Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sales halted; company issues statement and worldwide recall of handsets

Reports of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phablets exploding had recently hit the news. The actual source of the trouble is unknown Samsung took their time responding. Finally, after at least 35 reports of exploding phones poured in, Samsung has today issued an official statement announcing that it will replace every single Note 7 handset out there with a new one.

Korean news agency Yonhap News, has reported that Samsung held a conference in South Korea with regards to the same. The agency states that Samsung investigated the issue and has concluded that it was due to faulty battery cells.

Koh Dong-jin, head of Samsung’s handset business division, confirmed to reporters at the conference that only 24 out of 1 million units have been found to have faulty batteries.

“As of Sept. 1, a total of 35 claims were registered with Samsung’s service centers at home and abroad. Only 24 units on a scale of 1 million were affected by the battery problem,” he said.

“By putting our top priority on customer safety, we’ve decided to halt sales (of Galaxy Note 7) and offer new replacement handsets to all customers,”

Samsung has issued an official statement on the same issue as well that clarifies any doubts for customers who have already received their handsets.

“Samsung is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously. In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue.

To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7.

For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.

We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers. We are working closely with our partners to ensure the replacement experience is as convenient and efficient as possible.”

Out here in India, Samsung today had just begun rolling out its Galaxy Note 7 handsets to physical stores and online channels as the handset had hit pre-order on 22 August with a positive response.

Those who pre-ordered the devices are, however, receiving the following message from Samsung, “Thank you for pre-booking Galaxy Note7. We regret to inform that delivery of your Galaxy Note 7 is being delayed. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. You can be assured that we are working hard to deliver your Galaxy Note7 to you as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding.”

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

Samsung Galaxy S8 leak points to big dual-camera changes

With most of 2016's major smartphones now here and seemingly almost nothing left to learn about the iPhone 7, attention is turning to 2017 and to the Samsung Galaxy S8, which if the latest rumors are to be believed could have a very different camera to the Samsung Galaxy S7.

According to a Weibo leaker, the flagship will have a dual-lens rear camera, which is becoming a common feature for phones, with the LG G5 and Huawei P9 both sporting one, while the iPhone 7 Plus and LG V20 are also rumored to offer it too.

Apparently one lens on the S8 will be 12MP (just like on the S7), while the other will be 13MP, and the company will supposedly be using both its own lenses and Sony's.

This isn't the first time a dual-lens camera has been rumored for the Galaxy S8 and it's a believable feature, with so many rivals opting for the same. What's not clear though is what purpose the second lens would serve. It might be monochrome like in the Huawei P9, wide-angle like the LG G5 or something else entirely.

Upgrades all round

But according to the Weibo post, spotted by TechAndroids, it's not just the rear camera that's changing, as the front-facing camera on the Samsung Galaxy S8 will apparently be 8MP, up from 5MP on the Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

This too is a believable change, as Samsung hasn't changed the spec of its flagship selfie snapper in a couple of years.

Supposedly the S8 will also have an iris scanner, which is the most believable part of the leak, as an iris scanner was one of the Note 7's big new features and it would make sense for Samsung to carry it over to the Galaxy S8 - although it was largely ineffective.

But while all these things seem more than possible we'd still take them with a pinch of salt for now, as the Galaxy S8 is months away and the leaker has provided no real evidence for their claims.

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

The Best Encryption Software of 2016

Businesses, websites, and government agencies that store your personal data have a duty to protect that data from hackers. Not that even the best practices and security software can keep the hackers out—they always find a way in. But if the data is properly encrypted, stealing it doesn't do the hacker much good. You can up your security game by encrypting sensitive data on your own desktop and laptop computers. We've rounded up a collection of products to help you with that project. This isn't an exhaustive list, and we will update this story with additional products in the future.

No Back Doors

When the FBI needed information from the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, they asked Apple for a back door to get past the encryption. But no such back door existed, and Apple refused to create one. The FBI had to hire hackers to get into the phone.

All of the products in this roundup explicitly state that they have no back door, and that's as it should be. It does mean that if you encrypt an essential document and then forget the encryption password, you've lost it for good.

Two Main Approaches

Back in the day, if you wanted to keep a document secret you could use a cipher to encrypt it and then burn the original. Or you could lock it up in a safe. The two main approaches in encryption utilities parallel these options.

Which is better? It really depends on how you plan to use encryption. If you're not sure, take advantage of the 30-day free trial offered by all of these products to get a feel for the different options.

Secure Those Originals

After you copy a file into secure storage, or create an encrypted version of it, you absolutely need to wipe the unencrypted original. Just deleting it isn't sufficient, even if you bypass the Recycle Bin, because the data still exists on disk, and data recovery utilities can often get it back.

Overwriting data before deletion is sufficient to balk software-based recovery tools. Hardware-based forensic recovery works because the magnetic recording of data on a hard drive isn't actually digital. It's more of a wave form. In simple terms, the process involves nulling out the known data and reading around the edges of what's left. If you really think someone (the feds?) might use this technique to recover your incriminating files, you can set your secure deletion tool to make more passes overwriting the data.

Encryption Algorithms

An encryption algorithm is like a black box. Dump a document, image, or other file into it, and you get back what seems like gibberish. Run that gibberish back through the box, with the same password, and you get back the original.

If you're an encryption expert, you may prefer another algorithm, Blowfish, perhaps, or the Soviet government's GOST. For the average user, however, AES is just fine.

Public Key Cryptography and Sharing

Passwords are important, and you have to keep them secret, right? Well, not when you use Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) cryptography.

With PKI, you get two keys. One is public; you can share it with anyone, register it in a key exchange, tattoo it on your forehead—whatever you like. The other is private, and should be closely guarded. If I want to send you a secret document, I simply encrypt it with your public key. When you receive it, your private key decrypts it. Simple!

If you want to share a file with someone and your encryption tool doesn't support PKI, there are other options for sharing. Many products allow creation of a self-decrypting executable file. You may also find that the recipient can use a free, decryption-only tool.

What's the Best?

Right now there are two Editors' Choice products in the consumer-accessible encryption field. One is the easiest to use of the bunch, the other is the most secure.

AxCrypt Premium has a sleek, modern look, and when its active you'll hardly notice it. Files in its Secured Folders get encrypted automatically when you sign out, and it's one of the few that support public key cryptography.

CertainSafe Digital Safety Deposit Box goes through a multi-stage security handshake that authenticates you to the site and authenticates the site to you. Your files are encrypted, split into chunks, and tokenized. Then each chunk gets stored on a different server. A hacker who breached one server would get nothing useful.

The other products here also have their merits, of course. Read the full reviews and decide which one you'll use to protect your files. Have an opinion on one of the apps reviewed here, or a favorite tool we didn't mention? Let us know in the comments.


for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

Paytm parent in talks to raise $300 million from Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Mediatek

One97 Communications, which runs mobile payment and ecommerce platform Paytm, is in advanced talks to raise fresh funding of about Rs 2,000 crore ($300 million) from Taiwanese semiconductor maker MediaTek, Goldman Sachs, Singapore's Temasek and other investors, according to two persons with knowledge of the development.

This round will see Paytm's valuation more than doubling to $5 billion.

Existing investors, which include Alibaba and its payments affiliate Alipay besides venture capital firm SAIF Partners, will also be participating.

"The new round is expected to value the company at close to $5 billion," said one of the people cited above. The money will be deployed across all of Paytm's businesses -digital payments, online marketplace and the upcoming payments bank," the person said.

Paytm was valued at $2.3 billion in the last round of capital infusion in June.

Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd, set up earlier this month, will house the marketplace and is expected to initially mirror parent One97's shareholding. This unit is also expected to become the launchpad for Alibaba's online operations. The Chinese company's business-to-consumer site Tmall is expected to make its India debut in six months.

Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who holds the payments bank licence in his personal capacity, has established Paytm Payment Bank to house the financial services business.

The arm's CEO Shinjini Kumar and Ash Lilani, whose investment firm Saama Capital is an early Paytm backer, are on the board of this entity. The bank is likely to be launched in October.

ET was the first to report on Paytm's plans to spin off its ecommerce business and raise fresh capital in its March 21 edition.

The new round of financing comes after Alibaba and Alipay invested a total Rs 4,400 crore in 2015, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) filings. Paytm has said it raised about $675 million from Alibaba and Alipay.

ET could not ascertain the cash split between the payments bank and commerce business. Paytm did not reply to a detailed email questionnaire sent by ET and multiple calls made to its spokesperson. There was no response to emails sent to MediaTek, Goldman Sachs and Temasek.

If the deal goes through, it will be the largest financing round in India's broader technology and internet space this year, going past the $200 million raised by online marketplace Snapdeal and $150 million by grocery retailer Bigbasket. Last year saw several bumper rounds with cab hailing app Ola getting $900 million, Flipkart raising $700 million and Snapdeal getting $500 million.

But in the last 10 months, investor sentiment on the broader tech and internet ecosystem has turned cautious. Snapdeal and Flipkart have found it hard to raise capital at their existing valuation, according to multiple sources directly involved in these talks, with the latter also seeing a series of valuation markdowns by mutual fund investors.

What helps Paytm in raising capital is that it has established market leadership in consumer payments, while ecommerce companies like Flipkart are under constant threat from US rival Amazon, according to analysts.

"In the payments space, they (Paytm) have a big lead and an edge in terms of execution on the ground," said Forrester Research analyst Satish Meena.

"They are tapping the next 100 million customers, while other mobile wallets are pushing their services to the same top 50 million customers by offering cashbacks."

Paytm rivals in payments include Mobikwik, which recently raised $40 million from South Africa's Net1, and Snapdeal-owned Freecharge, which has been looking to raise a $150-300 million round since October 2015. Flipkart is also expected to launch its mobile payments business under PhonePe next week, and plans to invest $100 million initially.

Total payments through digital instruments is expected to reach $500 billion by 2020 in India, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group, with customer payments to merchants driving growth.

Paytm has been pushing its offline to online business aggressively over the last 12 months, entering areas like movie ticketing, petrol pump payments, taxi payments and education fees among others.

This is expected to be key drivers in monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) increasing to $500 million by December from $300 million in July, Sharma told ET in an interview earlier this month. Sharma had also said that Paytm is running at a 1% operating loss, which includes online marketing, payment gateway and cashback costs.

According to RoC filings, One97's losses swelled to Rs 1,534 crore in the year ended March from Rs 372 crore in FY15. This would mean that its average monthly cash burn was $19 million as it spent aggressively to build a mobile wallet customer base and launch an online marketplace after first raising capital from Alipay in February 2015.

As of now, Sharma holds 21.33% stake in One97 and its earliest venture capital investor SAIF Partners has 30.81%. Alibaba holds 8.53% while Alipay is the single largest shareholder with a 32.41% holding.

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

Paytm parent in talks to raise $300 million from Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Mediatek

One97 Communications, which runs mobile payment and ecommerce platform Paytm, is in advanced talks to raise fresh funding of about Rs 2,000 crore ($300 million) from Taiwanese semiconductor maker MediaTek, Goldman Sachs, Singapore's Temasek and other investors, according to two persons with knowledge of the development.

This round will see Paytm's valuation more than doubling to $5 billion.

Existing investors, which include Alibaba and its payments affiliate Alipay besides venture capital firm SAIF Partners, will also be participating.

"The new round is expected to value the company at close to $5 billion," said one of the people cited above. The money will be deployed across all of Paytm's businesses -digital payments, online marketplace and the upcoming payments bank," the person said.

Paytm was valued at $2.3 billion in the last round of capital infusion in June.

Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd, set up earlier this month, will house the marketplace and is expected to initially mirror parent One97's shareholding. This unit is also expected to become the launchpad for Alibaba's online operations. The Chinese company's business-to-consumer site Tmall is expected to make its India debut in six months.

Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who holds the payments bank licence in his personal capacity, has established Paytm Payment Bank to house the financial services business.

The arm's CEO Shinjini Kumar and Ash Lilani, whose investment firm Saama Capital is an early Paytm backer, are on the board of this entity. The bank is likely to be launched in October.

ET was the first to report on Paytm's plans to spin off its ecommerce business and raise fresh capital in its March 21 edition.

The new round of financing comes after Alibaba and Alipay invested a total Rs 4,400 crore in 2015, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) filings. Paytm has said it raised about $675 million from Alibaba and Alipay.

ET could not ascertain the cash split between the payments bank and commerce business. Paytm did not reply to a detailed email questionnaire sent by ET and multiple calls made to its spokesperson. There was no response to emails sent to MediaTek, Goldman Sachs and Temasek.

If the deal goes through, it will be the largest financing round in India's broader technology and internet space this year, going past the $200 million raised by online marketplace Snapdeal and $150 million by grocery retailer Bigbasket. Last year saw several bumper rounds with cab hailing app Ola getting $900 million, Flipkart raising $700 million and Snapdeal getting $500 million.

But in the last 10 months, investor sentiment on the broader tech and internet ecosystem has turned cautious. Snapdeal and Flipkart have found it hard to raise capital at their existing valuation, according to multiple sources directly involved in these talks, with the latter also seeing a series of valuation markdowns by mutual fund investors.

What helps Paytm in raising capital is that it has established market leadership in consumer payments, while ecommerce companies like Flipkart are under constant threat from US rival Amazon, according to analysts.

"In the payments space, they (Paytm) have a big lead and an edge in terms of execution on the ground," said Forrester Research analyst Satish Meena.

"They are tapping the next 100 million customers, while other mobile wallets are pushing their services to the same top 50 million customers by offering cashbacks."

Paytm rivals in payments include Mobikwik, which recently raised $40 million from South Africa's Net1, and Snapdeal-owned Freecharge, which has been looking to raise a $150-300 million round since October 2015. Flipkart is also expected to launch its mobile payments business under PhonePe next week, and plans to invest $100 million initially.

Total payments through digital instruments is expected to reach $500 billion by 2020 in India, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group, with customer payments to merchants driving growth.

Paytm has been pushing its offline to online business aggressively over the last 12 months, entering areas like movie ticketing, petrol pump payments, taxi payments and education fees among others.

This is expected to be key drivers in monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) increasing to $500 million by December from $300 million in July, Sharma told ET in an interview earlier this month. Sharma had also said that Paytm is running at a 1% operating loss, which includes online marketing, payment gateway and cashback costs.

According to RoC filings, One97's losses swelled to Rs 1,534 crore in the year ended March from Rs 372 crore in FY15. This would mean that its average monthly cash burn was $19 million as it spent aggressively to build a mobile wallet customer base and launch an online marketplace after first raising capital from Alipay in February 2015.

As of now, Sharma holds 21.33% stake in One97 and its earliest venture capital investor SAIF Partners has 30.81%. Alibaba holds 8.53% while Alipay is the single largest shareholder with a 32.41% holding.

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

Paytm parent in talks to raise $300 million from Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Mediatek

One97 Communications, which runs mobile payment and ecommerce platform Paytm, is in advanced talks to raise fresh funding of about Rs 2,000 crore ($300 million) from Taiwanese semiconductor maker MediaTek, Goldman Sachs, Singapore's Temasek and other investors, according to two persons with knowledge of the development.

This round will see Paytm's valuation more than doubling to $5 billion.

Existing investors, which include Alibaba and its payments affiliate Alipay besides venture capital firm SAIF Partners, will also be participating.

"The new round is expected to value the company at close to $5 billion," said one of the people cited above. The money will be deployed across all of Paytm's businesses -digital payments, online marketplace and the upcoming payments bank," the person said.

Paytm was valued at $2.3 billion in the last round of capital infusion in June.

Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd, set up earlier this month, will house the marketplace and is expected to initially mirror parent One97's shareholding. This unit is also expected to become the launchpad for Alibaba's online operations. The Chinese company's business-to-consumer site Tmall is expected to make its India debut in six months.

Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who holds the payments bank licence in his personal capacity, has established Paytm Payment Bank to house the financial services business.

The arm's CEO Shinjini Kumar and Ash Lilani, whose investment firm Saama Capital is an early Paytm backer, are on the board of this entity. The bank is likely to be launched in October.

ET was the first to report on Paytm's plans to spin off its ecommerce business and raise fresh capital in its March 21 edition.

The new round of financing comes after Alibaba and Alipay invested a total Rs 4,400 crore in 2015, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) filings. Paytm has said it raised about $675 million from Alibaba and Alipay.

ET could not ascertain the cash split between the payments bank and commerce business. Paytm did not reply to a detailed email questionnaire sent by ET and multiple calls made to its spokesperson. There was no response to emails sent to MediaTek, Goldman Sachs and Temasek.

If the deal goes through, it will be the largest financing round in India's broader technology and internet space this year, going past the $200 million raised by online marketplace Snapdeal and $150 million by grocery retailer Bigbasket. Last year saw several bumper rounds with cab hailing app Ola getting $900 million, Flipkart raising $700 million and Snapdeal getting $500 million.

But in the last 10 months, investor sentiment on the broader tech and internet ecosystem has turned cautious. Snapdeal and Flipkart have found it hard to raise capital at their existing valuation, according to multiple sources directly involved in these talks, with the latter also seeing a series of valuation markdowns by mutual fund investors.

What helps Paytm in raising capital is that it has established market leadership in consumer payments, while ecommerce companies like Flipkart are under constant threat from US rival Amazon, according to analysts.

"In the payments space, they (Paytm) have a big lead and an edge in terms of execution on the ground," said Forrester Research analyst Satish Meena.

"They are tapping the next 100 million customers, while other mobile wallets are pushing their services to the same top 50 million customers by offering cashbacks."

Paytm rivals in payments include Mobikwik, which recently raised $40 million from South Africa's Net1, and Snapdeal-owned Freecharge, which has been looking to raise a $150-300 million round since October 2015. Flipkart is also expected to launch its mobile payments business under PhonePe next week, and plans to invest $100 million initially.

Total payments through digital instruments is expected to reach $500 billion by 2020 in India, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group, with customer payments to merchants driving growth.

Paytm has been pushing its offline to online business aggressively over the last 12 months, entering areas like movie ticketing, petrol pump payments, taxi payments and education fees among others.

This is expected to be key drivers in monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) increasing to $500 million by December from $300 million in July, Sharma told ET in an interview earlier this month. Sharma had also said that Paytm is running at a 1% operating loss, which includes online marketing, payment gateway and cashback costs.

According to RoC filings, One97's losses swelled to Rs 1,534 crore in the year ended March from Rs 372 crore in FY15. This would mean that its average monthly cash burn was $19 million as it spent aggressively to build a mobile wallet customer base and launch an online marketplace after first raising capital from Alipay in February 2015.

As of now, Sharma holds 21.33% stake in One97 and its earliest venture capital investor SAIF Partners has 30.81%. Alibaba holds 8.53% while Alipay is the single largest shareholder with a 32.41% holding.

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

The really interesting reason why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code

You walk into your friendly neighborhood ATM kiosk and swipe your card. You then punch in a 4 PIN code to authenticate yourself and proceed to withdraw money. You may have been doing this mechanically since the day ATM was introduced but have you given a thought why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code?  No! Then read on.

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) were first introduced in 1967 and now have emerged as a best option to disburse cash. Instead of visiting your bank and waiting in a long queue to withdraw money, you just have to swipe your ATM card, punch in your secret 4 digit PIN and take away the money you require.

But if someone was to find or steal your card, the only barrier protecting your money is your 4-digit ATM PIN. Ever wondered why most PINs have only 4 digits? Given that an ATM dishes out money wouldnt the manufacturers of ATMS have been wiser to introduce a longish PIN say six digit or eight digit one. Isn’t that why our email passwords are also expected to be 6 letters or more?

You see there is a bit of story behind it. ATM was invented by a wellknown Scottish inventor John Adrian Shepherd-Barron, the man who pioneered the development of the ATM machine. Barron was born in Shillong and was son to a Wimbledon ladies doubles champion, Dorothy Barron. When testing out his invention, Barron had also proposed a 6-digit PIN.

However, the first person to use his invention was his wife, Caroline. We all know that behind every successful man is a woman, and Caroline apparently rejected the idea of using a six code PIN for her husband’s invention because she could only remember the numbers up to four.

When Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he laughs.

Reportedly, 6 numbers stringed together were too much information for her to recall.

Although, there are many banks nowadays that offer 6 digit PINs for security purposes, shouldn’t those of us using 4 digit PINs be thanking Caroline? It gets tough to recall those 4 digits at times, imagine what 6 or more would do to us?

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES