OnePlus Power Bank with 10,000mAh battery arrives in India at Rs 1399

Keeping up with its promise to not make users in India wait too long, OnePlus has launched its 10,000mAh Power bank in India priced at Rs 1399. It is up for grabs on Amazon.in and will be available in Silk white and Sandstone black.

“To compliment your existing devices and to help you stave away from the ‘charge your device’ every so often blues, we offer you the “OnePlus Power Bank” where portability, affordability and capacity will be your key features for buying this wonderful accessory,” OnePlus writes in a blogpost.

The portable power bank comes equipped with dual USB ports (5V-2A) for charging two devices at a time. It also comes with a battery indicator LED along with safety features to prevent overcharging and overheating. The battery is also backed by one year manufacturer warranty. It claims to provide three full charges for the OnePlus One.

In March, OnePlus has started shipping the 10,000mAh Power Bank in the US. The company had also promised an India launch soon and released a statement saying, “As for our fans in Europe and India, you won’t have to wait long, either. We are ironing out the logistics process for a smoother shipping experience.”

Recently, the company also announced to have resolved issues it had with Micromax through mutual consent. OnePlus One users in India will continue to get Cyanogen updates.

Posted by : Gizmeon

BlackBerry Leap smartphone with 5-inch display launched in India at Rs 21,490

BlackBerry has launched the Leap smartphone in India at Rs 21,490. It will be available starting today via all BlackBerry exclusive stores.

The BlackBerry Leap is an affordable all-touch smartphone which sports a 5-inch edge-to-edge HD display with a 720 x 1280 pixel resolution along with a 294ppi pixel density. It is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Plus chip, which has a 1.5GHz dual-core Krait CPU. It also includes 2GB RAM.

BlackBerry Leap runs BlackBerry 10 OS (version 10.3) and supports BlackBerry Blend desktop software. In terms of memory, the device has an in-built storage of 16GB and can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card. On the camera front, the BlackBerry Leap has an 8MP auto-focus camera with LED flash along with a 2MP front-facing camera. The device can record 1080p videos at 30fps and also has a 5x digital zoom.

In terms of connectivity, it supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0, A-GPS, 4G LTE and microUSB v2.0. The smartphone is fuelled by a non-removable Li Ion 2800mAh battery that claims to last for up to 25 hours, even after heavy use.

“The BlackBerry Leap was designed specifically for the young power professionals who see their smartphone device as a powerful and durable productivity tool that also safeguards sensitive communications, while on-the-go” said Sunil Lalvani, Managing Director, BlackBerry India. “With BlackBerry Leap complementing the latest BlackBerry portfolio, including BlackBerry Passport and BlackBerry Classic, we continue to provide products and services that meet the needs of our consumer and enterprise customers,”

Posted by : Gizmeon

Twitter to help users find a better job

Twitter can help more job-seekers than any other traditional platform if it incorporates a formal job board, say experts. The number of Twitter users has grown more rapidly than LinkedIn and Facebook in 2014, according to a study by the Pew Research Centre.

It showed that Twitter has more job openings than other social media sites and more job seekers than LinkedIn. However, only 15% of recruiters have actually found someone to hire through Twitter.

The people surveyed by Software Advice cited inconsistency of job postings and poor communication by companies with job-seekers as reasons for dissatisfaction.

Currently, the primary way for a Twitter user to find a job is by following specific companies she or he is interested in or by searching via hashtags related to jobs, companies or industries.

But a search for the hashtag #jobsearch will produce hundreds of tweets that are not related to actual jobs, such as articles on job hunting, random thoughts and junk tweets that use the hashtag for promotion.

In addition, as new tweets keep appearing every few seconds, the process of finding an appropriate job can be extremely time consuming and difficult.

What Twitter may do is to add this functionality, perhaps similar to what sites like Monster.com or CareerBuilder have done. They aggregate job postings, making it easy for job seekers to view jobs by different parameters such as functional area, industry, region etc.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Apple unseats Xiaomi in Chinese market to become number one

Apple has for the first time overtaken Xiaomi to become the largest vendor of smartphones in China, one of the world’s biggest markets.

Apple grabbed 14.7% of market share in the first quarter of 2015, surpassing Xiaomi, which had a 13.7% share, according to market researcher the International Data Corporation (IDC).

The two companies were followed by state-owned Huawei, Samsung and Lenovo. Top spot in China’s smartphone market, which is one of the world’s biggest but also one of its most fiercely competitive, has been occupied by four different companies in the past five quarters.

Samsung and Lenovo have also topped the list. Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung and Lenovo took up 57.8% of the market in the January-March period. While Apple, Xiaomi and Huawei saw shipments increase during this time, Samsung and Lenovo suffered substantial declines, according to the data.

A total of 98.8 million smartphones were shipped, 4.3% fewer than in the first quarter of 2014.

This was the first such drop in over six years, suggesting the market may be reaching saturation point after several quarters of over 20% growth.

The market entered a period of adjustment in the first quarter as companies’ inventories piled up due to intense competition, Wang Jiping, director of IDC’s China branch, was quoted by news portal Sina.com.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Alibaba in talks to buy $1.2 billion stake in Micromax: Report

Alibaba is in talks with India’s Micromax Informatics to buy an about 20 percent stake in the smartphone maker, helping the Chinese e-commerce giant expand in one of the world’s fastest growing markets for the devices, several people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The deal, if completed, would see Alibaba investing as much as $1.2 billion in Micromax, the second-largest smartphone brand in India by sales, and would value the company at up to $6 billion, two of the people said. India is the world’s third largest smartphone market and was the fastest growing in the Asia Pacific region in the third quarter of last year, according to industry research firm International Data Corporation.

Micromax and Alibaba began talks on the stake sale after discussions with investors led by Japanese telecoms firm Softbank Corp stalled over differences in valuations, the sources said.

“The Softbank talks are not officially over, but it’ll be hard to get back on track,” said one of the people. Softbank is the largest shareholder in Alibaba.

All the sources involved in the process declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media about ongoing talks. Micromax, SoftBank and Alibaba declined to comment. The sources said Alibaba wants to use the Micromax deal to tap into the boom in the number of internet users in India, which is also one of the world’s most rapidly growing smartphone markets.

Growth in India, and especially in mobile transactions, would help Alibaba offset stiff competition at home from domestic rivals including JD.com Inc, as well as what appears to be growing e-commerce user saturation.

Strong revenue from mobile transactions helped the company report a 45 percent increase in quarterly revenue. “The talks are centered around using Micromax devices as a platform to get into a serious business of its own in India,” said one of the sources, referring to Alibaba.

Alibaba, for example, would be able to roll out services such as Alipay, its online payment platform, on Micromax phones. Ant Financial Services Group, which owns Alipay, is China’s largest payment service provider and is controlled by Alibaba’s executive chairman and founder Jack Ma.

The stake sale is aimed at helping Micromax raise capital as it expands into new business segments including personal computing.

The company is seeking funds from private investors, or a possible stock market listing, its co-founder told Reuters.

Micromax started up in India in 2008, and its affordable, large-screen phones are now the country’s most popular after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd smartphones. Micromax counts Sequoia Capital and TA Associates among its investors.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Ericsson extends patent suits against Apple to Europe

Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson has filed lawsuits in Germany, Britain and the Netherlands against Apple over technology licence payments, Ericsson said on Friday, extending a U.S. battle between the firms to Europe.

Ericsson said it had offered to enter into arbitration with Apple to reach a global licensing agreement for its patents, but that offer had now expired. “Apple continues to profit from Ericsson’s technology without having a valid licence in place,” said Kasim Alfalahi, Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Ericsson.

“Our technology is used in many features and functionality of today’s communication devices. We are confident the courts in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands will be able to help us resolve this matter in a fair manner,” he added.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the legal action in the three European countries, which relates to 2G and 4G/LTE mobile communications standards and non-standardized technology, but referred to its statement in January.

“Unfortunately, we have not been able to agree with Ericsson on a fair rate for their patents so, as a last resort, we are asking the courts for help,” part of that statement said.

Ericsson had already filed a complaint in mid-January in the United States against Apple, responding to a lawsuit from the iPhone maker.

Last year, smartphone maker Samsung Electronics Co agreed to pay Ericsson $650 million along with years of royalties to end a licence dispute.

If the dispute with Apple also went Ericsson’s way, the U.S. firm would have to pay it between 2-6 billion Swedish crowns ($240-725 million) annually, analysts said, based on estimates of levels of handset sales and royalty payments per phone.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Facebook may sue lawyers over fugitive’s lawsuit: US judge

Facebook may pursue a lawsuit against law firms that represented a New York man who recently turned fugitive rather than face federal charges that he tried to defraud founder Mark Zuckerberg out of half of the company, a judge ruled.

New York Supreme Court Justice Eileen Rakower said Facebook and Zuckerberg could move forward with a lawsuit alleging law firms, including DLA Piper LLP and Milberg LLP, maliciously prosecuted claims by Paul Ceglia that were based on forged documents.

Rakower said that, accepting Facebook’s claims as true, its complaint adequately alleged the law firms “knew there was no basis – and therefore no probable cause- for Ceglia’s claims.”

Facebook in statement said it was pleaded with the ruling and would “continue to hold accountable DLA Piper and the other firms who pursued Paul Ceglia’s fraudulent claims against Facebook.”

A DLA Piper spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Milberg’s lawyer declined comment, and a lawyer for a third firm, Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman LLP, did not respond to a request for comment.

The ruling came a week after what would have been the May 4 start of a criminal trial in Manhattan federal court of Ceglia, a 41-year-old wood pellet salesman from Wellsville, New York.

Instead, Ceglia removed his electronic ankle bracelet in early March and disappeared, along with his wife, two children and a dog. His whereabouts remain unknown. The criminal case arose from Ceglia’s June 2010 civil lawsuit in upstate New York against Menlo Park, California-based Facebook and Zuckerberg.

Ceglia alleged that a 2003 contract with Zuckerberg, then a Harvard University freshman who had done programming work for Ceglia’s StreetFax.com, entitled him to half of Facebook. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York last month upheld the dismissal of that lawsuit, saying “overwhelming forensic evidence” showed the contract was forged.

Over the years, the lawsuit was handled by several prominent law firms, including DLA Piper, one of the largest firms in the world.

Facebook sued those firms in October, saying they knew or should have known Ceglia’s lawsuit was a fraud, but plowed ahead “for the purpose of extorting a lucrative and unwarranted settlement.”

Facebook also said those lawyers stayed with the case even after a lawyer at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, who also represented Ceglia, warned he had found “smoking-gun” evidence of fraud. Kasowitz Benson soon withdrew from the case.

Posted by : Gizmeon