Last week, Reliance Jio had announced its Summer Surprise Offer, which would give another three months of free 1GB per day Internet access to customers that subscribed to Jio Prime, and bought one Rs. 303 (or higher) recharge. This week, the company had to withdraw the Jio Summer Surprise offer on receiving an order from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
Although the Summer Surprise has been cancelled, Jio will continue to offer the free benefits it promised to anyone who has already subscribed. And Jio since says that it will take a few days to roll back, people were still able to join Jio’s Summer Surprise offer even after the announcement was made.
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Apart from this, a recharge page on Jio’s website also revealed that its broadband and TV services might be close to launch. On the recharge page, you can now see images for Jio Home Broadband and something called Jio Link, which is speculated to be a TV set top box.
Meanwhile, Motorola Moto G5 (Review) was launched in India this week, after the Moto G5 Plus (Review) launched last month. The phone is available via Amazon India and is powered by an oct-core Snapdragon 430 SoC. The Moto G5 also sports a 5-inch full-HD display, and. The 3GB of RAM and 16GB storage variant is priced at Rs. 11,999.
Battery capacity of Moto G5 is 2800mAh; the removable battery supports fast charging – the smartphone comes bundled with a 10W rapid charger. It has a 13-megapixel camera, with dual-LED flash, and a 5-megapixel front camera.
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Earlier this week, there was also a Nokia 9 leak – a fresh report has given all the major specifications of the soon to be released Nokia 9, which was earlier called the Nokia P1. As per a report by Nokia Power User, the Nokia 9 run Android 7.1.2 Nougat, and will sport a 5.5-inch QHD (1440×2560 pixels) OLED display. Nokia 9 is said to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC coupled with 6GB RAM.
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Also this week was the launch of the Vivo V5 Plus IPL Limited Edition this week, just ahead of the IPL 2017 opening ceremony and first match on Wednesday. It sports a new colour variant (Matte Black) and bears the IPL logo engraved on the rear panel. Otherwise it is the same as the Vivo V5 Plus (Review) smartphone was launched in India in January, and is priced at Rs. 27,980.
Speaking of the IPL, Twitter has partnered with the IPL to commemorate season 10 with player emojis. And there are a lot of different ways by which you can watch the IPL matches online if you’re not near a TV.
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One of the big launches of the week wasn’t a phone launch – it was the launch of Google’s music service, Google Play Music. With it, you get access to millions of songs, just like with Spotify and Apple Music. It’s available on Android, iOS, and the Web.
As for the price of the Google Play Music All Access subscription, Google has unveiled an introductory offer. It will be available at Rs. 89 per month (after a 30-day free trial) if you sign-up in the next 45 days. After this period, it will be Rs. 99 per month.
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Other launches this week included the Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro, which comes with a 16-megapixel front camera, priced at Rs. 27,990. It is a dual-SIM (Nano-SIM) smartphone, and runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. It sports a full-metal unibody, an Always-on display, a fingerprint scanner on the home button, and ‘upcoming’ Samsung Pay support.
A new Samsung Galaxy S8+ variant, with 6GB of RAM, and 128GB storage was also launched this week, listed on Samsung Korea’s website. It is otherwise identical to the Samsung Galaxy S8+, which has 4GB RAM and 64GB storage.
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The Nubia z17 mini with 6GB of RAM, and dual rear cameras was also launched this week, at an event in China. The smartphone has been priced starting at CNY 1,699 (roughly Rs. 16,000) for the 4GB RAM variant and CNY 1,999 (roughly Rs. 18,800) for the 6GB RAM option.
Back in India, the Sony Xperia XZs smartphone with Motion Eye camera technology launched this week at a best buy price of Rs. 49,990. The Sony Xperia XZs will be available via Flipkart and offline retail stores from April 11. The variant launched in India is dual-SIM, and the Sony Xperia XZs is essentially a smaller variant of the company’s Xperia XZ smartphone. The Sony Xperia XZs runs Android 7.0 Nougat, and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor coupled with Adreno 510 GPU and 4GB RAM. It bears 64GB of inbuilt storage, expandable further via microSD slot (up to 256GB).
The Honor 6C with a 5-inch display and 3020mAh batter launched this week in Europe, priced at EUR 229 (or around Rs. 15,900). The phone comes with a 1.4GHz CPU and 3GB of RAM, and comes with 32GB of internal storage. The company also launched the Honor 8 Pro in Europe. This upgraded variant of the Honor 8 is essentially the rebranded version of the Honor V9 launched in China two months ago.
There was also the launch of the Alcatel Flash, a phone with four cameras – dual cameras in the front and back. It has two 13-megapixel sensors on the back, and one 8-megapixel and one 5-megapixel sensor on the front. The phone, powered by a decacore MediaTek Helio X20 processor, comes with 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. Pricing and availability have not been announced.
And on the budget front, we had the launch of the Sansui Horizon 1, with 4G VoLTE support, priced at Rs. 3,999. The smartphone packs a 2000mAh battery, a 4.5-inch (480×854 pixels) FWVGA display, a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, and 1GB RAM.
After Truecaller Pay, now WhatsApp could be the next app to join the UPI payments fray in India. Not much is known about it at this point, but the company has made a job listing where it’s looking to hire someone with a technical and financial background, who understands the UPI and BHIM.
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In telecom, Idea was offering a new plan for postpaid customers – the telco will give up to 10GB per month to postpaid customers, in a plan called Idea Data Jackpot. The idea is that subscribers pay Rs. 100, and will get anywhere between 1GB and 10GB per month with this, for three months.
Both Google and Facebook unveiled initiatives to combat fake news this week. While Facebook now has an educational tool in awareness display, which helps users to spot fake news, Google has started to roll out its “fact check” tag against search results, which is powered by Snopes and PolitiFact.
And in worrying news for Mac owners, a report by McAfee says that Mac malware has increased by 744 percent in the last one year, although most of it is adware. However, the misconception that Mac is the immune to malware and adware is now being busted, as the figures show that the numbers of such exploits is increasing.
It was also reported this week that taxi service Ola will be making a push towards building a fleet of electric vehicles – the company is targeting 6 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020. The main challenge for Ola is the lack of charging stations and the limited range of vehicles given taxis travel about 150-200 km daily.
Finally, in gaming, although Microsoft’s not made an official launch announcement of its upcoming Xbox Scorpio, the company did reveal a number of details about the hardware and dropped some hints about pricing as well. The Xbox Scorpio will be more expensive than a PS4 Pro, but on the plus side, you don’t need a 4K TV to use the new console.
