TecQ: PUBG Zombie Mode, Amazon ‘Spy’ Alexa, Samsung Phones & More
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TecQ is our weekly round-up of the technology stories
1. PUBG Zombie Mode: Here Are a Few Tips & Tricks to Survive Longer
PUBG Mobile has rolled out the ‘Zombie: Survive Till Dawn’ mode for smartphone users where the game combines the battle royale format of gameplay with some zombie killing action.
The gameplay features three days and two nights in one 30-minute round accommodating 60 players at a time. The map that the players are dropped in is much smaller than a regular area.
There are multiple types of zombies players encounter and the publishers have added some Hollywood masala to the game by taking zombies from the Resident Evil series such as Police, Licker, and G1 which also includes some zombies created by the PUBG Mobile team.
Read here to know more about the new mode.
2. Samsung Unveils The Galaxy Fold With Two Screens & a Big Price Tag
Samsung has announced the Galaxy Fold, its first ever phone with a foldable screen that will be available to consumers. It gets a rather steep price tag of $1,980 (Rs 1.40 lakh approx) and will be available in LTE and 5G variants from 26 April onwards.
The Galaxy Fold, as Samsung showed at the UnPacked event in the United States on 20 February, gets two screens and works out as a smartphone-cum-tablet with an equally impressive set of six cameras rounding up the device.
The company also confirmed that the team and engineers behind the making of the Galaxy Fold managed to load two batteries which support a single power source.
Read the story here.
3. Amazon Alexa’s ‘Spying’ is a Necessary Evil Users Must Embrace
The Goa Director General of Police, Dr Muktesh Chander, at a seminar on cyber security for the industry, speaking to The Indian Express said, “And what Alexa does. All the time it is listening. Everything. Every word you are saying, Alexa is listening and passing it on to Google (Chander then corrects himself and says Amazon). “What can be a bigger spy than this?”, he added.
To get more clarity around this, The Quint spoke to Dr Muktesh Chander who told us that "these devices (smart home devices) have microphones, they are capable of listening. Don't keep them on throughout if you don't need them."
On asking him about his statement to The Indian Express, he added, "Nowhere did I say that Alexa is a spying device.”
Read the story here.
4. Why Airtel Losing Users is Merely Adding to Reliance Jio’s Kitty
Reliance Jio continued to increase its subscriber base in December 2018 as other major telecom operators Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel lost users during this period, data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) showed on Wednesday.
While Reliance Jio added 8.5 million subscribers during the month under review, taking its total subscriber base to 280 million. Vodafone Idea, the largest telecom operator in terms of subscribers, lost around 2.3 million subscriptions and its base by December-end stood at 418 million.
Even Airtel’s total subscriber base came down to 3.4 million, down by 1.1 million users from November, the data showed.
Read the story here.
5. The Affordable Flagship Battle: OnePlus 6T vs Samsung Galaxy S10e
Samsung launched the Galaxy S10e with an eye on the iPhone XR, which costs at least Rs 15,000 more than the former. Having said that, we’ve been intrigued by how Samsung, with a single variant of 6GB + 128GB storage in India has managed to keep it below Rs 60,000.
Which is why, our comparison stakes have gone a bit more ambitious and while many of you might say it is outrageous, we’re pitting it against the OnePlus 6T, even though both these phones carry a price difference of more than Rs 15,000.
We’re terming this as an affordable flagship comparison between these two Android devices and you can read here to know everything about it.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)