While the handsets will most likely be running on the newly announced EMUI 10, there’s no info on whether the devices will feature the company’s new HongmengOS or Android. While the source of this information is said to be the president of Huawei Consumer Business Software, at the time of writing this article, the company has not officially outed the news. So, we suggest you take the information with a pinch of salt for now. 

As for the Kirin 990 being more power efficient, it is to be expected from a 7nm chip that is being fabricated via TSMC’s EUV process, which is said to enable about 20 percent greater transistor density for the SoC. The chip is also expected to be more powerful than its predecessor and the company might also introduce a new neural computing unit for the SoC. 

Coming to the Huawei Mate 30 lineup, a previous report suggested that the devices will feature a square-shaped camera module on the back, which could house two custom developed 40MP sensors. The Mate 30 Pro is reported of featuring a 40MP sensor with 1/1.5-inch sensor size and f/1.6-f/1.4 aperture lens. The sensors could use the company’s patented RYYB pixel layout and there could be another 40MP sensor with 1/1.7-inch sensor size with a 120-degree ultra-wide lens. Along with that, Mate 30 series might have another 8MP camera with 5X hybrid zoom.

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QR code payments, which require opening an app, are causing holdups for public transit commuters in China, where 100M+ WeChat users regularly pay with QR codes (Masha Borak/Abacus)

Masha Borak / Abacus:
QR code payments, which require opening an app, are causing holdups for public transit commuters in China, where 100M+ WeChat users regularly pay with QR codes  —  NFC availability is growing, but 100 million WeChat users are now paying for public transit with QR codes



Honor Vision, Honor Vision Pro TVs running on HarmonyOS launched in China: Price, specs and more

Huawei recently unveiled its homegrown operating system called HarmonyOS and the company’s sub-brand Honor has launched first devices running on it. The new Honor Vision and Honor Vision Pro smart TVs are running on Harmony OS and they come equipped with a number of new features. There isn’t much difference between the pro and non-pro model of the Honor Vision TV as both feature a 55-inch 4K Ultra HD display panel and are powered by a quad-core Honghu 818 SoC. The pro variant of the television comes with more internal storage, six 10W speakers instead of four and a small pop-up camera on top. 

Honor Vision, Vision Pro specifications

As mentioned earlier, the Honor Vision and the Honor Vision Pro sport a 55-inch 4K IPS display with a 3840×2160 pixel resolution. The screen can attain up to 400 nits of brightness and is said to cover 87 percent of the NTSC colour gamut. Along with 178-degree viewing angles, TUV Rheinland certification for blue light protection and 60Hz refresh rate, the display is housed in a thin metal frame that is said to take up just 6.9mm of bezel space. The TVs are powered by the Honghu 818 quad-core chipset, which is paired with a Mali-G51 and come with 2GB RAM. 

What’s interesting is the features that the chipset enables on the TVs. It brings some advanced image processing capabilities to the TV like High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR), Super-Resolution (SR), Noise Reduction (NR), Motion Estimate and Motion Compensation (MEMC), Dynamic Contrast Improvement (DCI), Auto Color Management (ACM) and Local Dimming (LD). Running on HarmonyOS 1.0, the TVs include connectivity options like three HDMI ports, one USB 3.0 port, one Ethernet port, Bluetooth v5, and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. 

The Honor Vision Pro also sports a pop-up camera on the front, which enables 1080p, 30fps video calling. The camera can also be tilted 10 degrees down. 

Honor Vision, Vision Pro price and availability

The Honor Vision costs CNY 3,799 (Rs 38,200 approx), while the Honor Vision Pro is priced at CNY 4,799 (Rs 48,200 approx). The devices are currently up for pre-orders in China via Vmall and are slated to go on sale in the country from August 15. There is no information on when the new Honor Vision TVs would be announced globally or when they will be launched in India. 

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Amazon Freedom Sale: Last chance to get discounts on these 6 smartphones from Nokia, Xiaomi, Samsung and others

Amazon India is offering discounts and offers on smartphones in almost every price bracket. We have put together a few smartphones that are worth buying after the discount. https://ift.tt/2YVnQQ1

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Amazon Freedom Sale 2019: Best Deals Available on the Last Day

Amazon Freedom Sale 2019 has entered its last day today. There are still quite a few great deals you can grab, including a good chance to buy some last-minute gifts for Raksha Bandhan. https://ift.tt/2KGH4nb

Profile of WWT, which helps clients including the US federal government procure and install IT equipment; the company reported revenue of $11.2B last year (Lauren Debter/Forbes)

Lauren Debter / Forbes:
Profile of WWT, which helps clients including the US federal government procure and install IT equipment; the company reported revenue of $11.2B last year  —  Jim Kavanaugh climbs into a sleek, black-leather-interior Mercedes bus that whisks him away from his company's new headquarters in St. Louis to a squat, one-story outpost nearby.



How to delete your smartphone contacts uploaded on Facebook

Several users are unaware of Facebook uploading your smartphone contacts on its own website. These are what you have knowingly (or unknowingly) uploaded on Facebook. Sometimes, the data also includes call and text history. https://ift.tt/33pPBDM

Backbone, which provides product lifecycle management SaaS for consumer goods companies, raises $10M Series A extension, closing the round with a total of $18M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Backbone, which provides product lifecycle management SaaS for consumer goods companies, raises $10M Series A extension, closing the round with a total of $18M  —  Boulder, Colo.-based Backbone, a SaaS company that helps direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands get products to market, has raised $10 million as part of an ongoing Series A round.



Last day of Amazon Freedom Sale: Deals on speakers from JBL, Sony, boAt and others

Here are the top deals on speakers from JBL, Sony, boAt and others available during the last day of Amazon Freedom Sale. https://ift.tt/2MSGZj3

Cisco to acquire Voicea, the maker of a voice assistant called Eva for business meetings; Voicea had raised $20M from investors including GV and Salesforce (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)

Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE:
Cisco to acquire Voicea, the maker of a voice assistant called Eva for business meetings; Voicea had raised $20M from investors including GV and Salesforce  —  Cisco Systems Inc. today announced that it's bolstering its family of collaboration products with the acquisition of Voicea …



Sources: the US State Department ordered embassies to push back against foreign influence campaigns, as officials worry anti-US views are taking root worldwide (New York Times)

New York Times : Sources: the US State Department ordered embassies to push back against foreign influence campaigns, as officials worry ...