Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City was considered favourites against Olympique Lyonnais to progress to the Champions League semi-finals. Guardiola hasn’t won the European competition since his Barcelona days.
City was out of contention of the Premier League too soon this season and it was seen as a sign that Guardiola would focus everything on this season’s Champions League.
Once again, Guardiola has failed in his attempt as Lyon produced a surprising result by beating City 3-1 and setting up a Champions League date with Bayern Munich.
3 – Since progressing from his first seven Champions League quarter-finals as a manager with Barcelona and FC Bayern München, Pep Guardiola has been eliminated in each of his three appearances at this stage of the competition with Man City (17-18, 18-19 & 19-20). Crushing. #UCLpic.twitter.com/szeEW7qLWG
But the biggest question of the night is that whether VAR has robbed Manchester City of a Champions League semi-final place?
Cornet scored a brilliant tight angle goal in the first half but De Bruyne scored the equaliser at the start of the second half to make it 1-1. City was on top and it seemed they were going to take the lead but then the most controversial moment of the match happened.
In the build-up to Lyon’s second goal, Moussa Dembele fouled Aymeric Laporte and he went on to score the goal. The VAR checked the goal and surprisingly allowed the goal to stand.
Dembele clearly made contact and tripped Laporte. Although it was unintentional, these type of fouls in the penalty box has even seen penalties been given. But why did VAR not give a foul this time?
It clearly seems VAR has robbed Manchester City of a chance to progress to the semi-finals. City was on top and if that goal was disallowed City would have continued their rise and most probably win the match. But that incident turned the match upside down.
After that, Sterling missed an open goal to make it 2-2 and Ederson made a mistake too. He saved a shot and pushed the ball towards Dembele who scored the winner and made it 3-1 and it was clearly game over for Guardiola’s side.
Guardiola said about the incident: “It happened many times in this competition but I don’t want to talk about anything now because it will be like we are finding excuses as a club. It is what it is.”.
But the question remains why is VAR so inconsistent? These type of fouls are given all the time but in such a crucial match at an important moment, VAR overlooks it completely. City should surely feel robbed by VAR.
HMD Global, the maker of Nokia-branded phones, according to ET, plans to make India its future export hub. Recently it has raised $230 million from investors like Nokia Technologies, Google, and Qualcomm, out of which a large part of it is planned to invest the country.
India has the potential to become the world’s largest smartphone market in the coming years and brands do know that. 5G is an exciting thing coming in a few years, so 5G smartphones will also get a huge demand in the coming days.
So, HMD Global plans to work with its contractor manufacturers Qualcomm, and Google to help bring low-cost 4G and affordable 5G phones in the near future. Also, do keep in mind that Nokia manufactures it’s smartphones in India and is one of the few non-Chinese smartphone brands in India.
Florian Seiche, CEO, HMD Global talked to ETTelecom regarding this and he answered a lot of questions. Some of the important things he cited about the India’s smartphone market:
What does the fund-raising mean for India?
What that (fund-rasing) really enables us to do is to now focus on some of our key growth initiatives going forward. One of them is especially for the European and the US market, we want to focus on bringing the 5G transition that is not just limited to the top end portfolio, but to make the transition to the 5G technology more affordable.
The second one is we want to double down our efforts in software and services. We’ve already earlier this year, made a small investment in Finland in a software security center that we’ve opened and that’s playing a key role in our software quality management and we will further invest in other software areas like imaging. Earlier, we launched our first data connectivity service as a pilot, global roaming service HMD Connect at the beginning of the year. And we see this area as a great opportunity for us going forward to offer consumers directly the ability to connect their devices, right when they buy them from us or our partners.
And then the third pillar is the selected key geographies where we see unique opportunity and India for sure is key on that list. So, on that list is India but also Africa, and Brazil, a market that we have launched just this year, and also the US market where we have started our carrier collaboration last year. And I can say, for India, specifically that I’m excited about, I see a renewed optimism in India with the efforts to strengthen the local Indian smartphone ecosystem.
You also talked about the focus on the local ecosystem. What steps are you taking to deepen your manufacturing capabilities in the market? Are you looking at making India as one of your exports hub globally?
First of all, on the feature phones, as you know, we’ve already been producing India for a long time with our partnership with Foxconn. So there we have a very solid foothold in India. And for smartphones, as you said rightly, we are at the moment in deep discussions with local manufacturing partners, with the government, but also even with local possible component partners. So, we are very excited to see those possibilities become real in the next couple of months. And once we have that established, then obviously, as a future step, we could also envision India to be an export hub for us. However, now the first focus is definitely to strengthen that local supply chain set up to serve the Indian market and those opportunities that we can grow there locally.
via AndroidPIT
Can you give us an idea of how much of value addition for Nokia phones is done locally in India?
All our phones are actually manufactured in India already today. But what we would like to do going forward is to even deepen that, especially for the smartphones by working deeper, with fewer local Indian partners who then can also on-board local key component players.
Are you also asking your global supply chain partners to set up their operations to support your India operations?
Yes, this has already led to this setup we already have in place today. And our vision is that going forward for the Nokia smartphones, we could have maybe one or two bigger local partnerships in place.
Could you give us an idea about your pricing strategies?
As of today, our core lineup is between $100-$250. So actually, I think that for India covers quite a broad part of the market. So that’s definitely our core focus area.
The Nokia 1 with Android Go
In India, we now have a number of 5G phones already commercially available. Will HMD be playing a key role in bringing 5G phone prices further down?
We want to work together with Qualcomm but also with the carriers. I think for the user, it’s important also to have the coverage available so that they can enjoy, actually the true benefits of the technology.
Will you launch commercial 5G phones at affordable price points?
Nothing I can announce today, but I can share with you that it’s definitely a key priority we’re working on today.
Read the full interview here. Obviously, as Florian Seiche said, the brand will obviously look forward to the country especially when the anti-Chinese sentiment has increased sales for Nokia and other non-Chinese brand smartphones. Also, the Indian Govt has laid the PLI scheme to help boost local manufacturing and make India one of the top smartphone exporters in the next 5 years. Then, in 2021, 5G will again play a vital role and brands will think to profit from this to focus on the market with 1.3 billion people.
15th August is celebrated all over India as Independence Day. It is a day of pride for all the Indians. But on India’s 74th Independence Day, one of India’s greatest ever captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni officially announced “from 1929 hrs consider me as Retired.” which has left all the Indians in utter shock.
MS Dhoni posted this on Instagram on 7:29 pm on Saturday and asked everyone to consider himself as retired from that very moment.
Suresh Raina sees Dhoni as his mentor and both of them shared a close bond. They played for the Indian national cricket team and IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings together. They had a very good relationship both on and off the field.
Moments after MS Dhoni announced his retirement on 7:29 pm, Suresh Raina also posted on Instagram saying: “It was nothing but lovely playing with you, @mahi7781 . With my heart full of pride, I choose to join you in this journey. Thank you India. Jai Hind!” This type of bond is somewhat unseen in today’s world.
Suresh Raina has been one of the best white-ball players for India over the years. Although he played 18 tests scoring a century, he will be remembered for his limited-overs cricket.
His wife posted on Twitter: “Though I’m still processing this! All I can say is I’m bursting with pride, Immense pride. My heart is just filled with respect & gratitude ❤️❤️❤️ @ImRaina.”
Raina’s best moment in the Indian colours was arguably the crucial unbeaten knock in a tricky World Cup quarter-final match against Australia in the 2011 World Cup. India went on to lift the World Cup. He is also one of the best players of IPL till date and has numerous records to his name.
Due to the rapid growth of coronavirus positive cases, the duration of work from home is also extending. As a result, we need more data, obviously with great speed. So the network service providers, here, also notice this. Blending the solution with the Independents Day celebration, Airtel announced to offer additional 1000GB data to the new connection holder of its Fiber service named Airtel Xstram Fiber Broadband.
Though this additional data offering is not the only one, there are some more for the new customers. The list contains 12 months of Amazon Prime subscription, Wink music subscription, and all the Airtel Thanks benefits.
Need to inform, this offering is only available for the new members of the all top-tier Indian cities. Apart from that, it is also not applicable to the unlimited data plans as well as the prepaid broadband plans. The eligible Fiber broadband plans are starting from Rs. 799 and onwards. The data speed also goes up, as per the plan, up to 1Gbps.
On the other hand, the Indian telecom service provider Reliance Jio announced unlimited free internet along with free calling and more, for five months long, who buy the Jio Fi worth Rs. 1,999.
Just after introducing Instagram Reels, the social networking giant Facebook spotted testing the new ‘Short Videos’ feature inside its application. At the same time, all most, Zee TV’s video streaming application Zee5 introduced its new short video making service. It’s available as a part of the companies existing app, but only in the Android version. iPhone users have to wait for a while to get it.
Maximum of its features are the same as other TikTok clones or similar platforms. HiPi also has music tracks, various filters, visual effects, and more. The most famous vertical scrolling along with the like and share is also in it. HiPi allows the content creators to make videos of up to 100 seconds.
As per the Business Head of Expansion Projects and Head of Products at Zee5 Rajneel Kumar the company is working on this service over a year long. He also added, “We (are) story creators and story tellers for decades and that power of storytelling and creation is what we are bringing onto the HiPi platform, which is very unique and different from any other competition in the market, who are primarily all technology companies“.
The most interesting functionality of HiPi is it only allows the creators of age 18 or above.
Online smartphone sales have increased since the lockdown and there has been a battle going on already between two of the e-commerce giants. Now it seems finally according to Counterpoint Research, Amazon has surpassed Flipkart when it comes to online smartphone sales in Q2 2020.
Amazon has grabbed a 47% market share while Flipkart is just inches apart with 42%, still a win for the US-based e-commerce giant. For Amazon, smartphones from Xiaomi, Samsung, and OnePlus accounted for most of the shipments, interestingly, nine out of ten smartphones sold on Amazon were from either Xiaomi and Samsung.
As the research firm points out, models like Redmi 8A Dual, Samsung Galaxy M30s, and Galaxy M31 were among the bestsellers for Amazon. Both of these Samsung smartphones actually contributed to the best-selling smartphone range for Amazon i.e. the Rs. 15,000 – Rs. 20,000 price range.
“Online channels remained strong in Q2 2020, grabbing a 43% share in the overall Indian smartphone market. Pent-up demand and changed consumer behavior due to the current circumstances, accompanied by attractive offers and promotions by online platforms, were the main reasons for the increased share,” said Research Analyst Shilpi Jain.
On the other hand, for Flipkart, smartphones from Realme, Xiaomi, Samsung, and Poco were the backbone of the sales contributing to almost three-fourths of total smartphone shipments on the e-commerce platform. Interestingly, five out of the top ten smartphones on Flipkart were from Realme.
You may already aware of the clash between Epic Games and the duo of Google and Apple. In this situation, the Fortnite game ower company Epic Games alleged Google. The game maker is saying Google is forcing OnePlus to come out from one of there deals.
There is a deal between the Fortnite maker Epic Games and OnePlus that would have a special Fortnite game launcher premiere on only OnePlus smartphones. As per Epic, Google is pressuring the Chinese smartphone manufacturer against the deal. Along with that, the search engine giant also did the same with LG.
The ability to bypass Play Store during the in-app purchase payments is the main reason behind Google’s behavior, explained by Epic. The company also said about the special launcher that will available worldwide, but Google “demanded that OnePlus not implement its agreement with Epic with the limited exception of mobile devices sold in India.”
Epic says, along with the mentioned, Google also “prevented LG from pre-installing the Epic Game app on LG devices,” as LG signed a contract “to block side downloading off Google Play Store this year.” Google didn’t comment on this allegation till now.
The iQOO 5 will launch on August 17 and a few days before the launch it is been spotted in the Geekbench listing with 12GB RAM and impressive multi-core score. The phone has managed to take the 4293 single-core scores and 13495 multi-core scores.
As teased earlier by a tipster the mockup of the smartphone matches exactly with the final design. The phone shows a triple rear camera setup at the back while at the front it has a curved display with a punch-hole cut-out at the left upper corner on the display.
iQOO 5 is a top of the line smartphone that packs in a 120Hz AMOLED display and is HDR10+ certified. The phone will come with Snapdragon 865 SoC paired with 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 ROM.and will support VC cooling, an ultra game mode, and 4D haptics in the high-performance portion specially designed for high-end performance delivering experience and is even suitable for gaming.
The phone will also have 120db Hi-Fidelity and Hi-Res Audio for a whole new audio experience. The brand also showcased its 120W fast charging tech that seems to be faster than the Oppo 125W fast charging on pen and paper. The 125W fast charger of Oppo takes almost 20 minutes to fully charge a 4,000mAh battery but this one completes in only 15 minutes.
This phone will also have a BMW Edition that will launch alongside on August 17. We are not sure if that version will launch in India or not.
Instagram is getting a new update in the US where both Android and IOS users can experience a totally different thing. The new update is designed in such a way that it makes the full use by making a link between the app and Facebook Messenger. It’s been more than a year since Facebook has declared that they are merging Instagram and WhatsApp within the company and with the days passing by the company is implementing more features to make it look like all the four apps are integrated.
The above screenshot is taken from an iPhone where we can see that the DM icon in Instagram is replaced by the Messenger chat icon.
According to the users, the new update in Instagram allows you to directly message your friend in Facebook from the app and it will be shown in the messenger cha even if the person has no Instagram account.
This update has made the Instagram DM a bit colourful and the resemblance with Messenger app. This update has been spotted by some users in the US. The update has not been seen anywhere else and the global enrolment of it will start soon after the company start receiving positive reviews about this new feature.
OnePlus has been teasing some short videos showing the making and thinking of the OnePlus Nord, they are the four-part series titled New Beginnings on YouTube released last month. Recently OnePlus has uploaded a video with the title “OnePlus Nord Documentary – Amazon Prime Video Trailer”. This video seems to be the trailer of the OnePlus Nord Documentary to be released on August 18.
The video shows some new clips and even some old clips from the New beginning series. We are not sure if the company is going to combine all the four parts of the New Beginning series and name it as Documentary or it can also make a totally new video on the device that is totally new.
OnePlus Nord has a 6.44-inch FHD+ (1,080×2,400 pixels) Fluid AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate. The phone has a quad rear camera where they got the main sensor from the OnePlus 8, which means the 48MP Sony IMX586 main sensor with an f/1.75 lens. The phone will also have an 8MP secondary sensor with an f/2.25 ultra-wide-angle lens that has a field of view (FoV) of 119 degrees, a 2MP macro shooter, and a 5MP depth shooter – both with an f/2.4 aperture. The Nightscape modes are as vibrant as the OnePlus 8. There are dual-cameras at front housed in a punch hole cut. The setup comprises a 32MP Sony IMX616 primary sensor with an f/2.45 lens and an 8MP secondary sensor with an f/2.45 ultra-wide-angle lens that has an FoV of 105 degrees.
OnePlus Nord will run on Oxygen OS based on Android 10. As we all know it will feature the Snapdragon 765G processor that also supports 5G connectivity along with Adreno 620 GPU. The phone will come in three different types of storage variants where it will be available up to 12GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.1 internal storage. The phone will be powered by a 4,115mAh battery that supports Warp Charge 30T fast charging.
