Reliance Jio bounced back from the forced cancellation of its previous Jio Summer Surprise offer with the new Dhan Dhana Dhan offer with remarkable speed. Now, its main competitors are trying to match it. Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea are Jio’s three biggest rivals, and each of them has launched a counterattack to attract or retain customers who are heavy data users.
Airtel’s new Rs. 244 charging pack gives users 1 GB of 4G data per day – the same amount of daily data that Jio offers for Rs. 309 for 84 days to its Prime members – for 70 days, as well as free local and national calls for up to 300 minutes per day or 1200 minutes per week. With a top-up of Rs. 399, users get the same 1GB of data per day, but the free call limit goes up to 3,000 minutes over the 70-day validity period. Beyond the free call limit, customers will be charged Rs. 0.10 per minute. For those who want more data, a Rs. 345 package gives buyers 2GB per day without the previous timeslot restrictions imposed by a FUP between 6 am and midnight. This package is valid for 28 days.
Airtel’s new offers will be active on April 15, even if you buy them in advance. Users need a 4G-enabled smartphone and a 4G SIM card to take advantage of these offers. These plans are reportedly only available to existing users who can find them in the My Airtel app and not to all Airtel customers.
Vodafone’s response to Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan’s offer is a charging pack priced at Rs. 352, giving users 1GB of 4G data per day for 56 days, plus unlimited local and STD voice calls for that duration. Again, the offer is not widely published. Users can key in a USSD code to express an interest in the request and then be directed to visit a Vodafone store in person.
The idea is reportedly offering two packs priced at Rs. 297 and Rs. 447. As with Airtel’s plans, both users give 1 GB of data per day for 70 days. The difference is in the number of free calls – up to 300 minutes per day or 1200 minutes per week for the former and up to 3000 minutes for the latter. Calls outside the toll-free allotment are billed at Rs. 0.30 per minute.
Meanwhile, Airtel has filed a petition with the TDSAT Tribunal against Jio’s delays in withdrawing the Summer Surprise offer, objecting to allowing those who signed up before the cancellation date to continue to receive benefits.
The BHIM-Aadhar platform incentivizes users and merchants with bonuses and cashback. The National Payments Corporation of India has updated the BHIM virtual payment app to support more Indian languages, new security features, and more flexible ways to send and receive money. On the same day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a new OHIM-Aadhar platform and incentive schemes for customers and merchants.
The OHIM Referral Bonus Scheme gives anyone who refers a new user Rs. 10, while the new user is Rs. 25. The bonuses will be issued after the new user has completed three successful trades of at least Rs. 50. The OHIM Merchant Cashback Scheme rewards merchants with Rs. 100 for every month, they make between 50 and 100 works with at least 20 unique customers. Traders who execute more than 200 trades per month will also receive Rs. 0.50 per transaction up to a maximum of Rs. 200, for a maximum potential payout of Rs. 300 a month. This offer is valid for six months so that sellers can earn up to Rs. 1800.
The OHIM-Aadhar platform aims to promote digital payments and reduce the amount of cash circulating in the Indian economy. Users can make payments with their Aadhar credentials using the biometric authentication features of their smartphones.
Samsung is all set to bring its 2017 flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, to India. The pair will launch on Wednesday, April 19. Samsung launched Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ in India on April 19. Pre-orders are already open, although exact prices are not yet known. Samsung will sell the international versions of these phones, which use its own Exynos 8895 processor instead of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835. Interestingly, the phones will go on sale in South Korea and the US two days later, on April 21. More than 720,000 units are reserved in South Korea.
Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ on March 29. Both models feature large edge-to-edge “infinity display” screens with curved sides, a new virtual assistant called Bixby, and iris recognition for security. The Galaxy S8 has a 5.8-inch screen and a 3000 mAh battery, while the larger Galaxy S8+ has a 6.2-inch screen with a 3500 mAh battery. Both phones have 64 GB of storage and run on Android 7.0 Nougat.
Instagram Stories beats Snapchat in popularity after copying core features. Instagram Stories are already used by more than 200 million people daily, driving out rival Snapchat, according to a statement from Facebook. Snapchat reported 161 million daily users at the end of last year. That number significantly increased from the 150 million the company said in January. Shares of Snapchat, the pioneer of the popular means of expression, fell 1.2 percent as a result.
Both Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories allow users to post a series of video and photo posts that play sequentially but expire after 24 hours. Instagram also recently copied Snapchat’s stickers and geofilters. Recently, the company announced new features such as the ability for users to create stickers of their own, plus custom stickers for different cities and a favorites tab to make searching easier.
Whatsapp will take steps to fight abuse of videos shared Facebook-owned Whatsapp has told India’s Supreme Court it will cooperate in efforts to block sexually suggestive videos on its messaging platform. Company representatives agreed to meet with a court-established committee within two weeks to address the issue and explore technical solutions to block such videos. A meeting is scheduled for April 27.
The statement comes after Whatsapp received notification from the highest court on April 11 as a party to a petition filed by a Hyderabad-based NGO. Other companies named during the proceedings include Google India, Microsoft India, Yahoo India, and Facebook.
Meanwhile, a tipster has claimed that an upcoming update to Whatsapp for Android and its web client will introduce the ability for a user to revoke messages after they’ve been sent, as well as simpler controls for formatting bold, italics, and underlined text.
Xiaomi Mi 6 Leaks Tip Specs and Design Multiple reports have pointed to the upcoming announcement of Xiaomi’s new flagship smartphones, dubbed the Mi 6 and Mi 6 Plus, and now we can get our first look at the larger of the two. An image showing the Mi 6 Plus has surfaced on the Chinese social media site Weibo. There is no branding or indication of how accurate this leak could be. The device seems to have a large screen that takes up almost the entire front and a physical Home button on the bottom of the show. Dual speaker grilles and a USB Type-C port can also be seen on the underside of the alleged Xiaomi Mi 6 unit.
At the same time, new entries in the online Geekbench scoring database confirm that the Xiaomi Mi 6 models will be powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 835 SoC with integrated Adreno 540 graphics and will be able to beat Samsung’s Galaxy S8. The single-core and multi-core results for the alleged Mi 6 were 2,006 and 6,438, respectively, compared to 1,916 and 6,011 for a Galaxy S8.
The Xiaomi Mi 6 and Mi 6 Plus will be unveiled next week. According to rumors and leaks, several variants will be launched with different RAM and storage combinations.
Nokia 3310 (2017) launches in the UK through multiple carriers. Following reports from UK carrier Carphone Warehouse of unprecedented demand for the newly reborn Nokia 3310, Vodafone and EE have announced that they, too, will be selling the classic phone. Carphone Warehouse has been taking pre-orders for the new Nokia 3310 for over a month. The device will cost 49 euros (about 3,200 rupees), but there’s no confirmation of when it will be available.
The Nokia 3310 (2017) is a feature phone much like its namesake, riding a wave of nostalgia for one of the most iconic phones of the pre-smartphone era. It may not have powerful features, but it certainly raises the profile of Nokia’s brand in preparation for the launch of new smartphones later this year.
Xbox Scorpio to be unveiled on June 11 Microsoft has announced that its souped-up Xbox, codenamed Scorpio, will be unveiled on June 11 at the 2017 edition of the annual E3 game expo. The new console is designed for gaming at 4K and has a GPU that can handle up to 6 Teraflops of pixel-shifting bandwidth and a specially designed 2.3 GHz CPU. Microsoft recently shared these specs and also previewed a development kit used to get games ready in time for the console’s launch.
The new Xbox model will compete against Sony’s PS4 Pro. However, it won’t go on sale until the end of this year during the US holiday season.
Nintendo is discontinuing its popular NES Classic Edition despite high demand. Nintendo has announced that it is ending production of the NES Classic Edition. The miniature version of the NES plays 30 of its original games and supports modern TVs with an HDMI output. It regularly sells out because Nintendo has seriously underestimated demand. Fans of retro console games and those who just wanted a taste of nostalgia flocked to the $59.99 device, but now there won’t be any new stocks after the few still in circulation are picked up.
Worldwide sales of the NES Classic Edition have reached 1.5 million units, of which 200,000 are in North America. Due to the high demand, prices have been up to three times higher, and fans have expressed their surprise and sadness on social media. The only silver lining is that Nintendo’s statement hints at the end of shipments “for this year,” which could indicate that Nintendo will release additional batches at some point over time.
OnePlus 5 leaked more flagship news on a Chinese regulatory site; it seems that OnePlus will be launching a new flagship dubbed the OnePlus 5 shortly. Previous rumors suggested that the company is skipping number 4, which is associated with death and bad luck in many Asian countries. A listing on the Chinese Radio Regulation Authority website seems to confirm this.
The OnePlus 5 could be launched in the second half of 2017 and will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and a 5.5-inch QHD display. Other features include a 23-megapixel main camera and a 16-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone could also have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
