Education on technology

OnePlus kicked off its Road Trip initiative in 2022, a retail experience in a truck used as a mobile showroom travelling across the North-East of India. The company has now entered the second phase of this initiative and is calling it OnePlus Road Trip: Futurebound. This time, there are two trucks that will travel across North and South of India, allowing OnePlus to showcase some of its products as well as concepts and technology demos. OnePlus hosted an event in New Delhi as its new trucks embark on their journeys to 25 cities in India. These trucks, by Mercedes Benz, can transform into fully functional mobile showrooms where users can experience a variety of devices first-hand. Each truck has glass walls with OnePlus decals and glow signs, intended to recreate the feel of the company's OnePlus Experience Stores. Potential consumers can experience the products displayed along both sides of each truck. In the centre is the main highlight of this experience, the OnePlus 11 Conce...

Washington state plans to require electric vehicle charging companies to include Tesla's plug if they want to be part of a state program to electrify highways using federal dollars, an official told Reuters on Thursday. Washington follows the move by Texas to mandate Tesla's technology, The North American Charging Standard (NACS), adding momentum to CEO Elon Musk's hope of making it the national charging technology. GM, Ford, and Rivan have said they would embrace Tesla's NACS, shunning efforts by the Biden administration to make the Combined Charging System (CCS) the dominant charging standard in the United States. "I'm actually really happy about NACS and how finally automakers are gearing towards one standard. We want to provide access to as many make and models as possible," said Tonia Buell, alternative fuels program manager at Washington State's Department of Transportation. "It hasn't necessarily been tested and certified for othe...

iPhone 15 Pro — expected to debut later this year as part of the iPhone 15 series of smartphones — could sport a few subtle changes to the volume and power buttons. According to details shared by a tipster on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging website, the upcoming smartphone will also feature a new multi-function mute button that could replace the popular mute switch, a notable hardware feature found on every iPhone model. The upcoming iPhone 15 series is expected to switch from Apple's Lightning port to a USB Type-C port. Tipster Uncle Pan (translated from Chinese) recently shared images of a purported case for the iPhone 15 Pro on Weibo. The images suggest a familiar rear design with a large cutout for the camera module and support for Apple's MagSafe charging technology. In another image, the tipster holds a case for the iPhone 14 Pro alongside the one for the iPhone 15 Pro, showing subtle changes to the button layout. The most notable change that is visible in the sid...

Indian education technology giant Byju's , which lost its auditor after delaying financial statements, has told investors it will file 2022 audited earnings by September and 2023 results by December, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. Deloitte said on Thursday it was severing ties with Byju's, one of India's most successful startups, over its "long-delayed" financial statements for the year ended March 2022. Board members representing Peak XV Partners, earlier known as Sequoia Capital India, Prosus and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also stepped down, without publicly expressing their reasons. The resignations are among the biggest crises for Byju's, valued last year at $22 billion (roughly Rs. 1,80,321 crore) and backed by the likes of investor General Atlantic. The episode raises questions about the edtech firm's corporate governance and comes weeks after it was raided over suspected violations of foreign exchange laws. Byju's leaders...

US semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials will invest $400 million (roughly Rs. 3,300 crore) over four years in a new engineering centre in India, the company said on Thursday. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the company's CEO Gary Dickerson in Washington on Wednesday and invited Applied to strengthen the chip industry in the country. Applied's investment is among a flurry of announcements this week including General Electric's deal to jointly produce jet engines for the military with state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and data storage chipmaker Micron's $825 million (roughly Rs. 6,760 crore) investment to build a new factory in India. Modi also met Tesla CEO Elon Musk after which the automaker's top boss said the company will try to be in India "as soon as humanly possible." The new center is expected to be located near the company's existing facility in Bengaluru and is likely to support more than $2 billion (roughly Rs. 16,...

US memory chip firm Micron Technology said on Thursday it would invest up to $825 million (roughly Rs. 6,760 crore)in a new chip assembly and test facility in Gujarat, India, its first factory in the country. Micron said that with support from the Indian central government and from the state of Gujarat, the total investment in the facility will be $2.75 billion (roughly Rs. 22,159 crore). Of that total, 50 percent will come from the Indian central government and 20 percent from the state of Gujarat. Reuters reported earlier this week that India's Cabinet approved the project ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to the US, which kicked off on Wednesday. Micron said construction of the new facility in Gujarat is expected to begin in 2023 and the first phase of the project will be operational in late 2024. A second phase of the project is expected to start toward the second half of the decade, it said. The two phases together will create up to 5,000 new direct M...

Apple on Wednesday released the visionOS SDK, a set of tools that will enable developers to build apps for the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. The Cupertino company's first spatial computer will go on sale in the US next year and Apple is providing app developers with the tools required to build apps for the device. Unlike other Apple products, the company's upcoming mixed reality headset will use a combination of three different modes of interaction using a person's eyes, hands, and voice. The visionOS SDK will allow developers to tailor their apps around this functionality while making use of the specialised hardware on the device.   The company announced  on the Apple Developer website that the visionOS SDK is now available to developers. In order to create spatial computing apps for the Apple Vision Pro, developers will have to download Xcode 15 Beta 2 that includes the latest visionOS SDK along with a tool to visualise and preview 3D content for the heads...

The country's online retail market size may touch USD 325 billion (roughly Rs. 26,65,081 crore) by 2030 against USD 70 billion (roughly Rs. 5,74,017 crore) in 2022, mainly due to rapid growth of e-commerce in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, according to a Deloitte India report released on Tuesday. It also said that online retail penetration is projected to grow at an extraordinary rate, and it would outpace offline retail by 2.5 times in the next decade. As India ascends to become the world's third-largest consumer market, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP's (Deloitte India's) 'Future of Retail' report "foresees the online retail sector, which stood at USD 70 billion (roughly Rs. 5,74,017 crore) in 2022, to surge to USD 325 billion (roughly Rs. 26,65,081 crore) by 2030". The report attributes these projections to the rapid growth of e-commerce in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, which have surpassed tier-1 markets in terms of total orders. In 2022, these citie...

OnePlus kicked off its Road Trip initiative in 2022, a retail experience in a truck used as a mobile showroom travelling across the North-East of India. The company has now entered the second phase of this initiative and is calling it OnePlus Road Trip: Futurebound. This time, there are two trucks that will travel across North and South of India, allowing OnePlus to showcase some of its products as well as concepts and technology demos. OnePlus hosted an event in New Delhi as its new trucks embark on their journeys to 25 cities in India. These trucks, by Mercedes Benz, can transform into fully functional mobile showrooms where users can experience a variety of devices first-hand. Each truck has glass walls with OnePlus decals and glow signs, intended to recreate the feel of the company's OnePlus Experience Stores. Potential consumers can experience the products displayed along both sides of each truck. In the centre is the main highlight of this experience, the OnePlus 11 Conce...