iPhone X sales in India started today at 6 pm local time, with long queues at Apple resellers in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and other major cities. People queued outside stores hours before sales started to get their hands on the new Apple phone, though supply is expected to lag behind demand. iPhone X pre-orders began last Friday, and people who pre-ordered the handset should receive it today, with a South Delhi retailer saying others may forget to get the phone in the next 3-4 days. For those who don’t know, this is the first wave of iPhone X availability worldwide; the iPhone X price in India for the 64GB and 256GB variants is Rs. 89,000 and Rs. 1.02,000, respectively.
A teardown of Apple’s new flagship by iFixit revealed that the smartphone has a two-cell and an L-shaped battery; the combined capacity is 2716mAh. Also notable is that the handset’s logic board is 70 percent smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus. The handset also includes 3GB of SK Hynix LPDDR4x RAM, a wireless charging coil, and Qualcomm modem. The device received a six out of ten for recoverability from iFixit.
WhatsApp suffers global service outage. The popular messaging app WhatsApp is experiencing an outage affecting users worldwide, making #whatsappdown a trending hashtag in several countries. According to Down Detector, India (especially the western regions), Southeast Asia, and Europe were badly affected. At the same time, there were some reports of the outage from the Americas, Africa, Russia, and Australia. The WhatsApp outage started at 1:00 PM IST, and the service was available again at 3:00 PM IST, although users got an error message despite being able to send/receive text messages.
Paytm launched Inbox; a messaging platform Paytm has launched a messaging platform called Inbox, complete with the option to retrieve messages, a day after WhatsApp rolled out the option to delete sent letters to all its users. Like WhatsApp and other messaging apps, Paytm Inbox allows users to share texts, photos, videos, and live locations. TUsers can also send and receive money with contacts in the conversations. The Paytm Inbox chats are secured with end-to-end encryption. For now, the feature is only available in the Android app, with iOS support coming soon.
OnePlus 5 gets OxygenOS 4.5.14 update OnePlus 5 has started receiving the OxygenOS 4.5.14 update, which brings a patch to fix the WPA2 KRACK vulnerability, putting Wi-Fi devices at risk from accessing data by unauthorized parties. The update, which is rolling out gradually, also introduces optimizations in battery usage and GPS accuracy and bug fixes. The update for India-based OnePlus 5 users also supports the Airtel VoLTE network.
Book up to 12 tickets from IRCTC by linking. AadhaarAadhaar verified IRCTC users can now book up to 12 tickets per month, from a maximum of six until recently. This is an effort by the Indian Railways to get more passengers to have their Aadhaar KYC process done, which can be done under the My Profile tab when a user is logged in. When a user who has yet to match their Aadhaar tries to book tickets for more than six passengers, they will be prompted to check their UIDAI number and that of the passengers through the KYC process.
Twitter says an outgoing employee has deactivated Trump’s account. Twitter has said that a disgruntled employee who left the company Thursday deactivated US President Donald Trump’s statement. @realdonaldtrump’s Twitter account “was accidentally deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” the company said. Trump’s announcement was offline for 11 minutes, leading the company to conduct a full internal review and take steps to ensure nothing like this happens again.
Some Pixel 2 units that reportedly shipped without an OSGoogle’s Pixel 2 issues don’t seem to end anytime soon. The latest is multiple Reddit users posting on the front page of the web that the Pixel 2 XL units they received came without an OS installed. These users were greeted with the message: “Cannot find a valid operating system. The device will not start.” Google is reportedly replacing the Pixel 2 XL units that shipped without Android.
Asus Pegasus 4S with 18:9 display, 4030mAh battery launched Asus has also joined the class of brands offering smartphones with 18:9 aspect ratio screens with the launch of its Pegasus 4S. The display panel measures 5.7 inches, has an HD+ (720x1440px) resolution, and has a 2.5D curved glass design. Another highlight of the Asus Pegasus 4S is the 4030mAh battery; it comes in two variants, one with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage and another with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. Other key features include Android 7.0 Nougat OS, an 8-megapixel front camera, dual 16-megapixel + 8-megapixel rear cameras, 4G VoLTE support, and a fingerprint sensor on the back. Details about the price and availability of the smartphone have not been disclosed so far.
Xiaomi made big gains as smartphone shipments surpassed 373 million in the third quarter. The Chinese brand posted the strongest profit in the quarter, doubling its shipments to 27.6 million. Samsung was, in first place with 83.3 million units sold, with Apple in second place with 46.7 million. The third and fourth positions were taken by Huawei and Oppo, with 39.1 million and 30.7 million smartphones shipped, respectively. While smartphone shipments rose 2.7 percent during he July-Septemiod, IDC added that other smartphone brands outside the top 5 are still struggling.
Disclosure: Paytm’s parent company, One97, is an investor in Gadgets 360.
