Five hours of smartphone battery life in five minutes

New tech promises five hours of smartphone battery life in five minutes

FOR our smartphone obsessed society, an unexpected dead battery can be an unbridled disaster.
For those worried about being caught unable to take that perfect Instagram photo, or getting lost without the safety of Google Maps, then fear no more.
A new technology promises to give your mobile a supercharge boost meaning you can get hours of battery life by the time it takes you to read this article.
US company Qualcomm which makes semiconductors and telecommunications equipment for smartphones debuted its new super-fast charging technology dubbed Quick Charge 4 last week.
The company makes chips and other internal hardware bits for a majority of top Android smartphones on the market including handsets for Samsung, LG and HTC.
As the name denotes, it’s the company’s fourth generation of charging technology and offers up a major advance in performance.
“We put a lot of hard work and engineering into new products, and we’re going to deliver what we hope is a much better charging experience from 2016,” Qualcomm’s senior director of product management Everett Roach said at the unveiling.
Depending on the device, the company says Quick Charge 4 will provide phones with five hours of battery life in just five minutes, or up to 50 per cent of a battery’s capacity in under 15 minutes.

The generation of Quick Charge equates to about a 20 per cent increase in efficiency from the company’s latest version, Quick Charge 3.

The new technology will appear in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip, which is expected to launch early next year. So if you want to reap the benefits of super fast charging, you’ll need to look out for phones that use the Snapdragon 835 chip next year — something that has not yet been made public.

The latest version comes at a crucial time for Qualcomm. The global recall of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 due to phones catching fire and reports of dodgy third-party chargers also causing phones to catch fire has seen safety become a matter of paramount importance for smartphone manufacturers.
In fact Google — who has recently entered the smartphone wars with the release of its first device — sought to address the issue by implementing new guidelines for Android manufacturers which included charging recommendations that appear to ban Qualcomm’s Quick Charge tech.
The recommendations called for all phones to be USB-PD compliant — a specification intended to make USB-charged devices safer.
Quick Charge 3 is not, however Quick Charge 4 is fully compliant with Google’s new recommendations.
“Quick Charge 4 addresses that need by providing up to 50 per cent battery charge in roughly 15 minutes or less, so you don’t have to spend all day chained to your charging cable,” Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm’s vice president of product management, said in a statement.
So for those who live in perennial fear of a depleted phone battery, you can expect Qualcomm’s charging technology to appear in Android phones in early 2017.




source: www.news.com.au

Samsung Updates Android Nougat Beta For Galaxy S7 Devices

Samsung Updates Android Nougat Beta For Galaxy S7 Devices

Samsung announced the beta release of Android 7.0 Nougat for its 2016 Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge devices a week ago in three important smartphone markets: the United Kingdom, United States of America and South Korea. Beta programs are designed to allow customers or users to experience an unfinished product so as to provide feedback to the company. For a major software version such as Android Nougat, a developer – or in this case the smartphone manufacturer – will conduct a large number of internal tests, but because smartphones are both extremely complicated and customers can download and install large numbers of third party applications, it is useful to allow the pre-release version of the operating system to be tested “in the wild.” This way, Samsung can hope to capture many different device configurations and uncover bugs and glitches that might otherwise not be found until the software is officially released.

iPhone SE 2 Rumours

Apple might not release 2017 iPhone SE, says tech expert Ming-Chi Kuo

Back in 2015, we were worried that Apple had decided to ditch the 'C' range from its iPhone line-up and stop making 4-inch iPhone after a huge success of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6s Plus.

If you are Apple fan, you must know about the best Apple analyst in the world- Ming-Chi Kuo. In the latest reports from him hi tells, that Apple has cancelled the idea of the up-gradation of iPhone SE.

In the recent research note written by Kuo and obtained by MacRumors say that Apple won't be releasing the 2017 version of iPhone SE. For those who have forgotten about this mini 4 inch iPhone, it was a hit and after the launch of iPhone 7, reports The Tech Bulletin.

There are 2 reasons behind the dropping the idea of the iphone SE 2. One is to increase margins on the 2016 iPhone SE as its older components reduce in price. And other reason state that it will reduce risk of cannibalisation that a 2017 iPhone SE could have sales of the mare profitable iPhone 7.

Previously Apple did the same thing with iPads as well as MacBook Pro upgrades. People were waiting for the new upgrades but the company moved at its own velocity. However, in that time the already existing models worked perfectly well for all requirements.

Right now still there is no official statement from the company and Kuo is also not correct always. But every Apple leak or news has been accurate since last 18 months by Kuo.

Here's a quick highlights of Apple's iPhone SE which was launched in March this year:

1. Made of aluminium, with matt chamfered edges, the design is strongly reminiscent of the iPhone 5s.

2. iPhone SE is available with a Rose Gold finish, alongside silver, gold and Space Grey.

3. The 64bit A9 processor chip makes the SE, in Apple's words, "The most powerful 4-inch phone ever". The company further pledges "two times faster CPU and three times faster GPU performance compared to iPhone 5s

4. You can use Hey Siri in it

5. iPhone SE is having a rear-facing 12Mp iSight Camera and the 'Retina flash' feature - when you're taking selfies in low light you can make the display flash 3 times brighter than normal to light up the shot.

6. 4k video with the iPhone SE, and you can edit up to 2 streams of 4k video on the iPhone SE using iMovie.

7. iPhone SE offers LTE web connectivity that is 50 percent faster than the iPhone 5s. You also get 802.11ac and Wi-Fi calling.

8. Apple Pay is built in coming in iPhone SE






source: www.hngn.com

Facebook is finally getting serious about its

Facebook is finally getting serious about its ‘Snapchat problem’

For the past couple of years, Facebook has done nothing significant about its Snapchat problem.

Sure, Mark Zuckerberg and co. have tried to clone parts of Snapchat with failed apps like Slingshot. But Facebook has never really thrown its full weight behind taking Snapchat head on.

Until now.

During Facebook's quarterly earnings call this past week, Zuckerberg explained that Facebook now sees the camera as the future of how people share and communicate.

"In most social apps today, a text box is still the default way we share," he said. "Soon, we believe a camera will be the main way that we share."

While he didn't name Snapchat specifically on the call, make no mistake: Facebook's full attack on Snapchat has begun.

New MacBook 2017

New MacBook Pros might come in 2017 with lower price, 32GB of RAM

If you were underwhelmed by Apple's recent unveiling of the new, Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pro laptops, you might want to wait until the second half of 2017.

According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (as reported by MacRumors), this is when Apple will update its MacBook Pros with an option to add 32GB of RAM memory (currently, they're capped at 16GB), and lower their overall prices.