Recently, Indian Govt. blocked about 59 Chinese apps including TikTok, CamScanner, UC Browser, ShareIt and others as part of the recent clash between India and China in the Himalyan borders.
Now, it has been reported that the Indian government is also currently blocking shipments coming into the nation from China. Basically, additional scrutiny is being made on imports from China which ultimately has disrupted operations at plants owned by Apple supplier Foxconn.
The Customs officers at Indian ports have held back shipments from China and sought additional clearances, which is a part of the Anti-Chinese movement going on in the country. It is reported that more than 150 Foxconn shipments containing smartphone and electronic parts were stuck at the port of Chennai.
This will, in turn, affect the iPhone production done by Foxconn in India at two of its plants in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. A lobby group representing US-based companies in India has written to India’s trade minister that blocking of deliveries is barring companies to conduct business in the nation.
With this, hundreds of workers have been abandoned with no work this week and might severely affect the company in the event if the matter isn’t addressed. Apple started manufacturing iPhones in the Indian market with the original iPhone SE and is also manufacturing the iPhone XR in the nation.
This helps Apple from implying a hefty import tax and might offer its phones at a lower price, saving $100-200 on import tax. Also, sentiments about boycotting Chinese products have been rising in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic which originates from China. Nevertheless, the latest escalation of tension between India and China is taking this to another level.
A piece of news which is suddenly trending among all the football fans is whether Lionel Messi is really going to leave Barcelona in 2021. This is massive news and there are every hint to suggest that this is not just a mere rumour.
Lionel Messi has only 1 year left on his current Barcelona contract. It will expire in July 2021. Barcelona has offered him a contract extension but he has currently put a stop to all the contract negotiations.
So, could we see Messi leaving Barcelona in 2021? Or, there is a deeper meaning to this thing?
Josep Maria Bartomeu, the current Barcelona president clearly doesn’t have a good relationship with Messi. The Barcelona board has been accused of paying ‘i3ventures’ for leaking negative news about the club captain and blaming him.
Messi is like the leader of the club. He usually used to stay quiet on the board matters but this board has handled the matters wrongly. The club conversations shouldn’t be leaked to the media, leave alone negative false claims. This thing has hurt Messi.
But, the most important reason for Messi wanting to leave Barcelona, is that he is not convinced with the future project of the club. He is arguably the best player on the planet. So, naturally, he always wants to win and end each season with silverware.
Although Barcelona has won the last two LaLiga titles, it was mainly due to Real Madrid’s lacklustre form and the absence of not too many quality clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid in LaLiga. They have failed miserably in the European competitions since 2015.
The transfer market strategy has also been shocking. Messi and the other big lads in the club clearly wanted Neymar back at Barcelona but the board hasn’t been able to bring the Brazilian back. Barcelona clearly lacks wingers but they have repeatedly signed more strikers and midfielders, the current example being Braithwaite and Pjanic.
Messi has also contacted the other presidential candidate to know about his plans and objectives about the club. It seems Messi is frustrated with Bartomeu and would only want to continue at Barcelona if he is replaced.
If Messi decides to leave Barcelona, all the blame will be on Bartomeu and he would definitely be sacked by the socios (the club fans who vote in the club’s matters). So, this report of Messi wanting to leave Barcelona may also have a deeper and hidden message for Bartomeu.
Messi seems not to speak too many words but indirectly wants to warn Bartomeu to step down in the coming election. He is also clearly unhappy with Barcelona manager Quique Setien, who seems to have no new ideas if the opposition nullifies Barcelona’s initial tactics.
I, personally, think the little magician is not going to leave Barcelona in 2021. The real motive behind this is to take action against the board cause the club is clearly in wrong hands and Messi being a one-club man, it’s difficult for him to see his beloved club in this state. It’s better for everyone if Bartomeu steps down and a new and able president is elected who will guide Barcelona to greater heights in the future.
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Who can forget the legacy of Nokia in mobile devices for decades? It all started in Finland and after being owned by HMD Global, Nokia returns back its home country after acquiring the assets of Valona Labs and launching a brand-new Centre of Excellence in Tampere.
By acquiring Valona Labs, Nokia wants to utilize Valona Labs’ expertise in mobile, enterprise and cybersecurity software. The new R&D centre in Tampere will specialise in software, security and services, propelling HMD Global’s transition from a purely hardware business, to a combined hardware and services company.
It will concentrate on developing this service further and begin work on other services such as remote device locking, enterprise mobility management, mobile device software security, secure network communication and black box testing.
Nokia will be recruiting new technical talent in the region and will be led by Ari Heikkinen, Head of Unit for Valona Labs. HMD Global also wants to improve its HMD Connect, which is a global data roaming service that enables people around the world to benefit from a hassle-free data SIM. The R&D team in Tampere will also be working on it as well.
This new R&D centre by HMD Global will help them to provide a better experience with Nokia smartphones which already delivers secure and up-to-date software.
You probably know about Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) Team that developed so many apps for different fields and different purposes. As the name of this team suggests, their work results are ‘experimental’. Some of their apps currently running in the market are Venue, Collab, CatchUp, Whale, Kit, and Tuned. There is also Hobbi that is similar to Pinterest. As per TechCrunch’s report, the NPE team is going to close this app in a few days.
Hobbi was introduced back in February this year. And now, it is sending notifications to its active users saying the app will stop functioning on 10th July. Users can export their data and the option is available at the App settings.
The app has around 7,000 downloads in its five months life. One of the reasons for this less number of downloads is the availability limitations. Its access is limited to the US, Colombia, Belgium, Spain, and Ukraine. Besides, it only supports iOS platforms only.
If you belong to one of the previously mentioned regions and want to try this app, you definitely can. There are few more days of time for that. If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPad touch with iOS 11.0 or later, then you are good to go.
The most popular mobile game has just made a new record in terms of revenue this time, earning a lifetime revenue of a whopping 3 Billion US Dollars. The figure isn’t surprising at all considering the fact that the game is ultra-popular across the globe for quite some time now but the interesting fact is that it doubled its lifetime revenue in the last 7 months.
According to the data by Sensor Tower, the major bump in its revenue comes from its revamped Game For Peace mobile game in China. The two games have accumulated $1.3 billion in 2020 alone, with a revenue peak of $270 million in March 2020 when actually the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns totally brought everyone to their homes.
When compared to other battle royal games, in the first half of 2020, PUBG Mobile gained revenue more than four times than its competitor Garena Free Fire which earned $300 million so far this year. Even Call of Duty: Mobile made only $220 million in revenue to date in 2020. So, it’s pretty clear how PUBG Mobile has engaged its users and knows how to generate revenue from users.
This major revenue is achieved with the Chinese version of the game i.e. Game For Peace which alone gained $1.6 billion on China’s App Store alone or 52% of the total. The United States ranks No. 2 in terms of revenue with about 14% of revenue, while Japan comes third with 5.6%.
The China’s App Store has made up chunks of revenue, accounting for 79% of all player spending, on the other hand, the Google Play Store accounts for just 21% of the lifetime revenue. Although, Google Play Stire accounts occupy a huge share of downloads at 65% of all installs, while the App Store represents just 35% of the total. This shows how popular the game is in China and why Tencent rebranded it to make Billions of Dollars in a year or so.
If the number of downloads / installs are to be taken, both PUBG Mobile and Game For Peace have made a combined total of 734 million downloads globally. Unsurprisingly, India holds the crown with most number of downloads accounting to 175 million or 24% of the total, followed by China with 16.7% of all downloads, and the U.S. ranking third with just 6.4% of all downloads.
Previously, there were reports that MediaTek’s new flagship Smart TV SoC is ready to be shipped and now it is available. The new Smart TV Chip S900 will be powering the next-gen 8K Smart TVs and brings interesting AI and connectivity features as well.
The MediaTek S900 chip uses ARM Cortex A-73 cores and Mali G-52 GPU. The chip supports 8K video decoding along with HDR10+ support as well using HDMI 2.1A. It also offers a maximum bandwidth of 48GB/s, which, in turn, allows you to stream 4K at 120 FPS and 8K at 60 FPS.
The chip also features MediaTek’s proprietary AI PQ (AI Picture Quality) that uses machine learning to upscale video content, ultimately improving image quality automatically. The S900 chip integrates intelligent voice assistant technology that allows users to interact directly with Smart TVs and control their capabilities while manipulating other home IoT devices as a control hub for home AIoT systems.
Besides support for HDR standards, including HDR10/10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG. The chip provides AI enhancements through high-performance AI processing units that automatically adjust color saturation, brightness, clarity, image noise, and dynamic motion compensation for smarter, better picture quality settings in the video stream, automatically adjusting color saturation, brightness, clarity, image noise, and dynamic motion compensation.
This new S900 chip will be seen powering the Samsung 8K QLED TV, which will be the world’s first Wi-Fi 6 8K TV. MediaTek’s new S900 chip (MediaTek 8K smart TV processor series) will be the first among its 8K smart TV chip series.
Recently, Realme launched its much-awaited Realme Buds Q TWS earbuds in India alongside Realme X3 series. This is a budget TWS earbuds series as its price at ₹1,999 and brings a lot of unique features which its sole competitor Xiaomi lacks in its Redmi Earbuds S which costs ₹1,799. In design perspective also the Realme Buds Q looks premium and has better audio.
So naturally, amidst, the #BoyottChina movement, people seem to have jumped upon these new TWS earbuds, which are really selling like candies in India. On July 1st, the Realme Buds Q went on sale for the first time on Amazon India and Realme’s online store. After a day, Realme came out to social media to share that it has sold over 25,000 units on the first day of sale.
Record breaking sales opening day for #realmeBudsQ! 25K+ users turned for a new true wireless experience, a new Lifestyle. #QuietStylishTrueWireless One more step closer in our journey towards becoming the most popular tech-lifestyle brand. pic.twitter.com/Q2OEFYVE9s
This is a huge number for the first sale and it seems these new TWS earbuds will be a huge success in the country even though its country of origin remains Chinese.
Realme Buds Q comes with a 10mm driver said to be largest in an audio device at this price range. It is very much safe from the water and dust splashes because of the IPX4 rating. It features Bluetooth 5.0 support and provides a long 20 hours of continuous music playback time in one single charge.
The case has 30W fast charging support via micro USB port and the ‘Quick Control’ ability lets user to navigate the currently playing music. There are double, single, and dual touch controls available that allow users to have a smooth touch control over the music play, pause, and skip.
It is lightweight earbuds weighing just 3.6 grams and with the case, it becomes 35.3 grams in total. Also, it comes in a lot of colour variants including Quite Black, Quite White, and Quite Yellow. If you are judging to buy one for you, do check our review on the Realme Buds Q which is coming soon, keep an eye on this space for it. Buy it from here: https://amzn.to/3iiZ6Mn
If you are the one looking for a powerful laptop for your professional work, Dell has recently launched a new workstation laptop – the Dell Precision 5550 with 10th Gen Intel Comet Lake-H CPUs and NVIDIA Quadro GPUs. Being launched in India, Dell says the laptop is designed for professional creators and engineers.
Also Dell claims that the laptop is the smallest and lightest mobile workstation in the market, quite bold claim honestly, when you know there are a lot of popular workstation laptops like Apple MacBook Pro and Razer Blade. Dell says the new laptop is 6% smaller than the last generation and its chassis made from aluminium and carbon fibre.
The laptop weighs just 1.84kg but varies with the variants you choose and boasts of a high 92% display-to-body ratio. The Dell Precision 5550 features a 15.6-inch display with Full-HD+ (1920×1200) resolution and UHD+ (3840×2400) resolution with touch input options.
It features up to a 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10885H or a more powerful Xeon W-10855M processor along with graphics options up to NVIDIA Quadro T2000 GPU with 4GB GDDR6 memory. This comes coupled with up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM and up to 2TB of M.2 PCIe SSD storage.
For ports & I/O you get two Type-C Thunderbolt ports, an SD card slot, and a USB 3.2 (Gen2) Type-C port. On the cooling front, Dell has included dual fans and heat pipes, helping the laptop to stay cool under heavy workloads. Even though the estimated battery life is not told but the laptop will support fast charging that promises a 35% charge in just 20 minutes.
Vivekanand Manjeri, the Brand Director, Client Solutions Group of Dell India commented on the new workstation laptop: “From fast rendering to detailed visualisations and complex simulations, the Precision 5550 is a perfect combination of power and style, with the latest hardware and software components, thermal innovations and intelligent features, creative users across industries will appreciate this workstation”.
The new and powerful 15.6-inch Dell Precision 5550 workstation laptop has a starting price of Rs. 1,29,999.
Most of the Android users were waiting for Apple’s AirDrop like feature in Android i.e. Nearby Share. Finally, Google started rolling out this feature. But, with the Beta version of the Google Play Service. Another good news is, this feature is compatible with all the Android devices having Android 6 Marshmallow as the operating system or higher version of that.
A Google representative told to Android Police, “We’re currently conducting a beta test of a new Nearby Share feature that we plan to share more information on in the future. Our goal is to launch the feature with support for Android 6+ devices as well as other platforms,”
If enabled, you will see the ‘Nearby ‘ option displayed at the share sheet. It has three visibility options – out of which you need to choose one first. The three choices are All Contacts, Some Contacts, and Hidden.
Nearby Sharing Option
Activation Process
Visibility Option
For those, who don’t know about Nearby Share much, it is a file-sharing procedure work in between the compatible devices. Experts are expecting it will support in Mac, Windows, and Chrome OS too.
As per Android Police, the entire file sharing process needs a server-side component to work. Lastly, even if you have the Google Play Service Beta installed in your device, you may not see the Nearby Sharing feature.
After this Beta release of Nearby Sharing, we are hoping to get the feature through the stable public version of Google Play Service very soon.
For the last few days, a lot of details have been revealed by OnePlus about their coming mid-range smartphone. The name is verified to be OnePlus Nord and Carl Pei has explained the significance and the vision behind the name selection.
The company has also begun receiving pre-orders and it got sold out in minutes, without even knowing the specs. The new smartphone will be priced under $500 will feature a Snapdragon 765G SoC and have 5G connectivity as well, along with dual selfie cameras, 30W fast charging support and an AMOLED display with a high refresh rate.
From its launch, is the OnePlus Nord won’t be heading to North America right away although the name has something to do with North. The trusted tipster Ishan Agarwal has now shared a listing of nations where the OnePlus Nord is going to be available to pre-order.
Most of the nations on the list are in Europe because OnePlus is popular in European nations. While its very popular in India but it isn’t recorded, but surely the upcoming smartphone will be accessible in India via Amazon India, as they have good past relation with the brand.
Of course, India too but these are the regions except India and these regions will be able to pre-order the #OnePlusNord
As the tipster points out the places which include:
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Latvia
Malta
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovenia
Slovakia
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
Even though the OnePlus Nord will not be heading towards North America, OnePlus did go on to say that a “select number” of users on the continent would be able to participate in a limited beta program after launch. Now, the launch seems imminent and leaks say July 10 will be the official announcement date where we can see the alleged OnePlus Buds get launched as well.
