If you were on the fence on whether to get a Netflix subscription or not, then there is good news for you. It looks like Netflix will offer its catalogue for free for a weekend for users looking to try out the service before investing.
The information comes from Greg Peters, COO and Chief Product Officer at Netflix who during the company’s earnings call said that Netflix would keep experimenting with ways to lure customers to its service. The weekend trial will happen first in India but there is no information on when the promotion will be available. “We think that giving away everyone in the country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have, the service and how it works … and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up,” he said.
While India will be the first country to receive the free weekend trial, the US will stop getting the first month for free when a new user signs up for Netflix.
This isn't the first time we have seen Netflix try different promotional activities in India or introduce a new plan first in India and then release it globally. Netflix has changed its UI to now be available in Hindi. So, a user can read the title and description of a movie or TV in Hindi, if that is his/her preferred language. You can learn more about the Hindi UI here.
As a promotional offering back in May 2020, Netflix offered new subscribers a 30 days free upgrade to a higher tier plan. This would help give you access to more screens and higher resolution based on the plan you selected and was a way of Netflix to get users to subscriber to a higher tier plan. You can learn more about it here.
Netflix also introduced the mobile-only Rs 199 plan in India first. The plan gives you access to the service on a mobile or tablet and is priced at Rs 199. This plan was an attempt to lure the audience that consumes content on their smartphone and was competitively priced when you look at the pricing of services like Disney+ Hotstar and Prime Video. You can learn more about the mobile plan here.
With yet another promotional activity, back in August, the streaming service let users consume Netflix original shows and movies without an account. This would let users get a taste of the original content on offer on Netflix and entice them to subscribe. You can learn more about it here.
From the above, it is clear that Netflix has tried innovative methods to get users to subscribe to its service without reducing the cost of the monthly subscription. It is well known that India is a price-sensitive market. Services like Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and even Apple TV+ are more expensive in the US. In India however, these services offer differential pricing to stay competitive. While Netflix does offer plans at cheaper rates, it is limited to mobile devices only and their main plans are priced similarity to their international offerings.
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Amazon is currently hosting the Great Indian Festival sale 2020 offering deals and discounts across various categories such as mobile phones, televisions, audio, air purifiers, washing machines and more. Just in time for the festival season in India, many products in the home appliances category have also received discounts and offers and if you had been waiting for a shopping fiesta to buy a refrigerator for your home, there couldn’t be a better time. So here are the best deals on refrigerators that you must check out on Amazon India.
Whirlpool 190L single door refrigerator at Rs 12,990
Whirlpool (WDE 205 PRM 4S INV) refrigerator has a single door and a 190 litres capacity. It has a four-star power-saving rating and features Intellisense inverter technology that keeps it cool for upto 9 hours in case of power-cut.
The Whirlpool 190L refrigerator is priced at Rs 12,990 during the Great Indian Festival sale on Amazon India after a 25% discount of around Rs 4,400 on its original price of Rs 17,400. HDFC bank credit cardholders can get an additional Rs 1,500 off during the sale.
Check out the Whirlpool 190L refrigerator deal here
Godrej 190L single door refrigerator at Rs 15,490
Godrej 190L refrigerator has a five-start power-saving rating and has a base stand with a drawer for dry storage. The refrigerator uses toughened glass shelves and features anti-drip chiller technology.
This refrigerator is priced at Rs 15,490 during the Amazon sale down from its original price of Rs 19,990. This translates to a discount of Rs 4,500 and HDFC bank credit cardholders can get an additional 10% off.
Check out the Godrej 190L refrigerator deal here
LG 260L double door refrigerator at Rs 23,490
This refrigerator by LG is suitable for a family of two to three members and is priced at Rs 23,490 during the Amazon Great Indian Festival sale 2020. The refrigerator has received a discount of Rs 7,200 on its original price of Rs 30,690 and HDFC bank credit cardholders get an additional Rs 1,500 off.
The LG GL-I292RPZL has a 260 litres capacity with features like auto-defrost, smart inverter, toughened glass shelves and a 10-year warranty on compressor.
Check out the LG 260L refrigerator deal here
Samsung 244L double door refrigerator at Rs 25,990
Samsung’s double door refrigerator has a 244 litres capacity with features like Curd Maestro, movable ice maker, stabilizer free and digital display, to name a few. This frost-free refrigerator is suitable for a family with two or three members and comes with a 10-year warranty on compressor.
The Samsung 244 litres refrigerator is priced at Rs 25,990 during the Amazon sale after a discount of Rs 5,000 on its original price of Rs 30,990. In addition, HDFC bank credit cardholders can get Rs 1,500 off on the purchase.
Check out the Samsung 244L refrigerator deal here
Whirlpool 300L multi-door refrigerator at Rs 27,990
Whirlpool FP 313D is a multi-door refrigerator with a capacity of 300 litres and is priced at Rs 27,990 on Amazon. During the sale, this refrigerator has received a discount of Rs 10,910 over its original price of Rs 38,900. There’s an additional 10% discount of upto Rs 1,500 for HDFC bank credit cardholders during the sale.
The Whirlpool 300L refrigerator has frost-free functionality with auto-defrost, active fresh zone, 32L separate storage space at the bottom and ice twister system.
Check out the Whirlpool 300L refrigerator deal here
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Huawei Mate 40 series is set to break cover on October 22 but key specifications and official-looking renders have already leaked online, revealing everything there is to know, especially about the Mate 40 Pro. There are multiple phones expected to be part of this year’s Mate 40 lineup including the Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro, Mate 40 Pro+ and the Porsche Design Mate 40 RS.
According to a report by Roland Quandt on Winfuture, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro could feature a curved waterfall display and will be powered by the Kirin 9000 processor. The rear camera setup has also been revamped and the leaked pictures indicate a circular camera array that protrudes on the back. Here’s everything you should know about the upcoming Huawei Mate 40 series.
Huawei Mate 40 Pro leaked specifications
Huawei Mate 40 Pro reportedly features a 6.76-inch display that uses an OLED panel with a 2772 x 1344 pixels resolution and upto 120Hz refresh rate. The screen is said to be HDR10+ certified as well and curves towards the edges rather steeply. The Mate 40 Pro is expected to have a metal-glass sandwich design and is IP68 rated making it dust and water-resistant. It measures 9.1 millimetres in thickness and weighs around 212 grams.
The Mate 40 Pro is expected to be powered by the home-grown Kirin 9000 5nm chipset with an octa-core CPU running at upto 3.13GHz clock speeds and Mali-G78 MP24 GPU. This could be paired with upto 12GB RAM and 512GB storage options to choose from with the phone also supporting memory cards of upto 256GB storage. The phone will likely run on Android 10-based EMUI 11 out-of-the-box but with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) instead of the Google Play Services.
Huawei Mate 40 Pro could feature a quad-camera setup on the back with a 50MP primary camera with an f/1.9 aperture, PDAF and OIS support, a 12MP telephoto camera with upto 5x optical zoom and a 20MP ultra-wide-angle camera. The fourth camera is expected to be a 3D depth sensor. The cameras are tunes by Leica optics and could support recording in 8K UHD at 30FPS and 4K UHD at upto 60FPS.
On the front, there’s expected to be a 13MP selfie camera along with a 3D biometric sensor that offers features like gestures based navigation and facial recognition.
The screen is also home to an in-screen optical fingerprint sensor and the phone is compatible with WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. The Mate 40 Pro could come with a 4,400mAh battery with support for 65W fast wired charging out-of-the-box and wireless charging as well.
According to a leak by Teme on Twitter, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ could feature a slightly modified camera setup with a 50MP primary camera, a 20MP ultra-wide-angle camera, an 8MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, another 8MP camera with 10x optical zoom and a 3D depth sensor.
The same tipster has also revealed that the Mate 40 Pro could be priced around Euro 1,100 while the Pro+ is expected to launch for close to Euro 1,400 followed by the Porsche Design Mate 40 RS at around Euro 2,500.
Huawei has scheduled the Mate 40 series launch for October 22 and the event will be live-streamed online.
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The Google Pixel 4a is perfect for a compact smartphone that does not compromise on the experience even as it switches to mid-range components. Oh, and the camera? Just as good as before. But you may start missing the ultrawide lens soon after starting to use the phone.
The fact that not much of the market got up and took note of the fact that Google wasn’t bringing the Pixel 4 and 4 XL to India last year, save for us enthu cutlets ,speaks volumes about Google’s hardware division’s focus on the Indian market, and vice versa. But with India being one of the largest mobile markets, Google just can’t give up that easy, can they? Hence, the Pixel 4a.
The Pixel 4a is a course correction for Google, and at the same time, a bold experiment for the Android ecosystem. Google has put all its software expertise in the Pixel 4a to eke out every last bit of performance out of a moderately powerful, but old mid-range chipset, and enable an experience that's close to, or at par with their flagship counterparts. Does Google succeed? That’s what we’re here to find out —
Performance
The Pixel 4a is not a flagship smartphone. In the traditional sense, at least. The Snapdragon 730G inside has been used far and wide in mid-range smartphones, and with 6GB RAM, the Pixel 4a performs like the average mid-range smartphone on benchmarks. It’s not terribly far behind the Snapdragon 765 on the OnePlus Nord, and is only marginally beaten by the Redmi Note 9 Pro, Realme 7 Pro and the POCO X3 on both CPU and GPU benchmarks. A CPU Throttle test for 30 minutes slowed the CPU down to 68% of its capacity, and the phone did get quite warm during my benchmark runs.
Yet, using the Pixel 4a as a daily driver for more than a week, it feels like none of it matters. Because not once did I feel the Pixel 4a become sluggish and unresponsive. If this is a showcase of Android’s ability to run just fine on mid-range hardware, I’d call it a success. Google manages to keep the software minimal and simple, and bakes in the much-loved features like Now Playing (ambient song recognition), universal text captions, smart replies, and a spam filter. The app drawer is surprisingly intuitive, and threw exactly the apps I wanted to use at that very moment, on top of the list of apps. Like swiping up to launch Paytm to pay at the counter, and voila! Paytm’s on top waiting to be tapped on.
Having said that, there’s only so much you can improve with software. While the UI is consistently responsive, heavier apps like Lightroom, Snapseed, and Google’s own image processing takes a tad longer than I remember the older Pixel 3 taking. Games also take a bit of time to load. Then again, things like opening a new Chrome tab, or switching over to YouTube happens in a fluid motion. Even launching apps via voice commands happen without a long wait. This is essentially the Pixel experience Google wants you to experience, and over time, this is one phone that will know what you want and bring it up on time, saving time in searching for it.
I tried gaming on the Pixel 4a and it wasn’t a nice experience to be honest. I played a team deathmatch on Call of Duty: Mobile on a mobile network, and the performance was smooth enough with 60 FPS at 93% stability at High graphics with Max frame rate enabled. The display wasn’t too washed out, but the size was too small for me initially, with less thumb space and aiming area. There’s also no gaming mode, and despite all the intelligence inside, the Pixel 4a didn’t stop my WhatsApp messages from pouring in during the session.
Camera
Then again, people don’t buy a Pixel to play games competitively. The Pixel line has made its name for its magical camera. All of Google’s data harvesting from its services like Google Photos, Search, and more has culminated into what is perhaps the most intelligent post-processing algorithm on a smartphone camera. The iPhone comes close, but the iPhone also gets a leg up from superior camera hardware. The Pixel 4a continues to use the same Sony IMX363 12MP camera as the original Pixel released 4 years ago, and the results are quite at par with what you get on other smartphones launched this year in this price range. The HDR+ trick has now been emulated across every other smartphone now, but it seems no one does it better than Google.
I took a range of shots at every hour of the day to see how the camera holds up. And for the most part, the camera won’t disappoint you at all, at all times. Based on the time of the day, only the things you can shoot and how you can shoot them will change. For instance, the shutter is fast and instant in the day, but for a good Night Sight shot, you need a steady frame with nothing moving in it. The resulting images come out with lots of details and sharpness and impressive dynamic range, and if you open the photo immediately after shooting it, you will realise all this is done by the software after the shot is taken.
However, this is also a camera you will get bored of quite easily if you are somewhat of a camera enthusiast. You have no control over the ISO, white balance or the shutter speed, and you will soon notice a signature colour tone in all photos — Slightly warmer with more natural colours and less saturation. The camera UI gives you two sliders to play around with to control the highlights and shadows, and this can be used to capture some artistic silhouettes, as well as tone down the brightness in low-light shots without messing with the details.
Speaking of low light, you get the regular Night Sight and the camera automatically triggers the astrophotography mode when plonked on a tripod and pointed towards the night sky. You will need a clear sky with no light pollution around to capture the milky way, but from what we have seen from the Gcam app used from other mid-range smartphones, the results are astoundingly good.
Portraits are another strong point of the Pixel camera, and even after four years, Google is sticking to calculate depth of field using algorithms. While this allows for crisp details on the faces, the bokeh itself feels like a gaussian blur filter applied on Photoshop. Rivals like the OnePlus Nord can now match up to this portrait quality with creamier bokehs, and Google may soon find itself out of favour if it doesn’t innovate faster.
Battery Life
A major concern for going for a compact smartphone in 2020 is the battery life. Bigger phones allow room for bigger batteries, and the 3140mAh battery is endemic to that constraint. Don’t expect this one to be a marathon runner like the Samsung Galaxy M51. Heavy usage (gaming, camera usage, and watching an episode) will drain the battery by evening, while moderate usage with a good amount of deep sleep will stretch it till late evening. Faster charging would have somewhat compensated for the lower battery life, but here too, the Pixel 4a feels outdated with only 18W fast charging support, and with over 2 hours needed to fully charge the battery, this could potentially be a deal-breaker.
Design and Display
More than the performance and the experience, what may attract you to the Pixel 4a is the tiny footprint. The Pixel 4a is a hark back to the compact mid-rangers before the large screen mania gripped the market. And thanks to the ever shrinking bezels, the screen isn’t horribly small. It’s still a modest 5.8-inches, and this small size allows the pixels in the FHD+ resolution to be more tightly packed. More on that later. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, which was previously absent in the Pixel 4 and dual stereo speakers which could have been a little louder, but the expected sound separation is good enough if you are sitting in a quiet room. It also has a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, that somehow refuses to acknowledge a sweaty finger, but otherwise is quite fast. The body itself is made of plastic with a matte finish that may not attract fingerprints, but there’d be hard-to-remove oil smudges galore if you are replying to a text midway eating that paratha!
What made me stick to the Pixel 4a a few days more than required for the review was the fact that I could do everything on the phone with just one hand, and that’s such an overwhelming change from the tall and hefty OnePlus 8 Pro. But it wasn’t like I didn’t miss the 8 Pro at all. While texting, scrolling and navigating from one menu to another is smooth, watching movies and gaming in particular needs that large display for the best experience on a mobile phone. Or I am just spoilt for choice.
The Pixel 4a shaves off a lot of baggage to attain that attractive price tag of Rs 29,999 and I’m not talking about just the performance. It’s not water or dust resistant. And the punch hole selfie camera looks rather big on the small display.
The 5.8-inches, as I was saying before, packs pixels more densely, and the visuals crisper and sharper than a larger FHD+ display, and this advantage becomes clearer when you step outdoors under the sun. And if you can live with the small footprint, watching movies isn’t all that bad. HDR is supported on both Netflix and YouTube, and the battery drain is low enough to allow an episode or two while on the move.
Bottomline
The Google Pixel 4a is perhaps the most polarising smartphone I got to test this year. It’s just as much a curveball as the Pixel 3a was last year, with flagship camera but mid-range hardware. Only, with the price tag now going further down, recommending the Pixel 4a becomes easier. It also makes the showcase of Android’s fluidity more accessible to the masses. I’d say fret not about the 7-series processor, and go for the experience this is able to provide. It’s not unique anymore, but has the finesse only Google can offer.
What may throw you off the purchase is the fact that the Pixel 4a’s after-service may not be as good as that of the OnePlus Nord or the Galaxy M51 in India. We’ve read some harrowing reports on forums and it’s only fair for us to inform our readers about it. Hopefully this has been fixed, but do scourge through the forums for the most recent experiences to get a better idea. 4. If this is not much of an issue, recommending the Pixel is 4a is almost a no brainer.
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LG has officially launched the Signature OLED RX, the world’s first commercially available rollable television in South Korea at a mind-boggling price of 100 million KRW (Korean won) which roughly translates to around Rs 63,99,894 by direct conversion. The Signature OLED RX is one of its kind television in the world and the company has been developing it since for more than two years after previewing prototypes during Consumer Electronics Show in 2018 and 2019.
The 65-inch 4K UHD screen essentially rolls-into the aluminium base of the TV and has three different modes for users to choose from. This TV by LG is as premium as they come, which isn’t surprising given the price tag. We get the OLED display, a brushed aluminium base that can be engraved with a name or message and a wool speaker cover by Kvadrat, a Danish fabric company in black, gray, blue and brown colours to choose from.
This rollable TV offers three viewing modes-- Full view, Line view and Zero view and while the other two are self-explanatory, the line view essentially enables just a part of the screen to lift from the base and can be used to display time, pictures and control music playback.
“The R in the name not only signifies that the TV is rollable but that the TV is also revolutionary in the home entertainment space, redefining the relationship between a TV that can disappear from view at the touch of a button and the surrounding space,” LG wrote in a blog post.
Needless to say, the LG Signature OLED RX is a luxury product that delivers great picture quality and looks just as great sitting in a room. “LG’s exquisite creation liberates users from the limitations of the wall, enabling owners to curate their living environment without having to permanently set aside space for a large, black screen that is only useful when turned on,” the company adds.
The LG Signature OLED RX65 has won the CES 2020 innovation award and features self-lit sub-pixels with support for Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Atmos. Each RX65 unit is built to order and the TV is available to purchase in South Korea. There’s no official word of its launch in other countries just yet.
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Western Digital My Passport SSD has officially launched in India offering high read and write speeds in a really compact form-factor. The new SSDs are available in upto 2TB storage capacities and are designed keeping in mind portability and durability for daily wear and tear. The new My Passport SSDs go up against the likes of the Samsung T7 SSDs and SanDisk Extreme Pro range of SSDs.
WD My Passport SSD is well-built and comes in handy for people who need more storage for their laptops or portable storage for PCs. Moreover, with upto 1050MB/s read speeds, this SSD range can help users store and back-up large files easily. “With the new WD brand My Passport SSD, we aim to bring the unmatched experience in a sleek portable drive that helps users manage their large content libraries at a blazing fast speed,” said Khalid Wani, Director of Sales at Western Digital India.
Western Digital My Passport SSD price and availability
The WD My Passport SSD is priced in India starting at Rs 8,999 for the 500GB storage variant, Rs 15,999 for the 1TB option and Rs 28,999 for the 2TB variant.
As part of the launch offers during Amazon’s Great Indian Festival sale 2020, the My Passport SSD will retail starting at Rs 6,999, Rs 12,999 and Rs 24,999 for 500GB, 1TB and 2TB variants respectively.
Check out the WD My Passport SSD deal here
Western Digital My Passport SSD features
The WD My Passport SSD has a metal design with rounded corners and wave-like ridges extending downwards. WD claims that its new SSDs are shock and vibration resistant and can withstand drops of upto 6.5 feet, making it one durable drive. Do note, however, that it is not water-resistant like the SanDisk Extreme Pro which comes with an IP55 rating.
The new WD SSDs are offered in three colours-- Space Gray, Midnight Blue and Gold to choose from. It uses NVMe technology to drive read speeds of upto 1050MB/sec and write speeds of upto 1000MB/sec. Moreover, the drives are secured with 256-bit AES encryption and come pre-loaded with WD Discovery software to monitor file transfer and even back-up files to a cloud account. The SSDs have a USB Type-C 3.2 Gen-2 port and comes with a USB-A adapter as well. WD offers a 5-year limited warranty for the My Passport SSDs.
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Nokia 215 and Nokia 225 feature phones have officially launched in India by HMD Global offering 4G VoLTE network support with Facebook pre-installed. The Nokia 215 is a basic phone that focuses on the essentials while the Nokia 225 features a camera on the back as well.
“By bringing 4G to the Nokia 215 4G and Nokia 225 4G without compromising the accessible price point, we take another step towards our mission of providing low-cost access to global connectivity to those who need it the most – the billions of people who remain unconnected,” said Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product office and VP North America at HMD Global.
Nokia 215 and Nokia 225 pricing and availability
Nokia 215 is priced at Rs 2,949 in India while the Nokia 225 is set to retail at Rs 3,499. Both the phones will be available to purchase from Flipkart and Nokia India store from October 23 and in offline stores from November 6.
Nokia 215 and Nokia 225 specifications
The Nokia 215 has a matte finish with soft-touch buttons and is available in black and cyan green colours to choose from. The phone is powered by a Unisoc UMS9117 processor and runs on RTOS-based S30+ system. This is paired with 128 MB + 64MB storage with support for upto 32GB microSD card.
The Nokia 215 features a 2.4-inch QVGA display and comes pre-installed with FM radio, MP3 player and Facebook. There is a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a micro USB port. It is equipped with a 1,150mAh battery that can provide upto 6-8 hours of talk time and upto 15-16 days of standby time.
Nokia 225 has a glossy finish with a keymat and dedicated function keys. It is available in black, classic blue and metallic sand colours to choose from. It has the same set of processor, storage, display and battery as the Nokia 215. The only difference is that the Nokia 225 has a VGA camera on the back for users to take pictures of upto 0.3-megapixels.
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