IntellectBeat

State-owned BSNL unveiled an app through which its customers travelling abroad will be able to connect their landlines through mobile and make calls through them without attracting ISD charges. The Fixed Mobile Telephony service, to be operational from April 2, will however attract monthly charge. "Under FMT, we have virtually turned fixed lines into mobiles. Now, BSNL customers will be able to seamlessly connect their fixed line phone and mobile phone through a BSNL mobile application," BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava said after unveiling a range of modern services. "After installing the app, customers will be able to use their mobile phone to make calls using fixed line connection from anywhere in the world from April 2 onward," he said. Under the facility, BSNL customers will be able to use landline phones to make calls using mobile network as well. "We are working on tariff for this add-on service. It will be fixed charge on monthly basis for both pre-pa...

Over the last 20 years, mobile phones have evolved from being a luxury to an absolute necessity for many of us. The technology within the phones has also reached levels that your 20-year younger self (that is if you are old enough) will find it difficult to believe. Our phones first got smaller, then they started getting bigger (and bigger) and in the interim, they also got slimmer while developing abilities to potentially replace most household gadgets. The smartphones of today are more powerful than the most advanced supercomputers of the 1990s. Two things, however, remained the biggest stumbling blocks in this smartphone race: the battery and the fragile screen. The most significant feature we have seen in the solving the battery issue is fast charging - that actually solves only one part of the problem. But there is significantly more hope now in resolving the other big phone conundrum - the fragile screen. Motorola has a credible solution that they demonstrate in the Moto ...

China's first dark matter detection satellite has completed three months of in-orbit testing and found 460 million high energy particles in a 92-day flight, officials said Friday. The satellite's initial findings are expected to appear before the end of the year as it has completed three months of in-orbit testing, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said. Dark matter is an invisible material that makes up most of the universe's mass. Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) Satellite "Wukong" detected 460 million high energy particles in a 92-day flight and sent about 2.4TB of raw data back to Earth, DAMPE chief Scientist Chang Jin said. Launched on December 17 last year on a Long March 2D rocket, "Wukong" was handed over to the CAS Purple Mountain Observatory Thursday. The four major parts of the payload, a plastic scintillator array detector, a silicon array detector, a BGO calorimeter and a neutron detector, functioned satisfactorily. The satel...

Chrome for Android received an update earlier this month which brought new features to the browser. Another change has now been spotted, which removes the default setting of merging apps and browser tabs in the Android app switcher. Spotted first by Android Central, the new Chrome 49 for Android lists the "Merge tabs and apps" option as disabled by default, and this means that Chrome tabs will no longer show up alongside others apps when a user hits Recent apps button on the Android device. Users however have the option either enable or disable the option to "Merge tabs and apps" via Chrome's Settings. Notably, Google introduced the merge option in Android Lollipop which allowed Chrome tabs to appear alongside other apps. It's worth noting that the minor change is not very significant and will not be noticed by users who already use Chrome browser for Android. In a report, Android Central explains, "If you're setting up Chrome on a phone for the...

Video sharing website YouTube said its content partners, Culture Machine, OML, Qyuki and The Viral Fever (TVF), are set to launch four original properties. In the coming months, Culture Machine will be launching a beauty and style-centric programme Beauty Hunt, while OML will launch the second season of Comedy Hunt, YouTube said in a statement. It said #LaughterGames will launch in April, where nine comedy creators will launch their own comedy web series, featuring among others, YouTube comedians such as East India Comedy, Put Chutney and Kenny Sebastian. Web show creators TVF will be launching a search for the next generation of web series creators. YouTube's overall watchtime in India has grown by 80 per cent year-on-year with 55 per cent of that watchtime on mobile. The hours of video uploaded from India has increased at 90 per cent annually, content uploaded by India's independent creators has risen especially quickly. The watchtime of independent musicians grew over ...

Researchers have developed a high-tech, food-tracking necklace that will alert you about the unique sounds that foods make as you bite, grind and swallow them. Each food as it's chewed has its own unique sound and the device can help people suffering from diabetes, obesity, bowel disorders and other ailments by enabling them to better monitor their food intake and improve how they manage their conditions. “There is no shortage of wearable devices that tell us how many calories we burn but creating a device that reliably measures caloric intake isn't so easy,” said Wenyao Xu, assistant professor of computer science at University at Buffalo. Xu is creating a library that catalogues the unique sounds that foods make as we eat. The library is part of a software package that supports “AutoDietary”, a necklace being developed by Xu and researchers at Northeastern University in China. “AutoDietary” is like Fitbit and other wearable devices. Only instead of tracking burned calori...

When it comes to the battery on your mobile, who doesn't want more? While the desire for bigger batteries may be great, there aren't too many phones around with really big batteries (by big we mean, more than 4000 mAh). And from that select lot, we have picked the five best. 1. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Price:  Rs 9,999 Launched early in March this year, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is one of the very few phones to come at this price point boasting the features that it comes with. Some of the key highlights that make the phone stand out in the otherwise crowded budget smartphone market include a premium metal body, fingerprint sensor, an ergonomic and visually pleasing design. And of course, the phone includes a powerful 4050 mAh battery. 2. Asus ZenFone Max Price:  Rs 9,999 While the phone was unveiled in August last year, it was introduced in India early this year. The phone doesn't look much different from other ZenFones, but there is one thing in the phone that makes it d...

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh N Chandrababu Naidu launched AP FiberNet in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. Under the project, the government of Andhra Pradesh will offer low cost broadband internet to households and workplaces. A broadband connection with 15 Mbps speed will be provided at Rs 149 per month and 100 Mbps connections to offices at Rs 999 per month. These rates are substantially lower than what other internet service providers currently charge. The AP Fiber Grid Project has been taken up under the National Optic Fiber Network of the Centre as a pilot. The project has been implemented at a cost of Rs 333 crore and it will be gradually rolled out to other districts of the state by July 2016. The state government plans to connect 1.3 crore households through AP FiberNet. Andhra Pradesh government has tied up with Cisco to roll out the project. We're providing Internet through APSFL at Rs.149/month for a 15 Mbps line to households & offices will get 100 Mbps line...

The invites are out and the rumors are in. Apple’s first event of 2016 is going down March 21, when the company will loop fans in on some shiny new products coming soon to Apple Stores. Apple is expected to introduce a new 4-inch iPhone aimed at budget customers and people who want to be able to hold their smartphone with one hand, but a new 9.7-inch iPad that’s every bit as impressive as the iPad Pro could steal the show (along with some other new goodies). Here’s what to expect from Apple’s big event. iPhone SE The body of the iPhone SE will look almost exactly like the iPhone 5s, only the edges of the glass display will be curved, like on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s. Leaked case designs show the power button will still be at the top, with the mute switch and volume knobs on the side, just like the iPhone 5s. Color options will reportedly include gold, silver, space gray and rose gold. The iPhone SE will pack a 4-inch Retina displa...

China-based brand Vernee this week unveiled its flagship smartphone, the Apollo. The highlight of the Vernee Apollo smartphone is it packs 6GB of RAM which was seen on the recently unveiled Vivo Xplay5 Elite. Another notable feature is it packs MediaTek's newest Helio X20 (MT6797) SoC which was revealed at an event in China on Wednesday. According to Android Authority, the Vernee Apollo smartphone will feature a 5.5-inch QHD display with Force Touch (pressure sensitive touch display) capability and will pack 128GB of inbuilt storage. The handset is said to sport 21-megapixel rear camera with Sony IMX230 sensor and also houses an 8-megapixel front camera. It is likely to come with a USB Type-C port. On design, the Apollo smartphone is said to sport all-metal design. Unfortunately, the Chinese company has not detailed all the specifications of the handset or has revealed details about the Force Touch feature on the Apollo smartphone, though it did confirm the Android 6.0...

MediaTek says its deca-core Helio X20 SoC will hit the market next month. The announcement comes ten months after the Helio X20 was first unveiled. On the sidelines, MediaTek also unveiled a slightly improved and more powerful Helio X25 SoC. The Chinese chipmaker is finally ready to ship its Helio X20, which directly competes with Qualcomm's newest flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 820. The Snapdragon 820 was first unveiled in August last year, and only began to ship on some smartphones recently. To recall, the Helio X20 is built on top of a tri-cluster CPU architecture. In fact, at the time of launch, MediaTek claimed that the Helio X20 was world's first mobile processor to have tri-cluster CPU architecture, which houses three processor clusters. Other technical specifications of the Helio X20 include one cluster of two ARM Cortex-A72 cores (clocked at 2.5GHz for extreme performance), and two clusters of four ARM Cortex-A53 cores (one cluster cloc...