Caterpillar S60: World’s toughest Smart Phone

Caterpillar has announced new phone S60 which can easily be crowned as world’s toughest and most rugged smart phone. The Best part is that it is also the world’s first smart phone that comes with an integrated thermal imaging camera. A feature that is really new to every smart phone user in world.

CAT S60 World's Toughest Phone

The thermal imaging camera feature the Lepton sensor made by Flir, the world’s leading thermal imaging manufacturer. You can take a thermal image in VGA resolution i.e. 640*480 and record videos. As this isn’t a high resolution but using this you can measure the surface temperatures, shot images in absolute dark and in smokes filled locations.

This phone is also water resistant in depth of up to 5m. It can remain operation there for an hour. So you can also use the phone with wet hands and in rain without any fear.

Phone screen is also protected with 1mm thick gorilla glass 4 protective layer. This makes the phone screen resistant to scratches. Thanks to its all hard steel body you can drop this from an height of 5 feet without any hesitation.

 CAT 360

Along with thermal imaging this phone also had a 13MP normal camera in back and a 5MP front facing camera. Inside phone comes with 617 snapdragon chipset and latest android 6.0 Marshmallow.
For smooth multitasking it has 3GB of RAM. It has an expandable 32GB storage and screen size of 4.7’ with 720P resolution and a powerful battery of 3800mAh which will provide you enough juice for daily use.
This phone is specially designed for the personnel of the construction companies and law enforcement agencies, where the environment does not suits any conventional smart phones. So despite the fact that the hardware of the phone is not that great due to its tough design and unique feature like thermal imaging camera, water resistant body and steel frame phone really appeals to the people who wants a really tough smart phone it there pocket that has immunity to accidental drops on roads and in water.

Cat S60 key features:

• Thermal imaging camera, powered by FLIR
• Strengthened Die Cast Frame
• Drop proof to 1.8m, MIL Spec 810G
• Super bright display (typical 540 nits), Gorilla Glass 4
• 4.7” HD capacitive multi-touch with auto wet finger & glove support
• Optimised battery performance (3800mAh)
• Underwater 13MP main camera with dual flash, 5MP front-facing camera
• 4G LTE
• Snapdragon 617 Octa-core processor
• 32GB ROM, 3GB RAM
• Android Marshmallow

Price and Availablilty

The latest flagship device from Cat phones will be announced at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona and it will be available in price range of 600 dollars.
Source: CAT Phones

Bookings of Word’s cheapest smart phone are closed

India is 2nd largest population in the world and it smart phones market is also one of the largest in the world. It is developing nation with low per capita GDP. Therefore people here can’t afford a smart phone and majority is using feature phone. Indian Govt. lead by PM Moodi, wants to digitize whole country therefore they are rigorously promoting made in India campaign. One of the highlights of this campaign will be Freedom 251 smart phone.

Orders Closed for Freedom 251

The 251 one in the name of the smartphone indicates the price of the phone which in 251 Indian rupees. In USD this will be only 4 Dollars making its world’s cheapest smart phone. With ridiculously low price this phone really will attract masses. Now let us look at some specifications of Freedom 251.

Freedom 251

The Freedom 251 comes with a 4 inch IPS qHD screen with a resolution of 960*540 which is really good for a 4’ screen.
It had .3MP front facing camera and 3.2MP rear camera with LED flashlight which is capable of capturing decent photos.
It comes with 8 GB internal storage capacity and 1GH of RAM, phone is equipped with 1.3GHz quad core processor and it comes with android 5.1 Lollypop. It has a removable battery of 1400mAh which would not be sufficient for a day long use but at this price you cannot ask for more. 

Freedom 251 has a removable plastic back cover with Indian flag printed on it, which clearly shows that phone’s low price in subsidized by the Indian govt.(although the comapany denies any such support from Govt.)  Inside it has a removable battery of 1400mAh which would not be sufficient for a day long use but at this price you cannot ask for more.

Backside of Freedom 251

Problem with Online Orders

As this phone is aimed for the deprived majority of the country, which have no access to internet, so how can there people will order it online as they had no previous exposure to internet, let alone online shopping. So this would be main hurdle for phone to reach its targeted consumers with no internet or no experience of online shopping. 

It is worth mentioning that before introduction of the world’s cheapest smart phone, India had also introduced world’s cheapest car and cheapest tablet for students also.

Order Closed

Due to its really cheap price and online availability people rushed to put an order online. But the overwhelming response and huge traffic the website freedom251.com crashed on 18th of Feb. 2016, and went online again on 19 of the month. In just two days company had received 60 million orders online and after then the booking is closed for any new orders.

Infinix Unveils the Poster of Incoming HOT 3

Infinix Mobility an Hong Kong based mobile manufacture has disclosed a teaser poster of its new mobile phone. The phones image was released by the company’s twitter account. The phone was dubbed as Infinix HotPlay. Here is the tweet posted on official twitter account of Infinix.

Inspiring and modern, precision engineered for optimum performance to improve your lifestyle.
COMING SOON.#PLAYHOT pic.twitter.com/dEkB29Rxir

— Infinix Mobility (@InfinixMobility) February 16, 2016

What will be the HOT 3 like?

By its name the phone gives us the hint that it will be the next iteration of Infinix Hot 2. The Hot2 was a good entry level smart phone at an affordable price. It was also the first Android One smart phone ever sold in Africa. Hot 2 was equipped with Quad core processor, 8MP rear, 2MP front and 5 inch HD screen.

This too will be an entry level phone which will have many improvements over its previous installment. Some of improvements we love to see are given

 

Photo of Infinix HOT PLAY

1.       A Better Camera

With to HOT 3 Infinix really needs to improve its camera. 2MG front camera is not a good choice now a day, because selfie fever has really gone up these days. We should be hoping for an upgrade here. A 5MP front camera should be in place for better photos.

Phone already have a 8MP camera so a camera with same pixel density but butter performance will be sufficient here. Ideally I want to see a 12MP-13MP camera in HOT 3.

 

2.       Better Processor

Hot 2 had a good quad core processor clocked at 1.3GH, so here should also be an improvement. Hot 3 will be having an upgrade in chipset and processor speed also.

 

3.       Android 6

In Hot 2 we had android lollipop, so in this year its more likely to see the latest version of the android i.e. android 6 Marshmallow.

 

4.       4G LTE Connectivity

It all growing economies the high speed 4G networks are expanding very quickly. So to remain  first choice of the customers Hot 3 really should have 4G LTE connectivity otherwise this would really be a big drawback of the phone.

With all mentioned improvements as plus point we should really be hoping for a decent battery which can provide a good backup time. A battery with capacity more than 3000mAh is what we want to see in Hot 3.

So here are the things that we wish/want to see in Infinix HOTPLAY i.e. HOT 3. We will update our article as soon as we receive any other leak online.

Infinix Zero 3 goes Out of Stock on Daraz.pk

Infinix Zero 3, the latest flagship of the Hong Kong base company Infinix Mobility was launched in Pakistan by Daraz.pk. Zero 3 goes on sale on the 12^th February 2016 online on Daraz.pk at a price of 20899 pkr. Fans loved this phone and it went out of the stock it just two days. It was available in two colors Gray and Gold. Gray color was first to sold out before the Gold. Just like its predecessor Zero 2, this phone is going to be a bit hit. Let us see why Zero 3 got so popular?

Infinix Zero 3 went out of skocks on daraz.pk

Zero 3 a flagship Killer

Infinix Zero 3 is a flagship killer mobile with beefy hardware at an amazing price. The gorilla glass 3 protected 5.5’ screen of the phone is Full HD. Now you can enjoy 1080p videos in their full glory and resolution. You can also read your ebooks more easily due to its 400ppi density.

Most exciting part of the phone is its Camera. It is equipped with a Sony IMX 230 sensor with a whooping resolution of 20.7MP. To enhance your low light camera experience it has dual LED flash lights. Also note that the camera of Sony’s Xperia M and Motorola’s Moto X Style have same sensors but these mobiles have much higher prices.

For selfie lovers phone has also a front camera of 5MP with a front LED flash light also.

Rear camera you can shoot a video a 4K resolution, a feature which is currently available in only high end smart phones and cameras. You can also shoot slow motion pictures at a higher frame rate but on a lesser resolution of 480p.

Inside phone is equipped with 64bit chipset Helio 10X made by Mediateck with a Oct Core processor clocked at a frequency of 2.0 GHz. Its Mediateck GPU IMG6200 works at a frequency of 700MHz.

For smooth multitasking it has 3GB of Ram to avoid any lag shifting between the tasks. Phone internal memory is its big draw back as it comes with SSD storage of 16GB only. But you can extend it by using an external SD card.

Zero 3 has a battery of 3030mAh and four operating modes to maximize charge time of phone. Depending upon usage you can select a mode accordingly.

Currently phone comes with android Lollipop 5.1 but it will be upgraded to android 6 in future.

Availability in Future

Currently daraz.pk has not given any particular date when Zero 3 will be in stocks again. But by looking at availability of other phones like Infinix Note 2 we can expect it to be in stores at the end to the Feb 2016.

MyShake: An App to Issue Earthquake Warnings

Today there are apps for almost every other thing we do. The new  and welcome addition in already abundant app industry is MyShake. This app can record an earthquake like a seismograph and also issue an earthquake warning that gives 8 seconds lead time.

Screen Shots of MyShake

According to its developer Alan Richard at UC Barkely, It can sense the shakes due to the earthquakes by using its complicated algorithm with a remarkable 93% accuracy. By downloading this app your smart phone literally acts like a seismograph, which not only can record the earthquakes but most importantly it send these signals to its cloud servers where an area wide warning of the earthquakes can be sent to all its users.

How It Works

After completing its installation, MyShake works in background just like health apps, and starts recording and analyzing the data gathered from smart phone accelerometer sensor. All this Data is analyzed by a sophisticated algorithm which can distinguish in Human Activity and earthquake.

If earthquake signal is detected it then sends backs it to Berkeley Seismological Laboratory data centers. By comparing it with data gathered from other smart phones this data center qualifies these results as negative or positive. For reliable and good predictions it requires about 300 users within 1000 square KM area.

According to developer Allan Richard, “Conventionally it requires a trigger from four conventional seismographs stations to issue an alert. But by using the MyShake data along with the conventional seismograph an alert can be issued when only one seismograph is triggered. So this app will never replace the seismograph networks but can be used to enhance and speed up an earthquake alert.”

He also adds by MyShake the average phone can record a magnitude 5 earthquake within 10 kilometers of radius.

Benefits

Shakes from the earthquake move like waves from its center to the surrounding areas.  If we can have an alerts from the center of earthquake just when it occurs then it is possible to issue an alert in the surrounding areas almost 8 seconds before the quake. This 8 second lead time is crucial in a catastrophic event. In this time people can bend and duck under a strong table which can reduce the injuries by a large amount. Also in many earthquakes is the secondary wave that is more destructive, so an alert on a before primary wave can buy you a crucial time to coupe with this emergency.  

Also in countries like Nepal and Peru, where earthquake are common and no useful and integrated earthquake systems are available peoples have lot of mobile phones. By MyShake app these phones can act as earthquake alert system. By issuing an emergency and early alert the effects of earthquakes can be reduces there. 

MyShake along with detecting an earthquake also provides users with information about recent earthquakes and significant historical earthquakes. So what are you waiting for, you can download this app for both android and iOS from the respective app stores. People in all six continents are already using this app with majority in USA.

A Perfect Snowy Day

Today when I woke up in the morining, It was raining. One of my cousins came in my room a told me "Wake up yaar, its snowing outside."
"Snow, you must be lying" I replied.
"Then get up and look outside" He said to me a went back.
Now I had to check this, to told myself and went outside and then I couldn't believe the site. Its really was snowing out side. And it was a the site the will forget the feather like white tiny white snow balls swirling a falling on the lush green wheat fields just outside my house. First time in my life I see snow flake falling and filling the ground. The sight was amazing, beautiful and mesmerizing. I just went out in the snow to enjoy as much as I can, to make this one of memorable days my life. But suddenly snow stopped and it started raining. Like every other ordinary rain the country. But that few minutes was one the best of my life.

Snow After a long time
when I switched TV there was news that it  snowed on the Margalla Peaks near Islamabad after a decade. Mountains of the Murry, Nathiagalli, Galliyat, Abbottabad, Mansehara were filled with a thick layer to the snow. Muzafaerabad the capital city of the Azad kashmir had also received its part from the snowy weather which was usually considered a warmer cities. But to me most surprising thing was that according to my patents It snowed in our village after almost 30. So for most people it was the first time in their lives with they witnessed a snow fall.

Visit to Nearby Hills

when it stopped raining a the mist was cleared. And Dana hill unveiled herself from the deep curton of thick fog. And seen was magnificent

. Its was fully covered with snow. On my first site of the top I made a plan to visit the hill with a friend on my bike, within a few minutes we were on the way to the mountain.

Biking on Snow filled Track

The Dana mountain is one a the highest places in the District Haripur situated in the north of Islamabad, on the other side of the Margalla hills. Its is only 23km away from my house. But problem is that their was no proper road to the top, the path is just a sand top with  a 4 inch thick layer of snow it was really difficult to drive to that. The bike I own is Honda 125, it is really good in these condition but were three friends on the ride so with one extra passenger it really hard to drive and control bike. Thats why we couldn't reach at the top stead we have to return back due to the slippy condition of the path.


Although we are not able to complete our trip it was full of beautiful scenes of snow filled mountains and to me it was one the most memorable days of my life. I witnessed a snow fall in my home, where it didn't happened in almost 30 year and probably I will have another snowy day here it my home again. Also I had a great time with my friends a memorable biking experiences on a rough snow filled track. Here are some pictures of the day.

Six Problems with PTCL Broadband

As the main player in wired broadband internet PTCL is enjoying almost entire market share due to lake of competition. In small cities and rural area customer has no other choice and they have to stick with PTCL broadband. We don’t know whether its lake of competitors or the customary laziness of the company, its broadband customers are not experiencing a good customer services. Here we have enlisted the 6 main problems that you have to face if you are a PTCL broadband user.

PTCL Broadband Promotional Image in Pakitsan

1.    Line Rent

No matter what, if you like it or not, for every broadband user PTCL will charge you with a line rent of 250(Plus Tax) per month. Its entire wired broadband customer’s will have to pay a monthly fee of 250. This additional fee is charged by name of Freedom Package, the default voice services package of landline phone services. So every wired broadband customer is forcefully turned into a landline customer by PTCL, if you use it or not.

2.    Extremely Low Data Usages Limits

PTCL have two limited packages name 1MB limited and 2MB limited, problem is that these limited packages have ridiculously low limits. For 1MB you are limited to use only 10GB and for 2MB you can use a maximum of 15GB data packets.
Things are also not better because of the fact that 1MB and 2MB “UN-LIMITED” packages are also limited to 100GB only. For 4MB and 8MB these limits are 300GB only.

3.    No Value Added Services:

Almost every other ISP provides value added data packets which you can use in order to extend your monthly data limits. But PTCL have no such plans you have to pay 100pkr for each extra 1GB data if you exceeded your monthly limits. Things got worse if you are a 4MB or 8MB unlimited customers if you ever exceeded 400GB monthly limit you will be charged with straight 5000 bill.

4.    No Service for Tracking Data Usage

Though it sounds weird but there isn’t any easy way to track how much data you have consumed during a month or within any given period of time. If you are so curious enough you can dial PTCL helpline and ask the CSR about how much data you have consumed on your PTCL Broadband. There is official PTCL customer care app but it’s shameful that it doesn’t have this simple functionality.

5.    Almost Double Internet Bill than Advertised

Other big problem is that PTCL will charge almost double of the advertised broadband charges in monthly bills. For example, charges of IMB limited PTCL broadband connection is advertised at 599/- only per month but price doesn’t include line rent of 250/- plus GST and WHT. When you include this your actual PTC bill will be 1110 instead of 599.

6.    Poorest Customer Caring

If you have faced in problem with PTCL broadband connection then you have to be really patient. You have to submit a complaint about the problem you are facing. The PTCL staff working in the neatest phone exchange is obliged to solve this for you. But most of the staff in the rural areas and small cities is in adequately trained and lakes to troubleshooting skills.  That’s why you have to wait for at least 24 hours or two three days before you are connected back. In my personal experience it always took at least 24 hours in fixing broadband.

Update 

On 15 of February 2016: it seems that every one is fed up with PTCL, the hashtag #PTCLSharamKro is trending no 1 on twitter Pakistan. Here are some of interesting tweets from the others. 

 

#PTCLsharamKro The slow pace of internet is frustrating! 💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤 pic.twitter.com/0J1ZnNYvAo

— Saira Mehreen Abbasi (@Saira_M_Abbasi) February 15, 2016

Sometimes PTCL gets you so frustrated that you become suicidal.
#PTCLsharamKro

— T. J. (@TayabJanjua) February 15, 2016

Moment of Silence for those who are using Internet Explorer and than PTCL broadband #PTCLsharamKro

— Azam Shahzad (@Azamshahzad1) February 15, 2016

How facebook will monetize whatsapp?

As the time of writing this article, A few days earlier whatsapp announced that it’s laying of its annual 1 dollar fee and now everyone will enjoy a life time subscription without paying anything to whatsapp. Its founder Jan Koam also emphasized that he had no plans of bringing advertisements into your whatsapp experience. But If the company is giving off its business model then won’t be doing it for nothing and this rises an obvious question: How facebook will monetize whatsapp? And will it remain free for all? One thing is sure that facebook will monetize whatsapp sooner or later, but what method they will use. 

Whatsapp was bought by facebook with $19 Billion

To answer this question we need a wider prospective that illustrates how facebook had monetized its own social network. By now its enjoying continuously increasing profits from its advertisement business. We will come back to it later for now let’s look at a quick history of whatsapp.

19 Billion Dollar Investment of Facebook

A year before Mark Zukerburg acquired the mobile instant messaging plat form whatsapp for an incredible amount which totals to a staggering 19 billion dollars. It was a huge amount and it is still the highest tech deal in the history of the world. Then facebook was widely criticized for this move. 

facebook will surely monetize whatsapp

But now it seems that big investing had started paying back. In just one year whatsapp had doubled its user base from 500million to an astonishing 1 billion active customers worldwide. Its ahead of facebooks very own messenger app which currently had 800 million users. 

When is the Time to Payback big investment

Facebook had invested an awful amount of money in whatsapp and they surely have same pretty good ideas using which they can earn back their investment. Probably this is why whatsapp had dumped its clumsy money making idea. But one thing Is sure they aren’t in no hurry because facebook’s own profits are souring and Mark Zukerburg in now world’s 6 richist person.

by giving free whatsapp lifetime membership, facebook is just expanding its users base, when they found that its time and people can no more live without whatsapp they will throw their business in, so no one can resist any longer.

Its obvious to me that by giving free whatsapp lifetime membership, facebook is just expanding its users base, when they found that its time and people can no more live without whatsapp they will throw their business in, so no one can resist any longer. As It already happened with facebook Pages, one each post of pages can reach to all of its followers free, but facebook is deliberately decreasing the organic post reach of your facebook pages they charge you money to increase reach of your page posts. As people have pages with millions of fans and in order to reach their fans facebook charges per post from page owners. They can do very much same thing with whatsapp. They can easily charge whatsapp’s free call feature. 

Selling their Big Data

Now whatsapp one million active users exchange on average 42 billion text messages daily, 250 million videos daily and also billions of pictures. All these messages reveal a lot of insights to individual’s life I.e. what things that people often talk, what is the most talked about gadget and what are they planning to spend their money. Facebook can use all this data to targeted advertisement for individual’s and therefore boosting its advertisement business. Also they can sell this data to other companies which are willing to pay for it.

Why Apple shifting to a Budget and 4’ Screen iPhone

iPhone 5SE

The reports are that apple is working on a budget and 4 inch screen model of new I Phone which is called iPhone 5SE. This cheaper version of iPhone will be launched at an Apple event on 15^th of march 2016 along with its line of tablets iPad and iPad Air 3. As by the time Apple is selling millions of iPhones worth billions of dollars, ever since the launch of iPhone in 2007. Question is why they bother to make a smaller and cheaper phone if the customers are happily buying overpriced phones like hot cakes.

 "Apple is selling millions of iPhones worth billions of dollars, ever since the launch of iPhone in 2007"

To get the answer we have to look back to the history of the iPhone. The original iPhone was launched back in 2007 by legendary Steve Jobs. Right from the start of its launch, iPhone took the smart phone marker with storm and its sales are increasing year by year with every new iteration, breaking records set by the previous one. From first iPhone to iPhone 5S company stick to 4 inch screen size, but due to abundance of large screens android flagships Apple pushed the screen size of iPhone to 4.7” and 5.5’ with iPhone 6 and 6Plus. 

 In 2015 Apple’s new line of iPhones has same 4.7’ and 5.5’ screen sizes. Although the Apple reaped a record profit in last quarter of the years but at the same time the sales of its phone are not up to assumptions. Analysts said that the iPhones sales will be low this year which means that for the first time in iPhone history Apple will see a decline in demand of its phone. Thanks to the low economic growth of global economy and spatially of Chine because in recent years it’s the biggest iPhone market after USA beating the iPhone sales in Europe. 

 "in recent years China is the biggest iPhone market after USA beating the iPhone sales in Europe"

The demand of the iPhones will also be low due to other factors like saturation of the global smart phone market and lake of innovation in new iPhones models and stiffing of the competition due to new players in smart phone market. Its worth mentioning that the new iPhone design is same as the phones in previous years and with little modification of underneath hardware and no striking feature to attract the customers to dump the previous phone and rush for the new one.

Now due to slowing down to intake of new iPhones in the developed world Apple wants to continue current string of sale by invading new market in developing countries like India and Nigeria.  In these countries smart phone market is rapidly expanding but due to low per capita income majority can’t afford to buy a high end device likes of iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S series. So major player in these markets are not high end devices instead budget smart phones are the devices which rule this deprived world. 

"due to slowing down to intake of new iPhones in the developed world Apple wants to continue current string of sale by invading new market in developing countries like India and Nigeria"

So the path is clear for Apple, if it wants to grab its chunks from developing countries then it has play by “bugdet rule” i.e company has to offer a smart phone whose prices, style and features  can stand tall with other budget phones of Xiomi, Huawei and Samsung. And here the phone manufactured by Apple for this purpose naming iPhone 5SE.

This 4 inch screen phone will be much lower in price than iPhone 7 and 7Plus. Apple is hoping that with the help to this it will increase its presence in developing markets too. So as iPhone name has a crazy brand following its more likely that this budget phone will take the emerging markets by storms and will boast Apple’s slumping share values.

" iPhone name has a crazy brand following its more likely that this budget phone will take the emerging markets by storms and will boast Apple’s slumping share values."