It’s been a busy week with high profile launches and some much-anticipated phones becoming available in India.
The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are now available in India – we saw lines forming outside Apple stores for the 7pm launch on Friday, showing that there’s a fair amount of demand for these handsets in India. The iPhone 7 price starts at Rs. 60,000 and the iPhone 7 Plus starts at Rs. 72,000, but there are still plenty of deals you can go for to get a slightly cheaper phone. Aside from the new iPhone models, the Apple Watch series 2 is nowavailable in India as well, from Rs. 32,000 onwards.
Apart from the various e-commerce deals, Airtel and Reliance Jio are also giving special offers for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Airtel’s infinity plan is offering users 120GB of free 4G data, while Jio’siPhone offer gives users 12 months of free services including 20GB of data per month, and access to Jio services – a total bundle that the company pegs at being worth Rs. 18,000 for the year’s use. Airtel has another offer where it is iPhone 7 at Rs. 19,990 and you can check out all the details here.Our own review of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be coming soon, but first impressions have been very positive. You can also see exactly what all is inside the package you get through these unboxing photographs, or see the video below.
A word of caution for all prospective buyers – the phone does not come with a 3.5mm audio jack – something that worried people into being willing to try anything. Including being fooled by a viral videothat tricked them into drilling into their brand new phones. Don’t drill holes into your phone, and instead check out our picks for alternatives you can use with your new iPhone.
(Also see: Best Headphones to Use With the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus)
If the iPhone release was big news in India, then Google had the attention on the global scale with thelaunch of the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL phones. The Pixel phones will be up for pre-order in India from next week, with the smaller Pixel being available at Rs. 57,000, while the Pixel XL starts at Rs. 66,000. The two phones are identical on all fronts except for the battery and screen – the Pixel has a 5-inch screen while the Pixel XL has a 5.5-inch screen.
Both phones are powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, with two cores clocked at 1.6GHz, and two cores clocked at 2.15GHz. Both the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones will pack 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and sport Pixel imprint fingerprint sensor. They sport a 12.3-megapixel rear camera with a Sony IMX378 sensor, PDAF, f/2.0 aperture, and 1.55-micron pixels. Both sport an 8-megapixel front camera with a Sony IMX179 sensor, an f/2.4 aperture, and 1.4-micron pixels.
The two phones also have some software tweaks that are exclusive for now, including early access to things such as Google Assistant and Android 7.1, and some features that will not trickle down, such as free, unlimited backup for pictures and videos. See full specifications of Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL.
(Also see: Google Pixel vs iPhone 7 vs Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge)
Google also announced the launch of the new Chromecast Ultra, Google Home, Google Wifi, andGoogle Daydream View.
Apart from the iPhone, we saw another high profile phone launch in India this week – the Moto Z and Moto Mods. The phone was first launched in June but the global rollout started in September. Now, the phone has launched in India, with a starting price of Rs. 39,999. The cheaper Moto Z Play starts at Rs. 24,999. You’ll be able to buy the phones from October 17, along with the Moto Mods – modular components that can dramatically add features to your phone.
The Moto Mods connect to your phone via the 16-dot connector interface, and a number of them are going to be available in India. The JBL Soundboost costs Rs. 6,999, the Moto Insta-Share Projector costs Rs. 19,999, the Hasselblad True Zoom costs Rs. 19,999, the Incipio offGRID Power Pack costs Rs. 5,999, the Wood and Ballistic Nylon Motorola Style Shell costs Rs. 1,099, while the Leather Style Shell costs Rs. 1,599. These will all be available with a slight discount if you buy them with the phone.
Other launches this week included the Lyf Wind 4S with 4000mAh battery and the Lyf Flame 7S with a4-inch display. There was also the Asus ZenPad Z10 tablet with a 9.7-inch display and 4G LTE support. The Zen Cinemax Force also launched this week as did the Oppo F1SDiwali Edition that comes with a redesigned rear panel and Diwali theme. The Intex Aqua Strong 5.2 with 2GB RAM and 16GB storagealso launched, and the Vivo Y55L with a 5.2-inch display. Sony also launched two premium cameras, theA6500 and Cyber-Shot RX100 V.
The week also saw the big online sales coming to an end, with Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Amazon allreporting great sale numbers. Flipkart says customer saved over Rs. 1000 crore during its Big Billion Days Sale, while Amazon registered strong growth in mobile shoppers and Prime subscribers. Snapdeal says it saw total number of shoppers increase four times in the sale.
The latest round of spectrum auctions also concluded this week, falling short of its target by a large margin. The auction began on October 1, with the goal of shoring up gaps in spectrum holdings, and Telecom Secretary J S Deepak said the next such sale may not happen for “quite some time”. However, on day 2 the auction appeared to slow down and on day 3 the auction for the 700MHz and 900MHz bands saw no takers. These 4G bands continued to be ignored by operators on day 4, and on the final day the 900MHz band still saw no takers.
(Also see: What Is Spectrum, and Why Is It Being Auctioned?)
Aside from this, another interesting event this week was Oculus Connect 3, Facebook’s virtual reality event. Facebook is making a Web browser for VR and it showed off a lot of developments from Oculus. It showcased the Oculus Touch motion controllers, which will be available from December, and finally brought up room-scale VR, which is a pretty big development. The company also talked about a VR device that fits between the PC-powered Oculus Rift and the mobile-powered Gear VR. At OC3, Facebook talked about a standalone device that would offer experiences somewhere between these two extremes, with inside-out positional tracking.
Zuckerberg also showed off Oculus Rooms and the concept of “social VR”, as he showed a demo of people hanging out, holding a conference, and watching movies together using the Oculus platform.
And in news you’re not likely to believe – a Nokia phone saved a man’s life as it stopped a bullet. And no, it wasn’t the old unbreakable seeming models either, but a modern Nokia featurephone. This is actually not the first time that a Nokia phone achieved this feat. In 2014, a Nokia Lumia 520 stopped a bullet fired at a Brazilian policeman, though the handset – predictably – got destroyed in the process.
