Freedom 251: India firm launches 'world's cheapest' smartphone

An Indian company has launched what is being billed as the world's cheapest smartphone.

Ringing Bells earlier said their Freedom 251 phone would be priced under 500 rupees (£5; $7.3), but at the launch on Wednesday, it said it would cost just 251 rupees ($3.67; £2.56).

The phone has 8GB storage and cameras in the front and back.

India is the world's second-largest mobile market and has one billion mobile phone subscribers.

Freedom 251 is expected to target a market already dominated by low-cost handsets.

"This is our flagship model and we think it will bring a revolution in the industry," the AFP news agency quoted a spokeswoman as saying.

At present, the firm imports parts from overseas and assembles them in India, but plans to make its phones domestically within a year, she added.

Ringing Bells was set up a few months ago and recently launched one of India's cheapest 4G smartphones at 2,999 rupees, the Press Trust of India reported.

Google's SkyBender to deliver 5G internet from solar-powered drones

NEW DELHI: Internet giant Google is working at a spaceport in New Mexico to build and test solar-powered internet drones. According to the Guardian, project is codenamed as SkyBender.

Project SkyBender is using drones to experiment with millimetre-wave radio transmissions, and this technologies could underpin next generation 5G wireless internet access.

The SkyBender is technically part of Google's air balloon Wi-Fi project aimed at a similar goal of bringing remote parts of the world online.

The move is an attempt by the Google to compete with other social networking giants like Facebook to bring internet access to developing countries

Facebook to launch sports product during NFL championships

here's a new stadium in town. Actually, in every town.
It's on Facebook.
Facebook Sports Stadium will debut at the NFL's conference championship games and then the Super Bowl. After that, the social media giant's first sports product will cover most major events around the world.
With 1.55 billion users, an estimated 650 million of them sports fans, it seems a natural place to gather for the kind of passionate conversation that accompanies virtually every pass, tackle and kick.
"Sports is inherently social and has been since the beginning of time," Facebook's Dan Reed says. "Historically, to watch a sporting event, you root for or against, you're watching it in the context of a physical stadium, and interaction is as essential as what is happening on the field. Now, we can have that same interaction happening on a global scale through Facebook."
Last year, Facebook launched 'Trending Super Bowl', and more than 65 million people joined the conversation worldwide. That went so well that the social media giant decided to work on its first full-fledged sports product.
"We see the passion in the interactions. If you enter into this experience during a game, you will see a range of emotions, trash talk, memes going around," Reed said. "The same things happening in the stadium or a sports bar are happening on Facebook, and this allows people who are disconnected to interact as if they are watching together."
Users can conduct conversations with each other, get real-time stats, a live game clock, sanctioned photos and videos, team information and read commentary from media members.
"We think this complements the sporting experience,'' says product manager Steve Kafka. "It helps people build followings and get a wider audience. All the content already is on Facebook. They don't need to seek this out, we are taking folks connected with the game -- from the league, the teams, journalists -- and we put all that content and analysis in one place, and users can follow it during the game."
Facebook Sports Stadium features a live score and game clock at the very top of the page. Under the scoreboard are four tabs: Matchup, Friends, Experts and Stats.

'Matchup' provides a quick summary of what's happening in the game, with a scoring summary and the most recent plays. Users can like, comment and share every play. There also is a 'Live' indicator at the top where videos are uploaded about the game.
'Friends' is a feed of what users' Facebook friends are saying about the game. 'Experts' features commentary from verified pages, including journalists, athletes and celebrities talking about the game.
Next up for Facebook Sports Stadium after the conference championships and Super Bowl will be basketball, although Reed and Kafka weren't providing details yet. A good guess would be March Madness.
Then, the Summer Olympics in Brazil.
"We are going to make sure the product is ready for all the sporting experiences," Kafka says. "This is just the beginning of a long journey for us."

Xiaomi's upcoming Mi5 appears again in leaked images

Xiaomi's upcoming Mi5 smartphone has made its appearance again in leaked images on the web. Images alleged to be of Xiaomi Mi 5 have surfaced on Chinese social network Weibo.
The images which are likely of the black variant of the smartphone show an all-metal body. Also, the new images contradict the earlier leaked images which showed a fingerprint scanner below the display on the home button. The current images show it as located at the back below the rear camera.

Apple's Making An Electric Car: Tesla's Musk Calls It 'Open Secret'

One of the biggest automotive rumors of the past year or so has been Apple's reputed program to build an electric car.

Known as "Project Titan," the program is reported to involve hundreds of engineers, and some analysts say its goal is to produce a car as innovative as the iPod or iPhone.

Of course, Apple hasn't confirmed any car plans--and there is little hard evidence of "Project Titan's" existence.

But Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk considers the Apple electric car to be an open secret.

It is "obvious" that Apple will try to make a car of its own, Musk said in a recent interview with the BBC at Tesla's California design studio.

"It's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it," Musk said.

Back in September, it was reported that Apple was moving ahead with plans to triple the size of its car-development team--already rumored to be 600 strong.

Musk apparently doesn't view Apple as a threat, saying only that the Cupertino company will "expand the industry."

He said Tesla will still aspire to make the "most compelling electric vehicles," while also working with other companies to help them build electric cars as well.

This "more the merrier" attitude seems typical of Musk and other executives pushing electric cars.

At a conference in Detroit last week, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said he welcomed more electric-car competition, arguing that greater numbers will force governments to increase support and build more charging infrastructure.

Whether an Apple product will be a part of an expanded electric-car contingent is still unclear.

The company is reportedly aiming for a "ship date" of 2019, but that doesn't necessarily mean the car will go on sale at that point.

In Apple parlance, "ship date" can merely refer to when engineers sign off on the main features of a product, not when it is ready for sale.

Over the past few months, Apple has reportedly ramped up hirings of people with automotive andbattery experience.

MORE: Apple Wanted To Use BMW i3 As Basis For Its Own Electric Car: Report (Jul 2015)

Last summer, it also appeared to lay the groundwork for testing of an autonomous prototype.

Apple representatives reportedly met with officials from California's Department of Motor Vehicles to discuss that topic, and examined a testing facility near San Francisco.

More recently, Apple moved to trademark certain automotive web domains, including "apple.car" and "apple.auto."

Electric cars: Mechanics with no specialist training 'risk death when tinkering with the vehicles'

Mechanics trying to fix electric cars could end up killing themselves or their customers unless the Government takes action to prevent unqualified cowboys from servicing the new vehicles, the motor industry has warned.

In the next few weeks, the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) will launch a campaign to persuade Whitehall that new regulations are required to ensure mechanics are properly trained to work with electric motors.

Apple fans in a frenzy over electric car rumours

Ecars can contain circuits running at more than three times the 230 volts found in the mains supply, posing a real risk of electrocution and fire unless properly handled.

Steve Nash, the IMI’s chief executive, said there was a pressing need to set up a licensing system for electric car mechanics to ensure they were properly trained.

“Sooner or later somebody is going to attempt to do something they shouldn’t do and they are going to fry themselves. That will either be the person working on it who gets a 600- or 700-volt shock or it might be a member of the public exposed to a fire risk,” he said.

“It’s that serious. It’s not scaremongering. It’s real.”

There are about 180,000 car mechanics working in the country, of whom only 40,000 are on the IMI’s professional register. The remaining 140,000 are likely to have been trained but could potentially include people who have decided they have a talent for fixing cars, despite lacking real knowledge.

There are about 45,000 electric cars on the roads and 1,000 people trained to fix them.

However the IMI said it now expected the switch to electric cars to happen far more quickly than forecast. A recent survey found that half of 1,000 people looking to buy a new car were considering an electric or hybrid model.

Mr Nash said that once electric cars started to take over from petrol vehicles – and the work for traditional car mechanics began to dwindle – “the temptation to have a go becomes greater”.

“We need people who are at least qualified to the level where they know how to make the car safe before even trying the routine things like working on the brakes,” he said. “There is the very real risk that someone might say, ‘Well, I’ll have a go.’

“They [electric motors] are potentially lethal if people don’t know what they should do on them.”

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL Dual SIM Review

Microsoft debuted its Windows 10 Mobile OS with the launch of two Lumia devices in India late last month. The company is going with a top-down approach by first introducing the best it has to offer with the Lumia 950 XL Dual SIM and Lumia 950 Dual SIM and follow that up with more affordable variants across different price segments.

More than the devices though, Microsoft's real aim is to showcase its newest Windows 10 Mobile OS, which it hopes will resonate with consumers who are (hopefully) already using Windows 10 on their desktops and ultimately, coax developers into making more universal apps for the platform.

(Also see: Microsoft Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL - 7 New Features)

Today, we'll be taking a closer look at how this platform as evolved in its third attempt with the Lumia 950 XL Dual SIM. This phone is the Nexus 6P (Review | Pictures) or the iPhone 6S Plus of the Windows world and serves as a template for hardware partners to model their own creations on. Priced at par with the top-end Android offerings, let's see if Microsoft's finally able to crack the balance between top-of-the-line hardware and functional software.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III Confirmed as the Biggest Success of 2015

The "Call of Duty" video game installment released in November went on to rule the market, becoming the top-selling title last year at retail outlets, according to industry tracker NPD Group.

Blockbuster sales of "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" pushed overall sales for the franchise past 250 million copies, video game publisher Activision said Thursday in a blog post.

"Thanks to the community's continued support, 'Black Ops III' was the top-selling game of 2015 worldwide," Activision communications manager Scott Lowe said in the post.

Activision proclaimed "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" the top-selling title of 2015 globally "by a wide margin in both units and dollars."

The game racked up more than $550 million (roughly Rs. 3,728 crores) in sales in the three days after its release on November 6, according to California-based Activision Publishing, a subsidiary ofActivision Blizzard.

Overall video game sales last year tallied $13.1 billion (roughly Rs. 88,806 crores), essentially unchanged from the prior year and driven by titles tailored for new-generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox coneonsoles, according to figures released by NPD.

Black Ops III is the 12th game in the series, testimony to its longevity and ability to reinvent itself, all the while earning it a loyal following of tens of millions of fans.

The latest mission in the first-person shooter franchise sends players into a "dark and twisted future."

This time the action is set in the year 2065. Climate change has spawned fierce competition over scarce resources. Highly effective anti-aircraft systems mean fighting takes place on the ground, often in covert or "black" operations.

"Black Ops III" was created by Treyarch studio and published by Activision.

The second-selling video game last year was Madden NFL 16, a US football-themed title published by Electronic Arts.

Rounding out the top-five list by sales at stores were, in descending order, "Fallout 4," "Star Wars: Battlefront" and "Grand Theft Auto V," according to NPD.

Coolpad Note 3 Lite With 3GB RAM, Fingerprint Sensor Launched at Rs. 6,999

Chinese firm Coolpad has launched a new smartphone in India on Friday, the Coolpad Note 3 Lite. Priced at Rs. 6,999, the smartphone will be exclusively available via Amazon India with the flash sale method, with the first sale scheduled at 2pm IST on January 28. Registrations begin Friday at 5pm IST.

The Coolpad Note 3 Lite is the basic version of the Coolpad Note 3 (Review), which was launched in India in October last year at Rs. 8,999. 

The dual-SIM dual-4G Coolpad Note 3 Lite runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop skinned with Cool UI 6.0, and features a 5-inch IPS display with an HD (720x1280) resolution. It is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6735 SoC, coupled with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM - which can be considered the highlight of the device at this price point. Another highlight is its fingerprint sensor, placed on the back panel below the camera module.

The Coolpad Note 3 Lite bears a 13-megapixel rear camera with and f/2.0 aperture and LED flash, apart from a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The smartphone comes with 16GB of inbuilt storage that's expandable via microSD card (up to 64GB). Connectivity options include 4G (with support for Indian LTE bands), Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, and Micro-USB (with OTG).

The Note 3 Lite runs on a 2500mAh non-removable battery that's rated to deliver up to 10 hours of talk-time, and up to 200 hours of standby time. It features an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, and digital compass.

The company added that VoLTE (voice over LTE) functionality would also be made available, though did not specify the timeline for release. An Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for the Coolpad Note 3 Lite was also said to be in the pipeline. Coolpad added it had partnered with HCL for after sales service in India.

Meet the robotic cat for the elderly

"He feels like a real cat," says Jim McGucken as I place Alan on his lap.

"I can feel the movements inside."

Jim's a resident at Lake Park, a care home for the elderly in the city of Oakland, California.

And Alan is the name I've given to a robotic "companion pet", developed by toy maker Hasbro, that I've been looking after and talking to when no-one's around, allegedly.

It's the first product in the Joy For All range, an initiative that Hasbro says is about going beyond play and into areas that combat bigger problems. In this case, it's loneliness.

The robocat is designed to mimic a real animal. It miaows, semi-convincingly, and it purrs, very convincingly. It's fluffy and nice to stroke, although the rigidness of Alan's electronic innards spoils any illusion that he is real.

But even with those flaws, it works. When you switch it on, you instinctively say "hello!" - and from that point onwards, it's no longer a gadget. It's a cat.

"Feeling the purr is really nice," says Miriam Beames, who tells me that her beloved cat - Yum-Yum - died a year ago.

"For various reasons, I've thought I couldn't get another one yet."

The cat reacts to interaction via a series of fairly simplistic sensors across its body. A stroke of Alan's back will make him purr, a tickle of the cheeks will provoke a miaow. If it gets dark, you'll hear Alan yawn and nod off. The movements aren't predictable, adding to its lifelikeness.

"We don't think this is a replacement for a pet," says Ted Fischer, vice-president of business development for Hasbro. And, incidentally, a man who is allergic to cats.

"What we've tried to create is this interactive companion which is familiar and has characteristics and is lifelike."

As the world's population ages, the business opportunity for Hasbro is enormous.

"We're excited to make a commitment to this category. We're going to watch how this goes and learn a lot."

Is That You, Rosie? Humanoid Atlas Robot Takes on Household Cleaning Tasks

Fans of "The Jetsons" may see shades of the robotic maid Rosie as this Atlas humanoid robot attempts various cleaning tasks. The video, from robotics company IHMC, is shown at 20x speed so you don't have to wait for the slow-moving bot to get into position.

But just because Atlas can do it doesn't mean it's easy. Someone has to control its movements, double-check its hand positions when picking something up, and make sure it doesn't fall over while trying to retrieve a bit of trash from the floor.

John Carff, who was operating the robot for much of this video, told IEEE Spectrum that it takes "a lot of patience and out-of-the-box thinking" to make a humanoid robot do things like this — and you only have to watch this compilation of robots falling down at the DARPA Robotics Challenge to see how easily they can fail.

U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Microsoft Appeal Over Xbox Lawsuit

The Supreme Court will decide whether Microsoft Corp. must face a class-action lawsuit by disgruntled Xbox 360 owners who say the video-game console has a design defect that scratches game disks. The justices agreed Friday to hear an appeal from Microsoft arguing that individual claims by the plaintiffs had previously been thrown out.

Microsoft has sold more than 80 million Xbox 360 consoles and says only 0.4 percent of owners report disk scratching. The company says any damage is the result of consumer misuse and not a product defect.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2012, ruling there were not enough complaints to justify a class action. But a federal appeals court reversed, saying it could go forward.

Electric Cars Aren't Enough. Tesla Is Now Going Vegan

Tesla, the all-electric-car company, has just unveiled an SUV model that's not only environmentally friendly — it's also vegan.The Tesla Model X, with its double-hinged falcon wing doors, looks like something from the future — and it just might be. The world's first all-electric four-by-four SUV can hit 60mph in 3.2 seconds, a top speed of 155 mph and drive 250 miles per change. And now you can get the seven-seater with faux-leather seats.

When you think of luxury cars, you often think leather seats and that "new car smell" but what if you have plenty of money to spend, but don't want it lined with animal skin? It's a problem that plagues vegans.

For decades, leather-free options in the car industry have been limited at best. Generally speaking, buyers looking to avoid the use of animal products in their cars would have to settle for basic models with cloth seats and plastic steering wheels, but as they add options like better engines, heated seats or upgraded speakers, they're often forced to choose leather seats.But now, Tesla's "Ultra White" interior option, currently only offered in the new Model X SUV, comes available with a fully vegan interior — including synthetic leather seats, steering wheel and gear shift — giving that streamlined luxury look of leather.

The company reportedly created the new interior option, in part, after receiving criticism from potential customers who felt the company's eco-friendly stance on limiting emissions made no sense when the cars included animal products.

Livestock around the world account for about 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Critics argued that Tesla's continued use of leather would be perpetuating the need for more livestock, which would release more gas.

Many people might not know that animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is a shareholder of Tesla Motors. At the company's annual meeting in June last year, PETA urged Tesla to offer vegan leather for the interiors of its vehicles, with CEO Elon Musk stating that he would "absolutely" consider it.

"By offering a 100 percent leather-free car, Tesla is pushing its eco-friendly business even further into the future," PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement. "PETA can now point to Tesla as a source for top-quality vehicles whose cruelty-free seats are as kind to the environment as its engines are."

Tesla is taking reservations for the Model X with a $5,000 deposit. The estimated base price is $80,000. Delivery is set to begin at the end of 2016. 

UK will lead in zero emission cars, says supplier Rexel

This was the ambitious target agreed at the International Climate Conference in Paris before Christmas.

The UK has also signed up to the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Alliance, for promoting the wider international uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles. Members include the UK, Germany, Holland, Norway and a number of states in the USA and Canada.

According Steve Everard from renewable specialist, Rexel UK, in the third quarter of 2015 there were approximately 46,000 electric vehicle (EV) registrations in the UK, representing an increase of 18% on Q2.

“The argument for EV is conclusive, and with the Government’s latest commitment giving a signal of the onus on EV to come, we’re confident that the UK will continue to lead the way in full scale adoption,” said Everard.

Everard also believes that charging technology continues to improve and infrastructure expand, which is addressing the issue of ‘range anxiety’.

To qualify as ultra-low emission in the UK, the Office for Low Emission Vehicles states a vehicle must produce 75g/km or less of CO2, which currently only plug-in electric vehicles adhere to.

“Although wider uptake of EVs across the EU is encouraging, the UK has undoubtedly been the biggest growth market in recent years," said Everard.

Rexel UK is a distributor of electrical installation supplies.

Self-organised photo-resist boosts lithography

Self-assembling polymers could boost the resolution of lithography, according to modelling at the University of Chicago and US Argonne National Laboratory. Belgian research lab IMEC is testing the theory.Block copolymers will self-assemble when coated onto a patterned surface.

The trick is to pre-pattern the surface well enough so that the lowest energy state for the polymer is the desired accurate pattern. In this way, a less-than-perfect pre-pattern can become an excellent polymer pattern.

However, block copolymers can get stuck in mid-level energy 'meta-stable' states that have the wrong pattern (see diagram).

Researchers Juan de Pablo and Paul Nealey set out to find a way to encourage incorrect meta-stable states to climb their local energy barriers and drop into the correct pattern.

"What we have done in this work is predict the path these molecules must follow to find defect-free states and designed a process that delivers industry-standard nano-circuitry that can be scaled down to smaller densities without defects," said de Pablo of the University of Chicago's and Argonne's Institute for Molecular Engineering.

Using the Mira and Fusion supercomputers, the team ran molecular simulations of self-assembling polymers and created  algorithms to calculate where barriers to structural rearrangement would arise. Then they modelled how temperature, solvents and applied fields would affect the situations. The result was a way to predict the pathways of molecular rearrangement necessary to move from meta-stable to stable state.

Now de Pablo and Nealey are testing the theory at Belgian semiconductor lab IMEC, which has commercial-grade fabs and characterisation equipment.

Finding a defect in a 100cm² area is like finding a needle in hay stack, and there are only a few places in the world where one has access to the necessary equipment to do so," said de Pablo.

The work is described in 'Molecular pathways for defect annihilation in directed self-assembly', a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.