Reliance Jio Extends ‘Jio Preview Offer’ To More Samsung and LG Phones!

Reliance Jio is extending its preview offer to more devices now. Earlier the offer was available only to flagship Samsung smartphones and HP users but now the company has started offering its ‘Jio Preview’ offer to even the entry-level Samsung phones and select LG smartphones.

Here is the full list of Samsung smartphone which are eligible for Jio Preview Offer:

Samsung Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5, Galaxy A5 2016, Galaxy A5 Duos, Galaxy A7, Galaxy A7 2016, Galaxy A8, Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy Core Prime, Galaxy Grand Max, Galaxy J max, Galaxy J1 Ace, Samsung Galaxy J1 Ace, Galaxy J2, Galaxy J2 (2016), Galaxy J2 Pro, Galaxy J3, Galaxy J5, Galaxy J5 (2016), Galaxy J7, Galaxy J7 (2016), Galaxy K Zoom, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy Note 5 Duos, Galaxy Note 7, Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy S 5 Plus, Galaxy S4, GALAXY S4 4G, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S5 Neo, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, Grand Prime, ON5, ON5 Pro, ON7, and ON7 Pro.

Reliance Jio Preview Offer Extended To LG Smartphones

Reliance Jio has also started offering its Jio Preview offer to select LG smartphones which are K332 (K7 LTE), K520DY (Stylus 2), K520DY, H860 (LG G5), K500I (X Screen), K535D (Stylus 2 Plus), LGH630D (G4 Stylus 4G), and LGH 442 (LGC70 Spirit LTE).

If you have one of the above listed Samsung or LG smartphone then follow the below procedure for availing unlimited 4G internet, voice and video calls, SMS, and free access to Jio Premium app under the Jio Preview offer:

• Install MyJio app from Google Play.
• Open MyJio app and tap on ‘Get Jio SIM’ on the top banner.
• Follow the on-screen instruction for generating the offer code.
• Take a screenshot of the offer code and take its printout.
• Visit your nearest Reliance Digital or Dx Mini store along with the required documents (Original Proof of Address and its copy,Proof of Identity and its copy, one passport size photograph), and the printout of the offer code to get a Jio SIM.
• Please make sure that you carry the same handset from which you generated the offer code with you.
• Follow the instructions given on this page for SIM activation.

We would not be surprised if this Reliance Jio preview offer is slowly extended to other smartphone brands as well. We may soon see likes of Xiaomi, Lenovo, LeEco and others in the mix as well.

Given the way Jio is approaching the market and grabbing market share – the incumbent players will need to change their strategies (which we are already seeing), if they want to contain the disruption Jio is causing in Indian telecom market!

iPhone 8 Concept Shows A Design Overhaul That Everyone Wanted On The iPhone 7

Not many of us would be knowing that iPhone actually stands for 'Interactive Phone', which did a remarkable entry in 2007 and the series is going to complete its 10 years in the year 2017.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the release of original iPhone, Apple is expected to launch a top to the bottom reimagining of the iPhone 8 and I am sure that iPhone 8 features will be as amazing as they have always been in the 'Apple iPhone Series'.

It is said that the concept of iPhone 8 is based on the design everyone wanted on the iPhone 7.

It will feature an OLED display that covers most of the phone's face.

A glass housing that will replace current all-aluminium design.

It will also have wireless charging which is said to be introduced with iPhone 7.

It will have advance unlock system, smart screen and multitasking.

Edges with holographic projectors.

Real 3D videogames.

Have a look at the iPhone 8 concept.

Here, you can have a look at the iPhone 8 concept feature IOS.

Aadhaar Based Instant e-KYC Verification For SIM Cards Approved; 24 Cr Sheets of Paper, 50,000 Trees & Rs 10,000 Cr Can Now Be Saved / Year

Imagine going inside a mobile operator’s showroom with your Aadhaar Card for getting a new SIM Card. All you need to do is verify the Aadhaar card details, provide your biometric data (fingerprints or iris data) to verify and voila! You come out of the showroom with an activated SIM Card, ready to use within 5 minutes.

This is not a fiction anymore, as Govt. has approved Aadhaar card based e-KYC (Electronic Know Your Customer) procedure, which has been hailed as revolutionary for the telecom sector. And soon, this can change every service which needs to authenticate customers’ identity.

Department of Telecommunications, under Ministry of Communications, Govt. of India has issued a circular for all licensed telecom operators to use e-KYC method for authenticating new customers; and this has been rolled out for entire India – right from Jammu and Kashmir to North East India.

Test run of e-KYC had started since 2013, and the results are fascinating to say the least.

The circular said, “After successful completion of proof-of-concept to use ‘Aadhaar’ e-KYC service for issuing mobile connections to subscribers, it has been decided to launch the ‘Aadhaar’ e-KYC service across all Licensed Service Areas (LSAs), including J&K, North East and Assam,”

Besides saving time and energy, Aadhaar card based e-KYC will also save our environment and tons of money for the telecom operators. Right now, for every paper based KYC procedure, telcos spend around Rs 145 to Rs 175 besides using numerous sheets of papers. And around 7-8 crore new subscribers are added every year.

As per estimation, once every telecom firm start using Aadhaar card based e-KYC, around Rs 10,000 crore can be saved per year.

Besides 24 crore of paper sheets and 50,000 trees would be saved per year, as no paper record would be saved and the authentication would be done completely using digital medium, and records would be extracted from the UIDAI servers under strict surveillance.

In the circular, DoT has laid special emphasis on the security of the Aadhaar Card data, as only authenticated and verified personals would be allowed to verify customer’s’ data. In fact, telecom operators have been assigned the responsibility to test and evaluate their agents, dealers and/or employees who would access Aadhaar Card details of new customers via PoS outlets, and check their biometric details for verifications.

Before every such request to the UIDAI server, the details of the agent/employees would be cross-examined using the same metrics that is their own biometric details and passwords provided by the telecom firms.

The circular said, “Until and unless the agent of the PoS is authenticated by a licensee (telecom operator) using his/ her biometric details through UIDAI, no customer application form shall get displayed by the Licensee on the screen of the concerned PoS,”

Hence, we are witnessing a fool-proof, double layered security mechanism for avoiding misuse of Aadhaar card details.

UIDAI has already stated that their information is machine-readable, which will pose no problem for verifying biometric details of the customers.

Top three telecom operators in India: Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have already assured that they will start processing Aadhaar based e-KYC procedure within a week, there by fully supporting Govt.’s initiatives.

Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel, said, “It will contribute to the government’s ‘Digital India’ vision. Airtel plans to start rolling out Aadhaar-based e-KYC solutions this week itself,”

Sunil Sood, MD & CEO, Vodafone India, said, “For Vodafone, it will improve quality of sales as well as regulatory compliance. For the regulator, it not only means a green initiative but also hassle-free governance and accurate audit results,”

A big thumbs up to Govt. of India for enabling a revolutionary Aadhaar based mechanism for easing customer verification for mobile subscribers, which will unleash further revolutions in the service sector.

WhatsApp Voicemail Features Comes to Android & iOS

WhatsApp has been building some interesting new features into its messaging application for iOS and Android users, the most talked about ones being the secret font and file sharing options. There were leaks about WhatsApp adding voicemail feature to its app, and the company seems to have now rolled it out to iOS and Android users.

WhatsApp version 2.16.8 on iOS and 2.16.229 on Android brings this latest update to iPhone and iPad users, who can now leave a voice recording, or a voicemail, if the other person does not pick up the call or cancels it altogether. This feature had been on Android in the beta mode until now.

Now, when you call another person on WhatsApp from your smartphone, upon disconnection of the call, you will be prompted with a ‘Voice Message’ option. Hold down the voice message option to speak, lift it up once you’re done and it’ll automatically send it to the other person.

In case you do not want to send the voicemail, swipe to the left to delete it and send it to the bin. There is one shortfall with the voicemail right now, you cannot listen to the recording again before hitting the send button. Once a voicemail has gone, there is no way to delete it once it reaches the person on the other side, much like the texting feature.

This option is very similar to the simply sending voice messages on WhatsApp chat, except here you can make sure the other person knows you made the call and then left a message. The voicemails will be shown as a part of the conversation with the person you were trying to contact.

WhatsApp recently crossed the 100 Million calls a day figure and this update is an important addition to make WhatsApp calling as close to calling on a regular network. Voice over Internet Protocol(VoIP) technology is currently being used by the company, as it plans to introduce calling to landlines as well.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is trying to up its game to counter Telegram, Hike and Viber by adding features already available in its competitors. What the company should focus on are video calls, conference calls and WhatsApp for business(like we have Skype for Business) to keep its users engaged.

Google Maps Now Supports Full Offline Mode & SD Card Map Storage

Google Maps with ‘Offline areas’ has become a necessity these days. Think of any road trip, somewhere far where you have never been and you will automatically want to store that area in your Google Maps app (via offline places) and add desired pitstops.

It won’t be wrong to say that Google Maps has become an integral part of our lives. The users can now even edit maps and insert suggestions in Google Maps. I always keep my ‘Offline areas’ updated even when I have no plans to travel outside the city. Doing this not only gives me peace of mind, but also makes me ready to traverse those unknown areas of my city without asking for directions.

“Once you’ve switched to “Wi-fi only”, the Google Maps app will work completely offline — no Wi-Fi needed! You will still be able to use other apps and the rest of your phone as you normally would. And you might even save on battery life too. If you need to see what the traffic is like or update your offline maps, you can easily switch back to online mode by changing your setting or finding the nearest Wi-Fi,” said Sanket Gupta, Product Manager, Google Maps.

Google Maps supports offline areas for a while now, but the latest update adds support for ‘WiFi only’ mode letting youuse it completely offline even when the other apps are connected to the internet via mobile data. This would let yousave a lot of mobile data during those long road trips or to places with expensive cellular data.

The ‘WiFi only’ mode would also help save your phone’s battery while offering a seamless offline navigation experience.

Google Maps Becomes Entry-level Smartphones Friendly

Also with this update you would now be able to save offline areas in Google Maps on your entry-level Android smartphones too. While saving offline areas to internal memory has never been an issue for those with mid-range and high-end phones, people with affordable phones (4-8 GB ROM) have had difficulty in storing offline mode in Google Maps.

Entry-level smartphone users what it’s like when they can’t try a new app just because their phone doesn’t have sufficient free storage. Thankfully with this new update, they can now store offline areas in SD card too.

“Now, in addition to saving an area of the maps for offline use later, if you have a device that supports SD cards, you can opt to save your downloaded maps to an external SD card (if your device supports them) and free up storage space for important stuff like your holiday snaps or road trip playlists. Now you’ll never have to choose between snapping more food photos or the ability to navigate offline,” Sanket explained.

Another change that comes with this new update to Google Maps is new options for ride services in various cities across Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Currently Google Maps in India shows ride services only fromUber and Ola. We are expecting that Google will soon add more ride services to Google Maps in India too.

Lenovo Zuk Z1

Buy For

• Robust configuration
• Fingerprint sensor
• Large battery backup
• Best Price: Rs. 13,499 - Rs. 14,099

The powerhouse

Design and Display

The Lenovo Zuk Z1 features a 5.5-inch large IPS LCD display with a Full HD (1,080 x 1,920 pixels) resolution and pixel density of 401ppi. It is available in black colour and dimensions of this phone are 155.7 (Height) x 77.3 (Weight) x 8.9 (Thick) mm.

Storage and Configuration

Lenovo Zuk Z1 runs on Cyanogen OS 12.1 based on Android 5.1 and comes equipped with an impressive 2.5GHz quad-core processor and is also fitted with a 3GB RAM providing this device with a fast processing speed and great multitasking ability. It consist of a huge storage space of 64GB but lacks expandable memory option. 

Camera and Connectivity

This device comes packed with an impressive 13MP main camera with Exmor-RS CMOS Sensor, autofocus. Optical image stabilization, LED flash and 2.2F Aperture. Along with that it also consist of an 8MP front camera for selfies. Connectivity options included in this phone are dual SIM, 3G/4G connectivity, Wi-Fi with hotspot, Bluetooth, GPS and USB support.

This phone also includes a bunch of sensors like FingerPrint ID, Light sensor, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Compass and Gyroscope.  

Battery

The Lenovo Zuk Z1 is powered by a mighty 4,100mAh non removable li-polymer battery. Along with this it also comes with an added advantage of quick charging feature.

Verdict

Lenovo Zuk Z1 is a full featured phone which has the fastest quad-core processor available in today generation. Along with that an impressive camera, good amount of RAM and storage space combined with lots of other great features makes this device a good option in the midrange segment.

Facebook’s New Algorithm Update Aims To End Click-Bait Era!

World’s largest social network, Facebook, is plagued with clickbait titles by blogs and media corporations trying to lure people and increase views on their articles or productions. Facebook did modify its algorithm to tweak news feed and reduce the irrelevant contents, but the changes really didn’t make an impact.

The California-based social networking site has now released an update that aims to tone down clickbait titles and show you the most relevant content. Facebook executives claim that their main aim is to rank content and provide the best experience to its users.

You might see statements like “…And what happens next is hard to believe”, “..And you’ll get shocked by what you see!”, “..And his reaction was priceless” and “…You cannot guess what happened next.” in article and video titles that have regular content but the creators are trying to increase the views on their piece of work.

This is a very smart, and annoying, strategy adopted by content producers these days, and people often fall into the trap, finding themselves irritated by the content. This often leads to poor user experience on the news feed, directly affecting Facebook’s user engagement.

“To address this feedback from our community, we’re making an update to News Feed ranking to further reduce clickbait headlines in the coming weeks. With this update, people will see fewer clickbait stories and more of the stories they want to see higher up in their feeds,” the blog post mentions.

How is Facebook modifying its algorithm?

We regularly see pages with clickbait titles and posts and more often than not, end up closing Facebook altogether. Their older algorithm might have worked for a few, but overall the update wasn’t any promising. With this new update, Facebook is finally doing what we had hoped from them.

Now the company will scan specific clickbait titles, or identify titles that look like clickbaits and categorize them. Now there are two broad key points that Facebook will look into while deciding the relevance of the article –

1. Does the article contain what it says in the headline? Is the information complete and relevant?
2. Is the information provided exaggerated and is the title misleading?

So the next time you see an article saying “Do not go running in the morning because..”, do not click it just because it’s stating something readers might not know. In fact in most cases, you will already have knowledge about the conclusions, and you’ll end up wasting your time. If the article has content that is completely exaggerated and focuses on just one point which is irrelevant, Facebook will be removing the content from your feed.

This algorithm is what spam email filters also do, that look out for suspicious titles and block malicious content. The company will look at the title as well as the content through this algorithm and make sure you get the best content on your news feed.

Will this actually help?

To be honest, spam filters have worked wonders for me 99% of the time and they keep irrelevant mails in the spam box. Yes, sometimes emails might get mixed up, but errors are bound to happen anywhere.

This new algorithm from Facebook is what users had actually expected the first time, but probably was taking the company longer to implement. This definitely looks promising and interesting because not only with clickbait articles have lower rankings, their pages will automatically be affected.

Facebook clarifies that once the page stops making articles with clickbait titles and irrelevant content, this algorithm won’t rank them lower than before. Our news feed is already filled with so many things, we believe this will help reduce the clutter and clean the content.

The rollout has already started, so let us know in the comments section if you see any visible changes in the quality of the news feed now.