Nokia finally confirms to re-enter smartphone business in 2017: What we know, so far

By tech2 News Staff /  21 Nov 2016 , 09:23

In India, many associate brand Nokia with their first-ever mobile phone, and that’s one of the reasons why despite the no-show so far for many years, tech enthusiasts are still eagerly waiting for a Nokia smartphone. While rumours and leaked images make us believe that we are inching closer to the launch day, looks like Nokia has finally confirmed the smartphone for next year.

A chart at the Capital Markets Day presentation (via Nokiapoweruser) had pointers about the company’s plans n 2016, 2017 and 2018. And, 2017 confirms that brand Nokia will return to smartphones along with the possibility of an expanded VR leadership, digital health brand transition and also patent licencing for expansion in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics.

For 2016, it had listed the OZO VR camera launch that we’ve seen earlier this year, along with Withings acquisition, HMD brand and patent licencing and Samsung licence agreement expansion. For the year 2018, the plans include VR technology expansion, growth in remote patient care in Digital Health, continued incubation in new and adjacent areas and continued patent licencing growth and diversification.

Reports around Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri’s MWC 2017 keynote have been hinting at the possibility of the smartphone announcement being made at the tech show. However, some have already begun doubting a successful comeback.

Meanwhile, the Nokia D1C has begun popping its head quite often, and is believed to be the upcoming Nokia smartphone. The leaked renders show the usual candy bar shape dipped in gold, white and black colour options. The back shows the image sensor and LED flash, with the Nokia logo etched right at the centre. It also looks like the gold edition will come with a fingerprint scanner because the gold edition seems to have a dedicated home button.

The handset had recently appeared on Geekbench, giving us a sneak peek into some of its features. The device runs Android 7.0 Nougat and the benchmark app was run a few times. Scores showed 628 points in single-core and 3229 in multi-threaded loads. This isn’t exactly high-end, which is obviously due to the low-end octa-core Snapdragon 430 SoC, clocked at 1.4 GHz, with Adreno 505 GPU and 3GB of RAM. Apart from these details, now we have the new render images.

Xiaomi Mi 6 expected to come in March with Snapdragon 835 chipset

Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff /  26 Nov 2016 , 16:09

Qualcomm had announced earlier this month that it would be partnering with Samsung for its latest 10nm chipset – the Snapdragon 835 – which will be the next generation flagship Snapdragon processor. While the chipset is still under production, we have already started hearing about phones that are slated to come with it.

After hearing about Samsung Galaxy S8 coming with this chipset, the latest buzz on the grapevine is that Xiaomi’s Mi 6 which is expected to arrive in March next year, will also be housing Snapdragon 835.

According to GSMArena, an iSuppli analyst has said that Xiaomi Mi 6 will be the first Chinese smartphone to be sporting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset. It is also expected to be coming our around the same time as Samsung’s Galaxy S8’s international launch.

Nothing is confirmed yet, as Xiaomi hasn’t officially stated anything around this news. The information was posted on the analyst’s personal Weibo account, so it is not even an official confirmation from iSuppli itself.

Having said that, the Mi 5 was announced at MWC 2016 towards the end of February and started selling in many markets by April. Going by that release cycle analogy, the logical release for the Mi 6 should be around end of February or start of March.

Lenovo Vibe K6 Power, sporting 4000mAh battery, to launch on 29 November exclusively on Flipkart

By tech2 News Staff /  25 Nov 2016 , 18:16

Update: Lenovo Vibe K6 Power is going on sale exclusively on Flipkart from 29th November.

Lenovo recently teased the launch of Lenovo Vibe K6 Power in a tweet on Twitter. The company has sent out invites to media outlets for the launch event. Lenovo will launch the new smartphone in New Delhi on 29 November.

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One thing to note is that the company had already launched the smartphone during IFA 2016 tradeshow in Berlin with another smartphone from K-series, the Lenovo K6 Note.

Vibe K6 Power packs a 5-inch Full HD screen along with an octa-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 and Adreno 505 GPU. The smartphone runs Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 out of the box and comes in two variants, one with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage while the other one with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. It also sports a microSD card slot to expand the storage.

Lenovo Vibe K6 Power is equipped with a 4000mAh battery along with a 13MP camera module with an LED flash on the back and an 8MP camera module on the front. Regarding connectivity options, you get Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS and 4G LTE radios.

Sudhin Mathur, Executive Director for Lenovo MBG India added that “We are the no. 1 Online smartphone brand in India with 1 out of 4 shoppers choosing to buy a Lenovo or Moto smartphone, and Flipkart has partnered us well to achieve this success. We are glad to announce that we have exclusively partnered with Flipkart for the next launch in the popular K series, Lenovo K6 Power and hope to replicate our winning formula again.”

It will be interesting to see how Lenovo prices the K6 Power considering smartphone makers such as Xiaomi and smartphones even from Lenovo’s other product ranges like Lenovo Moto G4 Plus and Lenovo Zuk Z2 Plus are extremely competitive and offer good value for money.

Samsung Galaxy S8 to have 6GB RAM and 256GB storage, say reports

By tech2 News Staff /  26 Nov 2016 , 14:45

Samsung did not have a very good second half in 2016 thanks to the Note 7 fiasco. But speculations around the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 have already started doing the rounds online since the last few months. According to the latest report, the Galaxy S8 will feature 6GB RAM and 256GB of storage.

TechTastic has sourced information from Weibo which throws light on the upcoming Galaxy S8’s latest leaks.

The current generation Galaxy S7/S7 edge come in a 32GB variant and you can expand the storage to 256GB using a microSD card slot. With Apple offering 256GB storage variants in its iPhone 7 / 7 Plus phones, it seems only natural for Samsung to offer the same.

Also, the Galaxy S8 is expected to come with 6GB RAM and is rumoured to be sporting Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 835 chipset.

So far, a lot is being speculated about the Galaxy S8. Early rumours suggest that Samsung will use a 5.5-inch 4K Super AMOLED display, 6GB of RAM and an Exynos 8895/Snapdragon 835 SoC. It is also expected to sport a dual camera module on the rear side. Even the launch date has been unofficially confirmed pointing to 26th February launch which will be during MWC 2017.

Samsung recently acquired an AI platform Viv and plans to integrate it into the Galaxy smartphones and expand voice-assistant services to home appliances and wearable technology devices.

The Galaxy S8 is also expected to come in the 6.2-inch form factor with a bezel-less design, with over 90 percent screen to body ratio. This is to ensure that the dimensions of the S8 will not vary much from the S7 edge.

It is being speculated that the 6.2-inch variant has been added to appeal to the Note 7 customers, who could not get the device after it was globally recalled due to battery burning issues. This year Samsung had released the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge at 5.1-inch and 5.5-inch sizes respectively whereas the Note 7 was in the 5.7-inch form factor.

Internet search engines need to update to keep up with IoT products, says experts

Image: Linino

  26 Nov 2016 , 14:19

Internet search mechanisms will need to change to support the Internet of Things (IoT) whereby billions of devices will become connected, say experts.

“Search engines have come a long way since their original purpose of locating documents, but they still lack the connection between social, physical and cyber data which will be needed in the IoT era,” said the study’s lead author Payam Barnaghi, Reader in Machine Intelligence at the University of Surrey in England.

“IoT data retrieval will require efficient and scalable indexing and ranking mechanisms, and also integration between the services provided by smart devices and data discovery,” Barnaghi said.

With more and more IoT devices being connected to the internet, there is an urgent need to develop new search solutions which will allow information from IoT sources to be found and extracted, the researchers said.

Complex future technologies such as smart cities, autonomous cars and environmental monitoring will demand machine-to-machine searches that are automatically generated depending on location, preferences and local information.

New requirements will include being able to access numerical and sensory data, and providing secure ways of accessing data without exposing the devices to hackers.

“IoT technologies such as autonomous cars, smart cities and environmental monitoring could have a very positive impact on millions of lives. Our goal is to consider the many complex requirements and develop solutions which will enable these exciting new technologies,” Barnaghi noted.

The article highlighting the latest research in this area by academics at the University of Surrey and Wright State University in the US was published in the journal IEEE Intelligent Systems.

While in the past, human users have searched for information on the web, the IoT will see more machine-to-machine searches which are automatically generated depending on location, preferences and local information.

Autonomous vehicles, for example, will need to automatically collect data (such as traffic and weather information) from various sources without a human user being involved.

The IoT also presents a challenge in terms of cyber security. Applications which rely on public data, such as smart city technologies, need to be very accessible to make them available to a wide range of applications and services.

“I see tremendous opportunities to effectively utilise physical (especially IoT), cyber and social data by improving the abilities of machines to convert diverse data into meaningful abstractions that matter to human experiences and decision making,” Amit Sheth of Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge Enabled Computing at Wright State University said.

“IoT search, particularly for devices or machines to interact with each other to find and aggregate relevant information on a human’s behalf, will become a critical enabler,” Sheth noted.

IANS

Yet another Snapchat feature lift? Instagram to notify your friend when you screenshot their DM

  26 Nov 2016 , 12:57

With the roll-out of a new update, Facebook-owned photo sharing app Instagram will now notify your friends when you take a screenshot of their Direct Messages (DM) — just like its rival Snapchat, a media report said.

However, the notifications are only for the new disappearing message feature, Mashable reported.

To use the new feature, a user can swipe right into the camera to take a photo or video, then tap the arrow to send it privately.

A user can choose a group or create one in just a few taps – and can also send to individual friends at the same time.

According to Instagram’s statement, “Unlike other messages in Direct, these photos and videos disappear from your friends’ inboxes after they have seen them. And you will see if they replayed it or took a screenshot.”

Also, you can take a screenshot of your feed and Instagram will pop a new window down saying, “You can share this post with your friends” — offering a user a few ways to officially share the image if you tap the button.

IANS

New Toyota Prius hybrid to see an early 2017 launch in India

By tech2 News Staff /  25 Nov 2016 , 11:38

While the Toyota Prius has not exactly been a hit with India’s car buyers, with the rising pollution problem, it could be a good time to re-introduce a good old friend. Toyota Motor Corp plans to do just that as it has made up its mind and will soon be launching the new Toyota Prius come the first quarter of 2017.

Yes, the Toyota Prius hybrid that went low on emissions and high on price may not have been a success when it first launched in 2009, but this time around things could change. Car and Bike have reported that the new Prius hybrid will be launched in the first quarter of 2017 with the company looking at January launch.

Recently a senior Toyota official commented on how the company expects its hybrid car sales to shoot up to 20 percent by 2020 from the current 2 percent today.

Toyota, which already sells the Camry hybrid in India, plans to introduce hybrid technology in models like the Corolla and Prius sedans and could introduce it for sport-utility vehicles and multi-purpose vehicles, Akito Tachibana, managing director of Toyota’s India business told Reuters.

Coming to the specifications, the Pruis is powered by the same 1.8-litre 4-cylinder engine that develops 97bhp and is paired to an electric motor that develops 71bhp. The new Prius comes with new nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) hybrid battery system that now sits lower beneath the rear seats for better weight distribution.

The new and updated Toyota Prius features a more angular and aggressive design that is a big update from the previous model.

Japan working on a 130 petaflops supercomputer, which could be the fastest in the world

Image: Reuters

  26 Nov 2016 , 11:18

Japan plans to build the world’s fastest-known supercomputer in a bid to arm the country’s manufacturers with a platform for research that could help them develop and improve driverless cars, robotics and medical diagnostics.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will spend 19.5 billion yen ($173 million) on the previously unreported project, a budget breakdown shows, as part of a government policy to get back Japan’s mojo in the world of technology. The country has lost its edge in many electronic fields amid intensifying competition from South Korea and China, home to the world’s current best-performing machine.

In a move that is expected to vault Japan to the top of the supercomputing heap, its engineers will be tasked with building a machine that can make 130 quadrillion calculations per second – or 130 petaflops in scientific parlance – as early as next year, sources involved in the project told Reuters.

At that speed, Japan’s computer would be ahead of China’s Sunway Taihulight that is capable of 93 petaflops.

“As far as we know, there is nothing out there that is as fast,” said Satoshi Sekiguchi, a director general at Japan’s ‎National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, where the computer will be built.

The push to return to the vanguard comes at a time of growing nostalgia for the heyday of Japan’s technological prowess, which has dwindled since China overtook it as the world’s second-biggest economy.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for companies, bureaucrats and the political class to work more closely together so Japan can win in robotics, batteries, renewable energy and other new and growing markets.

DEEP LEARNING

In the area of supercomputing, Japan’s aim is to use ultra-fast calculations to accelerate advances in artificial intelligence (AI), such as “deep learning” technology that works off algorithms which mimic the human brain’s neural pathways, to help computers perform new tasks and analyze scores of data.

Recent achievements in this area have come from Google’s DeepMind AI program, AlphaGo, which in March beat South Korean professional Lee Seedol in the ancient board game of Go.

Applications include helping companies improve driverless vehicles by allowing them to analyse huge troves of visual traffic data, or it could help factories improve automation.

China uses the Sunway Taihulight for weather forecasting, pharmaceutical research, industrial design, among other things.

Japan’s new supercomputer could help tap medical records to develop new services and applications, Sekiguchi said.

The supercomputer will be made available for a fee to Japan’s corporations, who now outsource data crunching to foreign firms such as Google and Microsoft, Sekiguchi and others involved in the project said.

The new computer has been dubbed ABCI, an acronym for AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure. Bidding for the project has begun and will close on Dec. 8.

Fujitsu Ltd, the builder of the fastest Japanese supercomputer to date – the Oakforest-PACS, capable of 13.6 petaflops, declined to say if it would bid for the project.

The company has, however, said it is keen to be involved in supercomputer development.

Reuters