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Moto X4 Launched, iPhone Edition Rumoured, Xiaomi's India Milestone, and More: Your 360 Daily

Moto X4 Launched, iPhone Edition Rumoured, Xiaomi's India Milestone, and More: Your 360 Daily

By Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 1 September 2017 23:43 IST

Highlights

Moto X4 has a metal unibody design
The iPhone Edition could launch alongside iPhone 8
Xiaomi says it has sold over 25 million smartphones in India

The Moto X4 has been launched in Berlin, as part of IFA 2017. This smartphone from Lenovo ships with support for Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and has dual rear cameras. For those wondering, the Google Assistant is also there in this smartphone. Initially, the Moto X4 will be available in Europe in September, and then it will reach other regions. As far as the pricing is concerned, the Europe price is EUR 399 (roughly Rs. 30,300).

Moto X4 runs on Android 7.1 Nougat and it is a single-SIM smartphone. It sports a 5.2-inch full-HD display, is powered by a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 octa-core SoC, and 3GB of RAM. The smartphone ships with 32GB of internal storage and expandable storage up to 2TB via a microSD card. A Moto X4 variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage is expected to be launched in some regions.

The Moto X4 houses one 12-megapixel dual autofocus sensor and another 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle sensor. The front camera is a 16-megapixel selfie sensor and it comes with features such as adaptive low light mode and selfie panorama. The Moto X4 packs a 3000mAh battery that claims to last all day and supports fast charging (six hours of power in 15 minutes). This smartphone sports a metal unibody, with a dual camera setup at the back within a protruding round-shaped ring protection, and the Motorola logo below it. The fingerprint scanner is at the front. The Moto X4 doesn't support Moto Mods.

Here's everything else that made news today.

Could the next iPhone be called the iPhone Edition?
It's the event everyone has been waiting for and finally, it is official. Apple has sent out invites for the iPhone 8 event, which will be held on September 12. For the first time, it will be held at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus. The company is rumoured to be launching three new iPhones this year and the latest rumours suggest that the three iPhones could be called iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone Edition. The name iPhone Edition has cropped up in earlier reports and the latest leaks also claim that it will support wireless charging. As the iPhone event nears, the leaks seem to gain accuracy so this latest batch of rumours could indeed be closer to the truth than most other leaks we've seen so far.

Xiaomi has sold over 25 million phones in India in 3 years
Xiaomi on Twitter made the announcement that the company has sold over 25 million smartphones in India since its first launch in July 2014, 3 years and 1 month ago. In addition, Xiaomi claims that it’s the fastest mobile company that has managed to reach that milestone in India and that the figure equals 22,000 smartphones sold per single day for almost three years.

Xiaomi first launched in India with the Mi 3 and has been competing aggressively on price. The company has seen this approach succeed in the country. It had announced that the Redmi Note 4 (Review) has sold over 5 million units in six months since its launch in January, making it Xiaomi's best-selling smartphone till date. Xiaomi Redmi 4A sold 250,000 units in just four minutes during its first flash sale, which is a pretty big number for any company in one sale.

Cat S41 and S31 rugged smartphones launched
Bulitt has licensed the Cat, or Caterpillar brand name, which belongs to an American construction machinery maker. The Cat brand is known for its rugged electronics and at IFA 2017 in Berlin, the company launched two smartphones and one tablet under that name. These are the Cat S41 and Cat S31 smartphones, and the Cat T20 tablet. These devices include water resistance, drop and vibration proofing, military grade protection, and large batteries. The Cat S31 is priced at GBP 299 (roughly Rs. 24,700), and the Cat S41 costs GBP 399 (roughly Rs. 32,900). The Cat T20 tablet has been priced at GBP 599 (roughly Rs. 49,500). Both the smartphones are dual-SIM and run Android Nougat, while the tablet runs Windows 10.

Samsung launches T5 portable SSD in India
Samsung has launched the Samsung Portable SSD T5 in India. It is already available for Rs. 13,500 for 250GB, Rs. 21,000 for 500GB, Rs. 40,000 for 1TB, and Rs. 80,000 for 2TB. For the longest time, portable hard drives have been the default choice for people who want to carry a backup hard drive or extra data with them. However, SSDs have faster read and write speeds when compared with conventional hard drives.

This makes these an attractive proposition for some. The prices are still nowhere near hard drives, but if speed matters to you, you might want to consider these. This Samsung solid state drive uses the company’s latest 64-layer V-NAND technology that enables it to deliver transfer speeds of up to 540MBps with encrypted data security.

Lenovo launches a bunch of products at IFA 2017
Lenovo launched a slew of products in its Yoga and Miix range of convertibles at IFA this year. This, apart from unveiling its mixed reality headset and a smart speaker. The Chinese company launched Yoga 920 and Yoga 720 2-in-1 convertible laptops, the Miix 520 detachable 2-in-1, Lenovo Explorer Mixed Reality headset, and an Amazon Echo-like smart speaker called the Home Assistant Pack, an Alexa-powered device that’s meant to augment the Tab 4 series of tablets from the company.

The Lenovo Yoga 920 is a high-end laptop that runs Windows 10 and is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor. It weighs 1.37 kg and boasts a battery life of 15 hours. The Lenovo Yoga 720 weighs 1.15kg and claims a battery life of up to 8 hours. The Lenovo Miix 2 ships with a keyboard and a stylus, making it a nice tablet for productivity oriented people.

OnePlus' 1000 days sale
To celebrate its 1,000 days of operation in India, OnePlus has announced a three-day sale, where it will list discounts and deals on its smartphone lineup. This includes a price cut on the OnePlus 3T and cashbacks on both the OnePlus 5 and the OnePlus 3T smartphones. The OnePlus 1,000 Days sale will be held on its online store from Tuesday, September 5 to Thursday, September 7. During the three-day sale, the OnePlus 3T 64GB smartphone will be made available at a discounted rate of Rs. 25,999, giving it a price cut of Rs. 4,000 temporarily. Furthermore, users can also get additional cashback of Rs. 2,000 on Axis Bank credit and debit cards along with Rs. 2,000 off on exchange of their old phones as well. This cashback and exchange offer is going to be applicable on both the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 3T smartphones.

Is this the end of SMS in India?
SMS and email alerts may slowly be on their way out. Online movie ticketing service BookMyShow is among the first businesses to sign up for WhatsApp, where it has a verified business profile. The move could see the company sending movie confirmation alerts and other texts via WhatsApp instead of SMS in the long run. At the moment, however, BookMyShow is just testing its WhatsApp Business profile. WhatsApp is India's most popular messaging app with over 200 million active users. Indians sent over 1.4 billion messages through WhatsApp last year. Paytm, India's largest mobile wallet app plans to launch a messaging feature for businesses as well. For the time being SMS isn't going anywhere, but these companies don't want that to stay.

Facebook Watch video platform rolling out in the US
Facebook launched its Watch video service to US users on Thursday with plans to allow people to submit shows. This is Facebook's plan to take on YouTube in a bid to become the world's largest video platform and take a slice of the video advertising revenue pie as well. On Watch, which Facebook began testing earlier this month, users can see hundreds of shows from the likes of Vox, Buzzfeed, Discovery Communications Inc, A&E Networks, Walt Disney Co's ABC, as well as live sports like Major League Baseball. At the moment there is no word on when this feature will be rolling out to India, but we'll keep you updated the moment we hear more.

Don't believe Xbox One X pre-order success claims, analyst warns
The Xbox One X may not have amassed as many pre-orders as Microsoft’s marketing machine wants you to believe, according to analyst Michael Pachter. The analyst, who is known for his strong opinions and know-how of the video games industry, has claimed that the term “fastest selling Xbox pre-order ever” doesn’t mean much. He explains this by saying that Microsoft is marketing the new console to a team of 30-35 million Xbox Live Gold members, and that is why it’s heavily pre-ordered. However, Pachter adds, that the Xbox One X was at rank 66 on the Amazon pre-order popularity rankings. He compares this against the NES Classic, a limited edition console Nintendo had launched last year. Pachter says the NES Classic sold 2.3 million units in its lifetime and that it had only reached rank 23 on the pre-order popularity list.

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Further reading: Motorola, Moto, Lenovo, Moto X4, Apple, iPhone, iPhone 8, iPhone Edition, Xiaomi, Cat, Samsung, OnePlus, BookMyShow, Facebook, Xbox One X