Asus ZenFone 3 Max Launch, No Cash on Delivery, and More: Your 360 Daily

In Wednesday's major developments, Asus launched two variants of the ZenFone 3 Max, cash on delivery payment option was suspended or limited by e-commerce companies, and eBay India fired 100 employees. Here's 360 Daily for your dose of the biggest headlines from the world of technology.

Asus ZenFone 3 Max launched in India
Asus has launched the ZenFone 3 Max with 4100mAh battery in two variants in the Indian market. The base model (Asus ZenFone 3 Max ZC520TL) comes with 5.2-inch screen (720x1280 pixels), 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6737T chipset, microSD card support up 32GB, 13-megapixel rear camera, and 5-megapixel front snapper; it is priced at Rs. 12,999.

The other variant (Asus ZenFone 3 Max Z553KL) has a 5.5-inch display (1080x1920 pixels), 1.4GHz octa-core Snapdragon 430 processor, microSD card support up to 256GB, 16-megapixel snapper on the back, and 8-megapixel selfie shooter, and costs Rs. 17,999. Both smartphones run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based software, 3GB RAM, and 32GB internal storage.

(Also see: Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL Review)

E-commerce firms disable or limit cash on delivery option
With Rs. 1000 Rs. and Rs. 500 Rs. notes demonetised, online shoppers who preferred the cash on delivery (CoD) were dealt a blow by e-commerce companies in India. Amazon has suspended cash on delivery option for products with the statement, “We have disabled COD for you to save cash for essential payments.”

Flipkart also said the option to pay cash for products upon product delivery is not available, though we found that this was the case only for goods priced above Rs. 2,000. Snapdeal has a similar statement for its customers, along with a message reminding people that 1000 Rs. and 500 Rs. notes will not be accepted for deliveries.

eBay lays off 100 people in India
eBay India has fired around 100 people from its technology workforce based in Bengaluru as part of the company’s global reorganisation of tech and product teams. The analytics team, on the other hand, has not been affected by the layoffs. Gadgets 360 has learnt from its sources that with this move, 30 percent of the eBay India workforce has been laid-off.

Reliance launches all-in-one entertainment app Chillx
Reliance Entertainment has launched Chillx, a multilingual all-in-one entertainment app, in collaboration with FunOnGo Media & Entertainment. The app has been launched for Android, and offers access to free and paid videos, apps, games, music, short films, and movies. The app features regional language support for Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, apart from English. While some content is free, some content is paid (starting at Rs. 49 per month), and some content is ad-supported.

Lenovo may use Moto branding on all smartphones
Lenovo will reportedly drop its own branding on smartphones it launches in the future, and instead use the Moto brand. Earlier, the company was releasing Moto smartphones separately from Lenovo branded phones to keep a distinguishing factor between both brands.

OnePlus 3T launch set for November 15
After months of speculation, the OnePlus 3T is finally becoming official. OnePlus has announced that it will launch a Snapdragon 821-powered smartphone on November 15 in an event that will be live streamed on its Facebook page at 1pm EST (11.30 IST). While the company has not named the device it will be launching at the event, rumours point to the unveiling of the oft-leaked OnePlus 3T, a mid-year refresh to the current flagship OnePlus 3. It is expected to have a LCD display, 64GB and 128GB storage options, 6GB RAM, Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box, and a price tag of $479, $80 higher than that of OnePlus 3.

Android Nougat-based CyanogenMod 14.1 nightly build released
The CyanogenMod community has announced that a nightly build of CM14.1 based on Android 7.1 Nougat has been rolled out to select devices; the update is being released in phased manner. CyanogenMod 14.1 nightly build is available for the Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Xiaomi Mi 3, Xiaomi Mi 4, LG G3, Moto G variants, LG G4, Samsung Galaxy S5, OnePlus 3, and ZenFone 2 users. A nightly build is usually not a stable build, but is still released to all users, and usually is plagued with several bugs.