IN ITS CURRENT AVATAR, TRUE BALANCE ALLOWS USERS TO CHECK THEIR BANK BALANCE AND THEIR MOBILE DATA BALANCE APART FROM OFFERING RECHARGE SERVICE. True Balance, the app that facilitated checking your bank balance on your mobile, has since pivoted and has entered the mobile wallet space, reportsVCCircle. Balancehero India, is the name of the company that operates this app and is backed by SoftBank Ventures Korea, the South Korean arm of Japan’s SoftBank.
With the company having already obtained the license to operate pre-paid instruments from the Reserve Bank of India, it will now offer the mobile wallet and the peer-to-peer transfer services. The company has acknowledged this switch to Plan B in its business objectives and claims this is being done to enhance income and stay engaged with their customers better. The license issued by RBI is valid till September 2019. In its current avatar, True Balance allows the users to check their bank balance and also their mobile data balance apart from a recharge service. The balance checking can be done on any Android run mobile even if there is no internet connection. True Balance claims its app has been downloaded from the Google Play Store more than 50 million times. With the new business model, the startup will have to contend with established players like Mobikwik and Paytm who offer a range of services, like bill payments, travel booking and even shopping as in Paytm Mall. In fact, Paytm has since launched Paytm Bank. The promoter of Balancehero India, is a Korean national, Lee, who came to India in 2002 and has settled here ever since. His startup is said to have received a series A funding in 2016 from SoftBank Ventures Korea, though the amount invested is not disclosed. One more tranche, this time as part of series B fund raising, also saw SoftBank and other investors pitching in with $15 million. The other investors included M Investment Group, Mega Investment, Korea Development Bank and Capston Partners, the last three being all from S. Korea. Incidentally, SoftBank is one of the major investors in Paytm too. Tom's Guide performed charging tests on the top 10 flagships. This bargain model came out on top. You just realized that your phone is low on juice, and panic sets in. How much charge can you get in a limited amount of time? We tested 10 of the top flagship phones and found that the OnePlus 5T is the fastest in the land. The good news is that most of the premium Android phones these days offer some form of quick charging via their USB-C adapters. In the case of the latest iPhones, you can get fast charging, but only if you pay extra for both a 29-watt power adapter and a USB-C-to-Lightning cable (about $68 total). For our first round of testing, we wanted to find what battery percentage these phones could reach in 30 minutes of charging with their included adapters. The phones were on, but the screens were turned off. With the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, we used both the standard AC plug and the fast-charging gear to bring you both sets of results. The OnePlus 5T led the pack, reaching an impressive 59 percent in 30 minutes. The advantage for the OnePlus? Unlike most other Android phones, it doesn't use Qualcomm's QuickCharge technology. Instead, it employs the proprietary Dash Charge, which delivers higher amperage than QuickCharge and uses dedicated circuitry in the charger itself for heat management. (Android Central has a great explainer on how Dash Charge works.)
However, it's important to note that these iPhones charge slower than the rest of the field even with their included adapters. For instance, the iPhone X hit only 17 percent after 30 minutes. Among other phones, the Galaxy Note 8, S8 and S8+ were all in the same ballpark, at 35 to 38 percent, and the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL had comparable results. So how about after an hour? The OnePlus 5T once again took the prize, reaching 93 percent in 60 minutes. The LG V30 snagged second place, at 86 percent, and the latest iPhones all vied for third place, though the iPhone X had the most capacity, at 81 percent. And, yes, you could argue that you need to cheat to hit these numbers with the iPhone, because you have to buy extra gear. Overall, if filling up your phone fast is a top priority, the OnePlus 5T is the champ. And at $499, it's also the most affordable phone you can get that comes with flagship-level specs and performance. KGI Securities believe that 2018 iPhone lineup will feature tad bigger batteries for improved stamina. With the iPhone X, Apple has sorted those parameters about the iPhone as a product that smartphone buyers care for the most — a modern narrow-bezel-display, new biometric verifications and a pair of great cameras. With these out of the way, it seems that Apple will look forward to fixing one of the areas where iPhones have never made a name for themselves — battery life, in the next generation iPhones.
Renowned Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI securities has mentioned in his latest report that the next generation of Apple flagships will be sporting bigger batteries than the current generation models. The 2018 iPhones are expected to use an improved version of the iPhone X’s L-shaped batteries with an improved efficiency of 10 per cent, which may not sound great initially but could help the Cupertino giant add an hour or two worth of battery life. Relating it to his previous report of three iPhone models for 2018, the 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch OLED iPhones are only expected to benefit from the new stamina upgrade. The 6.1-inch LCD iPhone will probably stay contended with the older battery designs to keep the costs low. Do note that these are still rumours but KGI’s reports are nearly accurate in predicting the future iPhones. There’s still a lot of time before the next generation iPhones break cover, so keep following this space for more. With inputs from 9to5Mac Ive, who had led Apple’s design teams since 1996, was behind many of the company’s most iconic designs. Apple Inc Chief Design Officer Jony Ive is returning to day-to-day management of the company’s design teams after handing off managerial duties two years ago to focus on other projects, Apple told Reuters on Friday.
Ive, who had led Apple’s design teams since 1996, was behind many of the company’s most iconic designs, from early iMacs that came in translucent jelly-bean colours to the first iPhone. In 2015, Ive was named chief design officer, reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook. He then handed off some administrative duties to Apple design executives Alan Dye and Richard Howarth to focus on broader efforts like Apple’s retail stores and new “spaceship” campus in Cupertino, Apple Park. Dye and Howarth will now report to Ive once again. “With the completion of Apple Park, Apple’s design leaders and teams are again reporting directly to Jony Ive, who remains focused purely on design,” Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette told Reuters. Bloomberg reported the move earlier. Shazam’s smartphone app is already tightly integrated with Apple’s Siri digital assistant. Apple is in talks to acquire Shazam Entertainment, whose software helps users identify songs by pointing their phone at an audio source, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Shazam’s smartphone app is already tightly integrated with Apple’s Siri digital assistant. Users of Apple’s iPhone with the Shazam app installed can say: “Hey Siri, what’s that song?” and the app will identify it. But Shazam has other features, such as the ability to identify television shows that do not yet work with Siri. Tech news website TechCrunch reported the talks earlier, writing that Apple could pay about $400 million for Shazam and that a deal could be signed as early as next week. Shazam did not respond to a request for comment. Privately-held, UK-based Shazam has raised $143 million from DN Capital Limited, Institutional Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, among others, over its 18-year history, according to PitchBook, a firm that tracks private venture investments. The price TechCrunch reported would fall far below Shazam’s most recent $1 billion valuations reported by PitchBook. An acquisition of Shazam could help bolster Apple’s music efforts by making it easier for users to find songs and add them to playlists in its Apple Music service. As of mid-2017, Apple Music had 27 million subscribers, behind rival music streaming service Spotify’s 60 million users. Women who used the acupressure app reported significantly less menstrual pain than women who didn’t. Women with intense menstrual cramp pain may get more relief from smartphone app-guided acupressure than with typical medical treatments like painkillers, a recent study suggests.
Some previous research has linked acupressure - which uses precise finger placements at pressure points throughout the body to relieve pain - with reduced discomfort from menstrual cramps. To see if a smartphone app could help women self-administer acupressure for cramps, researchers randomly assigned 221 women to use the app or to stick with usual care for six months. By the end of the study, women who used the acupressure app reported significantly less menstrual pain than women who didn’t, the study found. “Because women with menstrual pain already practice self-management, an app for acupressure can be easily added,” said senior study author Dr. Claudia Witt of the Institute for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “It is wise to try first non-pharmacological interventions, with a good safety profile, before using a painkiller that can have side effects,” Witt said by email. The target audience for the app, young women in their 20s and 30s, already use their phones for a variety of different tasks, making it natural for them to consider an app that teaches them how to use pressure points to ease menstrual pain, researchers note in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Witt’s team developed their own app, called AKUD, based on a consensus of acupressure experts from China, Germany and the U.S. For the current study, the researchers offered the app to women ages 18 to 34 in Berlin between 2012 and 2015. All of the women reported their own pain levels for menstrual cramps on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being the worst. At the start of the study, women reported pain of at least 6 on this scale. Each participant was given an app to use for six months, but only half of the women had an app with an acupressure program. The rest had a “sham” app that didn’t offer any new ways of treating pain from cramps. By the time women in the study went through their third menstrual cycle, participants using the acupressure app reported average pain scores of 4.4, compared with 5.0 for the other women in the study. By the sixth menstrual cycle, women with the acupressure app reported pain scores that were typically 1.4 points lower, a large enough gap to represent a clinically meaningful difference. With acupressure, women were also less likely to use pain medications and reported fewer days with pain during their monthly menstrual cycles, the researchers also found. One limitation of the study is that most of the participants were highly educated and prone to intense menstrual cramps, which means the results might not represent what would happen for all women experiencing menstrual pain, the authors note. Even so, the results suggest that an acupressure app may offer some women a good approach to managing menstrual pain, said Caroline Smith, an acupressure researcher at Western Sydney University in Australia who wasn’t involved in the study but who is developing a mass-distribution app for this purpose. “Adherence suggests the app was acceptable, and the reduction in pain over time was clinically meaningful with few side effects,” Smith said by email. “This app is relevant to women who are looking for evidenced-based self-care options to manage their pain, although as the authors point out further research to address a more generalizable group of women is needed.” Saregama Carvaan Tamil, Carvaan Mini - M.S. Subbulakshmi Portable Bluetooth Speakers Launched12/9/2017 HIGHLIGHTS
Months after bringing the retro music playback experience for its Hindi-speaking customers, Saregama India on Friday launched the Carvaan Tamil and Carvaan Mini - M.S. Subbulakshmi as its new portable Bluetooth speakers. The Saregama Carvaan Tamil is priced at Rs. 6,490, while the Carvaan Mini comes with a price tag of Rs. 2,490. Both the speakers are available for purchase from Croma and online marketplaces such as Saregama.com and Amazon.in.
Among the two new Carvaan variants, Carvaan Tamil has a collection of over 5,000 preloaded songs, including various tracks from Tamil films as well as devotional and some popular Bollywood songs. There are also vocals and instrumental music by legends such as Dr. M. Balamurlikrishna, N. Ramani, and E. Gayatri. The songs are touted to be handpicked using data analytics run on billions of records of music consumption of users across various various platforms and categories on the basis of singers, lyricists, and music composers. You can pick each of the categories available on the speaker by turning its jog-dial. The Carvaan Tamil also comes with FM radio and USB in addition to Bluetooth connectivity. The speaker includes a battery pack that can last up to five hours. Saregama's Carvaan Mini - M.S. Subbulakshmi, on the other hand, is preloaded with 251 songs sung by the legendary singer. The speaker also has options such as an AUX input, Bluetooth v4.1, and USB. Similar to the bigger Carvaan Tamil, the new Carvaan Mini model is claimed to deliver five hours of battery life on a single charge. In September, Saregama launched the Carvaan Mini as the mini-version of its original Carvaan speaker with a price tag of Rs. 2,490. The speaker was debuted in Red and Blue colour options and came preloaded with a collection of 251 songs by Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and Mukesh. "Not only does Saregama have a huge legacy of Hindi music content, but also has an unparalleled collection of Tamil music. Hence we are delighted to launch the Tamil version of Carvaan and Carvaan Mini- M.S. Subbulakshmi to our Tamil audiences living down south," said Vikram Mehra, managing director, Saregama India, in a press statement. Mehra added that there are plans to bring its Carvaan range for other regional audiences in the coming future. The Saregama Carvaan Tamil and the Carvaan Mini - M.S. Subbulakshmi both come with one-year doorstep warranty support across India. Here are some facts that you might not know about the largest and best-known cryptocurrency. Bitcoin rocketed to another record high close of $16,000 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange on Thursday after gaining more than $4,000 in just 48 hours, stoking concerns that a rapidly swelling bubble could be set to burst. There were huge disparities between prices across different exchanges. On GDAX, one of the biggest, the price reached $19,500.
Here are some facts that you might not know about the largest and best-known cryptocurrency. HOW MANY ARE THERE? Bitcoin’s supply is limited to 21 million - a number that is expected to be reached by the year 2140. So far, around 16.7 million bitcoins have been released into the system, with 12.5 new ones released roughly every 10 minutes via a process called “mining”, in which a global network of computers competes to solve complex algorithms in reward for the new bitcoins. ENERGY DRAIN These mining computers require a vast amount of energy to run. As the price increases, more miners enter the market, driving up the energy consumption further. A recent estimate by tech news site Motherboard put the energy cost of a single bitcoin transaction at 215 kilowatt-hours, assuming that there are around 300,000 bitcoin transactions per day. That’s almost enough energy as the average American household consumes in a whole week. BITS OF BITCOIN If you want to buy bitcoin, you do not need to buy a whole one. Bitcoin’s smallest unit is a Satoshi, named after the elusive creator of the cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto. One Satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin, making it worth around $0.0002 at current exchange rates. BITCOIN BILLIONAIRES Bitcoin has performed better than every central bank-issued currency in every year since 2011 except for 2014, when it performed worse than any traditional currency. So far in 2017, it is up more than 1,400 percent. If you had bought $1,000 of bitcoin at the start of 2013 and had never sold any of it, you would now be sitting on around $120 million. Many people consider bitcoin to be more of a speculative instrument than a currency, because of its volatility, high transaction fees, and the fact that relatively few merchants accept it. EXCHANGE HEISTS More than 9,80,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, either by hackers or insiders. That’s a total of more than $15 billion at current exchange rates. Few have been recovered. MYSTERY CREATOR Despite many attempts to find the creator of bitcoin, and a number of claims, we still do not know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, or was. Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright convinced some prominent members of the bitcoin community that he was Nakamoto in May 2016, but he then refused to provide the evidence that most of the community said was necessary. It is not clear whether Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym, was a name used by a group of developers or by one individual. Nor is it clear that Nakamoto is still alive - the late computer scientist Hal Finney’s name is sometimes put forward. Developer Nick Szabo has denied claims that he is Nakamoto, as has tech entrepreneur Elon Musk more recently. INFLATED CHINESE TRADING Until earlier this year, it was thought that Chinese exchanges accounted for around 90 percent of trading volume. But it has become clear that some exchanges inflated their volumes through so-called wash trades, repeatedly trading nominal amounts of bitcoin back and forth between accounts. Since the Chinese authorities imposed transaction fees, Chinese trading volumes have fallen sharply, and now represent less than 20 percent, according to data from website Bitcoinity. “MARKET CAP” The total value of all bitcoins released into the system so far has now reached as high as $283 billion. That makes its total value - sometimes dubbed its “market cap” - greater than that of Visa, and bigger than the market cap of BlackRock and Citigroup combined. CRYPTO-RIVALS Bitcoin is far from the only cryptocurrency. There are now well over 1,000 rivals, according to trade website Coinmarketcap. “SHORTING” It is already possible to short bitcoin on a number of retail platforms and exchanges, via contracts for difference (CFDs), leveraged-up margin trading or by borrowing bitcoin from exchanges without leverage. But a number of big financial institutions - including CME Group, CBOE and Nasdaq - have recently announced that they will offer bitcoin futures, which will open up the possibility of shorting the cryptocurrency to the mainstream professional investment universe. LOST BITCOINS Many fewer than the 16.7 bitcoins that have been mined are actually in circulation and accessible, because of forgotten passwords, accidental losses, hoarding, owners forgetting about coins or even dying. It is impossible to know for sure how many bitcoins have been permanently lost, because those that have are still in the system, in dormant addresses. But according to a December 2013 research paper by the University of San Diego and George Mason University, 64 percent of the 12 million bitcoins that had by then been mined had never been spent. Bitcoin developer Sergio Lerner estimates that almost 1 million unspent bitcoins belong to the cryptocurrency’s mysterious creator. RICH LIST There are 5,638,155 bitcoins in the 1,000 biggest wallets - more than a third of all bitcoins in circulation. That makes the 1,000 biggest wallet-holders worth a collective $87 billion, at current rates. HIGH FEES The average fee paid to process bitcoin transactions has soared over the past year, outpacing even the staggering price increase of the cryptocurrency itself. Each bitcoin transaction now costs around $7.30 to process, up from around 30 cents at the start of the year, according to trade website BitInfoCharts. FORKING OFF If you owned bitcoin prior to Aug. 1, 2017, you also own Bitcoin Cash - a clone of the original. That is because on that date bitcoin underwent a so-called “fork”, in which the underlying software code was split into two. One unit of Bitcoin Cash is now worth more than $1,300. That adds roughly another 135 percent to the returns from a bitcoin investment at the start of the year. Google says that the feature is initially being piloted on mobile with a handful of celebrities for now. It seems that Google is taking another step to make its core product — Search, more interesting and cool. The Search engine is working on a feature that allows you to have your queries answered by celebrities and other notable figures in form of featured snippets in search results.
The company says that the feature is initially being piloted on mobile with a handful of celebrities for now that includes Priyanka Chopra, Will Ferrell, Tracee Ellis Ross, Gina Rodriguez, Kenan Thompson, Allison Williams, Nick Jonas, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Seth MacFarlane, Jonathan Yeo and Dominique Ansel. Evidently, the celebrities aren’t answering user’s queries on the real-time basis; instead, Google has had them pre-record their videos. These self-recorded videos share their perspectives and answers to some of your most-asked questions. The short videos will provide answers to questions like “How many languages does Priyanka Chopra speak?” or “Can Tracee Ellis Ross sing?” and so on. "When you search for your favourite personalities, whether they’re rising stars or well-known celebrities, their answers will appear in the form of selfie-style videos with a uniquely personal, authentic and delightful touch," the company said. Google has also hinted that this is just the snapshot of what is coming and but soon more innovation and videos will be added to Search. THE CHEAPER VERSION MAY NOT SEE DOWNGRADING OF FEATURES TO COMPENSATE FOR THE DROP IN THE PRICE. Apple Inc is reported to be planning to launch its 9.7-inch iPad next year at a price point much lower than the current $329 (approximately Rs 21,200). This report seems to suggest that the price may be brought down to a more affordable $259 (approx. Rs 16,700).
Incidentally, this is already the cheapest available iPad in the market. If this report is proved to be true (there is no official confirmation of these details yet), then it might indicate a clear policy shift at the Cupertino based tach giant on its strategy to take on competition. The nearest rivals to the iPads are the tablets run on the Android OS and there is the unending desire to lure these customers to iOS. The Android tablets are definitely priced lower than the iPads. The fight on the pricing front is not new and has been going on due to Apple witnessing its sales of iPads drop year on year. The repricing exercise may or may not see some downgrading of the features or specs on the iPad to take care of the drop in the price. These devices will be made by one of Apple’s vendors, Compal Electronics. The tentative timeframe being quoted now is around the middle of 2018. There is also the ambiguity on the policy Apple will follow in respect of the current model being sold at the higher price. Will it also exist in parallel or will it be withdrawn? Questions like these are not yet answered and buyers, particularly in India who are waiting to see the iPad prices drop before making their purchase will have to wait till a clearer picture emerges directly from the company. Till such time, the above information may remain only as mere speculations. |
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