Apple roars back to close smartphone gap with Samsung

Surveys released today showed the popular iPhone 6 and 6 Plus helped Apple pull to a virtual tie in the fourth quarter with Samsung, which has been the leader for the past three years.

The research firm Strategy Analytics said Apple and Samsung shipped 74.5 million smartphones each in the last three months of 2014 for a market share of just under 20 percent.

A separate survey by IDC analysts said Samsung had a tiny edge over Apple with 75.1 million units sold. Apple "beat everyone's expectations," said Ryan Reith at IDC.

Even more surprising is that Apple managed to increase the average selling price of its phones at a time when many consumers around the world are looking to low-cost handsets.

Another surprise was growth of iPhone sales in the US, "which is considered a saturated market," according to Reith, and in China, where competition is intense.

"Sustaining this growth and higher (selling prices) a year from now could prove challenging, but right now there is no question that Apple is leading the way," Reith said in a statement.

Samsung, which belatedly entered the market pioneered by Apple, had dethroned the US firm as the world's top smartphone vendor in the third quarter of 2011.

The South Korean electronics giant then went on to replace Nokia as the global leader in overall mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2012.

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Facebook, Instagram suffer widespread outage

"Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can," Facebook said on its website.

Users in United States and many countries in Asia and Europe reported that they were unable to log on to the website and mobile apps.

Representatives at Facebook were not immediately available for comment. It may be mentioned here that the temporary loss of service may be Facebook’s biggest outage since September 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

An Instagram spokesman posted on Twitter: "We're aware of an outage affecting Instagram and are working on a fix. Thank you for your patience."

Source:  Gadget Reviews India and views more Auto Expo 2015 India

Facebook puts warning labels on graphic videos

The California-based Internet giant will also prevent potentially shocking or upsetting video clips from popping into News Feeds of members whose profiles say they are younger than 18 years old.

Facebook allows children as young as 13 to join.

"When people share things on Facebook, we expect they will share responsibly, including who will see that content," a Facebook spokesman said.

"In instances when people report graphic content to us that should include warnings, or is not appropriate for people under the age of 18, we may add a warning for adults and prevent young people from viewing the content."

Facebook began adding warnings and age filters in November after the introduction of a feature that causes videos in News Feeds to automatically start playing. Users must now click on warning labels for those videos to play.

Source:Gadget Reviews India and  Automotive News

Samsung unveils latest range of ultra high definition TV

The Ultra High Definition (UHD) television with 4k resolution comes with a smart TV feature, powered by its homegrown operating system -- Tizen.

The SUHD TV has a homescreen that integrates services including Netflix, Comcast and Youtube.

"Our innovative heritage and spirit continue to push the boundaries of the home entertainment experience to new possibilities," H S Kim President, Visual display, Samsung Electronics, said.

The SUHD TVs Would be available from 48 to 88 inches, and they should be available in India in the coming months. The company is yet to announce the pricing of the latest TV range.

According to the company, The SUHD comes as an option for high end consumers of OLED. It said the SUHD TV's nano-crystal semiconductor transmits different colors of light depending on their size to produce the highest colour purity and light efficiency available.

"This technology produces a wide range of more accurate colours, providing viewers with 64 times more colour expression than conventional TVs," the company said.

Source:  Gadget Reviews India and Automotive News

Bad code update triggered Yahoo, Bing search crash-source

The outages were not caused by an outside attack, the person said, declining to be named because the discussion concerned internal Yahoo matters.

Microsoft's Bing search engine powers Yahoo search under a 10-year deal announced in 2009. Yahoo was not immediately available for comment. Microsoft confirmed the outage, but declined to comment on the cause.

On Friday afternoon, users who typed search.yahoo.com got an error message saying that Yahoo engineers were working to resolve the issue. The search engine appeared to be working again later in the day.

After the crash, Microsoft's roll-back procedure failed, forcing it to shut down its groups of linked servers to get back the point where everything worked smoothly, the person said.

Source: Gadget Reviews India 

Google Doddle welcomes New Year with fireworks

While Google bids adieu to year 2014 with animated doodle highlighting all the big events around the world in 2014.

Much coveted topics like the General Elections 2014, the FIFA World Cup, the iPhone 6 launch, IIT’s GATE exams, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and Mangalyaan, were the most talked about topics this year.

In other words, Google spotlights all the people, things and events that trended this year with the help of this colourful doodle.

Moreover, other topics that the Google Doodle depicts include the launches of smartphones Moto G, iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S5, Moto E and Nokia X.

Source: Gadget Reviews India

Twitter’s ‘While you were away’ recap feature rolls out for many users

The new feature includes what the micro blogging site thinks to be the best tweets to the top of a user's timeline the next time they open their Twitter account, reports said. It works like Facebook's news feed that presents status updates and posts in a ranked manner.

It is the first major Twitter feature beyond promoted tweets and adverts to sort tweets in a non-chronological fashion, the report added."Every time you open the Twitter app, you'll see something great," Twitter said when it announced the new feature as part of its "Timeline Highlights" improvements.

The new feature aims at preserving important tweets that could get drowned out by the rapid flow of tweets on a daily basis.

 Source: Gadget Reviews India

OPPO launches ultra-thin 4G enabled smartphone R5 at Rs 29990 in India

"We used cutting edge manufacturing techniques to create a phone that fits perfectly into the users' hands," said Tom Lu, chief executive officer, OPPO India, said in a statement.

The highlight of the phone includes its measurements at just 4.85 mm and weighing 155 gram, which is considered one of the thinnest phones in the world.

The R5 is equipped with an octa-core Qualcomm MSM8939 and comes with a 5.2-inch AMOLED screen.,.

Another major feature of the phone is the adoption of higher-strength stainless steel. Oppo R5, which is available in gold and silver colour, sports a 13 megapixel camera and 5 megapixel front camera.

Source: Gadget Reviews India and view more  Automotive News

Gone in seconds! 40000 Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G smartphones sold out in just 6 seconds

Priced at Rs  9,999, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G will have 5.5-inch 720p display and 13 MP rear camera with LED flash.

Also, it has 5 MP front snapper and the smartphone will work upon 1.6 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 processor,  2GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable internal storage.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G comes with a 3,100 mAh battery and has only one SIM card slot unlike its 3G version which has dual-SIM slot.

Xiaomi which entered Indian market in July has received good response in the country. The company has managed to sell one million smartphones in India by the end of year, via Flipkart.

Manu Kumar Jain Head of Xiaomi operation in India took to social networking site Twitter to announce the news. 

Source: Gadget Reviews India and view more  Automotive News

Motorola set to bring Moto X (Gen 2) 32 GB variant on December 22 in India

Flipkart, which has the exclusive rights to sell the series in India, is yet to reveal the price of smartphone.

The 16GB variant of the second generation smartphone was launched earlier in September. The basic variant of the new Moto X sports a plastic back body and costs Rs 31,999.

The Motorola Moto X sports a 5.2-inch full-HD (1080x1920p) Super AMOLED display. It features a curved metal frame. Moto X runs on Android 4.4 KitKat.

Powered by a 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor and 2GB RAM, the phone is 9.9mm thick and weighs 144gram.

Source: Gadget Reviews India and view more  Automotive News

YU launches 4G Cyanogen OS-based phone for Rs 8,999

Based on Android operating system, CyanogenMod offers features and options not found in the official firmware that is distributed by most mobile device vendors.

The dual SIM device will be available for pre-registration on eCommerce firm Amazon.in from December 19 and will be available from the second week of January.

"Going ahead, it will be about software more than hardware. Customisation and service will play an important role in determining the success of a brand. Yu imparts power to consumers to redefine the mobile space in the country by simply giving the control in a user's hand," Micromax founder
Rahul Sharma told.

The 4G device features Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octacore processor and 64-bit multi-core CPU, 5.5-inch HD IPS display, and 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 12.5GB memory (for apps and mass storage and expandable upto 32 GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera and 2,500 mAh battery.

"Yu will allow users to root their devices, without voiding the warranty. This will allow users to run endless customisation on their device and offer an enhanced product experience, presently not being supported by any other brand in the country," he said.

Source: Gadget Reviews India and view more Automotive News

Microsoft launches most affordable 4G Windows phone for Rs 8299 in India

The smartphone, sporting a 4.5-inch screen, 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 5MP camera, 8GB memory expandable upto 128GB and 1,830 mAh battery, has been launched exclusively on Microsoft brand store at Amazon.in.


"We are introducing Lumia 638 which is the most affordable 4G smartphone on Windows Phone 8.1. It aims to address the consumers demand for a device that lets them enjoy uninterrupted video content," Nokia India Sales a Microsoft Mobile Oy subsidiary, Marketing director Raghuvesh Sarup said.

Source: Gadget Reviews India and view more Automotive News

Lava Iris Fuel 60 smartphone with 4,000 mAh battery launched

Priced at Rs 8,888, the handset is second in Lava's range of smartphones focussed on longer battery life.

"With smartphones becoming part and parcel of everyday life, battery life has become a matter of concern for smartphone users," Lava International Vice President & Head Product, Navin Chawla told reporters here.

With Iris Fuel 60, the aim is to put an end to the recurring problem of frequent charging which has become quite a norm for smartphone users, he added.

The handset features a 5-inch HD IPS display, 1.3 GHz quad core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory (expandable up to 32GB).

Source: Gadget Reviews India and view more Automotive News

Micromax Canvas Nitro A311 available online at Rs 13574

Earlier in September Micromax had launched the Canvas Nitro A310 in India, priced at Rs 12,900, via Snapdeal. Notably, the only difference between the Canvas Nitro A310 and Canvas Nitro A311 is 16GB of inbuilt storage in all new A311.

Other specifications of the new smartphone are same as the original Canvas Nitro A310. The replacement of the Canvas Nitro A310 was listed on Micromax's website last week, without any details about its pricing and availability.

The Canvas Nitro A311comes with 16GB of inbuilt storage, a 13MP camera, while the front sports a 5MP lens. A 5-inch 720p HD IPS display with a 1.7GHz octa core processor. There is also a 2GB RAM, a microSD card slot, dual SIM support and a 2500mAh battery.

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