Xiaomi’s Redmi Pro does OLED and dual camera on a budget
Just because Xiaomi is selling Segways, drones, bicycles and rice cookers these days doesn’t mean that it’s forgotten what it started off with years ago: mobile phones. Today, the Chinese company announced the Redmi Pro which is the latest smartphone in its entry-level portfolio. As suggested by the name, this device packs some surprising features that make it stand out from its predecessors: This is the first time that Xiaomi’s featuring an OLED display plus a dual-camera setup on a device, which is a surprising move given that these are headed to the affordable Redmi line instead of the flagship Mi line. The price? From 1,499 yuan which is about $225.
The Redmi Pro comes in a gold- or silver-colored brushed metallic unibody — a real bonus at this price point — and packs a 5.5-inch 1080p OLED display (with full NTSC gamut), a fingerprint reader plus a 5-megapixel selfie camera on the front side. Flip it over and you’ll find a Mi 5-like curved back sans glass, along with a dual camera featuring a 13-megapixel Sony IMX258 main sensor plus a 5-megapixel Samsung assistive sensor for bokeh effects. Like many earlier dual-camera phones, here you can change the focus point on the image even after capturing; and there’s a dual-tone LED flash, too. There’s also a generous 4,050mAh battery inside — similar to the one in the very recent Redmi 3S — with fast charging via the USB Type-C port. Likewise, the Redmi Pro has the same IR blaster as the Redmi 3S which lets you control your TV and home appliances.
Given the base price point, it’s no surprise that the Redmi Pro is powered by a MediaTek chipset. The base spec starts with the 10-core Helio X20 plus 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM (1,499 yuan/about $225), followed by the faster Helio X25, 64GB of storage plus 3GB of RAM (1,699 yuan/about $255), and capping with the same chipset, 128GB of storage plus 4GB of RAM (1,999 yuan/about $300). As with most Chinese and Indian smartphones these days, the Redmi Pro is a dual-SIM 4G+ device (VoLTE supported), though you can also use the second SIM slot to add a microSD card instead.
1.21 Redmi devices were sold every second over the past three years.
For those who aren’t familiar, Xiaomi launched the Redmi line back in 2013 to tap into the low-end market, i.e. the sub-1,000 yuan or $150 price point. This was achieved with minimal advertising plus cheaper components, but without sacrificing build quality (and hopefully reliability). Unsurprisingly, the sub-brand has done very well in terms of volume — a total of 110 million Redmi devices have been sold as of July 11th, meaning 1.21 units were sold every second over the past three years.
The Redmi Pro marks a significant change for the sub-brand as it’s the first Xiaomi product to feature celebrity spokespersons (which obviously requires money) plus traditional advertisements across the country (I saw them at the bus stations and elevators in Beijing). Price bump aside, such move appears to be taking a page out of the books of local rivals Huawei, Oppo and Vivo — all of which beat Xiaomi in global shipment volumes earlier this year — who are well-versed in conventional marketing tactics plus offline retail in their home country. This works particularly well in the second- and third-tier Chinese cities, which are no doubt where the Redmi brand performs well.
Unfortunately, there’s no word on when to expect the Redmi Pro to hit the markets outside China, but we’re pretty sure it’ll eventually land in India plus other developing markets. Or you can just fly yourself to China for a quick shopping trip, if you don’t mind taking a break from Pokémon Go for a few days.
Nintendo’s lack of breakthrough games hits profits hard
Despite Nintendo’s attempts to lower expectations ahead of announcing its financial results, its latest quarterly earnings aren’t good. At all. Net sales are down 31 percent compared to the same quarter last year, down to 62 billion yen ($587 million), while it saw an operating loss of 5.1 billion yen (roughly $48 million). Nintendo managed to sell 220,000 Wii Us, nudging the total number of consoles sold over 13 million, while the aging 3DS sold just under an additional 1 million handhelds. Despite the company owning parts of Pokémon Go, it isn’t reflected in the earnings as the game was released after the quarter that ended in June. However, the company took to Twitter to announce that its curious Pokémon Go Plus accessory has been delayed two months until September.
The #pokemongo Plus accessory will now be released Sept 2016 instead of the originally expected end of July launch. https://t.co/QgjZf1aAV6
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 27, 2016
The games maker is blaming a stronger yen that’s negatively affected its overseas sales, but what’s probably to blame is the lack of major game releases in the last quarter — no single game sold more than a million copies over the last three months. 36.9 million Amiibo figures have been sold so far, as well as over 30 million Amiibo cards — somehow.
When Nintendo launched Miitomo, its first smartphone title, huge initial demand fostered over 10 million users by the end of April 2016. However, income from smart devices (along with IP licensing) came to just $15.6 million last quarter. The company didn’t elaborate further.
Nintendo is very much back in the public eye following Pokémon Go’s explosive launch on smartphones — which Apple has said is the most downloaded app in one week ever. Then, there’s also the coalescing rumors of Nintendo console sequel, which may be neither a home console or portable, but something in between. The company revealed nothing new about the NX in its financial reports — or those incoming smartphone iterations of Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing.
In short, it’s still waiting on its next hit, whether that’s a new console, a smartphone game or the next Zelda title. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was initially expected to launch last year, but has already been pushed to 2017 — just like the NX. There may be more bad news to come for Nintendo.
Source: Nintendo
Xiaomi’s first laptop is the $750 Mi Notebook Air
It wouldn’t be a Xiaomi event if it was just announcing one product. In addition to the new Redmi Pro smartphone, the Chinese company threw in a huge surprise by launching its first-ever laptop line, the Mi Notebook Air, running on Windows 10. It comes in two sizes — the powerful 13.3-inch and the portable 12.5-inch — and both feature a slim body, a 1080p display with slim under-glass bezels (while still managing to fit in a 1-megapixel webcam), a backlit keyboard, a USB Type-C charging port plus a minimalistic metallic design — in gold or silver, naturally — with no logo on the outside. The best part of all? The flagship model costs just 4,999 yuan or about $750.
Don’t be misled by that seemingly too-good-to-be-true price tag. The 13.3-inch model comes in at just 14.8mm thick and 1.28kg heavy, which is pretty good given that you get an Intel Core i5-6200U processor (up to 2.7GHz) plus an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX GPU (with 1GB GDDR5 RAM). Of course, Xiaomi just had to point out that this is thinner and lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air. You also get 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 256GB of SSD via PCIe and one free SATA slot for expansion (but only serviced by Xiaomi). The 40Wh battery should be good for up to 9.5 hours, and it can go from zero to 50 percent in just half an hour using the bundled USB-C charger.
The smaller 12.5-inch model is even slimmer and lighter at 12.9mm and 1.07kg, respectively, but you’ll have to make do with an Intel Core M3 CPU, no dedicated GPU, just 4GB of RAM and just a 128GB SSD via SATA — though there’s one free PCIe slot if you don’t mind letting Xiaomi do the upgrade for you later. And instead of two USB 3.0 ports, you only get one here; but you still have an HDMI port. The upside of this model is that you get two more hours of battery life. The price? 3,499 yuan or about $520.
Much likes its bicycles, rice cookers and drones, the Mi Notebook Air is a “Mi Ecosystem” product made by a partner — in this case, it’s Tianmi which literally means “field rice.” A Xiaomi rep reasoned that the company decided to tap into the laptop market as it identified a potential market to deliver the right balance between performance and portability, as well as to make it easier for young adults to afford a PC for productivity. While the Mi Notebook Air doesn’t run on MIUI (Xiaomi’s customized Android ROM), it does come with “Mi Sync” software (tentative name translated from Chinese) which should somewhat boost Mi Cloud usage. The laptop can also be automatically unlocked when your Mi Band is within a close proximity.
The Mi Notebook Air is launching in China on August 2nd. Again, there’s no info regarding global availability for it just yet, so stay tuned for future updates.
Google Play gives Android app developers more categories
Two months after giving VR its own category, Google Play will soon expand the list of Android app subcategories with additional general interest ones, allowing developers to more accurately slot theirs. Here’s the full list of new ones: Art & Design, Auto & Vehicles, Dating, Events, Food & Drink, House & Home and Parenting. Ideally, the increased specificity will improve the relevance of Google Play’s search results.
They’ve also renamed a few of the old subcategories to avoid confusion with the new, so ‘Transportation’ is now ‘Maps & Navigation’ while ‘Media & Video’ will now be ‘Video Players & Editors.’ The change will go into effect over the next 60 days.
Source: Android Developers Blog
Amazon launches one-hour Prime Now deliveries in Scotland
After spending the past year expanding its super-fast delivery service across England, Amazon’s finally taking Prime Now north of the border. The online retail giant announced today that it has begun offering one-hour deliveries on over 15,000 products to Prime subscribers in Glasgow, as well as free two-hour deliveries in Motherwell, Kilmarnock and Cumbernauld.
Although Glasgow is Scotland’s first Prime Now city, Glaswegians, along with customers in Edinburgh have enjoyed Amazon’s Prime Same Day service since November 2015. To mark the occasion, Amazon is offering £5 off everyone’s first Prime Now order with the code PRIMENOW5 and it’ll also throw in a 2-litre bottle of Irn-Bru Sugar Free. We’ve checked with Amazon UK’s Stereotype Dept. and there’s currently no word on whether battered Mars bars and haggis will also be included.
Source: Amazon UK
BBC adds subtitles to live iPlayer channels
In a bid to make its programming more accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired viewers, the BBC has launched a new trial that will bring subtitles to live channels on iPlayer. It’s the first time any major on-demand video service has embarked on such a trial. The BBC says that it will initially launch on PC and Mac, before rolling out to the broadcaster’s smartphone and tablet apps. Connected TVs will also get the feature but viewers will have to wait a bit longer.
The reason behind the move is clear: the BBC says almost two million programmes or 20 percent of all iPlayer viewings are done so with subtitles enabled. Right now, subtitles are only available on iPlayer programmes after they’ve aired but at launch, live subtitles will be available on BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies and BBC News and on some region-specific channels too. You can find the full list in the source below.
Source: BBC Media Centre
‘Destiny’ splits off from PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 today
If you’re still playing Destiny on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, today’s update is the last you’ll see. That’s aside from any emergency fixes, according to a post on Bungie.net. The patch also addresses a number of minor glitches involving loot, gear and quest items. From today forward, though, your progress won’t be shared between last-gen hardware, and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This patch also marks the cut-off for weekly events like Trials of Osiris and the Iron Banner on older hardware, and expansions like this fall’s “Rise of Iron.”
It’s a not-so-subtle push from the folks at Bungie, but really the developer has gone out of its way to accommodate legacy consoles. That’s even going as far as offering free upgrades from PS3 to PS4 or Xbox 360 to Xbox One during the game’s launch window back in 2014. There’s a point when every console generation must close its eyes, and it looks like that day is here for the 360 and PS3.
Source: Bungie
LG Display invests $1.75 billion for flexible OLED demand
The South Korean-based LG Display announced it will be investing $1.75 billion in an attempt to meet the growing demand for flexible OLED displays, which are expected to replace LCDs for smartphones and other similar tech in the future.
Flexible OLEDs are already being utilized in several different pieces of tech, and LG is the largest creator of LCDs in the world. It’s been actively working on creating additional OLED screens for TVs and mobile phones, though it’s fallen behind Samsung Display Co Ltd., which happens to be the largest creator of OLEDs for phones. In response to this, LG Display is creating a new production line for small and medium flexible OLED screens in South Korea.
The new production line, E6, is scheduled to begin mass production in the second half of 2018 and is set to produce 15,000 inupt sheets per month. It looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more out of LG Display in the future as far as flexible OLEDs go, however this is an intriguing turn of events as the company announced Wednesday that its second-quarter operating profit had fallen a whopping 91 percent from the previous year.
Source: LG Display
Solar-powered machine turns urine into drinkable water
Scientists from a Belgian university have built a solar-powered machine that can turn urine into drinkable water. They deployed it at a 10-day music and theater festival in central Ghent, Belgium. The experiment was a success as the scientists were able to recover a 1,000 litres of unconsumed water, which will be used to make Belgian beer, from the urine of several partygoers.
They’re able to pull this off through membrane distillation that gets rid of 95 percent of all ammonia present in urine. The liquid is collected in a big tank and is heated in a solar-powered boiler. The heated urine then passes through the membrane which separates out the water as well as nutrients like nitrogen and potassium, which can be used to make fertilizers.
The current goal is to install larger versions of these machines in airports and sports venues. The scientists also want to help out rural communities in the developing world where drinkable water is in short supply.
Source: Biblio
Check out Lockheed Martin’s robotic blimp inspector
Lockheed Martin’s hybrid airships are as big as a football field, and it’s a huge challenge making sure their surfaces are don’t have tiny pinholes in them. That’s why the company developed a robot called Self-Propelled Instrument for Damage Evaluation and Repair or SPIDER to crawl on the vehicle’s surface and conduct autonomous inspections. The aerospace corporation developed SPIDER under its top secret Skunk Works division, which was also responsible for making its helium-filled hybrid blimps. It’s composed of two magnetic parts that snap together: one goes outside the blimp’s envelope (or its surface, which is made of special balloon fabric) and the other goes inside.
The outer part shines light on the fabric, while the inner half detects the pinholes using its light sensors. When the robot detects a hole, it aligns its repair mechanism and patches it up. It also sends a report of all the pinholes it finds and repairs to a computer. Lockheed Martin landed its first hybrid airship contract — a huge, $480 million deal — in March. It would have been time consuming to inspect each of the 12 blimps the client ordered without SPIDER. While we doubt the robot would make blimps more common (as charming as they are), it could help speed up the company’s manufacturing process.
You can see the company explaining and demonstrating SPIDER in the video below:
Source: Lockheed Martin
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