Your Tech Story

Tech News

Beats to Launch its First True Wireless Earbuds ‘Powerbeats Pro’ which are Costlier than Latest AirPods

News, Tech News / By

The competition in the wireless earbuds market is increasing every other day, and companies like Apple and Samsung are one of the leaders of the very field. Recently, Apple launched its second-generation AirPods, and now, the Apple-acquired Beats is also set to enter into the competition independently with its Powerbeats Pro.

powerbeats-pro
Image Source: thurrott.com

The Powerbeats Pro is a pair of $250 wireless earbuds. Beats has worked well on the design of the product, and it comes with a better grip and better battery life, i.e., the Powerbeats Pro can be used continuously for 9 hours straight.

Having been worked with Apple, Beats has created a similar design and has got an over-the-ear hook, which keeps the earbuds on its place when the user is walking, running or working out.

“Over 20 configurations were electronically modelled and physically tested. The result is a completely new, ergonomically angled acoustic housing that nests comfortably in the concha bowl of the ear with an off-axis nozzle,” said Beats in the announcement.

The earbuds ships with volume controls in both the earpieces. The earbuds do not have any power button but include motion sensors, so the earbuds go to sleep whenever stays idle for a longer time. Like the other wireless earplugs, the Powerbeats Pro gets paused as soon as removed from ears and start to play the music when gets plugged into the ears.

According to Beats, the earbuds are 23 per cent smaller and 17 per cent lighter than the Powerbeats 3, and the audio quality for the calls has also been improved in this model. It also provides noise reduction property to enhance the call quality. The Powerbeats Pro is sweat and water resistant.

The earbuds include the same Apple H1 chip that provides the support for Apple-only feature Siri.

The elements that can be considered as the drawbacks are the bigger size of the charging case, no wireless charging available for the earbuds, and no LED light to show the charging status.

Though these earbuds are built by the Apple-acquired company, these are also compatible with Android devices. The Powerbeats Pro earbuds work well on the criteria of ‘true’ wireless earbuds, but these are on the pricier side. In fact, these cost $50 more than the latest second generation AirPods. Since Beats has been a leader in the field of earphone and headphone manufacturing, we can expect the Powerbeats Pro to get more user base. The company will start shipping the Powerbeats Pro earbuds from the beginning of May this year.

Flipkart Tops the List of Best Company for Employees in India Third Time in a Row; Beats Amazon and Oyo

News, Tech News / By

LinkedIn has released the 4th edition of the ‘2019 Top Companies in India’, and Flipkart is the one that topped the list of the most preferred workplace for Indians. The Walmart acquired company Flipkart is a home for over 14000 employees and is one of the fastest growing companies in India.

flipkart
Image Source: amarujala.com

The list from LinkedIn has ranked Amazon and OYO at the second and the third places, and the parent company of PayTm, One97, got shifted to fourth place from the third place which it held in the last year’s list.

LinkedIn, with the help of its 54 million users in India, shortlists the companies for ranking in the list and take four major criteria into account – interest in the company, engagement with employees, job demand and employee retention. Also, another requirement for the companies to get ranked into the list was to have employed over 500 employees as of February 1, 2018.

The evaluation of the best company was among the private companies operating in India, and any non-profit firm, government institutions and the recruiting companies were excluded from the competition. Also, LinkedIn and its parent company, Microsoft, were also not included in the contest to keep it fair.

Though Flipkart has been winning this race for the past three years, consecutively, as it has made to the top of the same list in 2016 and 2017, it is a great achievement for any company to be in a list of the most loved company by the employees.

Flipkart is one of the most successful startups in India and houses major e-commerce service providers including Myntra, Jabong and PhonePe, in India. It was also credited for having the fairest in working conditions and wages for ‘gig economy’ workers by an Oxford Internet Institute study.

This annual survey of the companies is done globally to determine the top companies to work for in India, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, the U.K, and the U.S., among others. Following is the list of top 25 companies to work with according to LinkedIn:

  1. Flipkart (Walmart) – Internet
  2. Amazon – Internet
  3. Oyo – Hospitality
  4. One97 Communications (Paytm) – Internet
  5. Uber – Internet
  6. Swiggy – Internet
  7. Tata Consultancy Services – Information technology and services
  8. Zomato – Consumer services
  9. Alphabet – Internet
  10. Reliance Industries – Oil and energy
  11. EY – Accounting
  12. Adobe – Computer software
  13. Boston Consulting Group – Management consulting
  14. Yes Bank – Banking
  15. IBM – Information
  16. Daimler AG – Automotive technology and services
  17. Freshworks – Information technology and services
  18. Accenture – Information technology and services
  19. Ola – Internet
  20. ICICI Bank – Banking
  21. PwC India – Management consulting
  22. KPMG India – Management consulting
  23. Larsen & Toubro – Construction
  24. Oracle – Information technology and services
  25. Qualcomm – Wireless

Microsoft Removes its Unpopular eBook Category; Will Payback the Users for Inconvenience

News, Tech News / By

Most of the people won’t be aware that Microsoft owned an eBook store, which the tech giant has announced will be closed down soon. The company announced the news of removing its eBook division from its Microsoft Store on Tuesday, 2 April.

microsoft ebook
Image Source: kryptomoney.com

Microsoft introduced its eBook store back in April 2017 as a part of Windows 10 Creators Update. Like every other eBook Store, the Microsoft eBook Store also offered free eBooks and paid eBooks. But unlike the other eBook Stores, this eBook Store did not have any standalone app.

The company made its entry into the eBook business quite late, and the eBook Store itself could not add any value to the business of Microsoft, which can be a reason that the company has decided to discontinue its eBook division.

“Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing. Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer be available to read, but you’ll get a full refund for all book purchases.” the company stated in a post on its support page.

Microsoft has disclosed a few details over its support page, where it has mentioned that the users will be able to keep their eBooks in their Microsoft library and read the books till July this year. After July, the library will be removed, and any annotations made on the eBooks, in their eBook account on Microsoft’s eBook store will also disappear.

The company has offered refunds on every purchase the eBook Store users have made or for their preorders to buy books. The amount will be directly deposited to the payment methods the users used for the purchases or the amount will be credited to the user’s Microsoft Store account, which they can use for other purchases on the same platform.

Microsoft has also offered a $25 refund for the users who had annotations stored at the platform earlier than 2 April as an apology for the data loss and the inconvenience for the users. According to Microsoft, the refunds will start rolling out at the beginning of July 2019.

Readdle Launches SparkMail for Android as Google’s Inbox bites the Dust

News, Tech News / By

Google has just shut down its email app Inbox, to focus on its most successful product, Gmail. And if the Inbox users are looking for an alternative, the news is that Readdle has just launched its famous email app SparkMail for Android.

Earlier the email app was only available for the Apple’s platforms, i.e. iOS and MacOS, and is among the most popular email app for iOS. The company confirmed the news yesterday on Twitter that the app will also be available for Android users. The tweet stated, “Ok I’m going say it. The plan is to release the Android version on Tuesday 8 AM EDT.”

The Spark app provides a smarter interface and faster performance. It also offers features like the Smart Inbox, customizable sidebar and gesture-based UI.

The Smart Inbox is responsible for a neater and organised email in uniformly divided bundles like Personal, Notifications, Newsletters, etc. Also, whenever the user opens the app, they see the emails categories instead of a homepage flooded with emails. All the categories include a View All button that lists down all the emails in the very category. There is also an option to turn off this feature.

The customizable sidebar lets the users pin the important emails on the top or hide the unnecessary emails. The app offers a simple yet effective design. Also with the swipe action in the app, the user can easily delete or archive the emails. It also allows users to schedule their emails for the future. Also, it has got an undo button for the sent emails, that really is a useful feature for every person dealing with emails.

The discussed features are one of the major ones, and apart from these features it also provides support for iCloud. Though Google is all set to get its hands on improving Gmail, as it has already shut down Inbox, the launch of a Spark Android app with enhanced feature may be quite challenging for Google.

Spark is free to use app and is available on Play store. But the paid version of the app is also available for $6.39 per user per month that includes even more features.

Slack Reportedly Chooses NYSE Over NASDAQ for its Direct Listing

News, Tech News / By

Last year in December, Slack announced that it is prepping for its IPO in 2019 and had hired Goldman Sachs as its Lead Underwriter. Now, according to the reports from Wall Street Journal, the company following the path of Spotify, has selected the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) instead of the NASDAQ for the direct listing of its shares.

slack
Image Slack: fubiz.net

Slack has earned enough value being private, and reportedly, it had $900 million in cash on hand last year. So, similar to Spotify, it is not, specifically, the money for which the company is going public, and hence it has selected the direct listing over the IPO.

Direct listing is a bit different from the IPO, as the companies who file for IPO are looking for more financial support for their growth. In the direct listing, most of the times, the shares are not backed up by any financial institution, and the shareholders like the investors, promoters or the employees can directly sell their shares.

Last year, Spotify also chose NYSE for its direct listing, and now the valuation of the company is $25 billion up. Also, companies like Uber and Pinterest have also selected NYSE for their IPO, this year. Last Friday, Lyft went public on NASDAQ, and reportedly, its price shed over 10 per cent in the morning trading.

The office-messaging platform has been a member of the Unicorn Club for a long time now, and the direct listing of the company will be a financial boost for its investors. The company is still in talks with the Securities and Exchange Commission and has submitted the draft registration statement on Form S-1, last month.

The company, currently, is serving over 10 million daily users across the globe including the 85,000 paid subscribers. It is one of the most valued and successful companies in Silicon Valley, and its direct listing may set a higher bar for the other SaaS companies. For now, Slack has not made any comments on the matter. But, according to the WSJ, the listing may occur in the month of June or July this year.

Google Celebrates Gmail’s 15th Birthday; Adds New Features to it

News, Tech News / By

Gmail has turned 15 today, and Google has added a few new useful features to it, to celebrate the 15th birthday of its most successful product. Google launched Gmail on 1 April 2004 in order to experiment with the email process, and after 15 years, Gmail is the most used email service across the world. In fact, despite being a Google product, it is also really popular among iPhone and iPad users.

gmail birthday
Image Source: techcrunch.com

Although Yahoo and Hotmail were leading the email business over a decade ago, Gmail slowly got into the race and finally became the number one email service. Gmail has a global user-base of over a billion people and is free to use. However, it also has got a paid enterprises suite.

In recent years, Gmail saw remarkable changes. Paul Buchheit started developing Gmail as the ‘Caribou’ project, and after working for years on it, Google launched Gmail in 2004. It was faster and offered an initial storage capacity of one gigabyte, per user. Hence, within no time Gmail took off to the success ride. Currently, Gmail offers 15 GB of free storage to its users, and the storage can be extended further as a paid service.

Google was the first to start the reply to all, i.e. group conversation, chat, priority inbox and calendar. Being the first successful product, Gmail also encouraged Google to experiment with other fields, and Google launched products like Google map, Google Drive, and even Android OS.

With Gmail, Google moved ahead from the searches and even launched its own browser, i.e., Google Chrome.

As a part of birthday celebrations, Google has added new features to Gmail, including improved Smart Compose (with four added languages Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese) and email schedule features. The earlier version of Smart Compose for Android was only available on Pixel 3, but now every Android user will be able to access this feature.

In January this year, Google had launched a new interface for Gmail mobile app that allowed users to see the attachments without opening the email. According to Google, it is also testing new features including pinned messages, reminders and category bundles to be added to Gmail for Android. Noticeably, the company has just shut down Inbox and tomorrow Google+ will also stop functioning, as now Google wants to solely focus on the improvement of Gmail.