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.