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Amazon Opens its OnePlus 7 Pro Sale for All Users; Offers No Cost EMI on the Purchases with Credit Card

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After making a lot of buzzes, finally, OnePlus 7 Pro is available in India on the official website of OnePlus, its physical stores, the other partner stores including Chroma, as well as at Amazon. Earlier, the company had made the One Plus 7 Pro sale open for only the Amazon prime users on the Early Access Sale and the OnePlus Early Birds Sale. But now the other Amazon users can also take advantage of the sale, and buy this OnePlus ultra-premium flagship smartphone.

oneplus-7-pro
Image Source: bgr.com

The sale of the phone started at 12 am today, and it, currently, is selling the three variants of the smartphone. The three variants of OnePlus 7 Pro includes 6GB RAM/128GB storage variant, which is available at the price range Rs 48,999, a Rs 52,999 variant, having an 8GB RAM/256GB storage as well as the 12GB RAM/256GB storage that costs the buyers a Rs 57,999. There are two other variants to this flagship smartphone, which will be launched in June this year and will cost Rs 32,999 for the base 6GB RAM/128GB option, and Rs 37,999 for the 8GB RAM/256GB version.

The smartphone was launched at an event in Bengaluru, on 15th May, along with the OnePlus Wireless Bullets V2 earphones. All the OnePlus 7 Pro variants are available in Almond, Mirror Grey, and Nebula Blue shades. But for now, the buyers will only get their hands on the smartphones in Mirror Grey colour, as the Almond shade of the phone will be rolled out after May 28 and the third one, i.e. Nebula Blue will be available in the month of June.

The OnePlus 7 Pro is packed with OxygenOS based on Android 9.0 Pie and has got the 6.67-inch Fluid AMOLED display with Quad-HD+ resolution (1440×3120 pixels). After various leaks and rumours, people were excited for its great quality triple cameras and its sleek design. The smartphone has got the motorised selfie camera, hidden inside the screen of the phone, whereas it has three cameras on the back, one of which is a 48MP Sony IMX 586 sensor with OIS, the secondary camera features a 16-megapixel sensor, which is a wide angle camera, and the third one is an 8-megapixel camera.

OnePlus 7 Pro is a bigger phone and has got new features including stereo speakers, new X-haptic vibration motor, noise cancellation support, Dolby Atmos support, native Screen Recording, and a Zen Mode, etc.

As the smartphone is available online, the company is also offering up to Rs 2000 cashback on purchase using SBI debit and credit cards. On the other hand, JIO is also providing benefits of worth Rs 9300 to the buyers, as well as people can buy the smartphone through no-cost EMI of 6 months. The buyers will also get up to 70 per cent Servify Guaranteed Exchange Price and up to 60 per cent Cashify buyback value with a special upgrade bonus for previous OnePlus smartphone owners.

Instagram is Killing its Standalone Messaging App ‘Direct’ Only After Two years of its Inception

Facebook, News, Tech News / By
instagram direct app
Image Source: marketingland.com

Facebook is going forward on the way to integrating most of its apps, and after its announcement of bringing chat back to the Facebook app, the company is now planning to kill the Instagram’s standalone Direct app.

Instagram revealed that by the next month, it will pull off the support for its direct messaging app. But the Instagrammers doesn’t have to worry about their messages, as the platform will migrate all the messages from the Direct app to the Instagram app DMs.

With the launch of Direct app in 2017, Facebook and Instagram both were up to adding new features and making it a standalone messaging app to stand against rivals like Snapchat. Similar to the Snapchat app, the Direct app opens with a camera. In fact, after logging in to the Direct app, the DM feature also disappears from the Instagram app.

But as a step of Facebook in the way of consolidating all its major apps, now Direct will have to face a young death. Instead, all the features it possesses will be merged into the DM feature of Instagram.

The company has already stopped providing updates to both the versions of the app. The latest update that the Android app had received was in April, whereas the iOS app had received the latest update in December last year.

The users have been receiving messages from the company about the closure of the app, upon which, a Direct user Matt Navarra, posted a tweet in a thread, saying, “Confirmed: Instagram is killing its standalone Direct Messaging app.” Upon which Instagram also posted a tweet, “Your conversations will automatically move over to Instagram, so you don’t need to do anything.”

Shutting down the Direct app might not be a big deal for either company as the app has failed in gaining as many users as Instagram has. In fact, the Instagram app’s DM feature has been a source of business promotion for many, and it is way more popular than Direct app despite having lesser features than the Direct app.

Lilium Unveils Five-seater Air Taxi Prototype After it Successfully Completes its First Test Flight

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The German aviation startup company, founded in 2016, has been working towards attaining the comfort for the people with its on-demand air taxis, and now, it announced that it has successfully completed the first test for its full-scale air taxi. The taxi is a prototype of the company’s taxi air crafts, that holds the capacity of carrying five passengers at a time, and is all electric.

lilium five-seater air craft
Image Source: techcrunch.com

The new five-seater aircraft is the company’s one of the all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) device, the first of which was a two-seater aircraft, successfully tested by the company about two years ago. But in the case of the two-seater aircraft, the prototype test had gone well. But when it came to the full-scale Lilium jet demonstration, after the take-off of the aircraft, the shift from vertical to forward flight was not as smooth as it was expected to be.

The new five-seater Lilium taxi has an egg-shaped cabin, having five passengers’ seats, which is mounted over the landing gear. It has the unique pair of parallel, asymmetrical tilt-rotor wings, that holds the 36 all-electric jet engines. Those electric jet engines enable the aircraft to take off and land in a vertical plane. Though the flight takes off and lands vertically, it renders “remarkably efficient horizontal or cruise flight”.

The company has been carrying out extensive tests with its latest five-seater air taxi, and the results are remarkable in every aspect. The company has released a video that shows how the aircraft takes off vertically, and after hovering for a small time in the air, the aircraft lands smoothly on the ground.

The company claims that after the final product is ready, it will be able to achieve a speed of 300 km/hour (186 mph). According to the Lilium’s chief compliance officer, Remo Gerber, the speed it can achieve is way more than that of the speed attained by its rival air crafts. The reason being, the aircraft uses only 10 per cent of its maximum 2,000 horsepower during the cruise flight.

But on the other hand, the electric air taxi works better with fuel, as the batteries that are available in the market are not powerful enough. For the air taxis, the battery power has to be in a proper ratio with the weight of the aircraft. So when fuel is used in the aircraft, it provides up to 43 per cent better performance.

Since the company is still carrying out tests on its five-seater flying taxi, the possibility of it coming into operation must not be expected before 2025. Also, the company will be launching a full-fledged app for people, so that they will be able to book the taxis through it.

Facebook Launches New Policy ‘One Strike’ to Prevent People from Misusing Live Streaming

Facebook, News, Tech News / By

Live streaming is popular, and Facebook is among those social media platforms, who brought this feature to the common people for the very first time. But in recent times, the company has witnessed how people are missing the very feature and violating Facebook’s live video streaming guidelines. Not taking a very old example, the live broadcast of the inhuman mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques in New Zealand in March took everybody by shock.

facebook live stream
Image Source: marketingland.com

Keeping all this in mind, the company has decided that it will be implementing a ‘one strike’ rule, for the ones, who will be violating its live video streaming guidelines. According to the company, it will take down the accounts for a set time period, if they fail to maintain the live streaming guidelines and violate the rules.

“Starting today, people who have broken certain rules on Facebook, including our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy will be restricted from using Facebook Live,” Facebook wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

The company confirmed that the ‘one strike’ rule is the result of the live broadcast of the horrifying New Zealand terrorist attack, which people kept on sharing even after Facebook had taken down the video. In fact, people were editing the video so that they could prevent the video from getting identified and will be shared further.

For such matters, the company has announced that it will be investing $7.5 million in new research partnerships, to carry out researches across industry and academia in order to improve the analysing techniques for the images and videos posted on the platform.

Previously, the company did not have much of strict rules for the violation of any of its guidelines. e.g. if there was a post that spread hate or rumours, Facebook would take the post down, and if the offence is done repeatedly by an account, the account was banned for a set period of time. But now, the rules will be stricter, as if Facebook finds someone broadcasting something offensive and violates the Facebook’s live stream guidelines for the very first time, the company will ban the account from live streaming for a certain time limit.

Facebook is also tightening its rules for the other areas that need attention, and for now, it will also be imposing strict rules for the people, who create ads that misguide people and spread hate.

“The overwhelming majority of people use Facebook Live for positive purposes, like sharing a moment with friends or raising awareness for a cause they care about. Still, Live can be abused and we want to take steps to limit that abuse.” the company wrote in the blog post.

SpaceX to Bring Free and Open Internet to All with the Launch of Starlink Project

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Last year, the aerospace transport agency SpaceX had launched the prototype satellite for its much-talked-about project, Starlink, a project that targets to provide internet to the whole planet through a network of the satellites. And now after a year-long wait, the company will finally be launching the first batch of satellites of Starlink’s “production” version with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 today at 10:30 PM EDT.

SpaceX Starlink project
Image Source: futurist.com

The company will launch 60 satellites with the help of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launched from a launchpad based in Cape Canaveral. After the launch, the satellites will be arranged like a constellation to cover a part of the Earth like a blanket. Starlink project will be responsible to provide open, high speed and low-latency internet to anyone in the world.

The Starlink project revolves around the concept of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Once the satellites are positioned in the orbit, these will link to the small terminals on the surface of the earth. The satellites are able to easily make a connection with the ground terminals as the LEO satellites are positioned at a distance as close as 99 to 1,200 miles from the surface of the Earth. This way the internet speed will also be faster as compared to the conventional methods used to provide internet.

The 60 satellites have been placed like kernels on a corncob, and with the help of a spring, these will be sent to the orbit at a particular velocity.

The launch of those satellites is a challenge for the company, which if went favourably, will be a great achievement for the company. Otherwise, there are other rival companies of SpaceX too that are also looking forward to getting their hands on similar projects, including OneWeb and Amazon too.

But since the company had test-launched similar satellite TinTin A and TinTin B successfully in the month of February, there are higher possibilities of the success of the Starlink project. According to Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX those 60 satellites are the “production design”, and in future, the company plans to launch as many as 12000 satellites to achieve that constellation network. If the experiment goes according to the plan, people will be able to access high speed and free internet by the mid of 2020.

Paytm Launches First Card; Ties-up with Citi Bank to Retain its Old Customers

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Apple recently launched its credit card for its iOS users, and amid the rising competition, from Google and the other digital wallet providing companies, India’s largest digital wallet Paytm is now launching its first credit card named First Card. The company announced on Tuesday that it will be launching its first credit card for its wallet users that too with 1 per cent ‘universal unlimited’ cash back on every purchase.

Paytm First Card
Image Source: inc42.com

The company has been struggling with maintaining its position in the Indian eCommerce market. And, the company has been trying new strategies to deal with the rising competition. It even launched its own eCommerce platform, Paytm Mall, that too providing huge cash backs for the users. But still, the threats from its rivals are only growing.

“We are delighted to partner with Citi to launch the Paytm First Card. Our new offering is designed to bring the utmost flexibility to our customers in their digital payment options and will help spur large-ticket cashless payments. We are confident of getting a very good response from our customers.” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chairman and CEO – One97 Communications, the parent of Paytm.

Though there are only 50 million people, who actually have credit cards and use for purchases in India, Paytm hopes to make 25 million of Indians to avail its new credit card service. To launch the credit card, the company has partnered with the global payments company Citi Bank. The company will charge an annual fee of INR 500 to the First Card users, and if the spendings of the users will go above INR 50000 per year, the fee will be waved off for those users. The users will also be provided with the offers on dining, shopping, and travel on the platforms having tie-up with Citi Bank.

The customers can apply for the credit card directly through the Paytm app, and the Paytm account passbook will reflect the offers from both Paytm and Citi Bank for the credit card holders. The users with minimum INR 10000 expenditure in a month will be able to avail promo codes of worth INR 10000. The users of First Card will also get the option to pay for goods in easy instalments.

The Citi Bank First card is powered by Visa and is valid internationally. Noticeably, Paytm had just joined its hands with Visa to launch its debit cards last week. The partnership between Citi Bank and Paytm has a long history, and this time, it is an initiative taken to support Paytm’s new subscription-based loyalty program ‘Paytm First’ and retain its users who have been shifting to the other payment apps.