Honor MagicBook 14, MagicBook Pro launched in Russia, to arrive in India later in 2020

After multiple media briefings and teasers, Honor has finally launched its MagicBook series of laptops. The company’s new laptops have been announced in Russia and their global availability will be announced at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC), on February 24.  While we know that the company intends to bring its MagicBook series of laptops to India, a definitive timeline is yet to be released. However, a spokesperson from the company told Digit that the laptop could be launched in India by the end of the first quarter this year or by the early second quarter this year.

Honor took the wraps off its MagicBook 14 and the MagicBook Pro in Russia but we know that there’s also a MagicBook 15 in the line-up. The MagicBook laptops are aimed at “young people on-the-go” and are touted to deliver up to 10 hours of battery life. Here’s all we know about the new laptops. 

Honor MagicBook 14, MagicBook Pro specifications

As per Honor’s Russia website, the MagicBook 14 features a 14-inch Full HD IPS display and is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 3500U processor. It comes equipped with 8GB RAM and 256GB of PCIe SSD internal storage. The outer chassis of the device is made of aluminum. Running on the Windows 10 operating system, the device is said to weigh 1.38kg and pack a 56Wh battery that the company claims can deliver up to 10 hours of battery backup. It also sports a 1MP front camera that is hidden beneath a keyboard keycap and integrates fingerprint authentication with the power key. For connectivity, it sports one USB Type-C, one USB 3.0, and a USB 2.0 port. 

The Honor MagicBook Pro features similar build and design as the MagicBook 14. It is equipped with a 16.1-inch Full HD IPS display and is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 3550H CPU. Both MagicBook 14 and the MagicBook Pro feature Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. The MagicBook Pro is equipped with 8GB RAM and 512GB of PCIe SSD storage. Honor claims it has a 12-hour battery life for video playback on the device with the 56Wh battery and it also sports a fingerprint sensor and a 1MP front camera. 

Honor MagicBook 14, MagicBook Pro price 

The Honor MagicBook 14 is priced at 44,990 Russian rubles, while the MagicBook Pro costs 59,990. This converts to Rs 52,000 and Rs 69,225 approx, respectively. However, one should note that the laptop’s configuration might change when it is launched in India and other factors could affect its pricing. 

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Honor Band 4 with optical heart rate sensor, sleep disorder diagnosis launched for Rs 1,999

Honor has launched its new fitness tracker, the Band 4 in India. The product was revealed on Thursday, January 23. It shares the design language with that of Honor Band 5i. Honor Band 4 includes features such as 5ATM water resistance, sleep disorder diagnosis, up to 9 days of battery life and more. Moreover, it supports built-in USB charging. 

Honor Band 4 specifications and features

The Honor Band 4 features a 0-96-inch TFT colour display with a resolution of 80 x 160 pixels. The fitness tracker is powered by an Apollo 3 microprocessor. The device offers the usual on-the-go alerts and notifications. Further, the Honor Band 4 comes with nine exercise modes such as walking, running, cycling, rowing, and more. It also comes equipped with an optical heart rate sensor that is capable of 24x7 heart rate monitoring. 

The Honor Band 4 supports the proprietary Huawei TruSleep 2.0 technology that is claimed to help in detection of sleep disorders of six types. Like the recently launched Honor Band 5i, the Band 4 can be charged directly via a power source, which is a USB-A port. Other features include Remote Shutter and Find My Phone. 

The Honor Band 4 packs a 91mAh battery, which is claimed to deliver up to 9 days of battery life on a single charge. As for compatibility, the Honor Band 4 is compatible with devices running Android 4.4 or higher, and iOS 9.0 or later versions. It weighs 24 grams.

Honor Band 4 price in India

The Honor Band 4 is priced at Rs 1,999 in India. It comes in a lone Graphite Black colour. A microsite for the device is also live on Flipkart, which you can check out here. However, Honor has not yet confirmed when the smart band will go on sale in India. 

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Intel may reduce prices for its processors in 2020

Intel hasn’t had the best year in 2019, with AMD rail-roading Team Blue’s consumer desktop chips across multiple metrics. AMD’s 7nm based Ryzen 3 processors offered more cores than their Intel counterparts while charging customers lower than what Intel was asking for. Additionally, thanks to the higher core/thread count, AMD’s processors started to show Intel up on various workloads. Intel still commands the advantage when it comes to single-threaded loads and even gaming to some extent, but it hasn’t been enough to stop AMD quickly eating into Intel’s share of the desktop processor market. Intel might be readying to counter AMD with a revised price strategy through 2020.

According to a report by DigiTimes, Intel may be considering a price reduction for all its chips in 2020. However, the price cut could be rolled out in phases, with OEMs being the first ones to receive Intel’s chips at a lower price. The report of Intel offering lowered prices to OEMs might happen sometime in the second half of 2020. However, there is no way to be sure that OEMs would actually pass on the benefit of cheaper Intel processors onto the consumers.

It should be noted that there is some merit to Intel’s alleged price reduction plans. Last year when Intel announced its 10th generation Core X HEDT processors, they were almost 50 percent cheaper than their predecessors. So Intel isn’t completely closed off to the idea of lowering the price of its chips. However, a question worth asking is why would Intel offer cheaper processors to OEMs before consumers? One of the biggest endorsement for AMD’s popularity in the last year has been the fact that retailers have had a hard time maintaining stock of various Ryzen 3 SKUs. OEMs haven't been raving about the notable value for money offered by Ryzen, but actual end-consumers who’ve bought the processors off the shelf and built systems with them.

Even if Intel manages to price their processors the same as AMD’s counterparts, there’s still the challenge of the price-to-performance proposition.  AMD has pretty much perfected the art of offering more bang for the buck, so Intel may have a bit of an uphill battle there. But if the contemplations are indeed true, it would mean great news for those who are Intel loyalists, and at the end of the day, it’s the consumers who win.

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Tinder adds panic button and photo verification to keep you safe during dates

If you have ever felt unsafe during a Tinder date, the popular dating app has announced a feature to help you out. Tinder’s parent company Match Group announced the dating app will get a panic button that’s operated by Noonlight, a safety app that track’s people’s location and sends the data to emergency services when an alarm is raised.

Beginning January 28, the Tinder app will have a panic button which when activated during a bad date, will alert the local police about your location. The user has to opt in to Noonlight’s services, and you can add a badge certifying the same in your profile.

In case you are concerned about Tinder tracking your location, the company assured that the location data will be shared with Noonlight and Tinder will not be a party to it. Users will also have the option to turn location sharing or or off. So when you go on a date, you can turn it on, and after the date has ended, you can turn it back off.

Apart from the panic button, Tinder also rolled out a global photo verification program to verify users using the platform to find matches. The feature will allow Tinder to detect inappropriate messaging and get senders reported.

Match Group which owns Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Match, OkCupid and Hinge will integrate the Noonlight Panic Button feature and the photo verification feature to its other offerings as well, later this year.

The new features should help in making the online dating platform safer to use. Previously, an investigation by Buzzfeed, Columbia School of Journalism and ProPublica had revealed Match Group exposed users to registered sex offenders on most of its apps. And in about 157 cases, women who were victims of sexual assualt after meeting dates from dating apps,the dates were from the apps belonging to the Match Group.

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Google IO 2020 officially scheduled for May 12, 13, 14: What to expect this year

Most technology companies announce the date of their upcoming annual developer conference over a simple tweet or YouTube video at most. But no—not Google. The search engine giant usually packs the date as an easter egg inside a riddle or game to tease its followers before eventually making the official announcement on Twitter. This year, it released a game called ‘A Collaboration of the Cosmos’. A few minutes of exploration is enough to learn that Google will host this year's I/O event from May 12 to 14. The event will take place in the same venue as last year's I/O: Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.

When Google held I/O last year, Android Q (what we now recognise as Android 10) was already reaching its third beta. The company announced what new features would be incorporated in it. Google also released more information on its Stadia game streaming service and unveiled the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL smartphones, both of which are sold in India. Google also showed off the new, faster Google Assistant. Finally, it announced the renaming of its Home Hub smart speaker. With that little recap out of the way, let's take a look at what Google might announce this year:

Pixel 4a

Google is definitely expected to announce the Pixel 4a smartphone at this year's I/O. Second in Google's a-series line-up of Pixel smartphones, the Pixel 4a could continue to be a mid-range model with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765 chip under the hood. Both, 4G-only and 5G versions of the Pixel 4a are expected to be announced. Recent renders of the handset hint at the presence of a 5.7-inch/5.8-inch flat display with a ‘punch hole’ for the selfie camera. The Pixel 4a is expected to have 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. You can read more about the Pixel 4a here.

Android 11

We expect Google to talk about the upcoming version of its popular mobile operating system, Android 11. By then, a couple of Android 11 beta releases are likely to be out. With Android 10, Google officially ditched the idea of naming its versions after popular sugary treats, such as Lollipop, KitKat, and Marshmallow. Android 11 will be no different. We hope the next version packs some useful features, such as an inbuilt screen recorder. The word on the street is that Google will include an extended or ‘scrolling’ screenshot feature, something seen on OnePlus and Oppo smartphones.

Google Assistant

Since the announcement at last year's I/O, Google has made some progress with the rollout of the new Google Assistant. The new, more lightweight digital assistant is already active in the US and, more recently, went live in Canada, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, and the UK. The new version packs Assistant's large online speech recognition models into a 500MB local package that can function without an internet connection. We expect this new version to make it to more countries this year. At I/O, Google could talk more about how it's planning to make that happen.

Stadia

Announced at Game Developers Conference 2019, Stadia is Google's recently released game streaming service. Since the time it went live in November 2019, the service has been fraught with problems. For example, games did not stream on the promised 4K resolution and users experienced a fair amount of latency. Google has been talking about how it's tackling some of these problems. At I/O, the company could further discuss its issues revolving around Stadia. Google's Stadia is currently available in 14 countries across the world, but sadly, India isn't one of them. To understand how Google Stadia works in detail, read our story here.

More Nest Speakers

At last year's I/O, Google's Home Hub smart speaker was renamed as Nest Hub to reflect the parent company's acquisition of Nest Labs in 2014. The speaker came to India and was later joined by the more affordable Nest Mini. You can read our review of it here. This year, we can expect Google to announce new smart speakers and smart display models under the Nest sub-brand. But this may or may not happen. In our opinion, Google should incorporate a 3.5mm jack in its future smart devices for those who would rather use their own speakers for sound while retaining the power of Google Assistant.

Our list of what to expect from Google I/O 2020 isn't admittedly comprehensive. In those three days, Google usually packs in a lot of information and announcements. If you're looking forward to a Google development this I/O, let us know in a comment.

 

Cosmos aligned. We'll be back at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View for this year's #GoogleIO on May 12-14! pic.twitter.com/3bZqriaoi1

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) January 24, 2020

 

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POCO confirmed to launch new phone in February

The last 10 days or so have been very eventful for the POCO brand. It separated from Xiaomi and became a new entity, we got leaks of an alleged POCO F2 Lite, POCO X2 was reportedly teased and now, the brand has confirmed that it would launch a new smartphone next month. The company is expected to launch the POCO F2 or POCO X2.

The latest development comes from POCO India GM C Manmohan who confirmed in an interview that POCO will launch a new smartphone in India as soon as next month. He said, “We will launch our new phone next month. We will start online and then progress to additional channels.” He also revealed that POCO has started the process of becoming an independent legal identity in India. The company will operate separately from Xiaomi. It will build its own sales, marketing and product teams in India. 

The news comes after Xiaomi teased the presence of a POCO X2 phone. POCO India posted a teaser video for POCO’s season 2. In the teaser, the name 'Poco X2' is hinted at, but you need to look closely to see it.

Separately, POCO is rumoured to launch three smartphones under its “F2” series. However, if Poco were to release an “F2” and an “X2", we can speculate that Poco could continue the F2 as a successor to the Pocophone F1, taking its spot as a midrange series and then release a higher-end “X2” later. It is said that POCO may as well repurpose parts from existing Redmi phones because of its current look.

To recall, the POCO F2 Lite was allegedly leaked. It is tipped to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 chipset, which features an integrated 5G modem. The handset may come with 6GB RAM and pack a 5000mAh battery.

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Realme smartphone with Snapdragon 865 SoC posts highest ever AnTuTu score, to be showcased at MWC 2020

A new Realme smartphone has appeared on AnTuTu and it has reportedly smashed the charts. The Realme phone, bearing the model number RMX2071, has appeared on the AnTuTu benchmark with 574,985 points, which is the highest on the app so far. The score beats Xiaomi Mi 10’s score of 560,217, which was the highest score on the app before this. Both smartphones are allegedly powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset, paired with an Adreno 650 GPU.

According to a report from Android Authority, a leaked screenshot of “the highest score yet posted to the popular AnTuTu benchmarking app” has appeared online. The Realme RMX2071 is said to score 574,985 points on AnTuTu. Besides Mi 10 and the upcoming Realme handset, the only other smartphone to have broken the 500k barrier on AnTuTu is the Asus ROG Phone 2.

The Realme RMX2071 is expected to be unveiled at the MWC next month. Furthermore, Realme has a launch event scheduled for February 24 where it is supposed to unveil a 5G device. The handset could be the Realme X50 Pro 5G. The Realme X50 Pro 5G is likely to be powered by the Snapdragon 865 chipset. Unfortunately, the AnTuTu screenshot doesn’t reveal much about the phone at the moment.

To recall, Realme X50 5G has already been launched in China. The handset is powered by the Snapdragon 765G chipset. It sports a 64MP quad rear camera setup and a dual 16MP + 8MP selfie shooter. There’s also an 8mm copper conduit for conducting the heat away from the motherboard. Realme X50 5G packs a 4200mAh battery that supports 30W VOOC 4.0 charging technology. The phone has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor.

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