HP is a well-known and one of the oldest brands when it comes to laptops in India. Today in New Delhi, India they have refreshed there gaming series of notebooks in the form of HP Omen 15 and HP Pavilion 15. One is targeted towards the premium end of gaming segment and the other is built for casual gamers (Pavilion 15) who are moving towards hard-core gaming.
Sumeer Chandra, Managing Director, HP Inc. India said, “As a market leader in the PC industry, it is our endeavor to expand the gaming ecosystem and provide devices that meet requirements of different users. Our aim is to make gaming more mainstream and enable the masses to participate in growing esports phenomenon in the country.”
HP Pavilion 15 Tech Specs
HP Pavilion 15 is the first one and this gaming laptop sports a 15.6-inch FHD display with 1080p graphics. Talking about which the notebook comes with Intel UHD graphics 630 as well as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphic card. This gives the machine immense power when it needs to perform and display splendid graphics. Furthermore, HP Pavilion 15 has the 8th generation of Intel Core CPU starting from Core i5 and goes up to Core i7. The display of the notebook has a backlit IPS panel with 16:9 aspect ratio.
To start with the HP Pavilion 15 has 8GB RAM and can serve up to 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive. The option of 128 GB PCIe NVMe SSD is also available. Other features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 3.1, USB Type C, HDMI v2.0 and 1 audio port. The notebook weighs 2.2 Kg, which by gaming standards is pretty decent. Over that, the notebook comes with B&O audio drivers.HP Omen 15 Tech Specs
This is the flagship model by HP when it comes to gaming. Simply put, it is a powerhouse. Under the hood you get the absolute best in the form of an 8th gen Intel Core i7-8750H CPU with 2.2 GHz clock speed. This goes up to 4.1GHz with intel turbo boost technology. With it comes the option of getting a graphic card starting from Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti to GeForce GTX 1070. As far as the RAM and storage combo is concerned the HP Omen 15 comes with 8GB and 16 GB option for RAM and up to 1TB of HDD with SSD combo.
The display of the HP Omen 15 is a 15.6-inch UHD IPS anti-glare panel with 300 nits brightness. For connectivity HP has thrown in couple of USB 3.1 ports, USB Type C port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a HDMI V2.0 port. Ethernet support is also there. This sweet machine weighs 2.38 Kg and is 24.9mm thick.
Price and Availability
The HP Omen 15 has a starting price of Rs 1,05,990 and the HP Pavilion 15 starts at Rs 74,990. The laptops are available across HP online and offline partners throughout India.
The budget smartphone segment in India is always on fire, not literally, but massive sales mean a hot market. Another phone that enters the budget segment of smart mobiles in India is by Lenovo-owned Moto E5 Plus with its super large 5,000 mAh battery. This smartphone with its younger sibling the Moto E5 were launched at an event in New Delhi and seem to be decent offerings. With this launch Motorola has strengthened its less expensive smartphone portfolio giving users more choice.
Before this, Motorola in June had launched Motorola G6 and G6 Play in India, starting at Rs 11,999. The smartphones were first showcased in Brazil in April and soon made their way into India.
Moto E5 Plus Technical Specifications:
The Moto E5 Plus comes with a 6-inch HD+ (720×1440) IPS LCD touchscreen with 18:9 aspect ratio and 268ppi density. The screen to body ration is 77% and comes with a strengthened glass on top. Under the hood, this smartphone runs Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 quad-core CPU with 1.4 GHz clock speed. This is backed by 3GB of RAM along with 32GB of internal storage. Talking about which, the on-board memory is expandable by up to 256 GB with the help of a microSD card.
The Phone will be available in two colours— Flash Grey and Fine Gold. The back sports a fingerprint sensor along with a single camera setup with LED flash. The rear camera is powered by 12MP primary sensor with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF and laser auto focus. The secondary front camera has a 5MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture, too. Features like geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR and panorama are available. The rear camera can also shoot full HD 1080p videos at 30 frames per second.
The Moto E5 Plus runs android 8.0 Oreo not 8.1 out of the box. The new update should sail in soon, but no specific timeline has been given. Weighing 197 grams this smartphone is 9.4 mm thick and sports a 3.5mm audio jack as well. As for the graphics, these are powered by Adreno 308 GPU. Other features include, dual SIM support (nano), Wi-Fi 802.11, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, FM, micro USB charging and 4G LTE is also supported. As said before the Moto E5 Plus sports a 5,000 mAh battery, which should last for two days (at least) after a full charge.
Moto E5 Technical Specifications
While most of the specifications of the Moto E5 are same as the Moto E5 Plus. Major points of distinctions are that the Moto E5 sports a 5.7-inch display, 4,000 mAh battery that will provide 14 hours of continuous movies on a single charge and phase detection 13 MP rear camera.
Moto E5 and Moto E5 Plus Price and availability
The Moto E5 Plus is available at Rs 11,999 in the market and is going to start sales by 11:59 pm 10 July, 2018. The smartphone will be available on Amazon India and all Moto Hub stores across the country. The Moto E5 is priced at Rs 9,999 and is also available on Amazon and all Moto Hub stores.
Launch Offers for Moto E5 Plus on Amazon.in are valid till July 12 and these include: Flat Rs 800 off on SBI bank credit cards and additional Rs 1000 off as exchange offer on old smartphones. Over that, users get 130GB additional data on Jio, valid on Rs 198 and Rs 299 plans only.
Launch offers for Moto E5 Plus and Moto E5 at Moto Hubs include: Shop using Paytm Mall QR code and get Rs.1200 cashback on mobile recharge on Paytm. Users can avail 130GB additional data on Jio connection at the Moto Hub stores, too.
Samsung has opened the largest mobile manufacturing unit in the world. The plant is setup in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida in sector 81. The facility will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who is also on a visit to the country. The report first appeared in IANS on Sunday and others have confirmed that this in fact is the largest mobile manufacturing facility in the world.
In a bid to outdo Xiaomi who has taken the lead in India, Samsung has managed to build this factory in record time. This facility will also be able to double the capacity of refrigerators being produced by Samsung in India. At the moment Samsung produces a little over 60 million smartphones in the country on annual basis and with the new plant operational, the company is set to produce over 120 million mobile phones yearly. This comes within a year of the company’s announcement that it will invest Rs 4,915 crores to substantially increase the production capacity.
Totalling 35 acres, the production unit has been built on the adjacent land next to the current Samsung factory in Noida. Other than this huge unit, Samsung also has one more working plant in India at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. There are five research and development units located in India, too.
Some reports also state that with the mobile phones and refrigerator production, Samsung is also going to produce flat screen televisions in the Noida facility. For the unknown, the Samsung plant was first setup in 1996 in India and televisions started production in 1997. The mobile phone division was setup in 2005 and by 2012 the company became the market leader. It is only this year that they have lost the lead, but by the looks of it, they are ready to dethrone Xiaomi and regain the market leader role.
The new production line will be producing over 12 million smartphone units per month and will be creating over 5,000 new jobs at the facility. This is a great initiative in the Prime Minister Modi’s Make in India plan that will create jobs and cash inflow for the country.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the world’s third richest person overtaking Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. In spite of the data breach scandal that happened this year, shares of Zuckerberg’s Facebook rose over 2.4%. According to a report in Bloomberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tops the list of richest people in the world followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg in second and third places respectively. The report said that Facebook CEO is now worth $81.6 billion, which is around $373 million more than Buffett’s. It was only last year that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world. Apart from Amazon’s success, a big factor that contributed to this was the fact that Bill Gates gives away a lot of his money in charity. With Mark Zuckerberg becoming the third richest person in the world, it is for the first time that the top three people in the list are from the world of technology.But that’s not the only reason for Mark Zuckerberg to be happy about. According to a report in Fortune, investors were never as interested in Facebook as they are now. One reason for this is Facebook’s deal with Premiere League.In a deal worth about $264 million, Facebook won exclusive rights to show 380 live matches in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from 2019 to 2022.It was in 2012 that Facebook went public, and the social networking giant has seen its stock rise more than 400%.The social media giant was recently in news when it admitted that over 800,000 users were affected by bug on its platform between May 29 and June 5. The bug unblocked some people that were blocked by Facebook users. This comes soon after Facebook was embroiled in the data breach scandal in which data of its 87 million users was shared with Cambridge Analytica.
It seems like technology companies are slowly shifting their focus towards making feature phones smarter. First, Reliance announced this week that its Jio Phone and Jio Phone 2 which are powered by KaiOS will get support for WhatsApp and YouTube — a move that is a game changer. Right after that, HMD Global, that manufactures Nokia feature phones and smartphones officially teased WhatsApp support for the ‘Matrix’ phone — Nokia 8110 4G. The Nokia 8110 4G or ‘banana’ phone is the successor to the iconic Nokia 8110 and was showcased earlier this year at MWC 2018. It runs KaiOS skinned with Smart Feature and came with some Google apps including Assistant, Search and Maps. It also included the revamped Snake game. And now, the much loved phone is set to get WhatsApp. However, it still remains unclear how different KaiOS version of WhatsApp will be from its Android and iOS apps.A tweet by HMD Global Product Officer Juho Sarvikas read, “Oh look, WhatsApp on KaiOS! Looking forward to going [banana]s!” This clearly points towards the possibility of WhatsApp coming to Nokia 8110 4G. WhatsApp is an app that has literally sidelined SMS which were used in feature phone days. One of the main concerns that people have in using a feature phone is lack of WhatsApp. This forces people to invest in a smartphone as well as a feature phone.But with WhatsApp coming to Jio Phone and Nokia 8110 4G, the phones will give a direct competition to many entry-level smartphones which are currently preferred over feature phones only because they support some key apps like WhatsApp.To recall the specifications of Nokia 8110 4G, the dual SIM phone runs KaiOS-based Smart Feature operating system and sports a 2.45-inch QVGA display. Powered by 1.1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clubbed with 512MB of RAM, the phone has a 4GB of onboard storage. It sports a 2MP primary camera and has an LED flash. Nokia 8110 4G houses a 1500mAh battery that is touted to have a standby time of 25 days and 9.32 hours of talktime on VoLTE. As the name suggests, the handset has 4G VoLTE connectivity and comes with hotspot functionality. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, MicroUSB, FM radio, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
When Jio Phone was launched by Reliance Jio last year, it promised to revolutionize the feature phone market just like the telecom industry. But, one of the key downsides of the phone was the fact that it didn’t let user access some widely used apps including WhatsApp and YouTube. Jio Phone was also late in getting support for Facebook, which only came to the platform six months after the phone was launched.However, now things are set to change. The company has announced that JioPhone is set to set support for WhatsApp and YouTube starting August 15. Yes, it’s the same day when Jio Phone 2 will hit the shelves.Directors of Reliance Jio, Akash and Isha Ambani demonstrated how WhatsApp and YouTube will work on Jio Phone and Jio Phone 2 with text or voice command. The versions of the apps are specifically made for made for Jio Phone. But, it is being claimed by the company that WhatsApp and YouTube will work just as they do for Android and iOS.Users will be able to launch these apps via voice command on Jio Phone. Once the apps are launched, voice commands for typing and sending messages or playing videos have to be given just like Android and iOS devices. It is notable, that according to Akash Ambani, WhatsApp messages can be sent to both Android and iOS devices by Jio Phone and Jio Phone 2. However, there is no clarity if the WhatsApp or YouTube apps for JioPhone will have all the features as their Android and iOS versions.Speaking about the launch, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said, “The three most popular apps YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook will be available to all the Jio Phone users from 15th August. With the added functionalities, our wider network reach across India and strong retail presence across India, the goal that I have now set for our Jio team is to enable 100 million users on this Jio Phone platform in the shortest possible time.”
The whole country and many from around the world are glued on to the screens when Mukesh Ambani is talking to partners, family, friends and media during the Reliance Annual General Meeting (AGM) every year. Last year he unveiled the JIO Phone that has already sold 25 million units and today he has gone ahead and launched the JIO Phone 2. The handset still lies in the feature phone category, but is larger than the previous edition and comes with a full QWERTY keyboard.
Reliance JIO Phone 2 Specifications
The JIO Phone 2 comes with a 2.4-inch QVGA display and supports dual nano SIMs. Inside it has 512MB RAM and 4 GB storage. The storage is expandable with the help of a memory card by up to 128 GB. The mobile phone runs on KAI OS and has VoLTE and VoWIFI functionality (LTE band 2, 5, 40, 2G band 900/1800 are braced). The full function QWERTY keyboard is coupled with 4-way navigation keys and does seem to be a tad bit inspired by yesterday’s BlackBerry phones.
A 2,000 mAh battery powers the smartphone and for cameras the JIO Phone 2 come with 2 MP rear camera along with a VGA front camera. The JIO Phone 2 also comes with a single Mono loudspeaker. Other features include, FM, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth and 4GLTE support.
Reliance JIO Phone 2 Price
The JIO Phone 2 will start shipping in India on August 15 and the introductory price is set at Rs 2,999. However, users can exchange their old mobile for the JIO Phone 2 at a special Monsoon Hungama price of Rs 501. The offer will start from 21 July and is not bad at all if you ask us. People who are using a feature phone can make full use of this exchange offer.
If you want to buy a flagship smartphone that is affordable, then you have three recently launched options to choose from — Asus Zenfone 5Z, Honor 10 and the much talked about OnePlus 6. All the three smartphones have some features that are similar to each other while some are different. Here’s a comparison between the specifications of all three that will help you decide which one is the perfect buy for you:DisplayAsus Zenfone 5Z: 6.2-inch FHD+ LCD touch display with 19:9 aspect ratioOnePlus 6: 6.28-inch FHD+ Full Optic AMOLED display with 19:9 aspect ratio Honor 10: 5.84-inch full-HD+ FullView display with 19:9 aspect ratioProcessorAsus Zenfone 5Z: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845OnePlus 6: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845Honor 10: HiSilicon Kirin 970 processorPrimary cameraAsus Zenfone 5Z: Dual rear cameras with 12MP and 8MP sensorsOnePlus 6: 16MP+20MP dual rear camerasHonor 10: 24MP+16MP dual rear cameras with AI photography modeSelfie cameraAsus Zenfone 5Z: 8MP selfie camera OnePlus 6: 16MP front facing snapperHonor 10: 24MP AI cameraRAM and storageAsus Zenfone 5Z: 6GB RAM/64GB internal storage, 6GB RAM/128GB onboard storage and 8GB RAM/256 GB inbuilt storageOnePlus 6: 6GB RAM/64GB inbuilt storage, 8GB RAM/128GB onboard storage and 8GB RAM/256GB of internal storageHonor 10: 6GB RAM/128GB internal storageSupport for microSD cardAsus Zenfone 5Z: Up to 1TBOnePlus 6: No microSD card slotHonor 10: No microSD card slotBatteryAsus Zenfone 5Z: 3,300 mAhOnePlus 6: 3,300 mAhHonor 10: 3,400mAhOperating systemAsus Zenfone 5Z: Android Oreo skinned with ZenUIOnePlus 6: Android 8.1 Oreo topped with OxygenOS 5.1Honor 10: Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1 on topPriceAsus Zenfone 5Z: The 6GB RAM/64GB onboard storage variant costs Rs 29,999, the 6GB RAM/128 GB storage model is priced at Rs 32,999 and the 8GB RAM/256GB storage variant can be picked up at Rs 36,999.OnePlus 6: The starting price of the phone is Rs 34,999, the 8GB RAM and 128GB model costs Rs 39,999 and the 8GB RAM and 256GB inbuilt storage variant bears a price tag of Rs 43,999. Honor 10: Rs 32,999
There are a bunch of action cameras now available in the Indian market and the most popular of them is the Go Pro. However, the Go Pro budget action cam also has a rather high price to begin with. Enter Go Noise Play 2, which is not so exorbitantly priced and has some of the latest features like Wi-Fi and app support one wants from an action cam. We put the Go Noise Play 2 on our test bench and used it over the last couple of weeks to know more about it. This is our review of the pocket friendly action camera.
Go Noise Play 2 Design and Blueprint
Out of the box the Go Noise Play 2 looks very similar to the Go Pro, but has its own distinct features. The front is dominated by a large lens (16 MP) that also has the power button along with the branding at the bottom. The left side has the microSD card slot along with the micro HDMI and proprietary TV and charging port. The speaker grille is also placed on this side. Top has the shutter release button, while the bottom slots the replaceable 1,200 mAh rechargeable battery and tripod port.
The rear has the fairly bright 2-inch TFT touchscreen. There is an unusually large black band around the touchscreen, which could have been reduced and one could have got a larger display. There are a total of three LED’s on the Go Noise Play 2. One over the screen, the other next to the shutter release button and the last one on the front of the camera. All three can be customised and turned on or off.
Go Noise Play 2 Performance
Setting up the camera does not take much time. In the box you just get the camera and charging cable. Rest of the accessories are sold separately, so you might want to pick those too. These include a Go Pro like waterproof enclosure, mounting accessories etc one would need when going out in the wild. the Go Noise Play 2 supports memory cards of up to 128 GB and you would need to purchase that additionally as well, since this action camera has no on board memory.
We took it out for a spin and found it quite nice during day light. It can record videos at 4K 24 FPS and the results were sharp and close to life. It’s in low light or at night that this action camera loses its touch. Noise and blurred edges are evident and not much can be done to help that. The Go Noise Play 2 is certainly not a picture taker. It struggles in that department.
We quite enjoyed the underwater video shooting with this camera. The videos were not bad at all and can put many others in the same price bracket to shame. There are lot of shooting modes available on the Go Noise Play 2 including our favourite time lapse. Slow motion mode is also there, which works fine but the to get better frame rates one needs to comprise on the resolution.
Users can also download the Noise Play 2 app from the Play store and manage the camera with it. Apple users you might want to skip this if you want app compatibility, since it is available only for Android users. The battery takes 1.5 hours to charge fully and gave us around 3 hours of video shooting time.
Verdict and Final Thoughts
Overall, the Go Noise Play 2 impressed us at some levels and at some we wanted more from it. If you want an inexpensive option to start with then this seems to be a fit. The performance is not bad and the wide lens does manage to capture most of what you are seeing.
Samsung Galaxy S9 is the leading smartphone by the company and is the latest offering when it comes to a flagship by Samsung. Yes, the Note 8 is still good, but the Samsung Galaxy S9 is the leading smartphone right now by the brand that has up-to-date technology inside. In a move to boost sales, Samsung is giving extreme discounts and offers on the smartphone. This could be because they have lost the lead of being the number 1 smartphone maker in India to Xiaomi.
Samsung Galaxy S9 specifications:
The Samsung Galaxy S9 comes with 64 GB of storage and sports a 5.8-inch Quad HD+ sAMOLED touch screen. It is just 8.5mm thick and sports a 3.5mm audio jack. As far as the cameras are concerned the Samsung Galaxy S9 has a dual pixel 12MP camera at the rear and an 8MP front snapper with auto focus and f/1.7 aperture. Under the hood this smartphone features an octa-core Exynos CPU, 3,000 mAh battery and 4 GB RAM. The storage can be expanded using a microSD card by up to 400GB. Other features include Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro Sensor, Compass, Hall Sensor, HR Sensor, Proximity Sensor, RGB Light Sensor, fingerprint reader, Wi-Fi, NFC and Pressure sensor.
How to avail the discount on Samsung Galaxy S9
You need to go to Samsung India’s online shopping website here to get the discount of Rs 50,000 in total. The company is giving an exchange offer value of up to Rs 33,000 on select smartphones. Over that, you can avail additional Rs 6,000 discount on select models. If you use HDFC bank credit card, then you are eligible to get additional Rs 6,000 as cashback. A scheme of Rs 5,000 instant cash back is also running. Overall, giving a discount of Rs 50,000 to the customer who wants to purchase the Samsung Galaxy S9 64GB with official selling price of Rs 57,900. So, effectively you would just need to pay Rs 7,900 and you can get the latest flagship smartphone from the company.
The eligible models for extra Rs 6,000 exchange value are as under:
HP Pavilion 15 Tech Specs
HP Pavilion 15 is the first one and this gaming laptop sports a 15.6-inch FHD display with 1080p graphics. Talking about which the notebook comes with Intel UHD graphics 630 as well as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphic card. This gives the machine immense power when it needs to perform and display splendid graphics. Furthermore, HP Pavilion 15 has the 8th generation of Intel Core CPU starting from Core i5 and goes up to Core i7. The display of the notebook has a backlit IPS panel with 16:9 aspect ratio.
To start with the HP Pavilion 15 has 8GB RAM and can serve up to 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive. The option of 128 GB PCIe NVMe SSD is also available. Other features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 3.1, USB Type C, HDMI v2.0 and 1 audio port. The notebook weighs 2.2 Kg, which by gaming standards is pretty decent. Over that, the notebook comes with B&O audio drivers.
HP Omen 15 Tech Specs
This is the flagship model by HP when it comes to gaming. Simply put, it is a powerhouse. Under the hood you get the absolute best in the form of an 8th gen Intel Core i7-8750H CPU with 2.2 GHz clock speed. This goes up to 4.1GHz with intel turbo boost technology. With it comes the option of getting a graphic card starting from Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti to GeForce GTX 1070. As far as the RAM and storage combo is concerned the HP Omen 15 comes with 8GB and 16 GB option for RAM and up to 1TB of HDD with SSD combo.
The display of the HP Omen 15 is a 15.6-inch UHD IPS anti-glare panel with 300 nits brightness. For connectivity HP has thrown in couple of USB 3.1 ports, USB Type C port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a HDMI V2.0 port. Ethernet support is also there. This sweet machine weighs 2.38 Kg and is 24.9mm thick.
Price and Availability
The HP Omen 15 has a starting price of Rs 1,05,990 and the HP Pavilion 15 starts at Rs 74,990. The laptops are available across HP online and offline partners throughout India.
