Alongside the Mi 9 and Mi 9 SE smartphones launch, Xiaomi has also unveiled a new speaker with a touchscreen display. Calling it ‘Mini TV’, the device is a smart speaker at heart, but comes with a 4-inch touchscreen display for added functionality. Apart from the touchscreen display abilities, the Xiaomi Xiaoai Mini TV smart speaker also supports voice control. It can control all the smart fittings in the house, set alarm clocks, play music, and also set custom routine settings. It is looking to give competition to other smart speakers with displays like the Echo Spot.

The Xiaomi Xiaoai Mini TV is yet another addition to the Xiaoai speaker series. The new variant is set to go into open beta registrations on February 28. The company has revealed very little about the smart speaker, and it is listed to sport a 4-inch touchscreen display and will support smart home products. For example, it will support smart doorbell products, showing you who is at your doorstep whenever someone rings the bell. It relays real-time information, and as mentioned, also works on voice control commands as well.

Users can also access videos and music via many supported apps. There’s little else that is known about the speaker, and we should know more in the days to come.

Alongside, Xiaomi also launched the Mi 9, Mi 9 Transparent Edition, and Mi 9 SE smartphones in China. Key highlights of the Mi 9 include a triple rear camera setup along with a 48-megapixel primary sensor, Game Turbo technology, 90.7 percent screen-to-body ratio, and a fifth-generation in-display fingerprint sensor. Price of the Mi 9 series starts at CNY 1,999 (roughly Rs. 21,200).

Scientists have developed flexible smart windows that can trap air pollutants, and keep the indoor environment free of harmful particulate matter.

Tuning the light intensity and reducing the concentration of atmospheric particulate matter (PM) in commercial buildings are both crucial to keep indoor people comfortable and healthy.

Smart windows fabricated on the flexible and transparent silver (Ag)-nylon electrodes can tune the light intensity entering commercial buildings to maintain thermal comfort.

However, fabricating a large-scale transparent smart window for high efficiency PM2.5 capture has been a significant challenge, until now, researchers said.

Scientists led by YU Shuhong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) developed a simple solution based process to fabricate large-area flexible, transparent windows for that can efficiently capture PM2.5.

“It takes only about USD 15.03 and 20 minutes to fabricate 7.5 square metre Ag-nylon flexible transparent windows,” researchers said.

The obtained mesh, coated with thermochromic dye, serves not only to tune the light intensity but also to purify indoor air.

The performance of the smart window remained stable even after 10,000 cycles of bending test and 1,000 cycles of stretching deformation, researchers said.

The success of the present design strategy provides more choices in developing next-generation flexible transparent smart windows and air pollution filters, researchers said.

Actor Javed Jaffrey says that the biggest problem with films is the availability of theatres, whereas web doesn’t impose any such restraint.

The cast of ‘The Final Call’ web-series – Arjun Rampal, Javed Jaffrey and Anupriya Goenka hosted a press junket here in Mumbai.

After making his presence count in films for decades, actor Javed is exploring web space and shares the difference between both the medium. He said, “With films the biggest problem is the theatres. You don’t get theatres. We have a population of 1.2 billion and only 12000 screens are there, which includes south territory. So how many films will get screens and how long the film will run, it has become weekend business, but with web-series, millions of people can watch it in one go, you don’t need cinema or screen, and I think this is a huge advantage of this medium”

The ZEE5 original series “The Final Call’ stars Arjun Rampal, Javed Jaffrey, Neeraj Kabi, Sakshi Tanwar, Pradeep Rawat, among others. It will start streaming on February 22.

Talking about the series, Javed said, “It is a spiritual thriller and both the trailers have been appreciated. The first trailer was quite thrilling and second one introduced the characters. The good thing like that I liked about the series, see people use to think that web-series doesn’t have censorship on sex and violence, so one would exploit it”

“People hooked on to web-series to see something different, which is not seen or shown on movies and films, some people thought that way. So for shock value, people put abuse, sex and violence in series, but this one has no such thing. It is purely concept based. The concept and story was such that it couldn’t have been told in film format”

Javed also added that the screenplay is beautifully adapted. He said, “The screenplay has been adapted beautifully and we’re six or seven main characters, who have kept the thrill. So it is not boring at any point. As the same time, the spiritual aspect of a journey, where are we going, what are we searching, life and death, how a point of view changes when you know you’re dying, so some of these elements have been exploited through the script”

The web-series is based on Priya Kumar’s best-selling novel ‘I Will Go With You’.