Xiaomi Sale, Redmi 5 Plus, Nokia 9 and Samsung Galaxy S9 Specifications, More: Your 360 Daily

Xiaomi is having a holiday season sale on its Mi.com website, which his being held today and tomorrow. The 'No.1 Mi Fan Sale' has offers on a variety of Xiaomi smartphones, accessories, and other merchandise. There'll also be Rs. 1 flash sales on both days at 2pm, along with open sales for the Xiaomi Mi A1: Special Edition Red which will be available for Rs. 12,999 (down from Rs. 13,999). Other phones on sale include the Mi MIX 2, Mi Max 2 and the Redmi Y1 Lite. You can read about all the details of the Xiaomi sale offers right here. 

For payments through its online portal, Xiaomi has added the option of using Google Tez, as a mode of payment. Xiaomi says it hopes to contribute to the government's Digital India initiative and by integrating Tez, it will help further boost the number of active users of the app, which recently surpassed the mark of 12 million active users. 

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 apparently replaced by Redmi 5 Plus
It seems like Xiaomi has dropped the Note branding from its Redmi series, if we go by a review posted on MIUI forum for the Redmi 5 Plus that was unveiled alongside the Redmi 5 earlier this month​. According to the forum post, the Redmi 5 Plus is the successor to the Redmi Note 4. We've reached out to Xiaomi to elaborate. Interestingly, the specifications of the Redmi 5 Plus also match with the leaked specifications of the Redmi Note 4 ​ successor.

Nokia 9 specifications leak ahead of expected launch 
Nokia is expected to announce the Nokia 9 sometime early next year and we might have new information about it's specifications through a recent US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) certification. Previous rumours already revealed that the Nokia 9 will come with the model number TA-1042, TA-1005, and TA-1009 and now, the FCC site shows the model number TA-1005 of the Nokia 9. The model is found to have 128GB of storage, Android Oreo and is listed with a 5.5-inch OLED display from LG Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, and a dual camera setup with 12-megapixel and 13-megapixel sensors.

Geekbench tips Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+ specifications 
The leaks for 2018 flagship phones are coming in hot and heavy and this time, it's the Samsung's next flagships that are in the spotlight. Now, the Samsung Galaxy S9+ with purported model number SM-G965U1 appeared on Geekbench, scoring an impressive single-core score of 2422 and multi-core score of 8351. The listing also reveals  an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC and 6GB of RAM will power the Galaxy S9+. 

Vivo Carnival sale offers discounts on its popular phones 
Like Xiaomi, Vivo is also having a holiday season sale - on Amazon India - where its popular smartphones are going for discounted prices. It's being held from Wednesday, December 20 to Friday, December 22 and the smartphones available with discounts are the Vivo V5S, V5S Plus, Y66, Y53, and Y55S. Apart from the discounts, Vivo is also touting 5 percent Amazon Pay cashback, additional exchange discounts up to Rs. 3,000, savings of up to Rs. 1,700 on no-cost EMIs, and free couple movie vouchers from Bookmyshow. 

Gionee A1 Plus, A1 Lite price in India slashed
Gionee is getting into the festive mood as well as it's just announced price cuts for A1 Plus and A1 Lite. The A1 Plus price in India is now Rs. 23,999, down from its launch price of Rs. 26,999, while the A1 Lite price in India has been slashed to Rs. 13,999, down from its Rs. 14,999 launch price. The company is also offering offers on data where new or existing Airtel subscribers that buy the A1 Lite will get 10GB additional data per month for 6 months on any data recharge of 1GB and above. Gionee A1 Plus buyers from Reliance Jio will get 10GB additional data per month six months on a recharge of Rs. 309 and above.

Samsung launches a 49-inch curved gaming monitor, unveils world's smallest DRAM chip
Samsung has launched the "world's biggest curved monitor" in India at a price of Rs. 1,50,000. The CHG90 is a 49-inch ultra-wide curved QLED monitor that boasts of HDR, an aspect ratio of 32:9 (3480x1080 pixels), a 1ms response time and a refresh rate of 144Hz. Ports include 2 HDMI ports, DisplayPort, Mini DisplayPort, USB Hub, 3.5mm headphone jack, and 3.5mm audio in.

The company also unveiled the world's smallest DRAM chip, which is its 'second-generation' 10-nanometre class, 8-gigabit DRAM chip with improved energy efficiency and data processing performance. This is geared toward premium data-crunching electronics such as cloud computing centres.

Google Chrome's native ad blocker launching on February 15 
Google Chrome is about to roll out its own ad blocker, come February 15. "Starting on February 15, in line with the Coalition's guidelines, Chrome will remove all ads from sites that have a "failing" status in the Ad Experience Report for more than 30 days," said the update on the Google Developer website. Google earlier announced that Chrome was now part of the Coalition for Better Ads, which is an industry group that focuses on improving online ads.

Facebook is improving its AI technology to help the visually challenged 
Facebook is tweaking its AI technology for identifying persons for the visually challenged and implementing it for a much wider purpose. For the sighted, the new facial recognition settings will also help crack down on imposters as starting Tuesday, Facebook will notify you if someone has uploaded your face as their profile picture. For the visually impaired, the company is also working on identifying text in manipulated photos like memes, though its technique isn't quite ready for primetime.

New Apple AirPods coming in the second half of 2018
Following the huge success of the AirPods, Apple is now prepping a follow up to it in 2018. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted that Apple will address the supply constraints of battery rigid-flex PCB, and will double the shipments of its AirPods by next year to more than 26 million units. While details are still sketchy for now, Kuo says a smaller quartz component will be a part of the upgraded model.