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...