Thursday, December 31, 2020

WHO Says Bigger Pandemic Than COVID Is Coming


World Health Organization experts have warned that even though the coronavirus pandemic has been very severe, it is “not necessarily the big one”, and that the world will have to learn to live with Covid-19.

The “destiny” of the virus is to become endemic, even as vaccines begin to be rolled out in the US and UK, says Professor David Heymann, the chair of the WHO’s strategic and technical advisory group for infectious hazards.

“The world has hoped for herd immunity, that somehow transmission would be decreased if enough persons were immune,” he told the WHO’s final media briefing for 2020.
Australia insists WHO inquiry into Covid origin must be robust, despite China tensions
Read more

But Heymann, who is also an epidemiologist with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the concept of herd immunity was misunderstood.

“It appears the destiny of SARS-CoV-2 [Covid-19] is to become endemic, as have four other human coronaviruses, and that it will continue to mutate as it reproduces in human cells, especially in areas of more intense admission.

The head of the WHO emergencies program, Dr Mike Ryan, said: “The likely scenario is the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat of a threat, but a very low-level threat in the context of an effective global vaccination program.

Ryan warned that the next pandemic may be more severe. “This pandemic has been very severe … it has affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one,” he said.

“This is a wake-up call. We are learning, now, how to do things better: science, logistics, training and governance, how to communicate better. But the planet is fragile.

“We live in an increasingly complex global society. These threats will continue. If there is one thing we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, is we need to get our act together. We need to honour those we’ve lost by getting better at what we do every day.”

Coke vs. Pepsi Blind Taste Test


so is coke or Pepsi will be blind taste??? when on test??? Curious???

AirAsia aims to provide a seamless delivery soluti, Food Panda and Grab Good Challenger


AirAsia’s new food delivery platform, airasia food, powered by Teleport, the logistics venture of airasia Digital, aims to continue making a difference for merchants with no hidden fees to join it.

Launched during the movement control order (MCO) in May 2020, airasia food is a seamless, fuss-free and affordable solution for merchants as it runs on flat-rates and 10% commission model.

In a statement, it said merchants could choose to sign up immediately with flat-rates and switch to a 10% commission model later on.


“Airasia food power payment and delivery, giving merchants full control in managing their menu and prices, apart from receiving an extended delivery range of up to 60km as compared to 15km to 20km by other food delivery platforms.” 

Almost a year after its launch, Sony Xperia Pro 5G might finally come to the US market


So, Sony launched the sleek Xperia 1 II flagship all the way back in February and it hit the US soil rather late in June. But if you remember, Sony also launched another flagship alongside the Xperia 1 II called the Xperia Pro 5G that offered mmWave 5G support and had some extra camera-centric chops. Well, it appears that the Xperia Pro 5G is finally ready to hit the US shores soon, but ten months too late following its launch.

Now, we don’t know a date as to when the Xperia Pro 5G will go on pre-order or starts shipping. B&H has currently listed the status as “Coming Soon”, and is asking users to sign up to get notified when it eventually goes on sale or the pre-orders go live for customers in the US. So yeah, your guess is as good as ours in this case. Now, there is no information about how much it will burn from your wallet, but it will most likely cost north of $1,000 if the Xperia 1 II’s asking price is any indication.

Talking about the device itself, the Xperia Pro 5G comes equipped with a 6.5-inch 4K (3840×1644 pixels) HDR OLED display with a tall 21: 9 aspect ratio. The IP68-rated device is powered by the Snapdragon 865 SoC ticking alongside 12GB of RAM and 512 gigs of onboard storage that can further be expanded using a microSD card of up to 1TB capacity. A 4,000mAh battery with support for fast charging keeps the lights on.

In the imaging department, you get a trio of 12MP sensors (wide + ultra-wide + telephoto) cameras at the back that offer up to 3x optical zoom output and can shoot cinematic 24 FPS (25/30/60 FPS options also available) videos at 4K resolution. An 8MP camera on the front handles selfies and video calls.

What separates the Xperia Pro 5G from the Xperia 1 II is its 360-degree 5G antenna system that is more efficient at picking up mmWave 5G signals. Notably, the Sony offering has an HDMI port at the bottom and can be connected to a professional camera to serve as a hi-res 4K monitor. When used as a monitor, the device offers controls such as brightness, pinch to zoom, and grid lines.

Also, when it is connected to a camera, the device can also be used to directly stream videos over a 5G network. Sony says that the wired connection between the phone and a professional camera also makes the process of file transfer much faster.

EOL for Adobe Flash Player today

 Adobe displays Flash Player end of life popup on Windows devices


If you have installed a recent version of Adobe Flash Player on a Windows machine, you may see a popup displayed by the program that informs you that Flash support is ending on December 31, 2020.

Adobe announced years ago that it would end support for Adobe Flash in 2020; browser makers such as Google, Microsoft or Mozilla pledged to remove Flash functionality from web browsers at the same time to limit security issues and other potential issues.

Some browsers include Adobe Flash natively; most Chromium-based browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, do. Other browsers require a plugin that needs to be installed, and it is users of the latter that Adobe tries to reach with its popup message.

Flash Player's update check, run once every seven days, displays the popup when it is run the next time. Users have options to select "remind me later" or to "uninstall". The latter starts the uninstallation process, the former will display the warning again in the near future.

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Headlines January 2021 Free Games For PS Plus Subscribers


PlayStation Asia waited until the very last day of the year to reveal next month’s free games for PS Plus subscribers. And it looks like a pretty good lineup too, consisting of three titles.

Headlining the free games is Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It’s the last game in the reboot trilogy, which can stand alone pretty well even if you haven’t played the earlier entries. The Challenge Tombs are great, and it has a Photo Mode to help you make the most of it.

The second game that’s free next month is Greedfall. It’s a fantasy action RPG that may remind you of the likes of The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age. There’s a meaningful crafting system, different builds for different playstyles, and even branching story paths.

And the third one, specifically for the PS5, is Maneater. It was first released for the PS4 this year, but for some reason the free version is only for the new-generation console. But either way, it’s a game of mindless fun like Jaws Unleashed for the PS2. There are some new mechanics like skills, but it’s still essentially the same thing.

These free games for PS Plus subscribers will be available between 5 January and 1 February 2021. If you haven’t claimed this month’s games, better get them now before they are gone.

2021 Chinese Zodiac Forecasts

 Remember, you have not ONE animal only like you have always thought. Every person may have up to FOUR animal signs, not just based on your year of birth, but month of birth, day of birth and hour of birth.

You can just use any “bazi calculator” by searching in Google to find out your 4 pillars which contains up to 4 animal signs.


General overview for 2021 split to 3 groups, if you have these in any of your 4 animal signs, then the star energy is affecting you, regardless whether you believe/like/realize/not.

THE ROCK STARS
Monkey, Tiger, Rooster, Rat
Be aware of the risks and opportunities. This is your year to shine.

THE TRAILBLAZERS
Snake, Horse, Dog, Dragon
2021 will be like action movie, got action, ups, downs, romance and villains.

THE COMEBACK KIDS
Ox, Goat, Pig, Rabbit
This will be a year of change for you. Now that you know change is coming for you, be prepared, don’t be surprised and don’t let crisis goes to waste.

For slightly more insight into each animal, watch the video.

Floating Pixels Has A Max Stand For The AirPods Max On Kickstarter


The Apple AirPods Max uses the old Lightning connector to charge its batteries. But German design studio Floating Pixels thinks it can do better. And the result is the Max Stand, that’s currently looking for backers on Kickstarter.

And it really looks to be making the charging process a lot easier. Rather than plugging in the old cable, the Max Stand essentially gives the Apple AirPods Max wireless charging capabilities. This comes in the form of a small magnetic plug. Put it where the Lightning port is, and just leave it on the stand.

While you’re at home, you can basically do away with the case that comes with the Airpods Max. The Max Stand allows it to look like it’s an intended look you were going for with your furniture. When you’re out and about, you can leave the magnetic plug in, and use the included magnetic USB-C cable to charge the headphones instead.

As mentioned, the Max Stand for the Apple AirPods Max is available on Kickstarter now. As for when it will ship, Floating Pixels say this will happen by March 2021, barring any hiccups thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Right now, the lowest price you can get it for is EUR59 (~RM293). The company says this is 40% off the usual price, which should be around EUR98 (~RM486)

The Worst Hacks of 2020, a Surreal Pandemic Year

 From ransomware schemes to supply chain attacks, this year melded classic hacks with extraordinary circumstances.

WHAT A WAY to kick off a new decade. 2020 showcased all of the digital risks and cybersecurity woes you've come to expect in the modern era, but this year was unique in the ways Covid-19 radically and tragically transformed life around the world. The pandemic also created unprecedented conditions in cyberspace, reshaping networks by pushing people to work from home en masse, creating a scramble to access vaccine research by any means, generating new fodder for criminals to launch extortion attempts and scams, and producing novel opportunities for nation-state espionage. 

SolarWinds Supply Chain Hack

On Tuesday, December 8, the well-respected cybersecurity and incident response firm FireEye made a stunning disclosure. The company had suffered a breach, and hackers had stolen some of the firm's internal threat-intelligence data as well as a cache of its “red team” hacking tools—used to probe the systems of paying customers for weaknesses so they can be fixed before attackers find them. In itself, the FireEye breach, which The Washington Post quickly attributed to Russian state-backed hackers, was significant but not a catastrophe. What no one knew that day, though, was that 18,000 other shoes were about to drop. 

Beginning on Sunday, December 13, news broke in waves that United States government agencies like the Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security, and Energy Departments, corporations, and international targets had all been victims of a massive nation-state espionage campaign. The hackers, who have widely been reported as Russian, were on a rampage that was largely made possible by what's known as a supply chain attack. In other words, all of the attacks were made possible by one initial compromise, in this case at the IT infrastructure firm SolarWinds. Hackers had breached the company as early as October 2019 and planted malicious code in software updates for its network-monitoring tool, Orion. Without knowing it, any customer that installed an Orion patch released between March and June was also planting a Russian backdoor on their own network.

There is also some evidence that the attackers compromised victims through other means aside from the SolarWinds breach, but through that one intrusion the attackers created access for themselves in roughly 18,000 SolarWinds customer networks, according to the company. The impact of the attack varied among victims. In some cases the hackers planted a backdoor but didn't go any farther. In other cases they used the access just long enough to figure out that they didn't care about the target. And for an unlucky subset, the attackers moved deep within victim networks for reconnaissance and data exfiltration. For example, critical infrastructure companies like more than a dozen in the oil, electric, and manufacturing sectors seem to have installed the backdoor, but it's not clear how extensively they were actually infiltrated by attackers. The situation underscores the threat posed by supply chain attacks, because they can efficiently undermine all of a company's customers in one fell swoop.

Russian hackers have used the technique before, sometimes with more expressly destructive goals. The SolarWinds attacks so far seem to have been largely for espionage, though some experts warn that it's too soon to tell whether there was a destructive component. Even if the attacks were purely for information-gathering, which is usually a globally accepted activity, some politicians and researchers say that the intrusions cross a line or are out of step with espionage norms because of their scale and scope. As former CIA agent Paul Kolbe put it last week in a New York Times essay, though, “The United States is, of course, engaged in the same type of operations at an even grander scale. We are active participants in an ambient cyberconflict that rages, largely unseen and unacknowledged, across the digital globe. This is a struggle that we can’t avoid, and there is no need to play the victim.” The question now is how the United States will respond to the SolarWinds hacking spree and approach digital espionage and conflict in the future as the Trump administration ends and the Biden administration begins.

Twitter

In July, a wave of stunning takeovers swept across Twitter, hijacking the accounts of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg, as well as major corporate accounts like that of Apple and Uber. The accounts tweeted out variations of a common theme: "I am giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes." 

Attackers had full access—a nightmare security scenario that would be any nation-state hacker's dream. Instead, the assault was simply part of a bitcoin scam that ended up netting about $120,000. In all, the scammers targeted 130 accounts and took control of 45. In a mad scramble to contain the situation, Twitter temporarily froze all verified accounts, blocking their ability to tweet or reset the account password. Some of the lockdowns lasted hours. 

Subsequent investigation revealed that the attackers had called Twitter's customer service and tech support lines and tricked reps into accessing a phishing site to harvest their special backend Twitter credentials, including username, password, and multifactor authentication codes. Then the attackers were able to use their access to these support accounts to reset the passwords on target user accounts. At the end of July, three suspects were arrested and charged with committing the hack, including 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark of Tampa, Florida, who allegedly led the digital assault. In the wake of the breach, Twitter says it launched a major effort to overhaul its employee access controls, particularly with November's US presidential election looming.

Blueleaks

On Juneteenth,  the leak-focused activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets published a 269-gigabyte trove of United States law enforcement information, including emails, intelligence documents, audio, and video files. DDOSecrets said the data came from a source claiming to be part of the ephemeral hacking collective Anonymous. Published in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the dump of more than a million files included documents and internal police communications about law enforcement initiatives to identify and track protesters and share intelligence about movements like Antifa. A lot of the information came from law enforcement “fusion centers,” which gather and share intelligence with law enforcement groups around the country. “It's the largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies,” Emma Best, cofounder of DDOSecrets, told WIRED in June. "It provides the closest inside look at the state, local, and federal agencies tasked with protecting the public, including [the] government response to Covid and the BLM protests."

University Hospital Düsseldorf

In September, a ransomware attack apparently targeted at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf instead crippled 30 servers at University Hospital Düsseldorf, throwing the hospital's systems and patient care into crisis. Unfortunately, ransomware actors have long targeted hospitals, because of their pressing need to restore service in the interest of patient safety. It's also somewhat common for university-affiliated hospitals to get hit inadvertently. The University Hospital Düsseldorf incident was especially significant, though, because it may represent the first time a human death can be attributed to a cyberattack. As a result of the ransomware attack, an unidentified woman in need of emergency treatment was rerouted from Düsseldorf University Hospital to a different provider in Wuppertal, about 38 miles away, causing an hour-long delay in treatment. She did not survive. Researchers note that it is difficult to definitively establish causality. The incident is clearly an important reminder, though, of the real-world impacts of ransomware attacks on health care facilities and any critical infrastructure.

Vastaamo

At the end of October, amidst a sobering wave of health-care-focused ransomware attacks, hackers threatened to release data stolen from one of Finland's largest psychiatric service networks, Vastaamo, if individuals or the organization as a whole didn't pay to keep the data under wraps. The hackers may have obtained the information from an exposed database or through an inside operation. Such digital extortion attempts have been around for decades, but the Vastaamo situation was particularly egregious, because the stolen data, which went back roughly two years, included psychotherapy notes and other sensitive information about patients' mental health treatment. Vastaamo worked with the private security firm Nixu, Finland's Central Criminal Police, and other national law enforcement agencies to investigate the situation. Government officials estimate that the episode impacted tens of thousands of patients. Hackers demanded 200 euros' worth of bitcoin, about $230, from individual victims within 24 hours of the initial ask, or 500 euros ($590) after that to hold the data. Finnish media also reported that Vastaamo received a demand for around $530,000-worth of bitcoin to avoid publication of the stolen data. A hacker persona "ransom_man" posted leaked information from at least 300 Vastaamo patients on the anonymous web service Tor to demonstrate the legitimacy of the stolen data.

Garmin

In late July, hackers launched a ransomware attack against the navigation and fitness giant Garmin. It took down Garmin Connect, the cloud platform that syncs user activity data, as well as large chunks of Garmin.com. The company's email systems and customer call centers were knocked out, as well. In addition to athletes, fitness buffs, and other regular customers, airplane pilots who use Garmin products for position, navigation, and timing services also dealt with disruption. The flyGarmin and Garmin Pilot apps both had days-long outages, which impacted some Garmin hardware used in planes, like flight-planning tools and updates for required FAA aeronautical databases. Some reports indicate that Garmin's ActiveCaptain maritime app also suffered outages. The incident underscored how exposed internet-of-things devices are to systemic failures. It's bad enough if your GPS-equipped, activity-tracking watch stops working. When you have to ground planes over instrument issues caused by a ransomware attack, it's very clear how tenuous these interconnections can be.

Honorable Mention: Chinese Government-Backed Hacking

China continued its unrelenting global hacking spree this year and seemed to be casting an ever wider net. Beijing-backed hackers burrowed deep into Taiwan's semiconductor industry to steal a huge quantity of intellectual property, from source code and software development kits to chip designs. Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said in June that the country's government and other organizations have been repeatedly targeted by a barrage of attacks. Australia has committed to investing nearly $1 billion over the next 10 years to expand its defensive and offensive cybersecurity capabilities. Though Morrison did not specify which actor has been dogging the country, he is widely reported to have been referring to China. Australia and China have been locked in an intense trade war that is redefining relations between the two countries. A Reuters report this month also provided an example of ongoing Chinese hacking operations across Africa after the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, discovered suspected Chinese attackers stealing video surveillance footage from their servers. The United States has also faced years of widespread digital espionage and intellectual property theft attributed to China. And it continued this year, especially in the realm of Covid-19-related public health and vaccine research.

Redditor Successfully Squeezes Full-Sized Movies On To Floppy Disk


It goes without saying that the world of hobbist and modders is home to some interesting characters and a ton of “what if?” projects. To that end, while the world looks forward to a future of 8K TVs and highly advanced multi-channel audio, one Redditor decided to backtrack and see if they can fit an entire movie on to the floppy disk.

The Redditor in question goes by the name of GreedyPaint and the answer to the question is: yes, they did. And yes, it is obvious that there were some workarounds. For a start, they wrote an x265 codec that would compress full-sized, high-resolution videos down to just 120 x 96 pixels. As for the movie of choice, it was Shrek, which they ripped from a 4.7GB DVD.

Bear in mind, the maximum storage capacity of a floppy disk was merely 1.44MB, and GreedyPaint was able to, by some miracle, shrink the entire movie file down to just 1.37MB; approximately 0.03% of the size of the DVD. In addition to the floppy disk, they also created a custom VCR player that could play the movies installed on the storage medium.

The final result of GreedyPaint’s efforts is…well, what you’d expect of a machine that clearly isn’t optimised to run movies off a floppy disk. At its best, the old-school TV connected to the “disk player” was stuttering, rendering the movie at what is clearly single-digit framerates.

All things considered, this is still just a personal project by GreedyPaint, all done in good fun; it’s not the first time they’ve tried to squash movie into an unconventional medium. In fact, it seems that the next medium they’re going to try and fit a movie into is a vinyl record. 

Apple Denied Copyright Claim Against Security Startup Corellium


Apple is well known for its extreme protectiveness of its products. So naturally, when a security company made it possible to emulate iOS, the company filed suit. But surprisingly, a US District Judge has ruled against the iPhone maker.

Reuters reports that Judge Rodney Smith ruled in favour of Corellium, the security startup in question. He said that the iOS emulation amounted to “fair use” because it was “transformative”. While these terms are more commonly heard in the YouTube content creation sphere these days, it also applies here as Smith says it helps developers find security flaws.

According to the report, the suit had Apple accuse the emulating of iOS by Corellium as having the “sole function” of running the operating system on non-Apple hardware. The claim also argued that Corellium sold its product indiscriminately, including potentially to hackers. Both of which were rejected by Smith.

That being said, Smith said Apple can still pursue a separate claim of Corellium circumventing its security measures to create the iOS emulation. In any case, it’s pretty rare to see a smaller company standing its legal ground against a larger company. Particularly one as large as Apple which, incidentally, previously attempted to acquire Corellium.

Samsung Announces New HDR10+ Adaptive Feature For Future QLED TVs


Samsung officially launched its new HDR10+ Adaptive feature earlier today. As per its official press statement, the new feature is designed to work with the Filmmaker Mode and will launch as an integral part of its upcoming QLED TV lineup.

Samsung says that HDR10+ Adaptive will support dynamic scene-by-scene optimisation and will be able to adjust to the lighting condition of any room, thus further enhancing the HDR experience of the select QLED TV. As to who benefits from the new feature, Amazon Prime video seems to be one of Samsung’s first clients that will enable HDR10+ Adaptive for the former’s Prime Video customers.

Samsung is also working together with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (UPHE) to expand the use of HDR10+ Adaptive across multiple movies and catalogues, both currently existing and new. Strangely enough, there’s no mention if other streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ will support the feature, although that could simply be due to the fact that alot of their content is more dependent on Dolby Vision than HDR10.


Beyond that, Samsung did not go into further detail, neither did it explain how much more improved HDR10+ Adaptive over its current HDR10+ format that is currently in use. Nor if the feature will be rolled out as an update to currently existing QLED TV models.

Caviar Golden Rock PlayStation 5 Is Made From 20kg of Gold


Over the years, we have seen plenty of bonkers releases from Caviar including iPhones that have a piece of Steve Job’s turtleneck shirt in them. The famed Russian jeweller recently has revealed their first batch of products for 2021 which also includes PlayStation 5.

Announced alongside the gold-laden AirPods Max, the company has implemented custom texturized faceplates on the PS5 that were apparently inspired by the outlines of rocks. In typical Caviar’s fashion, what made the Golden Rock PS5 rather outrageous is the fact that the faceplates were made from 20kg of 750/18K gold which roughly costs around RM 3.66 million*.

That amount alone would get you 1590 units of the standard PS5 or 1956 units if you prefer the Digital Edition model. Even if you choose to pay scalper-level pricing of RM 4000, you would still end up with more than 900 consoles.

To accompany the console, Caviar has also customized a pair of DualSense controllers for the PS5 with matching gold inserts as well as crocodile leather. The company didn’t reveal the actual pricing of its custom PS5 but judging by the pricing of its raw material alone, we have all the reason to believe that the Golden Rock is the most expensive PS5 in the world for the time being.


Meanwhile, we do wonder if Caviar’s Golden Rock PS5 will draw the wrath of Sony since the console technically comes with custom faceplates. Then again, it is also quite likely that the Russian jeweller has enough resources to defend itself against any legal challenge from the console maker.

*Based on today’s estimated 750/18K gold price of RM 183 per gram.

Apple Patent Depicts Keyboard Caps With Displays


Most of us are likely familiar with the US layout of keyboards. Though, if you’ve had the misfortune of using a keyboard with a different layout, you’ll probably understand the frustration of having keys with prints that don’t match the actual character you get when you press them. And this can be especially problematic if you get a laptop with the wrong layout. But Apple has a patent that could potentially solve this.

The patent that was recently awarded to Apple depicts the inclusion of a display panel on each keyboard keycap. This allows it to change the “print” on each keycap to reflect the character it will input when pressed. On one hand, those that benefit from this may be limited to those who type in multiple languages. But on the other, this will eliminate the issue of getting a laptop with the wrong keyboard layout.

What makes the idea behind this Apple patent event more impressive is the fact that these keys are meant to work on existing keyboard switches. This means that is will be compatible with the scissor switches on the company’s current run of MacBooks. It may also be compatible with other laptops, since scissor switches are currently the most common kind anyway.

But as with all patents, it remains to be seen if Apple will be doing anything with it. The incentive to do so is probably there, letting the company spend less on making MacBooks with different keyboard layouts.

LG Will Announce 86-Inch QNED MINI LED TV During CES 2021


LG has announced that it will be revealing its first-ever QNED mini LED TV lineup during the virtual session of CES 2021, along with its other premium LCD TV lineups for next year. Chief among its new lineup is an 86-inch model that supports resolutions of up to 8K.

For those among you wondering what QNED stands for, according to LG’s official press release, the “N” in the acronym refers to its NanoCell technology. To that end, it’s not wrong to say that its QNED lineup will be one of the world’s first TVs to merge both its NanoCell and Samsung’s Quantum Dot technology into one single panel.

Combined with LG’s Mini LED backlighting technology, the 86-inch QNED panel will support resolutions of up to 8K, house up to 30000 tiny LEDs with a contrast ratio of 1000000:1, paired with up to 25000 dimming zones and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, the latter presumably restricted to just 4K resolution at most. Oh, and they also support HDR.


Some of you already know that this isn’t LG’s first time dabbling in the realm of 8K. Earlier this year, the company introduced its NanoCell 8K TV during CES 2020, before officially bringing the TV into Malaysia in August.

Xiaomi Teases Another New Phone For Malaysia: Possibly Redmi 9 Power


There are only two days left before we can finally leave the oddity that is 2020 and step into 2021. For local Xiaomi fans, it seems like the company has already planned to welcome you with a new device in the new year.

However, it is not the newly announced Mi 11 though. Instead, the new device will be from the Redmi family as shown by this teaser-giveaway post that Xiaomi Malaysia published on its Facebook page earlier today:

As you may have noticed, Xiaomi has masked the name of the phone in the post above but based on the image itself, we believe that the phone is likely the new Redmi 9 Power that the company has just launched in India. Just compare the image above with the official render from Xiaomi India’s website:

The Redmi 9 Power itself is not an all-new model since it was adapted from Redmi Note 9 4G that was launched in China two months ago which is not to be confused with the older Redmi Note 9 that made its way to Malaysia in May. Truth to be told, it is so easy to get lost going through Xiaomi’s renaming scheme.

Aside from having the same physical design, both Redmi 9 Power and Redmi Note 9 4G feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor and a 6.53-inch Full HD+ IPS display. They also carry a 48MP main camera module on their back as well as 8MP selfie camera, 6000mAh battery and support for 18W fast charger although the Redmi 9 4G is missing the 2MP macro camera that is present on the Redmi 9 Power.


Meanwhile, there is also a possibility that the phone will not be called Redmi 9 Power when it arrived in Malaysia. Based on a recent report which has cited a listing on the database of Thailand’s telecommunication authority, the device could be released here as the Redmi 9T.

Given the dates shown in the teaser post by Xiaomi Malaysia, we believe that the company will launch the new phone in our market by mid-January 2021. Nevertheless, we will keep you posted once we hear more information from the company regarding its new Redmi device.

The 'Fatty' Chinese Zodiac Forecast in 2024 (Iverson Lee)

Interesting topic for 2024 years that you have on your bazi chart that you have it you will be surprised that you will become the fatty anim...