Reliance Jio launch doubles demand of 4G VoLTE devices

Demand for Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE) enabled devices has doubled since the launch of Reliance Jio, according to a report in Economic Times. Jio is a VoLTE only network, that only supports handsets with this capability. After the launch, Reliance has partnered with smartphone companies to make available VoLTE enabled devices to consumers.

The demand is more in price sensitive rural areas, as this market associated VoLTE technology with free voice calls. Reliance uses the same band for data and voice, with voice being another service offered over the LTE network. There is more demand in Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities as compared to Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Searchers for VoLTE devices have also grown in the budget category oif smartphones.

Analysts expect most devices to support VoLTE going forward. Over a third of the devices available in the market right now are VoLTE devices. Reliance Jio is one of the first Indian operators to adopt and deploy this new technology. Analyst reports confirm that the number of VoLTE devices sold this quarter is twice the number of VoLTE devices sold over the same period last year.

To cater to the section of the market that still prefers to use a feature phone over a smartphone, Reliance Jio may be launching a VoLTE enabled feature phone next year, according to a report in 91mobiles.

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge ‘Piano Black’ version leaks in images

Apple brought a glossy black finish this year on the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus calling it ‘Jet Black’. The company had explained that they had to create a new nine-step process to achieve the high-gloss finish. It looks shiny and classy too. While a lot of Apple fans were astonished by it, the excitement was short lived as this particular version was prone to scratches and there were availability issues as well. Even Apple agreed and advised consumers to put a case to protect it. Bummer.

We heard that Samsung would bring a similar finish on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Now we have a confirmation that the company is indeed working on a highly glossy black finish that will arrive on its flagship range. According to some leaked images, we can see that smartphones get a fresh coat of paint which could be called ‘Piano Black’. While the S7 and the S7 Edge already come in a Black Onyx version, the new colour variant will be a darker, have more gloss and have black trims all around.A special Blue Coral version of the S7 and S7 Edge was also announced recently, which made debut on the dead-on-arrival Galaxy Note 7. The new blue version is shipping in certain regions, however the it is nowhere to be seen in India. The company had also announced a special Olympics Edition of the S7 Edge as well as a special edition Batman inspired verison of the smartphone.

Google Glass to develop ‘virtual testing’ model for detecting Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s early

Russian scientists are using Google Glass to develop a new “virtual testing” model that may help doctors to identify Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and other brain disorders at an early stage.

The model will help identify an individual’s predisposition to certain brain diseases at an early stage and may even be used for testing children who are five years of age and older, researchers said.

Scientists at Tomsk Polytechnic University and the Siberian State Medical University used Google Glass to study how healthy people and patients with various diseases react to virtual reality.

During the experiment, the doctors analysed the participants’ movements in virtual reality provided by a Google Glass headset, an optical display in the form of eyeglasses, ‘RBTH Daily’ reported.

“They evaluated the condition of the muscles (EMG), the brain (EEG) and the vestibular system. There is a difference between the vestibular system’s reaction in healthy people and that in sick people,” said Ivan Tolmachev, one of the model’s developers.

The test was conducted on 70 people: 30 healthy individuals, 20 Parkinson’s patients and 20 people suffering

from sclerosis.

In the next stage, the researchers plan to develop an industrial sample of the virtual model, which would mean

creating a certain type of software.

Tolmachev estimates the cost of development to be 1.8 million rubles (USD 27,500).

The muscles of our robot overlords will be made of nylon

Artificial muscles are used in a bunch of industries - from robotics to aviation. But the exotic materials used in their construction are both expensive and difficult to source.

Now, engineers at MIT have come up with an alternative that's cheap, ubiquitous and effective - nylon fibre. And with it, they've designed one of the simplest and low-cost artificial muscle systems yet.

The work was underpinned by a peculiar property that nylon exhibits - that when the fibre is heated, it shrinks in length but expands in diameter. As a result, if you just heat one side then it'll bend. Using this knowledge, the team carefully compressed fibres so that their cross section was square rather than circular, to accentuate the bending effect. 

They were then able to generate complex motions by changing the direction of the heating - getting the fibres to move in circles and figure-eight patterns. Much more complex movement patterns could also be generated, the team said.

 Game-Changing

It lasts, too. Existing systems made of shape-memory alloys only manage about 1,000 cycles before losing their ability to contract, but a nylon system can maintain its performance up to at least 100,000 cycles. It can also bend and retract up to 17 times per second.

Beyond powering robot muscles, the system could be used to make clothes that adjust to your body, make self-lacing shoes, or biomedical devices. Down the line, it could even lead to vehicles that change shape to adjust to changes in wind speed or solar panels that automatically keep themselves aimed at the sun. 

Andrew Taberner, a bioengineer at the University of Auckland who was not involved in the research, said that the findings were "exciting and game-changing". “One can imagine many applications for this type of actuator in the medical and instrumentation fields," he added. "I expect that this work will become highly cited."

Crucial’s MX300 750GB SSD has been slashed to half price

Are you mulling over a potential move to an SSD? If it's a 2.5-inch solid-state drive you're after, then Amazon has quite a bargain with a 750GB offering from Crucial which has been slashed to just £106.

The MX300 750GB SATA 2.5-inch SSD (with 9.5 mm adapter) is Amazon's best-selling internal SSD.

Normally, this 3D NAND-toting drive would run to £212, so with this offer on Black Friday you're getting the SSD for half price; a tempter indeed.

Buy the Crucial MX300 750GB from Amazon here

Particularly seeing as this represents a good-sized chunk of solid-state storage for the money - the big problem with the move away from a traditional spinning disk being securing a replacement drive with a decent capacity, without burning too big a hole in the wallet.

Crucial speeds

Want some stats on the MX300? It's manufacturer-rated with sequential read and write speeds of up to 530 MB/s and 510 MB/s respectively, with random read and write speeds of up to 92k and 83k.

This drive is also friendly to your laptop's battery, as it sips 0.075W of power, and also boasts adaptive thermal protection tech to help your system stay cool.

The MX300 also comes with some bundled software including Crucial Storage Executive, which uses caching to speed up the drive, and the company claims it can boost performance by up to 10 times.

This Windows app makes the best case yet for the Surface Dial

Microsoft's new Surface Dial debuted alongside the Surface Studio last month. While it's available as a separate accessory for $99, less than 20 apps support it out of the box. Some of those apps just offer basic zoom and volume controls, but there are a couple that stand out. Sketchable includes various radial menus for drawing controls, and now Drawboard looks like the best case yet for the Dial.

Drawboard, a PDF markup app, is adding support for Microsoft's Surface Dial in an upcoming app update. It's designed as an app to manage drawings and documents, with support for touch and ink to leave annotations for colleagues or friends. A number of architects and engineers use Drawboard, and the company is making use of the Dial to bring a virtual protractor and ruler to the app. As the Dial reports its angle, architects will be able to set angles for drawing annotations or even set the grid overlays with the Dial.

Drawboard details the new features in a promotional video for Microsoft's Surface channel on YouTube, and they certainly look impressive. Microsoft is allowing developers to extend the use of the Dial in their applications, and it's apps like Drawboard and Sketchable that show the potential of the Surface Dial. Just like StaffPad with the Surface Pen, Microsoft will need many more apps to lead the way in showing why this new hardware could be useful for creatives, engineers, architects, and other professionals.

Nokia's canceled smartwatch appears in leaked video

Nokia had been working on a smartwatch, codenamed Moonraker, which came close to launching alongside its Lumia 930 handset back in 2014. After Microsoft acquired Nokia's phone business, the company canceled any plans for the smartwatch and proceeded with its own Microsoft Band hardware. Images of the Moonraker watch appeared two years ago, and now a new video appears to show the canceled smartwatch in action.

Nokibar on YouTube shows some basic functions of the smartwatch, with a swipe-based user interface to navigate between apps and features. There's a button for switching between the app interface and the default watch face, and the watch appears to support long presses on the display just like an Apple Watch or Android Wear devices. Nokia was also planning to support email, calendar, messaging, notifications, and other basic apps on the device.

The video is a fascinating look at what could have been, and it follows the cancelation of Microsoft's Band hardware. Microsoft had been working on a Band 3 device, and that wearable leaked in new images last month. Microsoft appears to have given up on its plans for wearables running Windows 10, as the company shifts its focus towards its strengths in PC and universal apps for VR and AR headsets.