Apple has recently launched the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus alongside the iPhone X. Whenever a company launches a new flagship smartphone, the prices of the older ones tend to drop down. The phones which are 2-3 years old get a drastic price drop. Now customers are able to get the iPhone 6 for around Rs. 21,000 which was retailed above Rs. 50,000 in the year when it was launched. However, customers can now get their hands on an Apple device for as low as Rs. 6,299.
Snapdeal, the e-commerce website, is selling the iPhone 5C 8GB just for Rs. 6,299. But the catch here is that the phone is not new and comes in a used condition. However, it is safe to buy as the smartphone is certified by Snapdeal which makes the deal lucrative. In the buy page, there are physical conditions to choose from. The conditions available include Acceptable, Good, Very Good. It is recommended to at least go in for the Good condition as the Acceptable condition would not be satisfying. Also if you can up your budget a little bit, you can also opt-in for the Very Good condition.
Apple iPhone 5C sports a 4-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 640x1136 pixels. The smartphone is powered by Apple A6 chipset which is a dual-core 1.3GHz chipset. The phone comes with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Under the hood, there is a 1510mAh battery powering up the device. The Apple device currently runs on iOS 10.3.3 and will not be updated to iOS 11.
Amazon India recently launched the Home Entertainment Hub which made a different section for easy shopping of home entertainment appliances. Now the e-commerce website has launched the 'Checkfit & Garage' feature which will help customers with a simplified process of identifying and purchasing suitable automotive parts. The feature will help in identifying the best part or accessory compatible with over 5,000 vehicles from their database. The company now has around 4,00,000 replacement parts and accessories for automobiles and this new feature will help in choosing the best one for your vehicle.
Commenting on the launch of the new feature, Suchit Subhas, Category Leader – Automotive & Appliances, Amazon India, said, “Buying auto parts & accessories online has been a cumbersome experience with customers relying on hours of research to purchase a product that fits in their car or motorcycle and then spending a few more hours scouting for reliable mechanics to install the parts. We worked customer backwards to create a database of close to 3,00,000 auto parts for over 5,000 cars & motorcycles to allow customers to easily shop for parts that fit their vehicle. Furthermore, we have partnered with verified service providers in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Delhi to offer free fitment services thereby simplifying the shopping experience for customers. In less than 3 months of piloting this feature, we are humbled to see more than 11 lakh customers adding vehicles to the ‘My garage’ feature indicating its usefulness.”
Along with the new feature, Amazon India has also tied up with few service providers in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Delhi for offering few fitting of the parts and accessories.
Amazon customers will now be able to register their vehicle with details like brand, model and variant which will then be registered under the "My Garage" option. This new option will allow users to find parts easily and checkout faster. Also, once the vehicle is registered, a 'check fit' stripe will indicate on a product so that the customer can check the fitment to his own vehicle before buying.
Alcatel Mobiles have launched another budget smartphone in India calling it the Alcatel U5 HD. The smartphone brings Android Nougat and 4G VoLTE support at a budget. The highlights of the smartphone include the cameras on the device as well as the tweaks made to the camera application. The Alcatel U5 HD is exclusively available via Flipkart.
Commenting on the launch, Praveen Valecha, Regional Director at Alcatel India said, “With the new AlcatelU5 HD, first-time smartphone buyers can now enjoy a crisp and clear viewing experience on a 5-inch HD display and some really fun camera features. This smartphone is designed to give our valued customers the power to get the most out of every moment – all with an appealing price tag.”
Specifications
The Alcatel U5 HD sports a 5-inch HD IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720x1280 pixels. The smartphone is powered by the MediaTek MT6737 SoC which is a 64-bit quad core processor. The device comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage which is further expandable up to 128GB via a microSD card. Under the hood, there is a 2,200mAh battery powering up the device. The Alcatel U5 HD runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.
On the optics front, the U5 HD features a 13-megapixel camera sensor at the back with a LED flash. Up front, the phone comes with an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with a selfie flash for better low light selfies.
Price and Availability
The Alcatel U5 HD is available exclusively on the e-commerce website Flipkart. The smartphone retails for a price of Rs. 5,999.
BlackBerry has been secretly working on a smartphone which was earlier codenamed Krypton. The smartphone will be allegedly named as BlackBerry Motion and will be launched sometime in October 2017. We now have the image of the smartphone giving us an idea of what it will look like, thanks to tipster Evan Blass. The biggest change with the upcoming Motion is the missing physical keyboard found on the Blackberry KeyOne. The lack of keyboard will give more room for the display which means a larger display as compared to the KeyOne.
The alleged BlackBerry Motion will have a USB Type-C for charging and data syncing and will have a 3.5mm audio jack for using audio output. The leaked images suggest that the phone might have a home button at the front with BlackBerry logo embedded into it. It is also speculated that the home button will also enact as a fingerprint scanner. As per the image, the smartphone will have four buttons on the side which include Volume up, Volume down, Power button and a Convenience key which can be assigned for any task.
A previous report of the Krypton, now called Motion, showed that the device will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 or 626 SoC coupled with 4GB of RAM. The smartphone might be backed by a 4,000mAh battery. It is also suggested that the phone will come with a full HD display.
BlackBerry recently launched the KeyOne Limited Black Edition in India. The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC. The phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage.
Micromax recently launched their infinity display smartphone, The Canvas Infinity with an 18:9 resolution display. Micromax basically is an India based company with few interesting smartphones and a great line-up of other phones. With that said it's not very successful due to its durability issues. However, the company is still growing and we expect it to get better with time. That being said here is the review of the Micromax Canvas Infinity.
Specifications
Micromax Canvas Infinity has a 5.7-inch 720x1440p HD IPS LCD display. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 64-bit 1.4GHz Processor coupled with a 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It also has a dedicated memory card slot for expandable storage up to 128GB. In terms of optics, it has a 13MP rear camera and a 16MP front camera both with their dedicated LED flash, something which is becoming common even in budget phones these days. Also, it runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box and all of this is powered by a 2,900 mAh battery. Also, it has the micro-USB slot and a headphone jack. The best part of this phone is an 18:9 aspect ratio which looks beautiful.
Design
Front
Back
The Micromax Canvas Infinity features a beautiful design. The front looks amazing with a beautiful 18:9 display ration and almost no bezels. The back looks pretty good with the Matte Black finish. However, there are speakers on the rear instead of the font or even the bottom of the phone. That becomes an issue when you lay down the phone on the table. Also, there is a camera bump on the back of the phone. This usually is not an issue but again when you put your phone on the table it wobbles due to it.
Bottom
Left
Right
The sides are also made out of plastic like the rest of the phone. There are volume rocker and the power button on the right. The power button is textured so that's a bonus. The left side and bottom side has nothing and there is a micro-USB port and headphone jack is at the top.
There are no buttons on the front. There are on-screen buttons and their front camera and the flash are covered under the 2.5D glass on the front. The earpiece is made out of metal, so that looks good. The phone feels good and comfortable in hand except for the raise camera bump and rear speaker, the phone's design is great.
Performance
The performance of the Micromax Canvas Infinity is a little less than expected at the price range. It handles everyday tasks pretty well except for some minute lag. At the price point of ₹9,999, you expect more. The phone performs great in heavy games like the Asphalt 8. The game stretches the phone display to provide an immersive experience. Apart from occasional lag, there is no issue with the performance. Considering the competition the lag is a pretty big negative factor.
We also ran and tested these phone with the AnTuTu Benchmark and the GeekBench 4. The results were around the point we expected with the Snapdragon 425 with 3GB of Ram. The AnTuTu yielded a result of 36908 while the Geekbench yielded a 671 single core score and 1864 multi-core score.
The phone doesn't get heated even while playing games so that's a plus point.
Battery
The 2,900mAh battery simply lasts more than a day without any hiccup. The 18:9 infinity display isn't too bright. For usability the brightness needs to be bumped up to around 50% which compared to other phones we test is almost the double. This consumes more battery and the phone lasts around a little less than a day with needing to be plugged in at night. At 3,000mAh battery and the price point, this is totally expected. Sadly the phones power management system is good enough to let any ran run when it is consuming a lot of battery. This means the PC Mark's Work 2.0 battery life test fails as it consumes a lot of battery to judge the performance and we can not give you a score for that.
Camera
Outside
Inside
Surprisingly the camera is way above and beyond any competition. The rear 13MP camera takes great photos in the low light as well as normal lighting. The camera quality is beyond what you could expect at this price point. The front 16MP camera takes great selfies. The only issue there is the colours comes are unnatural sometimes. The photos look great but the colours aren't accurate.
Verdict
The Micromax Canvas Infinity for the price of ₹9,999 is a great looking phone with a great camera. Surely it has some flaws like the occasional lag but with an 18:9 resolution display and amazing camera at the price point of only Rs. 9,999 it looks like we have to make that sacrifice. The phone is definitely better than the competition in the price range, so if you are looking for something in this price range, go for it.
Amazon India has kicked off the Great Indian Festival Sale as the festive season arrives in the country. Taking advantage of the auspicious festival of lights upcoming, Amazon India has launched a new store made just for home entertainment products. The store, Home Entertainment Hub, consists of handpicked devices like media players, LED televisions and much more. Customers can now easily shop for home entertainment products from the new Home Entertainment Hub.
Speaking on the launch of the new store, Jonathan Burks, Category Leader – Consumer Electronics, Amazon India, said “We are thrilled to launch this new store along with the Great Indian Festival. The Home Entertainment Hub recommends highly rated, well-priced products that work together with Prime shipping promise based on your requirement. We put a lot of care and expertise into choosing the right product for you at the best value. With the festive season around the corner, this is an opportune time to help you transform your home entertainment experience in a simple, hassle-free and enjoyable manner.”
The store will be including products like Projectors, Soundbars, Home Theatres, Gaming Consoles, Gaming Laptops, Vinyl Players, DJ Controllers and Karaoke Players. The company will sort down the best products in the price range making the shopping experience much better.
Customers can also save money with Amazon's offers like cash back and No Cost EMI. Customers can also exchange their old TVs in order to get huge discounts on the new ones. Along with the launch of the Home Entertainment Hub, Amazon has also announced the Home Entertainment Fest which will provide great discounts on big brands. The fest will be held from 4th to 8th October.
Honor, the sub-brand of Huawei, has unveiled the Honor 9i in India. The smartphone is basically a renamed Huawei Miamang 6 which was earlier announced in China. The unique selling proposition of the Honor 9i is the dual dual-camera setups making a total of four camera sensors present on the device. The smartphone also features an 18:9 aspect ratio display.
Commenting on the launch, P Sanjeev, Vice President Sales, Huawei India-Consumer Business Group, said, “Honor is Huawei’s global e-brand. In India, Honor pioneered dual camera phones over the last 3 years. Our team has spent extensive time studying what consumers in this segment prefer and we have worked to raise the bar each and every time, creating industry’s new bench marks. Today with the launch of Honor 9i, we have ushered in 4-camera technology which is widely acclaimed for its excellent selfies and low light photography capabilities. We view Honor 9i as a never-before opportunity for consumers who wish to experience an outstanding product.”
Specifications
The Honor 9i is powered by the Huawei's Kirin 659 SoC coupled with Mali-T830 GPU. The smartphone features a 5.9-inch FullView display with a resolution of 1080x2160 pixels. The phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage. The storage on the device is further expandable up to 256GB using a microSD card. Under the hood, there is a 3,340mAh battery powering up the device. The Honor 9i runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with EMUI 5.1 layered on top of it out of the box.
On the optics front, the Honor 9i sports a dual-camera setup at the back with a 16-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel secondary camera. Up front, the phone features a dual-camera setup consisting of a 13-megapixel and a 2-megapixel sensor.
Price and Availability
The Honor 9i is available exclusively via the e-commerce website Flipkart. The phone retails for a price of Rs. 17,999. The smartphone is available in Aurora Blue, Graphite Black and Prestige Gold colour options. The device will go on sale starting October 14.
Google held a launch event in San Francisco on October 4 to launch a couple of new devices alongside the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. The new set of devices include Google Home Mini, Home Max, Pixebook, Pixel Buds and the Google Clips. All of these new devices have widened the Google's portfolio of smart devices. Apart from the new devices Google also introduced the new improvements to the Google Assistant.
Google Home Mini
Google Home is a popular smart home device made by Google which functions with the help of the Google Assistant. Now, the company has introduced a smaller and more affordable variant of the smart home device. Just like the Google Home, this one can control the smart devices in a house, answer any questions and play music via different services. The Home Mini will retail for a price of $49 which roughly converts to Rs. 3,200.
Google Home Max
As Google unveiled the Home Mini as a more affordable and smaller variant of the Home, the Home Max fills the room of a higher variant. The Google Home Max has two speakers as well as two tweeters inside making it much bigger than the Home Mini. The device can be kept in an upright position or can just lay down according to the user's preference.
The major motive of the Home Max is to deliver great sound from music which can be easily played via services like Google Play, YouTube, Pandora, Spotify and much more. The interesting part about the Google Assistant integration is that the speakers can recognise the lyrics and find the music to start playing it. The smart home device will be sold for $399 (roughly Rs. 26,000).
The Pixelbook is an updated Chromebook from Google which carries a better design and hardware specifications. The Pixelbook is made out of aluminium and shares the design language of the Pixel smartphone series. The laptop runs on Google's homegrown ChromeOS out of the box. It is available in different variants depending on the processor, RAM and Storage configuration the user picks up. It is the first Chromebook to come with Google Assistant.
The Pixelbook is powered by the 7th Gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processor. The laptop is available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB storage variant where the storage is a Solid State Drive making the processes on the device much faster. RAM configuration can be picked up between 8GB or 16GB. The Pixelbook sports a 12.3-inch Quad HD display with a resolution of 2400x1600 pixels.
Google has also introduced the Pixelbook Pen which can be used with the Pixelbook in order to make drawings or writing.
Google Pixel Buds
Google has launched the Pixel Buds in order to take down the Apple AirPods. The Pixel Buds are not totally wireless unlike the Apple AirPods as the Pixel Buds have a wire connecting both the earbuds together. The new Pixel Buds come with 'Live Translation' feature which uses Google Translate to translate around 40 languages. Google Pixel Buds are compatible with any smartphone running Android 5 Lollipop or higher, any iOS device running iOS 10 or higher. The Google Pixel Buds will retail for $159 which roughly converts to Rs. 10,350.
1More is a relatively new brand in the audio industry as compared to the other brands. They recently launched their 1More Piston Classic In-Ear earphones in India, which we had with us for some time to review. These earphones come with a price tag of Rs. 1,999, however, they usually sell at Amazon India for Rs. 1,499, which we think is a decent price for these and we will be telling you why below.
1More Piston Classic: Design
The 1More Piston Classic headphones come beautifully packaged in a plastic box, similar to something that you might expect from a company like Apple. The box contains the earbuds themselves wrapped around a silicone case, three pairs of replaceable silicone tips for small, medium and large ear sizes. The box also includes a tie clip to hold the headphones in place.
The earpieces, inline control bar, and the 3.5mm jack connector are made up of aluminium and feel solid. During the process of our review, the earbuds accidentally got dragged around on the road and came out with very little damage which shows that these are extremely durable.
The cable from the connector to the in-line control is sheathed and the wire going to the buds is rubberised, all of these makes the unit feel extremely premium. The unit is light and is comfortable to use for long hours. However, we do feel that the company could have given a flat cable on these as these kinds of cables end up tangled in your pockets.
The inline remote features extremely good button placement as it comes with a single button to pick up or end calls or simply play/pause music and on the other side are the volume buttons, it also features a microphone.
1More Piston Classic: Performance
As far as the performance goes, we extremely love the 1More Piston Classic earphones. These definitely makes it into our Top 5 earphone recommendations of 2017 list. The device has a frequency range of 20Hz-20,000Hz and has the sensitivity of 98dB at 5mW and rated impedance of 32 Ohms.
We were able to test out the earphones on laptops, Android smartphones, and Apple smartphones to test out how these perform on different platforms, we ran FLAC, mp3, and M4A sound profiles on these amongst others. To say that these didn't perform well on all the devices would be a lie. These earphones were able to deliver the highs, mids, and lows perfectly, and for the Indian consumers yes the bass was to the point.
1More Piston Classic: Comfort
As far as the comfort goes the Piston Classic is one of the pair earphones that you can put and forget. They are extremely comfortable and after some time is unnoticeable. However, we did knock off 10 points of the rating as the headphones tend to slip out of your ears on many occasions. Otherwise, the Piston Classic is extremely comfortable and should cause you any problems while using them.
1More Piston Classic: Verdict
The Piston Classic in-ear earphones are what you would call a pair of all-rounder earphones. These are amongst the best in class earphones and should be up against the big players, however, the company has priced them at Rs. 1,499 which as per us is an extremely reasonable price being asked for the device. They have a lot of clarity in the sound which would make an audiophile smile. We recommend that if you are looking for a good pair of earphones, these might be your best bet.
Google, on Wednesday, has finally taken the wraps off the much anticipated Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Just like last year, the Pixel 2 devices again have the best smartphone cameras, at least according to the DxO Mark. The smartphones come with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Protection and have IP67 certifications making them dust and water resistant.
Specifications
The Google Pixel 2 features a 5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels resulting in a pixel density of 441ppi. On the other hand, the Pixel 2 XL sports a larger 6-inch pOLED display with a resolution of 2880x1440 pixels and a pixel density of 538ppi. The smartphones support Always-on-Display which is also seen on the Samsung's latest flagship models. Both the smartphones are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC which is a 64-bit octa-core processor clocked with Adreno 540 GPU. Both the smartphones will pack in a 4GB of RAM and will be available in two storage options, 64GB and 128GB. Google also offers unlimited online storage for photos and videos for the Pixel users.
Speaking of the photos and videos, the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL feature a 12.2-megapixel camera at the back with f/1.8 aperture. Up front, the smartphones come with an 8-megapixel camera with a f/2.4 aperture for selfies and video calling. The Google Pixel 2 devices have scored 98 out of 100 in the DxOMark which is currently the highest in any smartphone.
The Pixel 2 packs in a 2,700mAh battery while the Pixel 2 XL comes with a larger 3,520mAh battery under the hood. The phones also support fast-charging which can get up to 7 hours of charge in about 15mins. Both the smartphones will run on Android 8.0.0 Oreo out of the box and will be the first devices to get the Android OS and Security Patch updates.
Price and Availability
The Google Pixel 2 will be available in Just Black, Clearly White and Kinda Blue colour variants while the Pixel 2 XL will have only two colour options including the Just Black and Black and White. The Pixel 2 starts at $649 (roughly Rs. 42,250) while its big brother will retail at a starting price of $849 (roughly Rs. 55,250). The 128GB variant will be $100 more than the 64GB variant in both the cases. The new Google smartphones will launch in India, Australia, Canada, US, UK and Germany first.
