TCL at CES 2018 announced that it has revamped the structure of its sub-brand Alcatel. However, the company did not unveil any new smartphone at that moment. The things got a bit interesting when the company launched the Alcatel 3C a few days back.
Now, we get to see new pre-order listings for the Alcatel 5 and the Alcatel 3V on Amazon France. The listing does give us a few specifications, however, it doesn't reveal much. Interestingly, the listings do give away the prices of both the devices.
Alcatel 5
The Alcatel 5 as per the Amazon listing will sport a 5.7-inch display with an aspect ratio of 18:9 and an HD+ resolution, which in tech terms would mean 1440 X 720 pixels. It will be powered by an octa-core processor which remains unnamed in the listing. It will come with 3GB of RAM along with 32GB of internal storage with expandable storage via microSD card. All of this will be backed by a 3,000mAh non-removable battery and will come running on Google's Android Nougat operating system. It will be available in Gold and Black colour options and is priced at €230 (Approximately Rs. 17,950).
Alcatel 3V
The Alcatel 3V, on the other hand, will sport a 6-inch Full HD+ display. It will be powered by a quad-core unnamed processor. And will come with 2GB of RAM along with 16GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card. It will feature a dual camera setup on the back. All of this will be backed by a 3,000mAh non-removable battery and will come running on Google's Android 8.0 Oreo. It will be made available in Blue, Black and Gold colour options, and is priced at €189.99 (Approximately Rs. 14,825).
Both the devices will be put up for sale on February 26, which is also the same day that Mobile World Congress will also start in Barcelona, where these smartphones might also be unveiled.
The South Korean giant, Samsung, is reportedly working on their next flagship Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus. We have been hearing a lot of rumours about the Samsung Galaxy S9 lately. Now, fresh new rumours suggest that the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will be powered by the company's native neural processing units. These NPU's are also called artificial intelligence (AI) chips. The rumours have been reported by South Korean English daily citing people familiar with the development.
With this new AI chip, Samsung is trying to keep up with the competition as Apple and Huawei have already released their own AI chips. Samsung's version of AI chips will be showcased with their next flagship lineup at the MWC 2018. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are expected to unveil at the MWC 2018 in Barcelona on February 26.
The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will be powered by an AI chip coupled with Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset. Markets outside the US will receive the Galaxy S9 lineup with AI chips coupled with Exynos 9810 processor. The smartphones are also expected to feature an 18:9 aspect ratio Super AMOLED Infinity Display.
Further, the Galaxy S9 will come with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The smartphone will sport a 12-megapixel primary camera with OIS. The rear camera will support variable aperture where f/1.5 will be used for low-light shots. There will also be a f/2.4 aperture for brighter environments. It further remains to be seen if the new Samsung Galaxy S9 will be able to make the cut for the Best Android Smartphones of 2018 or not.
Apple recently launched their new iPhone 8 and iPhone X. These new smartphones are powered by the latest A11 Bionic chipset. The AI supported A11 chip developed by Apple enable features like Animoji. The Chinese tech giant, Huawei also HiSilicon Kirin 970 chip which supports AI. The Huawei Mate 10 Pro was recently launched with the AI supported Kirin 970 chip.
InFocus, last year, unveiled the Turbo 5, Turbo 5 Plus and Snap 4 smartphones. Now with the New Year's beginning, the company has brought massive discounts for its customers. The company taking the advantage of Amazon Great Indian Sale has announced discounts on its smartphones. The Amazon Great Indian Sale is set to start from 21 January and will go on until January 24, 2018. Prime Users can take the advantage of an early access to InFocus Vision 3 starting January 20, 2018, 12 noon onwards.
Commenting on the offers, Dr. Luo Zhongsheng, Global CEO for Sharp & InFocus said, “We have had a very successful start to 2018 with Amazon India. The amazing user response received on the platform has further strengthened our exclusive partnership. To keep the excitement going, we have announced several offers on our entire smartphone portfolio. We are really thankful to our fans for this exceptional response and are confident that InFocus will continue to win more hearts with its upcoming products.”
What InFocus has to offer?
The popular Infocus Turbo 5, Turbo 5 Plus and Snap 4 will have discounts of up to Rs. 3,000. Moreover, the recently launched Vision 3 will now be available at Rs. 5,999 which is Rs. 1,000 cheaper than its Rs. 6,999 launch price.
InFocus launched the Turbo 5 keeping in mind the users who need that extra battery life. The Turbo 5 is backed by a massive 5,000mAh battery. The smartphone also features reverse charging technology which allows users to use the Turbo 5 as a power bank.
The company recently launched the Vision 3. The Vision 3 is the first smartphone from the company to feature an 18:9 display. The smartphone comes with a dual camera setup at the back which includes a 13-megapixel camera and 5MP 120-degree Wide-angle lens. Up front, there is an 8-megapixel selfie snapper that comes loaded with beauty features and up tows up to 7 levels of beauty modification.
Xiaomi, the Chinese tech giant, recently started rolling out the MIUI 9 update. The company also recently launched its cheapest smartphone offering, the Xiaomi Redmi 5A. Xiaomi has now started to roll out the latest MIUI 9 update to the Redmi 5A. The new update carries the version number V9.2.1.0.NCKMIEK. The latest update is the MIUI 9 Global ROM for the smartphone and users will soon get the update OTA (over-the-air).
The new MIUI 9 update brings a bunch of changes to the Redmi 5A. A few of the features that are specific to this smartphone includes "Add to favourites" icon adjustments along with simplified design for virus scan result page. The smartphone now also hides free and incompatible themes in the list of the purchased items. Also, the Mi Mover application now supports data migration restarting, which will help restore data migration on a new smartphone, even in case of interruption.
Xiaomi Redmi 5A users can download the update once they receive the OTA notification. Users can also head over to the Updater app and tap Check for Updates to see if the update has arrived. However, if the user cannot wait for the OTA, he can always choose to manually download the update via flashing which can be done using the Fastboot Method or Recovery Mode method.
Redmi 5A Specifications
The Xiaomi Redmi 5A was launched back in November 2017. The smartphone features a 5-inch HD IPS LCD display and runs on the Snapdragon 425 chipset. The device comes with either 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage or 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Storage on the Redmi 5A is expandable up to 256GB using a microSD card. The smartphone runs on Android 7.1 Nougat and is backed by a 3,000mAh battery.
Honor recently launched the View 10 with AI capabilities unmatched to any other smartphone in the market. The surprise is the smartphone had all the AI features disabled. The Honor made public that View 10 will get an OTA to unlock it's AI superpowers really soon. The OTA update is stated to bring Face Unlock feature along with the other AI-centric features to the View 10.
Changes brought in by the OTA on the View 10
Although the phone is available to buy, the OTA recently started rolling out. It is expected to be available to all users by 24th January 2018. After the upgrade, you will be able to unlock your phone just by looking at it. IT will work similar to OnePlus 5T. The phone, however, won't unlock when your eyes are closed. And also it works on the camera image and not a dedicated sensor. This makes it less secure than fingerprint sensor. So online payments will still require the fingerprint sensor.
Also unlike the OnePlus 5T, you will need to look at the smartphone and unlock it before seeing the notifications. And once the device is unlocked, it will stay that way while you are looking at it. Additionally, the View 10 will be able to detect the position of your head.It can further use that to control the orientation of the smartphone.
The update also brings improvements to the camera app. Now you can change the background of your selfies after clicking them. Motion detection is now enabled for both the front and rear cameras. The feature can essentially detect a moving object. It can then capture the entire movement using machine learning and AI. The camera will also use AI to digitally enhance the quality of zoomed in images.
To recall, the View 10 features the latest HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset with a dedicated neural processing chip. This processor is the only reason behind all this processing power and AI capabilities of the smartphone.
Xiaomi recently started rolling out the MIUI 9 software update. A few of the Xiaomi devices have already received the update and are running on the latest MIUI 9. MIUI 9 offers a bunch of new features along with some optimisations here and there. With these new features, the new ROM also brings another feature which is hidden somewhere in the settings. This Game Speed Booster feature allows users to get a better gaming experience on their Xiaomi device.
If your Xiaomi device runs the latest MIUI 9 build, you will be able to find the Game Speed Boos option inside the MIUI Security application. The MIUI Security app is usually used to clean up the trash and it also runs virus scans. A little scroll down in the app will reveal the 'Tools' category inside which you will find a new option called "Game speed boost".
What does Game Speed Boost enabling do?
Once the user enables the Game Speed Boost feature, the phone clears the cache and memory to deliver maximum performance. However, the user will need to manually add the games he wants to play with Game Speed Boost mode enabled.
Additionally, the Game Booster has its own Settings menu where you can find a few customization options to get a better gaming experience. There is also a DND mode which will automatically get triggered once you launch a game. DND mode or Do Not Disturb mode will turn off all the notifications except incoming calls. The user can also keep a fixed brightness, restrict background sync, turn off the capacitive button lights and turn on hands-free calls while playing the game.
However, the Game Boost Mode only boosts up the performance and cannot control the temperature of your device while gaming.
Facebook-owned, Instagram has been recently spotted testing a new feature on its mobile app. With the latest addition, users can now see the last active on Instagram while using Direct (direct messages). Interestingly, people can see your last active even when they are not following your account. Several users took on Twitter to e reportedly seeing this feature. The company confirms that such a feature has been rolling out. Also, the company has been spotted testing text-only stories feature. And also screenshot security feature to let you know when your story has been screenshotted.
A company's spokesperson said while talking about the new 'last active at' feature. "We’re always working on ways to make it easier to have fun, real-time conversations with friends on Instagram. We recently rolled out the ability to see when people you follow or message in Direct were last active on Instagram, and they can see when you were last active. Activity status only appears in the Direct inbox and you can control the visibility of your activity status in Settings."
How to Access Instagram's Last active Feature
The latest feature on the Instagram is too similar to other applications. Like we can see on WhatsApp as well as Facebook Messenger. To view someone's last Active, you first need to go to the Direct section of the app on the top of the screen. Besides the name of the people in Direct, it will show the last active at. It shows text like 'Active now', 'Active today', 'Active 1h ago', 'Active 24m ago' etc. To disable this feature, users can go to the settings of the application and toggle the show activity status feature.
According to the report by TheNextWeb, that Instagram is also testing a new feature that enables text-only stories like we have seen on WhatsApp. Stories on the platform have been only images and videos but this will place the Text stories feature along with Boomerang, Rewind, and Superzoom.
Another report from WABetaInfo, a WhatsApp related information site reports that Instagram is also testing a feature to protect users privacy while posting stories. This feature will notify users via a notification when someone takes a screenshot of their story, like what Snapchat does.
The South Korean giant, LG, has launched the LG X4+ in its home country. The X4+ is a rugged smartphone offering from the company. The smartphone is claimed to have passed the 6-part MIL-STD 810G military standard of the US Department of Defense. The MIL-STD 810G military covers impact, vibration, high temperature, low temperature, humidity, and thermal shock.
Specifications
The LG X4+ features a 5.3-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720x1280 pixels. The smartphone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 SoC coupled with Adreno 308 GPU. The device packs in 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. The storage on X4+ is expandable up to 2TB using a microSD card. The smartphone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. Under the hood, the LG X4+ carries a 3,000mAh battery.
In the camera department, the LG X4+ sports a 13-megapixel camera sensor at the back with a 77-degree angle. Up front, there is a 5-megapixel selfie shooter with a 100-degree wide angle.
On the connectivity front, the X4+ supports 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC. The smartphone also comes with a fingerprint scanner located at the back. The device also includes features like LG Pay and a Hi-Fi DAC audio.
Price and Availability
The LG X4+ has been launched in South Korea with a price tag of KRW 300,000 (roughly Rs. 18,000). The smartphone will be available in Moroccan Blue and Lavender Violet colour variants. However, there is no word on as of when the smartphone will make its way to the other markets.
Tecno, a Hong Kong-based smartphone company, launched the Camon i in India. The smartphone is an addition to the company's flagship Camon series. The unique selling proposition (USP) of the smartphone include the 18:9 display and the 13MP camera at the front as well as the back.
Specifications
In terms of the specifications, the Tecno Camon i features a 5.65-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720x1440 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9. The smartphone is powered by the MediaTek 6737H processor which is a quad-core chipset clocked at 1.3GHz. The device packs in 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. The storage on the smartphone is expandable up to 128GB using a microSD card. The Camon i runs on HiOS 3.2 based on Android 7.1 Nougat. Under the hood, there is a 3,050mAh battery powering up the internals.
On the optics front, the Tecno Camon i sports a 13-megapixel camera at the back with an aperture of f/2.0 and a dual led flash. Up front, there is a 13-megapixel selfie shooter.
Price and Availability
The Tecno Camon i will be available at a price of Rs. 8,990. The smartphone will be available in the Champagne Gold, Midnight Black and City Blue colour variants. The device will go on sale in the first week of February and will be available across all major retail outlets. Interestingly, customers will also get 100 days replacement warranty, 1-time screen replacement and 1-month extended warranty over the regular 12 months warranty.
Fitbit, the leading wearable fitness brand just unveiled their latest offering for India. The Fitbit Iconic is the company's latest smartwatch and it is now available in India, including Reliance Digital, Croma, Helios and online platforms. Iconic is aimed at health and fitness like other products by the company. Along with The Fitbit Iconic, the company also announced the Fitbit Flyer and the Fitbit Aria 2 in the country.
The Fitbit Iconic
The Fitbit Iconic makes use of the new relative SpO2 sensor. This makes the Iconic be able to track deeper health insights. These include things like sleep apnea in the future, industry-leading GPS tracking, on-device dynamic workouts, improved heart rate tracking, and water resistance up to 50 meters. This new sensor also includes some of the new smart features like contactless payments, onboard music, smart notifications, along with a variety of apps and clock faces. All of these apps and watch faces can be found in the Fitbit App Gallery and downloaded for use. Ionic also has all the core features from Fitbit which we love like up to 5 days of battery life, automatic activity and sleep tracking, and cross-platform compatibility.
"Ten years ago, Fitbit pioneered the wearables category with the introduction of its first health and fitness tracker. Since then, we have become the leading global wearables brand, setting the pace of innovation in the category and establishing the largest social fitness network that helps millions of people around the world be healthier. With Ionic, we are delivering what consumers have not yet seen in a smartwatch a health and fitness first platform that combines the power of personalization and deeper insights with our most advanced technology to date, unlocking opportunities for unprecedented health tracking capabilities in the future."
-James Park, co-founder, and CEO of Fitbit.
Benefits of the Iconic
Up to 5 days battery life
Personal trainer with Fitbit Coach
Running companion
New swim exercise mode
Industry-leading GPS
Improved heart rate technology
New sensor technology
Motivation through music
Make payments using Fitbit Pay
Smart notifications you need most
In addition to these slew of new features, the Ionic also packs everything we love about Fitbit. The ability to automatically track your steps, calories, floors climbed and sleep stages, see your cardio fitness level (estimated VO2 Max), maintain moments of calm and more.
Features of the Fitbit Iconic
The Fitbit Iconic runs on Fitbit OS and can be customized according to will using the Fitbit App Gallery. It contains a slew of apps like Exercise, Fitbit Coach, Relax, Timer and more, as well as popular apps like Strava.
The company also unveiled their first wireless headphones, Fitbit Flyer, feature a durable, sweatproof design and customizable fit with an advanced sound performance for whether it’s listening to music seamlessly from Ionic, Audio Coaching from the Fitbit Coach smartphone app or staying in touch on the go.
Fitbit Aria 2
Fitbit unveiled their latest smart scale. The Fitbit Aria 2 Wi-Fi Smart Scale, re-engineered for best-in-class accuracy and easy setup via your smartphone’s Bluetooth connection. Fitbit can sync your data from Aria 2 with the Fitbit app, and track your exercise from the Iconic smartwatch to watch your progress grown in one place detailed.
Pricing and availability
Fitbit Ionic, Fitbit Flyer and Fitbit Aria 2 can be purchased starting 1st February across major retail stores in India. Like Reliance Digital, Croma, Helios and online partners in India. The Fitbit Iconic will be available at Rs 22,990. The Fitbit Flyer will be available at Rs 9,990. And finally, the Fitbit Aria 2 will be available at Rs. 9,990.
