Phones

Android remains the dominant mobile platform in the world with almost every brand — except Apple — selling smartphones based on it. Be it Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo, Samsung or Vivo — everyone sells Android phones. If you have wondered which was the highest-selling Android smartphone out of the 100s that were sold in 2020 then look no further. According to Omdia, a market research firm, it was the Samsung Galaxy A51 , which was the most shipped Android phone of 2020. As per Omdia, Samsung shipped 23.2 million units of the Galaxy A51 in 2020 to earn the top spot in the list of Android phones. The highest selling smartphone in the world was the iPhone 11. The list of top 10 smartphones has five Android phones and five iPhones. Out of the five Android phones, four were from Samsung and one was from Xiaomi. As per Omdia, Apple shipped 64.8 million units of iPhone 11 in 2020. This is the second year in a row that an iPhone has been the best-selling smartphone in the world. As for … [Read more...] about This is the world’s most ‘popular’ Android phone

Qualcomm's next flagship processor is embracing the same photo format technology championed by Apple , a move that will let you squeeze more pictures into your next high-end Android smartphone and maybe advance beyond ordinary snapshots. Last year, Apple introduced support for High Efficiency Image File Format, or HEIF , as part of an effort to improve digital photography, giving it an advantage in the area for more than a year. HEIF's most obvious selling point is that photos are half the size of JPEGs of the same quality, which means you can fit more on your phone and use less network data to share shots with your friends. But HEIF offers other advancements, too -- support for depth maps that record how far away parts of a scene are from the camera, for example, or a way to house the quick videos called live photos. Now those advantages will come to at least the high end of the Android market, helping casual snapshooters and serious photographers get more out of their … [Read more...] about With Snapdragon 855 chip, Android phones get iPhone’s photo-packing ability

In another bid to boost domestic manufacturing, the government has announced a 2.5 per cent increase in customs duty on mobile chargers and some sub-parts of phones, a move that will make phones more expensive. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman , during her Budget speech, said, "Withdrawing exemptions on parts of chargers and mobile phones will boost local manufacturing of smartphones. Domestic electronic manufacturing has grown rapidly. We are now exporting items like mobiles and chargers." "For greater domestic value addition, we are withdrawing a few exemptions on parts of chargers and sub-parts of mobiles. Further, some parts of mobiles will move from 'nil' rate to a moderate 2.5 per cent," she informed. The Centre has already rolled out a production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the electronics manufacturing sector, particularly for mobile phone manufacturing, to curb increasing imports. In October last year, the Ministry of Electronics and IT had approved … [Read more...] about Phones to get expensive as customs duty on mobile parts up 2.5%

One of the many iPhone 13 rumors that have come our way in the last few months is the idea that the device could ditch the Lightning connection entirely and go completely portless – and we just got some more details about how this might be achieved. According to information obtained by Appleosophy , Apple hardware and software engineers are exploring a method of iPhone recovery over the internet, which would use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth rather than a physical cable to reset an iPhone. At the moment, you can return an iPhone to its factory settings through iOS, but if the device won't turn on or the software is corrupted, you need to connect it to a PC or Mac. Under the new system, that physical connection wouldn't be required. We're ready for a new Google Nest Hub Portless phones could be the future Everything you need to know about WandaVision Instead the iPhone would broadcast a sort of help signal via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, which would enable a computer … [Read more...] about Leak details how a portless iPhone 13 could be reset without a Lightning cable

Our first big Android 12 news has come in, as the developers' beta has launched - this is a very early build of the software update designed for app developers, and while it's not representative of the final build, it gives us a good idea what to expect. There's lots of frantic digging into this new Android 12 source code, including comments from Google itself, and we've added all the confirmed and rumors features to our ever-growing list below. Android 12 is the 2021 update for Google's Android operating system, building on 2020's Android 11 , which some smartphones still don't have. We're expecting Android 12 to fully launch towards the end of 2021 and roll out from then, but a beta will likely come before that, and as we've said the developers' beta is already out. We've now heard a significant amount about Android 12, including new features it could bring and design changes from previous Android builds, though a final release date and availability information is still up … [Read more...] about Android 12 release date, features and what the new beta has taught us