LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8, Jio Plans, Nokia 3310 Price Leak, and More: Your 360 Daily

LG's latest flagship, the G6, went on sale in India on Tuesday morning, exclusively via Amazon online, and across multiple offline retailers at Rs. 51,999. In terms of pricing, that's a step down from Samsung's rival Galaxy S8, which starts at Rs. 57,900.

At its launch event on Monday, LG revealed that the G6 would be discounted by Rs. 10,000 for HDFC and SBI customers, as part of a limited-time offer on Amazon. That discount was valid until stocks last or 10pm on Tuesday, with the G6 temporarily a lot cheaper than even the Google Pixel, which is more than half a year old at this point.

If you missed out on that, you can still get the Reliance Jio offer for the LG G6, which gets you 10GB of free data with every recharge of Rs. 309, amounting to a maximum of 100GB until March 2018.

As for the phone itself, you get Android 7.0 'Nougat' with LG's UX 6.0, powered by a Snapdragon 821 and 4GB of memory. The LG G6 has a 5.7-inch quad-HD display, which is taller than regular displays, giving it a screen ratio of 18:9, as opposed to 16:9.

On the back, you get a dual-camera setup like the iPhone 7 Plus. Both have the same resolution at 13 megapixels, but different capture area - 71-degree normal vs 125-degree wide-angle - and aperture, f/1.8 and f/2.4. On the front, the LG G6 gives you a 5-megapixel shooter with a 100-degree lens, and f/2.2 aperture.

Samsung Galaxy S8 stays in the news
In line with the Korean trend, pre-orders for Samsung’s Galaxy S8 vs those of last year’s S7 are up in the US too. In a statement to the press, Samsung Electronics America president Tim Baxter said the company has seen 30 percent year-over-year growth for the new flagship. The phone, along with its bigger cousin the S8+, is also now up for pre-order in India, with the duo set to go on sale on May 5.

Meanwhile, analytics firm IHS Markit has gone through the Galaxy S8’s components to understand how much it cost Samsung to make them. The cost comes to $301.60 (about Rs. 19,400), while the phone sells for Rs. 57,900 in India. Of course, that’s ignoring the millions Samsung spends on R&D to improve its devices, among other significant overheads. More importantly, the Galaxy S8 costs roughly 20 percent more than its nearest predecessor, the S7 Edge, which costed $271.2 (about Rs. 17,400).

Lastly, some Galaxy S8+ users have reported issues with wireless charging. Even though they used it with Samsung-branded charging pad, the S8+ displays a ‘wireless charging paused’ sign.

Jio plans refreshed, home broadband trials confirmed
In a war that seems to have no end, Reliance Jio has once again updated its prepaid and postpaid plans. Jio prepaid plans now start at Rs. 19 per day, and go up to Rs. 9,999 for 420 days. And with Jio postpaid plans, you get three options – Rs. 309, Rs. 509, and Rs. 999.

The lowest prepaid offering – Rs. 19 – nets you 200MB of data if you’re a Jio Prime member, while the highest one gives you 810GB with no daily FUP. On the postpaid front, data benefits vary from 1GB per day to 180GB for 3 months, with no daily FUP. You can checkout the various Jio prepaid and postpaid plans.

Reliance Jio announced late on Monday that its user base stood at 108.9 million at the end of the financial year on March 31, which represents a marginal increase from February when it crossed the 100-million mark. The regulatory filing also confirmed that Jio has started home broadband trials in select places.

Nokia 3310 (2017) price revealed, but it’s not official
Indian retailer OnlyMobiles.com has put up the 2017 reborn version of Nokia 3310 on its website with a ‘coming soon’ sticker and a price of Rs. 3,899. Gadgets 360 reached out to HMD Global, the company operating with the Nokia brand name, who said that the price was unofficial, and it didn’t have any announcement to make right now.

LinkedIn now has more than 500 million members
LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft, has crossed 500 million members across 200 countries, it revealed in an official blog post on Monday. Out of that, some 42 million are from India. In addition, the site hosts 10 million active job listings, has access to nine million companies, and its users publish more than 100,000 articles every week.

ZTE Blade Max 3 launched at $199 in the US
Chinese manufacturer ZTE has launched its mid-range iteration Blade Max 3 in the US at $199.99 (about Rs. 12,800) via a single carrier, US Cellular. The phone's highlight feature is its humongous 4,000mAh battery, along with a dual-camera setup at the back - two 13-megapixel sensors outfitted with PDAF and monochrome abilities.

It's got a 5-megapixel camera on the front, above a 6-inch full-HD display, powered by Snapdragon 625 and 2GB of memory. It has 16GB internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB with a microSD card. The Blade Max 3 runs Android 6.0.1 'Marshmallow' unfortunately.

Google might announce three Pixel devices this year
According to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), Google will release three Pixel devices in the year's fourth quarter. Codenamed Taimen, Walleye, and Muskie, all three will allegedly be powered by Snapdragon 835, which is currently in short supply owing to Samsung's relationship with Qualcomm.

The report says two very different things about Taimen, in that it'll either have the Pixel branding, or be unique on its own. Either way, AOSP thinks it'll be the largest of the lot, which may well suggest a new Pixel C. Walleye is supposed to be the name for Pixel 2, and Muskie for Pixel XL 2. We’ll know more around October.

Google updates apps and services
In other Google news, the company’s Photos app for iOS now has AirPlay support. That means you can now easily display your family photos on the big screen, if you’ve an Apple TV. If that’s you, go get the Google Photos v2.14.0 update from the App Store now.

Meanwhile, Google has rolled out better Indian language support for several of its services. The biggest meaningful change is neural machine translation for nine additional languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, and Kannada.

“This change improves the quality of the translation in a single jump than seen in the last ten years combined," Google said. The neural translation also applies to Google Maps reviews, so you can see what Parisians are saying about a local French café in your own Indian language.

It’s also rolling out support for 22 scheduled Indian languages – as mentioned in the Constitution – for its keyboard app, Gboard. Plus, Google’s home turf, Search, can now help define Hindi words. Type in something like "Nirdeshak ka matlab", and Google will pull in dictionary definition from Rajpal & Sons in collaboration with Oxford University Press. All these changes are rolling out, so if you don’t see one yet, have patience.

Vodafone provides 27GB of 4G data to postpaid users
To keep users from jumping ship to Jio, Vodafone has come up with new plans for its postpaid users. You can get 9GB data every month for the next three months by signing up on the Vodafone website with your number. The free data will be on top of your existing data plan.