Tech giant Apple intends to use the world’s first low-carbon aluminium in iPhone SE, the company announced on Thursday.

With the help of $4.7 billion investments in green bonds, Apple could jump-start the development of new low-carbon manufacturing and recycling technologies, the company said in a statement.

Since 2016, Apple has issued three Green Bonds aimed to accelerate progress toward the company’s goal to become carbon neutral across its supply chain by 2030.

As part of this work, Apple announced it is purchasing direct carbon-free aluminium from Canada-based ELYSIS – the company behind the world’s first direct carbon-free aluminium smelting process.

The aluminium is the first to be manufactured at industrial scale outside of a laboratory without creating any direct carbon emissions during the smelting process. The breakthrough technology produces oxygen instead of greenhouse gases, and the achievement marks a major milestone in the production of aluminium, one of the world’s most widely used metals.

Apple said it intends for the material, produced by using hydropower, to be introduced in the iPhone SE.

“Apple is committed to leaving the planet better than we found it, and our Green Bonds are a key tool to drive our environmental efforts forward,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, in the statement.

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Meta Platforms Inc will make it easier for brands to run three-dimensional ads on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms through a new partnership with an ecommerce technology firm.

The integration with VNTANA will allow brands to upload the 3D models of their products to Facebook and Instagram and easily convert them into ads, VNTANA said on Thursday in a press release.

The move is a stepping stone into advertising in the metaverse, said VNTANA Chief Executive Ashley Crowder, referring to the futuristic idea of a collection of virtual worlds that can be accessed through devices such as headsets.

Meta has staked its future on contributing to the building of the metaverse, which it has said could take up to a decade to be realized.

Meta previously partnered with augmented reality (AR) companies Modiface and PerfectCorp to help beauty and cosmetic brands more easily run 3D and AR advertising.

“The metaverse is basically the spatial internet,” Crowder said. “It is a whole world of possibility that starts with having the right 3D models of your products.”

Facebook and Instagram users who see a 3D ad while browsing on their desktop or phone can interact with an image of a handbag, for instance, and move it around to view the item from all angles.

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Edtech giant Byju’s has been announced as an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Through this partnership, Bengaluru-based Byju’s will leverage its rights to the FIFA World Cup 2022 marks, emblem, and assets, and run unique promotions to connect with passionate football fans around the world. It will also create engaging and creative content with educational messages as part of a multifaceted activation plan.

“FIFA is dedicated to harnessing the power of football towards the goal of enacting positive societal change. We’re delighted to be partnered with a company like Byju’s, which is also engaging communities and empowering young people wherever they may be in the world,” said Kay Madati, FIFA’s Chief Commercial Officer.

“We look forward to supporting the promotion of Byju’s educational learning opportunities, as well as having them join the global drumbeat of excitement for the FIFA World Cup 2022 through its association with this groundbreaking tournament.”

Byju Raveendran, Byju’s founder, and CEO, said the company is excited to be sponsoring the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, the biggest single-sport event in the world.

“It is a matter of pride for us to represent India on such a prestigious global stage and champion the integration of education and sport,” said Raveendran. “Sport is a big part of life and brings together people across the world. Just as football inspires billions, we at Byju’s hope to inspire the love of learning in every child’s life through this partnership.”

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American multinational corporation Qualcomm will be investing Rs 3,904.55 crore to expand their Hyderabad operations and are planning to inaugurate their second largest campus outside the US in October 2022.

This investment would be made over a period of five years and will lead to an employment generation for about 8,700 software professionals.

The new campus coming up in Hyderabad will be spread over an area of 1.572 million square feet in Rayadurgam. The campus will be ready for inauguration by October 2022.

The leadership team of Qualcomm informed this to Telangana’s Information Technology and Industries Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who is currently on a visit to the US.

The leadership team from Qualcomm comprising their CFO, Akash Palkhiwala, VPs James Jean, Laxmi Rayapudi, Parag Agashe, and Senior Director Dev Singh met Rama Rao at their headquarters in San Diego.

During the meeting, the Telangana government agreed to partner with Qualcomm in areas such as agriculture, Smart Cities, digital education, and connected devices.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, also met electric vehicle company Fisker Inc’s Chairman & CEO Henrik Fisker, CFO Geeta Fisker, and the management team.

He thanked the leadership team of Fisker for choosing Hyderabad to set up their IT Development Center. The initial headcount of this upcoming center will be 300 IT professionals.

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Meta-owned encrypted messaging service WhatsApp has started rolling out the much-awaited multi-device support for all users.

Till now, the feature has been available to users under WhatsApp’s opt-in beta testing programme. Now, according to WABetainfo, the update will roll out to iOS users this month, followed by an Android release next month.

With the new update, your primary device will not have to remain online in order to access the platform.

Viewing live location is not possible on paired devices. Creating and viewing broadcast lists or sending messages with link previews from WhatsApp Web cannot be performed on the secondary devices.

WhatsApp has also started rolling out emoji reactions in beta on Android.

The emoji reactions have started appearing in beta version 2.22.8.3 of the service’s Android app, giving users a quick and easy way to respond to incoming messages.

With a long-press of a received message, the feature lets users react with one of six emoji — thumbs up, heart, crying, laughter, shocked face, or folded hands (usually taken to mean “thank you”).

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Samsung already has two foldable smartphones lineup: Galaxy Z Fold as Galaxy Z Flip and now a new report has claimed that there might be a third foldable in the pipeline.

As per GSMArena, three codenames for foldables are being circulated – B4, Q4 and N4.

Since last year’s names for the Z Flip3 and the Z Fold3 were B3 and Q3, it’s probably safe to assume that the N4 codename belongs to an entirely different foldable handset.

Samsung recently patented a new Galaxy smartphone with a sideways folding display.

According to the patent’s drawings, there is a triple-camera setup and LED flash. The design features a hinge on the lower left-hand side, as well as three magnets to keep the display stuck to the back cover.

The smartphone may come with two-part battery, and that the folding display would be made of Samsung’s UTG (Ultra Thin Glass), the same protective layer that’s used on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold3 and Z Flip3.

The patent describes the technology that is needed to make a transparent smartphone and can even be used in other electronic gadgets as well, including TVs, monitors, laptops and gaming consoles.

According to the report, the device seen in the patent has narrow bezels and a large transparent screen and an OLED panel is apparently used.

Samsung has shipped four times more foldable devices in 2021 than last year, exceeding the three-fold market growth that analysts expected.

According to the company, the consumer enthusiasm for Samsung foldables is exemplified by the success of the Galaxy Z series.

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Instagram announced it is bringing back the chronological feed.

According to GSM Arena, the new version of the app has two optional feeds, which you can get to by tapping on the Instagram logo at the top.

The first is called Following, and this is the chronological feed of every post from every account you follow, while the other one is called Favorites.

You can add up to 50 accounts as your favorites, and when choosing this feed you’ll only see their posts – also sorted chronologically.

Additionally, posts from accounts in your Favorites will show up higher in the home feed. You can make changes to the Favorites list at any time, as people are not notified when you add or remove them.

However, neither of these new feeds can be set as the default, at least for now. So every time you go into Instagram, you’ll still see the default algorithm-based feed, and if you want either the Following or Favorites feed, you’ll need to manually select that.

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Samsung unveiled its first 8K QLED TV back in 2018 and now the company has announced that the latest generation Neo QLED 8K TV sets will be shown off in a live stream on March 30.

The ‘UnboxDiscover’ event will be live-streamed on YouTube and Samsung.com.

“On March 30, Samsung is set to unveil how its vision for its latest Neo QLED 8K is set to redefine the role of the screen and bring unrivaled usability to their users’ daily lives by providing utmost convenience and seamless connectivity,” the brand said in a statement.

The post-pandemic economic recovery, faster upgrades in the entry tier and pent-up demand aided by festive sales helped India’s TV shipments grew at highest-ever 24 per cent (on-year) last year.

The smart TV market grew even faster at 55 per cent (on-year) in 2021 and 65 per cent (on-quarter) in Q4 2021 to reach its highest ever shipments for a calendar year.

The overall smart TV share in the TV market soared to 84 per cent in 2021 from 67 per cent in 2020.

Xiaomi continued to lead the smart TV segment in 2021 with 18 per cent market share, followed by Samsung (also with 18 per cent share) and LG with 11 per cent market share in 2021.

While, OnePlus saw a record 354 per cent shipment growth during the year and ranked fifth in smart TV shipments, ralme shipments grew 72 per cent YoY in 2021.

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Tech giant Microsoft is pushing ahead with plans to warn Windows 11 users that have installed the operating system on unsupported hardware.

In a new update to Windows 11, a watermark has appeared on the desktop wallpaper for unsupported systems, alongside a similar warning in the landing page of the settings app, reports The Verge.

The tech giant had been testing these changes last month, but they are now rolling out to Release Preview just ahead of a full release to all Windows 11 users in the coming days.

While Microsoft does not mention the addition of a watermark in its “improvements” list for this update, testers have noticed it’s included.

If Windows 11 is running on unsupported hardware, a new desktop watermark will state “System requirements not met. Go to settings to learn more”.

It is similar, but far less prominent, to the semi-transparent watermark that appears in Windows if users have not activated the OS.

It is been possible to bypass Microsoft’s minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11 and install the operating system freely, the report said.

The controversial hardware requirements mean Windows 11 only officially supports Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen+ and Zen 2 CPUs and up, leaving millions of PCs behind.

Anyone that has used the workaround will now start to see this warning in Windows 11, as per the report.

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Petrol and diesel prices on Wednesday were hiked by 80 paise a litre each for the second day in a row since the ending of an over four-and-half month hiatus in rate revision.

Petrol in Delhi will now cost Rs 97.01 per litre as against Rs 96.21 previously while diesel rate has gone up from Rs 87.47 per litre to Rs 88.27, according to a price notification of state fuel retailers.

A record 137-day hiatus in rate revision ended on March 22 with an 80 paise per litre increase in rates. Prices had been on a freeze since November 4 ahead of the assembly elections in states like Uttar Pradesh and Punjab – a period during which the cost of raw material (crude oil) soared by USD 30 per barrel.

Oil companies are now recouping the losses.

According to CRISIL Research, a hike of Rs 15-20 per litre is required to fully pass the increase in international oil prices.

India is 85 per cent dependent on imports to meet its oil needs.

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