If you thought Amazon’s 2-hour delivery was impressive, the company has teamed up with OnePlus and OlaCabs in India to make 2 hours seem like an age to wait. OlaCabs, similar to Uber, lets you order transport via a simple smartphone app and has joined forces with OnePlus to offer 15-minute OnePlus X deliveries in 7 Indian cities.
Motorola announced today that it’s beginning to roll out Android 6.0 Marshmallow starting with two devices in select markets. First to get the update is the 2015 Moto X Style (3rd gen) in India and Brazil and the 2014 Moto X (2nd gen) in Brazil.
I am happy to announce that we are starting initial deployment of the Android 6.0 Marshmallow upgrade for the following devices and channels: 2015 Moto X Style (3rd Gen) in both Brazil and India retail, 2014 Moto X (2nd Gen) in Brazil retail… It is not yet available for pull, you will receive a notification on your phone when you are able to update your phone
In addition to the two devices mentioned above, Motorola says it will begin to rollout the update for the 2015 Moto X Pure Edition (3rd Gen) in coming weeks. It also confirmed that a “full deployment will proceed in stages over the next few weeks.”
Motorola offered a breakdown of some highlights in the update:
– A new Memory Manager that lets you check memory usage of all your installed apps
– Volume controls have been greatly improved
– Do not disturb button has been added to the quick settings panel for easy access.
– System UI Tuner will appear in the settings menu at the very bottom once enabled. It provides a few simple UI tweaks.
– Google Now on Tap allows contextual information to be delivered based on content on your screen with a long press of the home key.
– Doze is a battery management feature that detects when your device is not in use and it will automatically go into a deep sleep state which saves your battery.
– App Standby reduces battery drain by putting seldom-used apps into a reduced activity state.
– Expandable Storage support allows for microSD cards to be used either in a portable storage or an internal storage mode. Portable storage allows your pictures, videos, audio and other media files to be stored. Internal storage allows both media storage along with apps and games but can not be used by other devices.
– RAM manager in settings which allows a consumer to view memory used by the system or an individual app over different time frames
– Automatic App backup not only backs up your apps but their associated data so when restored they will be the same as they were before
– Text selection has been improved
The company has full release notes for the update on its website here.
Google first tried to penetrate the Indian phone market with its Android One lineup of affordable devices, but after deeming that project less-than-successful, the company is reportedly planning to adjust its plans. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Google plans to relax the requirements it originally had on Android One devices, giving manufacturers more freedom when it comes to features and price.
At an event in India this morning, OnePlus announced that it has partnered with Foxconn to start making phones at the Foxconn Rising Stars factory in the Sri City Integrated Business City in Andhra Pradesh. OnePlus expects they will begin to assemble phones there by the end of this year. Pete Lau, OnePlus’ co-founder was at an event in Bengaluru this morning and stated:
“Producing smartphones in India is one of the most important decisions that we have made so far at OnePlus, and we are thankful to the Government of Andhra Pradesh and Foxconn for helping us make this happen. India being one of our biggest markets worldwide, we are committed to a long term sustainable growth path. This move will strengthen our presence and help us step up momentum in India.”
OnePlus isn’t the first phone maker to take part in the ‘Make in India’ initiative. Just a few weeks ago, one of China’s biggest manufacturers, Xiaomi, announced a brand new phone which was made in India, for the Indian market. Like OnePlus, Xiaomi is making its phones in the Foxconn Rising Stars factory.
Once up and running, OnePlus will be able to use its 30,000 square foot facility to manufacture up to 500,000 smartphones every month, employing 1,000 new full-time workers. The first ‘batch’ of phones, likely to be the unreleased and unannounced ‘OnePlus X’ will be made available in India before 2016 swings in.
Last week, we told you that a former Google employee managed to buy the Google.com domain name via Google’s own Domains service. While Sanmay Ved may have only owned the world’s most-visited domain for just a minute or two before the Mountain View company caught on and cancelled the transaction, it appears at least some good came of this story.
Once Google acknowledged the mistake, they rewarded Ved with some unknown sum of cash — but the company decided to double the reward when Ved generously suggested it go to charity instead…
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The OnePlus One
OnePlus has a budget handset on the way, and just this morning, Pete Lau, the company’s co-founder, came out on Weibo to tease the device. We don’t know much about the phone yet, but we do know that OnePlus has an announcement to make in India on October 12th. We’ll probably see the company’s third phone announced at this event, and if these FCC images are to be believed as credible, we might now have our first look at the device in the flesh…
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Google yesterday announced that Android Marshmallow is coming over-the-air to Nexus devices in the coming days and weeks, but now we have confirmation that Google is also pushing the update to Android One devices. Google promised when it launched the Android One program that these phones would get update priority and offer the latest and greatest much like Nexus phones, and it looks like the company is delivering on that promise…
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Google’s Sundar Pichai has taken to the Indian YouTube channel today to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Google headquarters.”It is an honor to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Silicon Valley this weekend,” Pichai said in the video. “I hope Prime Minister Modi’s visit will energize people in Silicon Valley.”
He puts emphasis on Google’s hope to bring the next billion users online, with the majority of those coming from developing smartphone markets in India, China, and elsewhere. He also outlined a couple of Google’s initiatives intended to make this happen, including Android One. Modi will be visiting Google HQ later this week.
Google Play gift cards, a familiar sight at supermarkets across the United States, have now arrived in India. This comes a few months after Google first introduced prepaid vouchers in the country, and according to the official Google India blog, the new cards will be coming to a total of five retail outlets at launch…
Following the launch of Google Play prepaid vouchers in June, we have now rolled out physical gift cards in retail outlets across India. You can now find Google Play Gift Cards in the stores of Spice Hotspot, Vijay Sales, Planet M, Planet Mobile and Sangeetha Mobiles.
Motorola and its parent company Lenovo recently opened a new manufacturing facility in India that is predicted to output as many as 6 million smartphone units annually. Motorola India published a video to YouTube today showing off the plant — in it you can see some of the individual steps that go into putting together a 2015 Moto E, much of which still seems to be done by hand.
The new plant has been created in support of a “Made in India” campaign that the government there has been pushing in order to get more companies manufacturing in India. The campaign so far has attracted big names including Microsoft, Xiaomi, LG, ASUS, and several others. India’s government hopes increased manufacturing investment in a handful of sectors including electronics will spark job creation and GDP growth, a good measure of living standards that is still low in the country. Lenovo earlier today tweeted a picture from a press event celebrating the company’s new plant.
Maybe this means India will finally get access to Moto Maker?
Google is making a “massive” investment in its Android One program, designed to make pure Android devices available to customers in developing markets at affordable prices, reports the FT. It hopes “over the next few years” to bring down the retail price of Android One handsets in countries like India from the equivalent of $100 to somewhere in the $30-50 range.
Rajan Anandan, managing director in India and Southeast Asia, told the Financial Times that the company [recognized that the] much-hyped mobile standard had “not delivered to expectations” …
Smartphone manufacturers are climbing over each other to take full advantage of the rapidly expanding market opportunities in India. Chief among them is Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi, which has just announced its first smartphone assembled in India, for the Indian market only. The Redmi 2 Prime still predominantly uses parts from China, but is assembled in Sri City.
As for the device itself, the Redmi 2 Prime offers a considerable memory and storage upgrade on the regular Redmi 2 without costing a whole lot more. For just under 7,000 Rupees ($110 USD) you get a device packing 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, that’s double the memory and capacity of the Redmi 2 which costs just under 6,000 Rupees ($94 USD). Both devices make use of Qualcomm’s 64-bit Snapdragon 410 processor and host 4.7-inch IPS HD (1280×720) displays and an 8MP camera on the back. What’s more, they’re dual SIM and can cope with LTE speeds up to 150Mbps.
Xiaomi plans to bring more of its manufacturing process to India, eventually producing more of its components and packaging within Indian borders. Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s chief stated “this is like the typical chicken and egg story. Unless there is any smartphone manufacturing happening in the country, you cannot expect to get components locally.” So this is very much just the first step in its journey to cracking the Indian market.
Indian consumers can purchase the new Redmi 2 Prime direct from mi.com from today.
Update: Google posted to Google+ shortly after we published this to announce that Play Movies is actually now available in three new countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Our report below doesn’t mention Singapore as a new supported country.
Google Play and Play Movies are both getting some international love today. Play is Google’s store for apps and games, while Play Movies contains movie and television content.
First up, developers in India can now price their Play Store apps lower than ever before: Rs. 10, which comes out to approximately 10 cents in US dollars. This is major because while India is a rapidly developing country with many starting to rise to the middle class, its per capita GDP is still much smaller than that of the United States. Also, and this is just my opinion, 10 cents is much more of a impulse buy area. This new minimum pricing only applies to India. Google recently began selling Play Store gift cards in the country as well – India is very reliant on cash over plastic (credit, debit cards), so by making gift cards available that can be purchased with cash, the company has ostensibly increased its potential customer base in that country.
Also new today, or at least very recently, is the launching of Play Movies in Indonesia and Malaysia. Several people have reached out to Android Police as of late with tips and screenshots of its availability in the two countries, so it’s pretty assured to be real. Play Movies is, as mentioned, Google’s movie and television entertainment store for Android devices. The company also rents out video content through YouTube, although the availability of both of these varies widely by region and country.
Almost all phone manufacturers seem to be launching “Plus” handset variants this year, and Micromax subsidiary YU isn’t an exception. The company first launched its YU Yureka handset late last year, and now, you can buy a “Plus” version of the device that packs a higher-resolution screen and some very minor spec improvements across the board…
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I honestly can’t think back far enough to remember the days when people had to rely on paper maps to navigate to places, but I can still appreciate how the combination of Google Maps and the Google-owned Waze makes life much easier than ever before. The one dedicated GPS I ever owned couldn’t even beat my Nexus 5 because it’s arrival estimates always seemed completely off-base. Unsurprising really, because unlike Google Maps, it didn’t have real-time information about traffic density on the roads my route would take me on. Now, Maps users in 12 cities in India will be able to enjoy the same real-time traffic information we have stateside.
India is a large, fast-developing country where cash is still the predominant payment method for everything from paying for cabs to refilling on smartphone data. Large multibillion dollar upstarts like Uber arrive in the country and find that it’s only once they add cash payment that their businesses really take off, and so it’s no surprise that Google is jumping into the fold through the arrival of Google Play prepaid cards in India.
These gift cards should start showing up in select Vijay Sales and Spice Hotspot stores in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata & Jaipur. They will be available in denominations of INR 500 (US$7), INR 1000 (US$15) and INR 1500 (US$23), and can be paid for with any payment method these stores allow.
Redeeming the cards is as simple as visiting this page and inputting the redemption code on the back of the card. It’s believed that direct carrier billing might come to India sometime soon, but there’s no word from Google on that just yet.
No, it wasn’t Moto Maker launching in India – it is another way to potentially get your hands on your own custom-designed Moto X, though.
Yesterday we saw Motorola India’s Twitter account teasing something special to come on June 15th, implying that customers would be able to do some designing themselves with captions like “Artistry is as artistry does. Fancy doing something to show off your arty side? Find out how on the 15th of June.” And while it was easy to assume that these tweets were referencing a launch of the company’s phone customization service Moto Maker, available in several countries allowing customers to customize every aspect of their Moto X from the trim color to onboard storage size, they sadly were not.
Instead what Motorola India announced is My Moto Logo, a contest in which individuals can create their own illustration of the iconic Motorola “Batwing” M logo, with the six best ones being made into real-life bespoke Moto X’s.
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Yu—a subsidiary of Micromax—announced their first device (the Yureka) late last year, but today the company has announced their second entry: the Yuphoria. At first glance you’ll probably notice that the device has a smaller overall build and a metal frame—and that’s exactly the realm of devices that Yu seems to be after with this launch (think the Galaxy A series)…
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Google has released several Android ads via the main Android YouTube account, but it appears that the company has now published the first cartoon Androidify-themed ad aimed specifically at India. The ad has appeared this morning on the Google India YouTube account, and features several Androidify cartoons playing what assumably is Indian-inspired music.
It appears that the ad is directly promoting the fact that even the low-end Android One devices are getting the latest version of Google’s mobile OS. “Things just got even better,” the ad says. “Android One upgrades to Lollipop 5.1.” The ad finishes out with a “Always the latest from Google” tagline, furthering the point that the company wants to fully support Android One in terms of software.
Check it out:
Thanks, Fedor!
Android One, Google’s program focused on bringing high quality smartphones to developing markets at affordable price points, is expanding to Indonesia later this month, the company announced today. Indonesia will become the fifth country in which Google has rolled out the Android One program since the initiative was first introduced at Google I/O last year.
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Samsung today revealed its first Tizen-powered smartphone, dubbed the Z1. The phone was originally teased as the “Samsung Z” in June of last year, and was supposed to be available in Russia in Q3 2014, but faced delays that pushed the release back until the new year.
Rather than launching the Z1 in Russia, however, Samsung is instead opting to only make the device available in India for the time being. While the originally teased phone featured decent specs, the version that went to market today sports decidedly less advanced internals targeting the entry-level market.
Micromax (which recently launched the Yurkea smartphone under the brand name “YU Digital”), had an exclusivity agreement for using the Cyanogen OS in India, and took OnePlus to court earlier this month—banning them from selling their phone under order of the Delhi High Court. Now, it appears that very same court has had a change of heart, at least for now, and the ban on the OnePlus has been temporarily lifted (via India Times).
In a reprieve to the company, judges on Wednesday said the case “shall be heard and decided afresh”. The case will come up for hearing on January 7 under a single judge. “We dispose off the appeal, setting aside the impugned order dated December 16, 2014,” Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and RK Gauba said in their order on OnePlus’s petition, a copy of which was seen by ET.
Google announced an initiative called Android One earlier this year that intends to bring some affordable smartphones to emerging markets, and now the Mountain View company says that the program is expanding beyond India (where it launched earlier this year in September). As noted on the company’s Asia Pacific Blog, the next few countries that will be getting Android One are three of India’s neighbors: Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
In these countries — with a combined population of over 200 million people — a wide range of manufacturers and network partners such as Banglalink will begin to sell Android One smartphones. In addition to Micromax, Karbonn and Spice, Bangladesh’s own Symphony will launch their first Android One phone with the Symphony Roar A50. All these devices will give people a high quality mobile experience for an affordable price, running stock-Android with updates from Google.
This is the company’s first step at the “next 5 billion people” it says, with these three countries comprising more than 200 million of the world’s population. A variety of manufacturers will soon begin selling Android One devices in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, including Micromax, Karbonn and Spice. But Google also says that Bangladesh-based manufacturer Symphony will be also be launching their first Android One device dubbed the Symphony Roar A50.
Recently, Karbonn committed to a long-term partnership with Android One in India, and it looks like the company is ready to push some high quality, affordable phones to a few new countries.
You’ve heard about #AndroidOne. Watch out Bangladesh, Nepal & Sri Lanka— coming your way soon! http://t.co/BEOBLkP5c9 pic.twitter.com/4cqScdXseU
— Google (@Google) December 22, 2014
A new company being birthed from Micromax (similar to how OnePlus came from OPPO) called YU Digital has launched a new middle-tier smartphone today for the Indian market, and it runs Cyanogen OS 11—much like the OnePlus One. In fact, this entire launch seems pretty familiar, as it appears YU Digital is attempting to do with the Yureka exactly what OnePlus did with the One: launch a phone out of nowhere at a killer price and hope viral marketing does its thing.