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An earlier report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman gave us some vague details about an upcoming iPhone model, which is currently tagged as the 20th anniversary iPhone. This device was said to introduce a brand-new design or have a unique design by itself, while the rest of the iPhone 19 series would have a slightly older or recent design. This strategy would be very similar to what Apple did when it announced its iPhone X, which was meant to celebrate 10 years of iPhone. After the initial details, there’s more information from another source which gives us a better idea about the design of the upcoming iPhone.

A detailed report by Korean publication ET News, gives out many details about this upcoming iPhone citing sources from the supply chain. Apple is reportedly working on a display that bends or has curved edges on all four sides. While this sounds like a regular quad-curved display panel, which is now also available in many low-end mid-range Chinese smartphones, this panel and its screen are supposed to have curved sides that are a lot more aggressive. When viewed from the front, the display is supposed to give a bezel-less appearance, meaning the bezels would hide or appear only past the curvature on the sides, which would not be visible unless viewed from the sides.

This indeed, sort of confirms the previous report which stated that the phone will make “extensive use of glass” and appear like a slab of glass with no visible bezels. The source claims that Apple will be meeting Samsung and LG for the development of this panel.

The second detail mentioned in this report is that of an under-display camera (UDC). Samsung and some Chinese smartphone brands have used the same tech in their smartphones. However, such technology means a lot for Apple, that’s stuck with a capsule-shaped cavity in its displays for its Face ID authentication method. Apple even built software features around it by branding it as Dynamic Island. Launched with the iPhone 14 Pro, Dynamic Island exists on every iPhone model on sale save for the recently announced iPhone 16e (Review). The under display camera is supposed to hide the camera under the display letting the various Face ID sensors peek between the pixels when needed.

The third detail mentioned in this report is the use of a solid-state battery. Solid state battery is an upcoming battery technology that is yet to make its way into production smartphones. The tech basically uses a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyte used in commonly available lithium-ion batteries. This is different from the silicon carbon technology that is currently used to deliver higher capacity and makes use of non-graphite anodes for faster and safer charging.

The report claims that using pure silicon will increase energy density allowing for holding higher charge and thereby allow for longer-lasting battery life.

A Google engineer based in Bengaluru responded to a post about a woman’s brother being laid off from Microsoft in the US. The woman shared her cousin’s brother’s job loss, highlighting the instability of tech careers and the perceived security of government jobs. She noted that this experience reinforced her parents’ advice to pursue government positions for better job stability. The user who goes by the name Sneha wrote, “My cousin brother working in Microsoft USA has been laid off, tech is not a stable place. That’s why parents say to prepare for a government job. At least there is job security.”

However, Rahul Rana countered the notion of prioritising government job security, arguing that higher earnings in the tech industry outweigh the benefits of job stability in government roles. He suggested that one can earn five times more in a few years than a government employee might in a lifetime. Another user echoed his views and wrote, “He would have earned more than a government employee would have earned in 10 years or more.”

he tweet ignited a debate on social media, with users weighing the pros and cons of tech jobs versus government positions, sharing their perspectives on job security, financial rewards, and career stability. Ms Sneha, who originally shared the tweet, said that government jobs in India can provide substantial benefits beyond salary, including allowances for housing, electricity, and other perks, which can lead to significant wealth accumulation. She also shared a personal anecdote about a family member in a state government position, who owns a villa in Dubai.

However, many users said that tech jobs offer more freedom, higher earning potential, and exciting opportunities, outweighing the benefits of government positions. 

One user wrote, “Sorry to hear about your cousin. But if he cracked Microsoft once, he can do it again — maybe even better. Tech isn’t always stable, but it gives you unmatched freedom and the chance to grow fast if you keep upskilling.”

Another commented, “My dad was in a govt job. Low salary, no work, lazy and boring job. My 1st month salary in MNC was twice my dad’s salary after 20 years. So u can decide which is better.”

A third said, “If you invest your money wisely I think you can get more than what government job has to offer plus with Microsoft tag I don’t think he would be unemployed.”

Microsoft layoffs

This recent layoff follows previous job cuts in 2023, where Microsoft reduced its workforce by 10,000 jobs, less than 5% of its total workforce. The company has cited the need for “organisational and workforce adjustments” to manage its business effectively. Microsoft’s layoffs affected its home state of Washington the most, with 1,985 job cuts, primarily in software engineering and product management roles, based in the Redmond headquarters.

Microsoft said the layoffs are part of its efforts to stay competitive and agile as it rapidly integrates AI into its products and services. The company aims to automate routine tasks, freeing up employees to focus on higher-value work. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, mentioned that the company was exercising caution due to economic uncertainty and potential recession.

US President Donald Trump‘s ‘don’t want you building in India’ exhortation to Apple boss Tim Cook was played down Thursday night, with government sources saying there is significant value for the global tech giant if it chooses to expand iPhone production in the country.

India has a manufacturing ecosystem that is ‘good for global smartphone companies’, and a company like Apple will see the competitiveness from domestic production, sources said.

‘India has become a significant player in the smartphone production space… if companies recognise the value of manufacturing in India, they will continue on that path’, sources said.

Sources also said any company like Apple – which has said a majority of iPhones sold in the US from the June quarter onwards will likely be ‘made in India’ – must acknowledge that edge.

‘Their investment decisions will be based on their own competitiveness…’

Sources within Apple, meanwhile, have said the company has no plan to change its India investment plans based on what Trump said. Company executives told news agency PTI the proposal to set up a major manufacturing facility in the country will go ahead as scheduled.

Earlier Thursday, the United States President said he had told Mr Cook he does not want him “building in India” and that “India can take care of themselves”. The comments were made at a business forum in Qatar, the last stop on Trump’s whirlwind three-nation West Asia tour.

“I said to him, ‘my friend, I am treating you very good. You are coming up with $500 billion… but now I hear you are building in India. I don’t want you building in India. You can build in India… because India is one of the highest tariff nations in the world, so it is very hard to sell in India.”

Trump later claimed Apple, one of the most valuable companies in the world, would be re-locating factories to the US. The company, though, has made no such comment.

Apple had committed to investing $500 billion in the US for manufacturing, but the realities are very different. The company will struggle to instantly re-create supply chains in that country large enough to make the nearly 76 million iPhones sold in the US in 2024 alone.

The costs could run into the tens of billions of dollars, analysts had said.

Trump’s rambling comment also came after Cook indicated a split in sourcing strategies for iPhones, which account for nearly 50 per cent of Apple’s revenue. iPhones meant for sale in the US will be made in India and existing plants in China will manufacture for the rest of the world.

For now, the split is also a way to avoid massive tariffs being slapped on iPhones produced in China and exported to the US. The two countries are in the midst of a ferocious trade war.

There was some reprieve on that front this week after a deal that saw Beijing agree to cut duties on US imports to 10 per cent and Washington to 30 per cent. This is for 90 days only.

Previously the rates were 145 on Chinese goods and 125 on US imports.

At this time an estimated 15 per cent of the global iPhone output comes from India, as do popular accessories – such as the AirPods, which are being manufactured in Telangana.

In April Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said iPhones worth Rs 1.5 lakh crore had been exported in FY25. This bodes well for the Indian government’s flagship initiatives to boost local manufacturing – the ‘Make in India’ programme – and steal a march on China.

Google announced the roll out of new artificial intelligence (AI) and accessibility features to Android and the Chrome browser on Thursday. The Mountain View-based tech giant introduced these features on the occasion of the Global Accessibility Awareness Day, observed on the third Thursday in May. The company has added Gemini capabilities to the alt text description feature and is now expanding the Expressive Captions feature, which was only available in the US. Additionally, the Google Chrome browser is also getting two new accessibility features to help those with low vision.

Google Introduces New Accessibility Features

In a blog post, the tech giant said that it is rolling out new updates to Android and Chrome to create customised experiences for vision and hearing. Additionally, Google is also adding new resources for developers building speech recognition tools.

Starting with Android, the tech giant is introducing a new feature and expanding the other to more users. Last year, the company integrated Gemini-powered capabilities into TalkBack, Android’s screen reader, enabling it to generate descriptive captions for images without alternative text (alt text). Now, this feature is being expanded: users will not only hear alt text descriptions of photos but can also ask questions about the images themselves. Additionally, the feature will also let users ask questions about their screen.

In December 2024, Google introduced Expressive Captions to Android in the US. Part of Live Captions, this AI-powered feature adds a new format to better convey the context behind the sounds. The company said these subtitles will be able to communicate things like tone, volume, environmental cues, as well as human noises.

For instance, the feature will write “noooooo” instead of “no” when the speaker said it emphatically, likely to show disappointment (think Darth Vader saying “no” in Star Wars: Episode III). Or it will write “amaaazing shot” when a commentator is excited about a great play in a game of Cricket or Football. Expressive Captions is now being rolled out in English in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US on devices running Android 15 and newer.

Google Chrome is also getting a couple of new accessibility features. Earlier, the desktop version of the browser did not support screen readers for scanned PDF files. Now, the company is changing that by adding optical character recognition (OCR). Chrome will now be able to recognise scanned PDFs, highlight, copy and search, and even use screen readers to read them.

The second feature is dubbed Page Zoom. It can increase the size of the text in web pages in Chrome on Android, without affecting the page’s layout. This feature is aimed at those who have low vision and prefer to read larger fonts without having to move the page left and right over and over.

Samsung is reportedly working on a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that can turn images into videos. As per a tipster, the South Korean tech giant is developing an AI-powered image-to-video feature that can convert any photo in the user’s gallery into a “few-second-long” video. There are no other details about the feature available, but it is likely to be part of the company’s Galaxy AI suite of features, and could be introduced with the upcoming One UI 8.0 operating system (OS) update in the coming months.

Samsung’s AI Video Generation Tool Could Use Google’s Veo 2 Model

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), tipster PandaFlash claimed that Samsung is developing an image-to-video AI feature for future smartphones. The tipster also says that the feature can create a few-second-long video using a single image as a reference. No other details were shared.

The information comes just days after the company announced that the Honor 400 series will feature an image-to-video tool that can generate up to five-second-long videos with images as input. TikTok has also announced a similar feature dubbed AI Alive. 

It’s worth noting that both of these features merely animate the image in different styles, instead of generating creative and abstract videos with the source image as the reference point. In a way, it is more of an enhancement feature instead of a generation feature.

Honor said that its AI feature will be powered by Google’s Veo 2 video generation model. It is possible that Samsung might also use the same model to offer the image-to-video feature. In 2024, the company partnered with the Mountain View-based tech giant to introduce the Circle to Search feature in the Galaxy S24 series.

Samsung’s AI-powered video generation tool would add to the multimodal capabilities of Galaxy AI. The suite already features tools that can generate images from a text prompt or an image input. However, so far, there are no video generation tools. This currently unnamed feature is speculated to be part of the One UI 8.0 update.

The tech giant is reportedly also working on an AI-powered video summarisation tool. This tool is said to be able to generate a text summary of any online video. The feature is reportedly compatible with platforms like YouTube and Vimeo.

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