MEDOLOGY

• Honor 9 Lite Review
• PM Modi's Mann Ki Baat now available on Alexa
• Reliance Jio launches Rs. 49 pack with free voice calls, 28 days validity for JioPhone users
• Huawei, Deutsche Telekom and Intel achieve 5G NR Interoperability
• Xiaomi to open its first Mi Home Store in Kolkata on January 26
• Reliance Jio reportedly in talks with Xiaomi to sell Mi TVs and smartphones on its retail platform
• LG posts its biggest-ever revenue, highest yearly profits in 8 years in 2017; narrows smartphone losses in Q4 2017
• Fitbit to end support for Pebble smartwatches on June 30
• Qualcomm inks $2 billion sales MOUs with Lenovo, Xiaomi, Vivo and OPPO
• Google Chrome 64 for Android brings white navigation bar, blocks auto-redirect pop-ups and more

Honor 9 Lite Review There are very few smartphone makers who cater to all the three segments - Entry-level, Mid-range and High-end. One such company among them is the Huawei's online brand Honor. A couple of weeks before the launch of Honor 9 Lite, the company pulled the wrap off its flagship smartphone in India dubbed as Honor View 10 equipped with Artificial Intelligence. Last week Honor launched the Honor 9 Lite with brilliant build quality, quad-camera setup and Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. We got hold of this device for more than a week and here is our review. Unboxing https://youtu.be/CS6XRoBGp5w Box Contents Honor 9 Lite in Midnight Black color 2-pin charger (5V-2A) Micro USB Cable SIM Ejector tool Quick Start Guide, Warranty information Display, Design, and Hardware The Honor 9 Lite sports a 5.65-inch (2160 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 18:9 2.5D curved glass display featuring a pixel density of 428ppi. There is no information about the Corning Gorilla Glass or any kind of screen protection though. In our observation, the screen is vibrant with punchy colors, has good viewing angles and texts looks sharp too. The sunlight legibility is good when the brightness level is set higher. The Honor 9 Lite smartphone comes with an ...

PM Modi's Mann Ki Baat now available on Alexa Amazon Alexa picks up a new skill. It can now play 'Mann Ki Baat' Indian radio programme hosted by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is developed by the Asian News International (ANI), India's premier multimedia news agency.  Mann Ki Baat is an unique initiative that was started by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi back in 2015 to reach masses across the country through Radio directly and empower on topics such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, demonetization and the Digital India vision. The skill is available on all devices with Amazon Alexa such as the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus and Alexa-enabled smart speakers such as Harman Kardon Allure and Eufy Genie. Users can also listen to all 36 previous episodes using simple voice commands. The company also mentioned that latest episodes will also be available within few hours of its telecast. Users need to enable Mann Ki Baat skill by going to the Skills section of the Alexa app or just by saying "Alexa, enable Mann Ki Baat." Once enabled users can start listening to episodes by using commands like "Alexa, open Mann Ki Baat" and then Specify the month and year to select the Mann Ki Baat that you wish to listen to. Ishaan Prakash, Editor Live Operations, ANI said: We are heading to a future where voice ...

Reliance Jio launches Rs. 49 pack with free voice calls, 28 days validity for JioPhone users Reliance Jio unveiled JioPhone, the company's first VoLTE feature phone back in July last year and started pre-bookings for the phone in August. It launched Rs. 153 plan exclusively for JioPhone users offering free voice calls and 500MB data per day with 28 days validity offering 14GB data. Earlier this month the company increased the data to 1GB per day offering 28GB data. Today it launched a new plan exclusively for JioPhone users that lets them to enjoy free voice calls and unlimited data (1GB at high speed) for 28 days at a price of  Rs. 49. It has also introduced affordable data add-ons at Rs 11, 21, 51 and 101. The company said "This Republic Day will mark an acceleration towards achieving the vision of Digital Freedom for the 50 Crore feature phone users of India." Reliance Jio said this will be achieved in three ways – Connectivity, Data Affordability and Device Affordability. Reliance Jio said that its network is expected to cover 99% of India's population this year, and India's 4G coverage will be more than 2G coverage in the country. After a huge demand for pre-bookings, Reliance Jio started sales of JioPhone a few weeks back. Now you can get it at your retailer as ...

Huawei, Deutsche Telekom and Intel achieve 5G NR Interoperability Huawei Deutsche Telekom and Intel today announced that they have collaborated to achieve 5G NR Interoperability and development testing, a multi-vendor interoperability based on 3GPP R15 commercial system which will accelerate 5G commercialization.  The test is based on Huawei's 5G commercial base station and Intel's third generation 5G NR Mobile Trial Platform (MTP) and it is a step forward in the commercial launch of Huawei and Intel solution supporting millions of devices in 2019. The development was initially started by Huawei and Deutsche Telekom in 2015 which later was benefitted by Intel's 5G NR platform. Three companies have jointly verified the fundamentals of the new 5G 3GPP NR standard, including new synchronization, coding, frame structure, and numerology components underlying the interconnection of the NR-compliant terminal and network. The test configuration used is based on the largest C-band cell bandwidth defined by the 5G NR standard. The first 5G NR standard was successfully completed on December 21, 2017, at the 3GPP TSG RAN meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. Arash Ashouriha, Senior Vice President Technology Innovation of Deutsche Telekom said: After delivering leading contributions to the 3GPP's work on 5G standards, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei and Intel moved swiftly to jointly verify implementation progress through standards-based interoperability testing. The success of our test is ...

Xiaomi to open its first Mi Home Store in Kolkata on January 26 After Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and Madhya Pradesh, Xiaomi is all set to open a new Mi Home Store in Kolkata in South City Mall tomorrow, January 26th. This will the company's twentieth Mi Home Store in the country, after five stores in Bengaluru, two stores in Chennai, Pune, New Delhi, Mumbai, and one in Hyderabad, Gurugram, Noida, Pune, Bhopal and Thane. [HTML1] Mi Home Store will let customers experience as well as buy smartphones, power banks, headphones, fitness bands, air purifiers as well as other ecosystem products that are launched in India. It recently started taking pre-bookings for smartphones at Rs.500 and it is offering Mi Earphone Basic Matte worth Rs.599 with every pre-booking that can be collected along with the smartphone at Mi Home. Xiaomi already said that it expects to open 100 Mi Homes across India in the next two years.

Reliance Jio reportedly in talks with Xiaomi to sell Mi TVs and smartphones on its retail platform Reliance Jio is said to be in talks with Xiaomi for exclusive rights to sell smartphones and TVs in India similar to what it has with Apple. If everything works out, Jio will exclusively sell Xiaomi phones and TVs through the Jio retail network and the Reliance Digital chain of stores, according to a new report from ET. There is also a possible arrangement to provide Xiaomi's B2B products like smart point-of-sales devices to Jio retailers digitalizing Xiaomi's supply chain. The company is also looking into bringing more Xiaomi products in India, said the executives. The proposed deal falls in line with Xiaomi's move to making the regulatory filing, indicating its intentions to bring products that are beyond smartphones, including for the B2B segment. In the same regard, senior executives of Xiaomi and Reliance Jio is said to have met several times in the last few weeks. With Jio on the verge of rolling out its Jio broadband service, Xiaomi's smart televisions are a compelling offering and will be bundled with the service at a compelling price. Both the companies are also looking into expanding their partnership with exclusive smartphone models, claims the report. Source

LG posts its biggest-ever revenue, highest yearly profits in 8 years in 2017; narrows smartphone losses in Q4 2017 LG Electronics has reported revenues of 16.96 trillion won (US$ 15.3 billion) for the fourth quarter that ended December 31, 2017, which is up 14.8% compared to the same quarter last year. For the whole 2017 it reported record 61.4 trillion won (US$ 55.4 billion) revenues, up 10.9% YoY and profits of 2.47 trillion won (US$ 2.23 billion) – the highest profit since 2009 – up 85% from 2016 due in large part to strong performance by premium home appliances and TVs.  It  reported operating income of 366.8 billion won (US$ 330.9 million) for the quarter, down 35.2% for the same quarter in 2016. Mobile Communications sector reported a quarterly revenue of 3.07 trillion won (US$ 2.77 billion), up 9% QoQ and 3% YoY due to steady sales of  increasing sales of V30 and Google's new premium OLED phone Pixel 2 XL.  The sector posted a operating loss of 213.2 billion won (US$ 192.33 million), compared to loss of  459.3 billion won a year ago. "Loss narrowed QoQ and YoY by increasing premium product sales and improving business structure, despite marketing expense for V30 and component price increase, said LG. For the whole 2017 it reported 11.67 trillion won (US$ 10.52 billion) revenue, despite a challenging marketplace and strong competition from Chinese brands, ...

Fitbit to end support for Pebble smartwatches on June 30 Fitbit today has made it clear once and for all that it will end support for Pebble smartwatches on June 30. Fitbit acquired Pebble along with smartwatch team and assets related to their software platform back in 2016. The company will put an end to most of Pebble's features including App Store, the forum, cloud development tool, voice recognition features, and SMS and email replies. Pebble's core Apps for iOS and Android will still function for now and the notifications which are a main feature of smartwatches will also work as long as the core apps are functional. As a part of the appreciation, Fitbit is offering $50 off on a Fitbit Ionic smartwatch to Pebble users who still own a device with a valid serial number. To redeem the offer, users who have purchased Pebble device prior to December 7, 2016, and opted in to receive Fitbit's marketing communications, will receive an email with additional details. For users who have purchased after December 2016 need to register here for the Pebble discount updates. Fitbit says that Pebble users can expect the same level of experience they had in 2017 until June 30th, 2018. While the Pebble devices and mobile apps will continue to work after June 30, 2018, Pebble services will end their support ...

Qualcomm inks $2 billion sales MOUs with Lenovo, Xiaomi, Vivo and OPPO At the Qualcomm, China Tech Day event in Beijing, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Vivo, OPPO have shown interest in Qualcomm to support the 5G initiative named as "5G Pioneer" in China and introduce 5G New Radio (NR) standard-compliant commercial devices expected as early as 2019. ZTE Corporation and Wingtech Technology have also extended their support. These companies will work on accelerating the availability of commercial 5G premium devices as early as 2019. The company mentioned that the 5G had reached unprecedented interest in China and research conducted by Qualcomm tells that 60% of Chinese consumers are likely to purchase 5G smartphones when available. During the partnership, Qualcomm in addition to its leadership in semiconductor solutions, the company will also provide manufacturers with the platform needed for the premium tier and global 5G commercial devices. With 5G, Qualcomm is focusing on transformative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) apart from just mobile applications. Apart from the 5G initiative, Lenovo, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo have also signed Memorandum of Understanding with Qualcomm to purchase Qualcomm Technologies' RF Front End (RFFE) components valued at $2 billion, in the aggregate, over three years. Qualcomm's RFFE components consist of system-level modem-to-antenna RF front-end platform solutions, which are design with an aim to enable ...

Google Chrome 64 for Android brings white navigation bar, blocks auto-redirect pop-ups and more After being in testing for quite some time, first Chrome update of 2018 is here. The Chrome 64 for Android brings white navigation bar, new APIs for developers to use and the biggest of all is that it blocks annoying auto-redirect pop-ups. Though the feature is listed as official by Google, it is still not enabled by default for some reason.  If you are a long time smartphone user, then you must be knowing about the annoying redirecting ads which certain websites follow. These redirects take you to a fake virus warning or other similar pages. This is mainly because the ads are breaking out of their frame and forcing the main parent page to the page of their desire. This type of ad behavior severely affected most ad networks including Google Adsense.  Google finally announced a solution of blocking the frames from redirecting the parent page on the browser level. However, Chrome 64 was supposed to turn on the feature according to the official changelog, but the function doesn't seem to be enabled for everyone. But, the feature can be turned on manually. You just need to copy the "chrome://flags/#enable-framebusting-needs-sameorigin-or-usergesture " in the Chrome address bar and then tap the highlighted drop-down menu where you have an option to enable. ...