Techno Bhogi

The month of February has been quite an eventful one for India’s flagship smartphone market. Samsung may have kicked things off with the launch of its Galaxy S20 lineup , but brands such as iQOO (Vivo’s gaming-centric brand) and Realme have also cashed on the opportunity to be the first to bring 5G phones to India. Samsung missed out on this title, which is okay, but what’s disappointing is that the Galaxy S20 series launched with Exynos chipsets in tow in India instead of the latest Snapdragon 865 that comes baked inside iQOO 3 and Realme X50 Pro . We expected the Korean giant to bring Snapdragon-laden flagships to India as Galaxy S10 Lite, which launched just weeks ago , packed a Snapdragon chipset. That wasn’t the case though. Well, I recently managed to get my hands on the Galaxy S20 Plus and iQOO 3, one of the first Exynos 990 and Snapdragon 865-powered smartphones respectively to find their way to India. With both the phones on me, I decided to go ahead and benchmark Samsun...

Riding on 4G consumption, the overall data traffic in India increased by 47 per cent in 2019 while average monthly data usage per user surpassed 11GB in December last year, a new report said on Thursday. 4G constituted 96 per cent of the total data traffic consumed across the country while 3G data traffic registered its highest ever decline of 30 per cent. “We believe the migration of subscribers to 4G will continue to drive broadband growth in the country. The Indian telcos will need to consider other connectivity solutions to leverage the new opportunities and to address the growing data consumption,” said Sanjay Malik, Sevior Vice President and Head of India Market, Nokia. The video consumption was fueled by the increasing number of over-the-top (OTT) platforms with over 30 platforms in India, easy availability of regional content, aggressive distribution strategy, and innovations like sachet pricing and mobile-only packs by OTT players. The average time spent on OTT platforms...

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman doesn’t seem to have a good opinion towards popular Chinese short-form video app TikTok. Huffman reportedly called the app “fundamentally parasitic” at a panel discussion held yesterday. “Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them. Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.”, said Huffman. In addition, Huffman mentions the app as “spyware” and says he discourages people from installing the app. “I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone'”, he added. As TechCrunch reports, Steve Huffman made these bold statements in front of multiple investors and entrepreneurs at the Social 2030 event, which is a one-day conference focused on identifying trends in social apps. Reddit CEO’s point of view directly conflicts with...

Recovering a malfunctioning iPhone can be quite a pain because the process relies on connecting the iPhone to a laptop and restoring the firmware via a Mac or Windows computer. However, according to a new report from 9to5Mac, Apple could be working on a OS Recovery feature for iPhones and iPads. The hidden feature, spotted in the iOS 13.4 beta is named ‘OS Recovery’ which makes its purpose fairly clear. It appears to be something that will allow a user to re-flash iOS on their iPhones without having to connect the iPhone to a computer. Image Courtesy: 9to5Mac It’s noteworthy that an internet recovery has existed on the Mac for years. In macOS, users can download macOS over the internet in order to reformat their MacBooks without requiring any other computers for recovering the device. This new iOS feature could be a step in that same direction for iPhones and iPads. As mentioned by 9to5Mac, the feature isn’t functional as of now since it’s under development, and the Cupertino gi...

Driven by ear-worn devices, India’s wearables market shipped a record 14.9 million units and witnessed an impressive 168.3 per cent year-over-year (YoY) growth in 2019, a new report by International Data Corporation (IDC) said on Thursday. Basic wearables continue to dominate India’s wearables market with a 96.2 per cent category share, up 177 per cent YoY in 2019. Smart wearables that can run third-party applications on the device itself, accounted for 3.8 per cent of the overall wearable shipments in 2019 and registered 49.5 per cent growth from the previous year. “Ear-worn devices have found huge appeal with consumers, who are spoiled for choice with a variety of models at different price points. Affordable neckbands are leading the charge of migration from wired to wireless in this category. “At the same time, truly wireless devices with improved battery life and connectivity are attracting users to spend more. As more vendors entered this segment with affordable options, the ...

The wildly-popular viral video app, TikTok, has dethroned WhatsApp to emerge as the most-downloaded app globally. According to data released by Sensor Tower earlier this month, TikTok was the top non-game application in January on both the Play Store and the App Store with more than 104.7 million installs, which represented a 46 percent increase from January 2019. Do note that the numbers don’t take into account the various third-party Android platforms in China and elsewhere, so the overall numbers are much higher. India, as expected, led the way with 34.4 percent of the app’s total global downloads, while Brazil came in at number two with 10.4 percent. While users in the US were relatively late in jumping on the TikTok bandwagon, the app has now become a rage in the country, especially among younger audiences. That being the case, the US is now the third-largest international market for TikTok, reportedly accounting for 7.3 percent of all global downloads. Image Courtesy: Sensor ...

Instagram has updated its Windows desktop client on the Microsoft Store as a Progressive Web App (PWA). Believed to have been originally spotted by Italian tech blog, Aggiornamenti Lumia , the new application (version 42.0.2.0) is now available to download globally and, comes with the Direct Messaging feature that isn’t yet available on the website. However, Instagram is currently testing DMs on its website, so expect it to be rolled out sooner rather than later. Instagram PWA is now available for everyone. Check for updates in the @MicrosoftStore https://t.co/OpcEOZTZvJ — Aggiornamenti Lumia (@ALumia_Italia) February 26, 2020 In case you don’t know it already, PWAs are platform-agnostic applications that are meant to work on both mobile and desktop operating systems. They mostly function as native applications with support for a full suite of functionalities, including push notifications, hardware access and more. PWAs also typically bring faster updates because any change on...