It’s only been a little over six months since Apple started operations at Apple Music, and in that short span of time, this promising service has outdone expectations, as well as the previous market leader, Spotify. Apple Music now has over 11 million subscribers, along with 782 million iCloud users.
The new 11 million figure was mentioned by Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice Presidents, on John Gruber’s podcast, The Talk Show, published today. It should be noted at this point that it took Spotify, its main rival, 6 long years to reach its first 10 million milestone.
This is an interesting piece of information because Apple’s streaming service had faced a lot of flak at its launch owing to its bug ridden, and clustered interface. It was only after iOS 9 came in that many of these issues were cleared.
However, Apple Music is not where it ends for the Cupertino tech-giant. “Apple Video” is something else the company has up its sleeve. It’s the next big Apple project with many partners involved, such as ABC, CBS, and Fox. Apple already has a large library of movies and video on its iTunes Store, which can currently be only bought or rented.
Streaming is slowly becoming the preferred form of consumption of music, and is growing rapidly as people give up on downloads. In the US, demand for streaming has increased more than 50 per cent, with 317 billion songs being streamed last year.
Apple despite all of this has a long way to go before it comes close to overtaking Spotify. Spotify last reported its number of subscribers in June, and it is expected to have grown substantially since then. Back then it had 20 million paid members, and in total it reported 75 million users.
It’s time to say good-bye to one of the most popular photo editors of all times. Google has announced in an official blog post that Picasa would no longer work come this March. Following which, users would no longer be able to edit Picasa web albums post May. Google plans to shift its focus to Google Photos by shutting down the application.
“After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos.”
Users with a Picasa account can access their pictures using the Google Photos app. People who are not using this app can still access their albums and delete or edit them. The company will withdraw support for the Picasa desktop app on 15th March, 2016. For those who have the application on their systems already -it will continue to run just as it does right now, but there will be no further updates or developments.
Google ended the blog-post by way of an apology, “We apologize for any inconvenience this transition causes, but we want to assure you that we are doing this with the aim of providing the best photos experience possible.” Time to bid adieu indeed.
As Samsung prepares to take on the world with its flagship devices this year, this is the latest we have about its phablet Galaxy Note 6.
A Chinese Weibo account has posted some specifications of the Note 6 which mention a 12 MP camera, along with 5.8-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560X1440. Additionally, there is also a mention of 6 GB of RAM. The latter news does not come as a surprise because it was only a couple of months ago when Samsung had announced it 12 GB mobile DRAM chips. This opened the door for 6 GB smartphones in the near future because the 12Gb LPDDR4 enables 3 GB or 6 GB of mobile DRAM in a single package by simply using two chips and four chips respectively.
Currently, even the fanciest of Samsung phones do not go beyond 4 GB of RAM. However, a 6 GB phone sometime this year shouldn’t come as a surprise now that the official announcement about the technology has been already made.
Note 6 will be equipped with an S-pen (who saw that coming?) according to the leak, but there are no updates about the battery-life of the device. Watch this space for all the latest developments.
There is no end to the rumours being churned out about the iPhone 7 and more and more new updates continue to pour in. Latest in the series of speculations and expectations is that the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 may be replaced by an extra speaker.
Analysts speculate that the 3.5 mm headphone jack will be removed and an extra speaker will be added in its stead to improve the sound quality of the new iPhone. Analysts Blayne Curtis and Christopher Hemmelgarn believe that the speaker would be provided by Cirrus Logic
The analysts also speculate that unlike many other phones in the market, iPhone 7 will not employ dynamic noise cancellation, Apple fans might have to wait for the next iPhone for this feature. The smartphone would instead use a basic digital codec.
There is a huge list of rumours that have been going around for the longest time, and we are unsure as to which ones would materialise and which ones won’t. Hold your breath until we have more to go on with.
For a long time now, there have been rumours and speculations regarding HTC’s own version of a smartwatch. Back in July 2014, popular tipster Evan Blass revealed that HTC had ditched the idea of a smartwatch. Back then, the renders available were of a square-shaped Android Wear watch. Last year, Yusuf Catalkaya displayed a render of the HTC One W1 ‘Superwatch’ that had a BoomSound speaker on the front, but nothing much was spoken about it ever since.
However, a recent tweet by Evan Blass stated that the HTC smartwatch will be available for purchase before the end of April. This comes after the mild response towards leaked images of HTC’s upcoming One M10 flagship. Clearly, fans are not all that kicked about the smartphone that looks like it doesn’t bring too much to the table, specification and design wise.
From what we know about the smartwatch so far, the watch will feature a circular design and will be powered by Android Wear. All of this should be taken with a grain of salt until HTC confirms the rumours.
GFXBench, which in the past has been our trusted friend in leaking specifications of upcoming phones, has now revealed to the Internet the details of an unknown handset from the stables of LG.
The latest listing reveals that the device will come equipped with the recently announced Snapdragon 625 chipset, the first of its kind to be manufacfured using a 14nm process.
The listing further reveals that the handset will sport a 5.3-inch Quad HD display. The phone will come with a respectable 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory.
The new smartphone which looks to be a budget device at best will come with 8-megapixel shooter at the front and the back. Surprisingly, the listing claims that the phone will run on the outdated Android 4.4 platform.
The listing further reveals this model number of the phone which bears the mark of the upcoming LG G5 model number, hinting to this being a toned down lite version of the soon to be launched G5, in which case the phone coming with Android 4.4 makes no sense.
A smaller, affordable iPhone is just around the corner and fans are eagerly waiting to see the 4-inch iPhone 5se. In today’s Apple related news, rumours suggest that the iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3 will go on sale starting March 18.
If what the rumours are true, the sale of the devices will fall in the same week as the unveiling event which is scheduled to take place on the 15th. Though there hasn’t been any official confirmation, it looks like there will not be any pre-order period for the two devices.
The iPhone 5se will borrow the design language of the iPhone 5s and is expected to be powered by the A9 chipset, and come equipped with an 8 MP or 12 MP rear-facing camera and Live Photos. The handset will miss out on the 3D Touch feature. The display would be the same as on the last 4-inch iPhone, the 5c.
The iPad Air 3, on the other hand, is expected to feature a lot of the same features as the iPad Pro such as the Smart Connector, Apple Pencil support, and four speakers. The rear camera is said to come with LED flash – a first for an Apple tablet.
As contemporary existence becomes more and more technology-centric, there is another development to emphasise this movement further. UK’s Independent has announced that the paper will go out of print, after a long, flourishing career of 30 years. Instead, the platform would become a digital news portal with http://www.independent.co.uk and its associated sites.
The owner of The Independent and the Independent on Sunday newspapers, Evgeny Lebedev announced today. The last Independent issue would hit the stands on the 20th of March, while Independent on Sunday on the 26th of March. Following this, it will be a digital-only product sold to Johnston Press for £24 million.
Lebedev told his staff, “We faced a choice: manage the continued decline of print, or convert the digital foundation we’ve built into a sustainable, profitable future.”
Many employees would join Johnston Press while many would have to be laid off. However, it’s been further added that those who are “long-term casuals” as per their contract will receive two weeks’ pay for each year worked, along with their notice period.
It is indeed time to say goodbye, and perhaps go on a trip of nostalgia often associated with the forward movement of contemporary lifestyle owing to the changes ushered in by technology.
Hello, Destiny-fans. Right around the time when preparations for the Destiny‘s Valentine’s Day event are underway, there is a new update from the front. Developer Bungie informs that the much-anticipated, and delayed, sequel to the game is all set to arrive – wait for it -next year.
Along with this, the game is also set to get an update this Spring which would include a “significant” Light level increase, new gear and challenges. The official blog post further mentions a larger expansion later this year, and the biggest news of them all, a sequel to Destiny in 2017.
The developer had been quiet for a while as to the plan of action, leaving fans a little lost in terms of what to expect next from their favourite game. During the first year post Destiny‘s release, there had been a fairly clear blue-print provided to players about the next stages of development. However, the same blueprint had been missing from the scene lately. Consequently, this new update comes as a much-welcomed news for the gaming community.
Apple loves court-room drama because it clearly can’t keep itself out of them. The latest name to be added to the list of Apple lawsuits is Immersion. Immersion, another California based company, has taken Apple to court over what it claims is infringement of three patents related to haptic touch used in iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, Apple Watch and Apple Watch Sport Edition. Phew.
The patents include “Haptic Feedback System with Stored Effects” and “Method and Apparatus for Providing Tactile Sensations”. Additionally, two more Apple devices, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have led to the infringement of a third patent called “Interactivity Model for Shared Feedback on Mobile Devices.”
Apple devices have used haptic touch before Immersion’s patent. However, the company added an upgrade in its devices post the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, called “Taptic Engine” which provided them with 3D Touch/Force Touch.
“We will vigorously defend the intellectual property we have developed when it is infringed”, said Immersion in an official statement.
Immersion has a history of dragging other significant names of the tech world to the court. This includes AT&T, Microsoft, Motorola and Google. Before things turned sour between Immersion and Apple, there were rumours of the former actually working with the latter on haptic touch tech in its devices. But alas, now we all now how that ended.
The Chinese brand famous for its TV products and content has rebranded itself to reflect its entry into a wider range of businesses like smart cycles, internet-linked electric cars, and smartphones. LeEco has done exceptionally well in China and wants to bring the same magic to the Indian market with its budget handset the Le1s
With its significant branding and marketing, LeEco created quite the hype around the launches of the Le1s and the LeMax early this month. However after two flash sales and a lot of hype, does the Le1s make sense for you? And should you get in line to own one today? Let’s Find out!
Overview
The Le1s is an excellent purchase handset but does have a few let downs. It is possibly right there in the top region for the best handset around the 10k price bracket, and there is a good reason. The company, however, is so new that they launched themselves at the launch of the phone. A new name, a new product and with that a whole lot of new promises of delivering service without suffering to the consumer.
Build Quality and Design
From a build perspective, the Le1s is probably something that truly looks its part. All metal shell is brilliant; it was only a few months ago when an all-metal design was highly coveted. Today it seems to be easily available in the set price bracket. More than that the front glass also gets Gorilla Glass 3 for strength. The sides are polished and chamfered to give it that additional premium look that the phone deserves and gets. The buttons are tactile and also made of metal which gives this phone a re-assuring feel and finish.
The design is very modern and taken from the likes of Samsung flagships and the Apple iPhone. You will see hints of similar design in the handset throughout. it’s a little harder in the hand, and it does not feel nimble or soft. Despite sporting a larger display than the iPhone, the Le1s is slightly shorter and has more display to mass ratio, which seemed to have been a big selling point for the company at launch. The phone is available now in a silver color along with the gold variant you see in the pictures.
Hardware
The Le1s is spec’d out, with a list of hardware on paper that stumps any and many in this price bracket. The phone runs on a MediaTek Helio X10 Turbo clocked at 2.2 GHz on eight cores along with a VR6200 GPU, 3GB RAM with 32GB storage.
Specification
LeEco 1s
Display
5.5-Inch Full HD Bezel-less floating glass display
Resolution
1080 x 1920 pixels (~403 ppi pixel density)
Chipset
2.2 GHz MediaTek X10 Turbo
CPU
Octa-Core Helio X10
GPU
VR 6200
RAM
3GB DDR3
Front Camera
5 MP
Rear Camera
13 MP with F 2.0 aperture
Storage
32 GB ROM
Expandability
NA
Battery
3000 mAh (Embedded)
Connectivity
Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b, g, n, ac / Bluetooth 4.2 / NFC / Type-C USB
Operating System
Android OS 5.1 Lolipop with EUI Skin
Price
Rs 10,999
Display and Multimedia
The display on the Le1s is a 5.5 inch LCD with a full HD resolution, which is not such a great deal and now is more of a standard practice. But, what is different is the floating glass nature of the display along with an almost bezel-less design. which not only looks fantastic but also helps reduce wastage on the front of the device.
The display is bright, and the colours are sharp, levels of black are deep. The bezel-less screen makes the display look big although there is a black frame around the screen which sits on the edges – hence making it a bezel, but you won’t be complaining about that when the screen is turned off.
As far as the audio is concerned, the speakers are good enough, and the output from the earphone jack is great. The balance of the sound when listening to music is a little off and can be easily tweaked using an amp application. However, a balanced sound would have been nicer. Especially if you have decent headphones to use the Le1s with.
Camera and Photography
The front camera on the Le1s is a 5 MP snapper; it has a wide angle lens but its nowhere near what you get on Galaxy S6 and sister handsets. The rear camera is a 13 MP shooter, for the tech junkies it includes a ‘Blue Glass Infrared Filter’ along with a wide F2.0 aperture for good low light pictures.
The camera is good in dim light. However, the best part about a phone camera has to be the response of the shutter which is okayish in the Le1s. The color on the images is accurate, and the exposure mostly comes out spot on. You do get some manual controls but nowhere near a pro mode seen on some smartphones. The UI is mostly like the iOS camera UI and you do get some filters. Images tend to be blurry if you are not perfectly stable throughout the image capture process.
auto
close
pre filter
original
front camera
The Le1s shoots 4k UHD video which is brilliant for the price it costs. The video is quite smooth and lag free. With video too colours are accurate and frames sharp.
Overall the Le1s has a fantastic set of cameras for the price that the phone is available at. See some samples below.
Performance and UI
The UI on the Le1s is fast and responsive, The use of proprietary user interfaces usually slows down the handsets, but for the LeEco Le1s, this is not the case. The UI remains quite snappy through usage and handles multitasking well. Designed again to look a lot like iOS or MiUi whichever you prefer. No app drawer and simple, minimal elements. The UI Looks clean and is functional, takes a little time getting used to it, though.
The control center at the bottom and notification panel at the top is also very reminiscent of an iOS strategy. However, Android regulars will not appreciate the complex mix it takes to find the settings icon.
The device does not have microSD card expandability, which is a disappointment. Running out of the 32GB internal storage is pretty easy with 4K video and high-resolution images.
Running games on the Le1s is great, the display is a great size, and the performance of the handset is good. The phone automatically switches modes and depending on applications entered a “High-performance mode” when needed. Graphics and animations are excellent and for the price you really cannot ask for more
The mirror-faced fingerprint scanner on the back is fast at unlocking the device. The company promises 99.3% accuracy and .15 seconds flash recognization. So far the response time has been snappy with almost no error in recognition.
Phone Networks and Battery
The network and call quality remained healthy throughout our tests, with little or no call drops. LTE network is not bad and works well on the Le1S with excellent data download speeds.
Call quality complaints arise from poor microphones which do not let the audio pass through properly to the receiver on the other side of the call which means that the Le1s at the moment is not good at its core job, which is making phone calls.
Battery life is good, with the bundled quick charger and USB type C you truly get a fast charge in 15 minutes, leading up to usage for many hours. However, we are not sure if the battery will manage to do this six months from now.
Type C
Overall the battery will easily last you a day, but if you are planning to buy this phone, make sure you have spare USB type-c cables. Because if you forget your charger, you won’t easily find folks with a USB type-c charger to spare, not as easily with micro USB at least.
Talk Time: 6 Hours
Internet: 8-10 Hours
Music: 18 hours
Video: 6 Hours.
Conclusion
In a time of day when a lot of handset manufacturers make half promises and fewer delivieries, LeEco seems to want to stand out. Setting up 500+ service centers before launch was an excellent show of force. But how well will this service fall into play, would only be known once the consumers start facing problems. With any new company LeEco deserves a fair chance, and with a product like the Le1s it seems they are off to a great start.
The Le1s deserves an expandable store especially since everything on the handset works well including the cameras. The phone also needs a better microphone, and hopefully, LeEco can fix the issue with a quick software patch, the problem, however, seems to be a design flaw. The OTG storage should solve the problem for storage mongers. However, inbuilt access is always better.
With those two cons aside, the Le1s truly has a fantastic set of specs on paper and translated well into the physical product. For the moment, it is possibly the best handset in the price bracket of 10K.
Today we saw Qualcomm not just take the lid off it’s upcoming SoCs for mobile phones, but also along with it the company, take the opportunity to unveil its new range of processors for wearables. Qualcomm has aptly named it Snapdragon Wear 2100.
This is rather exciting news for smartwatch makers, and users alike. In the past manufacturers except Apple, and Samsung have had to use low end SoCs meant for mobiles in their wearables which led to improper management of energy, and wastage of scarce battery power.
Qualcomm sensing the need of the market has come out with a fix by introducing the Snapdragon Wear 2100 that is designed with wearables in mind.
The company claims that this dedicated solution will be 30% smaller in physical size than the S400, enabling more compact designs and thinner wearables. It will at the same time be 25% more power efficient than the S400 used in the Moto 360 2nd Gen.
The Snapdragon Wear 2100 SoC is a quad-core system with Cortex A7 running at up to 800MHz or 1.2GHz paired with an Adreno 304 GPU and 400MHz LPDDR3.
Qualcomm with the Wear 2100 will also be able to offer an integrated X5 modem for basic cellular connectivity. Two versions of the chip will be provided (Bluetooth/Wi-Fi only), the other – connected, with full 2G/3G/LTE cellular connectivity. The chip also supports NFC and GPS, and comes with Quick Charge 2.0 capabilities.
And just in case more proof was needed about how important this launch is -we have LG’s Wearables branch Vice President David Yoon’sword who indicated that the Korean giant is already working on smartwatches which will be powered by the Snapdragon Wear 2100, and will be launched later this year.
It was reported earlier that Google is working on a virtual reality headset quite similar to Samsung’s Gear VR. While speculators busy themselves pitting the two head-sets against each other, another development has occurred on the Google VR-front. If sources are to be believed, Google is expected to come out with a VR headset that would not require tethering to a computer or a smartphone. Being independent of these devices will definitely give the VR-headset an edge over its Samsung, HTC and Oculus counterparts.
The headset would be launched alongside the other Google VR headset expected to be in the same league as Gear VR, and therefore, providing strong competition to the Samsung device. It is also expected to arrive alongside a new version of Android which would make virtual reality the core of the operating system.
Virtual Reality seems to be the next big thing in the tech world, already making a stable base for itself in the mainstream. Needless to say, this update from Google is bound to get users excited all over. However, the arrival date of this Google device is a little unclear at this point. We can hopefully expect to see it sometime later this year.
In what will come as the strongest indication of the Apple Watch 2 launch being close, the original Apple Watch as of now is being sold by re-sellers for discounts as big as $100. The Apple Watch which started retail last year, has seen its prices being slashed drastically in the past weeks, hinting at what could be an earlier than expected March launch for the next iteration of the smartwatch.
Earlier reports had hinted at Apple sticking to its plans of launching the next iteration of the smartwatch in September, while releasing a major OS update along with multiple bands for the current watch in March, but after today’s move that looks less of a possibility.
According to latest data by Juniper Research, the Apple Watch is by far the most loved smartwatch in the world, constituting over 50% of smartwatch shipment in 2015. The Watch, which was globally released in April 2015, has overtaken Samsung’s Tizen powered Gear S2 which was launched in November last year. With such aggressive sales the company will look to get more Apple Watches out of their inventory before next month’s launch.
Honor’s recently launched Holly 2 Plus is all set to go on sale in India on 15th February midnight. It will come in three colour variants -Dark Grey, White and Gold and will be exclusively available with Amazon and Flipkart.
The phone sports a 5-inch HD display and is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core Mediatek MT6735P processor and Mali 720 GPU, paired with 2GB of RAM. It offers 16GB of built-in storage, microSD slot, and a massive 4,000 mAh battery.
The company says about the device in an official statement, “Holly 2 Plus is a smart phone specially designed for India market with dual SIM 4G support and also one of the only smart phone which supports 2G/3G/4G LTE and CDMA at this same time.”
This device also comes with Smart Power 3.0 and quick charge capability. It features a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front. Connectivity options include dual-SIM and 4G LTE support.
The Honor Holly 2 Plus is priced at Rs 8, 499. Find the complete specifications of the device below.
The latter news does not come as a surprise because it was only a couple of months ago when 
