Asus made the many variants of the Zenfone 2 Laser official last month, and starting today a few models are available to purchase in India from Flipkart, the subcontinent’s leading online retailer.

This has happened because Asus decided to release the Zenfone 2 Laser series early in India, thanks to the very big number of pre-orders it’s received. More than 30,000 people pre-ordered the Zenfone 2 Laser, so Asus moved the Laser’s release window from September 19 to today. This way even those who didn’t pre-order now have the chance to buy one, 11 days earlier than expected.

That’s a nice surprise definitely. You can choose between the 5-inch Zenfone 2 Laser ZE500KL and the 5.5-inch Zenfone 2 Laser ZE550KL at the moment. The former starts at INR 9,799 ($147 or €131) if you can live with 8GB of storage. The 16GB versions cost INR 9,999 ($150, €134). Oddly enough, the bigger ZE550KL starts at INR 9,999 too, if you’re satisfied with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.

Otherwise you could pay INR 13,999 ($210, €188) and get the same 5.5-inch device but with a Snapdragon 615 and 3GB of…

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New rumors coming from China (via Weibo) suggest that Huawei is interested in competing with the Galaxy S6 Edge with a curved AMOLED display of its own.

The display will have both sides curved and will be “2K”, which presumably means QHD (2,560×1,440px). Huawei is said to be planning a massive production of 3 million panels a month. That’s a serious commitment from the company as it means it will have to shift millions of the flagship model a month.

The planned screen diagonal is unknown, but the recent Huawei Mate S has a 5.5″ 1080p AMOLED display. If these rumors pan out it will be Huawei’s first QHD Super AMOLED display, not just its first curved display.

Keep in mind that while the source of the rumor has a good track record, but there haven’t been any public prototypes yet.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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YU, a devision of India’s Micromax, has launched its fourth and cheapest smartphone, the YU Yunique. The phone is priced at just INR 4,999 ($75), which the company claims makes it the cheapest 4G HD smartphone in the world. The phone will be sold exclusively online through Snapdeal.

The Yunique has a 4.7-inch 720p IPS LCD, Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage with microSD support, 8 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front facing camera, and a 2,000mAh battery. The phone comes with stock Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box but users will have the option to install Cyanogen OS 12.1 later.

We had a brief hands-on with the device and in that time we noticed that the phone is quite compact and lightweight but with decent build quality and finish. The display quality was also surprisingly good for the price. Most importantly, the performance was fluid and the phone exhibited no sluggishness or stuttering while scrolling, opening apps, or during multitasking. We will be taking a closer look at the phone in our full review but our first impressions were quite positive.

The registrations for the Yunique will begin tonight from 6:00 PM IST and the phone will be on sale every Tuesday at 12 noon starting September…

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The Moto X Play is apparently coming to India sooner than we thoughts. The new Motorola mid-ranger was announced in July, along with a promise for international availability (60 countries, to be exact). In a new development, however, it appears the ever-growing India market will be getting said device on September 14.

Press invites for the launch of the Moto X Play have already been sent out and both Motorola and Flipkart have been teasing the phone for some time now, so, the e-commerce giant will most-definitely be its primary vendor.

The Moto X Play was developed as a mid-range alternative to the flagship Moto X Style and is lower-specced, but should offer much better battery life.It offers a a 5.5-icnhd FullHD display, a Snapdragon 615 chipset and 2GB of RAM. The 3,650mAh battery pack is allegedly good for 48 hours of mixed use and fast-charging is also part of the package, although the TurboCharger 15 isn’t and is offered separately.

The US pricing for the Motorola Moto X Play starts at $299 and we can only expect a similar and perhaps even slightly lowered price point in India.

Source 1 | Source…

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FC Barcelona fans will have noticed Oppo logos when their favorite team is playing. The smartphone maker is celebrating the three-year partnership with the Spanish football team with the Oppo R7 Plus FC Barcelona Edition.

5,000 units of the self-titled “Smartphone of Champions” will be made available at $550 at oppostyle.com. The special edition sports the Barcelona logo on the back, a Barcelona-themed wallpaper, a protective case and more.

Starting September 12 Oppo will hold a charity auction on eBay for phones autographed by top players – among which Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Dani Alves. Proceeds will go to the FC Barcelona Foundation. Also in September Oppo will hold a giveaway for the limited-edition phone in 20 overseas…

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Mobile data is getting faster and cheaper, while websites become more complicated. With that in mind Opera has updated the Opera Mini browser with a new “High” compression option. Despite its name, High actually uses less compression than the default mode of previous versions. That mode has now been renamed “Extreme.”

Extreme was the only mode Opera Mini had and white it gets you up to 90% data reduction, it can break more complicated web sites (change layout, how things look and other issues).

High mode renders pages as they would appear on a standard browser. Compression drops to around 50%, but that’s still enough to double the speed of a spotty 3G network or a sluggish Wi-Fi. High mode keeps the dynamic content and video playback that Extreme mode cuts.

The new version also includes the following improvements:

Private mode
UI for saved pages and bookmarks
Overhauled tab switching
Customizable layout
Support for high-res tablets and large phones
Better handling of big downloads in High mode

Opera still believes in Mini, pointing to India (where only half the population has access to a 3G network) and Indonesia (where half of users have daily connectivity problems). Opera aims to have 275 million users on Android by the end of 2017.

You can download the update from the Play Store or if you don’t have access, check…

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Samsung can already be considered a veteran by smartwatch standards with a few generations of wearable products behind its back. The new Gear S2, however, represents the tech giant’s bold first step into the newer round watch market.

One of these clever new technologies that went into the new wearable is Samsung SDI’s free-form battery. As it appears, it was instrumental to fitting as much juice inside the Gear S2 as possible within the limited space.

In this case, the device is equipped with a 250 mAh free-form pack, which might not sound like much, but is a whole 50 mAh more than the 200 mAh that a rectangular battery would have allowed. At this scale the extra juice is vital and ensures what Samsung claims to be up to three full days of battery life.

Samsung SDI actually started work on the free-form project in December 2014 and made quick progress with a final version in April and mass-production in August. That is a truly impressive development cycle and it is always astonishing to see how fast industry leaders can push a concept all the way to an actual consumer product with tangible benefits to the user. So, even if the Gear S2 doesn’t turn out to be a grand market success, it does still represent a significant technological step forward.

Source |…

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A new photo of the LG Nexus 5 (2015) has showed up, portraying the right side and the back of the phone. For the larger part, LG has kept the minimalist design of the Nexus 5 (2015)’s predecessor.

Naturally, there are differences – the phone looks noticeably thinner and got a fingerprint sensor below the camera bump, as we saw not too long ago. The Nexus logo is still present. The side Power/Lock and volume rocker buttons also look to be ceramic for a second year in a row.

The source of the photo, who sent it to AndroidPit hasn’t confirmed if the Nexus 5 (2015) sports a metal frame, but has hinted the phone might be officially named the LG Nexus 5X.

The new LG Nexus is said to sport a 5.2-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 12.3/5 MP camera combo and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chipset. RAM is set at 3GB of RAM, storage options are 16 and 32GB and the whole thing is going to be powered by a 2,700 mAh battery.

There’s still some time to come until the end of September when Google is expected to announce the LG and Huawei Nexus…

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150g of polycarbonate and 5 inches of a full-HD screen. Amazing what they’d call a mini these days. Technically, the ZTE Nubia Z9 mini is the compact version of the bezel-free Z9 but size isn’t the first thing that sets these two apart.

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Lava has announced that it will soon begin selling smartphones in Mexico. “Very soon we will be launching in Mexico. Gradually, we will be making inroads in to other international markets as well,” said Navin Chawla, senior vice-president and product head, Lava International.

Internationally, the Indian company already has a presence in SAARC nations, and has also recently started selling its handsets in Indonesia and Myanmar. It is sitting pretty at the No. 2 position in Thailand, where Samsung is currently at the top, Chawla revealed.

The company has just launched the Pixel V2 smartphone (shown above) in India. Successor to the last year’s Pixel V1, the new device is powered by a 64-bit quad-core Media MTK6735 SoC, and sports a 5-inch HD IPS display. It comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB expandable internal memory, and packs in a 2500mAh battery.

In terms of camera, it features a 13MP rear unit and an 8MP front shooter. The 4G ready smartphone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with Star OS 2.0 skin on top.

Via 1…

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