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Sony’s smartphone business may be struggling for years with no immediate remedy in sight, but the company isn’t throwing in the towel just yet. The company yesterdayunveileda new mid-range smartphone called the Xperia XA2 Plus as the third handset in its XA2 series that already includes theXA2 and the XA2 Ultra. However, while those two devices feature more traditional 16:9 displays, the new smartphone comes with an 18:9 panel, giving it a more modern look and feel....

US lawmakers recently asked Amazon foranswersabout the company’s digital assistant, Alexa, secretlyrecordingprivate conversations, and was even at the receiving of employees’ criticism for sellingfacial recognitionsoftware to the law enforcement authorities. The online commerce giant is again at the receiving end of a considerable amount of condemnation, this time, for allowing the sale of Nazi-themed goods. According to areportfrom two organizations,Partnership for Working FamiliesandAction Center on Race & The Economy, Amazon is encouraging hate groups by allowing them to sell Nazi-themed goods on its e-commerce platform....

After a long saga of controversy over privacy violation and granting third-parties access to users’ data, Facebook has looked to become more transparent, starting with the ability to let users see completedetailsabout all ads on the platform. The company is now testing a new feature that will tell users key information about a message from an unknown contact they’ve received on Facebook Messenger, who sent it, the location of the sender and other crucial details....

Apple hasappointedGoogle’s former head of search and AI, John Giannandrea, as its ‘Chief of Machine Learning and AI Strategy’. In his new capacity, Giannandrea will lead a combined Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) team at Apple, and will report directly to the company’s CEO, Tim Cook. The development comes just over three months afterthe former Google exec joined Applein a move that’s expected to help the iPhone-maker enhance its AI capabilities....

WhilePUBGmight have brought the battle royale genre to the limelight and made itself a huge success along the way, the streak was ended by Epic Games’Fortnite: Battle Royale. With Fortnite conquering the PC and the console world, PUBG Corp. decided to release a mobile version for Android and iOS which, surprisingly, actually runs better than the PC port. On the other hand, Fortnite had also released a mobile game which was available only on iOS....

Google is rolling out an update to its Assistant service that will assign colors to its various artificial intelligence voice options. Basically, whatever voice option a user is currently using will be given a color, and the colors have been randomly selected by Google so as not to associate any one color with a certain gender or intonation. https://gph.is/2KRdpeg One might recall that earlier these voices were just labeled at Voice 1, Voice 2, and so on, and alternated between male and female-sounding voices as you tap through the list....

Last month, Googleannouncedsweeping changes to the company’s portfolio of advertisement products by streamlining its offerings such as AdWords, and making it easier for businesses and advertisers to choose the most suitable option for their campaigns. At the Google Marketing Live event today, Google has unveiled new ad marketing tools that come with machine learning smarts, and has announced the integration of ML tools in existing products. Among the key announcements made by Google at the event were improved optimization for responsive search ads, ways to boost impressions and footfalls, and tools to deliver impactful ads on YouTube to name just a few....

Earlier this year, KaiOS, the platform powering the new breed of smart feature phones such as the Nokia 8110 and the Reliance JioPhone,announcedthat it has partnered with Google to bring features such as Google Assistant, Google Maps, YouTube and Google Search to smart feature phones. Following investments byRelianceandGoogle, the KaiOS-poweredJioPhone has finally received support for Google Maps. Announced back in July last year, the JioPhone was expected to get support for Google products, including Google Maps, in the future....

Infinix has announced the launch of its latest smartphone in India. Called the ‘Hot 6 Pro’, the device is the latest product to be launched by the company as part of its ‘Hot’ smartphone series that includes the Hot 4 from last year. The company also markets phones under a bunch of other lineups, including Note, Hot S and Zero. Infinix Hot 6 Pro Specifications The Hot 6 Pro comes with a 5....

Instagram has been adding a ton of features to Stories lately, so much so that it could be an app by itself. You havepolls,music stickers,shopping linksand a lot more! Add one more to the list, but this one makes little sense for me. Instagram is now introducing a new spin on poll stickers for Stories, by adding a new Question sticker.As the name suggests, it lets those you follow ask you questions which you can answer through a subsequent story post....

Instagram will soon make it easier for users to get that covetedblue tick. The company is testing an account verification process in Australia to let users submit requests to get their accounts verified. That blue tick not only makes your profile stand out in search results, but it also lends great credibility to the account and gives users access to some special features. Starting today, Instagram users in Australia can apply for account verification from the new‘Request Verification’option in the Settings menu....

A year and a half after letting users download movies and shows to their mobile devices for offline viewing,Netflixhas started rolling out a ‘Smart Downloads’ feature that automatically downloads new episodes of aTV seriesand deletes older ones. The feature is currently only available on Android, with iOS users expected to get it by the end of the year. Users wanting to keep the old episodes on their devices will need to turn offSmart Downloadsby going into theSettingsmenu of theirNetflix app, and turn off the feature, which is turned on by default when it rolls out to your device....

One of the most prominent names in the camera industry, Nikon has decided to take your telephoto photography ambitions to a whole new level. The company has today announced a brand new compact camera called the Coolpix P1000. However, be ready to be amazed, asthis compact camera comes equipped with a large 125x optical zoom lens. It even claims the title of the world’s highest zoom ratio with the 24-3000 mm equivalence lens, so it is a camera with a lot of firsts yet again....