IOS 10.2 Is Out With An India Specific SOS Panic Button

Apple released iOS 10.2 update on 13th December with many bug fixes and performance improvements. The update for the first time brings India only SOS button to iPhones and iPads, which was made mandatory for all the phones being sold in India from January 1st, 2017.

The update also brings numerous other features like 100 new emoji, new TV app and improvements to the Photos, Music, Mail, News and Messages apps.

The SOS button was something that has been expected to be rolled out by all the phone manufacturers in India, as Mobile manufacturers have been asked by the Department of Telecommunications to install a software in all existing phones to provide for a panic button like feature at the press of one single number to help users in case of emergency.

Back in May, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said by January 2017, all mobile phones will have a 'panic button' so that if a woman is under some kind of threat, she can use the button and alert the police.

The new SOS button functions via the power button, and the user can change how to activate the SOS call in the settings. By default, the SOS call will go straight to the number 112, which will become the new emergency number from January 1, 2017.
The user can tweak how the SOS key works under Settings > General > Emergency SOS on iPhones 5 and above running iOS 10.2. You can choose whether to activate SOS by pressing the power button three times or five times.

You can download the update by going to Settings > General > Software Updates on your iPhones and iPads.

Diwali Sale 2016, smartphone deals on Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal

Diwali Sale is back on popular e-commerce platform and its raining deals on smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices. Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal – the top three ecommerce platforms are offering exciting deals with cashback and exchange offers. Amazon is also giving early access to select deals for its Prime customers, who also get one day delivery for free with Prime shipping.

Amazon and Flipkart are giving away biggest discount on their platform exclusive products. Amazon, which has been offering Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus at an attractive discount since Dussehra, is continuing with the offer along with some new smartphones launched very recently. Flipkart, on the other hand, is offering exchange discount on Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus along with bank offers. Snapdeal is trying to woo consumers towards other electronic peripherals this Diwali.

Here is a look at top deals across all the three major ecommerce platforms:

Smartphones:

1. Moto G4 Plus:

Amazon is offering Rs 2,000 discount on Moto G4, which was launched at a starting price of Rs 12,499 in India. This is the third such discount on Moto G4 since the launch. Moto G4 is the latest from Motorola to counter the growing poipularity of devices like Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 3 and Coolpad’s Note series. Moto G4 features a tweaked design with textured back for superior grip and a 5.5-inch full HD display. Moto G4 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and can be purchased in two variants – 2GB RAM, 16GB storage and 3GB RAM, 32GB storage. The smartphone is backed by a 3,000mAh battery with support for Motorola’s turbo charging feature. Moto G4 features 13MP primary camera with dual LED flash and a 5MP front facing camera.

Moto G4 lacks fingerprint scanner but makes up for it with a near stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. Motorola has also started Android 7.0 Nougat update for G4 and G4 Plus, which means you will have latest Android OS even before some of the flagship smartphones.

2. Nubia Z11 mini:

Nubia is making a comeback in the Indian smartphone space with its Z11 mini smartphone. Nubia, a sub-brand of ZTE, is trying to pitch Z11 mini as an ideal smartphone. In our review, we were highly impressed by the capabilities of Z11 mini camera.

Nubia Z11 mini is a compact smartphone with 5-inch Full HD display and Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The smartphone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage onboard. The Nubia Z11 mini’s USP is its 16MP Sony-made CMOS IMX298 image sensor, which lets you controls photo parameters like DSLR.

In our review, we noticed the camera allows to “shoot in macro and wide angle which even top-end phones struggle with now.” The smartphone is backed by a 2,800mAh battery and offers premium build with rear facing fingerprint sensor.

3. Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus:

Diwali is also one of the best time to get yourself a flagship smartphone. Flipkart is offering exchange discount of up to Rs 23,500 on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. There is also a flat Rs 7,000 cashback on Citibank credit cards.

Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus start at Rs 60,000 and go all the way up to Rs 92,000, which is inline with last year’s pricing. Apple has not renewed the design of iPhone lineup this time but there is huge improvements in the departments like camera, performance and display. Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus feature same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays but with up to 25 per cent more brightness and support wide colour gamut.

The latest iPhones are powered by Apple’s A10 Fusion chipset clocked at 2.23GHz, which beats most mobile benchmarks in terms of numbers. The new iPhones are faster and are also capable of processing 4K videos on the go. With iPhone 7, Apple has made OIS standard and introduces six-element f/1.8 aperture lens. The iPhone 7 Plus gets an additional 12MP f/2.8 sensor equivalent to 56mm for shooting telephoto images. The bigger iPhone 7 also offers an option to shoot portrait with shallow depth of field.

4. Samsung Galaxy On8:

The Galaxy On8 is the latest in company’s On series of online exlusive smartphones. Samsung Galaxy On8 is available exclusively on Flipkart at Rs 15,900 with exchange discount up to Rs 13,000 and option for no cost EMI.

Samsung Galaxy On8 features a 5.5-inch Full HD display and is powered Samsung’s Exynos 7580 processor coupled with 3GB RAM and 16GB expandable storage. The smartphone features a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front camera. 

Flipkart is also offering a 32GB microSD card free with the smartphone.

5. Le 1s Eco:

LeEco’s Le 1s Eco, the Chinese smartphone maker’s ecosystem friendly device is now available on Flipkart at Rs 8,999. The smartphone was launched in India at Rs 9,999 with features like free access to live TV and access to on-demand content.

Le 1s Eco features a 5.5-inch Full HD display, 3GB RAM, octa-core MediaTek processor and 32GB storage. The smartphone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with EUI on top of it. 

6. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3:

Xiaomi has made a strong comeback in India’s smartphone market with Redmi Note 3. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is the best selling smartphone yet for the Chinese company. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 with 32GB storage is now available on Snapdeal at Rs 11,999.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 features a 5.5-inch full HD display and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 650 processor. The smartphone comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. The highlight here is the huge 4,050mAh battery packed in a 8.65mm thick chassy.

iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus Pre-Orders Open on Amazon, Flipkart

Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have gone up for pre-orders via Amazon India and Flipkar. The latest iPhone models come in 5 colours including Jet Black and Black, with Apple having revealed the India prices for the entire iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus lineup earlier, alongside the shipping date of October 7. Both Amazon and Flipkart have dedicated pages for pre-orders.

The iPhone 7 will start at Rs. 60,000 for the 32GB variant. The iPhone 7 Plus will start at Rs. 72,000 for the same storage capacity. The 128GB and 256GB variants of the iPhone 7 will be priced at Rs. 70,000 and Rs. 80,000 respectively, while the iPhone 7 Plus will priced at Rs. 82,000 and Rs. 92,000 for the corresponding storage capacities.

Both Amazon India and Flipkart have unveiled pre-order offers for the smartphones. On Amazon, the company has detailed exchange offers along with a full list of eligible phones. Those who use the exchange offer will get additional cashback worth Rs. 4,000 in the form of an Amazon Gift Card. The company has also unveiled a 'no cost EMI' option, and those that opt for this will get cashback up to Rs. 8,000 as an Amazon Gift Card.

Customers who pre-order the smartphones on Amazon and sign-up for a 1-year Amazon Prime membership get a Rs. 500 Amazon Gift Card. Another offer (which lasts till October 14) for iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus buyers who download and sign into the Kindle app will get 80 percent off on Kindle eBooks (up to a maximum of Rs. 1,000 Kindle store credit).  The same offer extends from October 15 to October 30, but the maximum store credit will be reduced to Rs. 300. The company has also detailed that the recently unveiled 1+9GB Vodafone offer for new 4G handsets is applicable as well.

As for Flipkart, the company is detailing an exchange offer that can give a discount of up to Rs. 24,500 on the price of the smartphones. Those who use Citibank credit cards will get cashback up to Rs. 10,000.

The new iPhone 7 series sports a refreshed design and the rear antenna bands have been redesigned to make them less prominent than before. Both the phones feature a brand new home button that uses Taptic vibrations to simulate a physical tap. The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus also come with IP67 water and dust resistance.

Shrinking Camera Tech Turned Smartphones Into Super Shooters

When Apple unveiled its new iPhone 7 last week, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Phil Schiller called the device's camera one of the most advanced ever put in a smartphone. Cameras in phones are so commonplace now that users take them for granted, but improving the picture-taking capabilities of the newest devices means cramming a lot of tech into a small, and thin, package.

Upgrading the cameras in smartphones typically requires improving the sensors that pick up the image, the optics that focus it and, perhaps most importantly, the software and computing power in the phone, said Daniel Sakols, vice president of business development at Amalence Inc., which makes the imaging technology for companies such as phone maker Huawei.

"There was a big increase in the available processing power to take this image information and do radically new things with it," Sakols told Live Science.

One of the first cellphones with a camera was the Nokia 7650, released in 2002. At the time, Nokia said the technology was going to usher in the "multimedia messaging era," according to a statement from November 2001. The camera, at 0.3 megapixels, was a far cry from current models, which range from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels.

The pictures taken on the Nokia 7650 were 30 kilobytes and were saved on only 3.6 megabytes of RAM, according to a 2003 review by ZDNet. This means that few existing smartphone apps would fit on the Nokia phone, let alone image-stabilization software.

In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which launched last month, has a processor similar to that found in a laptop computer and has 853,000 times as much data-storage space as the Nokia 7650. The Note 7's camera has a sensor that picks up 12 megapixels, while the iPhone 6 has an 8-megapixel camera and a similarly powerful processor. Both Samsung's and Apple's phone cameras can run image-stabilizing programs, as well as apps that sharpen edges and adjust for lighting conditions, a whole suite of adjustments that the cameras make without the user even knowing.

Sakols said that improvements to phone cameras made taking pictures more convenient and allowed the phone to compete with point-and-shoot cameras, if not digital SLRs. "It's what phone manufacturers are building around," he said. "It's no longer about just having a bigger sensor."

Software isn't the only factor in improving the cameras in smartphones. For example, the earliest phone cameras lacked the ability to focus. Now, smartphones can alter the position of the lens slightly using tiny motors and can provide a wider variety of depths of field and better autofocus capabilities. In fact, a big selling point of the iPhone 7 is the optical zoom, which actually changes the arrangement of lenses. The iPhone 6 had only a digital zoom, which just enlarges the image with software; it doesn't add any detail.

The optics of focusing are becoming a big issue in camera design, Sakols said. As a result, some manufacturers are adding a "bubble" to the front of the camera to add focal length to the lens(the bubble is visible on an iPhone 6 if you look carefully). Samsung has had camera models with optical zoom in the past, notably the Galaxy K, but the addition of real lenses added bulk to the camera itself. (On Samsung's website the phone even looks a little like a point-and-shoot camera)

"When you look at the lens against a sensor of a given size, one of the interesting constraints [is] as the sensor size increases so does the lens in front of it to project a nondistorted image," he said. This is why manufacturers are adding bubble shapes to the lenses — to get a little bit of extra distance between the lens and sensor so that the lens itself can be a bit larger.

But there are limits, Sakols said. He added that most phone makers now try to limit the size of the image sensor in order to keep the lens size down.

This is one reason why even though pictures taken on smartphones are good, digital SLRs still have an edge in some areas. This can be partly explained by the physics of gathering light onto an image. The aperture of the lens limits the resolution of a magnified image because when light waves go through a smaller opening, they tend to diverge rather than hitting the sensor in parallel. This process is called diffraction. Magnifying an image only magnifies the loss of detail, so the big lenses that professional photographers use will outperform a smartphone camera's zoom in some areas.

However, software and hardware advances have leveled the playing field for smartphone cameras and narrowed the performance gaps among phone manufacturers. Apple was once far and away superior, but that's less true now than it was nearly a decade ago, Saklos said.

"Apple's imaging capability is pretty awesome," he said. "But it's not just the iPhone 6 that can produce these beautiful images. Other smartphone cameras can kick out a fab image as well."

Here is the list of countries who can book the iphone 7 today

Here is the list of countries (in alphabetical order) who can book the phone today

Australia

Austria

Belgium

Canada

China

Denmark

Finland

France

Germany

Hong Kong

Ireland

Italy

Japan

Luxembourg

Mexico

Netherlands

New Zealand

Norway

Portugal

Puerto Rico

Singapore

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan

UAE

UK

US Virgin Islands

US

Apple iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus pre-order begins; these countries can book it

The Pre-orders of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will open on Friday. The phones will be available in more than 25 countries beginning September 16 and will also be available to customers in India beginning October 7.

Technology giant had launched the highly-anticipated smartphones beginning at USD 649 with advanced technologies like immersive stereo speakers and air pods and the new phones will be available to customers in India beginning October.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage in San Francisco to introduce the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, calling it the "best, most advanced iPhone ever, packed with unique innovations that improve all the ways iPhone is used every day."

The new iPhone features new advanced camera systems, come with more power and performance, more battery life, immersive stereo speakers and is the first water and dust resistant iPhone.

Apple iphone 7

New smartphone coming on 2016-

Apple iphone 7

Apple iphone 7

The iPhone 7 will be Apple's brand-new flagship phone for 2016, and following tradition should be announced in September. Although the final release date is still many months away, that hasn't stopped the rumour mill going crazy over the upcoming iPhone.

We've already seen rumours that the new iPhone will feature big design changes, with an all-new D-jack headphone jack, waterproofing protection and an eSIM. Loads of rumours are circulating about the screen too - will it get bigger? Will it feature a curved edge? Will it have a Touch ID display, or edge-to-edge glass?

One things for sure, the new iPhone will be faster than ever, with an A10 processor and embedded M10 motion co-processor, plus 2GB of RAM.