Author: Shivaank Rana

BlackBerry 10 Demoed on Z10 At CES

It’s coming — soon. But we wouldn’t miss one last opportunity to see BlackBerry 10 before it is announced on January 30th. There are still plenty of features of the OS that we haven’t yet seen and RIM is doing a good job of keeping some secrets under wraps until launch day.

Forbes got a great look at the almost-finished OS running on the Dev Alpha B hardware, which we believe to be quite similar in specs to the finished hardware, which we know as BlackBerry Z10. As we’ve seen before, the exciting things (that have already been revealed) are the keyboard, the Peek and Flow gestures for notifications, and the centralized Hub where all your important content is stored.

As we’ve heard before, the keyboard has heat-mapping which will learn over time where you most commonly hit keys in error and adjust accordingly to increase accuracy.

We’re getting excited as Launch Day approaches, and can’t wait to try out the device for ourselves. What do you think? Does this whet your appetite for the upcoming BlackBerry 10 phone?

[Mobile Syrup, Crackberry]

January 9, 2013
Bajaj Launches New Discover 100T

Bajaj Auto on Monday launched its new 100 cc motorcycle Discover 100T at the top end of the mass market category to compete with Honda Dream Yuga and Hero Passion Pro for a volume of around 125,000 units a month.

The Discover 100T is powered by a 100cc engine which delivers a peak power of 10.2PS at 9000rpm and a peak torque of 9.2Nm at 6500rpm. Bajaj proudly says that the Discover 100T is the first 100c bike in the world to feature the 4-valve DTS-I technology and will offer an impressive mileage of 87kmpl.

[quote]

“We invested Rs. 20-30 crore on the platform and made an additional investment of Rs. 6 crore for the new bike. We will launch another model on the same platform later this year,” said Bajaj.

Bajaj has bigger models in its Discover and Pulsar series of bikes slated for launch later this year. “We have reasons to hope that our market share will go up from the current 26%,” he said.

[/quote]

The bike features gas-filled Nitrox shock suspension. Its standard features include electric start, auto choke and DC headlamps. The Discover 100T will be available in four colours viz., flame red, brilliant blue, black red and black blue.

The vehicle is currently produced at company’s Auarangabad facility and within a fortnight the Pantanagar plant will also start production, Bajaj said adding this particular product has seen an investment of Rs 5-6 crore only.

January 8, 2013
Jabra Announces Revo Wireless Stereo Headset

Jabra has just announced a new suite of corded and wireless stereo headphones said to “elevate music and multimedia experiences to a new dimension of sound performance”. The headphones, Revo Wireless, Revo corded and Vox in-ear earphones, are designed for “hard-wearing, everyday use and portability”.

Basically, the Jabra Revo Wireless and Revo headphones are made from aluminium frame. Steel hinges and a shatter-proof headband also adds flexibility.

[quote]”Headphones are subjected to a lot of wear and tear so consumers are demanding that they are designed to withstand the rigours of regular use,” noted Anne Raaen Rasmussen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Division at Jabra. “Jabra’s line of stereo products has been tested to the extreme, undergoing drop tests, bend tests, fold tests, cable tests, dirt tests and more. These headphones are built to last, without sacrificing style or sound quality.”[/quote]

On the other hand, the Jabra Vox is smaller and is built from premium-grade materials. It comes with tangle-free cables and is also made to last. These headphones are Jabra’s latest additions to its lifestyle music category, and they embody the company’s ultimate balance in design, ease-of-use, and outstanding sound quality that music lovers are looking for. Jabra has also integrated Dolby’s Plus technology into its latest stereo headphones which will perfectly go in par with Jabra’s exclusive Sound App for iOS and Android devices. Jabra’s flagship stereo headphones will be coming in Q2 this year.

January 8, 2013
Polaroid iM1836 Android Jelly Bean Mirrorless Camera Introduced!
The first Android based mirrorless interchangeable lens camera from Polaroid (iM1836) is now official and it is indeed produced by Sakar as previously reported.

Following in the footsteps of Nikon and Samsung, Polaroid’s is the first with interchangeable lenses. The camera runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and has an 18.1MP sensor that can capture 1080p at 60fps.

Of course, it is WiFi-enabled and has Bluetooth connectivity for easy transfer between devices, and is significantly smaller than the Galaxy Camera, with a 3.5-inch multitouch display.

Not only does the Polaroid iM1836 better spec’d than its immediate competition, but it will come in at $399, some $200 cheaper than the Galaxy Camera, and includes a 10-30mm equivalent kit lens.

The Polaroid iM1836 camera looks like fantastic value, especially since it will be compatible with any micro 4/3 lens with an adapter.

Technical specs of the Polaroid iM1836 :
- Powered By Android 4.0 (JellyBean)
- Included 10mm-30mm Lens
- 3.5″ Touch screen LCD Display
- 18.1 Mega Pixel
- Built in Peer 2 Peer WIFI (iM1232W)
- Headphone Output
- HDMI Type B Output
- Face Auto Exposure
- HD Video
- Panoramic Pictures
- ISO up to 3200
- Blink Detection
- SD card Slot
- Compact Micro 4/3 Body
- Pop up Flash
[Engadget]
January 8, 2013
Qualcomm Unveils Next-Gen Snapdragon 800, 600 Series Processors

Not to be outdone by Nvidia’s new Tegra 4 processor, Qualcomm has unveiled its latest high-end mobile-friendly chipsets at CES 2013, with the Snapdragon 800 promising to bring UHD video and mind-boggling battery performance to phones and computers later this year.

Qualcomm says that the high-end Snapdragon 800 will deliver 75 per cent better battery performance than the current top-end S4 Pro.

But the real story here is the new Krait 400 CPU inside the Snapdragon 800: not only does it support four cores at up to 2.3Ghz each, but it utilizes a new 28nm High-K/Metal Gate manufacturing process that ensures the lowest power consumption at high performance numbers. Qualcomm promises much lower latency than previous Snapdragon S4 chips, and improved L2 cache performance.

Qualcomm’s also managed to fit asynchronous SMP architecture in, which ekes the best possible performance from each core without needing specialist cores.

The new chip also handles 4K Ultra High Definition encoding and decoding, and can project resolutions of up to 2560×2048, as well as stream video wirelessly at 1080p to a Miracast-compatible television or dongle.

Somewhat overshadowed by the 800 but still impressive is the new Snapdragon 600, intended for mid-to-high-end mobile devices and offering rich graphics and 40 per cent better battery performance than the S4 Processor that’s around now.

It comes with a new Krait 300 quad-core CPU with speeds up to 1.9GHz, a speed-enhanced Adreno 320 GPU and support for LPDR3 memory.

The Snapdragon 600 should also hit phones sooner than the 800, expected by the second quarter of the year (April-June).

[Tech Radar]

January 8, 2013
Vizio Launches New Tegra 4 10-Inch, Tegra 3 7-Inch Android 4.2 Jelly Bean Tablet

Image Courtesy : The Verge

Today, Vizio announced a duo of tablets running stock Android. The first is most similar to the Nexus 10: a 10″ display with the same retina-melting 2560×1600 resolution, only this one is powered by a Tegra 4 processor.

The new Tegra 4 System on a Chip was just unveiled recently in Las Vegas. Tegra calls it “the world’s fastest mobile processor.” Among its features are the following: Cortex A15, four power cores that will have a maximum speed of 1.9GHz plus a companion core, 28nm manufacturing process, and HPL low-power with high-K metal gate.

Image Courtesy : The Verge

According to The Verge, the tablet is “much more than your average iPad knockoff.” For one thing, it is noticeably light and thin, which gives the impression that it is smaller than the Nexus 10 or the iPad, two devices which have similar measurements in terms of screen size.

Image Courtesy : The Verge

For its operating system, the tablet features stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, that is, without any custom skin overlaid. It also comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity as well as 32GB of internal storage. Two cameras are onboard, as well, although the capacities of their image sensors are still unknown.

The reports coming in from CES haven’t actually mentioned the memory card, but there isn’t much of a chance for such a slot not to be included in the blueprint. Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi wireless connectivity are present as well.

Image Courtesy : The Verge

The seven-inch Vizio tablet is powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 SoC and has an IPS Display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, 16GB of storage, 1.2-megapixel webcam on the front, and runs stock Android Jelly Bean. Once it will be available the version of the OS will be 4.2.

Image Courtesy : The Verge

At the moment there is no exact information regarding pricing or availability for the two Vizio tablets. But boy are we excited!

[The Verge]

January 7, 2013
Vizio Announces Windows 8 AMD Tablet

Flat-screen TV manufacturer Vizio jumped into computers in 2012, launching its Windows 8 tablet at CES.

The Vizio Tablet is an 11.6-inch slate that will pack a dual-core 1GHz AMD z60 processor, a 1080p display and 2GB of RAM. Other specs include 64GB SSD storage, 2MP front cam, micro-HDMI, and micro-USB.

The Advanced Micro AMD Device’s Z60 processor allow Vizio’s tablet to run older programs on Windows 8, such as Apple’s iTunes.

One of the biggest negative to Windows hardware over the years is that many vendors choose to fill their devices up with tons of bloatware that make them slow and, well, annoying.

Rob Kermode, head of the Irvine, Calif., company’s PC and mobile device efforts, acknowledged that Vizio’s offerings were coming months after some other companies had released their Windows 8 tablets in late October. But, he said, Vizio chose to wait until the Consumer Electronics Show to make announcements because it was watching how customers would respond.

The good news here is that the Vizio Tablet PC has a “Microsoft Signature” software install. For those that don’t know, that means it is a clean installation with no added bloatware. This is perfect for consumers looking for a pure Windows 8 experience without vendor-specific add-ons like start menus and vendor software.

An AMD processor and 1080p display certainly sounds like a unique match. So when is it coming? Unfortunately we have no specific launch date or even pricing at this point.

By comparison, Microsoft’s own Windows 8 Surface tablet sells for around $1,000, and features an 8-inch screen and 720p HD.

January 7, 2013
Apple App Store Crosses 40 Billion Downloads, 500 Million Active Accounts

Apple announced on Monday that the App Store has surpassed 40 billion downloads. That’s unique downloads excluding re-downloads and updates. Nearly half of that came in last year alone. The company also says it has over 500 million active users, and surpassed over 2 billion downloads during the month of December.

There are over 775,000 apps available in the store, for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. Apple says it has paid the developers of those apps over $7 billion.

[quote]”Developers have made over seven billion dollars on the App Store, and we continue to invest in providing them with the best ecosystem so they can create the most innovative apps in the world,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, in a statement.[/quote]

Apple launched its app store in 2008. The store hit the 10 billion downloads mark in early 2011. In March 2012, Apple announced that more than 25 billion apps have been downloaded.

The last valuable figure Google gave for its Play Store was 25 billion downloads, encompassing 675,000 apps. Google’s marketplace launched after the App Store, but the search giant does not disclose how much money it has paid to developers.

January 7, 2013
Hashtag Declared 2012 Word of the Year

These days it seems like everyone goes around declaring the “word of the year,” but the tradition began with the American Dialect Society, which met last night in Boston for its 23rd annual Word of the Year vote. It’s a spirited event, where the members of the society—a group of linguists, lexicographers, and other professional language scholars—argue for their choices.

The American Dialect Society has selected its Word of the Year for 2012, and the winner was a bit of a surprise. It wasn’t fiscal cliff, the ubiquitous term in the news from Capitol Hill. And it wasn’t YOLO, the youthful acronym for “You Only Live Once” that quickly rose (and just as quickly fell) this past year. No, the ultimate champion was that mainstay of the Twittersphere, hashtag.

A hashtag is a convention used on Twitter to organize conversations, mark topics, or make witty commentary, created by appending a word or phrase with the hash symbol (#) preceding it.Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as “vocabulary item” — not just words but phrases. The words or phrases do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year.

This isn’t the first time an Internet term has gotten the nod: “Tweet” was declared word of the year by the group in 2010, while “Google” was then-named the word of the decade. In a nod to the worldwide Occupy movements, the group declared “Occupy” to be last year’s word of the year.

January 6, 2013
Lenovo To Split Into Lenovo Business Group, Think Business Group To Help Compete With Apple

Lenovo Group today announced that the company internally will have an organizational structure adjustment. The company will be divided into two major business groups: the Lenovo business group (LBG) and Think Business Group (TBG) after the adjustment. The adjustment will take effect on April 1.

Lenovo Business Group, responsible for mid-range desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones and TVs aimed at average consumers, will be headed by Liu Jun, senior vice-president (mobile internet digital home).

Despite some attempts to change course, the Lenovo brand is still only playing well in the mainstream and low-end markets; whereas the Think brand is his company’s best asset in the high-end market, and the only brand that can compete with Apple in the high-end market, Yang said in the email.

Think Business Group will be headed by Peter Hortensius, senior vice-president (product group). Yuanqing says this group will compete with the likes of Apple for the top-spot in the high-end market.

According to a recent report from Digitimes, Lenovo intends to move notebook production in-house within five years. This plan may help the company get there.

[Engadget]

January 6, 2013
Report : Sony C530X ‘HuaShan’ To Come With Dual-Core 1.7 GHz Snapdragon S4 and 720p Display

Sometime in the middle of last month, the Sony C530X (otherwise known as the C5303 as well), which carries the code name HuaShan, was seen in an AnTuTu benchmark, where it was revealed to the world that the HuaShan will carry a 1.7GHz processor after picking up a not half bad score of 16,133 in the benchmark. Other than that, very little else was revealed concerning the smartphone, but its latest outing on GLBenchmark has lifted the curtain a wee bit more.

Little else was known at that stage, but an outing on GLBenchmark reveals a few more details, as spotted by the Xperia Blog.

The Sony C530X (C5302, C5303, C5306) will be armed with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MSM8960T chipset with a 1.7GHz dual-core processor and Adreno 320 graphics. The benchmark also reveals that HuaShan will have a 720 x 1280 display with onscreen touchscreen buttons. The handset tested was running Android 4.1.2. We don’t know whether HuaShan will make an appearance at CES next week, but if not, MWC in February is a dead cert.

Beginning last year, Sony had decided to use a different nomenclature for naming its devices. We saw many devices in the Xperia series differentiated with alphabets like U, S, J and so on. But these didn’t clearly indicate what the user should expect from the handset.

January 6, 2013
Sony Xperia Z Video Stills Show Off Water Resistance And Skeletal Frame Structure

Sony’s upcoming Xperia Z (or Yuga), the company’s entry into the 5-inch smartphone space, will reportedly sport a “skeleton frame structure” and HDR video recording capabilities. Will these be the kind of features that get Sony into the same race as Samsung and Apple?

According to a leaked promotional video, the Xperia Z has a “skeleton frame” and is water/dust resistant. In addition, it has an Exmor RS image sensor and can take images and record video in HDR.

The so-called skeleton frame is composed of individual components, according to Sony, upon which the phone is assembled. In addition, there’s an OptiContrast panel, a 13-megapixel Exmor RS camera, a full HD Reality display, and the ability to both take images and record videos in the HDR mode. Also demonstrated is its water-resistant body, with images showing the handset covered in large droplets of water.

As we previously mentioned, the Xperia Z is expected to launch alongside a slightly smaller Xperia ZL. The Xperia Z will feature a 5-inch 1080p display, 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 13MP camera, and what we hope is a huge battery.

According to leaked images, it is running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. So far, everything we’ve seen points to an exceptional, sleek handset.

Sony today sent out an email to subscribers informing them that something worth noticing was going to be announced in three days.. that’s during CES.. it’s very likely to be this device. We can’t wait!

[Xperia Blog]

January 6, 2013
Skoda Confirms 6 Launches For 2013

Skoda has confirmed it is to launch six new models by the end of 2013.

The Rapid and the Octavia were teased repeatedly on the main Skoda fan page and the launches did not go unnoticed even with Facebook users who weren’t auto buffs. After all, who isn’t logging to Facebook today to keep a tab on their world?

Just before the year closed, Skoda’s French subsidiary uploaded one such image, teasing not one, but five launches for their country.

The first launch is that of the new Rapid, indicating the start of availability in the French market. The second launch is the Octavia sedan that rolled out last month, and the veil on the third launch covers the impending Octavia wagon variant.

The fourth, fifth and sixth launches could feature the Roomster facelift while photographs of the facelifted Yeti and Superb test prototypes spotted around the foothills of the Alps, characterizing the VisionD concept, confirm that they are waiting for their big days this year.

For the Indian market, 2013 could witness the launch of the new Octavia in the first half of the year, followed by facelifts of the Superb and Yeti towards the festival season.

For 2014 and 2015, Skoda should secretly be working on their version of the Taigun and the Up!-based sedan and not to forget the next generation Fabia and Yeti using the MQB platform.

Meanwhile, Skoda Auto India sales during the calendar year 2012 totaled 34,678 units as compared to 30,741 units in the same period of 2011 resulting in 13% sales growth. This was a notable increase in sales, especially when considering tough and turbulent conditions being faced by auto companies in India.

“Despite challenging market conditions, Skoda India achieved growth of 13% on the strength of our strong product line-up. Skoda Rapid steered our sales for this year and will continue to be one of our prime offerings in the year ahead. We are confident that the Skoda range of products, anchored by our class-leading Skoda Superb at the top end and the acknowledged high-quality and value-for-money Skoda Fabia at the bottom end will continue to grow from strength to strength. Our approach for 2013 is to continue the focus on improving Skoda’s performance in all areas of business in order to enhance the experience our customers have with Skoda products and services”, says Mr Sudhir Rao, Managing Director, Skoda Auto India.

[Indian Autos Blog]

January 5, 2013
Report : Google Maps Never Supported Internet Explorer On Windows Phone 8

Microsoft’s complaint that Google is hoarding its YouTube metadata has fueled a new conspiracy theory: The search giant has pulled levers to prevent Windows Phones from accessing Google Maps. In reality, this phenomenon likely has little if anything to do with chicanery on Google’s part and everything to do with Microsoft’s reluctance to support the WebKit browser framework.

While Google Maps was never officially built for or supported by the Windows Phone platform, prior to this complaint, the service was accessible to a certain degree. Users of Windows Phone 7 and 8 both seem to be facing this issue.

Google released an explanation for the issue, saying that Google Maps rely on WebKit on mobile devices and Internet Explorer for Windows Phone does not utilise the rendering engine.

Microsoft, over the past few months, has publicly sparred with Google over its shutting down of Exchange Activesync support at the end of January. Microsoft expressed “disappointment” in the action and implored any affected users to transition to Outlook.com, its new (and excellent) mail offering. By turning off Activesync access (which applies to all platforms, not just Microsoft’s), Windows Phone users will not be able to sync Google contacts or calendars. Because Microsoft has yet to implement CalDAV and CardDAV support in its mobile OS, users will be out of luck by the end of the month.

Apple, on the other hand, will be unaffected by the change as it implemented the new calendar and contact sync standards in its latest version and has push support for mail via a native app. Android users, of course, will suffer no such issues with sync as their phones tie directly into Google’s activation servers.

While it’s currently assumed that the redirect is a bug and not the status quo going forward, we’ve yet to hear from Google on the issue.

January 5, 2013
WhatsApp Pushed Record 18 Billion Messages On December 31st

WhatsApp has a message for its users — a lot of them.

The mobile messaging service announced today that it set a WhatsApp record on New Year’s Eve, processing 18 billion messages on the last day of the year. The company said it delivered 7 billion inbound messages and 11 billion outbound messages, surpassing its previous record of 10 billion messages processed in one day back in August.

In comparison, Apple revealed in October that its iMessage text service had delivered about 300 billion texts sent by iOS users during the previous 12 months — an average of less than a billion a day.

WhatsApp is an ad-free, paid service intended to replace your text messaging plan. Generally it works out cheaper, particularly when sending messages overseas, because it uses WiFi or mobile networks to carry texts instead.

It’s available for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Phone and Nokia phones.

Its success hasn’t gone unnoticed – according to rumours published last year by Techcrunch and others WhatsApp might still be facing a potential acquisition by Facebook.

WhatsApp denies that Facebook has made an attempt to buy the service, but with this kind of success it can’t be out of the question that several companies would be sizing up a potential takeover.

January 4, 2013