Business Articles

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has started a pilot program to verify business numbers. This allows customers to directly chat with businesses for quicker updates and problem resolution.

The workstation-oriented Xeon-W CPU family includes models packing between 4 and 18 cores and up to 36 threads, with Turbo frequencies going as high as 4.5 GHz. Prices range between US$294 and more than US$2000.

Acer has unveiled an update to their Chromebook 15 line sporting a touchscreen, fanless design, aluminum construction, and Google Play Store compatibility. The CB515-1H/1HT will be available from October for US$399 and up.

The Californian startup Upthere joins Western Digital one year after receiving US$77 million in venture funding, but the financial terms of this new deal were not revealed to the public yet.

Featuring a rugged, sweatproof design and customizable fit, Fitbit's first Bluetooth headphones integrate Waves MaxxAudio technology and can be pre-ordered already for US$129.95.

The 16 nm VPU consumes only 1.5 W and enables learning algorithms to train themselves in order to identify images and words or analyze video feeds. The Myriad X chip brings these capabilities to devices like drones, cameras, robots and VR / AR headsets.

The two new chips keep the typical mid-range Cortex-A53 core blocks used by their predecessors, but provide new GPUs and modems. Both are scheduled to roll out in the last quarter of this year.

In the continuing habitual setback for Microsoft in its mobile endeavors, the NYPD will soon be scrapping its 36,000 odd smartphones running Windows Phone 8.1 for iPhones. The department is taking the decision in the wake of Microsoft halting updates for the ill-fated mobile OS.

Three new professional monitors from Samsung have been revealed at IFA 2017. Samsung is hoping that business users will appreciate the visual clarity and extra screen real estate of the large panel, high-resolution displays.

Blackberry is in talks with device manufacturers to license their security enhanced Android build, according to the India Times. Blackberry already has three brand licensing deals, and this move would increase the market coverage of their software.

A judge has sentenced Lee Jae-jong, the Samsung heir, to five years jail time for his part in the bribery scandal with the administration of the former President of South Korea. He was also found guilty of giving false testimony in court and hiding overseas assets.

Sales figures by analytic firm Gartner imply that there are nine devices running on Android for every one running on iOS. Samsung leads the smartphone market comfortably, with Apple coming in second and Huawei a close third.

One year after shutting down its regional Lumia accounts and its support account on Twitter, Microsoft removes the official Lumia channel from YouTube. Its phone business' revenue in the second quarter has fallen to US$5 million from US$1.4 billion back in 2015.

The latest news on Google's Pixel 2 smartphone suggests an October 5th official unveiling — making it exactly one year since the original Pixel smartphone was launched. Information also hints at the incorporation of a Snapdragon 836 SoC.

Although this virtual assistant is now available virtually everywhere, the only two languages supported remain US English and Korean for now. Additional languages and devices should get Bixby support in the future, but the details are not yet public.

Nintendo accounts can now be linked to PayPal so their users can easily pay for future purchases using the Nintendo Switch or on the company's website. Sadly, this update is not available for Wii U or Nintendo 3DS.

Qualcomm is making a strong push into ARM-based server processors with their Centriq 2400 and the newly unveiled Falkor CPU core which they will be based on. This new core has been designed from scratch for low TDP high thread cloud datacenter usage.

This 5.5-inch Android handset with a (quite outdated) Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 under the hood hits select retail stores in the UK and UAE with a custom Italian leather accompanying phone case. The price tag reads US$2,450.

While the Nokia 8 is an interesting flagship that would surely gain quite a few fans in China and the US, HMD Global has revealed that this handset will not arrive in these two markets.

HP has refreshed their ProBook business laptop series with models powered by the latest Core i5-8250U and i7-8550U Coffee Lake CPUs from Intel. The ProBook G5 models come in 13.3”, 15.6” and 17.3” sizes.

Infographics from the Microsoft Bing team show market share is higher than you may have expected with many countries in double digits. International market share is at a much lower 9 percent.

Sales statistics for the United States show that the Nintendo Switch outsold all other consoles including the PS4 and Xbox One for July. Nintendo's Splatoon 2 was also the highest-selling physical copy game over that time.

Thanks to the latest expansion of this service's availability, US customers in 29 heavily populated areas can now enjoy it via multiple platforms - Android, iOS, Apple Airplay, Chromecast, as well as in a web browser.

Although Apple's iPhone 7 remains the world's most popular smartphone model, the Galaxy S8 is the most popular Android handset, with 10.2 million units shipped in the second quarter (Galaxy S8+ sales reached 9 million for the same period).

Variants of ransomware Locky and Mamba have resurfaced and are more lethal than ever. Those unfortunate to be infected, risk encryption of the entire HDD and need to cough up a huge sum of money for decryption and recovery of their data.

A new chrome extension from Microsoft allows single sign-in authentication to users who log in to Windows 10 using their Microsoft account and access their organizations Azure Active Directory content, or who deal with conditional access policies.

Acer has officially unveiled the Predator Helios 300 in India equipped with an overclockable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060/1050Ti GPU and other top of the line specs worthy of a gaming laptop with prices starting from ₹ 1,29,999 (US$ 2028) for the Core i5 model.

While Amazon's Alexa can only provide device-to-device calls, Google's smart speaker is now able to call phone numbers for free. Unfortunately, this feature is only available for its users located in Canada or the US.

A few days after we heard that the internet search giant wants to pay US$3 billion to Apple to remain the default search engine on iOS, we find out that Samsung is going to receive US$3.5 billion to keep Google as the default search engine on its devices.

This AI startup based in Belarus is behind Fabby, a mobile app for Android and iOS with more than 2 million downloads so far that uses artificial intelligence to detect and process images.

The Chinese phone maker has just sent out invites for the Mate 10 launch, confirming that this next-gen phablet would be unveiled in October, just as most recent rumors revealed.

Google might not launch a new Pixel notebook, but this patent that recently surfaced online shows an interesting device that comes with a section that can be covered and opened.

The next-gen Spectra ISP makes Qualcomm the first brand to announce depth-sensing camera tech that was designed specifically for the Android ecosystem. The next flagship Snapdragon Mobile Platform is expected to bring it to the market.

Although iPhone users are not able to use Allo on the desktop yet, those who own Android handsets can finally use the messaging app on the desktop. However, quite a few features remain exclusively available on mobile.

Although its archrival KDE has been around since 1996 and its initial release only arrived in 1999, GNOME can be considered to be two decades old now, since the GNOME Project was born on August 15, 1997.

Customers who have placed orders for the Essential Phone PH-1 have started receiving notifications from Essential that their devices are ready to ship following receipt of final payment. The smartphone is the brainchild of Android founder and former Googler, Andy Rubin, but has been beset by launch delays and the departure of two key execs.

With prices starting at US$129.99 for the 250 GB model, this new portable SSD comes in blue and black, also offering 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB models. It comes with 256-bit AES hardware data encryption and supports transfer speeds up to 540 MB/s.

Thanks to the addition of the cloud computing orchestration market leader Cycle Computing to its long list of assets, Microsoft hopes to ease the process of using High-Performance Computing and other Big Computing capabilities in the cloud.

An eagle eyed user of the Intel Codename Decoder has found an entry for the 10 nm+ "Ice Lake," Intel's replacement architecture for the currently unreleased Coffee Lake (14 nm++) and Cannon Lake (10 nm) processors.

Although this is only in the patent stage for now, future Note devices might come with a breathalyzer-stylus accessory that also bends to act as an external microphone and a gas sensor.

Clevo has reported first half revenues are down by 7.7 percent in their notebook business between 2016 and 2017. Net profit remains in the positive but is tight at slightly below US$11 million, or only 3.95 percent of revenue.

The new MA10-ST0 server motherboard comes packed with the high-end 16-core C3958 Denverton SoC that hasn't been previously announced by Intel. The combo is designed to power NAS servers.

Bitcoin, the world's most popular cryptocurrency, has been on a rise of epic proportions, with it's journey climaxing a few hours ago at an all-time high trade value of just under $4500.

After countless delays, the crowdfunded Saygus V Squared handset was labeled by everyone as vaporware, but this might have been wrong. The phone has apparently cleared the FCC and might finally reach the market.

Opera Max has been delisted from the Google Play store catalog but those still using this service will be able to do so "for a period of time" that has not been revealed. Opera promised to announce the termination of server-side support once the date has been decided.

Although Chinese regulators have something against social networks and foreign search engines, it seems that Facebook has just found its way to the local market via a photo-sharing app that launched via a local partner.

The latest expansion of Google's speech recognition brings 30 new languages to Gboard for Android and Voice Search, as well as to the Cloud Speech API. The Google Translate app and other Google products are also expected to get the new languages in the coming months.

This 6-inch phablet features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor, 2 GB RAM, 32 GB internal storage, runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat, and is expected to retail for a no-contract price of only US$129.

Japanese camera giant Nikon is celebrating its 100 year milestone. Along with a host of web features marking the occasion on its homepage and a YouTube video retrospective, the company has started rolling out a number of special edition cameras, lenses and binoculars.