Smartphone brand Xiaomi has announced that it has recorded strong and speedy growth in the premium smartphone segment by capturing a 14 per cent market share in the Rs 20,000-45,000 segment.

According to May 2021 tracker by market research firm Counterpoint, the company captured a 14 per cent market share in the 20K-45K category, thereby emerging as one of the fastest-growing and leading premium smartphone brands.

A strong and clear portfolio of smartphones such as Mi 10i, Mi 11X, and Mi 11X Pro led to the growth of the Mi brand in India, the company said in a statement.

“With Mi, we have focused on bringing breakthrough technologies and setting newer benchmarks for mobile innovation,” said Manu Kumar Jain, Managing Director, Mi India.

“With the launch of Mi 10 and Mi 11 series in the market, we have empowered our users with a premium experience, on the back of the superior design, best in class features and functionality,” Jain added.

Recently, the company announced that its Mi 11X series of devices has witnessed record sales worth over Rs 300 crore in just 45 days of its launch.

Both Mi 11X and Mi 11X Pro feature revolutionary cameras, the latest flagship Snapdragon 870 and 888 series chipsets, powerful Dolby stereo speakers, 120Hz E4 Super AMOLED display and fast charging capabilities that aims to offer a premium smartphone experience.

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Garmin India on Monday two new and advanced GPS smartwatches in its Venu series that comes with stainless steel bezel and comfortable silicone band and packs plethora of health and fitness tools.

The Venu 2 and Venu 2S smartwatches come with 45mm watch case and 40mm watch case, respectively. Venu2 is available for Rs 41,990 while Venu 2S will come for 37,990 on various online and offline channels.

The smartwatches feature more than 25 built-in sport applications with preloaded enhanced high intensity workouts, animated cardio, strength, yoga and Pilates.

“The Venu and Venu SQ have received an impressive response from our customers in India and other parts of the world. To advance the fitness regime of our customers, we have brought in the new Venu 2 and Venu 2S to guide the users with their workouts and drive them towards an active lifestyle,” said Ali Rizvi, Director, Garmin India.

The Venu series offer Corning Gorilla Glass 3 touchscreen with AMOLED display, new Health Snapshot feature providing in-depth report of the workout, enhanced battery life with rapid battery recharge and new battery saver mode.

The latest edition of the Venu series comes with newly built-in Health ‘Snapshot’ feature, enabling the users to log a 2-minute session to record key health stats, including heart rate, heart rate variability, Pulse Ox2, respiration and stress, generating a report via the Garmin Connect app to monitor the statistics, the company said in a statement.

The smartwatches are integrated with wide range of features ranging from respiration tracking, Pulse Ox sensor, body battery energy monitoring, stress tracking, pregnancy and menstrual cycle monitoring, sleep monitoring along with other additional health monitoring metrics to track the users’ fitness goals and progress.

The users can enjoy an enhanced battery life of up to 11 days in smartwatch mode and up to 8 hours in GPS mode on the Venu 2 and 10 days on smartwatch mode and up to 7 hours in GPS mode on Venu 2S and with rapid recharging, the company said.

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South Korean tech giant is all set to launch its upcoming smartphone –Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3 — on August 11, media report says.

The new report claims that at the next Samsung Unpacked event the company will unveil the new smartphones along with a watch.

The event will start at 10 a.m. ET and will be streamed on YouTube. Notably, Samsung has not publicly confirmed these details just yet, citing DigitalDailyNews, 9To5Google reported.

A recent report said that the Galaxy Z Fold3 will feature an under-display camera and support the S-Pen stylus. Its next clamshell foldable Galaxy Z Flip3 is expected to have a bigger outer display.

The Galaxy Z Flip3 is expected to feature a larger external display of 1.83 inches. It has a dual-camera system, which reportedly includes a 12MP main snapper and a 12MP ultrawide snapper.

The inner screen of the Z Flip3 may feature a punch-hole design with a 10MP selfie camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 is likely to arrive with a combined battery capacity of 4,275 mAh (2,215 mAh + 2,060 mAh) which may be advertised as 4,400 mAh.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 is rumoured to be powered by the Snapdragon 888 chipset.

Both foldable products are expected to have a lighter weight with a cheaper price than their predecessors.

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By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Between 800 and 1,500 businesses around the world have been affected by a ransomware attack centered on U.S. information technology firm Kaseya, its chief executive said on Monday.

Fred Voccola, the Florida-based company’s CEO, said in an interview that it was hard to estimate the precise impact of Friday’s attack because those hit were mainly customers of Kaseya’s customers.

Kaseya is a company which provides software tools to IT outsourcing shops: companies that typically handle back-office work for companies too small or modestly resourced to have their own tech departments.

One of those tools was subverted on Friday, allowing the hackers to paralyze hundreds of businesses on all five continents. Although most of those affected have been small concerns – like dentists’ offices or accountants – the disruption has been felt more keenly in Sweden, where hundreds of supermarkets had to close because their cash registers were inoperative, or New Zealand, where schools and kindergartens were knocked offline.

The hackers who claimed responsibility for the breach have demanded $70 million to restore all the affected businesses’ data, although they have indicated a willingness to temper their demands in private conversations with a cybersecurity expert and with Reuters.

“We are always ready to negotiate,” a representative of the hackers told Reuters earlier Monday. The representative, who spoke via a chat interface on the hackers’ website, didn’t provide their name.

Voccola refused to say whether he was ready to take the hackers up on the offer.

“I can’t comment ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘maybe’,” he said when asked whether his company would talk to or pay the hackers. “No comment on anything to do with negotiating with terrorists in any way.”

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South Korean electronics maker Samsung on Tuesday launched in India the Galaxy F22 smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy F22 comes in 4GB+64GB and 6GB+128GB configurations priced at Rs 12,499 and Rs 14,499, respectively. It will be available in Denim Blue and Denim Black colours on Samsung Online Store, Flipkart and select retail stores from July 13. As an introductory offer, Samsung is providing Rs 1,000 off to consumers on prepaid transactions on Flipkart. The introductory offer brings down the effective cost of the Galaxy F22’s 4GB+64GB and 6GB+128GB variants to Rs 11,499 and Rs 13,499, respectively.

As for the specifications, the Galaxy F22 sports a 6.4-inch HD+ super AMOLED Infinity-U screen. The screen is touted to attain brightness level of up to 600 nits in the High Brightness Mode (HBM).

The screen is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The Galaxy F22 packs a 6,000mAh battery supported by 25W fast charger. The phone, however, comes with a 15W USB-C fast charger in the box. The The phone is powered by Mediatek Helio G80 system-on-chip, paired with up to 6GB RAM and 128GB on-board storage.

ALSO READ: Samsung Galaxy M32 review: A value play in the company’s budget portfolio

Imaging is covered by a quad-camera system on the rear, featuring a 48-megapixel primary sensor (GM2) based on Samsung’s ISOCELL Plus technology, a 5MP ultra-wide-angle sensor of a 123-degree field of view, a 2MP macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. On the front, the phone sports a 13MP camera sensor for selfies, videos and phone unlock mechanism. The Galaxy F22’s camera comes loaded with several camera modes like Hyperlapse, Slow motion, Food Mode, Pro mode and AR zone.

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As smartphone maker OPPO gears up to launch its most anticipated Reno6 smartphone series in the country on July 14, a top executive on Monday said that the upcoming series will prove to be another milestone and a game changer in the premium segment.

According to Tasleem Arif, Vice President and Head, R&D OPPO India, with Reno6 series devices, the company aims at attaining leadership in the premium device category.

“With Reno6 series adopting the latest technology to build upon the series’ unique strengths in superior imaging capabilities and eye-catching design, we are confident that the most-awaited Reno6 series will be a hit with consumers thanks to its fresh, next-gen experience,” Arif told IANS.

Equipped with MediaTek 5G UltraSave power-saving enhancements, the Reno6 series devices are said to be designed with the power-efficient and fully integrated 5G modems that empower users with incredible 5G experiences.

“5G is the revolutionary technology that is speeding up the advent of digitisation with a shift across industries,” Arif said.

“We want to be a part of this important revolution and relentlessly work to present innovative technologies for mankind. Innovating for advance 5G technology is a key focus area for us,” he added.

According to Arif, the India R&D team has worked relentlessly on validating Reno6 series 5G devices as per the operator needs including performing interoperability and compliance tests.

The company’s performance in the first quarter this year has been particularly strong, with data from various research firms showing that OPPO is the world’s fourth-largest smartphone brand.

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China-based ByteDance which is the parent company of TikTok, has reportedly started selling the AI technology of the short video-making app to other companies, including in India where the app is banned.

The Financial Times reports that the company has kicked off a new devision called BytePlus and is selling TikTok AI to companies like India-based social gaming platform GamesApp, US fashion app Goat, Singapore travel site WeGo, Indonesian shopping app Chilibeli, among others.

In 2020, the Indian government banned several apps developed by Chinese firms, including TikTok, over concerns that these apps were engaging in activities that threatened the national security and defence of the country.

Last month, Nikhil Gandhi, the India Head of China’s ByteDance-owned short video-sharing platform TikTok, decided to quit. TikTok roped in Gandhi in 2019 as its India head to drive the next phase of growth for the Chinese short video-sharing platform.

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is a huge part of what has made it so popular.

According to the report that came out on Sunday, BytePlus offers customers the chance to access the TikTok recommendation algorithm, and “personalise it for their apps and customers”.

BytePlus also offers automated speech and text translation and real-time video effects as well as data analysis tools, according to its website.

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Apple is likely to release a 10.86-inch OLED iPad in 2022 and two new 120Hz OLED iPads in 2023, the media reported.

The report goes into some specifics. For example, the 2022 iPad will have a 10.86-inch screen, which is coincidentally the same size as the current iPad Air, citing The Elec, GSMArena reported.

This might mean that the report is referring to the next-generation iPad Air. Apple would use Thin-Film Encapsulation (TFE) method to protect the OLED panel from moisture and oxygen since the tech is pretty sensitive in this regard.

The 2023 iPads, on the other hand, will go for 120Hz LTPO panels coming in 12.9-inch and 11.0-inch flavours. The LTPO tech is supposed to reduce power consumption at a higher refresh rate.

A recent report said that, in India, Apple’s tablet appears to be doing even better.

Although Indian tablet shipments were down 34 per cent in the first quarter, Apple ranked as the second-largest tablet vendor with a 29 per cent share of the market.

Apple tablet shipments in India increased 144 per cent year-over-year in Q1 2021, allowing the company to overtake Samsung for second place.

When it came to individual devices, 17 per cent of Apple’s 29 per cent market share came from the iPad 8, while 9 per cent came from the 2020 iPad Air model.

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Over 1.5 million people are playing cloud-streamed games on Facebook Gaming every month and the social network has announced to roll out Cloud gaming in Canada and Mexico, and will reach Western and Central Europe by early 2022.

The social network also welcomed top gaming company Ubisoft as a partner and the popular Assassin’s Creed Rebellion has arrived as a cloud-streamed game on Facebook Gaming.

Last October, Facebook announced beta programme of its cloud gaming platform to expand the library of mobile games on Facebook and started with launching a handful of cloud-streamed games on Android and web in select US regions.

“We’ve now scaled our infrastructure significantly, and we’re announcing coverage to over 98 per cent of people in the mainland United States. We’re on track to hit 100 per cent by fall of this year,” Jason Rubin, VP of Play, Facebook said in a statement late on Thursday.

“This growth is an early signal that people are having fun and we’re on the path to delivering developer value,” he added.

Facebook in October last year made its Cloud gaming service official, with launching several new games in the main app and on browser for Android and on the web but ditched Apple, saying its Cloud gaming path on the iOS devices is uncertain.

Apple restricted Facebook Gaming to arrive on iOS several times and the social network’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg admitted that Facebook managed to launch an iOS version of its gaming app after it was “forced to make a concession to bring it to the App Store”.

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NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, is beginning an epic journey across a crater floor seeking signs of ancient life, the US space agency announced on Thursday.

A NASA release said the rover team is deeply engaged with planning navigation routes, drafting instructions to be beamed up, even donning special 3D glasses to help map their course.

But increasingly, the rover will take charge of the drive-by itself, using a powerful auto-navigation system. Called AutoNav, this enhanced system makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth.

“We have a capability called ‘thinking while driving,'” said Vandi Verma, a senior engineer, rover planner, and driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The rover is thinking about the autonomous drive while its wheels are turning.”

That capability, combined with other improvements, might enable Perseverance to hit a top speed of 393 feet (120 meters) per hour; its predecessor, Curiosity, equipped with an earlier version of AutoNav, covers about 66 feet (20 meters) per hour as it climbs Mount Sharp to the southeast, it added.

“We sped up AutoNav by four or five times,” said Michael McHenry, the mobility domain lead and part of JPL’s team of rover planners. “We’re driving a lot farther in a lot less time than Curiosity demonstrated.”

As Perseverance begins its first science campaign on the floor of Jezero Crater, AutoNav will be a key feature in helping get the job done.

This crater once was a lake, when, billions of years ago, Mars was wetter than today, and Perseverance’s destination is a dried-out river delta at the crater’s edge. If life ever took hold on early Mars, signs of it might be found there. The rover will gather samples over some 9 miles (15 kilometers), then prep the samples for collection by a future mission that would take them back to Earth for analysis.

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