Kartech Blog

- At its much-anticipated 'Hi, Speed' hardware event in Cupertino, Apple has taken the wraps off four new iPhones. Yeah, the iPhone lineup has today grown to four devices, including the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The new lineup is powered by the world's first 5nm A14 Bionic chipset, supports 5G, and brings a myriad of other minor upgrades. Source - Beboom

-  While most of us have made wearing face masks and washing hands part of our routines, we often forget to sanitize the gadgets we're using, primarily smartphones, and a new study shows we should seriously consider sanitizing our devices. Source - Beboom

- Bharti Airtel has partnered with Aakash Educational Services Limited to launch what they claim to be India's first dedicated TV channels for medical and engineering entrance exams preparation. Called Aakash Edu TV, the service is available exclusively on Airtel's DTH platform and, promises to offer "high-quality coaching sessions to students across India who are preparing for entrance exams such as JEE/Advanced and NEET". Source - Beboom

- Since the COVID-19 cases in India are still on a steep rise, Xiaomi has decided to offer a new product to further the safety of the citizens. The company has launched the Mi KN95 protective mask in India. It joins the Mi AirPOP mask, which launched back in January last year. Source - Beboom

- Latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) shows that the total number of broadband users in the country now stands at over 700 million (70 crore). As of July 31st, India apparently had 705.4 million broadband connections. The milestone is believed to have been achieved in July, when ISPs added 7.17 million new subscribers nationwide. Source - Beboom

- Flipkart is reportedly looking to re-enter the Indian mobile phone market with new feature phones and smartphones under the MarQ brand. That's according to ET, which claims that the company has already received its approval from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for handsets made by two manufacturers - the Haryana-based Forme Communications Technology and the Delhi-based Advantage Computers. Source - Beboom

- India, video-conferencing app, Zoom, is now listing its plan prices in Rupees alongside other global currencies, including Dollar, Yen, Pound Sterling, and more. To see the plan charges in Rupees, users will have to choose India as their 'billing' and 'sold to' country. The company already accepted Indian credit cards, but there doesn't seem to be any new addition to the payment mode for now. Source - Beboom

- Even though Apple's co-founder and former CEO, the late Steve Jobs has had problems with Intel, he still, at some point in time, considered putting Intel chips inside the iPad lineup. This interesting tidbit recently surfaced from Walter Isaacson's biography of the Apple genius Steve Jobs. Source - Beboom

- Launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station is now targeted for no sooner than early-to-mid November, providing additional time for SpaceX to complete hardware testing and data reviews as the company evaluates off-nominal behavior of Falcon 9 first stage engine gas generators observed during a recent non-NASA mission launch attempt. Through the agency’s Commercial Crew and Launch Services Programs partnership with SpaceX, NASA has full insight into the company’s launch and testing data. Source - Nasa Blog

- A group of hackers has received 32 payments from Apple totaling $2,88,500 for discovering 55 vulnerabilities (11 critical) in the core systems as they hacked the tech giant for three months. The critical bugs allowed the group to take control of core Apple infrastructure and "from there steal private emails, iCloud data, and other private information". Apple promptly fixed the vulnerabilities. There were a total of 55 vulnerabilities discovered with 11 critical severity, 29 high severity, 13 medium severity and 2 low severity reports. Source - Business Insider India

- Uber recently made a significant commitment to transition its entire fleet to electric vehicles by 2040. As part of its efforts to achieve this sustainability goal, Uber has now partnered with Lithium Urban Technologies to add 1,000 electric cars to its fleet in India.

- We are just a few days away from Amazon's Great Indian Festival sale that will last an entire month this time around. And today, Amazon has given us another new update With this update, users will see two new tabs namely 'Live' and 'On Now' on Fire TV's home page. The former will show you live TV channels from SonyLIV, Voot, NextG TV, and Discovery+. This includes popular channels, including Sony SAB HD, Colors HD, SET HD, Nick HD+, Dangal, DD National, News18 India, MTV Beats HD, SONY BBC Earth HD, Mastii TV Music, and Discovery.

- National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) is observed in the month of October every year. As part of Google's efforts to ensure the security and privacy of its users, the company is adding a guest mode on Google Assistant among other security features.

- Instagram has become the go-to app for messaging friends for many users. The image-sharing platform offers a fun experience that doesn't involve family groups and makes it easier to share photos, videos, and now Reels. Instagram then decided to offer close friends a safe space with the launch of the standalone Threads app earlier last year.

- Airtel is reportedly in talks with PUBG Corp to bring back PUBG Mobile to India. That's according to a report from Entrackr, which claims that the nation's second largest telecom operator entered the fray after PUBG Corp's negotiations with Reliance Jio fell through. According to an anonymous source cited by the report, "PUBG is in early conversation with Airtel for handing over distribution rights to the telecom giant. This desperation shows that PUBG has been trying hard to get back into the Indian market". Neither PUBG Corp, nor Airtel, has issued any official statement on the matter, but we should expect to hear more sooner rather than later.

- Looking to purchase a lot of new gadgets, clothes, and home decor items this festive season? Well, Amazon wants to be your go-to destination for shopping as its "Great Indian Festival" sale won't be a quick three-day affair this time around. Instead, the company has confirmed that its festive sale event will run for a whole month.  The Great Indian Festival, as we learned yesterday, will kick off 17th October and keep offering discounts, crazy deals, and new products up until Diwali, i.e. mid-November.

- Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips have always been the gold standard when it comes to flagship SoCs on Android smartphones. While the company is gearing up to announce its latest Snapdragon 875 chipset later this year in December, a new DigiTimes report hints that Qualcomm may diversify its portfolio to launch its own series of gaming phones. The report, citing industry sources, claims that Qualcomm will partner with Asus to make its new gaming phones lineup a reality. Moreover, the first smartphone through this partnership could launch by the end of this year.

- The package of services that include Google’s email, documents and video chat are now called Google Workspace Alphabet Inc.’s Google is renaming its bundle of productivity tools and adding more features, another effort to recruit corporate customers for the company’s cloud business.

- Google announced it is rebranding G Suite to “Workspace” with new features and major visual changes. This also means that Gmail is losing its iconic envelope logo for a more Google-like design. The new Gmail logo is now just the letter ‘M’ with Google’s trademark colours.

- Spotify now allow you to search song by its lyrics

- Cloud gaming requires a stable and fast internet connection, which is possibly why Google limited the availability of Stadia to Wi-Fi networks when it launched the service last year. However, times are changing, and considering the gradual adoption of 5G in several countries, the company has now enabled support for LTE and 5G mobile data connections on Stadia. As per user reports, Stadia now supports mobile data on Android. While Google started testing Stadia on cellular networks in July

- Google started testing password alerts for Chrome in October last year and rolled out the feature to PCs in December with Chrome 79. The software giant is now bringing the much-needed feature to Android and iOS with the latest Chrome 86 update. With Chrome 86, the browser will warn you if one of the saved passwords gets compromised. To check compromised passwords, Google will securely send a copy of your usernames and passwords to its servers. The company promises it can't access your credentials due to encryption.

- Apple was unable to launch the iPhone at its usual September timeline this year due to delays in production. Instead, the company launched the new Apple Watch Series 6 and SE, and the iPad Air at that event. Now, the company has now started sending out invites to yet another event, and this one is definitely for the new iPhone 12 series. The invite sets the date of the iPhone 12 launch as October 13 at 10am PDT (that's 10:30pm on October 13 for all of us in India).

- Shortly after the TikTok ban in India, we've not only seen a flood of homegrown clones but popular apps, such as Instagram and YouTube have also tried to step in and fill the void. If you haven't been living under a rock, you would know that 'YouTube Shorts,' a short videos creation feature, launched in India earlier last month. YouTube Shorts lets you create videos up to 15-seconds in length. These short videos are known to appear between traditional long-form content on the platform.

- As we approach the end of the year, the anticipations for what we expect from the next flagship Snapdragon chipset are running high. Will it be based on a 5nm process? Will it be able to beat Apple's new A14 Bionic chipset? Well, Qualcomm has decided to add fuel to the fire by confirming that the rumored Snapdragon 875 will be announced on December 1st.

- In an attempt to expand monetization on its platform, Instagram is adding shopping features to IGTV and Reels. While the shopping capabilities are being rolled out to all IGTV users globally right now, Instagram will test shopping integration in Reels later this year. With this addition, viewers can buy products showcased right from IGTV videos if the creator has added relevant links to them. This integration is part of Instagram's plans to offer more ways to monetize content on the platform.

- Paytm Mini App Store Launched for Indian Developers, to List Over 300 Apps Including Domino’s Pizza and Ola Paytm Mini App Store allows users to explore and use its listed apps without any additional download. Paytm Mini App Store launched for Indian developers It links users to the web apps from different companies Users don't need to download these web apps to use them

- The three tech majors — Wipro, IBM and Dell — in various letters to the CVC and UIDAI, raised objections to the participation of HP-Enterprise in the bidding process.  The Aadhaar-issuing body UIDAI has said its tender for selecting managed services infrastructure provider (MSIP) has been evaluated, ensuring complete "transparency, fairness and equity" in accordance with stipulated norms. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had floated a tender for contracting a managed services infrastructure provider.

- The system will also cover a wide belt around the globe, benefiting a broad range of French economic interests, the official said. The satellites will be operated jointly by France and India to monitor ships Weather alert! Low pressure area likely over Andaman Sea next week; rains in Odisha, coastal Andhra Pradesh Expert explains what caused recent earthquakes in India IMD predicts widespread rainfall in these states from October 4-7 The constellation of maritime surveillance satellites for the Indian Ocean Region, to be jointly launched by India and France, will be able to trace illegal spillage of oil by ships, a senior French space agency CENS official said on Sunday. The monitoring centre will be based in India, the official added.

- As bugs in highly-sensitive apps on Google Play Store keep increasing, Google is now looking for security engineers to find critical vulnerabilities and focus largely on fake Covid-19 contact tracing and election-related apps. The security engineers will manage a team that "performs reverse engineering, technical security assessments, code audits and design reviews of third-party Android applications and libraries," Google said in the latest job posting. There's no such thing as a "safe system" -- only safer systems and Google said that its security team works to create and maintain the safest operating environment for Google's users and developers.

- Apple self healing display, apple foldable phone, apple self healing display patent, apple first foldable phone, apple foldable phone leaks, apple foldable phone specifications So far, we have seen a handful of foldable phones from tech giants like Samsung, Motorola and Huawei. The new form factor has his own challenges with hinges causing a hindrance in the display, damage caused by dust, and other reasons. 

- Since its establishment back in 2003, Elon Musk's Tesla has grown to become one of the top sellers of electric cars in several countries. However, the company still hasn't made its way to India, primarily because of our dependency on gasoline-powered cars. Now, according to the company's eccentric founder and CEO Elon Musk, Tesla's much-loved electric cars may finally come to Indian roads as soon as next year.

- PUBG Mobile was banned in India earlier in September but is still playable. It has been removed from the App Store and Google Play store. PUBG Mobile experiencing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack The developer is working on a fix PUBG Mobile will add a new anti-cheat patch soon

- Flipkart has announced the dates for its 'Big Billion Days' sale ahead of the upcoming festive season. The six-day event will run from October 16-21 and will offer a wide range of products across several categories. In a press release, the company said that the event will offer great value propositions to existing and new consumers while providing growth opportunities to MSMEs and sellers across the country.

- JioMart is reportedly testing daily milk delivery in Chennai and Bengaluru on a subscription basis. That's according to a new report on Times of India citing sources familiar with the matter. Apart from milk, the company will also deliver other essentials such as eggs and bread through this initiative. "This is available in select pin codes in the two cities for now", according to the source.

- With most of us holed up in our homes and coordinating work over video calls due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you might have become well-acquainted with the variety of video conferencing software. A great feature of these video calling apps is automatic switching between video feeds of the person talking in real-time. This, however, doesn't work with sign language users and they could feel left out of the conversation.

- According to reports, 230 million of the global population aged 65 and above suffer from a hearing deficiency, amongst other health issues. Similar was the condition of Saad Bhamla's grandparents when the now-researcher was an undergraduate, studying in Mumbai, India. At the time, he wanted to solve his grandparents' hearing issue with the pricey hearing-aid devices. However, those expensive healthcare devices were out-of-reach for Bhamla. Now, the man has developed one of the cheapest hearing-aid devices to help all of the country's senior population suffering from hearing deficiency.

- Mobile phone prices in India are expected to go up once again in the coming days following the imposition of a 10% import duty on display panels. According to industry body, ICEA, smartphone vendors are expected to raise their prices by between 1.5% and 5% following the development. The new tax regime, which went into effect October 1st, is being applied under a phased manufacturing program (PMP) announced in 2016 in consensus with the industry.

- Microsoft has today announced the long-rumored 12.5-inch Surface Laptop Go in the US. As the name suggests, it's a budget-friendly laptop that's targeted at students and runs Windows 10 in S mode.

- India may soon own it's Atmanirbhar Bharat app store  At a time when Google is asking developers to adopt its billing system by September 30, 2021, and Apple is battling Fortnite's developer Epic, a new rumor suggests that the Indian government may soon announce its own new app store. This is apparently part of the efforts to make the country self-reliant or Atmanirbhar.

- Fifty-six founders of various Indian startups met on a Zoom call earlier this week to discuss a range of issues including establishing an alternative to Google Play Store. "We can't let India's digital dreams get controlled by one or two global companies," Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said. Founders of Razorpay, Policybazaar and GOQii were also on the call.

- New motor vehicle rules from October 1: No need to carry driving license? Carrying vehicle license, registration certificate, insurance documents etc., will not be required from October if these documents are validated through government portal.

- In a move that has been in the making for a while, Facebook on Wednesday announced it is integrating the messaging experience on Instagram and Messenger. In a post on the official Facebook blog, the company said that the integration will bring some of the best Messenger features to Instagram and ensure that users have access to the best messaging experience irrespective of the app they use.

- Pixel 4a India Launch Set for October 17, Will Go on Sale via Flipkart Pixel 4a is powered by the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G SoC and features a 5.81-inch full-HD+ OLED display. Google Pixel 4a is priced at $349 (roughly Rs. 25,700) in the US The phone will be coming to India on October 17 Pixel 4a is backed by a 3,140mAh battery that supports 18W fast charging

- Merely days after Paytm was removed and then reinstated to the Play Store following confusion over whether the app was violating Google's rules against gambling, Google has now reportedly sent notices to food-delivery platforms, Swiggy and Zomato, for in-app promotions associated with IPL 2020.