A medium-sized bus equipped with autonomous driving technologies made its debut on Thursday in Chongqing Municipality, a vehicle-manufacturing powerhouse in southwest China.

The L4 autonomous bus was a joint effort of Baidu Apollo and domestic bus manufacturer King Long, reports Xinhua.

After one-year construction, a test base for autonomous driving was put into use on Thursday in Chongqing.

Several carmakers have carried out L4 self-driving tests and demonstrations in five application scenarios.

Baidu Apollo will work together with Chongqing to set a benchmark for the self-driving industry in west China, and provide R&D test services and rich application scenarios for carmakers and auto parts manufacturers in the autonomous vehicle field, said Li Zhenyu, vice president of Baidu.

Also read: Uber heads in new direction with Toyota on self-driving cars

Leading e-commerce platform robishop.com.bd is offering an exclusive discount of up to Tk 10,000 on purchase of Apple’s latest smartphone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max.

The smartphones are available with 36 months EMI facility with a minimum monthly payment of Tk 3,612.

With a Tk 10,000 discount, the Robishop price of iPhone 11 Pro Max 256GB is Tk 144,999 while iPhone 11 Pro Max 64 GB will cost Tk 129,999.

Customers can buy the 256GB variant at Tk 134,999 and 64 GB one at Tk 114,999 getting a Tk 5,000 discount.

Moreover, customers can avail a Tk 300 discount while signing up at robishop for purchasing the premium brand smartphones with free home delivery.

Also readRobi-10 Minute School brings digital skill development courses

Bangladeshi handset maker Walton has launched new affordable smartphone ‘Primo GH9’ with attractive features.

The phone offers a large notch display, dual rear cameras, Android 10 operating system, and fingerprint scanner, among others. All this costs only Tk 6,799. The handset is available at all Walton Plaza, mobile brand and retail outlets along with its own online sales platform E-Plaza.

Asifur Rahman Khan, Chief of Walton Cellular Phone sales department, said the design and configurations of the smartphone have been fixed considering the demand and affordability of entry-level customers, the company said in a press release.

Also Read- Walton launches new flagship phone with 48-MP camera

The attractively designed 8.6 mm slim smartphones comes with black, sky blue, ocean green and deep blue colours.

It features a 6.1 inch U-Notch HD+ IPS display with 1560X720 pixel screen resolutions. The device sports a Helio A20 1.8 GHz Quad Core processor with PowerVR Rogue GE8300 GPU, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage (expandable up to 256 GB) and along with 3,000 mAh battery.

Primo GH9 features a 13MP and 0.3MP dual rear auto focus cameras with PDAF and LED flash. It also sports another 5MP front facing selfie camera. Some advance camera features are 5p lens, 1/3.06" large sensor for sharp and colourful photos, normal mode, bokeh, beauty, cute, BSI, face detection, digital zoom with option of capturing full HD videos on both side cameras. 

The dual 4G VoLTE supported phone has other necessary features including OTA, OTG, full HD video playback, dark mode, focus mode, full-screen gesture navigation, smart wake up, motion gesture, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cast screen, WLAN hotspot, GPS with A-GPS, accelerometer (3D), orientation, light (brightness), and proximity.

Customers will get instant replacement warranty for 30 days for the phone along with one-year regular service warranty, the company said.

Apple on Tuesday unveiled Apple Watch Series 6, Apple Watch SE, two new iPad models, and Apple One subscription plans during its virtual event.

Apple Watch Series 6 comes with a feature that can measure oxygen saturation of users' blood, so the users may better understand their overall fitness and wellness, reports Xinhua.

It uses a custom algorithm built into the Blood Oxygen app to measure blood oxygen between 70 percent and 100 percent.

Its new operating system "watchOS 7" also brings new features and the ability to curate and share watch faces, the company said.

Apple Watch SE features the same accelerometer, gyroscope and always-on altimeter as Apple Watch Series 6, and with the latest motion sensors and microphone. It offers robust health and safety capabilities including fall detection, Emergency SOS, international emergency calling, and the Noise app, according to Apple.

Apple introduced the eighth-generation iPad, featuring the A14 Bionic chip that brings the Neural Engine to the entry iPad for the first time.

The new iPad Air features an all-screen design of 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, with upgraded camera and audio, a new integrated Touch ID sensor, and the A14 Bionic chip, the company said.

"This is our strongest iPad lineup ever, giving our customers even more ways to enrich their daily lives," said Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak.

Using 5-nanometer process technology, A14 Bionic is packed with 11.8 billion transistors. The latest-generation A-series chip features a new 6-core design for a 40 percent boost in CPU performance, the company said.

Single subscription

Starting this fall, customers with Apple subscriptions will be recommended the Apple One plan, which includes all of Apple's subscription services.

"With a single subscription, customers in over 100 countries and regions can enjoy their favorite Apple services across their favorite devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Mac," Apple said.

The Individual plan includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud storage for 14.95 US dollars per month.

The Premier plan is for $29.95 per month, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and 2TB of iCloud storage, and can be shared among up to six family members.

Apple reported late July its financial results for its fiscal 2020 third quarter with quarterly revenue of $59.7 billion, an increase of 11 percent from the year-ago quarter while the net sales in the Great China region increased to $9.329 billion.

According to the quarterly financial report, the company's services revenue reached $13.156 billion, up by 14.8 percent year on year. Its Wearables, Home, and Accessories unit brought in $6.450 billion, a 16.7-percent growth, and its iPad unit reached $6.582 billion.

Read More: Apple is 1st US company to be valued at $2 trillion

China successfully sent nine satellites into planned orbit from the Yellow Sea Tuesday.

The nine satellites, belonging to the Jilin-1 Gaofen 03-1 group, blasted off atop a Long March-11 carrier rocket, China's first sea-launched rocket, at 9:23 a.m. (Beijing Time).

The satellites were developed by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd. Three of the satellites will be used for video imaging, one of which is for China's popular video sharing platform Bilibili and another for the state broadcaster CCTV.

Meanwhile, the other six satellites are push-broom imaging satellites.

The Bilibili satellite has features of low development cost, low power consumption, lightweight and high resolution. It was designed to shoot videos and pictures for popular science.

The satellite can obtain color videos and images with a resolution higher than 0.98 meters. The data will be used to create popular videos, covering fields such as science and technology, humanities, history and education, and will be released on Bilibili.

The nine satellites will provide remote sensing data for the country's land resource survey, urban planning and disaster monitoring services.

The Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center conducted the launch mission.

Developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the Long March-11 is the only rocket among China's Long March rocket series that uses solid propellants. It is mainly used to carry small satellites and can take multiple satellites into orbit at the same time.

Tuesday's launch was the 346th by the Long March rocket series.

Also read: China launches new BeiDou navigation satellite