Weekly Tech recap: From passing of Telecom bill to global X outage; a look at top tech news of the week

A lot went down in the world of tech in the last week from the passing of Telecommunications Bill 2023 in the Indian parliament to the global outage that affected X (formerly Twitter) and the launch of some key smartphones. Here’s a look at all that went down in the world of technology in the last week.

1) Telecom Bill passed in Parliament:

Indian Parliament passed the Telecommunications Bill, 2023 to reform the country’s century-old telecom law, based on the Indian Telegraph Act, of 1885, the Wireless Telegraphy Act (1933), and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act (1950). The bill cements rules for spectrum allocation and provides for a non-auction route for giving airwaves for satellite-based communication services. It also lays down stringent provisions for phone number spoofing for fraud and moots a “digital-by-design” online grievance redressal mechanism for addressing users’ complaints.

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2) Apple Vision Pro launch date:

Apple has begun ramping up production of its Vision Pro mixed reality headsets at the company’s facilities in China in recent weeks, with the goal of having customer-bound units ready by the end of January, while the headset could be launched in February, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurnman noted in a recent report, citing sources. However, the report noted that last-minute production problems and other issues could derail the planned launch schedule.

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3) Android could soon bring iPhone-like battery health indicator:

Android could finally bring the iOS-style battery health indicator, which has been teased in an upcoming Pixel release and may become more refined as time goes on. While iPhone users have long had the ability to check their battery health statistics from the Settings app, Android users usually need a third-party app or enter special commands to check their battery health.

A report by Android Authority notes that Google introduced a new “Battery Information” page in Settings with the Pixel Feature Drop for December 2023. However, the new page doesn’t yet reflect the health of the battery, and instead only shows the date of manufacture and the battery cycle count.

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4) Apple GPT in the works?

Apple has reportedly developed an internal service akin to ChatGPT, intended to assist employees in testing new features, summarizing text, and answering questions based on accumulated knowledge.

In July, Mark Gurman suggested that Apple was in the process of creating its own AI model, with the central focus on a new framework named Ajax. The framework has the potential to offer various capabilities, with a ChatGPT-like application, unofficially dubbed “Apple GPT,” being just one of the many possibilities. Recent indications from an Apple research paper suggest that Large Language Models (LLMs) may run on Apple devices, including iPhones and iPads.

5) Oppo A59 launched in India:

The Chinese tech giant Oppo has recently launched its much-anticipated Oppo A59 5G in India. Interestingly, the smartphone company claims that its latest smartphone is the most affordable 5G device under the ₹15,000 segment.

The Oppo A59 is priced at Rs14999 in India and it can be purchased from the official store of Oppo, Amazon, Flipkart and a few authorised retail stores. Customers can get the 5G device from December 25, 2023. It will be available in two variants – 4GB RAM and 6GB RAM and comes in Starry Black as well as Silk Gold colour options.

6) Poco M6 5G launched in India:

The competition in the budget 5G smartphone segment is about to get tougher with the arrival of the Poco M6 5G.

The Poco M6 is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 6100+ chipset, which is said to have a score of 4,28,000 on the Antutu benchmark, and has a 6.74-inch display with support for a 90Hz refresh rate. The screen is also said to be protected by Corning Gorilla Glass, but the company hasn’t revealed the exact version used for the budget device.

The Poco M6 is priced at ₹10,499 for the 4GB RAM/128GB storage variant, ₹11,499 for the 6GB RAM/128GB storage variant and ₹13,499 for the 8GB RAM/256 storage variant. Customers can also avail a discount of ₹1,000 with ICICI Bank cards.

7) Global X (Twitter) outage:

Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) suffered a major outage on Thursday. Outage tracking website Downdetector.com noted that thousands of users worldwide were reporting problems accessing X. However, the social media website was back online in a couple of hours.