CMP Gadgets

Tag: news

  • UPI One World Wallet Service

    UPI One World wallet service has been launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for non-resident Indians (NRIs) and international travellers visiting the country. The service was first announced last year during the G20 summit which India hosted. It will allow travellers who do not have an Indian bank account to access the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system and make payments using it. The initiative was launched by NPCI in collaboration with IDFC First Bank and Transcorp International Limited under the guidance of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

    NPCI said that travellers visiting India will be able to make secure digital payments and transact with merchants and vendors across the country with the UPI One World wallet. The service will allow travellers to eliminate the need to carry large amounts of cash or face the hassle of multiple foreign exchange transactions.

  • iQoo Neo 9s Pro+

    iQoo Neo 9s Pro+ was launched in China on July 12. The new Neo 9 series flagship smartphone by the Vivo sub-brand comes in three colour options and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. It houses a 5,500mAh battery with support for 120W fast charging. The iQoo Neo 9s Pro+ boasts an LTPO OLED display with up to 144Hz refresh rate and is offered in five RAM and storage configurations. The new handset arrives as a close sibling of the iQoo Neo 9 and Neo 9 Pro.

    Price of iQoo Neo 9s Pro+ starts at CNY 2,999 (roughly Rs. 34,000) for the 12GB + 256GB variant. The 12GB + 512GB variant is priced at CNY 3,399 (roughly Rs. 39,000). The 16GB + 256GB and 16GB + 512GB options are priced at CNY 3,299 (roughly Rs. 36,000) and CNY 3,699 (roughly Rs. 42,000), respectively. The price goes up to CNY 4,099 (roughly Rs. 46,000) for the 16GB + 1TB variant. It comes in Buff Blue, Star White, and Fighting Black colours. It will be available for purchase in China from July 16.

  • Airtel: News

    Airtel on Friday announced that it was revising the price of its prepaid recharge plans and postpaid plans, with costs increasing by as much as 20 percent. The telecom operator said the new prices are part of its efforts to increase the mobile average revenue per user (ARPU). The tariffs for prepaid and postpaid data plans will be revised next week, according to the operator. The Airtel price hike comes hours after rival Reliance Jio announced new tariffs on Thursday, increasing the prices of its plans in the country.

    Once the new tariffs go into effect, Airtel prepaid customers will have to pay more to access the company’s data and calling plans. The telecom operator says that it is looking to increase the ARPU beyond Rs. 300 in order to remain profitable while continuing to invest in spectrum and network technology.

    You can refer to the table below to see the updated pricing for each plan. The annual Rs. 1,799 recharge plan and Rs. 2,999 plan will increase by Rs. 200 and Rs. 600, respectively. It’s worth noting that all prepaid recharge plans offer unlimited voice calls and up to 100 SMS per day, except the last three entries in the table as they are data add on packs.

  • HMD 110 and HMD 105

    HMD 110 and HMD 105 were announced in India on Tuesday. These are the company’s first self-branded feature phones in India. They are offered in multiple color options and are budget offerings equipped with multimedia features. They are also said to include voice assistance and large displays. The company has also packed built-in UPI apps into these newly launched feature phones. They are claimed to offer a standby battery life of up to 18 days. The HMD 110 handset also has a rear camera unit.

    HMD 110 and the HMD 105 are priced in India at Rs. 1,119 and Rs. 999, respectively. In a press note, the company added that the phones will be available in the country starting June 11 via HMD.com, e-commerce sites, and offline retail stores.

    The HMD 110 is offered in black and green color options, while the HMD 105 comes in black, blue and purple shades.

  • Sony LinkBuds

    Sony launched the LinkBuds S and LinkBuds earphones in India in 2022. As per a tipster, these true wireless (TWS) earphones are likely to get successors later this year. However, Sony’s flagship audio products WH-1000XM6 and WF-1000XM6 are tipped to launch next year. Notably, the Sony WF-1000XM5 TWS earphones were introduced in India in September 2023, while the Sony WH-1000XM5 wireless over-ear headphones were unveiled in the country in September 2022.

    Tipster Zackbuks claimed in a Weibo post that Sony is likely to introduce the second generation of Sony LinkBuds S and Sony LinkBuds TWS earphones later this year.

    Meanwhile, they added that the Sony WF-1000XM5 and Sony WH-1000XM5 successors, likely to be the Sony WF-1000XM6 and Sony WH-1000XM6, are expected to be unveiled in the first half of 2025. There are no other details about the audio wearables available at the moment. The new products are expected to come with upgrades over the older ones.

  • AMD

    AMD announced the next generation of its processors to fuel the rising artificial intelligence (AI) wave at its Computex 2024 event on Sunday. The company unveiled four new Ryzen 9000 series chipsets for gamers and heavier workflows and two new Ryzen AI 300 series chipsets to power the AI PCs. These CPUs are built on AMD’s latest Zen 5 architecture and come with integrated GPUs and Neural Processing Units (NPUs). The chipmaker claimed that the Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors could deliver 16 percent better performance than the predecessors.

    AMD Ryzen AI 300 series features the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and the Ryzen AI 9 365 CPUs. Following the naming convention introduced in 2022, the HX appears in the name of the top-of-the-tier desktop processor. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset comprises 12 high-performance Zen 5 cores and 24 threads with a max clock speed of 5.1GHz. It features the Radeon 890M graphics and 36MB cache.

    Meanwhile, the Ryzen AI 9 365 chipset has 10-core high-performance Zen 5 cores and 12 threads with a max clock speed of 5.0GHz. It gets the Radeon 880M graphics and has a 34MB cache. Apart from using Zen 5 architecture for the CPU, AMD also used the XDNA2 architecture to build the NPU that powers the AI experiences for desktop users. Both processors have 50 Tera operations per second (TOPS) capable NPUs.

  • Nothing Phone 2: Latest Update

    Nothing Phone 2 was launched last year with Android 13 and was updated to the latest version by the end of the year. Now, the UK startup led by OnePlus Co-Founder Carl Pei has released a beta version of Android 15, Google’s upcoming operating system update that is expected to arrive later this year. The company has cautioned advanced users and developers that the beta version is an early build, and some features from the stable version of Nothing OS are currently unavailable.

    The first Android 15 beta version for the Nothing Phone 2 was released to testers earlier this week via a forum post on the Nothing Community. This is the second device from the company to get an Android 15 beta release — Nothing Phone 2a users got access to a test build last week. Users will need to ensure that their phone is running Nothing OS 2.5.5 before updating to Android 15.

    Nothing Phone 2 owners can download the Android 15 beta release in the form of an over-the-air (OTA) update package, which means there’s no need to connect your phone to a computer to install the beta update. It is also worth noting that while you can roll back to Android 14, there’s no way to do so without the phone wiping your data, which means that you should back up all of your data.

  • Google Update

    Google announced seven new Android features for applications such as Meet, Home, Messages and Wear OS on Thursday. One of the highlights of the latest Android feature drop is the ability to edit RCS messages up to 15 minutes after sending them. Unlike announcements made at Google I/O 2024 where several features were limited to Pixel smartphones, these features are expected to be available to Android devices across devices and regions, although some features may be limited based on the region a user lives in.

    RCS Message Editing

    In a blog post, Google announced that it is bringing a feature that lets users edit RCS messages up to 15 minutes after sending them. This feature is said to be available via Google Messages – the company’s text messaging app.

    To edit a message, tap and hold on a sent RCS message and a new edit icon will be displayed on the top banner. Users can tap on the icon to modify their message, as long as it was sent within the last 15 minutes, according to the company.

    Instant Hotspot and Device Switching

    Google says that it will soon bring an ‘instant hotspot’ feature that will enable users to connect a tablet or a Chromebook to an Android smartphone’s hotspot without needing to type in the password. It is also bringing an update to Cross-Device Services that will let users switch between devices such as smartphones, web browsers or tablets for video calls.

    Google claims that Android smartphones can now also be used as digital car keys with lock/unlock, vehicle start functionalities. The feature has been rolled out with support for select MINI models and will be expanded to Mercedes-Benz and Polestar vehicles soon.

    Furthermore, the company says users can now control their smart devices using the Google Home Favorites widget on Android smartphones and the Google Home Favorites tile and complication on WearOS-powered smartwatches.

    Google Wallet users using WearOS-powered smartwatches in the US and Germany can now make payments with PayPal, according to the company. Lastly, it says new Emoji Kitchen sticker combinations will be rolling out soon, which can be shared as stickers by entering two emoji via Gboard.

  • Samsung Galaxy AI

    Samsung unveiled its Galaxy AI suite in January with the Galaxy S24 series. The South Korean brand’s on-device and cloud-based AI model has since made its way to previous-generation flagship smartphones and tablets in the last few months. Now, Samsung is adding Galaxy AI to its wearables. The Galaxy AI features will be added to the Samsung Health app and Galaxy Watches later this year. It will bring several features to monitor and analyse health metrics.

    On May 29, Samsung announced that it is bringing Galaxy AI features to its smartwatches through its Wear OS-based One UI 6 Watch software later this year. A limited number of Galaxy Watches will get the beta version in June. Users of Galaxy Watch 6, Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, Galaxy Watch 5, Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, Galaxy Watch 4, and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic in the US and Canada will be able to test out Galaxy AI features via the Samsung Members app next month.

  • Infinix GT Book

    Infinix GT Book was unveiled in India on May 21. It features a Cyber Mecha Design with RGB Lighting as well as a an RGB keyboard. The laptop can be configured with up to 13th Gen Intel Core i9 processors paired with up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. It comes with up to 32GB LPDDR5x RAM and up to 1TB PCle 4.0 SSD storage. The laptop sports a 16-inch full-HD+ display with 120Hz refresh rate. The Infinix GT Book was introduced in the country alongside the Infinix GT 20 Pro.

    Infinix GT Book price in India starts at Rs. 59,990 for the 12th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU option. Meanwhile, the 13th Gen Intel Core i5 with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 and the 13th Gen Intel Core i9 with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 variants are priced at Rs. 79,990 and Rs. 99,990, respectively. These are special launch prices and Infinix is also bundling a free gaming kit for a limited period. The kit will include an RGB mouse, RGB gaming headphone, and an RGB mouse pad.