New Nokia phone with triple rear cameras, no notch leaked in images

All eyes may be focused on HMD's upcoming Nokia 9 PureView flagship smartphone, but it seems the company is also working on another new Nokia phone as well. Some leaked images have been spotted online that reveal a mysterious new Nokia smartphone that interestingly does not come with a notch of any kind. We also know this isn't the Nokia 9 PureView because the images are of a phone with triple rear cameras rather than a penta-camera setup.

The leaked images were spotted on micro-blogging site Weibo, and we cannot verify its authenticity just yet. Going by the images, this new Nokia phone will offer a triple rear camera system on the back vertically placed on the center. We can see the Nokia branding as well and no sign of a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, which seems to suggest HMD is going with an in-display fingerprint sensor. This year, HMD has released a few phones with dual cameras, but we are yet to see a triple camera phone from the company.

What's more interesting is the display of this new Nokia smartphone. There is no notch on the top and no clear indication of a front-facing camera at all. The side and top bezels are slim, while the chin bezel is fairly thick and houses the Nokia logo. It would be quite surprising if HMD launches a Nokia phone without a front-facing camera in today's time. It's possible that the front camera is in the chin bezel, but the image shows no sign of that as well. The other option is a pop-up selfie camera like the Vivo Nex or a slider mechanism like the Mi Mix 3.

Students placed on December 2018..

😃😃😃😃😃

Nvidia Titan RTX, Turing-Based GPU for AI Research, With 24GB GDDR6 RAM Launched in India

Shortly after rolling the first high-end gaming GPUs based on its new Turing architecture Nvidia has announced its next ultra-high-end Titan-series offering. The new Nvidia Titan RTX GPU is a somewhat beefier version of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, using the same TU102 GPU but without any of its hardware disabled. It will also feature a whopping 24GB of high-speed GDDR6 RAM. The primary target audience for Titan RTX graphics cards will be AI researchers, data scientists, and content creators. It will also be able to handle all the games that its GeForce RTX siblings can, with full support for Nvidia's much-touted ray tracing and Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS) algorithm.

According to Nvidia, a card like this is ideal for neural network training and inference. The large amount of RAM, plus support for the NVLink interconnect to combine the memory pools of two such cards, would help researchers work with enormous data sets. The powerful new graphics card is also being touted as a tool for studios that work on games and VR experiences built around ray tracing. The Titan RTX will be an alternative to Nvidia's pro-grade Quadro RTX GPUs, bridging the workstation and gaming markets. The price in India will be Rs. 2,24,000 including taxes, which is lower than the Rs. 2,81,800 list price of the outgoing Titan V model, which was launched almost exactly a year ago.

HP 260 G3 Desktop Mini Launched in India
HP India on Monday introduced an affordable mini desktop to help students learn and collaborate in schools and educational institutions across the country. Starting at Rs. 19,990, the HP 260 G3 desktop mini will enable schools and institutes to set up or upgrade computers in their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) labs at a minimal cost, the company said in a statement.

The Pentium Dual Core with 18.5-inch monitor configuration of the HP 260 G3 is available at a starting price of Rs. 19,990 while the 7th Gen Intel Core i3 with 18.5-inch monitor configuration is available at a starting price of Rs. 25,990. A maximum of 32GB of DDR4 RAM can be configured on the system, which runs Windows 10 Pro.

Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS, First Snapdragon 850-Powered Laptop With 25 Hours Battery Life, Unveiled

 Lenovo has become the first company in the world to announce a laptop powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Mobile Compute Platform at the ongoing IFA 2018 trade show. The new Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS runs Windows 10 and supports standard Windows software. The key benefits promoted by Qualcomm and Lenovo are its 25-hour battery life, ability to wake instantly from standby, and constant Wi-Fi connectivity. Lenovo is also citing data showing how people are online longer and more often than ever before, and how some people feel physically anxious or sick when running low on battery power, to illustrate the appeal of such a laptop.

             The Snapdragon 850 should deliver a significant performance benefit over first-generation ARM-based Windows laptops which used the Snapdragon 835 processor. Qualcomm announced this new chip at Computex 2018 in June this year. It is a variant of the Snapdragon 845, optimised for laptop form factors rather than smartphones. manufactured using a 10nm process, with eight custom Qualcomm Kryo 385 cores running at up to 2.96GHz. It also features integrated Adreno 630 graphics, Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, and dedicated blocks for image signal processing, audio, sensors, security, and artificial intelligence.

Future smartphones may fold up, have 9 cameras and charge over thin air

Magic Leap has #promised to ship a developer-focused version of its Magic Leap One at some point this year.

Your next smartphone might just throw you a curve. Picture this: You pull your phone out of your pocket and unfold it like a napkin into a tablet. You press your finger on the screen, and it unlocks. You switch to the camera app, and a spider-like array of lenses shoots simultaneously to capture one giant photo. The shake-up couldn’t come soon enough.

Fingerprint scanners go inside

Recent breakthroughs let phone makers embed the fingerprint reader inside the screen. Just press your finger over the right area of the screen and the phone unlocks. Component maker Synaptics figured out how to take a picture of fingers by looking in between the phone’s pixels; Qualcomm created an ultrasonic sensor capable of scanning not only though screens but also metal. So far, the tech has made its way into phones from Chinese makers Vivo and Xiaomi

Chargeing

A prototype Wi-Charge adapter lets this phone juice up without any plugs                                                   Cameras sprout more lenses

The big idea: Phone snaps could soon compete in quality with big-honking-lens cameras. How? By covering the back of the phone with a bunch of small lenses that shoot simultaneously and then stitch it into one big photo.

We have already seen a version of this in Apple and Samsung phones with two lenses on the back. The second helps with zoom shots and measuring depth to create photos with artistically blurry backgrounds. The P21 Pro flagship from Huawei is the first to include three lenses: one color, one monochrome (to help with depth and lowlight situations) and one 3x zoom.

Screens fold up

The big idea: We once had flip phones. Now here come the flip tablets. At a display industry conference in May, the buzz was about prototypes of screens that were flexible enough to roll and flap in the wind. One firm, called BOE, showed a gadget it dubbed a “phoneblet” with a 7.5-inch screen that folded, without seams, into a phone and back again ... without breaking.

Samsung 8TB SSD Based on NF1 Form Factor Launched for Data Centres

Samsung Electronics has launched an 8TB solid state drive (SSD) based on NF1 form factor for data centres. The South Korean electronics giant says that it is the industry's highest capacity NVMe solid state drive (SSD) based on the next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF). Samsung claims that the new 8TB NVMe NF1 SSD has been optimised for "data-intensive analytics" and "virtualisation applications" in next-generation data centres and enterprise server systems. The world's biggest maker of memory chips' has seen business going well, helping the company post record profits. It had recently started mass producing the industry's first 16Gb, 64GB DDR4 RDIMM (registered dual in-line memory module).Coming to the new SSD by Samsung, it is built with 16 of the company's 512GB NAND packages, each stacked in 16 layers of 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND chips. This method, Samsung says, helps in achieving an 8TB density in an ultra-small footprint of 11x3.05cm. It has double the capacity offered by the M.2 NVMe SSD that is used in hyper-scale server designs and slim laptops. Samsung says that the new NF1 SSD will replace conventional 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs by enabling up to three times the system density in existing server infrastructure that will allow 576TB of storage space in the latest 2U rack servers.

Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) 

                                                       

HIGHLIGHTS

• Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming router is available for sale in India
• It comes with 256MB flash storage and 512MB of RAM
• It has been priced at Rs. 23,000

Netgear on Tuesday launched the new Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) at an event in Bengaluru. The company had unveiled the gaming-oriented router in January, at CES 2018. The new product leverages its software to optimise network connections by stabilising ping, reducing lag spikes, and keeps users "always on" with it wired and wireless connectivity. The Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) is available for sale via authorised Netgear partners, other reseller channels, as well as, e-commerce portals. It has been is priced at Rs. 23,000.

The Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) features such as a dual-core 1.7GHz processor, Quad-stream Wave 2 Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO, and four external high-power antennas. Netgear claims that the MU-MIMO Wi-Fi streams simultaneously to multiple devices on the same network so users can get a smooth gameplay without affecting each other's performance. The company also claims that the processor supports more devices for better 4K streaming, VR gaming, and surfing.

Netgear has partnered with Netduma for the software. The DumaOS includes Gaming Dashboard, Geo Filter, Quality of Service (QoS), and Network Monitoring capabilities. In the Gaming Dashboard, users can view real-time bandwidth utilisation by the device, ping delays, and other parameters on a single screen. The Geo Filter helps in fixing gaming lags by limiting distance to servers or other players, getting a guaranteed local connection, and creating black/ white lists of preferred servers. Meanwhile, Quality of Service (QoS) enables users to prioritise gaming devices and allocate bandwidth by the device to eliminate lag due to queuing at the ISP network.

Additionally, Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) comes with Gaming VPN that protects user's network identity, prevents DDoS attacks, and more. The Network Monitor lets users check on bandwidth-hogging devices and identify the applications that could be causing lag.

The new router features four-port Gigabit switch for making wired connections. It also sports two USB 3.0 ports which can be used to share USB storage over the network. In terms of storage, the Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) sports 256MB flash storage and 512MB of RAM.

"At Netgear we have worked tirelessly to deliver best-in-class performance, customisation and ease-of-use for the ultimate gaming experience. The new Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router (XR500) is an extension of the customisation and development of modern technological solutions. It is designed to meet the specialised needs of the gamers, the LAN switch comes equipped with dedicated features designed to eliminate laggy gameplay." said Marthesh Nagendra, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Netgear.          

India Well Positioned for AI-Led Economic Transformation: Assocham
                           With over 36 percent of large financial establishments investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven technologies and 70 percent planning to embrace it, India is well poised for AI-led economic transformation, a PwC India and Assocham report said on Friday.

Yet, While AI, Machine Learning (ML) and robotics have a wide range of use cases in financial services sector, their potential has not been fully realised in India, said the joint report.

"Establishing data access frameworks and guidelines for open application interfaces from financial institutions will act as an enabler for increased adoption of AI in the sector," the findings showed.

AI can be leveraged to protect economic sectors and infrastructure such as airports and power plants that are vulnerable to attacks.

"Anomalous behaviour detection in individuals and infrastructure disruption prediction (natural/ man-made causes) powered by the use of distributed sensors and pattern recognition are examples of AI usage potential in the sector," the report added.

Along with AI applications in defence, robots can be used to perform jobs which are unsafe for humans - such as recovering explosives, detecting mines, space exploration, deep water probes, scouting for hostile territories, etc.

AI-enabled cybersecurity systems rely on historical data of cyber-attacks and apply ML to predict and detect similar threats likely to arise in the future. Having automated systems in place for monitoring and detecting risks helps to free up human agents from the time-consuming tasks of having to continually check and categorise these red flags based on their threat level, said the report.

AI-enabled assistive technology for differently abled individuals is an untapped market in India.

"AI, in combination with other emerging technologies like 3D printing and IoT, has great potential to fuel widespread availability, affordability and feasibility of innovations in smart prosthetics," said the report.

"Forming cooperative relationships with some of the front-runners in AI - such as Japan, the UK, Germany, Singapore, Israel, and China - to develop solutions that tackle social and economic challenges can aid and accelerate strategy formulation," it added.

Policy planning in AI must be aimed at creating an ecosystem that is supportive of research, innovation and commercialisation of applications.

The centre and state governments could look at providing fiscal and non-fiscal incentives for AI research/ deployment, the report advised, adding that setting up centres of excellence supporting inter-disciplinary research can further fuel AI adoption in India.

  

HP Z VR Backpack, ZBook 17, and EliteDesk 800 G3 Launched in India: Price, Specifications

HP India on Monday debuted its commercial Virtual Reality (VR) solutions and services - including the world's first professional wearable VR PC - for businesses in the country.

The PC and printing major launched HP ZBook 17 mobile workstation at a starting price of Rs. 1,65,000, HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Tower at Rs. 72,000 and the professional wearable HP Z VR backpack at Rs. 3,25,000.

"Making the most of VR technology requires a collaborative relationship between customers and partners. HP is uniting powerful commercial VR solutions to reinvent the future and create a unified portfolio of commercial VR devices," Vickram Bedi, Senior Director, Personal Systems, HP India, said in a statement.

HP Z VR Backpack solution lets users move and maintain total immersion with high-octane visual performance and docking capabilities that transform it into a manageable, powerful desktop PC experience.

Alienware 15 and 17 Gaming Laptops With Intel Core i9

Dell has revealed new upgrades to its Alienware 15 and 17 gaming laptops. The duo will now feature 8th generation Intel Core i5, i7, and i9 processors with upto 6 cores. Along with this, they will allow for overclocking for upto 5.0GHz, the first time ever on the company's most powerful laptops. In order to this, Dell claims it mechanically engineered Alienware Cryo-Tech v2.0, it's bespoke cooling solution with 50 percent thinner fan blades and a vapour chamber on the CPU to cool cores efficiently. Furthermore, users can overclock seamlessly with Alienware Command Center for laptops which also allow for 13 programmable lighting zones supAlthough an India price and release date for the Alienware 15 and 17 are yet to be announced, both the Alienware 15 and 17 ware available on Dell's website in US, China, and Europe. The Alienware 15 price is $2,400 (around Rs. 1.56 lacs) with additional configurations starting $1,450 (close to Rs. 95,000) from April 10 while the Alienware 17 price is $3,700 (approximately Rs. 2.40 lacs) with additional configurations starting $1600 (nearly Rs. 1 lac) also from April 10.porting full RGB on Alienware 15 and 17 keyboards.

Other additions include support for external desktop graphics via the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, optional 120Hz TN+WVA 400-nits display designed with Nvidia Gsync. GPU options include Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, 1070, and 1080 graphics or an AMD Radeon RX570 with 8GB DDR5.

Razer Basilisk Mouse, BlackWidow Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard Launched in India: Price, Features

Razer Basilisk customisable gaming mouse has been launched in India. The new mouse, targeted at gamers who are looking for a solution to enhance their experience for FPS gaming, is now available in the country with a price tag of Rs. 5,499. Bengaluru-based distributor Kaira Global has brought the Razer Basilisk to the Indian market with a one-year warranty. The distributor has also launched Razer BlackWidow Ultimate mechanical gaming keyboard with at a price of Rs. 9,999.

Equipped with a Razer 5G true 16,000 DPI optical sensor, the Razer Basilisk is designed to offer accuracy and precision for FPS gamers. It is also touted to have a lifespan of 50 million clicks, far more than what you can expect from a traditional optical mouse. There is up to 450 inches per second (IPS)/ 50 G acceleration and 1000Hz Ultrapolling. The mouse has a gaming-grade tactile scroll wheel with customisable resistance and includes two removable clutch (short/ long) buttons that are fully programmable and can be set for actions such as push-to-talk and item pick-up. A rubber thumb cap has also been included for players who don't want to opt for the clutch buttons. Coming back to the scroll wheel, it can be adjusted via a dial on its underside to let gamers increase or decrease its resistance. This majorly helps if a gamer wants to adjust the jump activation in a game to a preferred level of resistance.

Asus ZenBook Flip S UX370UA Ultra-Thin Convertible Laptop Launched in India: Price, Specifications

The Asus ZenBook Flip S UX370UA convertible laptop with ultra-thin and lightweight design has been launched in the Indian market. Priced at Rs. 1,30,990, the new ZenBook Flip S UX370UA laptop will be available at retail outlets across the country. It comes with Gen 8 Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB LPDDR3 RAM, weighs 1.1kg, and measures 11.2mm in thickness. The premium Asus laptop comes in metal finish and the company claims it is 50 percent stronger than standard aluminium alloy.

The new Asus ZenBook Flip S UX370UA laptop has a 13.3-inch anti-glare, touchscreen display with full-HD (1920x1080 pixels) resolution and 300 nits brightness. This Windows 10 laptop has 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-8550 processor (up to 4GHz), Intel UHD Graphics GPU, as well as 512GB SSD. There’s a VGA camera for video calls, fingerprint sensor, and a 2-cell Li-ion battery that delivers up to 11 hours of battery life. Connectivity suite of the new model consists of USB-Type C 3.1, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.1 (Dual Band).

Trackpad of the new ZenBook Flip S UX370UA is backlit, and travel between keys is 1mm, Asus claims. The dual Asus SonicMaster Premium stereo speakers are Harman Kardon certified, and the laptop has an amplifier for maximum audio performance. As for the design, the laptop is made from a single block of aluminium and features a spun metal finish that takes 40 steps to create. It comes in Royal Blue colour, with golden accents on the edges. The laptop has a hinge that can turn 360 degrees so that the display can be tilted to various angles conveniently.  

A DCIM Primer

What you need to know

 

CIOs who have their ear to the ground know that the right DCIM software can become a powerful tool for today’s data centers. There’s little doubt that these increasingly complex enterprises face huge challenges in maintaining and improving key deliverables to clients. Pressures from outside and from within are forcing data centers to become more efficient in space and power consumption, in profitability, and in ensuring security in the face of cyber threats.   

 

Situational Awareness to Fully Exploit Resources

 

The right DCIM can provide the situational awareness data centers need to run efficiently, to inventory and employ facilities, hardware, tools, software, and personnel in the most effective manner. No longer do centers have to be saddled with underutilized hardware and software resources (e.g. “zombie” servers). DCIM can provide the much-needed metrics for budgeting, service planning, and compliance audits. With increased situational awareness comes the agility to move with fluctuating business climates, a critically important factor in enhancing availability, reliability, overall quality and serviceability.

 

 

But many data centers increasingly find themselves in quicksand when it comes to updating their management systems, tools, and best practices. For whatever reason, they’re simply unable to plan, economically run or perform much-needed data analyses to improve workflow. 

 

Situational awareness allows CIOs to clearly identify their resources and the way they’re configured and employed. It reveals a data center’s availability (and vulnerability) when it comes to performance, capacity and cost-effectiveness in providing reliable service. 

 

Michael L. Ross, a data center management consultant who has over 10 years helping large data centers reduce their total cost of ownership underscores the importance of management tools like Tuangru’s RAMP DCIM in providing situational awareness.

 

“Ten years ago, data centers were focused on availability and performance. Today, data centers need to understand the total cost of ownership and its elements to deliver a service. You need to manage the cost of the data center plus the infrastructure supporting it as well as maintain high operating efficiencies,” he said

Netgear Orbi Pro Tri-Band Wi-Fi System for Small Businesses Launched in India: Price, Specifications

Netgear has launched a new router in the Orbi series - the SRK60 - for small and medium-sized business in India. The company is bringing Orbi tri-band Wi-Fi to the SMB market in India in the form of the Orbi Pro. The new device by Netgear with its Fastlane3 technology joins the company's Wi-Fi System product lineup as its first purpose-built Wi-Fi solution aimed at SMBs. It is currently available through authorised Netgear partners, other reseller channels, and e-commerce portals at a price of Rs. 39,000.

The company claims that Orbi Pro is the "perfect" Wi-Fi solution for commercial locations such as professional offices, restaurants, retail or bed and breakfast inns, which would benefit from easy to set up Wi-Fi. It said that there is no requirement of wiring, professional installation or added IT costs with Orbi Pro. "With the new Orbi Pro Tri-band WiFi System, DIY feature allows anyone to set up separate WiFi for guests, employees and business traffic

NCR Launches Select Edition Small Footprint ATMs for Remote, Underserved Locations

NCR Corporation unveiled its SelfServ Select Edition (SE) Cash and SE Recycle ATMs, that will help financial institutions (FIs) to expand their reach and serve the more than 19% unbanked population in India. This new, small-footprint ATM technology from NCR is designed to enable banks to offer access to cash in remote, previously underserved locations.

India remains overwhelmingly a cash economy with more than 50% of all retail transactions completed using cash – an estimated 18.5 billion will be withdrawn from ATMs in 2018 alone. That number is estimated to reach 26 billion by 2022.

AMD's first Ryzen desktop processors with Radeon Vega graphics launched

AMD's first Ryzen desktop processors with Radeon Vega graphics launche

 US-based semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has launched two Ryzen Desktop processor -- AMD Ryzen 5 2400G and AMDRyzen 3 2200G -- with built-in Radeon Vega graphics models at $169 and $99 respectively.

According to the company, the Ryzen 5 2400G processor delivers the same graphics performance in a single processor as the Intel Core i5-8400($199) clubbed with NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 ($89) discrete gaming GPU. AMD has also claimed that this chipset delivers up to 156% more graphics as well as up to 21% more system performance than the Intel Core i5-8400 and up to 39% faster graphics performance when overclocked.

Like the other AMD Ryzen Desktop processors, Ryzen Desktop APUs are unlocked for performance tuning of CPU, DRAM, and GPU settings through the AMD Ryzen Master overclocking utility. Also, the Ryzen Desktop APUs support the same Socket AM4 infrastructure as Ryzen Desktop CPUs. Meaning that the processors are compatible with the existing AM4 ecosystem of over 120 motherboards, and will require a simple BIOS update.

Samsung Portable SSD T5

HIGHLIGHTS

Samsung Portable SSD T5 is available in four different capacities

It's the fastest portable SSD we've tested till date

Price starts at Rs. 9,999 (MOP) for the 250GB model

Samsung T5 design and box contents

At 51g and 74x57.3x10.5mm (3.0x2.3x0.4 inches), the Samsung T5 is practically identical to its predecessor - the T3 - in terms of size and weight. It’s a tiny bit smaller than most credit and business cards, but a little bit thicker than the average smartphone. You won’t have any trouble fitting it in your pocket.

Samsung T5 specifications, features, and performance

The Samsung T5 has support for USB 3.1 Gen. 2 connectivity, which offers theoretical speeds up to 10Gbps; double of what the T3 supported with USB 3.1 Gen. 1. Of course the actual speeds you can expect to get are much lower. The Samsung T5 is rated for transfer speeds of up to 540MBps, a 20 percent bump on paper compared to the T3.

We connected the Samsung T5 to a HP Spectre 13 laptop using the bundled Type-C to Type-C cable to run some benchmarks and find out if it lives up to its claims. In CrystalDiskMark v6.0.0, we recorded sequential reads of over 550MBps and sequential writes of 499.9MBps, with the former topping Samsung’s own claims. With a queue depth of 32, we got random read and write speeds of 150.7MBps and 147.2MBps respectively, which are great. Our real-world experience was equally good, and we were able to copy a 5.2GB file from the SSD on a 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro laptop to the Samsung T5 in 10 seconds.

WhatsApp Business App for SMEs Now Available in India

Just days after its initial rollout, the WhatsApp Business app has now debuted in India. The standalone app offers a simple tool for small businesses to let them communicate with their clients and customers in an easy way. Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced the plans to kick off its WhatsApp for Business initiative back in September last year and launched a pilot by partnering with companiessuch as BookMyShow, Netflix, and MakeMyTrip. The new app, for small businesses, arrived first in a handful of markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the UK, and the US, on Friday. Interestingly, the app was initially tested in India and Brazil ahead of its public release.
The WhatsApp Business app is now available for free download via Google Play in India. It is compatible with devices running Android 4.0.3 and above. A version with similar features is also expected to be available for iOS devices in the coming future.

Happy republic day

Cashbacks, Rewards, and the Growth of Google Tez Payment App in India

Tez, Google's payments app for India that's built on top of the country's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), was launched in September last year. By early December - a little less than three months after the launch - the app had clocked 12 million users and 140 million transactions.

Those are impressive numbers, even if the government backed UPI app BHIM, which also launched last year, clocked 10 million users at a much faster rate - within 10 days. In terms of the number of transactions, however, Tez has completely blown past its competition.

When Gadgets 360 reached out to Google this week, the company reiterated that Tez has seen over 140 million transactions in the roughly three months since it launched on September 18. In contrast, according to figures from the National Payments Corporation of India - the entity that operates the payments interface UPI - the government-based BHIM app has seen just about 62 million transactions over 12 months, with only 9 million transactions in December.

Why the huge difference in the number of transactions, despite the two apps having similar user numbers? Is Google Tez such a game changer? At the time of the Tez launch, DD Mishra, Research Director, Gartner had said that Tez had the potential to do so. "It is too early to say whether it can be a game changer, but yes it has the capabilities to bring some disruption," he had said.

Google, on its part, credits the success of the Tez app to its "simplicity".

"People prefer simple, safe and trusted apps that are widely used. We’re happy that people are recommending Tez to their friends and family because they like the simplicity of the product," a company spokesperson told Gadgets 360.

Toshiba Introduced World’s First 14TB HDD

Toshiba Electronic Components Taiwan Corporation has announced the launch of the MG07ACA Series, the world’s first enterprise 14TB Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) HDD.

Using a 9-disk, helium-sealed design, the new MG07ACA Series provides the power-efficient capacity and storage density needed by cloud-scale and enterprise storage solution providers to achieve their TCO objectives.

“We have raised the bar with the new MG07ACA Series 9-disk helium-sealed design,” said Tadashi Sakaue, Division President, Storage Products Division, Toshiba Electronics Components Taiwan Corporation.“By utilizing an innovative design, we continue to improve the benefits that high-capacity disk storage can deliver to our broad global customer base.”

The MG07ACA Series features both 14TB 9-disk and 12TB 8-disk models. The helium-sealed 3.5-inch[3] mechanical design realizes better storage density and a lower HDD operating power profile than the previous MG06ACA Series for optimal TCO in cloud-scale infrastructures.