Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has launched its second smartphone in the Magic series, the Honor Magic 2, in China. The smartphone houses three cameras cameras on the front and three cameras on the back, making a total of six cameras on a smartphone. The smartphone has a sliding mechanism and the front cameras are revealed by sliding the display down. The same mechanism has been seen in the Mi Mix 3 smartphone. The smartphone also gets the company’s own Artificial Intelligence-powered digital assistant Yoyo. The smartphone is launched in three variants. The 6GB RAM + 128GB variant is priced at 3799 yuan (approx Rs 40,300), the 6GB RAM + 128GB variant will be available for 4299 yuan (approx Rs 45,600) and the 8GB RAM + 128GB variant will cost 4799 yuan (approx Rs 51,000). It will be available in three colours Gradient Red, Gradient Blue and Gradient Black. Honor Magic 2 specs and features Honor Magic 2 sports a 6.39-inch AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 91.5 percent and a 2140×1080 pixel resolution. The smartphone runs on Kirin 980 chipset which its parent company Huawei launched at 2018 IFA and with that, the Honor Magic 2 becomes the second phone with the flagship SoC. As mentioned above, the smartphone is offered in three configurations, which are, 6GB RAM + 128GB, 6GB RAM + 128GB and 8GB RAM + 128GB variants. The security options include an in-display fingerprint scanner and an infrared 3D face unlock. The handset comes with a total of six cameras with three cameras each on the front and the back. On the back panel, the cameras are vertically aligned in the Huawei P20 Pro fashion with a 16MP RGB lens with f/1.8 aperture, a 24MP Monochrome lens with f/1.8 aperture, and a 16MP super wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture. The front horizontal front camera module has a 16MP selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture, and two 2MP depth-sensing lenses with f/2.4 aperture each. The smartphone runs on Magic UI 2.0 which is built on top of Android Pie 9.0 and is backed by a 3400mAh battery. Honor Magic 2 supports 40W fast charging, called ‘Magic Charge’ and the company claims that it can charge the device from zero to 85 percent in 30 minutes. Apart from the smartphone, the company also launched Honor Waterplay 8 tablet, Honor Watch Magic and a two Honor FlyPods models. Honor Waterplay 8 The Honor Waterplay 8 tablet sports. It sports an 8-inch full-HD display with 1200x1920 pixels resolution and 74.13 percent screen-to-body ratio. Under the hood, the tablet is powered by the Kirin 659 processor, paired with Mali T830-MP2 GPU and 4GB RAM with up to 128GB local storage. In the camera department, the Honor Waterplay 8 features a dual-rear camera setup with 13MP and 5MP sensors and on the front, it has an 8MP camera with f/2.0 aperture. The tablet runs on Android 8.0 Oreo-based EMUI 8.0 and packs a 5,100mAh battery with 9V/2A fast charging support. When it comes to the price, the 4GB+64GB Wi-Fi is priced at Rs 1,499 yuan (approx Rs 16,000), 4GB+64GB LTE variant will be available for 1,799 yuan (approx Rs 19,000), and the 4GB+128GB Wi-Fi variant will cost 1,899 yuan (approx Rs. 20,000),. Honor Watch Magic The Honor Watch Magic ships with a 1.2-inch AMOLED display with 390x390 pixels resolution. The smartwatch has a heart rate sensor, packs a 178mAh battery and supports devices with Android (version 4.4 or above) and iOS (version 9 or later). The Honor Watch Magic comes in two colours: Lava Black and Midnight Silver. The Lava Black model will cost customers 899 yuan (approx Rs 9,500) and the Midnight Silver variant is priced at 999 yuan (approx Rs 10,500). Honor FlyPods Honor has also launched new a pair of FlyPods and the FlyPods Pro -- company’s wireless earbuds that look similar to Apple's AirPods. Both come with touch controls and have a 420mAh battery and can either be charged via a USB-C port or wirelessly, but only the FlyPods Pro comes with Honor's BoneID technology which the company claims can allow users to use voice recognition and 'bone sound pattern' recognition as biometric authentication to unlock the smartphone. The FlyPods are currently available for preorder in China. The FlyPods cost 799 yuan (approx Rs 8,400) and the FlyPods Pro are priced at 999 yuan (approx Rs 10,500) and will go on sale from November 6 three colours: Charm Red, Lily of the Valley and Robin Blue.
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2018’s smartphone story can be divided in two parts. The first part where OEMs worked to put the notch on top of the display and then the sequel where they worked to remove it. In the second half of this year, we’ve seen efforts from Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Honor to remove the notch they so gladly put in phones that launched in the first half. The workaround all of them chose is to make the front camera mechanical. Now Nubia, another Chinese smartphone maker has come up another ingenious way to remove the notch — Add another display at the back to take see your selfies in action. The Nubia X that launched Wednesday in China comes with two touchscreen displays, one at the back and another up front. The flagship phone from Nubia is essentially a selfie smartphone, but without a front camera. It houses two sensors at the back — A f/1.8 aperture 16-megapixel sensor and another 1/.7 aperture 24-megapixel camera. The two cameras work in tandem to capture portrait shots and has AI scene recognition, dual pixel PDAF and 240 fps slow-motion video capture. There’s also a dual-tone LED flash and another soft-light LED flash for selfies. The rear display doubles up as a viewfinder when taking selfies. It’s a 5.1-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1520x720 pixels that sits flushed to the body. On the front, there’s a 6.26-inch FHD+ LCD panel that stretches almost to the edges. The phone is powered by the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC coupled with up to 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. There are lower RAM and storage variants as well, and will be available in Deep Gray, Black Gold and Sea Blue colours. The second display at the back can also work as your primary screen. There are two capacitive fingerprint sensors on each side bezel that double up as your home and back button. Needless to say, using this phone will require new muscle memory. You’ll need to tap on each fingerprint sensor to switch screens, or let the phone’s behaviour recognition software to do it for you automatically. The rear panel can also be used as additional buttons while playing a game. Although how practical that will be remains to be seen. Remember the PS Vita also had touch-based controls at the back, but it never really took off. The Nubia X also has a software-based three-level blue light filter which is certified by TUV Rheinland on the OLED panel which could be a primary reason to switch to the panel at the back. The blue colour variants of the smartphone also come with a physical blue light filter integrated in the rear display and are a little more expensive. When not using the display at the back, it can be set to be an always-on panel and you can either have a clock, or a live wallpaper at the back. All in all, the implementation, on paper, looks neat, perhaps a tad over-engineered. All that screen will surely need a lot of juice to last the day. Nubia installed a 3,800mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 that tops up the battery with a bundled 18W fast charger. Nubia claims the phone has a ultra-low power mode that kicks in when the battery is at 5 percent and can last the phone for 3 hours more. The phone will only be available in China for now with no plans whatsoever for a global launch. It also comes with Android 8.1 Oreo even when phones are already releasing with Android 9.0 Pie out of the box. The base 6GB+128GB variant will retail for 3,299 Yuan (Rs 35,000 approx) while the 8GB+128GB variant will be available for 3,699 Yuan (Rs 39,000 approx). The top of the line 8GB+256GB variant will be sold for 4,199 Yuan (Rs 44,500 approx). All the variants are offered in blue colours that will cost 100 Yuan more because of the physical blue-light filter. Now that’s a smartphone I’d like to review.
Apple’s iOS 12.1 update has been hotly anticipated given the number of exciting features it brings with it. Features like e-SIM activation, Group FaceTime and 70 new emojis did make the update exciting for users, but it also brought in a feature that is bound to ruffle some feathers; performance management. Performance Management is a software toggle that will allow you to lower the performance levels of the phone in case the battery has deteriorated beyond a point. This is a feature that Apple had secretly enabled on older iPhones, which eventually exploded into one of the biggest controversies for the brand in 2017. As many iPhone 6s users started to report that their iPhones would suddenly turn off despite having an adequate battery, Apple discovered that the heavy demand of iOS was taxing the deteriorated battery, causing the phone to shut down. Hence, through an iOS update, they silently throttled the performance of all iPhones at the time, provided the battery had deteriorated below a certain level. After the issue blew up, Apple said they have issued an update making the feature optional. They also said that the newer iPhones at the time, the iPhone 8 duo and the iPhone X would not be impacted, but here we are. The Performance Management setting will allow users with an iPhone 8/iPhone 8 Plus or an iPhone X whose battery has deteriorated and are experiencing sudden shutdowns, to turn the feature on and not have their phones switch off randomly. The issue can be fixed by having the battery swapped out, but Apple has traditionally been very difficult about offering this service, sparking conspiracy theories that they built planned obsolesce into their devices. At the time, Apple did say that future iPhones would not have a need for this feature, but it looks like the company is not taking any chances. Thankfully, this time, instead of automatic throttling, the company has given users a choice; choose full performance or stable battery life. Having to choose between the two is a terrible thing and Apple should just go ahead and make battery replacements as easy as walking into an Apple authorized store and walking out with a new battery in the phone, no questions asked. Apple does have a concessional pricing for battery replacement on models iPhone 6 and higher running through till December 31, but it would be nice to see the company extend this indefinitely.
In a conversation, the Xiaomi Global VP and India MD, Manu Jain, said that this year Xiaomi focussed on bringing its televisions and accessories to India, which were previously exclusive to China. Next year, in 2019, the company will try to bring more of its gadgets here and its gaming laptop are on the list, along with some other devices. Xiaomi sells a range of products in China and It recently announced its biggest Mi Home Experience Store in Bengaluru where its gaming laptops and a slew of other devices that are yet to launch in India are on display. Jain said that Xiaomi garners feedback from its users that experience these devices in its Mi Home Experience Stores and if enough people put in a request, it considers bringing those devices to India. Xiaomi launched its Mi Gaming Laptop back in March this year. It comes in two variants and the more powerful model is priced at RMB 8,999 (Rs 95,400 approx), while its base model costs CNY 5,999 (Rs 62,000 approx). We did get to play with the laptops at the new Mi Home Experience Store and they are considerably thin for a gaming laptop and are comparatively lightweight for their category. The Mi Gaming laptop features a 15.6-inch full HD display with a 1920 X 1080p resolution with 300 nits of brightness and “high-precision anti-glare”. Alongside its gaming laptops, the company also showcased its Mi Notebook Air laptops. They goes up against the Apple MacBook Air with an all-metal build, Full HD 13.5-inch display and a Nvidia MX150 discrete GPU on board. Next year, Xiaomi will look at launching its other non-smart products in India as well, like clothes, shoes and apparels. Jain says that even though there’s no tech infused in them, they are good quality products that will appeal to the masses and of course, Mi fans. As mentioned earlier, the Mi Gaming laptop comes in two versions where the top-most variant is powered by the 7th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with 16GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 2400MHz and is coupled with the 6GB GDDR5 Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. It comes with a 1TB HDD and 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD for storage. The lower variant of the laptop is powered by the 7th Gen Intel Core i5 processor coupled with 4GB GDDR5 GeForce GTX 1050Ti and 8GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 2400MHz. It is also equipped with a 1TB hard disk but comes with only 128GB SSD.
OnePlus 6T is now on sale in India and customers can buy the smartphone from Amazon. The OnePlus 6T will be available in three - 6GB RAM + 128GB storage, 8GB RAM +128GB storage and 8GB RAM and 256GB storage - variants. All the three variants will be sold through Amazon India and OnePlus online store. They will also be available in pop-up stores and from November 3, the device will be available offline via OnePlus Stores, Reliance Digital and Croma. Amazon has noted that the order quantity for this product is limited to one unit per customer and the orders which exceed the quantity limit will be auto-canceled. OnePlus 6T price starts at Rs 37,999 for 6GB+128GB variant while the 8GB+128GB variant will retail for Rs 41,999. The top most variant with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage will be available for Rs Rs 45,999. Amazon is bundling several offers with the OnePlus 6T. Under “Unlock The Speed Offer”, Reliance Jio users will get to avail a Rs 5,400 cashback, along with 3TB of 4G data with the OnePlus 6T. The cashback will be provided on the first prepaid recharge of Rs 299 in the form of 36 vouchers worth Rs 150 each in the MyJio app. People who purchase OnePlus 6T will only have to pay 6 per cent for any Kindle eBook and can avail a discount up to Rs 500. If purchased using a pre-paid method (non-COD and pay by Amazon Pay balance, Credit Card, Debit Card or Net Banking) between November 1 to November 5, the customers shall be entitled to receive cashback worth Rs 1000 in the form of Amazon Pay balance which will be credited within 72 hours after the items are dispatched. There is a No cost EMI offer on all major Credit and Debit cards, and the company is providing free damage protection via Kotak Mahindra 811. ICICI bank Credit and Debit card, and Citi Credit Card holders can get Rs 2000 Instant Bank Discount. No Cost EMI is also available on Bajaj Finserv EMI cards. Customers can also get 10 percent cashback and up to Rs 50 using BHIM UPI or Rupay ATM cards, debit cards or credit cards. The cashback will be credited as Amazon Pay balance within 15 days. OnePlus 6T specifications and features The OnePlus 6T sports a 6.41-inch Optic AMOLED display along with an in-display fingerprint sensor, which the company claims is the fastest among its peers. The display is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 6 and the phone is sandwiched between two glass sheets. Instead of a regular rectangular notch, the OnePlus 6T has a waterdrop notch and the chin has been shaved off for a bigger screen area. Under the hood, the OnePlus 6T has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor coupled with up to 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. OnePlus has completely striked away the 64GB storage option and the smartphone is being offered only in midnight black and mirror black colours. The camera on the OnePlus 6T has the same sensors as the OnePlus 6. On the back is a 16MP Sony IMX 519 sensor with f/1.7 and 1.12-pixel pitch, which is coupled with a 20MP Sony IMX376K depth-sensing sensor. On the front is a 16MP sensor for selfies. The camera now has a dedicated mode for low-light photography called Nightscape. The OnePlus 6T runs on OxygenOS 9.0.2 which is based on Android 9.0 Pie. The OnePlus 6T packs a battery of 3,700mAh which the company claims that lasts 23 percent longer than its predecessor.
There’s enough noise going on around foldable phones these days. Big players in the smartphone market like LG and Samsung have been indicating their desire to create a smartphone with a foldable display for some years now. In fact, you could say that the curves on the displays of models like the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the LG G Flex 2 is a small step towards getting there. But this new Chinese smartphone called FlexPai is cutting through all of that noise to show off a display that can be folded like a book. Made by a little-known Chinese manufacturer called Royole Corporation, the FlexPai is a phablet (if that term even exists anymore) with a 4:3 7.8-inch display. The 1920 x 1440 display, when flattened out fully to resemble a tablet, can be folded backwards in the middle to make the device resemble a phone. Still a prototype, the FlexPai’s display doesn’t fold completely and without glitches: there’s a rather large gap between the folds and the screen flickers a bit when it’s folded. A folded side of the display measures 4 inches diagonally. The phone was seen in action in IceUniverse's tweet: This is the "world's first foldable screen phone" released by Rouyu Technology, which will use the Snapdragon 8150 processor, but its design is very rough, just to seize the "first", this is a futures product. pic.twitter.com/M0v9o2z0Bw — Ice universe (@UniverseIce) 31 October 2018 The FlexPai is powered by a Qualcomm 8-series chipset that clocks at 2.80GHz and an Adreno 640 GPU. Some believe it’s the to-be-announced Snapdragon 855 or Snapdragon 8150 flagship chipset. On the software front, it runs Android 9.0 Pie with Water OS 1.0 on top. The FlexPai is expected to come in three variants: 6GB RAM + 128GB storage, 8GB RAM + 256GB storage, and 8GB RAM + 512GB storage. According to Royole's product page, the FlexPai features a dual-camera setup on the back: a 16-megapixel wide-angle sensor and a 20-megapixel telephoto sensor. Both have an aperture of f/1.8. The FlexPai uses a fast-charging technology called Ro Charge, which is capable of juicing up the phone from nought to 80 percent in just one hour. The battery on it is a 3,800mAh unit. The FlexPai is reportedly close to being ready for commercial sale and will go on sale in December this year. Pre-orders are said to start on October 31 in China. The FlexPai by Royole Corporation is expected to cost CNY 8,999 (approx Rs 95,000) for the entry-level variant and CNY 12,999 (approx Rs 1,37,000) for the top-end variant. There’s little chance the FlexPai will enter the Indian smartphone market anytime soon.
Paytm is once again hosting its Maha Cashback Sale on Paytm Mall and there are a bunch of good smartphone deals one can grab on sale days - November 1 to November 7. Offers include a sale-wide 10 percent cashback on Axis Bank credit and debit cards, over and above the cashback Paytm is offering. The platform is also offering cash on delivery on sale items as well as cashback up to Rs 16,000 on some smartphones. Here are some lucrative smartphone deals on Paytm mall right now. Google Pixel 2 XL (64GB) - Buy Now Before Sale: Rs 43,590 After Sale: Rs 32,931 after cashback Last year’s Google flagship smartphone is still a good phone to buy, especially at this price. The device has one of the best cameras a smartphone can sport and offers a stock Android experience in a 6-inch form factor. The Pixel 2 XL (review) features Quad HD+ P-OLED display. The handset is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 chipset coupled with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. It sports a 12MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture, Dual Pixel autofocus, optical and electronic image stabilisation (EIS). When it was launched, the smartphone ran on Android 8.0 Oreo but Google has already rolled out the Android 9.0 Pie update to it. On Paytm Mall, you can get a Rs 7,000 cashback on the purchase of the smartphone straight away and add a 10% cashback if you purchase the device through an Axis bank debit or credit card, taking its price down to Rs 32,931. iPhone 7 (32GB) - Buy Now Before Sale: 39,499 After Sale: Rs 29,680 after cashback The iPhone 7 (review) may be a two year old device, but it’s still a pretty good Apple device to buy. The smartphone has been updated to Apple’s latest iOS 12.1 operating system. It features a good camera, is a great performer and has a good display. Specs wise, the iPhone 7 has a 4.7-inch display with a 1334 x 750 pixel resolution, giving it a pixel density of 326 ppi. It runs on the A10 Fusion chip which is a quad-core 64-bit chipset coupled with 3GB RAM. The phone has a 12MP camera at the back and a 7MP camera on the front. On Paytm Mall, you get a cashback of Rs 6,500 up front and another 10% with Axis bank cards, taking the price of the phone down to Rs 29,680 iPhone X (64GB) - Buy Now Before Sale: Rs 83,990 After Sale: Rs 61,200 Last year’s iPhone X (review) has all the latest features that even this year’s iPhones sport. It has a notch, a TrueDepth camera system at the front, dual 12MP cameras at the back, a 5.8-inch OLED Super Retina Display that supports HDR10 as well as Dolby Vision and an A11 Bionic Chip. The very first version of the future of phones as per Apple, the iPhone X, is an excellent smartphone and steered Apple into a whole new direction. On Paytm Mall, the flagship phone is available with Rs 16,000 cashback upfront, and another 10% cashback using Axis Bank cards, bringing its price down to Rs 61,200.
