Thinner Ebook Reader at Rs. 5,999

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled an upgraded Kindle, aiming to boost its e-reader sales with a thinner, lighter device at a low price.

The new Kindle will be sold in the US market as low as $80, which is the same price as the version it replaces, but with more memory and added features. It is priced at Rs. 5,999, and is up for pre-orders, shipping from July 7.

Amazon  remains committed to the e-reader market despite wider use of tablet computers, which can also be used for electronic books.

"Recent studies have shown that evening exposure to blue light from backlit screens like tablets 

and smartphones can suppress the body's production of melatonin, a naturally occurring 

hormone that helps the body fall asleep. Because the Kindle display emits no light, you can 

read anytime without losing sleep."

The new Kindle weighs in at 161 grams, or 5.7 ounces, with a six-inch display.

Some of the features include "export notes," allowing users to send notes and highlights from 

a book to e-mail, and Bluetooth audio paired with a screen reader that can allow the visually 

impaired to hear content without an adaptor.

In April, Amazon released its top-of-the-line Kindle Oasis reader, which sells for $290 in the 

United States.

Asus ZenFone Go Price in India Announced

Asus ZenFone Go smartphone finally has a price tag in 

India, and it's Rs. 7,999. 

The new ZenFone-series handset is now available via the company's exclusive stores apart 

from other

retail stores and Flipkart.

The Taiwanese company had last month listed the Asus ZenFone Go on its official website as

well as on Flipkart.

The company was rumoured to be working on its budget ZenFone Go since July. The new 

ZenFone smartphone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop-based ZenUI. It supports dual Micro-SIM 

cards with dual standby support. Unlike previous generation ZenFone smartphones that 

packed Intel chipsets, and the more recent series that included Qualcomm chipset powered 

smartphones, the ZenFone Go (ZC500TG) features a quad-core MediaTek (MT6580)

 processor clocked at 1.3GHz coupled with 2GB of RAM.

Asus ZenFone Go will be available with 8GB inbuilt storage and supports expandable storage 

via microSD card (up to 64GB). It features a 5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS display. The 

handset sports an 8-megapixel rear autofocus camera with f/2.0 aperture. There is a 

2-megapixel front-facing camera also on board.

The ZenFone Go comes with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS/ EDGE, 3G, GPS/ A-GPS, and 

Micro-USB connectivity options. Notably, the handset doesn't support 4G connectivity. It is 

backed by a 2070mAh battery. The handset will be available in Black, White, and Red 

colours. It measures 144.5x71x9.98mm and weighs 135 grams. The ZenFone Go packs 

accelerometer, e-compass, proximity, and ambient light sensors.

The ZenFone Go will come with 100GB of Google Drive storage, which will be free for 2 years. Asus notes that the free storage will have to be redeemed in the Google Drive app by April 1, 2018.

Announcing the availability of the ZenFone Go, Peter Chang, Regional Head, South Asia and 

Country Manager - System Business Group - ASUS India, said, "We are excited to announce 

the availability of ZenFone Go for our Indian users. Being the third largest home to 

smartphone users, India is a critical market for us and we intend to bring cutting edge 

products to consumers here, who seek power packed design sensibilities of a high-end 

smartphone at competitive prices."

Dell Venue 8 7000 with Intel RealSense camera launched in India at Rs 34,999

Dell launched what it calls the “world’s thinnest” tablet and expanded its India range of products. The company aims to push higher personal computer (PC) adoption in the country. The PC-maker expanded its XPS, Alienware, Inspiron and tablet series with the launch of the XPS 13, Alienware 15 and 17, Dell Inspiron 5000 laptops and the Venue 8.

While the Inspiron 5000 Series will be available at a starting price of Rs 39,990 for the Inspiron 15, inclusive of 2 year at home (on-site) warranty, the XPS 13 will be available at a starting price of Rs 70,990.

The Alienware 15 and 17 will be available for Rs 125,990 and Rs 145,990 respectively. The Venue 8 7000 Series tablets will be available beginning July at a starting price of Rs 34,999.

Commenting on the launch, Ray Wah, vice president, consumer product marketing at Dell said: “We see immense potential for technology adoption in the Indian market. The PC is the hub of creation, and our contribution to the Indian market is to design devices that not only appeal to consumers across all genres, but also consider the unique needs and preferences of that region.”

“We are designing products that are thin and light, offer exceptional battery life, with style and performance, service and software solutions that customers can only get from Dell.”

The company also launched an all-in-one 19.5-inch desktop PC that will be available at a price range of Rs 27,390 to Rs 40,790 (with touch screen).

Commenting on the launch of the all-in-one, P.Krishnakumar, vice president, consumer & small business, Dell India said, “We believe that the future of the PC is strong and lies with the youth and their cognizance that technology is the key to the advancement of their ambitions.”

Dell, which is seeing tough competition from rival brands, believes that the Indian domestic PC market is still unexplored and wants to make PC adoption at homes one of its primary strategies in India.

“With just 10% Household PC penetration the full scope of the transformative nature of technology is still unexplored,” Krishnakumar added.

Dell, during the launch, revealed that the XPS 13 will ship with a quad HD display and Windows 8.1 powered by a 5th generation Intel Core i7 processor and solid state drives.

The Alienware 15 and 17 will come with an overclocking mode that will enable gamers to draw extra juice from the Core i7 when needed. The Dell Venue 8 from the 7000 series, which the company claims to be the thinnest (6mm) will sport an Intel Atom Z3500 processor.

The tablet, which comes without a call function, will come with a 2560×1600 OLED infinity edge-to-edge display. It will also house a first of its kind Intel RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera. The camera is capable of capturing a depth map for every picture taken.

OnePlus One 64GB Variant to Be Available at Rs. 16,999

The popular OnePlus One (Review | Pictures) smartphone will be made available via unboxed and refurbished device provider Overcart on Wednesday at Rs. 16,999 for the 64GB Sandstone Black variant in its unboxed form. To put that in perspective, the retail unit is priced at Rs. 21,999.

The unboxed OnePlus One smartphones, specified as seal-opened but otherwise unused units, will come with six-month warranty from OnePlus. Overcart says that while the sale is open to all, customers are encouraged to sign up for notifications leading up to the sale at 2pm on Wednesday. No details about the 16GB Silk White or refurbished OnePlus One units being sold on the site in the future were revealed.

Notably, OnePlus had back in April announced that the OnePlus One smartphone will be available without invites across the globe.

Back in January, Overcart had collaborated with Xiaomi to sell its unboxed and refurbished devices online, starting with the Redmi 1S and the Redmi Note 4G.

Apart from Overcart, GreenDust is another provider of unboxed and refurbished smartphones in India. It too has collaborated with Xiaomi in the past to offer unboxed and refurbished Redmi 1S units.

Earlier this month, Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus announced that all legal proceedings with Micromax in India had been resolved and cases withdrawn through mutual consent. The firm emphasised the resolution would mean that OnePlus One smartphone users in India will continue to receive Cyanogen OS OTA (over-the-air) updates the same as other markets.

The One smartphone, launched in India in December, sports a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a 1080x1920 pixel resolution and offers a pixel density of 401ppi. The display boasts Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It comes with 3GB of RAM and is powered by the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 clocked at 2.5GHz with Adreno 330 GPU. Unfortunately, the OnePlus One does not support expandable storage.

The One sports a 13-megapixel rear IMX214 sensor with six lenses and f/2.0 aperture that boasts quick shutter speed of only 0.3-seconds, according to OnePlus. It also comes with a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. Connectivity options on the OnePlus One include 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC functionality. It features a 3100mAh non-removable battery.

At Rs 6,999, Yu Yuphoria comes with a metal-frame, Cyanogen OS 12

Micromax’s online venture YU Televentures launched its second phone on May 12, called the YU Yuphoria along with a YU Fit Band which will work with a health tracking service powered by HealtifyMe. Unlike the YU Yureka, the YU Yuphoria is priced at Rs 6,999 and is aimed at the budget segment. Coming in two colours, Buffed Steel with black cover and Champagne Gold with white cover, the YU Yuphoria will go on sale on May 28 and the registrations for the same have started at 5PM on Tuesday. Just like its predecessor, the Yuphoria will be selling on Amazon.

We had a chance to use the phone for some time after the launch and here are our first impressions of the device.

The design of the YU Yuphoria is impressive considering it has employed a metallic frame. The rear cover is made of plastic and is removable. We noticed that the cover itself isn’t that sturdy. The metallic frame is rounded and gives a good grip on the phone, helped in part by the matte finish on the rear cover.

On the top you have a 3.5mm audio jack and at the base there’s the microUSB charging port. On the right hand side there are the metallic volume rocker buttons with the power/standby button bang in the middle.

The design on the rear side is reminiscent of the Nokia Lumia 830 with the camera placed in the centre of the top half region. The camera has metallic rings surrounding it and an LED flash unit is placed on the left side. At the base you have the grills for the speaker section and the YU branding.

The front portion has a 5-inch display with thick bezels on the top and bottom. The display comes with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection.

The YU Yuphoria comes with a 5-inch HD display with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. Thanks to the IPS panel,  the viewing angles are good. The display looks vibrant. But according to YU, since the display is fully laminated it gives better legibility in sunlight. We will have to test this claim when we are testing the device.

The YU Yuphoria houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC that we’ve come to see on budget devices off late. The Snapdragon 410 houses a 64-bit 1.2GHz quad core processor along with Adreno 306 GPU. It has 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. You can expand the storage using the micro SD card slot accessible on removing the battery cover. While the demo unit seemed to run smoothly, we will need to run benchmarks, games and heavy apps to get a complete picture of how smooth the YU Yuphoria is.

The YU Yuphoria supports 4G LTE bands in regions where its applicable and it comes in dual-SIM configuration. Apart from this it has Wifi 802.11n, Bluetooth v4.0, GPS and sensors such as a gyroscope, compass, proximity sensor and so on.

An 8MP rear and a 5MP front camera are seen on the device. The 8MP camera comes with an f/2.2 aperture and has a 1.4 micrometer pixel size. It is capable of shooting full HD videos as well and the Yuphoria camera also supports slow motion (120fps and more) movies. The 5MP front camera has a f/2.0 aperture and a wide angle lens for selfie enthusiasts. The user interface on the camera is similar to what was seen on the YU Yureka as well as the OnePlus One. We will need to test the camera in various conditions to start talking about the image quality.

YU Yuphoria houses a 2230mAh battery which is removable. The YU Yuphoria also supports Quick charge 1.0 which let you charge the phone from 0 to 65% in 45 minute according to YU. We will naturally be testing these claims.

Since the Yuphoria belongs to the YU line,  it comes pre loaded with Cyanogen 12 atop the Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. The Cyanogen OS Skin maintains the Android 5.0 design language but at the same time YU has added some software finesse with the Cyanogen OS.

For instance Themer is a feature that let’s you change the themes / look of certain supported apps. The phone also offers some features such as an inbuilt Truecaller dialler app,  Audio FX for tweaking the audio output, email service called Boxer and so on. These are choices offered to the users over the default Google apps. This seems like a step in the direction of making Cyanogen OS offer non Google apps. Apart from this you have some YU specific software as well such as YUniverse and HealthYU.

‘Miracle in Metal’ goes the tagline of the YU Yuphoria and it is one of the only device to come with a metal frame body at a Rs 6,999 price point. The phone looks good and the metal frame will no doubt attract a lot of buyers. On the software front too, you are getting the latest OS along with a lot of features to tweak the appearance of your phone. We will have to see how the phone performs in the real world scenario to give a final verdict. While there are many phones such as the Lenovo A6000, Motorola Moto E, Xiaomi Redmi 2, the build of the Yuphoria certainly makes it stand apart. Will good looks be accompanied by good performance as well? We will find out soon in our full review.

Xiaomi launches Mi 4i in India

Xiaomi finally launched the Xiaomi Mi 4i at an event held in New Delhi on Thursday. The device is priced at Rs 12,999 and will go on sale on April 30. Registrations will start at 8 pm today on Flipkart. Initially, the device will be available on Flipkart, and later across all its channels including Mi website.

Xiaomi has given some serious thought to the new smartphone’s display. The Mi 4i features a 5 inch HD display along with a pixel density that goes up to 441ppi. Xiaomi claims that the smartphone has a higher color saturation than iPhone 6. It is a fully laminated OGS. In other features, the Mi 4i comes with Sunlight Display, a technology which allows the phone to do dynamic tone mapping, which in turn, keeps  the image quality balanced in bright sunlight.

The device is powered by a 64-bit Snapdragon 615 processor. It comes with four performance cores at 1.7 GHz, and four power saving cores at 1.1 GHz. They have been designed by Qualcomm India. The device owns a 2GB RAM and includes 16GB on-board storage.

In terms of camera, the smartphone sports a 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and dual tone flash and also includes torch feature for low light focusing. It also gets improved HDR feature.

For those selfie lovers, the Mi 4i sports a 5MP front facing camera. The beautify feature included comes with tools like wrinkle remover, skin smoothening and so on. It also gets a selfie timer feature.

The dual micro-SIM smartphone runs on Android’s latest Lollipop-based MI UI 6. It will feature Visual IVR to MIUI to bypass those long IVR calls by giving you a text output of preset options. MIUI supports six Indian languages – Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil

In terms of connectivity, the device includes Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11ac, GPS/Glonass, Wi-Fi Direct and USB on-the-go. Xiaomi Mi 4i has a 3120 mAh battery. There’s a soft matte touch back cover with anti-grease coating as well.

Towards the end of the launch event, Xiaomi also launched its water-resistant Mi Band in India for Rs 999.

Xiaomi Mi 4 64GB price drops

Xiaomi has reduced the price of its flagship Mi 4 smartphones in India. The 16GB variant of Mi 4 is now available at Rs 17,999 while the 64GB version costs Rs 21,999. The 16GB and 64GB versions of Mi 4 were originally priced at Rs 19,999 and Rs 23,999 respectively.

The Mi 4 smartphone sports a 5-inch HD IPS display with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels at 441 ppi. It sports a Corning OGS Glass which claims to allow users to operate the phone with wet hands or gloves. It runs on a 2.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU with 3GB RAM.

Running Android 4.4.4 KitKat operating system sugar-coated with MIUI 6, the phone comes with a 13MP rear camera along with an 8M front camera. The The rear camera supports 4K video recording and along with Sony IMX214 stacked CMOS rear 6P lens, and f1.8 aperture. The front camera features a Sony IMX219 sensor 5P lens and offers f1.8 aperture and 80- degrees wide-angle. On the connectivity front, the phone will support 3G networks, WiFi, and Bluetooth and is powered by a 3080 mAh battery.

Xiaomi 7.9-inch MiPad now available on Flipkart at Rs 12,999

Along with the Xiaomi Redmi 2, the company had also launched their MiPad in India. Priced at Rs 12,999, it is now available on Flipkart. For now, only the white model is available. Unlike previous flash sales, this device does not require any prior registrations.

The MiPad has a 7.9-inch Sharp display with an eye-popping resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels and a pixel density of 324 ppi. It uses Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. The device is powered by a 2.2 GHz NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor with 192-core Kepler GPU and runs on Android-based MIUI ROM optimized for tablets. It is paired with 2GB of RAM.

The device has an 8MP rear camera with a Sony BSI sensor along with a 5MP front-facing camera. It has an internal storage of 16GB and can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card.

In terms of connectivity, the device supports WiFi 802.11/b/g/n/ac Dual Band (2X2 MIMO) and Bluetooth. The device is powered by a 6,700 mAh battery and is available in Black, White, Red, Blue, Green and Yellow colour variants. The tablet measures 135.4 x 202.1 x 8.5mm and weighs 360 grams.

New Xolo LT2000 comes with 4G connectivity for Rs 9,999

Xolo introduced its LT2000 4G (TDD-LTE) smartphone in India at a price of Rs 9,999. The smartphone runs on a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (64 bit) processor with LPDDR3 1 GB RAM and 8Gb internal storage which can be expanded up to 32 GB.

The LT2000 sports a 5.5-inch 720p HD display with Dragontrail Glass protection along with an 8 MP rear camera with BSI 2 sensor and 2 MP front camera. Powered by a 2920 mAh battery, the smartphone runs on Android 4.4 KitKat operating system upgradable to Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Specs:

4G TDD & FDD LTE connectivity

1.2 GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (64 bit) processor

8 MP AF rear camera with BSI 2 sensor

2 MP Front Camera

5.5-inch 720p HD Display with Scratch resistant Dragontrail Glass

1 GB LPDDR3 RAM, 8GB Internal Memory

Android v4.4 KitKat, upgradable to Android 5.0

2920 mAh Battery

Dual SIM (4G+2G)

At Rs 6,999, Motorola Moto E second has Android 5.0.2 Lollipop

The 3G version of Motorola Moto E (2nd Gen) has officially arrived in India. The new Moto E smartphone will be available from March 12 on Flipkart only at a introductory price of Rs 6,999. Commenting on the availability of the 4G version, Amit Boni, general manager, Motorola India said, “The 4G version will not take much time and we will launch it soon in India. The device will be similar, except for the processor and will be very competitively priced.”

Meanwhile, Motorola will also continue with its earlier Moto E smartphone which will now sell at Rs 5,999 on Flipkart.

The new Moto E smartphone sports a 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. Running Android 5.0.2 Lollipop OS, it runs on a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 CPU with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage which can be expanded up to 32GB. It is powered by a bigger 2,390 mAh battery.

On the camera front, the new Moto E now offers a VGA front camera for selfies along with 5MP rear camera which is now powered with Auto Focus and has similar features of that of the Moto G (2nd gen). However, there is no Flash. Citing the reason, Boni said, “We did a lot of market research and found out that at this budget price point, users are comfortable in trading off Flash for a selfie camera and Motorola’s Quick Capture feature.”

As Motorola is now a Lenovo company, smartphone enthusiasts in India complained that the new Moto E smartphone is underpowered ( in terms of specs) when compared to Lenovo’s bugdet 4G smartphone- A6000, which is also priced at Rs 6,999 on Flipkart. However, Boni denied this.

“The specification sheet really doesn’t matter. It is the overall experience which counts. The question of ‘underpowering’ the Moto E (2nd gen) doesn’t arise as both brands are completely seperate from each other. Also, the new Moto E offers the latest Android operating system in its purest form (no bloatwares) along with good software features from Motorola. We take user experience very seriously and have strictly avoided bloatwares worth millions of dollars and offer good after sales support,” said Boni.

Just Rs 17,999, but should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S4 now?

Samsung seems to have found a clever way to beat the competition in the mid-range smartphone market in India. While companies like Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi are trying to woo buyers with high-end specs at competitive prices, Samsung, in reply, has simply reduced the price of its 2013 flagship Galaxy S4 by 57 per cent (approx).

The Samsung Galaxy S4, which is now selling for Rs 17,999 on Amazon.in, competes well on papers when compared with Huawei Honor 6, Xiaomi Mi 4 and Lenovo Vibe X2. Also, Samsung will roll out Android 5.0 Lollipop update to the Galaxy S4 soon, making it a sweeter deal as the other competitors are yet to talk about it.

The Galaxy S4 runs on two quad-crore processors clocked at 1.6GHz and 1.2GHz respectively along with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal memory which is expandable up to 64GB. It sports a Full HD 5-inch Super AMOLED display and mounts a 13MP rear camera and a 2MP front camera. The device is powered by a 2,600mAh battery and comes with a single SIM card slot.

At Rs 17,999, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a good value for money device. The smartphone, orginally, offered with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean out of the box and was among the popular devices in the Galaxy S series.

Note that the Galaxy S4 India varaint doesn’t support 4G connectivity while the Honor 6 and Vibe X2 does. When compared to the Xiaomi Mi 4, the Galaxy S4 gets an edge with a 64GB expandable memory card slot. Overall, the Galaxy S4 is good buy, even now, if you are willing to accept the same old Samsung design.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Price in India Slashed to Rs. 17,999

Samsung has slashed the price of its 2013 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4 in India. The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be officially available via dealers at Rs. 17,999, compared to the previous price tag of Rs. 21,900 - a price cut of Rs. 3,900.

At the time of writing, the official Samsung online store still listing the old price of Rs. 21,900. However, NDTV Gadgets has learnt Samsung has communicated the new dealer price of Rs. 17,999 to its offline retailers and the new price should soon reflect on the company's official India e-store as well.

To recall, Samsung launched the Galaxy S4 in 2013 at a premium price of Rs. 41,500. The handset started receiving Android 5.0 Lollipop update earlier this month. The Android 5.0.1 Lollipop update for the Exynos-based GT-I9500 variant rolled out over-the-air (OTA) and was about 990MB in size. The update, apart from bringing the Material Design UI of Lollipop, featured Samsung's own TouchWiz interface skinned on top, and brings changes to the notification panel, includes Guest mode, and adds Android Smart Lock, apart from improving overall performance, security and battery life.

Samsung last year slashed prices of several Galaxy-series smartphones in India including Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo, Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, Samsung Galaxy Ace NXT, Samsung Galaxy Star Advance, Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo, Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo, and Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo.

In October, Samsung slashed the price of its 2014 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, alongside the LTE-variant of the handset. The Samsung Galaxy S5 price was slashed to Rs. 37,500 while the Samsung Galaxy S5-LTE price was reduced to Rs. 40,300.

At the time of writing, the Samsung Galaxy S5 is available at Rs. 32,900 while the LTE-variant is not listed on the company's India e-store.