Tech News LIVE Updates May 21: Catch all the tech news of the day right here. (Image: Reuters)
Tech News LIVE Updates May 21: At indianexpress.com we have begun a tech news live blog to provide our readers with all the latest updates related to the tech world. Amid the lockdown, internet service providers are offering a number of benefits to their customers including the telecom operators as well as the broadband service providers.
Excitel has announced extensions to its ongoing Work From Home data plans that come with unlimited FUP over the data usage. The broadband service provider also achieved 25,000 new connections across India during the first phase of Lockdown, which is the most number of new connections installed by an ISP during the period of COVID 19 restrictions.
Meanwhile, Truecaller has revealed a new app and Facebook and Twitter have rolled out new features that qualify as major changes to the platforms. More about them below:
Shinco, an Indian TV manufacturer has started shipping its TVs in Red, Orange and Green zones (Except for contaminants zones) according to the government guidelines of Lockdown 4.0. The company is currently only shipping its devices via Amazon's No Contact delivery service.
The company in a press release claim to ensure strict social distancing precautions while operating, delivering and installation of the products at customers homes.
Here are the safety guidelines that the company is making its technicians follow when making an on-site visit to a customers house to install its TVs delivered by Amazon or to service a TV:
1. All technicians should wear masks, gloves and must kee hand sanitizers with them.
2. The technicians must wash their hands before and after their work.
3. Technicians will have their temperatures taken at the factory before they are assigned a job.
4. No signature will be required from the customer after the job is completed. They will only need to provide the technician with the OTP that the company sent to them when they requested the service.
5. If a customer looks unwell, the technician can refuse service and leave.
6. The technicians are not allowed to use the doorbells, instead, they will have to call up the customers on their smartphones to let them inside the house.
7. The technician, the helper and the customer will be required to maintain a distance of at least three feet from each other.
8. The technician will have to leave out his belongings like a helmet outside of the customer home.
9. The technician will have to remove his shoes outside of the room or will have to wear a show cover while entering the customer's room.
10. The technician will be required to have the Aarogya Setu app installed on his phone, with the Internet, Bluetooth and GPS Location turned on at all times.
Twitter is rolling out a new feature that will make it easy for users to control their tweets and avoid unwanted replies. The feature has been made available to select users who are now able to control who can respond to their tweets and who cannot. Once the feature is available to everyone, users can select who is allowed access to reply among everyone, only people you follow and only people you mention. The feature is similar to Facebook's custom option for posts that allows users to select who can see their post and who cannot. Read more about it here.
Facebook has introduced a new feature for Indian users that lets them lock their profiles. The lock will not only prevent people not friends with them from seeing any photos or posts but also restrict expanding the profile picture of the user. The feature is aimed at ensuring the safety of women users in the country. Men can also opt for the locked profile feature to save their profile and profile picture form prying eyes. Read more about it here.
Truecaller has rolled out a new version of its Android and iOS app, which is not both faster and cleaner. The idea behind the update is to streamline its users calls history, SMS, and Instant Messages conversations into a single tab. Apart from the revamp, the company has also introduced two new features along with the update: a full-screen caller ID and Smart SMS.
With the revamp, the main screen now acts as a hub where the user can see all of his recent activities. Now, a user can simply enter the conversation to make a voice call, VoIP call, chat, text and more.
Truecaller has said that in the future it plans to add travel information, courier delivery details and more.
To know more about the updated Truecaller app and what the company is planning to do as it goes forward click here.
According to CMR’s Tablet PC Market Report for Q1 2020, tablet sales saw a sharp decline of 24 per cent in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It states that the initial impact was due to the supply chain challenges in China and then due to the muted domestic demand owing to the onset of lockdown in India.
Lenovo managed to retain its first place due to opportunities in the Healthcare and education sector. Samsung still in the second position with a 12 per cent decline. And lastly, Ball was able to regain the third position with an 11 per cent market share.
According to the report, Q2 2020 will see a further decline of 5 to 10 per cent. However, it also said that the market is anticipated to pick-up in H2 2020.
At the Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2020, Huawei said that it is looking to working with its partners to explore the industry digitization market and help customers accelerate digitization and intelligence processes. During the summit, it also stated that the company will build the foundation for digital China and the core for a digital world based on "New Connectivity, New Computing, New Platforms, and New Ecosystems".
The company says that it has great confidence to achieve its challenging new goals, due to the external environmental changes. These changes include the development and unified application of new ICT technologies (5G, AI and cloud computing). Another factor is that the current COVID-19 pandemic has made governments and enterprises around the world realise that digital transformation is necessary to grow.
Huawei said that its major focus going forward would be helping companies digitize their information, digitize the transportation system and digitize the financial sector.
Honor X10 priced at Yuan 1,899 (approximately Rs 20,200) for the 6GB RAM/64GB storage variant, at Yuan 2,199 (approximately Rs 23,400) for the 6GB RAM/128GB storage variant and Yuan 2,399 (approximately Rs 25,500).
It sports a 6.63-inch full HD+ display with a 2400x1080 pixels. The device is powered by the company's own Kirin 820 processor. It runs Google's Android 10 operating system with its own MagicUI 3.1.1 skin on top. All of this is backed by a 4,300mAh with support for 22.5W fast charging.
The device comes with a triple camera setup on the back, consisting of a 40MP primary sensor paired with an 8MP secondary sensor and a 2MP tertiary sensor. On the front, it features a motorised pop-up selfie camera with a resolution of 16MP.
On Tuesday Xiaomi officially announced Global MIUI 12 skin for Android and it will be available for several Redmi and Mi smartphones every soon. During phase 1 around June end phones including Mi 9T, Mi 9T Pro, Redmi K20 and Redmi K20 Pro. During phase 2 in phones including Redmi Note 7, Redmi Note 7 Pro, Redmi Note 8 Pro, Redmi Note 9, POCO F1, Mi 10 Pro, Mi 10, POCO F2 Pro, POCO X2, Mi 10 Lite, Mi Note 10, Mi 8, Mi 8 Pro, Mi MIX 3, Mi MIX 2S, Mi 9 SE, Mi 9 Lite, Redmi Note 7S, Mi Note 3, Mi MIX 2, Mi MAX 3, Mi 8 Lite, Redmi Y2, Redmi S2, Redmi Note 5, Redmi Note 5 Pro, Redmi 6A, Redmi 6, Redmi 6 Pro, Redmi Note 6 Pro, Redmi Y3, Redmi 7, Redmi 7A, Redmi Note 8, Redmi Note 8T, Redmi 8, Redmi 8A, Redmi 8A Dual, Redmi Note 9s, Redmi Note 9 Pro, Redmi Note 9 Pro Max, and Mi Note 10 Lite will get MIUI 12. Read here for more details.
Realme recently confirmed that it will be launching its first-ever smart TV on May 25 in India. The company has revealed a few key features of the upcoming television on its official website via a teaser poster. The teaser reveals that the TV will come with a bezel-less design, Chroma Boost Picture Engine for image processing, a 64-bit MediaTek processor, a quad-speaker system with an output of 24W and support for Dolby Audio. Apart from these, the company has not revealed any other specifications for the upcoming TV.