Technology

Samsung Electronics Co . determined that a problem with batteries that triggered a global recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones wasn't to blame for devices that burst into flame in China, saying their combustion was likely due to unspecified external heat sources. The company launched a preliminary investigation after comments circulated over the weekend on social media about two of the high-end phones sold in China igniting, mirroring complaints by Note 7 users from the US to South Korea. But on Monday, Samsung and its supplier Amperex Technology said they found no evidence of a link between its batteries and the fires. The South Korean company is grappling with its deepest crisis in years, a global recall precipitated by scores of reports that the batteries in its newest gadget were prone to sudden combustion. But it continued selling Note 7 devices in China, explaining that the power cells for phones sold there came from ATL and carried no defects. "Samsung has begun...

As expected, Lenovo on Monday launched the Moto E3 Power in India. The smartphone has been priced at Rs. 7,999, and will be exclusively available to buy via Flipkart from Monday midnight. It is eligible for the Reliance Jio Welcome Offer. The company was earlier anticipated to launch the Moto E3 smartphone in the country, however, it has launched its battery-focused smartphone instead - the Moto E3 Power. The company at the event also revealed that there are over 3 million Moto E users in India. The Moto E3 Power bears a bigger battery compared to the Moto E3 (3500mAh compared to 2800mAh), however, that's not the only difference. It sports twice the memory - 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB - and twice the inbuilt storage - 16GB instead of 8GB. Both smartphones support storage expansion via microSD card (up to 32GB). The E3 Power also bears 4G LTE connectivity, with VoLTE support, apart from water repellent nano-coating. It comes with a 10W charger in the box, and the company is claim...

Lenovo India has started sending invites of the launch of its Z2 Plus smartphone in the country on Thursday. The company is holding a launch event in New Delhi that's scheduled to begin at 11:30am IST. The Chinese consumer electronics giant will be launching the Lenovo Zuk Z2 – which was launched in China in May this year - as the Lenovo Z2 Plus in India. Detailing the reasons behind the rebranding in the country, Anuj Sharma, Head of Product Marketing, Smartphones, Lenovo MBG India told Gadgets 360, "Once we are getting into a particular price band, we want to make sure consumers know the brand. We want to sell the phone. We are not bringing the device as token flagship as India is still a big market for us. However, Zuk branding will be there on the box, with the text 'Powered by Zuk' as a hat tip for the Zuk team." The Lenovo Z2 Plus will be launched in two variants in the country – 3GB of RAM with 32GB of inbuilt storage, and 4GB of RAM with 64GB of inbuilt...

Reliance Jio on Sunday welcomed Bharti Airtel's decision to provide better interconnection for its calls. But it also said the number of such points proposed remained substantially less than actual requirement - and these won't be able to address the issue of large-scale call drops. Airtel rebutted in a counter-statement. "Based on the current traffic flow between the two networks, the proposed augmentation by Airtel would still only suffice for less than one-fourth of the required interconnection capacity," a Jio statement said. Sponsored Content by Taboola You can speak another language in just 1 hour! Babbel "More than two crore calls are failing everyday between the two networks, which is far in excess of the quality of service parameters and of alarming proportions. Urgent steps are required to be taken in the interest of customers of both operators," the statement said. The statement comes a day after Airtel said it has received the payments due ...

iBall on Friday launched a new entrant in its Slide tablet series - the Slide Cuboid. The voice-calling tablet comes in a Grey colour variant, and is priced at Rs. 10,499. Keeping the Indian customers in mind, iBall has introduced a total of 9 Indian system languages in the tablet, with support for 21 Indian languages for keyboard inputs. The iBall Slide Cuboid offers 4G connectivity via its single SIM card slot, and runs Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box, powered by a 1GHz quad-core SoC and a Mali-400 GPU. It has 2GB of RAM under the hood. The tablet sports an aluminium chassis over the edges, has front-end speakers for music and calling purposes. It packs an 8-inch HD (1280x800) IPS display with a pixel density of 189ppi. Talking about the optics, the iBall Slide Cuboid has a 5-megapixel autofocus rear camera. There is a 2-megapixel front fixed-focus camera for video calling and front camera photography. The camera app offers features like Panorama, Face Beauty, Motion Track mo...

Apple has just released iOS 10 and it has plenty of awesome new features such as the iMessage App Store. We've highlighted the big iOS 10 features before, but we found several other useful features that the company didn't highlight. Here are the best of those hidden gems. 1. Restore the old home button iOS 10 has a new unlock feature that requires you to press the home button to unlock the device. That'll probably work very well with the new home button on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, but with older iOS devices, the experience is less convenient. To get the old unlock method back, head to Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button > turn on Rest Finger to Open. 2. Remove pre-loaded apps Don't need apps such as Stocks, Weather, Mail? You can now get rid of them easily - just like you delete other apps on iOS. Note that Apple has clarified that these apps are not really removed from your system - only the icon is hidden, so you won't really gai...

While iFixit has published its teardown of the iPhone 7 Plus , we now look to Chipworks for its teardown of the iPhone 7. Just as we mentioned with the larger model, Apple keeps certain iPhone specifications close to its chest. These include the amount of RAM and the battery capacity - and these have been revealed by the teardown. The Chipworks iPhone 7 teardown is still ongoing, however, it has published details on the RAM module and battery capacity of the smartphone, apart from details on various other chips on board. The teardown reveals that the iPhone 7 sports 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM, manufactured by Samsung. To recall, the iFixit teardown of the iPhone 7 Plus revealed a Samsung-made 3GB LPDDR4 RAM module. As for the battery capacity, the teardown found the iPhone 7 sports a 1960mAh battery, which is significantly larger than the 1715mAh battery found on the iPhone 6s, and marginally larger than the 1810mAh battery found on the iPhone 6. Just to put that in perspective, the iFixit ...

Samsung India on Friday began sending invites for a Galaxy J-series smartphone launch in Gurgaon on Monday. The company is expected to launch the Galaxy J7 Prime, which was launched in Vietnam in late August. To recall, the Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime was tipped by an established Mumbai retailer to launch soon in India. Mahesh Telecom claimed the smartphone would launch at Rs. 18,790, and will sport an MRP of Rs. 19,400. The Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime is the upgraded version of the Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016), and features a fingerprint sensor on the home button in addition. Other differences include the presence of a full-HD display instead of an HD display, more memory (3GB RAM instead of 2GB), more inbuilt storage (32GB instead of 16GB), and a higher resolution front camera (8-megapixel instead of 5-megapixel). The other specifications of the Galaxy J7 Prime almost completely match the Galaxy J7 (2016). The dual-SIM (Micro-SIM) Galaxy J7 Prime ships with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. The s...

It seems like online piracy has left its glory days behind, as another major player -TorrentHound - has finally decided to call it quits. After Kickass Torrents and Torrentz.eu, TorrentHound has become the third torrent website to bite the dust this year as the website has reportedly decided to shut itself down voluntarily. In a one-word message to TorrentFreak, TorrentHound's founder said 'Finito', which means 'finished' in Italian, indicating the website's shutdown. The torrent website was founded back in 2007 and had been around for nearly a decade before its founder took the decision to shut it down. As pointed out by TorrentFreak, even though the website had been around for quite some time now, and was among the top 10 torrent sites in terms of visits, it never reached the popularity levels of bigger players like The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, and Torrentz.eu. TorrentHound founder provided a more detailed statement on the shutdown to the publication, s...

Samsung India on Friday launched the Galaxy A9 Pro in India. Priced at Rs. 32,490, the smartphone will be made available in India from September 26 in Black, Gold, and White colour variants. The highlight of the smartphone is its large 6-inch display and its 5000mAh battery. To recall, the Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro was launched in China back in March. The smartphone bears some upgrades compared to the Samsung Galaxy A9, thus the 'Pro' moniker, sporting 4GB of RAM, a 5000mAh, and a 16-megapixel camera instead of 3GB of RAM, a 4000mAh battery, and a 13-megapixel camera. The dual-SIM (Nano-SIM) Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and sports a 6-inch full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) Super-Amoled display, and is powered by a 1.8GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor. In terms of optics, the smartphone bears a 16-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, an f/1.9 aperture, and optical image stabilisation (OIS), apart from an 8-megapixel front camera that also bears an f...

Apple on Thursday updated its website to reveal the price in India of the entire iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus lineup. The iPhone 7 Plus starts at Rs. 72,000 for the 32GB variant, compared to Rs. 60,000 for the iPhone 7 variant with same storage, a price tag that was revealed by Apple last week. The price jump to the next storage variant remains at Rs. 10,000, which means you can get your hands on 128GB iPhone 7 for Rs. 70,000, while Rs. 80,000 will get you the 256GB smaller iPhone. The 128GB iPhone 7 Plus will cost Rs. 82,000, while the top of the line 256GB iPhone 7 Plus will cost Rs. 92,000. As announced earlier, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will go on sale in India from October 7. While some retailers have been taking unofficial pre-bookings for the latest iPhone models, with the price of the entire iPhone 7 range revealed, the official pre-bookings can now begin in earnest. Apple has also slashed the prices for iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE. With the 64GB model disco...

While Reliance Jio SIM cards remain a difficult thing to obtain, many stores see to have at least replenished their stocks of the Reliance JioFi 4G wireless hotspot. In fact, Reliance Jio has quietly launched a new JioFi 4G wireless hotspot that sports an Oled display and an improved 2600mAh battery. It is currently being sold in few cities in India at a price of Rs. 1,999. Reliance Jio's new JioFi is larger than its predecessor and sports a squarish shape with smooth edges. It has a sleek matte finish design, compared to the glossy egg-shaped original JioFi wireless hotspot. However the most notable difference is the Oled display housed on the top. The new Reliance Jio device shows whether the power is on/ off, the amount of battery life left, the 4G signal strength, and Wi-Fi signal strength. The large form can be credited to the 2600mAh battery integrated inside. To compare, the original JioFi had a 2300mAh battery. Twitter user Raghvendra shared pictures of the new Reliance...

Google few weeks back started rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat for compatible Nexus devices. The Android Nougat update was rolled out to the Nexus 5X , Nexus 6P , Nexus 9 , Nexus Player , Pixel C tablet, and Android One General Mobile 4G devices gradually. The list of devices however missed out the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 LTE devices giving an impression that they may miss out on Android N update altogether. Google has now confirmed that both the Motorola Google Nexus 6 and HTC Google Nexus 9 will receive the final Android 7.0 Nougat update "in the coming weeks." The company confirmed the details to Android Police without giving an exact timeline for the update. Unfortunately, Google has so far also not revealed the reasons for the delay of the Android 7.0 Nougat update for the devices. For those users who can't wait for the official rollout of Android 7.0 Nougat can register for the Android N Developer Preview to experience Nougat. To refresh, the final Android 7.0 Nougat b...

Google was in the headlines for the wrong reasons this week, with reports of 24x7 location tracking on Android devices. The search giant was also in the news for the most recent version of Google Play (v6.9.15) causing battery life issues for some users. Google has responded to the latter reports on its product forums. Addressing the issue, Google Play Community Manager Amanda said, "We identified a bug affecting a small number of users in a recent release of the Google Play. For users in the error state, the Google Play app was unable to obtain GPS, causing it to make frequent unsuccessful requests and use battery. We will be rolling out a fix in the next few days." As Google says, users can expect a fix to come their way soon, solving their battery problem. Till then, they can revert to an older version of Google Play (v5.1.11 is reportedly not causing any problems), a method complaining users on the Google Product Forum resorted to. To recall, users have since last we...

Apple India on Thursday announced it was slashing the prices of select iPhone models in India. Specifically, the 128GB models of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, and the 64GB model of the iPhone SE. The announcement comes just ahead of the festive season, as well as ahead of Apple's October 7 launch of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in India. The iPhone 6s 128GB model is now priced at Rs. 60,000, a Rs. 22,000 price cut from its earlier price of Rs 82,000. The iPhone 6s Plus 128GB in the meanwhile is now priced at Rs. 70,000, seeing the same Rs. 22,000 price drop from its Rs. 92,000 launch price. The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus now start at Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 60,000 respectively, a drop of Rs. 12,000 each compared to their launch price, and you also get double the storage at 32GB, compared to 16GB last year. As we mentioned, Apple's 4-inch iPhone SE smartphone , which was launched in March this year, also got a price cut. The iPhone SE 64GB model is now priced at Rs. 44,000...