Weekly Wrap-Up #29 : Xiaomi Mi 6, Samsung Galaxy S8, Coolpad Cool 1 Dual, iPhone 8 & More….

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Another Monday and another Weekly Wrap-up from Phone Radar is here. Get the glimpse of all the happenings in the smartphone sector from the last seven days. Lot many devices are made available for sale in the last week in India. Alongside the high-end devices, we have seen a few low-cost smartphones with 4G VoLTE compatibility. Talking about the upcoming devices, we will be seeing two major launches in the next few days in India and China.  Also, check out the list of upcoming smartphones to know about the new smartphone launches that are scheduled for the next few weeks.

• We have quite a few smartphone launches in the last few weeks. A few of those devices are made available for sale in the last week. The list includes the Sony Xperia XZs which comes with a 19MP rear camera that can slow-mo videos at 960 fps. It comes in Ice Blue, Warm Silver, and Black color options and is sold via Flipkart and retail stores for Rs. 49,990. During this IPL season, Vivo which is the title of this cash rich cricket league launched the Vivo V5 Plus IPL Limited Edition smartphone in Matte Black color. The device is priced at Rs. Rs. 25,990 and sports an 18K golden IPL 10 logo engraved on the bottom rear. Samsung’s latest smartphone in the C-series, the Galaxy C7 Pro is now sold exclusively through Amazon India. The Galaxy C7 Pro comes with a price tag of Rs. 27,990 and is available in Gold and Navy Blue colors. Another high-end to go sale last week comes from the Indian smartphone manufacturer, Micromax. The Micromax Dual 5 which is a rebranded version of the 360 Q5 is priced at Rs. 24,999. It comes with dual camera setup and is sold through Flipkart and company’s online store.

• Apart from the new Dual and Evok series, Micromax also launched the Bharat series to offers low-cost VoLTE mobile phones. While the Evok and Dual series limited to online stores as of now, the Bharat series is sold through offline stores across the country. The Bharat 2 is the most affordable VoLTE smartphone from Micromax and is priced at Rs. 3,749. The device supports Jio 4G SIM and there are dual SIM card slots for adding another SIM. It comes with a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) display and packs Speadtrum SC9832 quad-core processor clocked at 1.3GHz. At such a low price, the device packs just 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. However, there is a MicroSD card slot for storage expansion. The Bharat 2 also comes with a 2MP rear camera with LED flash, 0.3MP front camera, and a 1,300mAh battery.

• Samsung has officially launched the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus smartphones at the Galaxy Unpacked event with 4GB of RAM. As rumors suggested, the company unveiled the Galaxy S8 devices with 6GB and 128GB storage in South Korea. Last week, the device are also made available top pre-order and the company is offering Samsung DeX workstation for free. Apart from its home country, the 6GB RAM variants of the Galaxy S8 devices will be sold only in China. Earlier to this, the company launched the Galaxy C9 Pro with 6GB of RAM in India and China. Recently, the Samsung also announced to launch the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus smartphone with 4GB RAM and Exynos 8895 SoC in India on April 19th.

• Coolpad Cool 1 Dual is one of the most popular budget smartphones. It even packs 13MP dual-lens camera setup on the rear. Last year, the company launched the Cool 1 Dual with 3GB RAM for the offline market and 4GB RAM for the online market. Then, both the variants are priced at Rs. 13,999 and now in April, the company started selling the 3GB RAM variant of the Cool 1 Dual exclusively through Amazon India for just Rs. 10,999. It is now the most affordable dual camera smartphone in the Indian market. Apart for 1 gig lesser RAM, there are no other changes between the 3GB and 4GB RAM variants. It includes 5.5″ Full HD Display, Snapdragon 652 octa-core SoC, 32GB of storage. For selfies, there is an 8MP front camera and is backed by a large 4,000mAh battery.

• If the rumors are to believed, Apple will be launching three new iPhones in the second half of this year. Along with the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus, we will be seeing the limited edition iPhone 8 that will mark the 10th anniversary of the iPhone lineup. The iPhone 8 will be the first smartphone from Apple to feature OLED panel. However, the latest reports suggest the iPhone 8 will be delayed and will not go sale alongside the other two iPhones. The issues with the new 3D sensing technology are said to be the reason for this delay. It sports a 5.8-inch display with trimmed down bezels. The iPhone 7 Plus came with a horizontal dual camera setup but the leaked sketches of the iPhone 8 reveal it to come with vertical dual camera setup.

• The above mentioned Micromax Bharat 2 is not only the affordable 4G VoLTE smartphone to launch last week. We have also got Ziox Quiq Flash 4G & Intex ELYT-e1 smartphones priced at Rs. 4,444 & Rs. 6,999 respectively. While the Ziox Quiq Flash 4G is sold through Shopclues, the Intex ELYT-e1 will be available across the country through retail outlets. Both the device support dual SIM dual standby and offers 4G VoLTE connectivity. They run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow out fo the box and we don’t expect the manufacturers to release any updates. The Ziox Quiq Flash 4G packs 5-inch FWVGA display, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage. On the other hand, the Intex ELYT-e1 with a slightly higher price tag comes with a 5-inch HD display, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage.

• After months of rumors about the Mi 6 and Mi 6 Plus, last week Xiaomi officially confirmed to launch their latest flagship smartphone on April 19th in China. The specifications the Mi 6 are already revealed by the benchmarking website. It comes with the same 5.15-inch Full HD display as seen on its predecessor. Under the hood is the Snapdragon 835 SoC coupled with Adreno 540 GPU. The device includes 4GB of RAM and 64Gb of internal storage. It runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box and features a 12MP rear camera and an 8MP front camera. There will be also an high-end variant with 6GB of RAM. Talking about the Mi 6 Plus, it is said to come with a Quad HD display and dual camera setup on the rear. Though there is no confirmation, we expect these devices to come with Quick Charge 4.0 fast charging technology and will support Xiaomi Mi Pay exclusively in China. The company is yet to announce the launch date of the new Mi 6 smartphones in India.

• In the next couple of months, OnePlus will be launching their new flagship smartphone as the successor to OnePlus 3. Instead of calling its OnePlus 4, the company will be launching it as OnePlus 5 since the number 4 is considered as unlucky in China. The device has been in the rumors mills for quite a few weeks and they suggest the device to feature dual camera setup on the rear. Just like the other flagship devices, the OnePlus 5 will also come equipped Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor built on the 10nm FinFET process. We also hope to see Quad HD resolution display on the OnePlus 5 which also makes the device to support Google’s DayDream. The latest report from China also mentioned the device to feature 8GB of RAM but we don’t think the company will offer anything more than 6GB.

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