Twitter has to comply with the new Information Technology Rules for digital media if they have not been stayed, the Delhi High Court said on Monday.

Justice Rekha Palli issued notice to the Centre and social media platform Twitter seeking their stand on a plea by a lawyer, Amit Acharya, claiming non-compliance of the rules by it.

While Twitter claimed before the court that it has complied with the rules and appointed a resident grievance officer, the central government disputed the claim.

“They have to follow it (rules), if it has not been stayed,” the court said.

In his plea, filed through advocate Akash Vajpai and Manish Kumar, Acharya said that he came to know about the alleged non-compliance when he tried to lodge a complaint against a couple of tweets.

During the hearing, central government standing counsel Ripudaman Singh Bhardwaj told the court that Twitter has not complied with the rules.

Acharya, in his plea, said that the new IT Rules took effect from February 25 and the Centre had given three months to every social media intermediary, including Twitter, to comply with them.

He contended that the three-month period got over on May 25, but no resident grievance officer was appointed by Twitter to deal with complaints regarding tweets on its platform.

The petition has sought a direction to Twitter to appoint a resident grievance officer without further delay. It has also sought a direction to the Centre to ensure that the IT rules are complied with.

Twitter had recently said it was committed to India as a vital market, but criticised the new IT rules and regulations, saying they “inhibit free, open public conversation”.

Responding to Twitter’s comments, the Centre had said the social media platform was levelling baseless and false allegations to defame India and dictating terms to the world’s largest democracy.

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Realme is set to launch in India the Realme X7 Max smartphone and a couple of 4K LED smart televisions at 12:30 pm on Monday. The Chinese smartphone brand is hosting a virtual event to launch the products, and the event will livestream on its social media platforms, including Facebook and YouTube. You can also watch the livestream on the video embedded below.Realme X7 Max 5G

Third smartphone in the performance-centric Realme X7 series, the Max edition will be powered by MediaTek Dimensity 1200 system-on-chip. It is a flagship octa-core chip with a prime Cortex-A78 core clocked at up to 3.0GHz; three additional A78 cores clocked at up to 2.6GHz; and four energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores that could go up to 2.0GHz. Besides, the phone will sport a super AMOLED screen of 120Hz refresh rate. It will boast a triple-camera set-up on the rear, featuring a 64-megapixel primary sensor.

It will be a 5G smartphone with dual-SIM dual-standby and standalone carrier support on both SIMs. The phone will boot Android 11 operating system based Realme UI 2. It will ship with 65W fast-charger but will support 50W charging capability.Realme Smart TV 4K

The Realme Smart TV 4K will come in two screen sizes – 50-inch and 43-inch. Both will be similar to each other with regard to features and specifications. The TVs will sport 4K UHD LED screen of 280 nits average brightness level. Importantly, both the TVs will support HDR10 and Dolby Vision high dynamic range content. Besides, they both will feature a 24W quad-speakers set-up powered by both DTS surround and Dolby Atmos audio.

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Apple maintained its leading position and registered a healthy 50 per cent growth in the global smartwatch market in the first quarter this year, as worldwide shipments in grew 35 per cent (on-year) in Q1 2021, a new report showed on Thursday.

With a surge in demand for its Series 6 models, Apple saw its market share climb by 3 per cent from the year-ago quarter to reach 33.5 per cent in the March quarter this year, according to Counterpoint Research’s ‘Global Smartwatch Model Tracker’.

Samsung’s shipments also rose 27 per cent with the popularity of the Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy Watch Active series.

Huawei continued to lose share compared to a strong quarter a year ago.

“Apple was able to further solidify its leadership position in the market by widening the portfolio from Watch SE to Series 6 at the right time. This may drive Samsung to launch a mid-price-tier model to boost growth,” said senior analyst Sujeong Lim.

In terms of smartwatch OS platforms, Apple’s WatchOS captured more than a third of the market with a growing attach rate to its base of billion iPhone users.

Google’s Wear OS has not yet achieved such success in smartwatches.

“This is because most of the major smartwatch brands have developed and installed their own proprietary OS (like Fitbit OS, Tizen and Garmin OS), the report showed.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday said the company continues to engage closely with partner Jio on the initiative of building an affordable smartphone and that work is underway on the project.

Last year, Google had picked up a 7.7 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 33,737 crore. It had also entered into a commercial agreement with Jio Platforms to jointly develop an entry-level, affordable smartphone.

“We are focused on building an affordable phone… we are committed to making progress on the project and we are working with them (Jio),” Pichai said in a virtual conference with select reporters from Asia Pacific.

He, however, did not divulge other details, including possible launch date and pricing.

Availability of affordable devices, along with cheap data rates can help bring the internet within reach for more people across the country.

Google’s investment in Jio Platforms was part of ‘Google for India Digitisation Fund’ that was announced last year. In July last year, Pichai had unveiled plans to invest Rs 75,000 crore (USD 10 billion) in India over the next five to seven years to help accelerate the adoption of digital technologies in the country.

“Google is also looking at new opportunities to deploy funds from its USD 10 billion India Digitisation Fund (IDF), and will make some announcements later this year,” Pichai said on Thursday.

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Looking to make a toehold in the market beyond smartphones, OnePlus is gradually expanding its products line-up. Fresh in the company’s portfolio is a smart wearable, the OnePlus Watch. Labelled a smartwatch, the OnePlus Watch covers a wide spectrum of features and services that one looks for in smartwatches. Among the most notable is the built-in storage for music, a speaker and mic set-up to attend calls, and a sensor to monitor blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). As a debutant, the OnePlus Watch seems to be a solid smartwatch. But how does it fare vis-à-vis peers? Let’s find out:

What’s good

Design: OnePlus has done a spectacular job in designing its first smartwatch. The Watch looks premium, especially the moonlight silver colour variant (review unit), which goes well with most outfits. It has a solid build, complemented by a circular case that makes it look more like a watch and less like a toy. The top side of the case is dominated by a screen with thin bezels around. It is a touch screen with curved glass on the top to aid the watch’s gesture-based navigation. At the bottom, the slightly raised centre accommodates sensors for monitoring heart rate and blood oxygen, and charging pins. While the case is made of stainless steel, there is a plastic covering at the bottom. This makes the watch comfortable to wear as the temperature effect on the stainless steel does not pass on to the skin. The case has two buttons – the top one for the menu and the other (customisable) for fitness modes.

Display: The OnePlus Watch design is accentuated by a bold-looking 1.39-inch AMOLED touchscreen of a 454 x 454 resolution. The screen supports sliding gestures; swipe down for quick settings, swipe up for notifications, swipe right to go back, and swipe left to access music player and information related to heart rate, stress, weather, steps count, etc. The screen is bright, vivid and has good sunlight legibility. It supports several watch faces, most with dark backgrounds that look dazzling on an AMOLED screen. The watch also supports custom faces, allowing you to turn any picture from your phone into a watch face background.

Health and fitness features: The OnePlus Watch is loaded with several health and fitness features, including the uncommon stress and air pressure monitors. Starting from health-related features, the smartwatch has a multipurpose heart rate sensor, which registers heart rhythms during active and resting hours. Through this sensor, the watch also monitors stress levels. It supports auto stress level monitoring and has a dedicated breathing exercise built in; this comes in handy in bringing down the stress level. The heart-rate sensor also doubles up as a sleep monitor to register sleep quality. Besides the heart rate sensor, there is a dedicated sensor for measuring oxygen saturation in blood. The Watch is capable of auto-tracking SpO2 during sleep, and there is a provision to manually measure it as well. As for accuracy, the sensor works fine and the deviation in reading is +/- 2 in most cases. Important to note that the watch is not a medical device, so the measurement data and results are for reference only, not a basis for diagnosis and treatment.

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Cyclone Yaas LIVE updates: The landfall process of very severe cyclonic storm Yaas began at 9 am on Wednesday near the Dhamra port in Odisha’s Bhadrak district, an official said. The location of the landfall is north of Dhamra and south of Bahanaga, close to Bahanaga block, on the coast, around 50 km of Balasore, he said.

The wind speed during landfall was at 130-140 kmph, gusting to 155 kmph, as per Doppler radar data.

“The landfall process has begun and will take three- four hours to complete. The maximum impact will be in Balasore and Bhadrak districts,” Odisha’s Special Relief Commissioner PK Jena said.

 In view of the storm, the coastal states of West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand carried out a mass evacuation drive and over 1.2 million people have been shifted to safe shelters.

 Last week, Cyclone Tauktae slammed into the west coast.Cyclone Yaas update: Yaas to reach Jharkhand on Thursday

Cyclone Yaas is crossing Odisha border, south of Balasore. It’ll reach Jharkhand tomorrow morning. It caused heavy to extremely heavy rain in Odisha in past 24 hrs. North Odisha & coastal Odisha expected to receive heavy to extremely heavy rain today: IMD DG Mrutyunjay Mohapatra

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WhatsApp on Tuesday filed a legal challenge against the Indian government, protesting before the Delhi High Court new IT rules that would require messaging services to trace the origin of particular messages.

“Requiring messaging apps to “trace” chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson.

“We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users. In the meantime, we will also continue to engage with the Government of India on practical solutions aimed at keeping people safe, including responding to valid legal requests for the information available to us,” said the spokesperson.

Under the recently notified Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, social media intermediaries with more than 5 million users and providing messaging services will have to enable identification of the first originator of problematic content that may harm the country’s interests and several other provisions described in the Rules.

ALSO READ: Aim to comply with IT rules, says Facebook as deadline ends today

The social media intermediary will have to do this in response to a judicial order passed by a court or by a competent authority under section 69 of the IT Act.

“Provided also that where the first originator of any information on the computer resource of an intermediary is located outside the territory of India, the first originator of that information within the territory of India shall be deemed to be the first originator of the information for the purpose of this clause,” say the rule.

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Poco X2 (review) is the last smartphone from Chinese smartphone brand Poco that I tested. Though among the good ones of its time, the smartphone left me in the lurch simply because I was expecting Poco to make a comeback after a silent gap of over two years after the Poco F1. The next Poco smartphone that I used after about a year, the Poco X3 Pro, seemed to be a performance-centric package. With Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 system-on-chip in tow, the Poco X3 Pro is touted to be the spiritual successor to the Poco F1. But is it really that? Let’s find out:

Poco X3 Pro: Design

Poco is one of the brands that do not shy away from experimenting with radical colour themes in their smartphones. That legacy continues with the Poco X3 Pro. Aimed at young buyers, the phone comes in three jazzy colour options – graphite black (review unit), steel blue and golden bronze. The colour theme is accentuated by an unconventionally shaped rear camera module and an intriguing patterned design on the back cover. Speaking of the back cover, it is made of good quality polycarbonate featuring a thick glossy stripe at the centre sandwiched between stripes in matte finish on the sides. The centre stripe features a Poco logo, which is big enough to come to notice but outlined for minimal distraction. Rounding up the package is the IP53 rating, which is good to handle minor water splashes and dust abuse. It is, however, strongly advised not to expose the phone to either water or dust as both can damage the phone severely. While the overall design is good, the build is uninspiring. The Poco X3 Pro is big, heavy and bulky. It weighs 213g and is 9.4mm thick on its thinnest side.

Poco X3 Pro: Display

Not much seems to have changed here since the Poco X2 and the display on the Poco X3 Pro is mediocre at best. The phone sports a 6.67-inch LCD screen of a fullHD+ (2400 x 1080 pixels) resolution, stretched in a tall 20:9 aspect ratio. Though the screen does well with contrast, it seems off with regard to colours, brightness and viewing angles. The screen supports HDR10, but the panel’s abysmal brightness hampers its utility to a large extent. The brightness might not be good enough for HDR10 content, but it does not temper the screen’s sunlight legibility. It is also a competent screen for fast-paced games like Call of Duty Mobile, thanks to the 240Hz touch sampling rate. As for the refresh rate, the screen goes up to 120Hz and variably adjusts it based on on-screen content requirements. That said, the user interface (UI) transitions appear lively and enhances user experience (UX) in regular operations (browsing, social media, etc). Being an LCD panel, the phone’s display does not include the on-screen fingerprint sensor, which is placed beneath the side-mounted power button. It is safe, fast and accurate and one of the best things this smartphone offers.

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British home appliance maker Dyson on Tuesday launched two new brands of vacuum cleaners equipped with dust-detecting laser technology as the company tries to expand sales here amid the pandemic-induced stay-at-home trend.

Dyson’s V15 Detect and V12 Detect Slim cordless vacuum cleaners will be sold in South Korea with price tags of 1.24 million won ($1,100) and 1.09 million won, respectively. The two vacuum cleaners were already launched in select markets earlier this year.

Dyson said the latest vacuum cleaners boast a laser technology on the cleaning head that reveals micro dust and dirt particles on the floor, reports Yonhap news agency.

They also have a piezo sensor that can measure and count dust particles, and show such data on an LCD screen. The sensor, which converts vibrations into electric signals, counts the particles 15,000 times a second, according to the company.

Dyson hopes the latest products can boost sales in South Korea, where it competes against home-grown tech giants, like Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc.

The company in January opened its first flagship store in South Korea to better target local consumers here.

Last year, Dyson’s vacuum cleaner with an omnidirectional head, the Omni-glide, was launched in South Korea first in the world.

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In a bid to help protect browsing history and search activities of its users from others to see, Google will now let them password-protect the page that shows their searches.

Whenever people use a Google device or product (Android smartphone or Chrome browser), their activity history is stored and is available for them to review via ‘My Activity; feature.

Now, “if you turn on extra verification, Google will make sure it’s really you before you can see or delete your full history on My Activity,” the company said in an update.

“This can help keep your history safer on shared devices. This setting only applies to My Activity. Your history may still appear in other Google products,” the company added.

To strengthen your privacy on shared devices, you can choose to require an extra verification step to view your full history on My Activity.

To activate the verification, go to activity.google.com and click the Manage My Activity verification link.

According to Android Police, once turned on, “the feature will ask you to verify your identity before showing your history”.

“What this actually does is simply take you to the regular Google sign-in page, allowing you to either enter your password or connect using your Android device if you’ve set that up,” the report mentioned.

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