Meizu Pro 6 tipped to come with 6GB RAM

The Meizu Pro 6 might have a variant with 6GB of RAM. According to a report by Chinese website, My Drivers, the phone may be available in two variants, one with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage and another with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. However, the screen will still have a resolution of 1080p and the phone may be launched in August this year. 

As per the report, the phone might  be powered by Samsung’s Exynos 8890 SoC, which is currently used by the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones. It may also come with other features like Hi-Fi 3.0 support, fast charging, and Flyme 6.0 OS. Earlier this month Meizu’s VP, Yang Tan shared a screenshot on his Weibo account which hinted that the company may be developing a 3D Touch display for use in the Pro 6. The screenshot suggests that the company implement the system in a manner similar to what Apple does in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. 

If Meizu does launch a smartphone with 6GB of RAM, it won’t be the first to do so. Earlier this month, the Vivo Xplay 5 Elite became the first phone to come with 6GB of RAM. Besides the RAM, the phone also comes with a 5.43-inch QHD display and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor.

WhatsApp reportedly planning to encrypt voice calls and group messages

WhatsApp may be planning to encrypt voice calls and groups messages. According to a report by The Guardian, the company is planning to introduce the service in the coming weeks. The report also highlighted WhatsApp’s troubles in Brazil, where authorities arrested a Facebook executive on March 1. This was after WhatsApp had told investigators that it lacked the technical ability to provide messages sent by drug traffickers. WhatsApp already offers Android and iPhone users encrypted messaging. 

As per the report, Facebook, Google, and Snapchat may also be working to improve the encryption provided by their services. Facebook is planning to improve the security of Messenger and offer encryption on voice calls. Snapchat is also said to be working on a secure messaging system, while Google is looking into encrypted email technology. All this focus on encryption and security comes after Apple’s battle with the FBI in which Apple refused to grant the agency access to the iPhone belonging to the accused in the San Bernardino shooting. 

Google adds 2 new search features for ICC World T20 2016

In a bid to cash in on the ongoing ICC World T20 tournament, Google has announced 2 new search features on its platform - fresh content directly from your favorite cricket players, personalities and commentators, and a new live sports commentary panel.

According to a recent post by Google, “You’ll now be able to hear from your favorite cricketers more easily. Now if you search for Ravindra Jadeja, in addition to the news articles, tweets and links you’re used to seeing in Google Search, you’ll also see posts, match photos, or videos directly from him.”

As far as the live sports commentary is concerned, Google says, “Now, when you search for cricket and ICC World Twenty20 related queries like “T20” or team names during and after matches, you’ll see real-time commentary on the match from a range of cricket stars. That way you can catch Akash Chopra’s most recent quip or Boria Majumdar’s anecdotes on cricketing history. These commentary panels will launch just in time for today’s highly anticipated India vs New Zealand match and will be available for the ICC T20 games listed below.”

Google is only making these new search features live during the ICC World T20 2016. These are followed by the launch of score updates and match schedules in Search last week.

Below are all the matches and players for which the new Google search and commentary features will apply.

Google Now may soon work offline

The Google Now voice assistant on Android phones may work offline soon. A team of engineers from Google recently published a paper, demonstrating how they had used voice commands on a smartphone, with a 13.5% error rate, on a Nexus 5 with 2GB of RAM and 2.2 GHz processor. The paper demonstrates a lightweight speech-recognition program being run on a smartphone. Speech recognition programs like Google Now, Siri and Cortana all depend on cloud based systems right now. Interestingly, Google Now’s error rate, using the cloud-based system, is at around 8%.

If speech recognition is available for offline use, it would enable companies to make the feature faster on smartphones, since the voice data will not have to be sent back to Google’s servers. In addition, it may also be more power efficient and should enable new features for smartphones. That said, being offline, it would presumably mean that the various Search-based enquiries will not be available. You can read the entire paper published by the engineers, here.

Google has been making big progress in artificial intelligence and machine learning recently. DeepMind Technologies, a UK-based Google-owned company, recently demonstrated the power of its AlphaGo AI, by beating world champion Lee Seedol in one-on-one competition.

Microsoft announces Xbox and PlayStation cross-play

Microsoft has announced support for cross-network play that will allow Xbox and PlayStation gamers to play together. Chris Charla, Director of ID@Xbox said on Xbox Wire, “in addition to natively supporting cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 games that use Xbox Live, we’re enabling developers to support cross-network play as well. This means players on Xbox One and Windows 10 using Xbox Live will be able to play with players on different online multiplayer networks – including other console and PC networks.”

Microsoft’s support for cross-platform will not only allow Xbox and PlayStation gamers to play together, but will also allow PC games to join in on the fun. However, Microsoft has only enabled support for the feature, and there currently aren’t many games that support it. The company is hoping that more developers will support the feature in the future and release games that allow users to play multiplayer gamers with their friends who use different consoles. Currently, Psyonix’s Rocket League is one of the first games to support the feature any allows Xbox One and PC players to play together.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Mini may launch to compete with iPhone SE

Samsung may be planning to launch a Galaxy S7 Mini to compete with the 4-inch iPhone SE. According to a report by Taiwanese website Apple Daily, the handset will sport similar hardware as its bigger sibling, albeit with a smaller screen. The phone is tipped to sport a 4.6-inch display with a 720p resolution. It may be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 or Exynos 8890 processor with 3GB of RAM. The report also mentions that the device itself will be 9.9mm thick and it might come with a 12MP primary camera with a 3x optical zoom.

Apple is expected to launch the 4-inch iPhone SE during its event on March 21. The device is expected to sport an A9 processor with 1GB of RAM. It might also come with a 12MP iSight camera with support for Live Photos. However, the phone might not come with 3D Touch. Apple may also launch a 9.7-inch iPad Pro alongside the iPhone SE. The tablet is tipped to come with a quad-speaker setup and a Smart Connector. Previous reports have suggested that the tablet might come with a 12MP camera and a flash.

NASA invites ISRO for possible collaboration towards Mars mission

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has invited the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for a possible international collaboration towards a future Mars mission. Many other space agencies from different countries are also expected to attend the meeting, which is scheduled to be held in Washington next month.

Jakob van Zyl, Associate Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was delivering a lecture on the space agency’s Mars mission and its finding on the planet at the American Center in New Delhi. He told PTI, “We are looking to send astronauts to Mars. In order to do that, you need certain robotic missions to begin with. Early next month, there will be a meeting in Washington. The Isro has also been invited for the meeting to discuss the future collaborations for the mission to Mars. We think it will be more of an international consortium. There are potential opportunities to collaborate in future.”

ISRO’s low-cost Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, was successfully placed in Mars’ orbit back in 2014. In doing so, ISRO became the first space organisation to successfully reach Mars at first attempt. It is also the fourth space agency to have a successful Mars mission.

Idea partners with Ericsson to expand its 4G LTE services

Idea has partnered with Ericsson to deploy its 4G LTE networks across select circles in India. This deployment includes Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, the North East and Himachal Pradesh, and will serve more than 40 million subscribers. The agreement also includes the transformation of Idea’s existing mobile infrastructure across nine circles for 2G, and five circles for 3G services. The company did not disclose the financial details of the deal.

Idea has already launched 4G LTE services in eight telecom circles, and is looking to expand to 750 towns across 10 circles by June 2016. Himanshu Kapania, CEO, Idea Cellular says, “We are committed to offering our customers the best possible mobile experience. Transforming our 2G and 3G network will enable us to offer optimized mobile data and better smartphone performance, while our LTE deployments will take the customer experience on Idea Cellular’s networks to the next level.”

Airtel has already launched its 4G services across India, while Vodafone is in the midst of expanding its recently-launched 4G LTE services across Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. Reliance Jio also launched its 4G services in December 2015, initially for its in-house employees.

Xiaomi Mi 5 launch presentation slides leaked

Slides from the official launch presentation of the Xiaomi Mi 5 have reportedly been leaked on a Chinese forum. According to the slides, there will be two variants of the device, one with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, while the other will come with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The phone may also come with a 5.2-inch Full HD display and may be powered by a 2.2GHz Snapdragon 820 SoC, with an Adreno 530 GPU. Other specifications shown in the leaked slides include NFC and a USB Type-C port and Quick Charge 3.0, which will reportedly be able to charge the battery by 80% in 34 minutes. At the back, a 26MP camera sensor is mentioned, with an f/1.7 aperture lens, dual-LED flash and phase-detection autofocus. The slides do not include information about other specifications like the battery or the front camera. Earlier, reports have suggested that the phone may come with a 3600mAh battery and an 8MP front-facing camera.

Earlier this month, Xiaomi President Bin Lin shared a couple of pictures taken by the Xiaomi Mi 5, on his Weibo account. The images demonstrated good colours and impressive amounts of detail, and the camera is expected to have good autofocus capabilities, since it managed to capture a bird within flight.

Islamic State's reach stalled on Twitter, thanks to crackdown

The Islamic State’s reach on Twitter has been reducing over recent months, says a report from the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. According to the report, the extremist group’s English-language reach has been stalled, thanks to increased efforts against its digital proselytizers. They have often used Twitter to recruit and radicalise people, said the study. Further, the crackdown has also halted the viral reach of specific users, the report said. Easily discoverable English accounts that were sympathetic towards the Islamic State has usually under a thousand, and these users usually limited their activities to interacting with each other, found the report.

Twitter had earlier come under scrutiny for having a lax approach towards policing content on its network, especially since companies like Facebook had become much more active in this direction. The micro-blogging social network finally announced, recently, that it had taken down over 125,000 terrorism-related accounts on its platform since the middle of 2015. Most of these accounts were linked to the Islamic State. Twitter had also said that while it does take down accounts reported by other users, it has also increase the size of its teams that monitor and respond to these reports, hence decreasing its response time “significantly”

Apple planning to retracts iPhone 4s & iPhone 5c from India: reports

According to a report by Economic Times, Apple is withdrawing its iPhone 4s and iPhone 5c models from the Indian market, in a bid to increase their Average Selling Price in the country. The iPhone 4s has been selling in India anywhere between Rs 12,000 - Rs. 16,000, whereas the iPhone 5c can be bought for as low as Rs. 20,000.

With this move, Apple may be looking to completely exit the sub-20K smaretphone market in India. Although no official statement has been made by Apple yet, analysts feel that Apple is doing so to fix its dipping avergae selling price.

Since there has been no word from the company on the timeline by which it will phase out both the devices, currently, both the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5c are available for purchase on ecommerce websites. It is expected that sellers on ecommerce websites such as Amazon and Flipkart will now start pricing the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5c higher, before Apple completely halts their shipment. 

Because of their sub-20K pricing, both the iPhones have been quite popular in India. The iPhone 4s comes with a 3.5 inch display and runs on Apple's A5 chipset whereas The iPhone 5c comes with a 4 inch display and runs on the A6 chipset. 

Samsung unveils Exynos 7 Octa 7870 chipset for mid-range smartphones

Samsung has unveiled the Exynos 7 Octa 7870 chipset that is designed for the next generation of mid-range smartphones. The company hasn’t revealed much about the chipset except for the fact that it uses Samsung’s own 14nm FinFet process. This process is also used in high-end flagship chipsets like the Exynos 7420 and 8890 as well as in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor.

The chipset was earlier spotted on Galaxy J7 (2016), whose specifications were leaked on GeekBench and GFXBench. As per the listing, the chipset comes with a 1.7Ghz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU and a Mali-T830 GPU. Last year, it was reported that the company was working on a  separate high-end chipset called the Exynos 8870 that will be supplied to other smartphone manufacturers. The chipset may be a slightly less powerful version of the chipset in the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones, the Exynos 8890. It was also reported that Samsung has purchased a semiconductor Electronic Design Automation tool, which may help it start manufacturing 10nm chipsets before its competitors. In addition, reports suggest that Apple has signed a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the sole manufacturing of the iPhone 7’s chipset. Earlier iPhone chipsets were manufactured by TSMC and Samsung.

China's 'Fast' telescope project will lead to relocating 9000 people

In 2011, China began its work on Fast (Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope), a massive telescope unit that will aid our quest for life on the outer fringes of the universe. Fast came at a price of £127 million, and when finished later this year (by September, as per targets), will become the world’s largest observatory telescope, with a diameter of 500 metres. All of this sounds fantastic and is sure to excite the dream of E.T. life hunters, but this comes at a price. Come September 2016, and the Chinese government will force nearly 9,000 local residents to relocate from the nearby areas of Guizhou, China.

The Xinhua news agency reported the news of the impending evacuation yesterday, stating that homes that will be forced to relocate will be given a compensation of £1,275 (12,000 Yuan) by the eco-migration bureau of the Government. This move is being undertaken to ensure a safe electromagnetic environment, and prevent damage to individuals exposed to radiation. Such moves, however, are not unheard of by the Chinese government. Previously, hydro-electric dam projects and poverty alleviation schemes have led to similar relocation drives imposed by the government, leading to the affected residents claiming that they are often poorly compensated.

The Fast telescope, however, is being looked at as a scientific achievement. Once functional, the movable panels of the telescope will reflect signals from distant corners of the universe and gather them into a singular 30-tonne Retina source. As much as progress for progress's sake must be encouraged, the issue of sudden relocation being imposed upon local residents is definitely a point of concern. Necessary sacrifice, or overconfident technology?