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The Samsung Galaxy F23 builds on its predecessor in all the right ways
Better display, camera, chipset, and an attractive pricing
While Samsung's best known for its Galaxy S and A-series lineups, it also sells smartphones under the Galaxy F and M branding in India. These devices are primarily meant for select online and retail channels and don't usually bring anything new or overly impressive to the table, but they're solid offerings in their own right. The Galaxy F23 is the Korean smartphone maker's latest device in this segment, and with some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, it might just be an exception to this rule.
Motorola now thinks it's Samsung or LG, lends its name to home appliances
Customers in India can buy Motorola-branded air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines
Motorola is known for making smartphones that span from budget to flagship range, but in a year with lagging sales, the company is expanding its repertoire. In partnership with Flipkart in India, Motorola is announcing its debut in the home appliance space with a series of smart-home products.
Aggressively-priced Pixel 4a arrives in India alongside Nest Audio speaker
They aren’t going on sale until next week, though
Google hasn’t been able to crack India’s highly competitive smartphone market with its expensive Pixel flagships, but it now seems bullish that its more reasonably priced a-suffixed lineup has a chance to finally hit a home run. In line with its previous announcement to bring the $349 crowd-pleaser to India in October, Google today announced the Pixel 4a at a price that is even lower than what was widely anticipated. The new Nest Audio speaker is also coming next week.
Nokia's Android TV lineup expanding with new 43-inch model
Product listing is live at Flipkart, but you can't buy one yet
A new 43" TV has just joined Nokia's smart TV lineup in India. The new 43-inch model (108cm) has some slightly diminished specs in addition to that smaller size, and it's now listed as "coming soon" at Flipkart for just ₹31,999.
Xiaomi’s spin-off brand Poco made a splash with its first phone by bringing a Snapdragon 845 chip to the $300 price bracket, reminding many of OnePlus’s early days. A year and a half after the Poco F1 was unveiled, the company is finally coming out with a follow-up called the Poco X2, initially only for the Indian market. The handset is basically a relabeled Redmi K30, which was announced in China alongside the $284 K30 5G in December 2019.
In partnership with the Finnish brand Nokia, India’s Walmart-owned online retailer Flipkart today announced a 4K TV running Android TV 9 Pie out of the box. The Nokia-branded TV will join the ongoing smart TV boom in the country to compete with the likes of OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Vu in the budget category. The 55-inch Android TV supports Google Assistant along with a few local and global streaming services.
Android TV boxes have risen in popularity over recent years thanks to some outstanding products like the Nvidia Shield TV and the platform's general ubiquity among TV operators, so it's no surprise that companies are looking into expanding their business to this device category. And sure enough, Indian e-commerce merchant Flipkart has taken the opportunity to launch its own-brand MarQ TurboStream Android TV dongle for about $50.
Nokia 5.1 Plus announced in India, with a notched 5.8" display, MTK Helio P60, and dual rear cameras
HMD Global has unveiled its latest mid-range Nokia-branded handset in India, confirming an earlier leak that suggested similar design language to the Nokia X6 and subsequent X5 released in China. What they have in common is a notched display, 5.8 inches and 19:9 in the case of the 5.1 Plus. There's also an octo-core MediaTek Helio P60 chip, and dual rear cameras on board.
Motorola announced a pair of iPhone X clones last month - the One and One Power. As the names might imply, both are running Android One, with three years of promised monthly security patches (and updates to Android Pie and Q). In our hands-on post, Stephen noted that the Motorola One Power was the better of the pair, and now that model is heading to India.
Google isn't the only American tech giant improving on its Indian language support — Amazon has now launched a Hindi version of its Indian app and mobile website. It will be the first among India's other major e-commerce platforms to offer an Indian language version.
Last month, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy On6, a rebranded Galaxy J6 sold exclusively online. Perhaps renaming existing phones is working out for Samsung, because the company just did it again. Today it announced the Galaxy On8, a phone identical to the already-released Galaxy J8.
The signs have been popping here and there and everywhere and now it's finally official: Google is bringing its smart speaker duo, the Home and Home Mini, to India. But before you get ahead of yourself and jump in excitement, you may want to do a double check on the prices: Rs 9,999 for the larger Home (approx. $154) and 4,499 (approx. $69). As always, prices outside the US are higher, and the sting is even more palpable in this case when the Home is over a year old and has been discounted to around $80 a few times and the Mini to $29 in the US.
Google's Pixel phones are on the expensive side in the US, but they're priced rather unreasonably in a lot of other markets. For example, the starting price for the Pixel 2 in India is Rs 61,000, which works out to almost $950. Yikes. In a few days, Flipkart will drop the price by a third to a much more reasonable Rs 39,999.
To our Indian readers interested in the new Pixels, I have some bad news for you. Seems that the powers that be have decided that all of you need to pay the same (roughly, thanks to currency exchange) for the 64GB Pixel 2 that we here in America have to pay for the 128GB Pixel 2 XL. What.
Samsung phones are pretty popular in India. In fact, its J series makes up a full 30% of all smartphone sales in the country. Now, Samsung is introducing a brand new device in the Galaxy On series, aimed squarely at those who like to share selfies or take photos at night. The Galaxy On Max will be an exclusive for Indian online retailer Flipkart.
As expected, both the 5-inch Pixel and the 5.5-inch Pixel XL are compatible out of the box with Project Fi, Google's MVNO (it would be news if they weren't). Google also announced just over a dozen of other international partners around the world.
When the details of the Nexus 6P started to leak, several colors were spotted: aluminum, white, black, and gold. As it turns out, the gold-colored version was exclusive to the Japanese market. We never found out why the gold phone isn't available elsewhere - a gold option has been popular for flagship phones across most major manufacturers for several years now. Whatever the reason, customers in India will soon have a crack at the gold Nexus 6P, courtesy of online retailer Flipkart.
It has been nine months since the second generation Moto G was announced so it's no surprise that we're starting to hear rumblings of a third iteration of the affordable and capable smartphone. This latest rumor bears a bit more credibility since it emanated from a published Flipkart page for the phone (that has since been removed).
You probably know Punit Soni best from his brief run as VP for product management at Motorola Mobility when it was owned by Google. After leaving Google in September, Soni has now announced that he's found his next gig. He'll be spending the next few years in India as the chief product officer of Flipkart.
Google hyped up Android One, its initiative to get Android-powered phones into the hands of more people in the developing world, back at Google I/O. They made good on their promises today in India, launching new phones in partnership with local hardware vendors Spice, Micromax, and Karbonn. The first three Android One phones are available today starting at Rs. 6299 ($103 USD at current currency rates) without a contract at major online Indian retailers. More countries, as well as more hardware partners, are planned for future rollouts.