Lionel Messi faced humiliation against Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals. Bayern hammered Barcelona with a massive scoreline of 8-2.
Barcelona felt to the bottom. Even Messi, who is from another planet couldn’t save them this time. Messi was so frustrated that night, he even rejected to swap shirts with Bayern’s young left-back Alphonso Davies.
The Canadian international was handed the task of keeping Messi at bay and he did that almost to perfection. But he has now revealed that Messi rejected to swap shirts with him.
Davies told BT Sport: “Yeah, I asked for it [Messi’s jersey], but I think he was a little upset. It’s OK, though. Next time, hopefully.”
Bayern will now face PSG in the finals on Sunday and Davies feels it will be a high scoring encounter.
He said: “For me, it’s a dream come true. Playing in the Champions League and making it to the final. It’s everything you can ask for.”
“Paris are a good team. For now, we celebrate a little bit but afterwards, we focus on the next game. It’s going to be a good game, there’s going to be goals in it. This is what you dream of as a footballer – playing against the best in Europe.”
Meanwhile, there have been numerous rumours that Messi wants to leave the club. He doesn’t see his future at Barcelona. The Argentine told Barcelona’s new coach Ronald Koeman that he does not see his future clearly at Barcelona. He is thinking of leaving more than staying.
It will be an interesting transfer window featuring one of the best players.
Good news is coming out from Sony, as they are expected to launch the second version of Xperia 1, which is a SIM-free version but users have to go through a carrier DOCOMO or AU. The phone may be launched on October 30 in Japan.
This phone offers a SIM-free version that’s literally sounds, a phone that is free of SIM card. People use many networks (like Vodafone, Jio, etc), which are often ‘locked’ into their respective carrier, but in this SIM-free version, phones are completely ‘unlock’ to applicable network. That means the user can use the network of another carrier through his SIM. Sony will also release dual-SIM and SIM-free versions of old Xperia 1 and Xperia 5.
The source reveals this handset will be available in limited edition Frosted Black with a matte finish. But two more colours are planned for this set – White and purple.
Sony Xperia 1 II Limited Edition Frosted Black
The phone is coming with model no of XQ-AT51. This handset is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ upgrade or anything supported with Android 10 version, and GPU Adreno 650. This upcoming handset will support the 5G network.
Right now people can afford this phone with 8GB RAM size. The carrier phone had only 128GB of storage while the SIM-free will match the global models with 256 GB. But 12 GB RAM version may be available for this set.
The phone has a quad-camera with 12 MP primary sensors, 12MP telephoto, 12MP ultrawide and 0.3 MP ToF 3D depth lenses, aligned left side on the back, and a 3D iToF sensor is also on the back. The front camera will be supported by an 8 MP lens. The phone has support for 4K video recording.
Xperia 1 II in Limited Edition Frosted Black, White and Purple
The prediction says that the display of the phone is identical to Xperia 1. The display of this upcoming phone is 6.5 inches with FHD+ (1644X3840) pixels of screen resolution and a 21:9 aspect ratio. The phone will be protected with aluminum frame and Gorilla Glass 6 on both side
The phone has Li-Po 4000 mAh battery capacity with the support of 21W fast charging and 11W of wireless charging. The phone has front-facing dual stereotype speakers and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
The price set for this upcoming smartphone is JPY 124,000 (approx Rs.87,932.38).
One of the biggest titles of this year, Madden NFL 21 is coming on 28th August across all platforms, however, EA Play Pro members get early access to play the game that too the MVP Edition of the game. You can now easily get access to the EA Play Pro membership and know more details about this from here.
With EA Play Pro, I was able to get the hands-on with the game much earlier than anyone, and here’s the first look that I share along with what can you expect from the new version of the game. 2019 NFL MVP Lamar Jackson, who is the Baltimore Ravens quarterback, is the cover of the Madden NFL 21 game.
The game size on PC via EA Play Pro is about 33 GB but however, you can play it even before its totally downloaded. I noticed how dynamic the game feels as EA Sports has added a cool cover video while loading the game, however, it does really take around 3-4 minutes to load and I tried multiple to confirm that, EA should reduce it later with an update.
Having loaded up, you have to play a new exhibition match that clearly shows the new additions and improvement over last-gen. EA Sports’ new Innovative new gameplay mechanics in Madden NFL 21 deliver advanced levels of control and inspire creativity.
Get crafty with the all-new Skill Stick that allows for enhanced precision on both sides of the ball. There are new offensive and defensive skill sets you can use while playing the game. The new Skill Stick is really very handy in choosing the moves and tactics to either go offensive at players, set different moves, make the best out of the new ball-carrier system to cleverly grab points with you team.
While you defense, there are a lot of new features with the Skill Stick that lets you take full control of your team with specific pass rush moves and combos. You can use various strategies in different aspects of the game and I like how fast it gets adapted.
Also, there are various tackling advancements that include location-based tackling, breakdown tackling, and improved dive tackling. I also noticed that EA Sports has done improvements to play-calling using adaptive AI adjustments to help during defense.
The graphics has improved a lot and the bodies and faces of players look more natural. The game dymanics, the stadium, the graphics tweaks during games makes it more like a original NFL to watch.
The new celebrations and new ways of kickoff also looks cool:
You can even celebrate with different gestures in realtime and obviously you have the signature style as well.
Also, the new highlights look much more natural and graphics rich as well:
The homescreen looks great now, however, the loading times have increased a bit mote but its worth it:
As this is an MVP Edition, you have Lamar Jackson all over the game and some extra add-ons which I will show in my upcoming articles. Obviously, the game has a lot of modes to discover, and it been few hours since I played the game, so this is the end of the first look and with days, I will be writing more about the game even it before releases on 28th August.
But, if you pre-order the game now you get a lot of things like (PC):
3-Day Early Access to Madden NFL 21 (8/25/2020)
Lamar Jackson Elite Item with Power Up
1 Large Quicksell Training Pack
17 Madden Ultimate Team Gold Team Fantasy Packs
Madden Championship Series Ultimate Champion Pack
1 of 32 Players from NFL Team Elite Packs
1 “Your Choice” Uniform Pack
Or if you want to access the full game then grab a EA Play Pro membership, here are the pre-order links:
Standard Edition:
Deluxe Edition:
MVP Edition:
Both the Madden NFL 21 Deluxe and MVP Edition release on August 25th while the Standard one releases on August 28th. I will bring more updates about the game in the days to come, so do keep an eye here.
Legendary former Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan made a statement recently that IPL is more difficult than playing for the country. According to him, surety of getting chance in the playing XI is much higher while playing for the country. As only four foreign players can play in playing XI in IPL, that is why most of the time many good players have to wait in the bench in spite of having a great last game. But this is not the case in playing for your country. The player knows if he plays slightly good in one match there is a 99% chance that he will be in the playing XI in the next match too.
Murali also stated that the level of competition in the IPL is really very much high. The team keeps changing according to grounds and opponents, so in that scenario, it is very difficult to make you fit in the playing XI. Many times we have seen that good players who were bought by the team in the auction do not get a single match to show his ability, most of the cases they come into the field as substitute fielders.
Muralitharan made these statements during an interaction with Ravichandran Ashwin in his show DRS with Ash.
“Playing IPL difficult than playing for country. With country, you know you will perform. You will have the confidence that you’ll get the ball, you’ll play. But in IPL, no matter how well you’ve done, you might have to sit out for the sake of team combination,” Muralitharan said.
According to him, this is just a part of this huge T20 league. In fact, he had to sit outside for a number of matches for the sake of combination of the team. So his advice to all the players that take it as a sportsman and next time try harder to make you fit in the team.
“Some matches need all-rounders, some don’t. I too have sat out many matches. But I’ve never been unsatisfied. That is part of the game,” the former Sri Lankan cricketer added.
Muttiah Muralitharan was a part of IPL for the first eight editions. He has represented Chennai Super Kings, Kochi Tuskers Kerela and Royal Challengers Bangalore over the eight editions. While playing for CSK, it was the best edition for him, he ended up taking 52 wickets from 46 matches. He ended his career in IPL after playing for RCB in 2015.
Sony has already announced the release of their next-gen console PlayStation 5. The console will be released in late 2020. There has been a lot of hype surrounding this next-gen console. But there hasn’t been enough details released yet.
Now, Sony has released a new PS5 advertisement giving a sneak peek of the gameplay which you’ll experience on the next-gen console.
Sadly the advertisement has only been released in Hungary. But we have got you! Here’s the tweet from the video game analyst showing the new PS5 ad.
Until now, we only know that the console will be a black-and-white box with rounded angles and fins on the top. The DualSense Controller will also have the same colour theme as black-and-white.
Some of the key features of PS5 will be:
Up to 8K resolution
4K games at 60 fps
Ray tracing
Fast-loading SSD
Up to 120 frames per second.
Some of the PS5 specifications which have been revealed are:
8-core 3.5 GHz AMD Zen 2 CPU
10.3 teraflop AMD RDNA 2 GPU
16 GB GDDR6 memory
825 GB custom SSD
Sony is expected to reveal some information about the much anticipated PS5 this month, so stay tuned here to get the latest updates.
The National Payment Corporation of India, NPCI in short, organization for operating payments and settlement systems in our country, is trying to reach out to the country markets as well. That’s why it started a new subsidiary named NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL). It not only expand the business of NPCI beyond India but spread Indian payment technologies like UPI and RuPay in abroad.
NPCI has assigned Ritesh Shukla as the CEO of NIPL who will lead the organization to spread NPCI’s “indigenously developed offerings and technological acumen” to outside India. But before that, they will take RuPay and UPI on the global platform.
The agency said, “NPCI has achieved success at developing a robust payments system that is cost effective, secure, convenient and instantaneous.Several nations have displayed an inclination towards establishing a ‘real time payment system’ or ‘domestic card scheme’ inspired by the exemplary innovations by NPCI in the country”.
As per NPCI, so many developing nations are showing interest in real-time payment technologies like UPI. The CEO of NPCI Mr. Dilip Asbe said, “It is a matter of pride for NPCI that several regions such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East have displayed interest towards replicating our model in their own nations. The growth and evolution of NIPL will result in a huge acceptance network for RuPay and UPI, which, in turn, will empower Indian travelers”.
ZTE is teasing a new video everyday for its upcoming ZTE Axon 20 5G’s under-display camera. This phone will come with the world’s first under-display camera for the mass. Previously we have also seen such type of technology in an Oppo smartphone but that was never launched. Now from the discussion of launch, let us remind you ZTE Axon 20 5G will be launching on September 1.
The new video again shows that all types of punch hole cameras and pop up cameras are not been used in the ZTE Axon 20 5G so the company is making it prominent that they are confident with its under-display camera technology.
Yesterday an official render from the company reveals the front panel as well as the rear design of the smartphone. From the image, we can see no notch or punch hole present on the front panel, whereas, at the back, we can see the quad rear camera setup. The primary camera will be of 64MP.
The bezels on all sides of the phone seem very thin compared to other devices. There are no punch holes on the display of the phone neither it has a pop-up camera, which means the under-display camera is skillfully hidden under the display as from the top it can’t be seen at all. At the side of the phone, we can see the volume rockers and the power button. The power button might also integrate a fingerprint scanner with it. The display of this phone might be OLED.
More information about this device will pop-up with due course of time before launch.
Motorola India teased the launch of a new device in India in their official twitter account with a promo video of the smartphone. It seems to be a mid-range device from the device. The phone will launch on August 24 via Flipkart in India. The phone will also be Flipkart Unique device. Expect this promo video the company has not revealed any information about this smartphone yesterday.
Now coming to the design of the smartphone as we have no information about the specification of the smartphone. The in the video we can see a rear fingerprint scanner with the Motorola logo on it. The phone will have a Type-C charging port and speaker grills at the bottom. At the top, we can see a secondary microphone and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The phone will come with a triple rear camera setup at the back. There will be a power button, volume rockers, and another button on the left side of the phone. It is still unknown what is the purpose of the third button. The phone will have a drop notch camera at the front.
In Flipkart app we can see, while tapping on the promotional product banner the company has shared an MCQ type of survey where it has asked what the users will prefer in terms of battery, screen size, rear camera, and processor. From that, we came to know that the phone will have a processor among Snapdragon 450, 630, 636, 636. The batter was asked for a maximum of 4,850mAh and the screen size was listed for max 6.3 inches.
A few days ago @evleaks had shared renders of Samsung Galaxy S20 FE revealing six different colour options of the phone. We are not sure if the company would launch the S20 FE in all the colours or not. Yesterday the leaks had again shared two spin animations of the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE in two different colour options which shows its 360-degree video.
From this spin animation, we can see a closer look at the flagship smartphone. The animation shows a triple-rear camera setup along with flash. Now coming to the side we see both volume rockers and the power button at the left side while there is center aligned punch-hole cut on the display. The phone has a slim bezel on all sides. It does not has any curved screen like the Galaxy S20 Plus, but has a flat-screen.
According to the leaked image of the phone at different angles, it is predicted that the screen size is between 6.4 & 6.5 inches, it falls between the Galaxy S20(6.2”) and the S20+(6.7”). It is guessed to have a display with Full HD+ resolution & a refresh rate with 120Hz. Most probably, the phone will be launched with IP68 dust & water resistance.
In this phone, the user gets a triple camera setup with a 12MP primary camera, 12MP Ultrawide & 8MP telephoto units. The selfie camera is in a centered punch hole.
This smartphone is expected to have a huge battery capacity of 4500mAh, which is as same as Galaxy S20+. Based on an article of Gsmarena, this phone has a power button & volume controller on its right side. The phone has a USB-C port set at the bottom.
Earlier this month we have witnessed the launch of the Google Pixel 4a (4G) version and the company only left us with an image with the side view of two devices – Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5. Google revealed that these two smartphone will be launched soon by this year, but didn’t leave us with any clue for neither both the devices nor their launch date.
This time Jon Prosser had shared an interesting news in his twitter account claiming that the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G will launch in 30th September. But there is a catch, the smartphones will be available in two different colour options for each model. This means according to Prosser, Pixel 5 5G will be available on 30th September in Black and Green colours, the Pixel 4a 5G will launch on the same day only in Black colour. Whereas, the White colour version of the Pixel 4a 4G will be available in October.
What we see in the system is
Pixel 5 5G (black and green) Pixel 4a 5G (black) – September 30
Though the company has already revealed the price of the Pixel 4a 5G which seems to be decent. The phone has been spotted recently in AI Benchmark with a Snapdragon 765G chipset and with the same SoC used like the Pixel 4a.
Some new renders of the Google Pixel 5 have surfaced showing similar camera layout designs like Pixel 4a. The Pixel 4a has only one camera at the back but comes with a punch hole cut design at the front. But Pixel 5 has a dual rear camera setup while the phone will feature the old bezel with a wide forehead and chin.
