Shirin Ghaffary / Vox:
Instacart says worker strike had “no impact” on its operations and that its workforce has seen 40% earnings rise in the past month compared to the month prior — Why workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, and Amazon are walking off the job in protest.
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Bloomberg:
Amazon confirms that it fired a worker, who led the Staten Island warehouse strike, for violating its quarantine measures; worker says firing was in retaliation — - Worker Chris Smalls says labor activism led to his dismissal — Amazon says Smalls violated safety conditions, quarantine
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Zoom, the videoconferencing app whose traffic has surged during the coronavirus pandemic, is under scrutiny by the office of New York’s attorney-general, Letitia James, for its data privacy and security practices.
On Monday, the office sent Zoom a letter asking what, if any, new security measures the company has put in place to handle increased traffic on its network and to detect hackers, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.
While the letter referred to Zoom as “an essential and valuable communications platform,” it outlined several concerns, noting that the company had been slow to address security flaws such as vulnerabilities “that could enable malicious third parties to, among other things, gain surreptitious access to consumer webcams.”
Over the last few weeks, internet trolls have exploited a Zoom screen-sharing feature to hijack meetings and do things like interrupt educational sessions or post white supremacist messages to a webinar on anti-Semitism — a phenomenon called “Zoombombing.”
The New York attorney-general’s office is “concerned that Zoom’s existing security practices might not be sufficient to adapt to the recent and sudden surge in both the volume and sensitivity of data being passed through its network,” the letter said. “While Zoom has remediated specific reported security vulnerabilities, we would like to understand whether Zoom has undertaken a broader review of its security practices.”
With millions of Americans required to shelter at home because of the coronavirus, Zoom video meetings have quickly become a mainstay of communication for companies, public schools and families. Zoom’s cloud-meetings app is currently the most popular free app for iPhones in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, a mobile app market research firm.
Even as the stock market has plummeted, shares of Zoom have more than doubled since the beginning of the year.
As Zoom’s popularity has grown, the app has scrambled to address a series of data privacy and security problems, a reactive approach that has led to complaints from some consumer, privacy and children’s groups.
The company updated its privacy policy Sunday after users reported concerns, and Monday, Eric S Yuan, chief executive and founder of Zoom, posted a link on Twitter to a company blog item about the policy.
In a statement for this article, the company said it took “its users’ privacy, security and trust extremely seriously,” and had been “working around the clock to ensure that hospitals, universities, schools and other businesses across the world can stay connected and operational.”
“We appreciate the New York attorney-general’s engagement on these issues and are happy to provide her with the requested information,” the statement added.
Last week, after an article on news site Motherboard reported that software inside the Zoom iPhone app was sending user data to Facebook, the company said it was removing the tracking software.
As many school districts adopted Zoom to allow teachers to host live lessons with students, some children’s privacy experts and parents said they were particularly concerned about how children’s personal details might be used. Some districts have prohibited educators from using Zoom as a distance-learning platform.
“There is so much we simply don’t know about Zoom’s privacy practices,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a nonprofit group in Boston.
In the letter, James’ office cited reports that Zoom had shared data with Facebook and asked for further information on “the categories of data that Zoom collects, as well as the purposes and entities to whom Zoom provides consumer data.”
The office expressed concern that the app may be circumventing state requirements protecting student data. To help educators, the company recently expanded meeting limits on free accounts. The attorney general’s office called such efforts “laudable” but also said the company appeared to be trying to offload consent requirements to schools.
The office requested a description of Zoom’s policy for obtaining and verifying consent in primary and secondary schools as well as a description of third parties who received data related to children.
Zoom has said its service for schools complies with federal laws on educational privacy and student privacy.
The letter also asked for details about any changes the company put in place after a security researcher, Jonathan Leitschuh, exposed a flaw allowing hackers to take over Zoom webcams. The letter noted that the company did not address the problem until after the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, a public interest research centre, filed a complaint about Zoom with the Federal Trade Commission last year.
Danny Hakim and Natasha Singer c.2020 The New York Times Company
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Older people remain most at risk of dying as the new coronavirus continues its rampage around the globe, but they’re far from the only ones vulnerable. One of many mysteries: Men seem to be faring worse than women.
And as cases skyrocket in the U.S. and Europe, it’s becoming more clear that how healthy you were before the pandemic began plays a key role in how you fare regardless of how old you are.
The majority of people who get COVID-19 have mild or moderate symptoms. But “majority” doesn’t mean “all,” and that raises an important question: Who should worry most that they’ll be among the seriously ill? While it will be months before scientists have enough data to say for sure who is most at risk and why preliminary numbers from early cases around the world are starting to offer hints.
Not just the old get sick
Senior citizens undoubtedly are the hardest hit by COVID-19. In China, 80 percent of deaths were among people in their 60s or older, and that general trend is playing out elsewhere.
The greying of the population means some countries face particular risk. Italy has the world’s second-oldest population after Japan. While death rates fluctuate wildly early in an outbreak, Italy has reported more than 80 percent of deaths so far were among those 70 or older.
But, “the idea that this is purely a disease that causes death in older people we need to be very, very careful with,” Dr Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, warned.
As much as 10 percent to 15 percent of people under 50 have moderate to severe infection, he said Friday.
Even if they survive, the middle-aged can spend weeks in the hospital. In France, more than half of the first 300 people admitted to intensive care units were under 60.
“Young people are not invincible,” WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove added, saying more information is needed about the disease in all age groups.
Italy reported that a quarter of its cases so far were among people ages 19 to 50. In Spain, a third are under age 44. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first snapshot of cases found 29 percent were aged 20 to 44.
Then there’s the puzzle of children, who have made up a small fraction of the world’s case counts to date. But while most appear only mildly ill, in the journal Pediatrics researchers traced 2,100 infected children in China and noted one death, a 14-year-old, and that nearly six percent were seriously ill.
Another question is what role kids have in spreading the virus: “There is an urgent need for further investigation of the role children have in the chain of transmission,” researchers at Canada’s Dalhousie University wrote in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Riskiest Health Conditions
Put aside age: Underlying health plays a big role. In China, 40 percent of people who required critical care had other chronic health problems. And there, deaths were highest among people who had heart disease, diabetes or chronic lung diseases before they got COVID-19.
Preexisting health problems also can increase risk of infection, such as people who have weak immune systems including from cancer treatment.
Other countries now are seeing how pre-pandemic health plays a role, and more such threats are likely to be discovered. Italy reported that of the first nine people younger than 40 who died of COVID-19, seven were confirmed to have “grave pathologies” such as heart disease.
The more health problems, the worse they fare. Italy also reports about half of people who died with COVID-19 had three or more underlying conditions, while just two percent of deaths were in people with no preexisting ailments.
Heart disease is a very broad term, but so far it looks like those most at risk have significant cardiovascular diseases such as congestive heart failure or severely stiffened and clogged arteries, said Dr. Trish Perl, infectious disease chief at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Any sort of infection tends to make diabetes harder to control, but it’s not clear why diabetics appear to be at particular risk with COVID-19.
Risks in the less healthy may have something to do with how they hold up if their immune systems overreact to the virus. Patients who die often seemed to have been improving after a week or so only to suddenly deteriorate — experiencing organ-damaging inflammation.
As for preexisting lung problems, “this is really happening in people who have less lung capacity,” Perl said, because of diseases such as COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — or cystic fibrosis.
Asthma also is on the worry list. No one really knows about the risk from very mild asthma, although even routine respiratory infections often leave patients using their inhalers more often and they’ll need monitoring with COVID-19, she said. What about a prior bout of pneumonia? Unless it was severe enough to put you on a ventilator, that alone shouldn’t have caused any significant lingering damage, she said.
Gender Mystery
Perhaps the gender imbalance shouldn’t be a surprise: During previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS — cousins to COVID-19 — scientists noticed men seemed more susceptible than women.
This time around, slightly more than half the COVID-19 deaths in China were among men. Other parts of Asia saw similar numbers. Then Europe, too, spotted what Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus coordinator, labelled a concerning trend.
In Italy, where men so far make up 58 percent of infections, male deaths are outpacing female deaths and the increased risk starts at age 50, according to a report from Italy’s COVID-19 surveillance group.
The U.S. CDC hasn’t yet released details. But one report about the first nearly 200 British patients admitted to critical care found about two-thirds were male.
One suspect: Globally, men are more likely to have smoked more heavily and for longer periods than women. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control is urging research into smoking’s connection to COVID-19.
Hormones may play a role, too. In 2017, University of Iowa researchers infected mice with SARS and, just like had happened in people, males were more likely to die. Estrogen seemed protective — when their ovaries were removed, deaths among female mice jumped, the team reported in the Journal of Immunology.
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As the demand for ventilators rises with the number of coronavirus patients growing across the globe, a Texas-based university has developed an automatic, hand-held and inexpensive breathing unit that can soon be used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 37,500 people.
A total of 782,365 COVID-19 cases have been reported across more than 175 countries and territories with 37,582 deaths reported so far, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Across the United States, hospitals are facing shortages of ventilators, some medical device makers, including Philips, have agreed to ramp up supplies.
But because patients diagnosed with or suspected to have COVID-19 often require breathing support, there is widespread concern that these devices won't be developed and shipped quickly enough.
Texas-based Rice University and Canadian global health design firm Metric Technologies have developed an automated bag valve mask ventilation unit that can be built for less than $300 worth of parts and help patients undergoing treatment for COVID-19.
The collaboration expects to share the plans for the ventilator by making them freely available online to anyone in the world.
The varsity team designed and built a programmable device able to squeeze a bag valve mask. These masks are typically carried by emergency medical personnel to help get air into the lungs of people having difficulty breathing on their own. But the masks are difficult to squeeze by hand for more than a few minutes at a time.
"It's automatic, electric, and works independently of a tech," Wettergreen, a varsity professor and member of the Design Kitchen team, told PTI.
"It's not designed for people who are critical cases, but rather who are in respiratory distress," the professor said.
That delineation is important: the automated Bag Mask Valve (BVM) would take less-critical patients off ventilators and free them up for only those in dire need. The benefit could be a game-changer for those on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle, Wettergreen said.
"When a crisis hits, we use our skills to contribute solutions. If you can help, you should, and I'm proud that we're responding to the call," said the professor.
The design has caught the attention of the Department of Defense, which may authorise the Navy to utilise it in the near future.
It's a huge feat for the small unit, dubbed the Apollo BVM team, whose students worked around the clock and took classes online in order to deliver the project as soon as possible.
Rohith Malya - an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, an adjunct assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice, and a principal at Metric Technologies - coined the name as a tribute to Rice's history with NASA and former US President John F Kennedy's now-famous speech kicking off the nation's efforts to go to the moon.
"This project appeals to our ingenuity, it's a Rice-based project and it's for all of humanity. And we're on an urgent timescale. We decided to throw it all on the table and see how far we go," he said.
Malya inspired the Rice project two years ago after seeing families try to keep critically ill loved ones at the Kwai River Christian Hospital in Thailand alive by bag-ventilating them for hours on end. He expects the new Apollo BVM to serve that purpose eventually, but the need is now worldwide.
"This is a clinician-informed end-to-end design that repurposes the existing BVM global inventory toward widespread and safe access to mechanical ventilation," Malya said, noting that more than 100 million bag valve masks are manufactured around the world each year.
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India is adding more resources to tackle its increase in coronavirus cases by announcing that private hospitals may be requisitioned to help treat virus patients, and turning railway cars and a motor racing circuit into makeshift quarantine facilities.
The steps were taken after a nationwide lockdown announced last week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to a mass exodus of migrant workers from cities to their villages, often on foot and without food and water, raising fears that the virus may have reached to the countryside, where health care facilities are limited.
Indian health officials have confirmed more than 1,000 cases of the coronavirus, including 29 deaths.
Experts say that local spreading is inevitable in a country where tens of millions of people live in dense urban areas with irregular access to clean water, and that the exodus of the migrants will burden the already strained health system.
As India’s under-resourced health care system prepares to confront a wave of coronavirus cases, some state governments have asked liquor factories and breweries to produce liquid sanitizer after the initial supply failed to match demand. Designers, nonprofit groups and prisoners in various jails have stepped up to help overcome shortages of masks and other personal protective equipment.
India has less than one medical doctor and three nurses per thousand people, the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization. The dominant share of India’s doctors and beds are in the private health care sector, which the country’s poor often cannot afford.
“India’s big city hospitals are well equipped to deal with the surge in virus cases,” said public health expert T. Sundararaman. “But the same can’t be said about district hospitals in rural areas, barring some exceptions in states that fare well when it comes to health care.”
On Monday, the Indian Council of Medical Research, India’s top medical research body, said the country had conducted 38,442 tests for the virus as of March 29. India has a population of 1.3 billion people.
The governments of the states of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have announced in the past few days that intensive care units, ventilators and staff of private hospitals might be requisitioned to treat virus patients.
Joining the fight against the virus, New Delhi’s top hospital, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said it is converting its trauma center into a coronavirus hospital, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. The Buddh International Circuit, India’s first Formula One racing track, was being readied for use as a shelter and quarantine facility, officials said.
Indian Railways announced on Saturday that it is converting some of its train coaches into isolation units for rural and remote areas. All passenger train service in the country has been suspended until 14 April.
On Sunday, after tens of thousands of migrant workers had already made arduous dayslong journeys home on foot, Modi apologized for the 21-day lockdown he ordered and said he had “no choice.”
On Saturday, state borders were opened as hundreds of buses were sent by the authorities to transport migrant workers who live in squalid housing in congested urban ghettos and earn meagre wages, often with no savings to fall back on.
The government’s late response, however, struck a jarring note in comparison to its quick response to the plight of Indian workers stranded abroad, hundreds of whom were brought back home on special flights.
Ram Bhajan Nisar, a migrant worker from the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who was working in New Delhi as a painter, set off from the capital last week with his wife and two children. Government buses and hitchhiking took the family part of the way, but the rest of the journey to their village near the border with neighboring Nepal was on foot.
“I walked two days, two nights to reach here, and both the children have blisters on their feet,” said Nisar, who was then sent for quarantine in a government school.
People who have been quarantined in India for suspected exposure to the virus say conditions in government facilities are unsanitary and could potentially foment the outbreak.
Azad Ahmad Padder, a 40-year-old doctor, was sent to a quarantine facility in northern Jammu city along with his 60-year-old brother, who is recovering from lung-related ailments, on March 24. The two, with no foreign travel history, had expected clean quarantine facilities at the converted university campus.
Instead, they found stained bedding with five people in a room, dirty floors and clogged washrooms that were full of bird droppings.
The facility already housed more than 200 people who rushed through its corridors in groups, risking the spread of the virus, Padder said.
“The conditions here are so filthy that if a person spends a few days here, even if they are healthy, they will get the virus,” he said. “It feels like we are living in a detention center.” ___ Associated Press photographer Manish Swarup contributed to this report.
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The Los Angeles-based digital challenger bank, HMBradley, opened its virtual doors to the public today, allowing the thousands of waitlisted would-be users to set up direct deposits and collect their sign-up bonuses.
The company is offering banking customers an up to 3% return on their savings based on the percentage they save of their quarterly deposits.
HMBradley also set up a new feature which allows users to save towards specific goals.
Backed by PayPal founder Max Levchin’s HVF Labs, along with Walkabout Ventures, Mucker Capital, Index Ventures, and Accomplice, to the tune of $3.5 million, HMBradley was designed to benefit savers, the company said.
Account holders with balances up to $100,000 can receive up to 3% annual percentage yields on their accounts. These account holders qualify by receiving one direct deposit and saving at least 5% of the total amount deposited in an account monthly.
HMBradley accounts are held through Hatch Bank, which is FDIC insured.
To qualify for the 3 percent rate, customers need to save over 20 percent of their income, account holders who save between 15 percent and 20 percent receive 2 percent of their cash per year, and those saving less than 15 percent but more than ten percent receive a 1 percent APY.
“We want to empower and protect every consumer financially to show them that a bank can be on their side, regardless of how much money they make,” said Zach Bruhnke, co-founder and CEO of HMBradley, in a statement.
Account holders have access to 55,000 fee-free ATMs around the country, mobile check deposit and around-the-clock support, the company said.
The company’s MasterCard comes with all of the standard features including zero liability protection and an ability to set up travel, fraud alerts, and cancel cards all through an online portal, the company said.
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Facebook has diverted from its policy of not fact-checking politicians in order to prevent the spread of potentially harmful coronavirus misinformation from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Facebook made the decisive choice to remove a video shared by Bolsonaro on Sunday where he claimed that “hydroxychloroquine is working in all places.” That’s despite the drug still undergoing testing to determine its effectiveness for treating COVID-19, which researchers and health authorities have not confirmed.
“We remove content on Facebook and Instagram that violates our Community Standards, which do not allow misinformation that could lead to physical harm” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch. Facebook specifically prohibits false claims regarding cure, treatments, the availability of essential services, and the location or intensity of contagion outbreaks.
BBC News Brazil first reported the takedown today in Portuguese. In the removed video, Bolsonaro had been speaking to a street vendor, and the President claimed “They want to work”, in contrast to the World Health Organization’s recommendation that people practice social distancing. He followed up that “That medicine there, hydroxychloroquine, is working in all places.”
If people wrongly believe there’s an widely-effective treatment for COVID-19, they may be more reckless about going out in public, attending work, or refusing to stay in isolation. That could cause the virus to spread more quickly, defeat efforts to flatten the curve, and overrun health care systems.
This why Twitter removed two of Bolsonaro’s tweets on Sunday, as well as one from Rudy Giuliani, in order to stop the distribution of misinformation. But to date, Facebook has generally avoided acting as an arbiter of truth regarding the veracity of claims by politicians. It notoriously refuses to send blatant misinformation in political ads, including those from Donald Trump, to fact-checkers.
Last week, though, Facebook laid out that COVID-19 misinformation “that could contribute to imminent physical harm” would be directly and immediately removed as it’s done about other outbreaks since 2018, while less urgent conspiracy theories that don’t lead straight to physical harm are sent to fact-checkers that can then have the Facebook reach of those posts demoted.
Now the question is whether Facebook would be willing to apply this enforcement to Trump, who’s been criticized for spreading misinformation about the severity of the outbreak, potential treatments, and the risk of sending people back to work. Facebook is known to fear backlash from conservative politicians and citizens who’ve developed a false narrative that it discriminates against or censors their posts.
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The Mumbai Metropolitan Region's COVID-19 count reached 170 on Monday with 47 people testing positive for the novel coronavirus, officials said.
While 29 of the new infections are in Mumbai, the rest 18 are from other parts of MMR, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation officials said.
Also, an 80-year-old man, who suffered from acute respiratory distress, succumbed to COVID-19 at a private hospital here, taking the death toll in MMR to eight, including six in Mumbai, said the civic body's release.
He was a known case of hypertension and ischemic heart disease, and had tested positive for COVID-19 on March 29, the release added.
The sprawling region consists of Mumbai city and parts of adjoining districts of Thane, Raigad and Palghar.
The release said on Monday, 206 people were checked at OPDs in the metropolis and 61 people admitted for suspected exposure.
One COVID-19 patient was discharged after recovery, taking the number of such persons in MMR to 15, the BMC release said.
"There were 18 new cases detected during tests conducted between 24-28 March. As these 18 cases are included in the list today, there appears to be a rise in cases. It is mainly due to vigorous contact tracing by the health teams and enhanced testing in public and private labs," the release said.
The civic body said, as a containment measure, its teams and police had surveyed areas where COVID-19 patients reside, including 1 lakh houses and 3.87 lakh people.
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New York Times:
New York's AG sent a letter to Zoom expressing concern over security vulnerabilities and privacy practices as more users conduct sensitive tasks on the service — As the videoconferencing platform's popularity has surged, Zoom has scrambled to address a series of data privacy and security problems.
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Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson is partnering with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to fund over $1 billion in COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment research and development, the company said on Monday.
The partnership is an expansion of an existing agreement between BARDA and J&J’s Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies division.
With the agreement, the company is setting a goal of providing a global supply of more than one billion doses of the vaccine, which J&J expects to have in clinical trials by September 2020 at the latest. The first batches of the vaccine may be available for emergency use by early 2021, the company said.
BARDA’s partnership with J&J encompasses research and development of potential antiviral treatments in addition to the work that’s being done to develop a vaccine for the disease. Those efforts include development work J&J and BARDA are conducting with the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Belgium.
J&J said it had also committed to expanding its global manufacturing capacity, both in the U.S. and overseas. That additional production ability will help the company bring an affordable vaccine to the public on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use, the company said.
Working with teams at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a part of the Harvard Medical School, Janssen Pharmaceuticals began its research into potential vaccine candidates back in January. Those candidates were tested at several academic institutions, the company said, which led to the identification of a lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate — and two potential back-ups.
Last week, Moderna Health, another pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, said that it could have an experimental treatment available to healthcare workers as soon as the fall.
The Moderna vaccine uses messenger RNA, rather than doses of the COVID-19 virus itself, to inoculate against the disease. The use of mRNA means that the inoculation doesn’t expose recipients to the disease itself, so they’re not at risk of contracting the disease.
Last Monday, Moderna made the vaccine available to volunteer participants as part of the company’s Phase 1 clinical trials conducted in Washington state.
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Air Doctor, the health tech startup that connects travellers with local doctors, has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Kamet Ventures (the AXA-backed venture builder), and The Phoenix Insurance Company.
Founded in 2016, Air Doctor aims to empower travellers who get sick when abroad and need non-emergency advice or treatment. It has created a network of local private physicians that travellers can access, typically via travel insurance or perks. The platform is available across 42 countries in 5 continents, and lets you search by location, language, specialty, and cost.
“Air Doctor was born out of the founding team’s own travelling experiences, out of that terrible feeling you get when you fall ill in a foreign country and don’t know who to turn to or how to get the fast response you need,” says Jenny Cohen Derfler, CEO and co-founder of Air Doctor.
“Yam [Derfler, Head of Product Innovation] came up with the idea after eight months of travelling around South America, in which both he and his friends at different times felt completely helpless when they got sick and, more often than not, couldn’t find English-speaking doctors”.
Derfler says Air Doctor’s initial focus was that of the travelling patient, but the team quickly realised that this is a problem that affects an entire ecosystem around medical care for travellers.
“Local doctors have no reliable way of accessing a whole new group of private customers, insurance companies waste huge amounts of money on tedious and questionable medical services, and also want to improve the customer experience of being connected to healthcare, and travel agents want a reliable service to bundle up as part of their packages. It became clear we needed to build a platform that would benefits all parties,” she says.
By combining a global network of medical professionals with a digital platform, Air Doctor is able to lower costs for insurance companies, and offer value-added solutions for credit card companies and mobile operators. On the supply end, it also claims to increase physicians’ income and digital presence, while providing “the highest level of healthcare” for international travellers in their native languages.
“Our aim is to provide every traveler in the world access to experienced local doctors and specialists when they need it, and by doing so to help them avoid having to go to hospitals or tourist clinics,” adds Derfler.
The that end, Air Doctor’s first customer was The Phoenix, one of Israel’s leading insurance companies, which has subsequently invested as part of this Series A round. By offering Air Doctor to its customers, The Phoenix was able to reduce its loss ratio by reducing claim costs, reorienting patients to outpatient clinics rather than emergency services, and streamlining payments.
“Our big selling point for the travellers themselves is control,” underlines the Air Doctor CEO. “When you’re sick while away from home, you want to feel like you are in control of your situation. Our online platform helps patients find immediate solutions, by providing them with a wealth of information about a wider range of local practitioners so they can choose the most appropriate doctor for their needs and preferences. Most importantly, we help them access medical care in their native language, which is one of the biggest things when it comes to feeling in control of your situation”.
Meanwhile, this latest round follows Air Doctor’s seed round of $3.1 million in July 2018. The new investment will be used to bolster Air Doctor’s medical network and R&D capabilities and for international expansion across the insurance, telecom, and credit card industries.
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While the OnePlus 8 series is likely to debut next month, the company is expected to release a lighter variant of the devices soon after. It was tipped to be named OnePlus 8 Lite. However, the latest development claims that the OnePlus X is all set to be succeeded by the OnePlus Z. The information comes from tipster Max Weinbach who leaked plenty of information about the Galaxy S20 series and Galaxy Z Flip before their official announcement.
As per the tipster, OnePlus is soon going to revamp the older OnePlus X under a new series. Further, he revealed that the phone could arrive with the name “OnePlus Z”, and not as OnePlus 8 Lite.
The OnePlus Z is tipped to sport a 90Hz refresh rate 6.4-inch AMOLED display. OnePlus is said to use a MediaTek chipset for the first time. It may be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 SoC. The device is said to come with an in-display fingerprint scanner.
As for the optics, the leaked renders have shown a triple rear camera setup. It may sport a 48MP primary camera alongside a 16MP and 12MP sensors for ultra-wide-angle and telephoto lens respectively. The OnePlus Z could pack a 4000mAh battery with support for 30W fast charging. Further, it is rumored to be made available in two variants: 8GB + 128GB and 8GB + 256GB.
It may be priced at 400 GBP, which is around 511 USD and approximately Rs 37,500. That is actually a high asking price for a Lite model especially when the OnePlus 7T is now selling for Rs 34,999 in India. However, it is highly likely for OnePlus to price it lower in India than the international markets.
According to previous rumours, OnePlus Z will be made available in India and other markets by July 2020. Hence, it may launch after the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, which are rumored to be launched in mid-April.
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As the OnePlus 8 Pro inches closer to its launch date, more information about its camera setup has appeared online. According to previous rumours, it will sport a quad rear camera setup of 48MP + 48MP + 8MP + 5MP. The latest development reveals the camera specs of each sensor. The leak comes from noted tipster Ishan Agarwal, who took to Twitter to reveal the latest information.
According to the tipster, OnePlus 8 Pro will feature a 48MP Sony IMX 689 primary sensor with an f/1.78 aperture + a 48MP Sony IMX ultra-wide-angle lens with an f/2.2 aperture and 120-degree field of view + an 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and 30x digital zoom + a 5MP colour filter. The camera is said to pack new features like new night portrait mode, “3-HDR” video, cinematic effects and better OIS.
As per previous leaks, OnePlus 8 Pro will feature a 6.78-inch Super AMOLED display with support for a 120Hz refresh rate. It will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC. Further, the smartphone is likely to come with 8GB/12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB/256GB of UFS 3.0 internal storage. On the front may lie a 16MP selfie shooter.
The smartphone will pack a 4510mAh battery with support for 30W fast charging. This time around, OnePlus is likely to add 30W wireless fast charging support as well as 3W reverse wireless charging. The phone will be IP68 rated and come in blue, black and green colour options.
On the AI Benchmark, the OnePlus 8 Pro is listed below the Honor 9X Pro, Nova 5, Nova 5i Pro, Xiaomi Mi 10 5G and a couple of other models. Moreover, it is listed above the Google Pixel 4, ASUS ROG 2, Mi 10 Pro 5G and the Realme X2 Pro.
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Overall Rating: 3.8/5
Price: Rs 31,999
I’ve tested a lot of Android TVs over the past few months, and official Android, along with Fire TV OS, seems to be the best platforms for smart TVs currently. A lot of premium TV brands are sticking with proprietary platforms like Samsung is with Tizen, LG with Web OS, etc. Similarly, Philips has its own Saphi OS for its smart TVs. Today, I’m taking a look at the Philips 50PUT6103S/94 model, a well-priced smart TV that looks to compete with some popular budget alternatives. Let’s see how it stacks up.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — Design and Connectivity: 7.5/10
The Philips 50PUT6103S/94 has a standard design with narrow bezels around a 50-inch screen. The small, transparent, trapezoid chin with the company logo under the bottom bezel looks cool. Strangely, it doesn’t host the IR receiver, and the same is placed near the right edge of the TV. The TV isn’t too bulky and can be wall-mounted or placed on a desk using the bundled stands. The necessary screws and mounts are provided in the package.
The placement of ports is a bit unusual here. One USB port, two HDMI ports — one of which supports ARC, optical audio, and a LAN port, are all placed along the bottom edge of the back panel. One HDMI, one USB and a headphone out are placed along the left edge, while coaxial A/V inputs are placed right at the back of the TV. The ports can be a bit hard to reach if you choose to wall-mount the TV. Make sure you connect the cables to the respective ports before you hang it on the wall.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — Features and specifications: 6.5/10
This Philips TV has an Ultra HD panel with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels, and a 60 Hz refresh rate. The company doesn’t specify the panel type, but it seems like a good quality VA panel. It is powered by a quad-core processor, the make and speed of which aren’t specified, and neither is the amount of RAM or internal storage. The TV claims to support micro-dimming with 6,400 software controlled zones. The TV has built-in WiFi with support for a/b/g/n standards at 2.4 GHz. There is no support for Wi-Fi AC or the 5-GHz wireless band. There is no Bluetooth either. Audio output is rated at 20 W RMS. Since this isn’t an official Android TV, it does not have Chromecast, but you can mirror content from your phone or tablet using Miracast.
The company bundles an IR remote with dozens of keys and a hotkey for Netflix. As you might have guessed, it doesn’t accept voice commands. The build quality is good and two AAA batteries are bundled in the package.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — User Interface: 6/10
As I mentioned earlier, this TV runs Philips’ Saphi OS. It is fairly easy to operate, featuring a simple, icon-based user interface. You can browse through apps and menus using the D-pad and select the desired option using the OK button.
The UI is smooth and pretty much lag-free. There is a media player to play content from USB drives, and there are lots of audio and video settings to tinker with. The picture and sound adjustments are buried a bit too deep for my liking, but can be accessed on the fly in any app or input mode; something several Android TVs still don’t let you do.
Among the popular OTT services in India, you only get apps for Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube and Eros Now preinstalled. There is no support yet for Hotstar, Sony LIV, Zee5 and many more; something that’s readily available on official Android TVs.
There is no casting option either, except when using the YouTube app. So, you can browse through YouTube on your phone and cast any video to the TV as long as the phone and TV are on the same Wi-Fi network. You cannot do that for any other service though. Even beyond streaming platforms, app support is very limited on Saphi OS, and it still feels like work in progress.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — Picture quality: 8/10
The OS may be a bit undercooked, but that cannot be said about the core performance of this Philips TV. Its picture quality is quite impressive. The panel is sufficiently bright and has good contrast. However, the picture wasn’t optimally tuned out of the box and I had to do a lot of tweaking in the picture settings to get it right. Details in dark areas in high contrast scenes in our test videos that weren’t visible at the default settings were clear once I switched off all the dynamic contrast options and played around with the manual brightness and contrast settings.
Colour reproduction is excellent and the colours feel vibrant. Strangely, the default colour calibration of our test unit was a bit conservative and image quality seemed slightly dull. But after boosting the colour and sharpness settings a bit, the colours looked perfectly natural and popped out well without going over the top. There are natural motion settings too. Set them at 'low' for optimal results.
The 4K videos look extremely sharp on this TV, as do 1080p videos. 720p videos scale reasonably well too, courtesy of the TV’s upscaling engine. Anything lower looks noticeably washed out.
The TV supports HDR, but the Prime Video app on this TV doesn’t turn on HDR for some reason. For instance, Jack Ryan, a show with some quality HDR content, played in Ultra HD on this TV, but without HDR. Blame it on Saphi OS again as I faced no such issues when playing the same episode via the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K on this TV.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — Audio quality: 8/10
The TV has a pair of stereo speakers that deliver a total rated output of 20 W RMS. The speakers on this TV produce crisp audio, and with a good degree of bass too. Volume is ample even at 25 percent, and I don’t remember going beyond the 50 percent mark during the course of my testing. The TV provides you with a bunch of sound settings to let you tweak it further to suit your taste. Unlike the picture, the sound was tuned very well out of the box.
The audio quality is among the best in TVs I have tested over the past couple of years, surpassed only by the Vu Cinema TV from the recent lot. It is more than adequate for day-to-day TV viewing, and while watching the odd movie or web series. If you crave for something better, there are various audio out options to plug a soundbar or other speakers to enhance the audio.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — Overall performance: 8.5/10
The TV takes just five to seven seconds to boot up when you switch the power on from the mains. This is quite remarkable given that even the fastest of Android TVs take in excess of half a minute to boot. This is easily the fastest booting Smart TV I have come across till date. Credit to Saphi OS for this.
Video file format support through USB is excellent too. The default media player managed to play almost every file with various codecs I threw at it, and smoothly at that, including my 4K test videos.
There was no noticeable lag either. Though Philips hasn’t shared details about the processing hardware, it clearly does its job well. Even the TV viewing experience via DTH was good, especially HD channels. Non-HD channels are just about watchable, and that’s the best case scenario with all 4K TVs these days.
The only major issue here is the lack of an app ecosystem, and support for limited OTT platforms. If you just use Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube, you are pretty much covered. For the rest of the OTT services, it would be advisable to invest in a Fire TV Stick 4K. Not only will you get access to several other apps and services, you will also get the best out of this TV, case in point: HDR support in Prime Video.
Philips 50PUT6103S/94 4K Smart TV — Price and verdict
The price of this TV varies between Rs 29,999 and Rs 39,999 online. More often than not, one can purchase it around the 32K mark on Flipkart, and that is a good price for this TV. Also, this is the figure on which all the above ratings have been based.
Philips offers a 2-years warranty, which is an added benefit given that most competing brands offer half of that. So, all said and done, how does this TV compete with the popular official Android TVs in the market?
In terms of picture and sound quality, the Philips 50PUT6103S/94 is noticeably better than the Xiaomi, Thomson and TCL 49/50-inch variants selling in the market at around Rs 30,000. The picture quality is also comparable to the Vu Cinema TV I reviewed recently. However, the VU has a brighter panel than the Philips and better HDR performance. Though the sound output here is quite impressive, it cannot surpass that of the Vu.
The biggest limitation of this TV is Saphi OS, though, which still seems far from ready in terms of the app ecosystem. In that department, official Android TVs are undeniably superior. You have to invest in a Fire TV Stick 4K to make this TV feel complete, and to get the most out of it. That’s an additional cost of 4K to 6K. So, if you are looking for the best all-round TV right out of the box, the Vu Cinema TV is a better alternative at 30K. But its availability has been scant since a week after its launch (weeks before the nationwide lockdown in India).
The Philips 50PUT6103S/94 is the next best option if brand name and very good audio/video quality are more important to you than the OS, and if you can find it at close to 32K or lower. But be prepared to invest a bit more in a Fire TV stick or smart set-top box to extract the most out of this machine.
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