Manish Singh

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Elephone is working on a feature-rich flagship smartphone which will ship in two variants -- one running on Android 5.0 Lollipop, and the other one offering dual-boot capability with Windows 10 for phones, the company confirms to BetaNews. The Android counterpart will launch next month while the dual-boot capable phone will launch in June.

Windows Phone enthusiasts will be pleased to know that the upcoming smartphone will carry high-end hardware modules. As reported by Chinese tech portal GizChina -- and confirmed to us by the company -- the smartphone will feature a 5.5-inch 2K display. As of now, there is no flagship smartphone with 2K display running Windows OS. Other features of the handset include a mammoth 4GB RAM, and the touch ID fingerprint security. On the camera front, the smartphone will carry a 21-megapixel Sony IMX 230 shooter at the rear end. The dual-boot version will have a 20.7-megapixel sensor.

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Sony has finally launched the much-awaited successor to last year's Xperia Z3. Called the Xperia Z4, the new flagship smartphone features a range of incremental improvements to its last generation handset. It features a 5.2-inch 1080p display with the latest and greatest (and controversial) 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor from Qualcomm. The smartphone runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop.

The Xperia Z4's FHD (1920 x 1080) display might not please a lot of people given how most of the other flagship devices are offering QHD display these days, but Sony continues to value a longer battery life over bragging rights. Other specifications of the device include 3GB of RAM coupled with 32GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 128GB using a microSD card.

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Hours before HBO could officially premiere the returning episodes of the all-new 'Game of Thrones' season last week, screener copies of the first four episodes leaked to the interweb. Pirates from all across the globe took notice and yet again the American fantasy television series ended up getting illegally downloaded over a million times in less than a day.

HBO has in the past condemned such practice, but it looks much more furious this time. The American premium cable and satellite television network has started to send out thousands of warnings to subscribers who had illegally obtained copies of 'Game of Thrones', and is asking their respective carriers to take severe actions.

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Earlier this week, Cyanogen Inc announced that it has entered into a partnership with Microsoft to bundle some apps into its future Android-based operating system. While the companies meticulously chalked out most of the specifics of their collaboration -- and how it wouldn't much affect consumers in the coming months -- many people and even some news outlets are having a hard time understanding these facts, and have started to make bold, misleading conclusions.

Wired, for instance, believes that this tie-up between the two companies will end up taking Android’s future out of Google’s hands. I think they are wrong, and much to the contrary, I believe that this alliance will only be good for Google (and Android). Here’s why.

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WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging client, has reached 800 million monthly active users, company’s CEO Jan Koum shared the stat on his Facebook account last night. Interestingly enough, the company has just rolled out an update to its Android client to include an online conversation backup option. Users now have the option to take a backup of their conversation to Google Drive.

The updated version of WhatsApp’s Android client -- v2.12.45 -- is available to download through company’s official website. At the time of writing, this option wasn’t available to WhatsApp’s iPhone and Windows Phone clients, as well as not live on Google’s Play Store.

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Future Android-based builds and ROMs from Cyanogen Inc will ship with bundled Microsoft apps, as the startup has signed a deal with the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. The partnership will result in Microsoft apps and services such as Bing, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, as well as productivity suite Office among others being prominently showcased on Cyanogen’s software.

The collaboration between the two companies doesn’t come as a surprise as many similar rumors started to crop up when a news outlet reported that Microsoft was making an investment in Cyanogen Inc. The partnership is a win-win situation for both of the companies.

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A vast majority of Indian citizens don’t give a hoot about topics like net neutrality. But things have changed dramatically over the past couple of weeks. Not only have many of them started to understand what net neutrality actually means -- also why we should care about it -- but sites like SaveTheInternet.in are helping these critical topics become the word of mouth. TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) -- which started to seek people’s views on this matter last month -- has received over 600,000 responses. It will be taking these -- and many more that are yet to come -- into consideration as it moves closer to the deadline to make recommendations on the issue to Department of Telecom, a government ministry body which holds the power to take real action to uphold net neutrality in the country.

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce portal, received so much criticism that Sachin Bansal, the company’s CEO and co-founder, had to step up to explain why Airtel Zero, a platform through which Airtel will offer users free access to select mobile apps and services, is important. When that didn’t tone down the uproar from several Indian communities, earlier this week Flipkart announced that it is leaving India’s largest telco’s Airtel Zero plan.

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The OnePlus One smartphone has finally started to receive the Cyanogen software update. On a blogpost, the software maker announces that the OnePlus One handset is the first smartphone to snag the Cyanogen update. The Yu Yureka smartphone will be receiving the update soon, the company notes.

Cyanogen 12 is built on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop with some exclusive software features -- such as App Themer that lets you change style system-wide -- and many software tweaks. The build also brings with it the company’s new email app. The update is rolling out over the air.

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2014 was an interesting year for PC vendors. It was the year when Microsoft’s Windows XP -- a 14-year old operating system with more than one-third of market share then -- went out of support. The Redmond-based company announced that it won’t be providing any further security patches to the veteran desktop operating system, leaving hundreds of millions of computers vulnerable. PC vendors saw an uprise in their computer shipment figures, as a large chunk of users, as well as companies, upgraded their computers to Windows 7 or higher.

But things have started to wither once again for PC OEMs. These companies are having a hard time selling their new computers to people. While the individual figures from Lenovo and HP still point upwards, Dell and Acer seem to be having a bad time, so bad that they are dragging the entire community a little backward. Up to five to seven percent decline has been observed in the shipment figure in last one year.

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Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen a number of new Web browsers arrive on the desktop platform. We’ve seen Vivaldi -- a browser developed by ex-Opera folks, Maxthon -- a browser that challenges Chrome on speed and resource usage, and Microsoft’s Project Spartan which comes with a plethora of features. But there is one more browser that has many of us excited. It’s called Project Maelstrom -- and according to its developers -- it’s the world’s first torrent-based browser out there. This week Maelstrom hit the public beta, meaning anyone can now take it out for a test drive before the final version of it comes out in a couple of weeks. And so we did.

Project Maelstrom is different. You see it fetches content from peer-to-peer distributed torrents while other browsers ping traditional servers and request them for files. But how different is it? Will we have websites in the future available as torrent files? So here it goes.

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As promised two weeks ago, Microsoft is today releasing the Windows 10 for phones preview build across a larger set of Lumia phones. In a blog post, the company announces that it is seeding out the Build 10051 of the Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones to the Fast ring today. In addition to bringing support for more smartphones, the new build also brings along a number of new features, including Project Spartan, new Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, and more.

First up, let’s talk about the new features. Project Spartan -- the new browser from the Redmond-based company which recently made its way to the Windows 10 technical preview for desktops -- is now making its debut on Windows Phone handsets. “It uses our new rendering engine to give greater interoperability with the modern mobile web, and includes early versions of Reading View and Reading List”, says Gabe Aul, Windows Insider Guru, Microsoft. Project Spartan will not replace Internet Explorer 11 on your phone as the default browser but will exist side-by-side with it.

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Uber, the popular mobile-app-based transportation network, today announces its foray into the auto-rickshaw aggregation space. Called UberAUTO, the San Francisco-headquartered company is debuting it at Delhi. With UberAUTO, folks in India’s capital city will be able to book tickets via a swipe on their phone. This is the first time Uber has brought auto-rickshaws -- a transportation medium widely popular in India -- onto its platform.

The announcement comes a week after Uber was spotted testing a new auto-rickshaw aggregation service in Delhi. Users will be able to take a ride and pay the driver through the in-app UberAUTO option. As of today, it is a cash-only service. This also makes Delhi the first city where Uber is accepting direct paper cash as a mode of payment.

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Windows 10 -- the forthcoming operating system for desktop, mobile, gaming console, and IoT devices -- will hit the shelves this summer. While there is still some time left for it, according to a new report by Neowin’s Brad Sams, the Redmond-based software giant has already started to work on the "next Windows update". Codenamed "Redstone", it is the first major update to Windows 10 and will be released in 2016, ZDNET’s Mary Jo Foley confirms, citing her sources.

We don’t know what exactly this update will add to the operating system, but one thing is pretty evident: Microsoft is gearing up its update cycle. The company is now providing major updates to its operating system on a yearly basis, while also providing security patches on the second Tuesday of every month.

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Late February, the Federal Communications Commission announced it would change the way the United States' internet service providers are regulated. It was a major victory for the net neutrality advocates. "The internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform on the planet", said FCC Tom Wheeler. "It's simply too important to be left without rules and without a referee on the field". But elsewhere in the world, things aren't as clear and fair yet. In India -- the world's most populous democracy -- leading telecom operators in the past couple of months have made a number of moves that violate the essence of net neutrality. But thankfully more people are becoming aware of the situation and have started to push back such motions. The good news is that you -- the people -- have a chance to fix it.

Airtel, India's largest telecom operator, has announced Airtel Zero, a platform through which it will offer users free access to select mobile apps and services. The operator said that with this move, it will provide marketers with tools to let them pay for their customers' data access charges to aforementioned apps. “Akin to the established concept of toll-free voice calling, Airtel Zero will allow everyone from big marketers to small-time application developers to make parts or their entire mobile app free for customers – thus reviving interest of dormant customers, attracting new potential users and increasing retention", Airtel said in a statement. "From startups to enterprises, it is an open marketing platform that empowers companies ranging from small businesses to large conglomerates with an equal opportunity to reach out to customers in India", it added.

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OnePlus today released the much awaited OxygenOS update for its flagship One smartphone in India. The said Android-based operating system brings a Lollipop update in addition to a set of features from the Chinese smartphone manufacturer. Whether or not this is what you prefer, the OxygenOS bestows “pure Android experience”. The update is meant only for the OnePlus One smartphones sold in India.

OnePlus One global variant runs on Cyanogen’s Android KitKat-based CM 11 software. Days ahead of One’s launch in India, Cyanogen partnered with Micromax to give it an exclusive right to ship Cyanogen’s software in the country. The move spoiled OnePlus’ plan to debut in India with a bang. Cyanogen made it clear that it won’t be providing any software updates to OnePlus’ Indian variant.
Amidst the controversy, OnePlus announced that it will soon release an Android 5.0-based operating system for devices by the end of January. The company missed the deadline, but the software update is finally here. And so are a couple of other confusions.

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