Headlines of the Week : For the week ending August 31st

The past week majorly belonged to two things (again) : iPhone and IFA 2014. Rumours regarding both these special events, kept surfacing, and today, you would probably find our this post, filled up with that only. Take a Look :

Let’s start with the iPhone (or we should say, Apple) stories of the week :

1. New schematics, revealed by GeekBar confirmed the next generation M7 co-processor, named Phosphorus, which will be coming inside the iPhone6. Just to give you a heads up, Apple uses a coprocessor, along with its chipset, which puts the main processor to rest at the time of performing minimalistic functions.
2. Samsung made it back to Apple’s supplier’s list for the DRAM. Samsung had been excluded during iPhone5, largely due to the numerous patent battles between the two smartphone giants.
3. Samsung and TSMC are reportedly involved in an iBattle, to gain orders for Apple’s A9 chip, which may be used in “future” devices.
4. Confirmed news came in that Apple will be launching the iWatch along with the next-gen iPhone at its September 9 Launch event. But later news suggested that the iWatch may not begin to ship, anytime before January 2015.
5. iPhone will be coming up for sale, somewhere between September 16th and 19th in China, a chinese publication revealed through Weibo post.
6. Many other iPhone leaks, gave us a complete picture, of what the next-gen iPhone may look like. Most notably, Feld and Volk released a hands-on video of iPhone6, which they assembled using the leaked parts they had acquired. That was seriously the best look at iPhone6, you can ever get before launch.

Apart from those iPhone leaks, plenty of other, important stories have been doing rounds. As for India specials, India has been seeing some huge investments into e-retail space ( they seem to happen only in India these days ! ) and Instant messaging. Take a look at the Top 3 India Specials stories of the week :

1. E-retail website, Snapdeal raised huge funding, the amount of which hasn’t been officially disclosed, through Ratan Tata, the Chairman Emeritus of India’s largest conglomerate, Tata Group.
2. Hike, the Indian-origin and Bharti Mittal backed Instant Messaging app, raised ₹ 400 crores ($65 million) through Tiger Global and other investors.
3. Also, as for our weekly Mangalyaan (India’s Mars Orbiter Mission) update, it is expected to reach near Mars in almost 23 days from now. It will then be injected into an elliptical orbit around Mars, where it will carry out its scientific experiments.

Last, but not the least, IFA 2014. The most notable news from IFA has been the smartwatch-rain at this year’s conference. Numerous vendors including LG, Samsung, Motorola, Asus and other are expected to release almost half a dozen smartwatches at IFA. Here’s a list which includes, well not all, but most of them :

1. LG and Samsung, almost forgetting the fact that they did release AndroidWear powered “non-circular” watches at Google I/O this year, are now gearing up to launch their circular dial smartwatches at IFA. This is simply because the “rejuventaed and re-invented” Motorola’s Moto 360 took the entire public by storm with its stunning design, leaving LG and Samsung watches on the sidelines.
2. Also, after that speculated leak, LG officially announced its G Watch R.
3. Asus will be unveiling its ZenWatch, obviously named after its popular Zenfone series of smartphones.
4. Recent news has also suggested that HTC is lining up two smartwatches for launch in this year’s IFA. They are (confusingly) named HTC WWY and HTC CWZ.

Apart from these, there were several other stories that made headlines. Facebook decided to filter your timeline on its own, by removing click-bait advertising posts. We’re still unclear on Facebook’s actual motive behind that move.

Also, India’s most popular mobile vendor for now, Xiaomi, announced its second smartphone in India, the Redmi 1S at an unbelievable launch price of ₹ 5,999.

So that was the complete round up for this week’s top headlines. Think we missed something ? Tell us via an e-mail and we have something exciting in store for you. Stay Tuned.