TECH NEWS : GOOGLE, WINDOWS 7, GOOGLE MAPS NEW LANGUAGES, APPLE PATENTS

Tech News

Apple files patents for flexible batteries

Apple recently filed patents that will upgrade the Pencil, but now few fresh patents have surfaced that gives us a peek into what Apple is working on. The patents show flexible batteries and creating 3D effects on 2D display, reports DigitalTrends.

Flexible batteries

The first patent shows a concept flexible battery that can extend the battery life of the iPhones. It has been shaped better to cram into the device and will move according to the movement of the components inside the handset. The patent suggests that the batteries are made of cells placed along a flexible substrate, enabling the battery to move accordingly.

It will be interesting to see how Apple takes this design forward. It can be used for standard iPhones to offer a battery life. But this also indicates a possibility of a flexible device altogether.

Showing you around

There must have been instances where you arrive at your destination only to find that the front door is locked, and you have no clue if there's another door to the building. That's something Apple wants to fix with its new patent.

While many services such as Google Maps are restricted to streets and roads, they are working on mapping indoors as well. Company's latest patent includes the ability to map entry and exit points of a particular place.

The patent also notes that positioning can be done using tools such as GPS, accelerometer, pedometer, and others.

3D effects on display

Apple has been long rumored to be working on devices such as augmented reality headsets, but now it seems the company also wants to make 3D effects more engaging for people with iPhones. The patent suggests, in order to create a 3D effect on the screen, the device will track user's head - which might be done using the FaceID tech already seen on the iPhone X.

Using the positioning, the device can alter what the display is projecting to make an object appear 3D. This will also upgrade the ARKit for the developers to create new AR-based apps.

Xiaomi to unveil a smartphone with Helio P60 SoC in Q2 2018

Recently, MediaTek launched the Helio P60 chipset along with a few others for the mid-range smartphones. The new chipset seems to have turned things favorable for the chip maker with its Midas touch. The newly launched Oppo R15 smartphone uses the MediaTek Helio P60 chipset and the smartphone will go on sale in China on April 1. Now, there are claims that there could be a Xiaomi smartphone using the same processor in the making.

According to a Chinese publication with information from a Taiwanese supply chain, a Xiaomi smartphone with the Helio P60 chipset could be pegged for Q2 2018 announcement.

Given that Oppo has also launched a smartphone with the processor and Xiaomi is working on one, it is definitely a proof that MediaTek is climbing the uphill as Oppo, Xiaomi and Vivo are among the top five smartphone manufacturers in the Chinese market. There is a possibility for the device to be a variant of the upcoming flagship Mi 7.

Lenovo's VP recently spoke about the MediaTek Helio P60 giving us a clue that we can expect to see a Lenovo smartphone using the chipset to be unveiled later this year. And, even Meizu is said to be working on a smartphone equipped with the Helio P60 SoC. It is also reported that Helio P70, another chipset from MediaTek based on the 12nm process could be launched later and the same could be used by the upcoming Xiaomi smartphones.

Talking about the MediaTek Helio P60 chipset, it is built on the 12nm FinFET process offering 15% reduced power consumption over the chipsets built on the 14nm process. The octa-core processor can be clocked up to 2GHz and uses four Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores both clocked at 2GHz. The chipset comes with a Mali G72 MP3 GPU clocked at 800MHz. This graphics unit is said to offer 70% better boost in the gaming performance over the previous generation P series chipsets.

MediaTek has also used a dedicated processing unit called NeuroPilot, which can handle AI-related tasks. This is two times more power efficient than the GPUs and can handle tasks such as deep-learning facial detection, scene and object identification, AR/MR acceleration and real-time beautification. The chipset also supports dual cameras up to 24MP and 16MP and up to a 32GB single camera sensor.

Google Maps gets support for 39 new languages

Google is constantly releasing updates for its apps, services, and devices, now it is being reported that the tech giant has added support for 39 new languages to its navigation software Google Maps. It is being further reported that the new update will have a positive impact on up to 1.25 billion people from all over the world. The list of languages which are added to the support of Google Maps majorly includes European, African and Asian languages. However, there is no new Indian language support added to the Google Maps.

As per some sources from the internet the 39 new languages includes Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Burmese, Bosnian, Czech, creation, Danish, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Georgian, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Kazakh, Khmer, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Zulu.

It would have appreciated if Google also added support for some new Indian languages; however, we can only wait till Google adds support for some Indian languages.

Also, in one of our recent articles related to Google, we covered that the tech giant has rolled out a new feature for its social networking platform 'Google '. Google is working on introducing new 'Highlight' feature which will show the notifications on the social network. Google is aiming to make it easier for its user base to keep a track of everything that is happening without bothering the user by sending continuous notifications. It is being further reported that Google will automatically prioritize the notifications to notify a user.

Windows 7 Meltdown patch makes users prone to the vulnerability

Almost all the devices were affected by the Meltdown and Spectre security flaws. However, all the companies rolled out various updates and patches for the security of their user base. Microsoft was also not left behind, with its user base being attacked by the Meltdown and Spectre flaws the company was quick enough to roll out patches for the same. Microsoft took the situation quite seriously like the other tech giants tried to provide quick resolution of the situation to its users. The patch for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 devices was out following the security flaws, however as per some reports from the web the new patch which Microsoft is rolling out for the Meltdown security flaw is leaving the users vulnerable to data theft.

As per some reports from The Beebom, the patch which was rolled out for Meltdown on Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows Server 2008 R2 doesn't improve the situation rather it marks a big question mark on the security of the users.

The latest vulnerability allows processes to access all data in the memory and also allow them to read or write anywhere in the Kernel memory.

The flaw was first noticed by Ulf Frisk who is a security researcher. According to Frisk, 'Windows 7 already did the hard work of mapping in the required memory into every running process. Exploitation was just a matter of reading and write to already mapped in-process virtual memory,' 'Once read/write access has been gained to the page tables it will be trivially easy to gain access to the complete physical memory unless it is additionally protected by Extended Page Tables (EPTs) used for Virtualization. All one [has] to do is to write [one's] own Page Table Entries (PTEs) into the page tables to access arbitrary physical memory' he further adds.

Google is working on developing quick settings for Chrome OS

Google's Chrome OS which is an operating system that is designed by Google seems to get its share of an update. The Google Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interface. As per some reports from the Beebom Google is working on making Android p-style quick settings for Chrome OS which will be available on its developer channel for the Chrome OS.

It is being further reported that Google has now redesigned the icons and now the icons in the quick settings are round in shape. Further, Google has also added a blue color hue in order to make them resemble the rounded notification icons which were first showcased by Google during the Android P's first developer review.

The new design comes in reference to the latest leaks and rumors which have indicated Google's Android P tests on Chromebook.

That said about the latest update for Google Chromebook, we will keep you updated with other tech-related information. Also, in one of our recent articles related to Google, we covered that Google Cloud Text-to-speech will feature 32 different voices which will be available in 12 different languages and variants. Google currently uses DeppMind's text-to-speech engine to power up its AI (Google Assistant) and for Google Maps direction. The technology is one of the best when it comes to the performance metrics. Now some report is surfacing over the web that users might soon be able to see the Text-to-cloud engine on third-party products as Google now has made the engine available for the developers.