Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 with 6GB RAM and More?

The Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 is rumoured to launch at the end of this month. According to a new rumour from China, the handset will be launched with MediaTek's Helio P25 chipset and not Qualcomm's yet-to-be-announced Snapdragon 660 processor. Additionally, the Redmi Pro 2 will feature a dual-rear camera setup like its predecessor

The new report refutes previous rumours which hinted at Xiaomi ditching the dual-camera setup on the Redmi Pro 2. Like most Xiaomi smartphones, the Redmi Pro 2 will also feature an all-metal design with 2.5D curved glass. The handset is likely to arrive in two variants - one with 4GB RAM, 64GB storage and the other with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage

Xiaomi recently introduced the Mi 5C with its own custom processor named Surge S1. The company is also reportedly working on its 2017 flagship smartphone, the Mi 6, which is tipped to launch in April with Snapdragon 835 SoC. The Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 may launch ahead of the Mi 6, and rumours suggest that the 4GB RAM variant will be priced at 1,599 Yuan (around Rs 16,000), while the 6GB RAM variant will retail for 1,799 Yuan (around Rs 18,000). There is no word on the official launch date yet.


Courtesy:
www.digit.in

Nokia 3310 Pushes Nostalgia Buttons

HMD Global owner of the Nokia phone brand, on Sunday reintroduced the classic 3310 feature phone at the Mobile World Congress, along with a line of brand new Nokia smartphones that run on the Android platform.

The relaunch of the 3310 is the re imagination of one of the world's best-selling feature phones as a sleek, lightweight device that features 22 hours of talk time and an entire month of standby time. Its average retail price will be just 49 euros (about US$52).

The phone will come in four colors: warm red and yellow with a glossy finish, and dark blue and gray in matte.

The reintroduction was part of a larger rollout that included new smartphones -- the Nokia 3, Nokia 5, Nokia 6 and Nokia 6 Arte Black Limited Edition -- that will operate on the Android Nougat platform and include Google Assistant.

The launch is the first major Nokia phone product introduction since Microsoft agreed last year to sell the feature phone business it had acquired from Nokia to HMD and FIH Mobile for $350 million.

HMD has committed to spend $500 million over three years to support the resurrection of the Nokia smartphone and tablet business.

Nokia phones stir up real emotions in customers, said Juho Sarvikas, chief product officer of HMD Global.

"For the Nokia 3310, we just couldn't resist," he said. "We wanted to reward loyal Nokia phone fans and make a statement that rich heritage, innovation and modern design can go hand-in-hand."

Limited Gain

It's unlikely that the new device will generate much profit, said Todd Day, senior industry analyst for mobile & wireless communications at Frost & Sullivan.

It features a basic operating system with texting, but no QUERTY keyboard, and there are low-end smartphones on the market that can provide greater functionality at the same price point, he told TechNewsWorld.

The new feature phone rollout is little more than a marketing ploy -- but it could drive enough volume to be profitable for HMD, said Ian Fogg, an analyst at IHS Markit.

The risk is that the publicity from the launch will overshadow the "innovative industrial design" in the new Nokia smartphones, he told TechNewsWorld.

The Nokia 6 features a 5.5-inch full HD screen with a unibody made of 6000 series aluminum. The phone features a smart audio amplifier with dual speakers and Dolby Atmos sound. The limited edition phone features 64 GB of storage and 4 GB of RAM.

The Nokia 5 features a Corning Gorilla Glass laminated 5.2-inch IPS HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 mobile platform, and a Qualcomm Adreno 505 graphics processor.

The Nokia 3 features a Corning Gorilla Glass laminated 5-inch display, and an integrated 8-MP wide aperture front and back camera.

Marketing Tricks

"In some ways, the Nokia 3310 is a marketing coup, as it reminds people of the Nokia brand," remarked Annette Zimmermann, research director for personal technologies at Gartner.

"On the other hand, this is just one classic feature phone of many that HMD Global now has under its roof since it bought Microsoft's feature phone business," she told TechNewsWorld.

There were 400 million feature phones sold in 2016, Zimmermann noted, many of them in emerging markets, and HMD was one of the leading vendors of those devices, next to Samsung and TCL.

It's possible that HMD sees an opening in the global market due to Samsung's recent Galaxy Note7 troubles and other reliability issues, and wants to strike when the iron is hot, suggested telecom analyst Jeff Kagan.

"This throwback to the year 2000 gets them a lot of media attention, and brings warm and fuzzy feelings," he told TechNewsWorld. "Whether this is going to be anything bigger than that is the problem."

Courtesy:
http://www.technewsworld.com

Apple Maps search may get personal, and much better, thanks to Spotsetter...

 Apple may be looking to infuse its mapping software with personally relevant results by incorporating social search with technology acquired from the startup Spotsetter.

A Friday TechCrunch report said that Apple had acquired Spotsetter. The company provided personalized recommendations for places to go based on various outside data like content from people's social networks on Facebook and Twitter.

Apple declined to comment. But a blog post from Spotsetter published last week said that the company was closing down its app, which was available on iOS and Android.

Though the Spotsetter app is now dead, its technology may find its way into Apple Maps -- or maybe an altogether new app -- providing new features around discovery that could help Apple better compete against Google Maps. Google Maps provides a variety of targeted search functions, but it's not currently using social data in a major way.

With Spotsetter's technology, Apple probably sees an opportunity to improve Maps, and possibly grow elsewhere.

"This could be a sign that Apple will become more social, which is a technology they have struggled to master," said Brian Blau, an industry analyst with Gartner. "Adding context to maps will make them more useful and more interesting, as people will start to use maps for not only general navigation, but they can use maps as a primary search tool."

Spotsetter's technology was focused on what it called a "personal index," to provide recommendations on places to go based on data like people's Foursquare tips, Facebook posts, tweets and even Instagram photos. The indices, the company has said, were based on the content of the posts, who posted them, when and from where. Results were ranked based on a number of signals including the searcher's location and which friends the person may have tagged as "experts."

The idea was that no two users would get the same results for a given search.

"Many people will have Chinese food in their suggestions," as the company previously described its service on its website. "But if you and your friends are die-hard joggers, into indie bands, or like kite surfing, Spotsetter will highlight that information."

Spotsetter also pulled in content from other sites like Zagat, OpenTable and Yelp.

Glitches and routing inaccuracies have plagued Apple's Maps. In 2012 Apple CEO Tim Cookapologized for the state of the software. So, Apple no doubt is looking to improve its mapping software.

courtesy:www.itworld.com

The cloud and big data are no threat to data warehouses...

I'm often told that the use of big data systems will kill the now very old world of data warehousing. Why? It's hugely expensive to build data warehouses. Consider the cost of the technology, including very pricey hardware and software. The minimum buy-in is well over $1 million -- and I'm being kind with that number.

Enter big data on cloud platforms. Now you can access other people's hardware to build massive data-storage systems. These data-storage systems can use highly distributed query processing systems for a divide-and-conquer approach to gain answers from massive amounts of data in mere minutes or even seconds.

Traditional data warehouses typically work with abstracted data that's been rolled up (cleansed and transformed, in data warehousing lingo) into a separate database (the data warehouse or data mart), for which specific analytics are known in advance (such as compliance reporting or sales trend analysis). That database is updated incrementally with the same type of rolled-up data, typically on a weekly or monthly schedule. By contrast, big data systems tend to have raw data, whether from operations (log reports), user activity (website tracking), or other real-world usage (census surveys). That raw data is left as is because its usage is not predetermined, so there's no known target to trasnsform it to.

It's clear that using big data systems means you have more current, original-context information that can better support line managers and executives. What's more, the cost is about a third or less than that of traditional data warehouses. And getting a big data system up and functional on a public cloud takes about one-tenth of the time, if that.

Given the huge differences and the obvious benefits of big data on public clouds, what's the future of traditional data warehousing?

The reality is that those who use data warehousing technology will continue to do so. Although tasks are moving quickly to big data, the systems I've seen deployed are more operationally focused. Big data systems are typically used to understand tactical issues, such as when inventory likely needs to be replenished or who's not selling their quota.

Enterprises still use data warehousing for reports and visualizations that go to executives and regulatory agencies to report the holistic performance of the company. They are generated by traditional data warehouse systems that cost millions of dollars to build, and those systems are not going anywhere anytime soon. No matter how good and cost-effective big data on the cloud is or becomes, data warehousing will still be a fact of life in many enterprises, and that fact will last for the lifecycle of existing systems. It's strange, but that's the way I see it.

courtesy:www.infoworld.com

Hands-on with the Tizen-powered Samsung Z smartphone

For two years, we've been hearing about Tizen smartphones. But we haven't seen any.

Tizen was first promised by Nokia as a replacement for its Symbian OS -- one of several such successors that never saw the light of day, including Maemo and MeeGo. When Nokia switched to Windows Phone, Intel and then Samsung picked up Linux Foundation's Tizen open source project as a lower-end operating system for phones and other devices. Now it's pitched as the "everywhere" OS for the Internet of things.

Tizen has been all hat and no cattle. But now the cows are coming: The poorly reviewed Samsung Gear 2 smart watch is the first device to run the full Tizen OS, and full-Tizen cameras and TVs are promised by Samsung for later this year. And the first Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z, is due this fall for sale in Russia and other former Soviet-bloc countries. I got a brief chance to try out the Samsung Z this week at the Tizen Developers Conference, and I can tell you that, despite its still-languid pace of development, Tizen is an actual operating system, not just the never-ending research project it has felt like.

The Samsung Z looks and feels very much like Samsung's Android smartphones. There's the tiles section at the top of the home screen, with some app icons at the botton, and there's the pull-down notifications and settings tray at the very top. You also get the hardware Back and Menu buttons, in addition to the main Home button. The Settings app looks almost identical to Samsung's Android version.

None of that is a surprise -- Samsung has said it wants its Tizen phones to feel like its Android phones so that users don't hesitate to stay within the Samsung universe. Back when it had the Bada OS, it espoused the same goal of a largely converged UI.

But there are some differences, and not just in the icon designs. If you swipe up from the app section on the home screen, you get a full-screen window of app icons, similar to the standard iOS home screen. And you don't get the multitasking controls in Android, such as when you swipe in from the side. The Tizen UI may echo the look of Samsung's Android UI, but it's a much simpler interface with only basic gestures to learn. In that regard, it's less complex to master than Canonical's Ubuntu Touch or Mozilla's Firefox OS, both aimed at the same users.

courtesy:www.infoworld.com

Microsoft promises lower prices on Windows tablets, phones...

Dell's Windows 8 Venue 8 Pro tabletCNET

Windows tablets and smartphones will be cheaper this year, according to Microsoft.

Prices on 7-inch, 8-inch, and 10-inch Windows tablets will become more competitive, Nick Parker, Microsoft's vice president of OEM partners, said at this week's Computex Asia trade show, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

"We'll reach price points that are very industry competitive for 7, 8, 10-inch devices," Parker told reporters at Computex. "They will really surprise you. Last year, we were in the 3s, 4s, 500 dollars. This year, we'll be 1s, 2s, 3s."

The consumer cost of Windows Phone handsets will also drop to less than $200 in certain markets this year, Parker added.

Slashing the price on Windows tablets could help Microsoft win over more customers in a market dominated by the iPad and lower-cost Android devices. Rival tablets such as the Google Nexus 7, start at around $200, though the Amazon Kindle Fire 7 undercuts much of the competition at just $139. In contrast, comparable Windows tablets still tend to run higher. Microsoft's own Surface Pro 2 rings in at $900, though it offers much greater memory and far more features than the average Windows 8 tablet.

But lower prices will only go so far. Windows 8 hasn't exactly been greeted with open arms, challenging Microsoft to convince consumers to choose a Windows 8 tablet over an iPad or Android device. In the smartphone arena, Windows Phone has grown in popularity and market share but still runs a very distant third to leaders Apple and Android.

In April, Microsoft announced that it would start offering Windows for free to manufacturers of phones and tablets with screen sizes under 9 inches. That move will pave the way for device makers to in turn lower the prices to consumers.

courtesy:www.cnet.com

Apple's Beats buy the result of executive ignorance -- report...

A glance at the streaming music market back in March.Statista

Apple's management underestimated the importance of streaming music to consumers until it finally snagged Beats Electronics, which includes the Beats Music streaming service, a new report claims.

Apple's management team has historically focused on getting customers to purchase songs through its iTunes service rather than on feeding them streaming music, leading to a level of "arrogance" that put the company behind the 8-ball, Buzzfeed reported Thursday, citing people who claim to have worked at the company and have knowledge of the behind-the-scenes discussions over music.

According to Buzzfeed's sources, who include both current and past employees on the iTunes and iTunes Radio teams, many of the company's own employees have opted for Pandora and Spotify over Apple's streaming service, iTunes Radio. Those sources also said Apple's management failed to see Spotify or Pandora as threats, causing the company to "panic" and acquire Beats.

"The management in particular were pretty much tone-deaf in what Spotify was and that's why they're panicking now," the source told Buzzfeed. "They didn't understand how Spotify worked, which is why they thought iTunes Radio would be a Spotify killer."

Apple launched iTunes Radio last year as a streaming competitor to Spotify and Pandora. The service allows people to create stations and then hear tracks similar to their stations' songs or artists.

Despite the Buzzfeed sources' claims, iTunes Radio isn't a failure or could eventually hurt Spotify. In March, an Edison Research study found that in the US, iTunes Radio had surpassed Spotify for streaming share, with 8 percent of the market. Spotify could muster only 6 percent share. Apple still had a long way to go to catch Pandora, however, which owned 31 percent of the market.

The growth of iTunes Radio suggests that Apple is doing something right. In addition, Apple's recent acquisition of Beats Electronics, which included the company's popular hardware as well as streaming service Beats Music, may not have been an act of desperation, despite what Buzzfeed's sources say.

courtesy:www.cnet.com