Ather Energy India's first electric scooter 60km in one charge,Top speed of 72 kmph

Electric two-wheeler startup Ather Energy launched its first product, Ather S340, in Bengaluru on Tuesday at the startup event ‘Surge’.

The company was founded in 2013 by IIT Madras alumni Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain and has since been working on developing India’s first smart electric scooter.

There is a growing need for a sustainable energy-based transport. “Electric vehicles are an inevitable future,” said Tarun Mehta, CEO and Co-founder of Ather Energy, at Surge 2016, the startup event organised by the team behind Web Summit.

Products in general are getting into an intelligent loop of data collection, control, and intelligence, thus reducing human intervention.

However, the automobile industry is yet to catch up. The Ather S340, which has taken close to three years to build, aims to bring in the power of data and intelligence to the automobile industry.

As mentioned in a YourStory article on Ather, the Ather-S340 is a connected vehicle powered by a lithium-Ion battery pack, and features a digital touchscreen dashboard, a light-weight aluminium chassis, and can reach speeds of 72 kmph. The smart dashboard in the vehicle will enable users to create personalised profiles, choose riding modes and set other ride preferences. The vehicle charges up to 80 per cent in less than an hour. Its touchscreen dashboard contains a Vehicle Control Unit (diagnostic system) that constantly monitors the rider’s behaviour, a GPS, and an indicator showing how much distance can be travelled on the remaining charge. The personalised profile feature will allow users to create their profile comprising all the basic information.

The inbuilt navigation, Tarun said, works very differently from the plain vanilla mapping that is available in other vehicles. The map uses data to not only predict the time taken to reach a destination but will also analyse the road conditions. They will also add data on charging points on the route and time taken to reach a destination based on driving patterns and use.

Some of the features of the bike can be highlighted as follows:

• Touchscreen dashboard with 24*7 connectivity
• On-board navigation
• Range of 60 km in single charge
• 80% charge in one hour
• Top speed of 72 kmph
• 15 patent applications filed
• Manufacturing in Bangalore, Karnataka
• Online-only sales model
• Doorstep delivery and service
• “There’s also a growing need for predictive analysis in vehicle maintenance. In most cases, vehicular maintenance takes place after something goes wrong. With our predictive maintenance vehicle, owners can figure out when the scooter needs a service or maintenance check,” said Tarun.
• Ather is backed by angel investors like Flipkart founders, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, MEDALL CEO Raju Venkatraman, and Tiger Global. Tiger Global invested $12 million in May 2015.

Lenovo Vibe K5 and Vibe K5 Plus specifications and first look

Lenovo at MWC 2016 trade show launched two new smartphones - the Vibe K5 and the Vibe K5 Plus. We managed to get our hands on the metal-clad Lenovo Vibe K5 and the Vibe K5 Plus at the trade show in Barcelona, and you can check out our First Look video.

The budget smartphones feature similar specifications except the display resolution and the processor they are powered by. The phones are slated to arrive in March at a price of $149 or roughly Rs. 10,200 for the Vibe K5 Plus and $129 or roughly Rs. 8,800 for the Vibe K5.

The handsets focus on offering a better entertainment experience to users as they sport Dolby Atmos speakers for stereo sound. The company is also positioning its new offerings as the successor to the existing A6000 series, which will be discontinued. In addition, all smartphones from the company will either fall under the Vibe or Moto sub-brands. The Vibe K5 and the Vibe K5 Plus will come in three colours - Silver, Grey, and Gold.

The Lenovo Vibe K5 sports a 5-inch LCD HD display (720x1280 pixels). It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 octa-core SoC coupled with Adreno 405, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of inbuilt storage - which can be expanded via microSD card (32GB). Other features of the Lenovo Vibe K5 include a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel sensor on the front.

The Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, as its name suggests, offers slightly more powerful hardware modules. It has a 5-inch IPS LCD full-HD display (1080x1920 pixels). It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 quad-core SoC with Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB of RAM. It also houses a 13-megapixel rear-camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing sensor.

Both the handsets support dual-SIM, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, and Micro-USB 2.0 connectivity options. The Lenovo Vibe K5 and Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus have 2750mAh batteries and run Android 5.1 Lollipop.

World's first 6GB RAM phone vivo XPlay 5 with edge display

Yesterday, Vivo officially confirmed that it’s 6GB RAM smartphone, XPlay 5 is coming on March 1. And it’s not surprising that today a weibo (popular micro-blogging site in China) the user has posted what appear to be the images of the upcoming Vivo XPlay 5. The device which is scheduled for an announcement next week has been leaked in full glory.

The XPlay 5 would be powered by Qualcomm’s most powerful chipset yet, the Snapdragon 820. But what’s more, interesting is that it would be world’s first smartphone sporting staggering 6GB of RAM. The Chinese manufacturer is not far behind when it comes to teasing about the feature. In first two teasers we learnt about the confirmation of processor and RAM, now in new teaser posted, company touts the Hi-Fi Audio 3.0 technology that is being used on their upcoming handset. It should be interesting to see what more company has got in store for us.

The upcoming Vivo handset would also have a dual-screen setup in form of an edge screen. If you have been familiar with Galaxy smartphone sporting edge screens, then you’ll know what they are capable to do. The recently launched Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge takes this innovative technology to next level and, this time, they are calling it Edge Panels on their handsets. I wonder whether Vivo would be giving it a name or we will just assume and call it edge screen, as we are right now.

Other smartphones that are expected to come with 6GB of RAM this year includes Huawei P9, which will also come with Kirin processor, the latest flagship chipset by HiSilicon, the Huawei’s in-house processor maker. There is also a concept phone from Asus that we are hoping would be a real thing, it’s Asus Z1 Titan, but that is highly likely. Well, at least we are going to get real thing, the Vivo XPlay 5, pretty soon. Are you as excited as we are? Let us know in the comments section below. We would love to get your thoughts on this 6GB RAM smartphone. Shoot.