LG’s latest flagship, the G6, went on sale in India on Tuesday morning, exclusively through Amazon online and at multiple offline retailers for Rs. 51,999. Regarding pricing, that’s a step below Samsung’s rival Galaxy S8, which starts at Rs. 57,900.
At its launch event on Monday, LG revealed that the G6 would be discounted at Rs. 10,000 for HDFC and SBI customers as part of a limited-time offer on Amazon. That discount was valid until supplies last or 10 p.m. Tuesday, with the G6 temporarily being a lot cheaper than even the Google Pixel, which is currently more than half a year old.
If you missed that, you could still get the Reliance Jio offer for the LG G6, which gives you 10GB of free data with every top-up of Rs. 309, up to a maximum of 100GB until March 2018.
As for the phone, you get Android 7.0 ‘Nougat’ with LG’s UX 6.0, powered by a Snapdragon 821 and 4GB of storage. The LG G6 has a 5.7-inch quad-HD display, which is larger than traditional screens, giving it a screen ratio of 18:9 as opposed to 16:9.
You get a dual-camera setup like the iPhone 7 Plus on the back. Both have the same resolution at 13 megapixels but a different shooting area – 71 degrees normal versus 125 degrees wide angle – and aperture, f/1.8 and f/2.4. On the front, the LG G6 gives you a 5-megapixel shooter with a 100-degree lens and an aperture of f/2.2.
Samsung Galaxy S8 remains in the news. In line with the Korean trend, there are also pre-orders in the US for Samsung’s Galaxy S8 versus last year’s S7. In a statement to the press, Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America, said the company has seen 30 percent year-over-year growth for the new flagship. The phone, along with its bigger cousin, the S8+, is now up for pre-order in India, and the duo will go on sale on May 5.
Meanwhile, analytics firm IHS Markit has been sifting through the components of the Galaxy S8 to understand how much it costs Samsung to make them. The cost is $301.60 (approximately Rs. 19,400), while the phone retails for Rs. 57,900 in India. That, of course, ignores the millions Samsung spends on R&D to improve its devices, among other significant overheads. More importantly, the Galaxy S8 costs about 20 percent more than its closest predecessor, the S7 Edge, which costs $271.2 (about Rs. 17,400).
Finally, some Galaxy S8+ users have reported issues with wireless charging. Although they used it with a Samsung-branded charging pad, the S8+ displays a ‘wireless charging paused’ sign.
Jio Plans Renewed, Home Broadband Trials Confirmed In a war that seems to have no end, Reliance Jio has once again updated its prepaid and postpaid plans. Jio prepaid plans now start at Rs. 19 per day and go up to Rs. 9,999 for 420 days. And with Jio postpaid plans, you get three options: Rs. 309, €. 509, and Rs. 999.
You can pay for the various Jio prepaid and postpaid plans. The lowest prepaid offer – Rs. 19 – Gets you 200MB of data if you’re a Jio Prime member, while the highest gives you 810GB with no daily FUP. On the postpaid front, data benefits range from 1 GB per day to 180 GB for three months, with no daily FUP.
Reliance Jio announced late Monday that its user base at fiscal year-end on March 31 was 108.9 million, a marginal increase from February when it crossed the 100 million mark. The regulatory filing confirmed that Jio had begun home broadband trials in selected locations.
Nokia 3310 (2017) price revealed, but it’s not official Indian retailer OnlyMobiles.com has posted the 2017 reborn version of Nokia 3310 from 2017 on its website with a ‘coming soon’ sticker and a price tag of Rs. 3,899. Gadgets 360 contacted HMD Global, the Nokia-branded company, who said the price was unofficial and had no announcement.
LinkedIn now has more than 500 million members. LinkedIn is now owned by Microsoft and has crossed the 500 million mark in 200 countries, it revealed in an official blog post-Monday. About 42 million of these come from India. In addition, the site hosts 10 million active job openings and has access to nine million companies, and users publish more than 100,000 articles every week.
ZTE Blade Max 3 launched for $199 in the US Chinese manufacturer ZTE has launched its mid-range iteration Blade Max 3 in the US for $199.99 (about Rs. 12,800) through a single carrier, US Cellular. The phone’s highlight is its massive 4000 mAh battery, a dual camera setup on the back, and two 13-megapixel sensors equipped with PDAF and black and white capabilities.
The Blade Max 3, unfortunately, runs Android 6.0.1 ‘Marshmallow’. It has a 5-megapixel front camera, above a 6-inch full-HD display, powered by Snapdragon 625 and 2 GB of storage. It has 16 GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 128 GB with a microSD card.
Google could announce three Pixel devices this year. According to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), Google will release three Pixel devices in the year’s fourth quarter. Codenamed Taimen, Walleye, and Muskie will reportedly be powered by Snapdragon 835, which is currently in short supply due to Samsung’s relationship with Qualcomm.
The report says two very different things about Taimen: it will either have the Pixel branding or be unique on its own. AOSP thinks it will be the biggest of them all, which could very well point to a new Pixel C. Walleye should be the name for Pixel 2 and Muskie for Pixel XL 2. We’ll know more around October.
Google updates apps and services. In other Google news, the company’s Photos app for iOS now has AirPlay support. That means you can now easily display your family photos on the big screen if you have an Apple TV. If that’s you, download the Google Photos v2.14.0 update from the App Store.
Meanwhile, Google has rolled out better Indian language support for several of its services. The biggest change is neural machine translation for nine additional languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, and Kannada.
“This change improves the quality of translation in a single leap over the past decade combined,” Google said. The neural translation also applies to Google Maps reviews, so you can see what Parisians say about a local French cafe in your native Indian language.
It is also rolling out support for 22 planned Indian languages – as stated in the constitution – for its keyboard app, Gboard. In addition, Google’s home base, Search, can now help define Hindi words. Type something like “Nirdeshak ka matlab”, and Google pulls the dictionary definition from Rajpal & Sons in conjunction with Oxford University Press. All these changes are rolling out, so if you don’t see any, be patient.
Vodafone offers 27 GB of 4G data to postpaid users. To prevent users from switching to Jio, Vodafone has come developedplans for its postpaid users. You can get 9GB of data monthly for the next three months by signing up on the Vodafone website with your number. The free data comes on top of your existing data plan.
