Apple unveils premium iPhone XS, smartwatch

Agencies
September 13, 2018

Apple unveiled three new iPhones on Wednesday in a bid to bolster its spot in the premium smartphone market, along with an upgraded smartwatch that takes electrocardiograms and detects falls.

The California tech giant said it would begin selling its 5.8-inch iPhone XS and 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max later this month, keeping the starting price of the company's top-end model at $999 but bumping the entry price for the version with the larger screen.

Apple also announced a new iPhone XR starting at $749, available in October, with a 6.1-inch display to broaden its pool of buyers.

The phones are updates to last year's iPhone X ("10"), which marks the 10th anniversary of the smartphone -- stretching the screen while keeping the overall handset size at or near that of previous models.

"I think Apple did extremely well here," GlobalData analyst Avi Greengart said after checking out the new offerings at the unveiling at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

"Overall, this is going to be a very good year for Apple."

The analyst expected the line-up to be a hit, pushing up the average selling price of Apple smartphones.

The new iPhones have more powerful processors and cameras, and a dual-SIM card feature for top-of-the-line devices. Home buttons were replaced with screen swipes, taps and facial recognition capabilities.

"We are going to take iPhone X to the next level," chief executive Tim Cook said.

While the iPhone has made Apple the world's most valuable company, worth more than $1 trillion, it has slipped to third place among smartphone makers as Chinese-based Huawei has grabbed the number two spot behind Samsung.

Analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy said Apple had done enough "to keep its smartphone growth going until the competition responds."

Apple said the XS models would be sold from September 21 and the XR from October 26. 

Apple also introduced a fourth generation of the Apple Watch with a major redesign -- and a series of features designed to improve its performance as a medical and health device.

The watch, sold in the United States from $399 and up, will be available in stores on September 21.

"Apple Watch has become an intelligent guardian for your health," chief operating officer Jeff Williams said.

The smartwatches are able to detect hard falls, and an electrical heart rate sensor can take an electrocardiogram.

"This is the first ECG product offered over the counter directly to consumers," Williams said.

"Now you can take an ECG any time, anywhere, right from the wrist."

The fall detection upgrade is expected to appeal to worker safety concerns in factories or other industrial settings, as well as to elderly or disabled users.

"Identifying a fall may sound like a straightforward problem, but it requires a lot of data analysis," Williams said.

If a person falls, and then is motionless, the watch will call emergency services, he added.

Moorhead said the health features for the new devices were notable.

"I can see kids buying one for their parents and grandparents," he said of the smartwatch.

"I believe Series 4 will sell better than all previous models."

The current version of Apple Watch is the most popular watch in the world, according to Cook.

Apple stressed its devotion to data privacy, saying all health information gathered is encrypted on the smartwatch to be shared only as users see fit. 

Research firm CB Insights said Apple is at a "crossroads" a decade after introducing the iPhone.

"Looking for the next wave, Apple is clearly expanding into augmented reality and wearables with the Apple Watch and AirPods wireless headphones," the firm said.

"But the next 'big one' -- a success and growth driver on the scale of the iPhone -- has not yet been determined. Will it be augmented reality, auto, wearables? Or something else entirely?"

Apple's event comes with the global smartphone market at near-peak saturation, and without a major catalyst for sales ahead of a likely rollout of 5G, or fifth generation, wireless networks, expected in 2019.

Research firm IDC expects worldwide smartphone shipments to decline 0.7 percent in 2018 to 1.455 billion units, with growth likely to resume as 5G devices become available.

Cook said Apple was nearing the two-billion mark for devices with its mobile operating system known as iOS.

"We are about to hit a major milestone. We are about to ship our two billionth iOS device," he said.

"This is astonishing -- iOS has changed the way we live."

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News Network
November 10,2024

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has warned that disciplinary action will be taken against those officials who change the land mutation records and serve eviction notices to farmers under the Waqf Act.

In a letter, the Revenue Department Principal Secretary Rajender Kumar Kataria reminded all regional commissioners and deputy commissioners in the districts that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently had a meeting following complaints about certain land properties being made in favour of the Karnataka Board of Waqfs.

In the meeting it was decided that all the directions issued previously by any government office or authority to change the mutation records has been withdrawn, the letter said.

It added that all the notices served in the past have also been withdrawn and no action should be taken against the farmers who are cultivating on the said land.

On the directions of the chief minister, the previous letters and the latest reminders served on November 7 to the farmers and land owners have been withdraw, the letter said.

"The officials who served reminder-2 despite the chief minister's direction will face appropriate disciplinary action," Kataria said in his letter.

He said he has been instructed to strictly implement the chief minister's direction.

The fresh direction was issued in poll-bound Karnataka, where bypolls to three crucial assembly segments are due on November 13.

Some farmers in Honwad village in Vijayapura in north Karnataka had alleged last month that they were served eviction notices as the Waqf Board claimed rights over it.

Subsequently, complaints started in pouring in from some other parts of the state.

BJP leader Tejasvi Surya on October 25 alleged that Karnataka Waqf Minister B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan directed the deputy commissioners and revenue officials to register lands in favour of the Waqf Board within 15 days, which resulted in confusion.

On Surya's request, the Chairman of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, Jagdambika Pal visited Karnataka on November 7 and met farmers in Hubballi, Vijayapura and Belagavi districts who had alleged that their lands were marked as Waqf properties.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 21,2024

palestainetragedy.jpg

Hamas says the Israeli regime’s sole objective lies in “erasing” the entirety of the Palestinian population from across the Palestinian territories.

Khalil al-Hayya, a ranking official with the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement, made the remarks to the Palestinian al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday.

“The occupation targets everyone—it strikes hospitals, civil defense, women, children, and the elderly,” he said, adding that the regime sought to “empty Gaza of its residents, and displace the Palestinian people to fulfill its dreams of building a Zionist Jewish state across all of Palestine.”

The remarks came amid the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the coastal sliver that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 44,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“This unprecedented aggression in modern times evokes scenes from the dark ages of human history, having crossed all red lines and exceeded every expectation of brutality in the modern era,” the Palestinian official lamented.

He also regretted that the regime had added “systematic and dangerous starvation to its aggression, falsely claiming before the world that it allows 250 [aid] trucks into Gaza daily. In reality, the number of trucks is far fewer.”

Hayya, meanwhile, regretted that “scenes of children torn apart, women screaming over their children, and heart-wrenching destruction have failed to stir enough humanity to stop these crimes.”

He decried the United States for vetoing the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions that are aimed at bringing about a potential ceasefire in the war, saying this indicated Washington’s “partnership in the aggression” and a simultaneous siege that the Israeli regime has been enforcing on Gaza.

Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official asserted that, despite what the Israeli official is after, Hamas would not hand over the regime’s captives “without [the regime’s] stopping the war.”

He called Netanyahu “the main obstacle” in the way of cessation of the aggression, saying the Israeli premier “blocks any progress for political reasons,” and citing his preventing conclusion of a ceasefire agreement in July.

Hayya also warned that the regime sought to expand the war beyond Gaza, but asserted that its goals are “impossible and will never happen.”

“Today, the enemy exposes its true intentions of extermination and displacement, but it will fail,” he stressed.

“The Palestinian people are resilient and will not surrender, as they believe in their humanitarian and political cause. The enemy and its allies will not succeed in achieving their goals. This steadfast people will endure, and the occupation will not prevail against them.”

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