As consumer spending shifts from travel, dining out and general leisure to consumer electronics during the pandemic, the global smartphone market is expected to return to growth during the holiday quarter this year amid strong push towards 5G, according to a new IDC report.

According to the IDC ‘Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker’, smartphone shipments are forecast to grow 2.4 per cent (on-year) in the fourth quarter of 2020, followed by 4.4 per cent growth in 2021.

The market rebound will be fuelled by an impressively quick supply chain recovery as well as significant incentives from both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and channels on new 5G products.

“Despite concerns around weakness in 5G demand, smartphone volumes exceeded the forecast in 3Q20 and supply-side momentum headed into the holiday quarter and 2021 remains strong,” said Ryan Reith, programme vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers.

“Despite on-going lockdowns and economic concerns, consumers in many markets around the world have shifted their normal spending from things like travel, dining out, and general leisure to things like consumer electronics. Smartphones happen to be a benefactor of this transition,” Reith informed on Wednesday.

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Xiaomi restricted itself to budget and mid-range smartphones in India’s price conscious market for a long time. This year, however, the Chinese electronics maker took the leap and launched its premier smartphones in India. Fresh in the line-up is the Mi 10T Pro, which epitomises the company’s efforts in display technology and imaging. Priced at Rs 39,999, the Mi 10T Pro is one of the smartphones that seems to offer sheer value-for-money, at least on paper. Is it as good in real life usage? Let’s find out:Mi 10T Pro: Design

The Mi 10T Pro is huge, bulky and heavy. Look elsewhere if you need a compact smartphone because this one is a brick not meant for single hand operations. The smartphone boasts premium glass-metal construction with Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the front and back, and on the rear camera module. Though the phone has a premium built, its glossy rear profile makes it susceptible to accidental slips from hands. Moreover, the phone’s back cover attracts fingerprints and smudges, and requires regular efforts to keep it clean and shining. The protruding rear camera module puts another dent to the uninspiring design; the phone wobbles on flat surfaces like table top.

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A new scam has surfaced and the target this time is the popular instant messaging app WhatsApp. Hackers are sending texts to people pretending to be a friend or relative and asking for immediate help stating some emergency. The Whatsapp OTP scam is similar to other recent scams where hackers target to gain access to one-time password (OTP). Here is how it works and why one must be careful: 

What is this WhatsApp OTP scam?

Hackers can contact you via SMS, pretending to be your friend or relative, and will ask for an one time password (OTP) they may have sent on your number by mistake. 

If you share the OTP then hackers will get access to your account and all your personal messages and media. The hacker can then send messages to your friends/relatives and can also ask money from them.

What to do if this happens?

One should immediately reset WhatsApp and log in again. To avoid the scam, it’s always advisable to not share any information without confirming if the message is genuine. Also, you may activate the two-factor authentication on WhatsApp to increase your account’s security. 

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Google has confirmed its cloud gaming service Stadia will be coming to Apple iPhone and iPad. However, it will not be a standalone app, instead a web app that will run on any mobile browser including Apple’s own Safari, according to The Verge.

Google was not able to bring the service to iOS devices at the time of its launch because of restrictions imposed by Apple. In August, Apple eased restrictions after public criticism from Microsoft and others, but the App Store still requires companies to submit individual games for App Store review.

These are not the only two services to come to iOS devices. The GeForce NOW Cloud gaming service is already up and running on iOS Safari in Beta. It is also expected to feature the widely popular game Fortnite, which has been banned from the App Store as a result of Epic Games bypassing Apple’s standard 30 per cent fees.

Stadia is not yet available in India, but reports say Google is planning to introduce it in the country by 2021.

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Parents, take it easy if your kids are spending more time on various screens. New research claims that parental restrictions on tech use have little lasting effect into adulthood and fears of widespread and long-lasting tech addiction may be overblown.

The study is among the firsts to examine how digital technology use evolves from childhood to adulthood in the mobile Internet era.

The data were gathered prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in dramatic increases in the use of technology as millions of students have been forced to attend school and socialise online.

But the study authors said the findings should come as some comfort to parents worried about all that extra screen time.

“Are lots of people getting addicted to tech as teenagers and staying addicted as young adults? The answer from our research is ‘no’,” said lead author Stefanie Mollborn, a professor of sociology at the Institute of Behavioral Science at University of Colorado Boulder in the US. “We found that there is only a weak relationship between early technology use and later technology use, and what we do as parents matters less than most of us believe it will”.

Published in Advances in Life Course Research, the paper is part of a four-year National Science Foundation-funded project aimed at exploring how the mobile Internet age truly is shaping America’s youth.

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Samsung will launch a new foldable phone called Galaxy Z Fold 3 with the S Pen support in June next year and the South Korean giant may discontinue the Galaxy Note lineup, the media reported on Monday.

According to a report in the South Korean publication Aju News, Samsung Electronics has confirmed that the Galaxy Z Fold 3 foldable phone will arrive in June 2021.

The report claimed that Samsung will discontinue the Galaxy Note series next year.

“The Galaxy Z Fold 3 is developed as a premium smartphone that combines the latest technologies from Samsung Electronics, such as S Pen (electronic pen) and UDC (Under Display Camera)”.

UDC is a technology that allows to take pictures without a camera hole by placing a camera under the OLED screen.

Samsung “confirmed that the Galaxy Z Fold 3 will be equipped with the S Pen, a feature of the existing Galaxy Note series,” the report mentioned.

As the S Pen stylus is applied to the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy S21 Ultra (tentative name), “the Note series will be discontinued”.

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The OPPO Enco W51 is an affordable pair of true wireless stereo (TWS) earphones with noise cancellation feature. At Rs 4,999, the Enco 51 is one of the few TWS earphones with in-ear design for noise isolation, an array of six microphones for digital noise cancellation, and an ingress protection rating (IP54) for water and dust resistance. The earphones are touted to be as good for attending voice calls as it is for listening to music. Is it? Let’s find out:Design

The OPPO Enco W51 looks similar to the OPPO Enco W31 (review), which is another budget in-ear TWS earphones, but without noise cancellation feature. The earphones look premium and have a touch of novelty. Being an in-ear earphones, the Enco W51 offers secure and snug fit besides good passive noise isolation. However, the earphones’ hard silicone tips and oval design make them unsuitable for extended usage as they cause discomfort to ears after some time.

Like the earphones, the Enco W51’s charging-cum-storage case boasts a premium design. It is a petite case, convenient to carry and fits easily even in the most cramped places like jeans pockets. Made of plastic, the case has a glossy texture with OPPO printed on top and a USB type-C charging port at the back. Unlike the Enco W31’s case, this one supports Qi-based wireless charging.

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The requests by the Indian government to seek access to Facebook users’ data further increased in the first six months of this year, second only to the US government, the social networking giant has revealed.

In total, India requested Facebook to provide data in 35,560 cases in the January-June 2020 period — significantly up from 26,698 queries about users’ data in the second half of 2019.

Facebook provided data in 50 per cent of the requests, according to its latest biannual Transparency Report.

“We have strict guidelines in place to deal with all government data requests,” Facebook said in a statement late on Thursday.

There were a total of 33,374 legal requests and 2,186 emergency requests from India.

There was also an increase in the Indian government’s request to preserve account information too, pending the receipt of formal legal process.

In the January-June 2020 period, India asked for 4,100 accounts to be preserved, from 2,500 account requests in earlier reported periods.

Globally, during the first six months of 2020, the government requests for user data increased by 23 per cent from 1,40,875 to 1,73,592.

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US-based content streaming platform Netflix on Friday said it will host ‘StreamFest’ in India on December 5-6 that will allow non-subscribers to experience the service for free.

The move is aimed at bringing new users to the platform that competes against players like Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and Zee5 in the burgeoning OTT (over the top) market in India.

“At Netflix, we want to bring the most amazing stories from across the world to all fans of entertainment in India. It’s why we’re hosting StreamFest: an entire weekend (December 5 12.01am-December 6 11.59pm) of free Netflix,” Netflix India Vice President (Content) Monika Shergill said in a blogpost.

She added that non-users of Netflix can sign up with their name, email or phone number, and password and start streaming without any payment.

“Anyone who signs in during StreamFest gets one stream in standard definition so, no one else can use the same login information to stream… And to make sure everyone who comes in gets the best experience, we will have to limit the number of StreamFest viewers.

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Instant messaging app WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature that would let users mute their videos before posting those to their friends and family members or putting them up as status.

As spotted by WABetaInfo, a website that tracks WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned company is now developing a mute video feature and it has appeared on a beta update.

In the screenshot shared by the WhatsApp features tracker, one can see the option of muting the video along with the trimming option.

“After enabling Advanced Wallpaper features and Disappearing messages, WhatsApp is working on new features now. The next feature, available in a future update, will allow muting videos before sending to contact or your status updates,” a report by WABetaInfo read.

WhatsApp has also started rolling out advanced wallpaper features to more users.

This feature lets users set a different wallpaper for each chat. You can choose to set one wallpaper for all chats on WhatsApp, or manually select a different one for each chat.

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