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Amazon on Friday launched a new feature called “Alexa Cast” on its own ad-free music streaming service “Amazon Music.” It will enable music users to play and control music on their Alexa-enabled devices from Amazon’s Prime Music app and make switching between voice and app controls smoother. The new feature will enable Amazon’s Prime Music app to be able to match the progress of the music playback making the task of switching between app and voice control smoother, the company said in a statement....

“There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year,”Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement late on Thursday. “Our partners are creating a wide variety of new Alexa-enabled devices and experiences, including soundbars from Polk and Sonos, headphones from Jabra, smart home devices from ecobee and First Alert, Windows 10 PCs from Acer, HP, and Lenovo, and cars from automakers including BMW, Ford, and Toyota,”Bezos said....

That number would be slightly below but “essentially in-line” with Wall Street consensus of 42 million units, Gene Munster of venture capital firm Loup Ventures was quoted as saying. The iPhone is becoming a stable business, performing more like software than hardware, Munster suggested. Specifically that refers to the notion the product will see slow but predictable growth over the next several years, thanks to an install base in the hundreds of millions, a consistent replacement cycle, and retention rates believed to be over 90 per cent, the report added....

Apple Watch shipments to Asia (excluding China) surpassed 250,000 units, with the LTE version accounting for about 60 percent, said Singapore-based market research firm Canalys. “India is a surprising addition to the list of countries. But this is a good strategy byAirtel and Reliance Jioto retain their high-value customers in a bid to minimise churn in a cut-throat market,” noted Senior Analyst Jason Low. Since the launch of theAppleWatch Series 3, the tech company has formed partnerships with telecom operators in Australia, Japan and Singapore, with Thailand, India and South Korea added in the last quarter....

BSNL has launched a new prepaid plan priced atRs. 171, which competes directly with Reliance Jio’s highly popular Rs. 198 recharge plan and also undercuts it on some parameters. The state-run telecom operator’s new prepaid plan offers benefits such asunlimited voice calls, 2GB of 2G/3G data allowanceand100 text messages per day. The new Rs. 171 plan has avalidity of 30 days, which means users get a total of 60GB data with a per GB cost of aroundRs....

By creating fake websites for free generation of gift cards, many cybercriminals are tricking users into parting with their time and data, for no return, researchers at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab have warned. While legitimate apps like Tokenfire and Swagbucks buy card codes from vendors, to then give them to clients as a reward for certain activities, criminals have apparently recognised the popularity of such websites and have decided to deceive users using a simple algorithm....

TheOppo Find Xisone of the most innovative phonesto have been launched this year. Not only does it have a stunning bezel-less display, but it also comes with a pop-up camera similar to what was seen earlier on theVivo NEX. However, unlike the Vivo device, where only the front-facing camera is housed in a pop-up slider, the Find X has all three of its cameras placed mounted on retractable mechanism. As it turns out, for all its innovation, Oppo seemed to have overlooked one important aspect that most buyers look for in their mobile devices – durability....

Samsung’s upcoming flagship, the Galaxy Note 9, is less than two weeks away from beingofficially announced. But before the Galaxy Unpacked event could give us our first look at the Galaxy Note 9 and the upgrades it brings, RedditorAutopsy15claims to have got their hands on a Galaxy Note 9 and has posted their first impressions of the phone. The Galaxy Note will pack adual rear cameras with dual OISonboard, much like the cameras on the Galaxy S9+....

Fake apps are not new to Android, some of them areblatant rip-offswhile a few are much more dangerous as they seed malware, steal data and even impersonate apayment appto dupe users of their money. Now, a new wave of fake banking apps has hit the Google Play Store, which steal data by asking users to fill forms that require sensitive information such as log-in credentials and credit card details. According to a report, the fake banking apps impersonate the official banking apps of three well-known Indian banks and claim to increase the credit card limit of users who use the services of the three banks at target – ICICI Bank, RBL Bank and HDFC Bank....

Fortnite is the undisputed leader in the world of battle royale games today, earning up to $2 million in revenue daily. Unlike PUBG, the game has been available on all platforms, even the Nintendo Switch, but Fortnite on Android is the most-anticipated release this year. While we earlier expected the game tocome out on July 24, as part of their 1 year anniversary celebrations, recent reports suggest that the game will finally be coming to Android in August....

After Apple, Google has now stopped permitting developers to submit apps that mine cryptocurrency on devices. However, apps that remotely manage the mining ofcryptocurrencyare not facing any such restriction on the Play store. Apple earlier took a similar step last month when it introduced a new section on cryptocurrency in its guidelines on App Store saying “Apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes such as cryptocurrency mining”....

Google has announced a partnership with Microsoft-owned GitHub to make a crucial element of modern software development, Continuous Integration, fast and easy. As part of the new collaboration,GitHub, a major software development platform, is getting connected to Google’s Cloud Build, the company’s new CI/Continuous Delivery (CD) platform “Together, we will provide fast, frictionless, and convenient Continuous Integration (CI) for any repository on GitHub, integrated directly into the GitHub developer workflow,”Melody Meckfessel, Vice President, Engineering,Google Cloud, wrote in a blog post on Thursday....

India has a burgeoning number of smartphone users withmore than 30 million smartphones sold in the last three months. Many companies have stressed on the importance of India as a market and often predicted that it might even outpace China in the longer run. As a result, we have seen India become aprime focus for major Chinese playersover the last three to four years. Huawei is part of the clique that is trying to attract swarms of Indians to buy their products and has beenusing a two-brand strategy to ensure success....