From the budget segment to premium, there is no dearth of smartwatches in India’s wearable market. However, your options become limited if you want to pick a fully functional smartwatch to complement your Android smartphone experience. Among these few smartwatches, there are those made by American fashion accessory maker Fossil. Fresh in the line-up is the Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch.

Historically, design has not been an issue with Fossil-branded smartwatches; that legacy continues in the Gen 6 model. The Fossil Gen 6 is a better-looking smartwatch with a classic circular design. Cased in a 44mm anodized aluminium shell (Review unit – Brown Leather), the watch is sleek and compact, and looks well on most wrists. Complementing the case are brown leather straps, which go well with both formal and casual attires. These are quick-release straps of 22mm size. Therefore, you can easily pull them out and replace them with straps of choice. Like previous iterations, the Gen 6 has a three-button layout on the right side of the case – two configurable push buttons and a rotating home button.

As for the screen, it is slightly smaller (1.28-inch) when compared with the last-generation model (1.3-inch). The screen is adequate, irrespective of light conditions, but it does not have enough room for smooth touch operations. Thankfully, the user interface is slick and a quick flick on the touchscreen with a finger gets the job done. The UI is optimised but the performance boost comes because of the Qualcomm

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Meta-owned Facebook Messenger and Instagram are delaying plans to encrypt users’ messages until 2023.

In a post in The Telegraph, Antigone Davis, Meta’s head of safety, attributes the delay to concerns about user safety.

“We are taking our time to get this right and we don’t plan to finish the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023,” Antigone Davis wrote in The Telegraph.

“As a company that connects billions of people around the world and has built industry-leading technology, we’re determined to protect people’s private communications and keep people safe online,” added.

With E2EE only the sender and recipient will see their conversations, the firm wants to ensure that this does not interfere with the platform’s ability to help stop criminal activity.

Facebook had first started rolling out encryption to its Messenger service back in 2016, but it only works when users use the Secret Conversation feature on the service.

Earlier this year, Meta said that default E2EE would become available on Instagram and Messenger “sometime in 2022 at the earliest.”

Facebook has taken criticism over the years for being slow to implement end-to-end encryption by default on all of its platforms.

In addition, Meta is also planning to unify the infrastructure behind the three messaging platforms — Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct.

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Delivery of MG Astor vehicles could get delayed because of shortages of chips and semiconductors in the market, said Gaurav Gupta, Chief Commercial Office of MG Motor India.

“We are all facing a situation very unprecedented. The supply of chips and semiconductors are very uncertain and very dynamic,” Gupta said.

“Sometimes our suppliers, whether it is global or European suppliers, have a weekly schedule which also gets altered. And that makes us change our production plans.”

“We have also seen very high demand for certain variants, which is different from the original plan, for example, our customers of Style and Super. But we have recalibrated our entire work at the backend to be able to support our customer base,” he added.

The automaker aims to deliver its batch 1, which includes first 5,000 cars, in the current calendar year.

“But just in case, there’s a spillover to next year, I can assure you all batch 1 customers will be protected at the launch pricing,” he added.

The MG Astor compact SUV was reportedly launched in India last month with prices starting at Rs 9.78 lakh for the base ‘Style’ variant, while the top-of-the-line ‘Sharp (O)’ variant is priced at Rs 17.38 lakh.

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WhatsApp is adding more details to its privacy policy and flagging that information for European users, after Irish regulators slapped the chat service with a record fine for breaching strict EU data privacy rules.

Starting Monday, WhatsApp’s privacy policy will be reorganized to provide more information on the data it collects and how it’s used. The company said it’s also explaining in more detail how it protects data shared across borders for its global service and the legal foundations for processing the data.

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, now renamed Meta Platforms. With the update, users in Europe will see a banner notification at the top of their chat list that will take them to the new information.

WhatsApp is taking the action after getting hit with a record 225 million euro ($267 million) fine in September from Ireland’s data privacy watchdog for violating stringent European Union data protection rules on transparency about sharing people’s data with other Facebook companies.

The chat service said it disagreed with the decision, but it has to comply by updating its policy while it appeals. The update doesn’t affect how data is handled, and users won’t have to agree to anything new or take any other action.

Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission is the lead privacy regulator for WhatsApp under European Union rules because its regional headquarters is in Dublin.

WhatsApp was embroiled in a separate privacy controversy earlier this year when it botched a different update to its privacy policy that raised concerns users were being forced to agree to share more of their data with Facebook. That update sparked a backlash from users who switched to rival services like Telegram and Signal, an investigation by Turkey’s competition watchdog, a temporary German ban on gathering data, and a complaint by EU consumer groups.

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Twitter users will soon see new warning labels on false and misleading tweets, redesigned to make them more effective and less confusing.

The labels, which the company has been testing since July, are an update from those Twitter used for election misinformation before and after the 2020 presidential contest. Those labels drew criticism for not doing enough to keep people from spreading obvious falsehoods.

The redesign launching worldwide on Tuesday is an attempt to make them more useful and easier to notice, among other things.

Experts say such labels, used by Facebook as well, can be helpful to users. But they can also allow social media platforms to sidestep the more difficult work of content moderation that is, deciding whether or not to remove posts, photos and videos that spread conspiracies and falsehoods.

Twitter only labels three types of misinformation: manipulated media, such as videos and audio that have been deceptively altered in ways that could cause real-world harm; election and voting-related misinformation and false or misleading tweets related to COVID-19.

The new designs added orange and red to the labels so they stand out more than the old version, which was blue and blended in with Twitter’s colour scheme. While this can help, Twitter said its tests showed that if a label is too eye-catching, it leads to more people to retweet and reply to the original tweet.

Twitter said Tuesday the redesigned labels showed a 17% increase in click-through-rate,” which means that more people clicked on the redesigned labels to read the information debunking false or misleading tweets.

Misleading tweets that got the redesigned label with an orange icon and the words stay informed” were also less likely to be retweeted or liked than those with the original labels.

Tweets with more serious misinformation for instance, a tweet claiming that vaccines cause autism will get a stronger label, with the word misleading and a red exclamation point. It won’t be possible to reply to, like or retweet these messages.

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US-based chip maker Qualcomm is planning to announce next-generation Arm-based chips for Windows PCs that would be able to compete with Apple’s M-series processors.

During the company’s Investor Day, Qualcomm CTO Jim Thompson announced Qualcomm’s plans to create a next-gen ARM-based SoC (system-on-a-chip) designed to set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs.

The new chip will be designed by the Nuvia team, which Qualcomm had bought earlier this year for $1.4 billion, the company said late on Tuesday.

Nuvia was founded by John Bruno, Manu Gulati, and Gerard Williams, former Apple employees who previously worked on the team that helped create Apple’s M-series chip.

The Soc in terms of performance for Windows PCs would be able to go head to head with Apple’s M-series processors.

Unlike Qualcomm’s 8cx chips, which are designed primarily to support mobile productivity, Qualcomm envisions its next-gen CPU may challenge Apple’s homegrown silicon in both performance and power efficiency.

Meanwhile, Apple is also reportedly working on new Mac chips, presumably to be called the M2 expected to land as soon as 2023.

The next generation of chips presumably the M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max will use an enhanced 5nm process, reports The Information.

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To be more transparent about the viewership of its top series and movies, video-streaming giant Netflix will begin publishing a weekly report detailing its most popular TV shows and movies.

The company said it will publish the new weekly “Top 10 on Netflix” every Tuesday based on hours viewed from Monday to Sunday the previous week for both original and licensed titles.

“We have broken the lists down as follows: global Top 10 lists for Films (English), TV (English), Films (non-English) and TV (non-English), as well as rankings for over 90 countries. The website is currently available in English and Spanish, with more languages to come next year,” the company said in a blogpost.

“These weekly lists are in addition to the daily country Top 10 rows we introduced on Netflix last year, which will now also be based on hours viewed. So whether you are searching for Top 10 on Netflix or browsing directly on our service, it’s incredibly easy to see what other people are watching,” it added.

Netflix said it will also update overall lists, which it first published last month, as new titles become mega hits.

These lists are based on the total hours viewed in a title’s first 28 days on Netflix.

“This is an important step forward for Netflix, the creators we work with and our members. People want to understand what success means in a streaming world, and these lists offer the clearest answer to that question in our industry,” the company said.

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In a bid to help holiday shoppers, tech giant Google has launched new Google Maps features that includes Area Busyness and Directories.

The company said that users can use Area Busyness, a new feature that combines live busyness trends to help them instantly spot when a neighbourhood or part of town is near or at its busiest.

“To keep the coming weeks stress-free, we are launching new Google Maps tools to help you stay safe, maximise your time with loved ones and find that perfect holiday brunch spot,” the company said in a blogpost.

To help users find their way around large buildings fast, the company is also expanding the Directory tab globally on Android and iOS for all airports, malls and transit stations around the world.

“Now, when we have this data available, you can quickly see what types of stores are in a building (like toy stores or jewellery boutiques), airport lounges, car rentals, parking lots and more,” the company said.

“And within each category, you can see a list of the relevant businesses, in addition to helpful information about whether it’s open, its rating and what floor it’s on,” it added.

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The business of rating is very subjective, especially when it comes to sovereigns. Fitch has retained the rating of India at BBB- but given a negative outlook compared to the other two agencies that think it is stable. Hence, Fitch’s view comes as a disappointment for sure.

India is probably going to be one of the best-performing economies in the world this year. This has been done without the government going in for excessive fiscal spending as the western nations have done. This factor has been appreciated by S&P and Moody’s. The way in which we have rebounded has been remarkable, with the government following a rather unique route since the pandemic began of ushering in some tough reforms in the last 18 months. It has been ably supported by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Fitch’s main grievance appears to be on the side of public debt, which admittedly is high compared to the median of comparable countries. Ideally, credit rating agencies (CRA) need to give more weight to the underlying as well as the efforts being put to get things back on rail. The Union Budget has laid down the fiscal path for the centre and this is also being pursued by the states under the revised FRBM guidelines. The focus has been on galvanising investment as seen by the higher capex. There have been limited giveaways on the tax front and the government has taken the bold step on not compromising mulch on taxes on fuel. To top it all, the asset monetisation plan lays down the roadmap for revenue to be garnered and the sale of Air India bears testimony to the urgency on disinvestment. Hence, we do have reason to be disappointed in the view taken by the CRA.

Notwithstanding the view taken by these rating agencies, the relentless flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) is a vindication of reforms and how investors see India and its future. The government has ushered in reforms that have the potential to change the landscape in the medium term. The balance of payments has been positive as seen in the continuous growth of forex reserves with exports riding the wave of global trade.

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Walmart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe said that it has processed over 2 billion transactions on its platform in October this year. PhonePe is the market leader in UPI transactions, driving the highest number of peer-to-peer(P2P) and merchant transactions in the country. It also has the pole position in Recharge and Bill Payment transactions via Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS). PhonePe had crossed the 1 billion monthly transaction mark in February this year, and has now hit the 2 billion milestone in just 8 months, cementing its position as India’s leading Fintech platform. PhonePe competes with players, such as Google Pay, Paytm and Amazon Pay.

“Last month was phenomenal for PhonePe, as we processed our highest ever transactions till date, cementing our position as India’s leading payments platform,” said Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO, PhonePe.

PhonePe’s phenomenal growth comes on the back of rapid traction across tier-2, tier-3 cities and beyond. This remarkable growth is a clear indicator of strong user preference for the platform with the highest end-to-end success rates and superior product experience.

“The fact that 80 per cent of our transactions come from tier-2, 3 cities and beyond, shows that digital payments have truly penetrated across the length and breadth of the country,” said Nigam.

PhonePe has over 145 million monthly active users, $600 billion annualized Total Payments Value and digital transactions from over 19000 pin codes, constituting more than 99 per cent of the country.

“We will continue to build the most preferred digital payments and financial services destination for a billion+ Indians while transforming lives positively,” said Nigam.

PhonePe now has over 335 million registered users. It is also accepted at over 22 million merchant outlets across India.Using PhonePe, users can send and receive money, recharge mobile, DTH, pay at stores, make utility payments and also buy and invest in gold and silver. PhonePe forayed into financial services in 2017 with the launch of gold providing users with a convenient option to buy 24-karat gold, and recently also launched silver on its platform. It has since introduced several Mutual Funds and Insurance products like tax-saving funds, liquid funds, international travel insurance, life insurance, and insurance for the Covid-19 pandemic.

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