Apple iPhone 7 – What to Expect?

Apple iPhone 7 – Design

KGI Securities superstar analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has an excellent track record with predicting iPhone specs, says the iPhone 7 will be Apple’s thinnest yet–approaching the thinness of the iPod touch. Ming-Chi Kuo is claiming the Apple iPhone 7 will come in between 6mm and 6.5mm.

According to information leaked on Weibo by a reliable tipster, Apple is testing out five iPhone 7 prototypes, each with its own unique hardware characteristics. By the sound of it Apple is trying to figure out which technologies would go best in the upcoming model, all the while keeping an eye on the performance of its suppliers,” said the report. “Reportedly, some of the technologies that can be found in these prototypes include a USB Type-C connector compatible with headsets, wireless charging technology, multi-Force Touch, dual camera configurations, and fingerprint recognition technology embedded within the display.”

There’s also strong hints that Apple is working on doing away with the physical home button and embedding a virtual home button and Touch ID in the screen itself, but that might not come until the iPhone 8.

Multiple sources are now claiming Apple is looking to do away with traditional headphones, meaning no 3.5mm jack-support on the Apple iPhone 7. It will be replaced by a lightning port.

Apple iPhone 7 – Camera

The Apple iPhone 6s gained a huge camera upgrade with its 12-megapixel high-quality rear camera and its 5-megapixel front FaceTime camera. But going to the Apple iPhone 7 we expect the camera upgrade to be less pronounced. Apple will probably keep to a 12-megapixel rear camera but add OIS(optical image stabilization) across the line.

The Apple iPhone 6s also gained 4k video recording on the rear camera–something we don’t see changing or expanding on for the Apple iPhone 7. However, it’s possible the front FaceTime camera could gain 4k video recording in the Apple iPhone 7.

Apple iPhone 7 – Processor

As is customary for new Apple products, investors should expect Apple to deliver a new applications processor (known as the A10), which should, once again, deliver best-in-class CPU and graphics performance, as well as other functionality to support the rest of the iPhone’s subsystems (such as the camera).

Beyond that, according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, we should expect the 4.7-inch iPhone to pack two gigabytes of memory while the 5.5-inch model will come with three gigabytes of memory.

Apple iPhone 7 – Wireless charging

The second aspect suggested by the report is that Apple will include wireless charging in the Apple iPhone 7. This has also been linked with the device for quite some time, but these suggestions have now been further solidified. It is worth noting that Apple generally does not include technology in the iPhone range until the corporation believes that it has been absolutely perfected, so this will undoubtedly influence its decision over wireless charging. If Apple does decide to incorporate wireless charging into the iPhone range, it will probably be focused on ensuring that similar charge speeds to wired charging are possible.

Wireless charging remains one of the most frustrating technologies around, because while it’s here, it works and it feels like living in the future, it isn’t as widely supported as we’d like.

An Apple iPhone 7 with wireless charging would be great, especially if the same charger worked for the Apple Watch too. And if it could support both wireless standards as well, like the Galaxy S6, then that would be just swell.

Apple iPhone 7 –  Displays

The iPhone 6s gained the 3D Touch display that the Apple Watch has (there, it is called the Force Touch display)–of course the Apple iPhone 7 will adopt this 3D Touch display as well. But we also expect the Apple iPhone 7 to get a higher resolution display, specifically a QHD one with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 with 401 PPI (pixels-per-inch), as many Android handsets have.

Apple could also make subtle upgrades to the 3D Touch display in the Apple iPhone 7–for example, making it sensitive to more than two types of pressure inputs, but other than that we don’t expect the 3D Touch display to change much.

Also, it is unlikely that the Apple iPhone 7 will adopt an AMOLED display, which is found in Samsung phones and the Apple Watch, according to Kuo. In a recent investors note he stated:

 “Based on recent comments by Minebea, one of the main iPhone backlight unit suppliers, we believe AMOLED will not penetrate iPhone for the next three years. Moreover, Hon Hai is preparing to invest in Gen-6 LTPS TFT-LCD production lines in Zhengzhou, China for mass production in 2018, suggesting the iPhone line will likely stick with TFT-LCD technology in 2018 and thereafter.

Apple iPhone 7 – Faster cellular, potentially faster Wi-Fi

The Apple iPhone 7 will use Qualcomm’s X12 LTE modem, which should lead to a doubling of peak download speeds from what the iPhone 6s can deliver; peak upload speeds should triple.

Apple also significantly improved Wi-Fi speeds in its last two iPhone releases as it has been more aggressive in adopting newer connectivity combo chips from Broadcom. I expect that Broadcom (which is being acquired by Avago) will announce new connectivity chips in the February/March timeframe, if/when that happens, we should have a good idea of what kind of Wi-Fi performance increase to expect in the next generation iPhones.

Apple iPhone 7 – Waterproof

There are the rumours that the next iPhone will be waterproof. This rumour started back in 2014 with an Apple Patent application, which has since been granted, for a technique known as Plasma-Assisted Chemical Vapour Deposition (PACVD) to coat the internal components and make them water resistant.

Apple iPhone 7 – Storage

Apple iPhone 7 will come in the three variants- 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and there is also another rumour that the Apple iPhone 7 will be the first smartphone to have 256GB of storage. This would be double the current 128GB maximum of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Apple iPhone 7 – iPhone 7c

Go to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is back with more assertions that Apple will release a 4-inch iPhone early next year as a follow-on to the plastic-backed iPhone 5c. Kou states:

“As there is still demand for a 4-inch iPhone, we believe Apple will upgrade this product line. Because the iPhone 5s is more popular than the iPhone 5c, we think Apple is likely to launch an upgraded iPhone 5s. We predict Apple will mass-produce this new 4-inch iPhone in 1H16 with metal casings. In order to make the current iOS 9 or next-generation iOS 10 run smoothly, Apple may adopt an A9 chip for this new phone.”

Apple iPhone 7 – Release Date

If there’s been one reliable thing about Apple’s iPhone launches, it’s that they happen just once a year. Given that the iPhone 6S was launched in September 2016, a year after the iPhone 6, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the iPhone 7 will come in September 2016. Apple iPhone 6S @ Rs. 50,999

Android 6.0 Marshmallow: Features. What's new?

Android 6.0 Marshmallow features: What's new?

Google has started the rollout of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Here are the features you can expect from the latest version.

It’s time to prod the Marshmallow: Android Marshmallow is here. But you still have a while to wait unless you own a Nexus 6, Nexus 5, Nexus 9, or have recently picked up a Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P.

So, the question: is Android 6.0 Marshmallow worth getting excited about? We’ve been spending some quality time with the new software to see what it offers over the Android Lollipop version we’ve been using for what feels like forever.

Here are the features that take Android Marshmallow a step further. Is it enough to steamroll iOS 9 and Windows 10? For now at least, we’ll leave that to you.

The apps menu is crazy-different

One Android Marshmallow change all of you will notice is the way the new apps menu works. It’s totally different to Lollipop and the other previous versions of Android.

This time, instead of a bunch of apps ‘pages’ you flick through horizontally, the apps box is a scroll thumbed through with a smooth vertical movement. It’s a lot more like Windows 10/Windows Phone’s apps menu, or that of the HTC Sense custom Android interface.

Is it better? Is it worse? This is very much a case of being different rather than better, but it does scroll very snappily on the Nexus 6 we’ve been using. Those with big app collections may find it faster. And, as in Android Lollipop, the apps are arranged alphabetically rather than letting you move them about yourself.

As before, there are no app menu folders either. You have to keep these on the home screens, if you want them.

App search bar and favourites

In order to help those who think the new apps menu is worse, and there will be some, there are some extra features to the apps area. First, there’s a search bar up at the top.

This is a text bar you just type words into, and Android Marshmallow searches your app collection for any apps with that name. There’s also an option to use the search term to look for other apps in Google Play.

If your apps library is so massive you can’t remember which apps/games you’ve uninstalled, this bit will let you get them back on-board sharpish.

There are also four special apps slots right at the top of the apps menu. These are filled using an algorithm that picks the most important apps based on those you use most, and have used most recently.

On the Nexus 6 these extra interface elements can feel like a bit of a stretch to reach. But then 95 per cent of people think the phone is that bit too big anyway. The Nexus 6X should feel comfier.

The clock has gone all stylish

Lollipop upped Android’s style game, and Marshmallow tries to take that a step further with a redesigned clock. It’s little more than a font shuffle, but does give the new software a bit of a different, sharper visual personality.

Check it out below. The date text is now written in all-caps, and the font of the time characters seems to be a bit thicker, as if Google has hit the ‘bold’ button.

Google has added a memory manager

One of the complaints about Android Lollipop was that its memory-hungry nature introduced all sorts of performance problems in phones without absolutely loads of RAM.

A new feature lets you check out the memory usage of all your installed apps without using a third-party app.

There’s a whole new ‘Memory’ area in the main Settings menu.

However, before you get too excited, it’s mostly about monitoring RAM use and seeing if there are any apps doing things they really shouldn’t rather than tinkering with how much memory apps are allowed. You can see the RAM use over the last 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours, to let you identify when and where things are going wrong without too much active monitoring on your part.

As is so often the case with Android, you’ll still likely have to try uninstalling/reinstalling any apps that are seriously misbehaving.

You can add a lock screen message

A tiny little tweak of Android M is that you can now add a little line of text to your lock screen. Maybe you’ll want to add a little tag to your ‘Jim’s VHS and DVD rental’ small business, or a way to tell you and your other half’s his ’n’ hers Nexus 6s apart.

Unlike the date font, this little extra line is written in lower case, and seems to have opacity of just under 100 per cent, making it a bit less bright than the clock.

It’s basically a custom number plate for your phone: go to town.

Battery optimisation now on a by-app basis

Android only really started to embrace proper a battery-saving mode with Android Lollipop, even though custom skins have had such features for years now. Android Marshmallow adds a whole new battery area called ‘optimisation’.

This tweaks how apps eat energy when not being actively used in order to save battery life. As standard, all apps bar the Android system itself use battery optimisation, and all you can do is make important apps exempt from this feature.

Google hasn’t laid out too clearly exactly what optimisation does, but you can bet part of it is about regulating access to mobile data and how freely they can perform background processes.

The volume controls have changed yet again

One part of Android Lollipop that everyone got quite angry about originally was the volume control. The silent mode was ditched completely. It caused a bit of a fuss.

It has returned, sort of. Android Marshmallow has a Do Not Disturb shortcut in the notifications drop-down that lets you switch off certain alerts for a period of time, or indefinitely. It does feel kind of fiddly still, but is designed to make sure you don’t switch the feature on and then end up missing your early morning alarm.

This new spot for Do Not Disturb lets Android Marshmallow pare down the volume controls a bit. Press the volume button and you’ll see the slider for system notifications. Next to it there’s a drop-down arrow that gives you access to the separate ‘media’ and ‘alarms’ volume dials.

Fingerprint scanners supported as standard

Finger scanners have been found in Android phones for years now. However, it’s only with Android Marshmallow that the system supports the hardware natively. Before now, software for these scanners had to be jammed in by the manufacturer.

Both the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P have rear fingerprint scanners, and Google calls the system Nexus Imprint. It lets you unlock your phone with a finger-press, as an identification measure in apps and to sign off on Pay wireless payments.

Pay has been around for years now, but more recently Google re-announced it as Android Pay. Hopefully it’ll catch on this time.

Instant Google Now ‘Ok Googling’

Android 6.0 makes the system’s digital assistant way more useful. Where before it was largely consigned to the Google Now area of the phone, it can be accessed to look up things wherever you are, using something called Now on Tap.

First of all, you can talk to the assistant whenever the phone is on the home screen just by saying ‘Ok Google’.

Don’t like talking to your phone? One of the neatest parts of Android Marshmallow is that the digital assistant can now be called up everywhere. A long-press on the Home button makes the Google Now assistant scan whatever’s on the screen to find extra info online that might be helpful.

It works absolutely anywhere. One example of a good use we found was looking at Tripadvisor for a local restaurant, then using Google Now to fly straight to that place’s menu URL. Neat, right? The only bit it doesn't seem to do yet is to OCR text in photos to Google Now-ify your photo gallery. Maybe one day, eh Google?

Permissions are on lock down

Before Android Marshmallow, app permissions were granted at the point of install. You agree to give an app access to, say, your camera, contacts and storage as soon as the app begins installing. This has changed.

From now on, apps will have to ask for your permission to access the camera, at the point where they want to use it. It’ll make things much clearer, letting you see exactly what apps are doing in the background.

For all apps already granted permissions, you’re also given a much clearer round-up of what’s what in the Settings menu. A dedicated section shows you which apps have access to your camera, your contacts and so on, and you can revoke them at the press of a switch.

USB Type-C/3.1 support

One important bit of future-proofing is full support for USB-C, which is closely linked to the USB 3.1 standard. We’ve seen this plug already in the OnePlus 2, but it was really just a USB 2.0 port with a different connector.

The big news is the new set of capabilities we’ll see when ‘proper’ USB-C phones arrive, with USB 3.1 support. They’ll be able transmit 40x the power of the current USB connectors, although exactly how much power phones of the future are going to gobble up is something we don’t know yet.

Doze

In a bid to hopefully give your battery life a boost, Android Marshmallow introduces a feature that recognises when the Android device is in a rested state to help conserve power. Google says it has tested it with a Nexus 9 and claims it can help make battery life last two times longer in standby mode by using fewer background services. If you're worried about missing out on alarms and incoming instant messages, Doze will still allow those notifications and modes to be activated.

When will Android 6.0 Marshmallow be available?

Google has announced that the Android Marshmallow launch will be at the beginning of October. Currently, developers can play around with the final Android Marshmallow builds on the Nexus 5 and 6 smartphones plus the Nexus 9 and Nexus Player set-top box. Google has since confirmed that the Nexus 7 will also be among the first devices to the get the Marshmallow treatment.

Big Data: Data is new oil.
Lifi: A far more better and faster than usual WiFi.
Turing Phone: Stronger than steel.
The Incredible Oculus Rift.

Big Data: Data is the new oil.

Big data is a broad term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. Challenges include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and information privacy. The term often refers simply to the use of predictive analytics or other certain advanced methods to extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set. Accuracy in big data may lead to more confident decision making. And better decisions can mean greater operational efficiency, cost reduction and reduced risk.

What is big data analytics?

Big data analytics is the process of examining big data to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations and other useful information that can be used to make better decisions. With big data analytics, data scientists and others can analyze huge volumes of data that conventional analytics and business intelligence solutions can't touch. Consider that your organization could accumulate (if it hasn't already) billions of rows of data with hundreds of millions of data combinations in multiple data stores and abundant formats. High-performance analytics is necessary to process that much data in order to figure out what's important and what isn't. Enter big data analytics.

Why collect and store terabytes of data if you can't analyze it in full context? Or if you have to wait hours or days to get results? With new advances in computing technology, there's no need to avoid tackling even the most challenging business problems. For simpler and faster processing of only relevant data, you can use high-performance analytics. Using high-performance data mining, predictive analytics, text mining, forecasting and optimization on big data enables you to continuously drive innovation and make the best possible decisions. In addition, organizations are discovering that the unique properties of machine learning are ideally suited to addressing their fast-paced big data needs in new ways.

Why is big data analytics important?

For years SAS customers have evolved their analytics methods from a reactive view into a proactive approach using predictive and prescriptive analytics. Both reactive and proactive approaches are used by organizations, but let's look closely at what is best for your organization and task at hand.

Reactive vs. proactive approaches

There are four approaches to analytics, and each falls within the reactive or proactive category:

Reactive – business intelligence. In the reactive category, business intelligence (BI) provides standard business reports, ad hoc reports, OLAP and even alerts and notifications based on analytics. This ad hoc analysis looks at the static past, which has its purpose in a limited number of situations.

Reactive – big data BI. When reporting pulls from huge data sets, we can say this is performing big data BI. But decisions based on these two methods are still reactionary.

Proactive – big analytics. Making forward-looking, proactive decisions requires proactive big analytics like optimization, predictive modeling, text mining, forecasting and statistical analysis. They allow you to identify trends, spot weaknesses or determine conditions for making decisions about the future. But although it's proactive, big analytics cannot be performed on big data because traditional storage environments and processing times cannot keep up.

Proactive – big data analytics. By using big data analytics you can extract only the relevant information from terabytes, petabytes and exabytes, and analyze it to transform your business decisions for the future. Becoming proactive with big data analytics isn't a one-time endeavor; it is more of a culture change – a new way of gaining ground by freeing your analysts and decision makers to meet the future with sound knowledge and insight.

The Challenges of Big Data Analytics:

For most organizations, big data analysis is a challenge. Consider the sheer volume of data and the different formats of the data (both structured and unstructured data) that is collected across the entire organization and the many different ways different types of data can be combined, contrasted and analyzed to find patterns and other useful business information.

The first challenge is in breaking down data silos to access all data an organization stores in different places and often in different systems. A second big data challenge is in creating platforms that can pull in unstructured data as easily as structured data. This massive volume of data is typically so large that it's difficult to process using traditional database and software methods.

Big Data Requires High-Performance Analytics

To analyze such a large volume of data, big data analytics is typically performed using specialized software tools and applications for predictive analytics, data mining, text mining, forecasting and data optimization. Collectively these processes are separate but highly integrated functions of high-performance analytics. Using big data tools and software enables an organization to process extremely large volumes of data that a business has collected to determine which data is relevant and can be analyzed to drive better business decisions in the future.

Examples of How Big Data Analytics is Used Today

As the technology that helps an organization to break down data silos and analyze data improves, business can be transformed in all sorts of ways. According to Datamation, today's advances in analyzing Big Data allow researchers to decode human DNA in minutes, predict where terrorists plan to attack, determine which gene is mostly likely to be responsible for certain diseases and, of course, which ads you are most likely to respond to on Facebook.

The business cases for leveraging Big Data are compelling. For instance, Netflix mined its subscriber data to put the essential ingredients together for its recent hit House of Cards, and subscriber data also prompted the company to bring Arrested Development back from the dead.

Another example comes from one of the biggest mobile carriers in the world. France's Orange launched its Data for Development project by releasing subscriber data for customers in the Ivory Coast. The 2.5 billion records, which were made anonymous, included details on calls and text messages exchanged between 5 million users. Researchers accessed the data and sent Orange proposals for how the data could serve as the foundation for development projects to improve public health and safety. Proposed projects included one that showed how to improve public safety by tracking cell phone data to map where people went after emergencies; another showed how to use cellular data for disease containment.

Benefits of Big Data Analytics:

Enterprises are increasingly looking to find actionable insights into their data. Many big data projects originate from the need to answer specific business questions. With the right big data analytics platforms in place, an enterprise can boost sales, increase efficiency, and improve operations, customer service and risk management.

Webopedia parent company, QuinStreet, surveyed 540 enterprise decision-makers involved in big data purchases to learn which business areas companies plan to use Big Data analytics to improve operations. About half of all respondents said they were applying big data analytics to improve customer retention, help with product development and gain a competitive advantage.

Notably, the business area getting the most attention relates to increasing efficiencies and optimizing operations. Specifically, 62 percent of respondents said that they use big data analytics to improve speed and reduce complexity.