Oppo Mirror 5 smartphone will boast a 5-inch display

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July 16, 2015

Oppo, a Chinese Smartphone manufacturer has just launched its new Oppo Mirror 5 handset with a highly polished mirror finish.

Coming with a 5-inch display and quad-core processor, Oppo Mirror 5 is quite an eye-catcher.

On the back of the device there are diamond-like patterns with “cut-glass sections and different reflective tendencies,” Oppo says. The patterns have been made using a method called ultraviolet embossing technique.

Now apart from being a looker, the Mirror 5 is coming with pretty much the basic specs.

As mentioned above it will boast a 5-inch display, but offers 540 x 960 pixels resolution.

Oppo Mirror 5 will run on a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor with 2Gigs of RAM. There is going to be 16GB of onboard storage which will be expandable via a microSD card.

In respect of the camera department, it will come with an 8MP rear camera and 5 MP front shooter. Though it doesn’t appear too exciting Oppo is praising the f/2.2 wide angle lens of the front camera.

The camera will also offer different photo modes like beauty, double exposure, filters, time lapse, panorama and many more.

The Mirror 5 will be running Oppo’s colourOS 2.1 operating system based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop). Oppo Mirror 5 will also include a range of custom features like “smart cleaner” which will help free up space and “shake shot” which will manage the home screen functions and many other features.

They are hoping on these features to be the point of attraction for potential buyers.

The handset will come with a finish of Ivory White or Midnight Blue. This is going to be quite a good buy for people not interested in specs as such but put high regards on the looks of their device.

HTC targets US mid-range market with Desire 626s, 626, 526, 520

By

Nitish Singh

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July 16, 2015

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HTC is releasing four new Desire Android Smartphones for the US market. They are partnering with some mobile operators in hope to get the attention of customers on the currently rising prepaid plans.

Desire 520, Desire 526, Desire 626s and Desire 626 will be released soon in HTC’s mid-range lineup. They will borrow design elements from the One M9 flagship phone but will come at a much low pricing.

“At HTC, we don’t think you should have to sacrifice or settle if you are looking for an affordable smartphone. That is why we are bringing the absolute best affordable smartphones to market with the HTC Desire lineup”,

says HTC America president Jason Mackenzie.

“Our Desire smartphones bring the premium experiences, performance and style of our flagship Smartphone at an incredible price”.

He added.

The Question is will consumers find them attractive enough to buy them?

Low cost Phones for the US

Based on the specifications of the devices the HTC is targeting them at lower end markets. People shopping in this market are likely not have very high expectations from the devices; though HTC will provide 4G LTE support on all these devices.

Now let’s get into the Devices and their specs:

Desire 626:-

Display: 5-inch HD display with 720 x 1280 pixels resolution

Operating system: Android 5.1 lollipop

Memory: 1.5 GB RAM with 16 GB internal storage and expandable by microSD card

Processor: 1.1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chip

Camera: 8 MP rear camera and 5MP front camera

Desire 626s:-

Display: 5-inch HD display with 720 x 1280 pixels resolution

Operating system: Android 5.1 (Lollipop)

Memory: 1 GB RAM with 8 GB internal storage and expandable by microSD card

Processor: 1.1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chip

Camera: 8 MP back camera and 2MP front camera

Desire 526:-

Display: 4.7-inch display with 540 x 960 pixels resolution

Operating system: Android 5.1 (Lollipop)

Memory: 1.5 GB RAM with 8 GB internal storage and expandable by microSD card

Processor: 1.1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chip

Camera: 8 MP back camera and 5MP front camera

Desire 520:-

Display: 4.5-inch HD display with 480 x 854 pixels resolution

Operating system: Android 5.1 lollipop

Memory: 1 GB RAM with 8 GB internal storage and expandable by microSD card

Processor: 1.1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chip

Camera: 8 MP back camera and 5MP front camera

All these devices will be launching with once the mobile operators announce which model they will be carrying. Most famous carriers are in collaboration with HTC on this.

AT&T, Boost Mobile, Cricket, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, Tracfone, Verizon and Virgin Mobile are some of their collaborating carriers.

Adobe is now up and running to solve Flash’s Vulnerabilities

By

Nitish Singh

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July 16, 2015

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Adobe has released an update for Flash Plug-ins for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Recently it was discovered that Hackers used vulnerabilities in the plug-in to exploit and intrude into a computer system.

With this latest update, Adobe has addressed much critical vulnerability which makes the Flash Player Plugins more competent.

Users are advised to update Flash Player to version 18.0.0.209 to protect their systems from attacks.

A week earlier an Italian surveillance/spy company Hacking Team got hacked and 400 GB of their internal data were stolen and released online.

The information released among other revelations showed that many hackers used/exploited the vulnerabilities in the plugins to attack or potentially take control of an affected system.

“A separate attack against one of these vulnerabilities shows that not sharing the discovery of vulnerabilities with the vendor or broader security community leaves everyone at risk,”

wrote Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend.

“This latest attack is yet another demonstration that Adobe is a prime target for exploit across commercial and consumer IT systems.”

He added

The current predicament of Adobes’ aging platform is quite severe. Facebook and Mozilla both have put Flash plugins in their blocklist. Mozilla is even testing an alternative to rendering SWF content.

Adobe’s Flash Player is a major target of attackers and Adobe’s behavior is quite passive in that matter. Update 18.0.0.209 will be the 7th update issued by Adobe as an emergency update for fixing a zero-day flaw in Flash Player.

Perhaps the most practical option now is to remove Flash altogether, as Flash is not that much required in our lives anyways. With the introduction and inception of HTML5, the necessity of Flash on the net is also in the decline.

Are you ready to give up on flash? Comment below.

Samsung officially launches Galaxy A8

By

Jia Khan

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July 16, 2015

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After weeks of speculation, the wait is finally over and Samsung has officially launched its Galaxy A8 android phone this week in China.

Features of Galaxy A8 are quite similar to the other phones of the same price range, manufactured by Samsung. Samsung Galaxy A8 possesses a metal and glass design.

Like previously speculated the Galaxy A8 is the slimmest phone that has ever been produced by the firm with a 5.9mm thick body.

Galaxy A8 has a metal frame whose design closely resembles the Galaxy S6. The rear side of the phone is built with of aluminum which is the trademark for Samsung A-series.

It presents a 5.7 inch full HD display and surprisingly, despite the addition of metal, it is still easy to carry as it weighs just 151 grams.

Samsung has also introduced finger print scanner in this phone that has be accessed from the home button.

Galaxy A8 boosts with Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor that has been coupled with 2GB RAM. It is comes with 16GB/32GB of internal memory that is further expandable up to 128GB, using a micro SD card.

Samsung Galaxy A8 has been provided with a lot of connectivity options that include 4G LTE internet, dual-band Wi-Fi, USB port 2.0, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with Glonass and Beidou support, as well as NFC.

The handset features a 16MP main shooter rear cam that is minimized up to 1.0 µm, a bright f1.9 aperture, a wide range lens focus and LED flash light. Galaxy A8 has a 5MP front cam that is best suited for low light conditions.

Camera can be accessed directly from the shortcut by pressing HOME button twice (ease of access that was also observed in Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge). Battery backup is provided by a 3,050mAh battery that provides hours of surfing.

Samsung is now aiming to commercialize this phone in India, possibly on July 19^th. No date so far for Nigeria.

Apple’s iPhone 6S is Almost Here

By

Jia Khan

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July 15, 2015

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Apple’s next iPhone, reportedly christened iPhone 6S, will possibly be launched in September as reports of the begining of mass production of the upcoming device emerge. Some of the specs of the iPhone 6S have been revealed from software perspective, few months before it hits the market.

iPhone 6 was launched in 2014 but its predecessor cellphone 6 Plus marked it down with its super 5.5 inches LCD screen. 6 Plus got much attention in the market due to its advanced features.

The Wall Street Journal published a report in which it mentioned that Apple is on the top rank in making 92% of industry profit, followed closely by Samsung that makes almost 15% of industry’s profit.

The report shows that industry’s profit is almost occupied by these two leading companies.

According to statistics carried out by global investment group Canaccord Genuity, Apple aims to launch its iPhone 6S with between 85 and 90 million units.

It shows a considerable increase as compared to 70 to 80 million units for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus that were launched in 2014. The expected growth is about 10%.

Analysts are of the view that the Apple will focus on internal features of upcoming iPhone 6S rather than beautifying it and loading it with bloat as compared to the predecessors iPhone 6 and 6 Plus that included features like bending etc.

It is also expected that the new phone comes in pink color and surprisingly, a 14-karat “Gold Edition” will also be seen.

Apple revealed iOS 9 for the new 6S that was declared in a developer’s conference on June 8. Apple also announced that the new device will include updated versions for Siri, some modifications in Apple Pay, new map functionality and some different News app.

Apple also promises to provide better animations, screen-scrolling and extended battery backup that would provide 3 hours more on the new operating system.

Moneypenny: Facebook’s new human-powered digital assistance

By

Nitish Singh

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July 15, 2015

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Facebook’s messenger app will now have a personal assistant built into it. It is currently in the process of testing and known internally as Moneypenny- the name of the secretary from the “James Bond” franchise.

Unlike Apple’s Siri, or Microsoft’s “personal digital assistant” Cortana, Moneypenny will be a service that will connect users to “real people”. Via Moneypenny people will get help with “researching and ordering products and services, among other things.”

Hence, Moneypenny will more be analogous with a traditional caretaker than the new class of digital assistants.

A number of companies have also targeted this area of business. Magic which is a US startup creates a platform where people communicate with “trained Operators” via text, allowing them to order anything from food to airplane flights.

GoButler is another company which is similar to Magic but has a much more international reach. The Operator is another notable concierge system.

Last April when Facebook had split its messaging service from the main app, it had started to develop Messenger to compete in the Asian market against services like WeChat and Line, apps that combine commerce and gaming and chatting.

So hopes are up that Moneypenny will have the capability to provide quality service to users.

The Information has reported that Moneypenny is currently in the process of testing. And so we don’t have a precise launch date, or how well-developed it is right now.

Pluto Flyby: NASA’s New Horizons Probe sends Images

By

Nitish Singh

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July 15, 2015

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New Horizons an interplanetary space probe launched by NASA in 2006 flew by Pluto yesterday (14/July/2015). History was made as New Horizons captured the first-ever close-up images of Pluto.

It was about 7.49am EDT when this historical event (Pluto flyby) happened. At 12500 KM above Pluto’s icy cold surface, New Horizons took the astonishing picture.

As, celebration NASA had unveiled a low-res Instagram image which was quickly (after few hours) followed by a high-res image of Pluto.

It appears as a reddish dwarf with a distinctive heart-shaped mark on its surface.

Glen Fountain, the mission project manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, told Space.com that New Horizons is a “capstone mission”. He said,

“It is the completion of this initial reconnaissance of our solar system. It’s giving us a new perspective about how we as human beings fit into the universe.”

Now we officially have visited all 9 planets that are (or have been) considered a planet of our solar system via a robotic spacecraft.

Now of course Pluto is no longer officially recognized as a planet but there still remains a controversy since the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006.

The main purpose of New Horizons was to study Pluto, its moons and the Kuiper Belt. It was designed to perform flybys of the Pluto system and one or more Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs).

So in that regards New Horizons jobs is half way finished, the New Horizons now heads for the Kuiper Belt.

But the history of New Horizons wasn’t all daisies.

New Horizons “faced a crazy number of challenges — politically, funding and priority; nuclear fuel shortages; rocket issues,”

Stern said.

“So many people stuck with this for so long. They got knocked down, they stood up. They got knocked down again, they stood up again. They would not take no for an answer.”

He added.

And all this struggle and persistence paid off in the end. Glen fountain said that when New Horizons hit its target at about 4.8 billion KM away from the earth, NASA had just struck a hole-in-one on a golf shot from New York City to Los Angeles.

Adobe Flash is now in Mozilla’s Block-list

By

Nitish Singh

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July 15, 2015

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All previous versions, up until 18.0.0.203 of Adobe Flash are now in Mozilla Firefox’s blocklist.

This action was announced by Mark Schmidt, head of Firefox support in a twitter feed.

Few days prior to Mozilla’s initiative Facebook had also extinguished all Flash plug-ins as they were reportedly being used to spread malware to users’ systems.

Recently an Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team was hacked and 400GB worth of the company’s internal files, source codes and communications were leaked onto the Internet.

Three major Adobe Flash vulnerabilities were leaked via which your security system can be exploited. These vulnerabilities can also affect all versions of Flash on Windows, Linux and Macintosh systems.

Though Adobe has said that these issues will be taken care of by next week, Mozilla has put Adobe in their blocklist until all these vulnerabilities are assessed.

Firefox is now displaying a warning message on its plug-in management page about the vulnerability of Flash. All Flash plug-ins will either be set to “ask to activate” or “never activate”. Options to switch these states are not available as Adobe Flash is on the browser’s block-list.

Whenever a web page embedded with Flash-based content is opened Firefox will display a warning message in the browser.

Firefox has prevented the unsafe plug-in “Adobe Flash” from running on [website url].

This prompt will include options to allow the plug-in. if the option be selected then Flash content will begin to load as normal. Hence, it will ensure that the codes on the website can’t exploit the Flash vulnerabilities without while the user remains oblivious.

Firefox is now invested on training Shumway which is an HTML-5 based SWF renderer to replace the necessity of Flash.

It seems quite grim for Adobe as a major browser has shut off their old multimedia platform and is working on finding an alternative.

Galaxy Tab S Pro Coming Soon? Samsung Registers Name

By

Jia Khan

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July 15, 2015

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Samsung registered the name of an upcoming tablet, the Galaxy S Pro in South Korea so that the rival companies could not use the same name for their devices.

The Galaxy Tab S Pro was first discussed by Samsung in January within a changelog referring to the Milk Music app of the company but nothing has been heard of the tablet since then, but the registration of the device name has again led to raised expectations.

Samsung has not mentioned any details regarding the specifications and features of Tab S Pro but the specs of Galaxy Tab S2 have already been revealed so the experts are of the view that some features of the upcoming Galaxy Tab S Pro can be expected to be the same as the former device.

Samsung previously announced the specifications of the Galaxy S2 Tab and it is being speculated that two models for this tablet, namely Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 and Tab S2 9.7, shall be launched. The numbers mentioned in the name refer to the screen size of the devices that would be 8.0 inches and 9.7 inches respectively.

Experts are of the view that Galaxy Tab S Pro could feature a Super AMOLED screen that would be 12 inches or larger in dimensions, while some people are of the view that it would just differ in size than its predecessor model Galaxy Tab S whose models were 8.4 and 10.5 inches in size.

The new update also includes the names of some other devices that Samsung has yet to launch. The development of Milk Music App has made a good impression on the people regarding the progress on the new device.

The registration of the name of the new Galaxy Tab S Pro has created a hype on the net and now we await more details from Samsung.

Asus ZenPad S is now up for grab in the United States

By

Nitish Singh

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July 13, 2015

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Asus had announced at Computex last month a handful of Tablets that are going to be available soon. And one of them is now up for purchase in the United States.

Asus ZenPad S is now available at Best Buy for $199.99. It is marketed as an alternative to iPad Mini, but at a cheaper price.

ASUS ZenPad S will boast a beautiful 8-inch 2048 x 1536 pixels display with a 5 MP rear shooter and a 2 MP front-camera.

Internal storage is limited to 32 gigs but with an expandable memory card you can get 128 gigs of storage. So you have no worries about space for your games, photos, and videos.

And as for running your favorite apps and games; ZenPad S comes packed with a quad-core Atom Z3563 processor clocked at 1.33 GHz.

The model also has 2GB of RAM, but rumor has it that future variants of the model might come with 4Gigs of ram.

Asus ZenPad S is designed as an on-the-go tablet and will be quite light weighted, coming in at just 298 grams and 6.6mm thick.

Though a downside is, data connectivity will only be possible via Wi-Fi. Mobile data connectivity is not possible with this device.

Asus ZenPad S will be running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) with Asus’s own custom UI.

Pretty much its a great deal for the money and worth a consideration. Besides, Best Buy Asus ZenPad is also available for pre-order at B&H and Adorama for $199 (40,000 Naira).