Spreadtrum - now Unisoc - has finally started its upward journey with its SC9863A chip. Either it's already there or it's now very close to the point where its cheap chips will finally become decent enough or good enough that they'll finally start to be incorporated by mainstream smartphone and device manufacturers.

• There's no other purely ARM Cortex-A55 SoC on the market currently. Which is surprising considering there were/are several purely ARM Cortex-A53 chips, and A55 is the successor to A53. But the point here is that there was a market gap that Unisoc's chip has filled - at least until others release pure A55 processors.
• Good GPU.
• Though use of 28 nm manufacturing process is a shame [they should've used at least 16 nm and preferably 14 nm], all 8 cores are A55 and not A57/A72/A73/A75/A76, so power consumption shouldn't be too high. Still, had they used 14 nm, the chip's power consumption would've become a strong point.
• 1.6 GHz isn't stellar of course, but it's certainly good enough for casual usage, especially if the OS is a pure version devoid of unnecessary layers/skins [and optimally compiled and configured].
• The stunning success that MediaTek has achieved in the last 1-2 years, and particularly with its Helio P60 SoC should serve as a cautionary tale for Qualcomm. It's only a matter of time before Unisoc has its own Helio P60 moment. Obviously it's tough to digest that the excellent Helio X30 failed.
• Obviously Unisoc needs to market itself and its products better. For example, the webpage for its older SC9832E product highlights "VoLTE, ViLTE, VoWiFi", but the page for its latest chip doesn't, making you feel like it might be missing these.

Nick Jonas will soon kick out Priyanka Chopra from his life. Their marriage won't last long. She's much older than him, and he'll throw her out when he has milked her sufficiently and gets bored of her. She too has married him largely to further her Hollywood career, so getting dumped in favor a younger, fresher girl won't be as painful for her. Her inflated ego and pride will be hurt though.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Priyanka-Chopra-marrying-Nick-Jonas/answers/94315473

https://www.quora.com/Is-the-cunning-Priyanka-Chopra-marrying-Nick-Jonas-for-money-or-is-it-vice-versa/answer/Shan-Barani-1

America will soon see - if it hasn't already - the already-high and rising Russian agricultural and grain exports on the world market as a threat to its national security, because the massive revenues and profits from wheat and other food exports can ultimately feed into modernization of Russia's military (and allow Russia to undertake military interventions abroad, wherever required).

http://rishabhsingla.blogspot.com/2017/11/so-good-to-see-russias-food-and-grain.html

The Canada–Mexico–United States 2026 FIFA World Cup bid will win over the bid from Morocco. The combined diplomatic, economic, and political strength of these three nations will triumph over tiny Morocco. These three nations have vast financial resources and massive networks of diplomatic corps needed to influence and buy the votes of other nations. Morocco won't be able to survive.

Over the next few years, artificial intelligence and AI will be two of the most misused buzzwords in the technology industry. Shallow companies will casually use this sophisticated and specific term to create a false impression on buyers, most of whom obviously won't understand whether something really contains and represents AI or not. Other candidates for similar and related misuse are neural and neural network, or some sort of jazzy combinations, like neural engine.

Update [12-Oct-18]: AI nonsense is in full swing. Chinese smartphone makers - Oppo, Vivo, etc., are fully misusing this term and have diluted the serious breakthrough that it represented in computer science, and have converted it into a shallow marketing buzzword devoid of any depth.

Apple's extremely lucrative smartphone business via its iPhone franchise will eventually - not immediately, but one day - face challenge from ultra-premium, highly-innovative, co-branded flagship handsets from successful Chinese smartphone makers, especially Huawei and OnePlus. The absence of premium branding on these will be largely compensated by co-branding these devices with marquee brands such as Porsche Design, Emporio Armani, TAG Heuer, etc.

Samsung - unable to compete with Chinese smartphone brands (Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, ZTE, etc.) that sell flagship-like looks, quality, specifications and performance at mid-range prices - will continually cede more ground in the mid-range price smartphone segment to these formidable competitors. Samsung won't be able to provide near-flagship phones at mid-range prices else it won't be able to charge high prices for its flagship devices. These forces will thus ensure that Samsung will gradually be forced to move towards premium-only segment in smartphones.

Samsung is desperately trying to compete with the Xiaomis and the Honors by releasing a variety of ugly-looking mid-range phones with specifications that are a compromise compared to what's being offered by Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. What's being done to Samsung is somewhat similar to what Samsung did to Sony [with the notable exceptions that Sony products always looked/look very beautiful and had/have top-notch build quality].

HMD Global's Nokia 1 smartphone powered by Android Oreo Go, and priced at INR 5,499 will fail and fail miserably in India. Xiaomi's Redmi 5A - priced only slightly higher at INR 5,999 and having vastly superior hardware - will mercilessly slaughter and rape the comparatively pathetic phone that the Nokia 1 is.

https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1-9052.php

https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1_with_android_oreo_go_edition_launched_in_india-news-30273.php

https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_5a-8898.php

https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=9052&idPhone2=8898

Qantas Airways' direct flight from Perth to London will fail, for price and value reasons. Its significant extra cost will not be borne by customers, and instead flyers will prefer the significantly cheaper one-stop flights offered by Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways, for only little extra time.

Despite all the current hoopla around #deletefacebook, in reality few users will permanently ditch Facebook today or in the future. FB users are too "invested" in Facebook - uploaded photos and videos, and also contacts as well as memorable comments and conversations - to be able to purge it. And people's "investment" in Facebook will only grow, making getting out even more difficult. The locks will only get tighter.

America will use US-built self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles as targeted weapons to carry out assassinations of individuals in other nations. These assassinations of economic, military or political adversaries will be carefully crafted to look like normal accidents, thus providing America with the cover of plausible deniability.

Initially thought about this about 2-3 years back.

Self-driving cars raise fears over ‘weaponisation’
https://www.ft.com/content/a8dbd4e0-f807-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1a00

China impedes foreign carmakers’ autonomous tests
https://www.ft.com/content/2ba4366c-e08c-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c

The proliferation of tiny-sized, single-board computers and single-board microcontrollers will massively increase the risk and incidence of terrorist attacks around the globe. Like improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and Molotov cocktail type bombs of the last few decades, there will now be a whole new class of small yet smart drones and other sophisticated weapons that will utilize the high amount of computing power and sensor inputs available in tiny-sized, low-power-consumption packages. The challenge to militaries from these machines will be immense.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Tinker_Board
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_single-board_computers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_microcontroller
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_single-board_microcontrollers

In the next few years, an airline that exclusively uses cutting-edge, lighter, lower-cost, higher-comfort, higher-safety, lower-noise, modern, next-generation flying equipment - Sukhoi Superjet 100, Bombardier CSeries, UAC Irkut MC-21, and Comac-UAC CRAIC CR929 aircraft - will successfully grow against large incumbent airlines relying on only Airbus or Boeing planes. Betting on these new-age upcoming airliners coming out simultaneously is a once-in-decades opportunity that doesn't arise often.