Vivo V7+ India Launch, BSNL 'Rate Cutter' Packs, iPhone 8 Pre-Order Date, and More: Your 360 Daily

Vivo V7+ was launched in India today and will go on sale later this month. The smartphone is selfie-centric, so it should come as no surprise it sports a 24-megapixel front camera with an f/2.0 aperture and a selfie soft light. Another highlight feature of the handset is its 5.99-inch, 18:9 aspect ratio display, but with HD resolution. The Vivo V7+ price in India is Rs. 21,990. Pre-bookings open on Thursday, September 7, while the smartphone will go on sale in India on September 15.

Vivo V7+ is a dual-SIM phone that runs the custom Funtouch OS 3.2, based on Android 7.1 Nougat. It sports a 5.99-inch HD display with an 18:9 aspect ratio with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and 2.5D curved glass. The display is almost bezel-less on the side. The smartphone is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 SoC and has 4GB of RAM. As far as storage is concerned, this Vivo phone has 64GB of inbuilt storage that is expandable via microSD card (up to 256GB).

Here's everything else that made news today.

BSNL's new 'rate-cutter' packs
BSNL continues to sweeten the deal for its customers as incumbent telcos face the heat from Reliance Jio. The telco has now started offering two new recharge packs priced at Rs. 8 and Rs. 15, which is great news for people who don't want to pay big sums for prepaid recharges. The Rs. 8 pack is valid for 30 days and charges 15 paise per minute for BSNL to BSNL calls and 35 paise per minute from BSNL to other networks. The Rs. 15 pack offers the same rates but is valid for 90 days.

iPhone 8 pre-order date revealed?
Apple's September 12 event is almost upon us and the new iPhone models are all set to be unveiled. The spotlight is going to be on the anniversary iPhone rumoured to be called the iPhone 8, iPhone X, or iPhone Edition. Fresh rumours indicate that the new models will go on pre-order as soon as September 15. Apple might ship the iPhone with an OLED display, which could bump the price of the anniversary edition iPhone to $999 (roughly Rs. 64,000).

Asus ZenFone 4 series launching on September 14
Asus has sent out media invites for an event on September 14 for the launch ‘of its latest smartphone series’. Furthermore, on its social pages, Asus has confirmed that the next ZenFone is coming next week, confirming the India launch for the ZenFone 4 series. While there’s no clarity on which smartphones from the ZenFone 4 series will launch in India, Asus has so far, made many ZenFone 4 variants official - the ZenFone 4, ZenFone 4 Pro, ZenFone 4 Selfie, and ZenFone 4 Selfie Pro.

Andhra Pradesh signs MoU for Hyperloop
Having junked the proposed metro project from Vijaywada, the Andhra Pradesh government on Wednesday joined hands with a US-based company to introduce the futuristic Hyperloop transportation system in the state capital region, Amravati. If everything goes well, this will be the first Hyperloop project to be implemented in India. The AP Economic Development Board and the US-based Hyperloop Transportation Technologies  signed the MoU here. But an official release on the MoU did not disclose the probable cost of the project.

Honor 6 Play With 3020mAh battery launched
The affordable Honor 6 Play has now been launched in China. Huawei's brand Honor's new smartphone has 4G VoLTE support and a 3020mAh battery. The price is CNY 599 (roughly Rs. 5,900), which makes this a budget smartphone. The dual-SIM Honor 6 Play runs EMUI 4.1, with the underlying OS being Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Its display size is 5 inches and it has a quad-core MediaTek processor clocked at 1.4GHz with 2GB RAM. The Honor 6 Play comes with 16GB of built-in storage, which is expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB).

New Surface machines releasing in October?
Microsoft is going to host an event on October 31, to most likely launch new computers in its Surface lineup. Microsoft has revealed that its Surface product lead Panos Panay will be speaking at the event and that leads us to believe that this event will be focused on Surface hardware. This year in May, Microsoft launched the new Surface Laptop with Windows 10 S operating system aiming to compete with Chromebooks, followed by the new Surface Pro. There is no word on the much delayed Surface Phone, but one can always hope that it shows up soon.

Facebook tests simultaneous Instagram Stories posts
Facebook Stories are all but dead but that may not be the case for long. The company is now testing a new feature that allows people to share their Stories from Instagram to Facebook. This could prompt more people to post Stories to Facebook since the feature has been wildly successful on Instagram. The Stories feature, which was initially introduced by the company's own Instagram platform and was inspired by Snapchat's feature, was later adopted by Facebook's main app as well. In the future, one may even be able to post Stories to all four Facebook apps - WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger - at once. Perhaps that could be one way of reviving the feature in apps where no one uses Stories.

Nokia plans to cut around 600 jobs
Nokia is planning to cut around 600 jobs in France by the end of the year 2019. The company seeks to make cost-savings and refocus its loss-making businesses. The job cuts would concern central and support functions within Alcatel-Lucent International and Nokia Solutions Networks France, a Nokia spokeswoman said.

Siri, Alexa vulnerable to malicious commands, says report
A group from China’s Zheijiang University have found a new way to enter into your smartphones and open malicious websites and even gain access to connected smart devices if there are any using ultrasound frequencies. For this purpose, the hack takes advantage of what is known as the Dolphin Attack, where frequencies of over 20KHz are sent to a nearby smartphone to attack Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and other voice-based virtual assistants.