The Cupertino giant recently announced the iPads and Smart Watches along with the fact that Apple is planning to host an event for its iPhone 12 series in October. The world is pumped up for its new iPhones as they will be the first 5G smartphones from Apple.
So, naturally, a lot of consumers can prefer an upgrade to enjoy 5G. This is the reason why Digitimes reports that Apple contractors Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai) and Pegatron will see a peak in their revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Due to the pandemic there had been a delay in supply chains and manufacturing, but, finally, they will be shipping next quarter. Even component makers have already begun the shipments for Apple’s next-generation iPhones.
Largan, a lens module maker for iPhone, did see consolidated revenue for August return to above NT$5 billion (US$170 million).
As Digitimes says, the 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch models of the iPhone 12 series will become available in the early half of October. On the other hand, the 6.1-inch version and 6.7-inch variants (Pro) will hit store shelves in the latter half.
So, the large Apple contractors Pegatron & Foxconn may see a huge bump in revenue in the next quarter because the iPhone 12 series has a lot more potential than before.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 is only a week away. After the tournament was postponed, after many hindrances and altercations, the IPL will begin on September 19 in UAE.
The fact that the tournament is in UAE, will bring an interesting element to every aspect of the game. However, most of the time under sub-continental conditions one thing remains constant, a free flow of runs! After all, cricket by many is termed as a batsman’s game.
Today we will name 10 batsmen who are contenders to win the orange cap. The orange cap is given to the highest run-scorer of the tournament. However, it signifies more than that. It’s a sign of consistency, performing several times across 14 games to retain that cap. Also, due to being in UAE, one may think the conditions to favor Indian batsmen. However, that might not be the case as IPL played in Indian conditions over the years, has made the international players accustomed as well.
Also, just having an orange cap does not necessarily mean that team will reach the playoffs. Last year Mumbai Indians didn’t have an orange or purple cap and yet went on to win the tournament.
Ambati Rayadu (CSK)
Rayadu is probably one of the most underrated cricketers in the Indian cricket. He’s probably the dark horse on this list. After getting a chance to open for Chennai Super Kings, he has been an integral part of their success since last two years. He also takes charge so that Shane Watson on the other end can set in. Rayadu prematurely retired last year, however he has a lot of cricket left in him.
(PC- NDTV Sports)
Aaron Finch (RCB)
Finch will come into the IPL as the number 3 ranked T20 batsman in the world. He will most probably open the batting for Royal Challengers Bangalore. He will probably be accompanied by Parthiv Patel who will go guns blazing. This will give Finch some time to set himself up and will also have the cushion of Kohli and De Villiers at 3 and 4. Also, he will enter the IPL with some great form.
Johnny Bairstow (SRH)
Bairstow was a surprise addition among one of the highest run-getters of the tournament last year. He has had a great 2010 and even 2020 ever since. He has been in sublime form since World Cup 2019 to the England-Australia series in 2020. He will bring a lot of momentum into the IPL.
Glenn Maxwell (KXIP)
Maxwell became the first player in the history of the sport to take some time off of cricket due to mental/stress issues. He made a rejuvenated comeback and hasn’t looked back ever since. He went on to become the number 1 ranked all-rounder in T20 cricket. Just like Bairstow, he’s in great form as well and is coming off a series-winning hundred and Man of the Series award in the recent series against England.
Jos Buttler (RR)
Jos Buttler has evolved himself into a great T20 opener. He has always been amongst the runs for RR and has continued to do that to date in all three formats of the sport. This year he will be accompanied by the young and exciting Yashasvi Jaiswal who can provide him assistance as well.
(PC- Sportstar)
Andre Russell (KKR)
Andre Russell is one of best all-rounders and most vicious batsmen in the world. KKR have got a change in management which has former NZ captain Brendan McCullum as their coach. McCullum is known for taking aggressive decisions both as a player and as a captain. He has decided to promote Russell at number 3. It will be interesting to see how Russell does at number 3.
(PC- Sportskeeda)
Rohit Sharma (MI)
Sharma or rather Mumbai Indians have never been among the caps. But you can never count the ‘Hitman’ out. Sharma has been moving up and down the order due to team combination and responsibility issues. However, now that their middle-order issues are fairly resolved with Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan, Sharma can whole-heartedly focus on opening. He will have an equally dangerous Quinton de Kock with him.
David Warner (SRH)
The entire world is well aware of what David Warner can do, especially in the shorter format of the game. Warner can be a game changer and has evolved into a really good player of spin as well. He will enter the IPL in great form as well.
KL Rahul (KXIP)
Rahul has been the lone warrior for KXIP for the last two years. However, he has updated himself into a vicious T20 cricketer. Rahul finds himself at an impressive spot of number 2 on the T20 best batsman rankings. Despite moving around in the stacked Indian batting line up, the Karnataka cricketer has consistently delivered match-winning performances both in ODIs and T20s.
Virat Kohli (RCB)
Virat Kohli is hands down one of the best batsmen to grace a cricket pitch. The man is a legend irrespective of format, opposition, and conditions. He can play the bull and the matador. This year he is not only expected to score high but also lead RCB to their maiden IPL trophy ever.
Facebook is not just limited to your daily social media apps these days but the company has been quite active in the AR & VR space through its subsidiary Oculus which back again with yet another Virtual Reality headset dubbed Quest 2 at Facebook’s Connect virtual conference.
The Quest 2 is the successor to Oculus’ last-gen Quest headset and its more powerful, has a better design, and has 50% more pixels on each display than the original Quest along with the support for 90Hz refresh rate.
The Oculus Quest 2 features a new display with 1,832×1,920 pixels resolution per eye but there’s no word on which type of display it is but let’s assume its an LCD display with 90Hz of refresh rate but currently, the software only supports a refresh rate of 72Hz but Oculus has told that the future applications will be supporting 90Hz. The headset is powered by Qualcomm XR2 SoC coupled with 6GB of RAM. Further, the new headset just weighs 503 grams that is lighter than the original Quest which weighs 571 grams.
The controller has also got the update which makes it a lot more power efficient then the last generation.
Apart from launching a new product Oculus has also discontinued an old one which is none other than Rift S and will be replaced by the newly launched Quest 2 since it is also capable to function as a PC VR headset with the additional Quest Link accessory.
The Oculus Quest 2 is priced at $299 for the 64GB variant while for an extra $100 you can grab the 256GB storage variant and can be preordered starting today in the US, UK, and Europe while the delivery will be starting from October 13. The second iteration of Quest is priced $100 lesser than the original Quest which launched back in 2018 for $399 for the base storage variant.
The compatible titles include Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, Myst, Jurassic World Aftermath, Warhammer 40,000 Battle Sister, Pistol Whip: 2089, The Climb 2, and Rez Infinite which will be coming later this year.
According to a recent report from Reuters, the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart largely owned by Walmart is preparing to open up initial public offerings in foreign countries like the US or Singapore in 2021 which could be valued around the range of $45-50 billion.
Flipkart is one of the well-established e-commerce marketplaces in the country and after Walmart’s acquisition the company is growing but the reports suggest that the launch of players like JioMart in the segment has left Flipkart in some worry so the company is looking to gear up and for that, the company will be requiring finances and to tackle this situation Flipkart is looking towards the international IPO.
Flipkart is currently deciding between the Singapore and United States since the company is incorporated in Singapore while it’s parent organization Walmart is based in the United States so opening up an IPO in the US will be able to gather more funds.
There is no confirmation from either Flipkart or Walmart since both of them have denied Reuter’s request to comment on the news. The discussions come after the new regulations drafted by the Indian government which makes it easy for homegrown companies to list themselves overseas.
According to a source familiar to this matter has told Reuters that the work has already begun and the Flipkart has started working on the compliance, legal, and finance aspects to meet the regulatory standards ahead of a potential listing.
According to one of the sources, the company won’t be going to list before the end of 2021 or mostly the listing will go live sometime at the beginning of 2022 but for now, things are blurry due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The overseas IPO would prove beneficial for the Walmart owned Flipkart since the likes of its major rivals of Amazon and Jio has been investing heavily on the e-commerce segment so getting some funds to eradicate the competition might be a great option in times like these when e-commerce has witnessed an upwards slope up during the COVID pandemic in the country.
Last year, the Chinese flexible display manufacturer Royole launched its FlexPai foldable phone. That phone made a huge impact on the market of foldable smartphones – beating Samsung’s Galaxy Fold and Huawei’s Mate X. In this year back in March, the company has announced that they were working on the improvements of the successor of FlexPai, dubbed as FlexPai 2. Today we’ve got the confirmation from the company that the FlexPai 2 will launch on September 22, 2020.
Apart from this, the FlexPai 2 has also been spotted in a Geekbench 4 listing revealing its synthetic performance. That’s why some of its specifications have now been revealed, such as this device is powered by the Snapdragon 865 chipset paired with 8GB RAM and 128GB of internal storage. The storage is further expandable up to 256GB via an external microSD card. Let’s talk about the performance scores of the device on Geekbench. The FlexPai 2 has managed to secure 4,252 points in the single-core test and 13,365 in the multi-core department.
This phone features a dual rear camera module, which includes 16 MP + 20 MP sensors with auto-focus. But unfortunately, there will be no front camera on this device.
Now coming to the most important part of the device, which is the display. The FlexPai 2 features the company’s third-generation flexible display dubbed Cicada Wing. The bends of this display offer higher brightness output and improved viewing angles. Physically, the folding technology is also very much durable, which can withstand all types of bends including rolling up the display.
From some recent reports from Samsung, we came to know that Samsung is working on its ‘F’ series smartphones and in the upcoming days, the company is going to launch its ‘F’ series smartphones in India.
According to some fresh tweets from the tipsters, the support page of Samsung Galaxy F41 also goes live in India. The model number was SM-F415F/DS. From this, we can assume that this upcoming phone can be dubbed as the Samsung Galaxy F41.
It is almost clear that Samsung Galaxy F-series smartphones will come in the Indian market with a price tag between Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 20,000. That means we can expect the phones of the F-series will be really pocket-friendly. According to the company, the first phone of that series will get launched in India next month via the online market. The company has also added that F-series phones will be basically camera-centric handsets. Just like the M-series smartphones, the F-series are claimed to focus on the online market initially.
As we know that the main focus of the M-series smartphones is the battery, the F-series will make its focus to the camera module. So it will be a blessing to the mobile photographers in a pocket-friendly budget.
Recently, Samsung has launched its latest M-series smartphone, the Galaxy M51 carrying a 7,000mAH battery. It is also said that M51 is the best handset under Rs. 30,000. So, we can expect some great start from Samsung with its F-series smartphones.
Sony globally introduced the successor of WH-1000X M3 over-the-ear headphone on 6th August and around one and half months later going to release the product, named Sony WH-1000X M4, in India. This headphone by Sony was listed on Amazon at the beginning of this month and if you were excited about it, wait till 2:00 PM IST. Before the launch, have a look at all the qualities this headphone has.
The overall design of WH-1000X M4 is the same as its predecessor. Not only that, but it also equipped with the same QN1 noise-canceling processor. Besides, there are gesture controls, adaptive sound controls, wear detection, and more. In the case of audio, this headset supports SBC, AAC, and LDAC Bluetooth Codecs.
Sony claims it can serve you for over 30 hours in a single charge, again same as the M3.
A new feature is introduced in this called “Speak To Chat”. This feature automatically pauses the running track when it detects you are talking with someone around you. In WH-1000X M3, you need to cover the right ear cup with palm for the same. So, this is one of the most noticeable differences. Another one is the new one has Bluetooth 5.0, M3 had Bluetooth 4.2.
You can connect this headset with multiple devices simultaneously. For a hands-free experience, there is built-in voice assistant support. All kinds of audio customizations are possible through the Sony Headphones Connect application.
Sony is bringing two color variants – Black and White with the price tag of Rs.28,490. You can pick anyone as per your choice from the Amazon India page, the sale will start today at 2:00 PM IST. The buy link is given below.
Samsung Galaxy M51, the Meanest Monster Ever was revealed in India on 10th September and now, it stepping in for sale today (18th September). Let you know, it’s the first-ever smartphone in the market having a massive 7,000mAh battery capacity. Before diving into the pricing and variant part, have a look at the specs, in case you don’t know.
Specifications of Samsung Galaxy M51
The Samsung Galaxy is equipped with a 6.7-inch (16.95cm) sAMOLED Plus Infinity-O display (contrast ratio 78960:1 || aspect ratio 20:9). On top of that, the screen is almost bezel-less to provide a great viewing experience.
To power the monster, Samsung assigned the Snapdragon 730G processor (2.2GHz based on 8nm architecture, Adreno 618 GPU with game booster) paired with LPDDR4X 6GB/8GB of RAM.
There is 128GB of internal storage for both the sets which can be extended up to 512GB through a MicroSD card
The most attractive one is Galaxy M51 is carrying India’s first 7,000mAh battery. It can provide up to 64 hours of calling, up to 24 hours of browsing, 34 hours of video playback, and 128 hours of audio playback time. To recharge it, the company is giving a 25W Type-C fast charger in the box that can push the battery level from 0% to 100% in 115 minutes. Point to note, the reverse charging feature is also included.
Coming to the camera, there is a quad-camera setup in the rear where the main sensor is of Sony IMX682 64MP with an f/1.8 lens. Along with that, a 12MP ultrawide (123 degrees) sensor, 5MP depth sensor, and 5MP macro sensor are also there. The Single Take facility is added to the setup. In the front, users will get the Sony IMX616 32MP punch hole camera at the center position.
The phone will run on OneUI which is based on Android 10
For the security, both the fingerprint and face unlock support are provided
In the end, it has Dolby Atmos support
Pricing and Availability
As you can see, there are two variants available hardware-wise and color-wise two variants – Celestial Black and Electric Blue. The 6GB variant costs Rs.24,999 where the other one is of Rs.26,999. All will be available from today (18th September) via Amazon India. The sale will start at 12 noon. The buy links are given below.
What if it costs $299? The next-gen budget gaming console will support the Quick Resume feature while playing multiple titles seamlessly
The new Microsoft Xbox Series S was a kind of surprise from the company this month and having shared its images, Microsoft launched it with the pricing alongside the flagship Xbox Series X. It derives all the good things from its big brother, however, targeting the 1080p or 1440p gamers coming in at a sweet $299 price.
Microsoft even announced a mouth-watering Xbox All Access scheme that allows you to get both the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for just $24.99 a month. Now, to show the prowess of its new budget console, Microsoft did share a video where the Quick Resume feature for the Xbox Series S is in action:
So this shows how smooth the game transitions are and who could guess this is a $299 hardware? The new Microsoft Velocity architecture helps to deliver more than 40x the I/O bandwidth of an Xbox One, for faster loading times and Quick Resume for multiple titles.
Also, the 512GB custom NVMe SSD gives a huge 2.4 GB/s of raw I/O throughput along with Hardware Accelerated Decompression that offers 100x more I/O performance than any current-gen controllers. Then there’s the fast AMD hardware that delivers 4x the processing power of an Xbox One console.
As we see in the video, the transition between heavy games like the Star Wars and Minecraft is seamless, takes a few seconds to load. Then if say you are bored with one game, you can quickly return back to the first game and due to Quick Resume, you can continue from where you left off.
The next-gen budget console gaming experience seems much more promising with 3x the GPU performance of the Xbox One with a promise to play games at 1440p at 60 frames per second, with support for up to 120fps.
So, the performance and features that you get on a $299 machine make the Microsoft Xbox Series S even more valuable deal. A lot of 1080p gamers will be pouncing on this console in November and for the price its obvious.
A couple of weeks ago, Sony has announced its upcoming Xperia series smartphone, which is Sony Xperia 5 II. Finally, the wait is over as the company has launched the Sony Xperia 5 II in some selected regions including the US and the UK. This phone holds a pretty powerful processor for high-end gaming. Now let’s get into the specifications of this newly launched Sony Xperia 5 II.
The Sony Xperia 5 II is offered in four different color variants in the US (Black, Blue, Grey, and Pink), whereas three different color variants in the UK (Black, Blue, and Grey color). This phone runs on the Android 10 OS and is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 865 SoC processor paired with 8GB RAM. This phone comes with only 8GB RAM variant. In terms of storage, this phone offers 128GB of UFS storage onboard that can be expanded via microSDXC card (up to 1TB).
Regarding the display, the Xperia 5 II features a 6.1-inch full-HD+ (1,080 x 2,520 pixels) OLED display with a refresh rate of 120Hz and 240Hz touch sampling rate. The display comes with a 21:9 aspect ratio and also supports HDR with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space.
Coming to the camera section, this phone features a triple rear camera module, which includes a 12-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.7 lens, a 12-megapixel sensor with an f/2.4 lens, and a 12-megapixel sensor with a wide-angle f/2.2 lens. Regarding the selfie, this phone offers an 8-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 lens, housed in the top bezel on the front.
The Sony Xperia 5 II comes with a decent battery backup of 4,000mAH with the support of 18W fast charging. The company claims that the device can be charged to 50 percent in just 30 minutes. In terms of size, this phone has a dimension of 158mm x 68mm x 8mm and it weighs around 163 grams.
This phone supports all the connectivity facilities like 5G, dual-band Wi-Fi, Dolby Atmos audio, GPS/ A-GPS, Bluetooth 5.1, a 3.5mm headphone jack, NFC, and a USB Type-C port for charging. There is also a support of the fingerprint sensor and face detection on this phone.
Regarding the pricing and the availability, this phone has a price range of EUR 899 (roughly Rs. 78,000) for the single 8GB + 128GB storage variant. This phone will go on sale from Autumn 2020 in the European market (the exact date is not confirmed yet by Sony). As per reports, the US pricing of this phone is around $949 (roughly Rs. 70,000), which will go on sale later this year (probably December 4).
Sony has also made an announcement of releasing two accessories for the phone – a Stand Cover (with a built-in kickstand) and a more traditional Style Cover. This phone also natively supports DualShock 4 controllers.
