Corona Kavach: It is a COVID-19 tracking app that will alert users if they are at risk.
Corona Kavach: With the coronavirus pandemic growing daily and the death toll rising, the Indian Government has launched its own coronavirus tracking app, called Corona Kavach. The app is currently available for only Android devices, and has been developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW).
Corona Kavach is a COVID-19 tracking app that will alert users if they are at risk. It will also provide consumers with daily data and other information about the pandemic to curb misinformation. Apart from this, it has a breathing capacity tracker and self-diagnostic tool.
Take note, the app is currently in beta, so it might have a few bugs that will pop-up.
Corona Kavach: How does it work?
In the app, you will be required to answer a couple of questions, after which it will mark you as "All Good, See a Doctor, Quarantine or Infected."
You will also be required to enable the app and provide it with location permissions. It will then track your movement and alert you if you are in the close proximity of a person that is infected or at a high-risk.
Corona Kavach: How to download
The Corona Kavach app is currently available only for Android smartphones, the government has said that it will soon be launching the iOS version of the app to the Indian public. To download the app on to your Android smartphone you can follow the given steps:
Open the Google Play Store, and search for Corona Kavach.
The app store will then bring up a display for the same.
Select the right app that has the developer named as MeitY and MHFW.
Press Install. After which the app will download and install itself on to your smartphone.
After the app is downloaded, you can open it and will have to register yourself on it using your mobile number.
After completing the registration process, the app will take you to its homepage, which consists of the number of people infected, mortality rate, recovery rate and more.
The app currently consists of three options on the bottom, which are 'Upload' that lets users upload their Unique ID, 'Kavach' that lets users start tracking themselves while stepping out of the home and 'Options', which consists the questionnaire and the breathing exercise.
Apart from this, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is also developing its own app for curbing the spread of misinformation and tracking the coronavirus pandemic. The app is reportedly named "WHO MyHealth" according to 9to5Google. It will provide users with tips, authentic news, alerts and other crucial information related to COVID-19. The app will not initially roll out location tracking feature, however, the report states that it is in the plan and will be rolled out at a later date.
Video calling apps have also seen a major increase in the number of downloads and daily users.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread like wildfire. Many governments are taking precautions like India's 21-day lockdown to curb it. And due to this lockdown people are having to work from home and attend meetings via video chatting apps like Zoom Cloud Meetings, Skype and more. Apart from making official calls, these apps are also letting users stay connected to each other, even if they cannot meet as they are practising social distancing.
According to a report by VentureBeat, citing data from Apptopia, video-calling apps like Zoom Cloud Meetings, Houseparty and Marco Polo are being widely downloaded and used on both iOS and Android operating systems. This trend started back in February and has grown many-fold in March.
According to App Annie, Zoom Cloud Meetings was the top app downloaded in the first two weeks of March, which the major chunk of downloads coming from the US and UK.
According to Apptopia, worldwide downloads of Zoom Cloud Meetings grew from 1,71,574 back on February 15, to 24,10,171 on March 25.
Houseparty, which is another video calling app rose from 24,795 per day on February 15 to 6,51,694 on March 25.
Other video calling apps have also seen a major increase in the number of downloads and daily users. App Annie has stated that Snapchat has also increased its app engagement time between March 1 to March 14.
Marco Polo according to Apptopia, jumped from 12,674 daily downloads on February 15 to 73,395 daily downloads on March 25.
In related news, Microsoft has also announced that its Microsoft Teams chat and conferencing app between March 11 and March 18 gained over 12 million daily users, which according to the company was a 37.5 percent jump from its usual userbase.
Following the legacy of its predecessors, the gen 5 is a watch first, a smartwatch later.
Traditionally speaking, a watch has always been considered to primarily tell users what time is it. However, with the advent of modern affordable smartphones, watches have turned into nothing more than a fashion piece.
Companies are now trying to put in a lot of computing power right into our wristwatch. Smartwatches have been around a couple of years, and the biggest competitor is Fossil, the brand known for its great watches.
Fossil Carlyle HR is the 5th generation of Fossil smartwatches. So let's find out how good is it really?
Fossil Carlyle HR Review: Design
Like its predecessors, the Carlyle HR comes in many variants including the metal variant, leather stapped one and silicone one. We had the silicone band variant for review, which shouldn't make much difference in the experience. Fossil smartwatches are watches with smart features.
The buttons on the side are stiff
The watch sports two customisable buttons on the right edge along with a rotating crown. The side buttons are fully customisable enabling you to launch anything and everything possible from the watch face. The crown doubles as a power button and a scroll wheel for navigating the UI.
The bands are interchangeable if you would like to try on some new colours or material. The heart rate sensor and the charging coils are located on the back. Unfortunately, the watch doesn't support Qi wireless charging like Samsung's lineup of watches, instead, it comes with a proprietary charging standard.
The biggest design change compared to older generations is its 44mm dial, which makes the watch feel chunky especially on small hands. Overall, ṭhe design of the watch is subtle and functional. From a distance, it looks like a normal watch and attracts very little attention. Overall, the design is well balanced.
Fossil Carlyle HR Review: Display
Fossil Carlyle HR features a 1.28-inch circular AMOLED display with a resolution of 416x416 pixels. The AMOLED panel offers true blacks, good colour accuracy and saves battery when the watch face is not on or in the Always-on Display mode.
The 44mm casing provides space for a big display.
The bezel is not the smallest, with a considerable huge black border around the display. Bezel-less displays haven't yet hit smartwatches, but I am sure that we all will agree that it's not required.
The display panel on the watch is not one of the brightest. Even at full brightness, it is hard to properly read outside. You can forget about you even being able to comprehend anything that's showing up on the watch under direct sunlight. The always-on display is much duller.
Fossil Carlyle HR Review: Performance
Fossil Carlyle HR is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor, which greatly improves battery life and performance compared to the last generation Wear 2100 processor. It comes with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage.
Overall, the performance of the watch is snappy.
The new processor helps the watch feel a lot more snappy and responsive. It doesn't lag thanks to the 1GB of RAM in place. The 8GB of storage allows users to load up a lot of apps or even music and videos on to the watch if that's what you want.
While sporting a fairly basic Wear OS experience, thanks to the beefy hardware, it's smooth. It comes with NFC for Google Pay only, a GPS, speaker, and a heart rate sensor.
Like any piece of electronic hardware with a battery, it should come as no surprise, that using NFC, GPS and the heart-rate sensor regularly decreases battery life.
The smartwatch is also 3ATM waterproof, means you can take it out in rain without it getting affected. It also sports a speaker which enables it to make phone calls that Fossil removed in some earlier iterations of their smartwatch. The speaker also enables users to talk on phone calls using the watch. If you are an iOS user, you still can't do that, but the company claims you will be able to do the same with an update sometime in the autumn.
Fossil Carlyle HR Review: Battery Life
AMOLED panels on smartwatches make a lot of sense. Things like the Always-on display on LCD panels drain out a lot of battery. On an AMOLED display, it can shut down most of the pixels for a true black experience and battery savings.
Qi wireless charging would be preferred.
With the device completely isolated with aeroplane mode turned on and all the features turned off, the device managed to last for an impressive 48 hours. However, keeping it that way takes out all the benefits of owning a smartwatch.
With the typical use settings, the smartwatch manages to take out a whole day of usage. This is due to the Snapdragon 3100 battery optimisation and Fossil's custom battery mode settings. Battery life issues have plagued Wear OS watches for generations, but it looks like the issue is somewhat overcome thanks to these optimisations.
Overall, it's a good Android Wear smartwatch suitable mainly for Android smartphone users
Fossil Carlyle HR starts at Rs. 22,999. At that price, Fossil Gen 5 is a solid and dependable smartwatch. For what it offers, the price is just right.
The customisations made by the company also deal with Wear OS's never-ending battery plague. The beefy hardware helps keep the watch lag-free which cannot be said for other Wear OS watches.
In the end, if you are looking to snag yourself a new smartwatch, then opting for the Fossil Carlyle HR is a good deal unless you are an iOS user. Then grabbing an Apple Watch would be a better option just due to the Apple ecosystem.
Facebook is not working in some parts of the world.
Facebook Down: Facebook servers are facing issues currently as users are reporting problems. Not only in India, but users across the globe are either having troubles accessing the website or they are unable to log in to their accounts.
According to DownDetector, Facebook is down in India, Turkey, Poland, Bangladesh and a few other parts of the world. As of now, the website claims that over 58 percent users are unable to access Facebook on their PCs or smartphones. While 33 percent users are able to access the app or website, they are not able to login to their accounts.
Reportedly, 7 percent users across the globe are having troubles while loading pictures or other media content. Alongside Facebook, users are also reporting problems with Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook has been facing issues since 5:07 PM today and till now more than 400 people have reported on the DownDetector website. As for WhatsApp and Instagram, the apps have been facing issues since around 5:30 PM today.
This has created a panic at the time when people are making use of these social media platforms to stay updated with the news of coronavirus pandemic. However, the company is working towards a fix and people should be able to start using these platforms in some time.
Currently, all three platforms are working just fine for some users but there are a lot of users across the country not being able to access them properly.
Many users have taken to Twitter, complaining about the issue. This issue when it began was only prevalent for select regions.
WhatsApp Down: WhatsApp is currently not working for many users in India. People are unable to send texts, stickers or media files to their contacts. And many are unable to access the service completely.
Reports started coming in at around 5:15 PM IST according to downdetector.in.
Many users have taken to Twitter, complaining about the issue. This issue when it began was only prevalent for select regions. However, since then it has spread and almost all of India along with Europe, US, UK and more are suffering outages.
According to DownDetector, people are reporting that they are unable to send media files, Gifs, voice notes and more. This has happened for the second time in India during 2020, with the first major outage happening in January.
This usually happens when a particular server for the service is not responding or down due to hardware issues. The company seems to be working on the issue as in between sometimes, some images or files to tend to pass through and go to the receiver.
The Facebook-owned instant messaging service is yet to provide a statement regarding this outage. Facebook and Instagram are also facing outages but not as widespread as WhatsApp.
According to DownDetector, as of now, there are over 2,000 complaints regarding the platform being down have been reported by the users. 53 percent people have complained that they are unable to connect to the platform, 43 percent state that they are unable to send or receive messages and 2 percent state that they are unable to login to the platform.
If you click on the disclaimer you will be taken to the WHO website, which provides users with all the necessary information about coronavirus.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) is spreading like wildfire throughout the globe. With hundreds of new cases being discovered daily across the globe, tech companies like Facebook and Google are taking steps to educate people about the virus and how its spread can be stopped. They are also taking steps to curb the spread of misinformation, which is causing mass hysteria.
YouTube is also taking part in this initiative, by doing two things. The first is that it shows a COVID-19 disclaimer when you open the site. If you click on the disclaimer you will be taken to the WHO (World Health Organisation) website, which provides users with all the necessary information about coronavirus.
The second step is that it is promoting "authoritative content" regarding coronavirus with a "news shelf" on its homepage. In the box, it shows informative videos regarding the coronavirus outbreak to users.
To recall, Facebook has also announced a similar action this week to curb the sharing of rumours and hoaxes about the pandemic.
We want everyone to have access to authoritative content during this trying time, so we’re launching a COVID-19 news shelf on our homepage in 16 countries. We’ll expand to more countries, as well. pic.twitter.com/nivKDZ2mHo
YouTube earlier this week along with its parent company joined major US internet companies in a joint effort to root out misinformation about coronavirus. This move was taken after increased claims of the virus being a hoax.
In related news, Twitter has now expanded its safety rules, according to which it will remove tweets that could put more people at risk. In a statement, Twitter's safety team said that it will ban all "content that increases the chance that someone contracts or transmits the virus." This includes denial of expert guidance or encouragement of the use of fake or ineffective treatments.
Facebook hs also taken steps to place authoritative information regarding the virus on the top of all its users feeds. The company is calling the box, where all of this information will appear, the Facebook information hub. This was developed by the company in collaboration with various health organisations and is currently available in the US and Europe. The company has stated that it plans to expand this platform to other markets soon.
The Redmi Weibo account also has listed another teaser image, which shows the back of the phone.
Xiaomi has announced via a Weibo post has announced that it will be launching its Redmi K30 Pro smartphone will be launching on March 24. Another phone that is likely to launch alongside the Redmi K30 Pro, is the Redmi K30 Pro Zoom Edition, which Redmi General Manager and Xiaomi President of China Region Lu Weibing confirmed the existence of.
The company via its official Weibo account posted a teaser image revealing the release date of the Redmi K30 Pro. In the image, it is mentioned that the K30 Pro will launch in China on March 24.
The Redmi Weibo account also has listed another teaser image, which shows the back of the phone. In the photo, we can see that the device sports a quad camera setup on the back inside of a circular module. The back panel features a gradient finish. Additionally, a glimpse of the pop-up selfie camera module, 3.5mm headphone jack and IR blaster are visible.
Redmi chief Lu Weibing in a Weibo post stated that he had started using a new smartphone. The device details of the post shows that the device is the Redmi K30 Pro Zoom Edition.
The Redmi K30 Pro Zoom Edition according to reports will offer extended zoom capabilities with up to 50x zoom support. However, it is not known if the zoom will be hybrid, optical or digital.
The launch date for China has been revealed. However, the company has not revealed when it will be launching the products globally including the Indian market.
To recall, the company has already launched the Redmi K20 in India, rebranded as the Poco X2. We can expect the Redmi K30 Pro to be rebranded as the Poco F2, which is expected to launch later this year.
Vodafone has launched two new prepaid plans in India, priced at Rs. 218 and Rs. 248. The plans come with additional benefits like Zee5 subscription and Vodafone Play subscription. They are only available in Delhi and Haryana circles for now and can be activated via the company's website and app.
Under its Rs. 218 plan, the company provides customers with unlimited calls to any networks without any FUP, a total of 6GB of data and 100 complimentary SMSes. It comes with a validity of 28 days.
And under its Rs. 248 plan, the company offers 8GB of total data. Other benefits of the plan remain the same as the Rs. 218 plan. It also has a validity of 28 days just like the Rs. 218 plan.
The same plans are listed on the Idea website. However, the Zee5 and Vodafone Play services are not available to Idea customers.
Airtel
The best plan Airtel has to offer that can counter both of the new plans from Vodafone Idea, is its Rs. 219 prepaid plan. Under this plan, the company offers 1GB of daily data along with unlimited calls to any network and 100 daily complimentary SMSes.
The company also provides customers with free Hellotunes with unlimited changes, access to its Wynk Music service and free access to its Xstream app. This plan is valid for 28 days.
Reliance Jio
Reliance Jio offers a similar plan to Airtel for Rs 199. This plan also comes with 28 days of validity. Under this plan, the company offers 1.5GB of daily data. However, unlike Airtel and Vodafone Idea, Jio does not provide customers with unlimited calls to networks other than Jio. It has a non-Jio call FUP of 1,000 minutes. Apart from this, the company provides customers with free 100 daily SMSes and access to Jio apps
Motorola RAZR sports a 6.2-inch flexible OLED HD+ display paired with a 2.7-inch Quick View panel on the outside, which can be used to capture selfies, view notifications and control music playback.
Motorola RAZR after months of waiting has finally been launched in India. It is priced at Rs 1,24,999 for the sole 6GB RAM/128GB storage variant in the Noir Black colour option. The device will be made available on Flipkart and in the offline market. Pre-bookings for the device are now live, with it going on sale starting April 2.
Launch offers include a 10,000 cashback for consumers purchasing the device using Citibank debit or credit cards. Reliance Jio customers will be offered double data and validity on its Rs 4,999, under which it will offer 1.4TB of data and two years of validity.
MotoCare Accident Damage Protection Plan can also be purchased within 30 days of buying the smartphone at a discounted price. One time free screen replacement is also being offered under launch offers.
Motorola RAZR specifications
Motorola RAZR sports a 6.2-inch flexible OLED HD+ display paired with a 2.7-inch Quick View panel on the outside, which can be used to capture selfies, view notifications and control music playback. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.
The device runs Google's Android 9 Pie operating system. All of this is backed by a 2,510mAh battery with support for 15W fast charging. For security, the company has provided customers with an optical fingerprint sensor on the chin.
It comes with a single camera module on the back consisting of a 16-megapixel sensor with an f/1.7 aperture lens. On the front, the device features a 5-megapixel sensor for taking selfies.
The new app is currently only available to customers using Lava feature phones.
Lava, the Indian mobile phone brand has launched a new digital payments application for feature phones, called Lava Pay. The most interesting thing about this app is that it does not require any internet connectivity to work.
The company has claimed that the app comes with the highest security standards and helps feature phone users perform digital transactions easily from their phones.
The new app is currently only available to customers using Lava feature phones. It has said that the Lava Pay app will come preloaded with all of its feature phones from now on. Existing users can head to one of the company's service centres to get it installed in their feature phones.
Lava Pay will require users to enter the mobile number of the receiver, the amount they want to transfer and an authentication password, to make a payment via the app.
Even though the app can function without the internet, they still require a UPI ID to make payments. Lava has said, customers can reach out to their banks to set up their UPI IDs.
After the payment is made, both the sender and the receiver will get a confirmation message on their phones. Lava states that Lava Pay is the "first solution for digital financial transactions without the requirement of Internet connectivity."
The app will also allow users to check their account balance with a single tap.
According to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI transactions touched Rs. 132.32 crores in February this year. The total amount of transactions have totalled Rs. 2,20,000 crores. And with the introduction of apps like Lava Pay, these numbers are expected to go up by high margins.
