Apple considering making iPhone in the US

iPhones may soon be made in US as Apple has asked Foxconn and Pegatron to look into this possibility, reports said. According to Nikkei Asian Review, key Apple assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, has been studying the possibility of moving iPhone production to the US.“Apple asked both Foxconn and Pegatron,the two iPhone assemblers, in June to look into making iPhones in the US Foxconn complied, while Pegatron declined to formulate such a plan due to cost concerns,” sources said.
But the sources have said that making of iPhones in the US will cost will more than double. The general perception among Americans that they are losing manufacturing jobs to other countries overlaps the Apple’s ‘rumoured’ prospect move.
President-elect Donald Trump referred to Apple multiple times during his campaign and vowed to slap a 45 per cent tariff on goods made in China. “We’re going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries,” Trump said at Liberty University in Virginia in January. Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook was quoted by CBS’ 60 Minutes programme in December 2015 that America simply did not have enough skilled workers for the production of iPhones.
To make iPhones, there will need to be a cluster of suppliers in the same place, which the US does not have at the moment. Even if Trump imposes a 45 per cent tariff, it is still possible that manufacturers will decide to continue production overseas as long as the costs together with the tariffs are lower than the amount they need to spend on building and running production lines in the US,” sources familiar with the iPhone production process were quoted by Nikkei Asian Review.
Sources said that to make iPhones, America will need US government to subsidise local companies for domestic productions.

WhatsApp launch video call on Android, iOS and Windows 10 platform

WhatsApp has just announced video calling for all users starting November 15.The feature will roll out to all users over the next few days. WhatsApp was launched in 2009 as a rich messaging service and is now one of the world’s largest OTT messaging platforms with over 1 billion users,. It added voice calls in early 2015.Here is how the new video calling feature works. The Video calling will work on all devices with Android4.1 and above. The rollout is happening at the same time for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, thus covering the top mobile operating systems across the world. Users will need to upgrade their app for the feature to show show up. When you click on the call button, you will start getting a new video calls options along with the existing voice calls.
Once the call connects, you will be able to choose either from or back camera of the phone for the video. You will be able to choose if the preview of you video is the main image or the incoming video. Also, the location of the smaller window can be moved to anywhere on the screen.
WhatsApp says it does not assume anything about the quality of the network from which the video call is being made. So the video call quality will improve as the system recognises that the network quality is good. The video calling feature has keep kept really simple so that engages everyone without confusing them. The one additional feature is the ability to multi-task by minimising the video and using other apps on the phone. User will be able to return to the call by tapping on the green band that appears across apps.
At the moment the video calling feature can be used synchronously between two users and not to whole group.

World biggest Robot Dinosaur unviel in Japan

The world’s biggest dinosaur robots, including a human-controlled Tyrannosaurus Rex, have been unveiled by a Japanese company which plans to build a massive Jurassic style theme park. The company unveiled a huge robotic T-Rex at a hotel in Tokyo.
The realistic robot emerged from the mist into the event hall, roaring loudly and stomping towards the audience. The creature even pretended to bite the head of a ‘staff caretaker’ as part of the performance. Other dinosaurs, including Allosaurus and Raptors, joined the T-Rex in roaming the hall and letting out growls. “Dino-a-Park”, a cross between new American TV show Westworld and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, was envisaged by Kazuya Kanemaru, the CEO of ON-ARTCorp.“
The fact that we have been creating living things, the desire we have had to want to truly experience dinosaurs, and living things, to draw that out, these are things that spurred us on,” Kanemaru told the visitors after the performance. “We are striving to create dinosaurs that make people feel as though they are invisible, through how real the dinosaur’s breathing and movements are,” Kanemaru was quoted as saying by the ‘Mirror’.
The dinosaurs were about eight metres tall and weighed about 38 kilogrammes. State-of-the-art carbon fibre materials used for the creatures made them look more rugged and realistic.

Report: Telltale working on Guardian of the Galaxy Game

US game developers Telltale — the makers of a number of well-received video game adaptations of popular movie and TV franchises — seems to be working on a Guardians of the Galaxy title. The news comes via a document of in-development games circulated by SAG-AFTRA, the voice actors’ union. The union is currently on strike, but members are still allowed to work on titles currently in production.
A list of these games was circulated online, and includes one titled"Guardians Of The Galaxy — The Video Game."The .PDF, which was spotted by sites, says the game's signatory is a company named O'Farrell Enterprises. That same sheet lists O’Farrell Enterprises as working on "The Walking Dead Season 3" — a game that we know Telltale is releasing this month. Telltale also said back in April last year it' be working on an unspecified Marvel game for release in 2017. These clues, along with the fact that that the registered company agent for O'Farrell Enterprises is voice-over director Darragh O’Farrell, suggests the leak is legitimate.
(A fun aside: the .PDF also refers to the Guardians game as "Blue Harvest" — a title used for the production of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi to keep the film's creation secret.)A screenshot of the .PDF from SAG-AFTRA. Telltale has so far made games for franchises including The Walking Dead,Game of Thrones, and Batman,with each title playing more like an interactive TV show than a traditional video game, using minimal action and lots of dialogue.
Guardians Of The Galaxy— a surprise-hit for Marvel in 2014, with a sequel due out next year.

Samsung new patent hint bendable Phone

A recent patent application from Samsung shows a new smartphone with a foldable design. The patent was filed with the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and was first spotted by Dutch website GalaxyClub. Samsung’s  patent also gives us a first glimpse at the design of the phone they are trying to create. Back in 2015, Samsung had announced that it was working on a bendable phone design,which a leak on Weibo claimed was dubbed as Project Valley.
The patent application shows clear renders of the foldable design, which when folded reminds us of a Microsoft Surface Book hinge. The patent shows the display of the phone to runs down the entire length of the thin but tall design, which can be folded right down the middle.
In June this year, Bloomberg had reported that Samsung was working on two new smartphones, which will have a bendable display. Both devices will come with an OLED display, and an early 2017 launch is being planned, claimed the report.
A recent report also said Apple was granted a patent for a foldable smartphone design. Unlike the Samsung device, Apple’s patent hints at a device that will fold like a book. The inner workings of Apple’s patent talks about flexible printed circuits, flexible display substrates and flexible touch sensor substrates.
Samsung has also been testing the smartphone market with a dual-display flip smartphone design, and has recently launched the W2017. The dual-display phone features two 4.2-inch Super AMOLED displays with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution and comes with the latest Snapdragon 821 processor. Samsung W2017 is the successor to the W2016 that carried a similar flip design.

GoPro recall Karma Drone

The company announced it was recalling around 2,500 Karma drones. A  number of the drones lost power during operation. Customers can return the item to its place of purchase for a full refund.
Safety is our top priority, GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said. "We are working in close coordination with both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration. "We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible."bFor the moment, GoPro is not offering any replacement drones, which they've been selling since Oct 23.
The company said they will only resume shipping once "the issue is resolved. "The recall comes at a bad time for the public camera and drone company, which just took a big hit in its third-quarter earnings.
GoPro lost a whopping $84 million over the past three months, at the time, although Karma drone sales were not included in the report.

Google: Two Billion Chrome Installed

Google announced a new milestone for its Chrome browser today:2 billion active installs between desktop and mobile since its September 2008 release. The news was made public onstage at the Chrome Dev Summit conference by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher. Of course, this stat differs from active use — just because you installed Chrome doesn’t mean it’s your primary daily browser. That’s especially true of mobile, where a company like Apple makes it easer to use its built-in Safari browser even after you’ve defaulted to mobile Chrome.
Still, 2 billion installs is a first for a Google product. The company announced last year during its I/O developer conference that it has more than 1 billion users of Android, Chrome, YouTube, and search. And last April, Chrome passed the 1 billion active user mark on mobile. That means, between its active install pass and growing mobile presence, Chrome could be the first Google product to hit the 2 billion user mark.
Though it is of course contending with Android. As of last September, Google’s mobile operating system was installed on1.4 billion active smartphones around the world. So for Google, it looks like a never-ending race with itself.

Report: Samsung Galaxy J5 Explode

A Samsung phone user in France says her Galaxy J5 smartphone caught fire and exploded on Sunday. The model is different from the Galaxy Note 7 that has been recalled worldwide.
Lamya Bouyirdane told The Associated Press on Monday that she noticed the phone was very hot after she asked her four-year-old son to pass it over during a family gathering at her home. She said she threw the phone away when she realized it had “swollen up” and smoke was coming out. “I panicked when I saw the smoke and I had the reflex to throw it away,” said Bouyirdane, a mother of three in the southwestern French city of Pau. The phone then caught fire and the back blew off. Her partner quickly extinguished it.
Bouyirdane said she bought the phone new last June on a website offering discounts. She said she will sue Samsung. The South Korean company recently recalled millions of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones globally because of a problem that caused the batteries to overheat and catch fire. Samsung did not immediately respond to an email from the AP seeking comments following the latest incident.  Samsung is facing billions of dollars in damages due to the Note 7 fiasco.
Samsung has recalled more than 2.5 million units of the Galaxy Note 7 and its replacement units last month, and has since terminated the program completely. The company is already reeling from a second recall, after safety concerns regarding 2.8 million top-loading machines made from 2011 to 2016.
There have been 700 reports of the top-loading machine related incidents, along with nine serious injuries.

Intel unveil Shooting Star Drone

Intel has announced its new ‘Shooting Star’ aerial drone that isn’t meant for aerial photography or aerial-sensing, but tailor-made for light shows. Intel’s new quad-copter aims too redefine entertainment and new possibilities with light shows in the night sky.
Recently, we put the fleet of Intel Shooting Star drones to the test in Germany and we were able to achieve what no one else has done before. We set a new Guinness World Record for having The Most UAVs Airborne Simultaneously with 500 Intel Shooting Star drones lighting up the night sky. We outdid our own previous record of 100 drones in-flight simultaneously in less than a year,” said Intel in a press release.
The Shooting Star is Intel’s first venture into the entertainment light show business. The company says that the drone is designed keeping in mind creativity and safety. The Shooting Star features a light-weight structure and has ‘virtually limitless colour combinations.’ Intel has asked for a waiver from US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly the drones at night, to demonstrate the capability of the drone cluster.
Intel just last month unveiled its first consumer drone, the Yuneec Typhoon H –featuring the company’s Real Sense technology. The company also has a drone for commercial use, called the Falcon 8+. Falcon 8+ was introduced in North American markets in October, and comes with ‘complete flight system redundancies built-in’.
The US tech giant has recently acquired MAVinci GmbH, a drone company based in Germany that comes with what Intel calls the “best-in-class” flight panning software.

YouTube new System give Creators more Control

YouTube has rolled out several new features for its comments section to help creators interact with their fans more personally. “We realize that comments play a key role in growing this connection,” said Courtney Lessard, Product Manager at YouTube. The new features include the ability to pin comments, highlight creator usernames, as well as new hearts icon.
YouTube has also introduced a new beta feature that will allow creators to hold potentially inappropriate comments for review. The company plans to roll out the same in the coming months. According to Lessard, the new features will help grow stronger communities and have more constructive conversations in comment sections.
YouTube’s pinned comments allows creators to post (or pin) a specific comment at the top of their news feed. However, users will only be able to pin a single comment at a time on their news feed. YouTube has also rolled out creator hearts that can be ‘given’ to favorite comments. “This is a new and easy way to acknowledge comments from your community,” says Lessard. Up next is change in the way creator usernames appears. Creator’s usernames will now appear with a pop of colour around it, whenever they comment on their channel. Verified users will still have the verification checkmark besides their names, along with the new look.
YouTube already gives creators an option to choose moderators who can remove public comments from their videos. Now, it plans to roll out a new feature that holds potentially inappropriate comments for review. Lessard explains how it works, “If you choose to opt-in, comments identified by our algorithm will be held and you have the final decision whether to approve, hide, or report these comments.” Creators who’re interested in trying out the feature can do so by submitting their channel information.

Apple accounted for 103.6 per cent of smartphone profit

While there is a lot of talk about how Apple’s momentum is slowing down, there seems to be one area where it is way ahead of the competition and that is profits. In fact, one analyst thinks Apple has more than 100 per cent of smartphone industry profits in Q3.As per BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long, Apple accounted for 103.6 per cent of all smartphone industry operating profits in Q3. The number is above cent per cent because other vendors are losing money.
Thus Apple ends up with “more smartphone profit than the industry netted overall”. For the year-earlier period, Apple grabbed 90 per cent of smartphone profits, Long said, highlighting how others had fallen of the cliff when it came to profits.
In fact, the number 2 in profits is Korean tech giant Samsung with a mere 0.9 per cent share. Long said everyone from LG to HTC had lost money in the quarter. The analyst was of the opinion that Samsung, which had lost some market share because of the Note 7 fiasco, will end up ceding more ground to Apple in the near future.
However, according to BMO estimates, Samsung still had 21.7 per cent of the smartphone market based on units sold in Q3, followed by Apple (13.2 per cent) and Huawei(9.7 per cent). Apple launched the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus in September this year at a crucial time for the company when its overall revenue has fallen thanks to slowing iPhone sales, which has become the star product in its portfolio. However, most analysts expect the iPhone 8 to come with major design changes and spark better upgrade than the 7 series.