TCL and Sony cancel their MWC 2020 press conferences, joining ZTE, LG and others

The spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (nCoV) has caused a humanitarian emergency. More than 40,000 people have been infected, with the death count climbing every day (currently, it’s 900+). The city of Wuhan and Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, have been in lockdown for the past three weeks. The WHO has classified the outbreak as a global health emergency. The cause and effect of the situation has led to the global supply chain being badly affected. Smartphone vendors such as ASUS and OPPO have warned of production problems with their phones. MWC 2020, scheduled to take place from February 24-26, has also been shaken by the outbreak, as companies such as ZTE, LG, Ericsson, Amazon, and NVIDIA have withdrawn from the event. Now, TCL and Sony have also announced they are canceling their scheduled MWC press conferences, throwing more doubt on the show’s schedule.

In a press release, TCL stated that due to the recent global concerns about the spread of the 2019-nCoV virus, and out of abundance of caution and care for its staff, customers, press, and other guests, it is canceling its global press event for MWC 2020, which was planned for February 22. This does not have an impact on any other planned MWC 2020 activities and TCL specifically notes that it will still announce its latest mobile devices and showcase them at its booth (Hall 3, Stand D311) from February 24-27 as scheduled. The company noted that it will continue to monitor the situation and share further updates as necessary. This means TCL, unlike LG, isn’t completely pulling out of MWC. ZTE is also following the same approach.

On a notice posted on its website, Sony said that it is taken the “difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain” as it places importance on the safety and well-being of its consumers, partners, media, and employees. The Sony press conference will instead take place at the scheduled time of 8:30AM CET on February 24, 2020 as a video via our official Xperia YouTube channel to share the company’s product announcements. In effect, it will be an online announcement instead of having a booth at MWC.

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WhatsApp Pay receives regulatory approval for operating in India

Back in 2017, we first found signs of a new payments feature in Facebook’s popular messaging app WhatsApp. In India, the UPI-based payments feature was briefly rolled out to a small number of users back in 2018. However, due to data localization issues with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a wider rollout was pushed back indefinitely. The company has been in constant talks with the government of India and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg also assured that the payments service would be launched in India soon. But late last year the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed the Supreme Court that WhatsApp Pay was still not compliant with India’s data localization norms and asked the NPCI to stop its deployment in the country. Now, it seems like WhatsApp has finally managed to iron out all the issues.

As per a recent report from Business Standard, WhatsApp has secured regulatory approval to launch its payments platform in the country in a phased manner. The NPCI has given the messaging platform the permission to operate WhatsApp Pay in the country, with a pilot run that will initially be extended to 10 million users. In a bid to get official approval, WhatsApp has assured the RBI and the NPCI that it will comply with the country’s data localization norms, which was the key reason behind the impending rollout. Sources familiar with that matter have revealed that, “If WhatsApp is able to fulfill the compliance requirements, the messaging platform will be able to do a full roll-out.”

As soon as WhatsApp is able to roll out its payments feature nation-wide, we believe that it will capture a huge chunk of the online-payments space. This is because WhatsApp already has a strong presence in India, with over 400 million users as of July 2019. Competitors like Google Pay and PayTM, who have invested heavily in marketing campaigns to dominate the space, might be left behind solely because of WhatsApp’s extremely large user base.

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Source: Business Standard

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OPPO Reno3 Pro 4G variant with 44MP dual-front cameras will launch in India soon

OPPO is the fourth largest smartphone vendor in India, ranking below Xiaomi, Vivo, and Samsung, and above Realme. The company’s Reno range of smartphones proved to be popular in the Indian smartphone market. The the OPPO Reno 10x Zoom competed with the OnePlus 7 Pro and other flagships in the online smartphone market, while the regular OPPO Reno and its successor, the OPPO Reno2, were more heavily marketed in the offline market. According to IDC, the Reno2 was a great seller in India in Q4 2019. It was succeeded in China by the OPPO Reno3 and the OPPO Reno3 Pro 5G. Both of these phones haven’t been made available in other international markets yet. Now, Tasleem Arif, Vice President at OPPO India, has officially confirmed that a 4G variant of the Reno3 Pro will be arriving in India soon. He also states that there is a pipeline of OPPO products which will be released with 5G versions in India this year. The Reno3 Pro in India, therefore, won’t be a 5G phone, which is just as well when considering the fact there are no 5G networks in India yet, and they probably won’t arrive until 2022.

Excited to share the most awaited news of 2020 – #OPPOReno3Pro with Expert Camera credentials is launching soon with 4G specifications in India. Moreover, there are a pipeline of products by OPPO which will come with 5G version in India this year!

— Tasleem Arif (@tasleemarifk) February 10, 2020

Separately, 91mobiles reports that the Reno3 Pro in India will come with a different set of specifications. The publication exclusively leaked a promotional banner for the phone. The major change will be that it will have a 44MP front camera in dual punch setup, joined by a depth sensor. This will be the first phone to have a 44MP front camera, but this isn’t the highest megapixel resolution for a front camera as the ASUS 6Z (ZenFone 6) uses a 48MP flip camera. The OPPO Reno3 Pro 5G in China, on the other hand, comes with a single 32MP front camera.

Source: 91mobiles

The banner confirms the presence of a 44MP dual punch-hole camera. The phone will be available in a Blue gradient color. Its rear cameras are expected to consist of a 48MP Sony IMX586 primary sensor, 8MP ultra-wide angle camera, 13MP telephoto camera, and a 2MP monochrome sensor. This is the same configuration as the China 5G variant.

The other major change will be the SoC. The 4G Indian variant of the Reno3 Pro won’t feature the 5G Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chip. 91mobiles doesn’t report the exact SoC, but our guesses include the 4G Qualcomm Snapdragon 730. The rest of the specifications are expected to be the same as the China variant. This means it’s expected to have a 6.5-inch curved Full HD+ OLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, a 4,025mAh battery with VOOC 4.0 30W fast charging, and Android 10-based ColorOS 7 out of the box.

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Source 1: Tasleem Arif | Source 2: 91mobiles

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Wi-Fi 6 support will pick up this year with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Android smartphones

Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 802.11ax is the latest Wi-Fi standard from the Wi-Fi Alliance. The new standard supports transfer speeds of up to 9.6 Gbps, which is more than double the maximum speed supported by Wi-Fi 5 (3.5 Gbps). However, only a handful of Android smartphones in the market today support the latest Wi-Fi standard, including the Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup, Galaxy Note 10 lineup, and the Galaxy Fold. This year though, we expect a number of devices to feature Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 865 SoC. The flagship chip from Qualcomm features an integrated QCA6391 chip that includes support for Wi-Fi 802.11ax and this is expected to promote widespread adoption of Wi-Fi 6.

A number of smartphone manufacturers have already started teasing Wi-Fi 6 support in upcoming smartphones. For instance, in a recent post on Weibo Nubia’s Ni Fei confirmed that the Red Magic 5G will include support for Wi-Fi 6. This announcement came shortly after Xiaomi executives confirmed that the Mi 10 series will also include support for the new Wi-Fi standard. Similarly, Chinese OEM ZTE has also revealed that the Axon 10s Pro also supports the standard. If you head over to the Wi-Fi Alliance’s website and filter the list of certified devices with those that are “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6”, you’ll find that the same is true for Vivo’s upcoming flagship as well. Therefore, it’s safe to say that Wi-Fi 6 support should be a standard feature in Android flagships this year. However, Wi-Fi 6 support in smartphones wouldn’t amount to much if there are no supported routers in the market. To that end, Xiaomi will also be releasing a Wi-Fi 6 enabled router soon. Although it’s unlikely that the company will sell it outside of China.

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Xiaomi’s Mi 10 teaser posters confirm 108MP quad cameras and curved display

Chinese OEM Xiaomi is expected to launch its flagship Mi 10 series at an online-only event on February 13th. At the event, the company will be showcasing the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro, powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 865 SoC and up to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM from either Micron or Samsung. We already have reason to believe that both the devices will also include Samsung’s 108MP ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor and that the higher-end Pro variant will support 66-watt fast wired charging. Now, Xiaomi has released a teaser poster for the launch event on Weibo confirming some of these details.

The latest teaser poster was shared by Xiaomi’s co-founder Lei Jun on his official Weibo page and it showcases the Mi 10 in all its glory. The poster confirms that the Xiaomi Mi 10 will indeed feature a 108MP primary sensor, along with three more camera modules on the back. Additionally, the poster also reveals that the device will feature a curved display, much like the one we expect to see on Samsung’s upcoming flagship S20 series. In a separate post, Jun also revealed that the Mi 10 duo will include support for UFS 3.0 storage. This will help the device achieve the fastest sequential write speeds of up to 730MB/s which is expected to help the device process the 108MP photos much faster than the Mi Note 10 from late last year.

But that’s not all, Jun has also revealed some key details about the cooling system on the Xiaomi Mi 10 in yet another post. The post highlights information shared by Xiaomi’s thermal design experts who have revealed that the Mi 10 will feature the largest (by area) VC heat-dissipating board in any smartphone. The heat-dissipating board is almost three times the area of the VC on the Mate 30 Pro 5G and it’s expected to greatly improve the Mi 10’s thermal performance. To improve the system’s efficiency even further, Xiaomi has made use of a Graphene heat dissipation material to move heat away from the core components of the flagships. The device will also include a total of 6 layers of graphite sheets covering almost the entire body, along with an independent graphite cooling solution for the camera and the flash. Rounding it all off is a large copper foil and thermally conductive gel that covers every single component inside the machine for optimal cooling.

Xiaomi’s Wan Teng Thomas has revealed even more details about the heat-dissipation design on the Mi Note 10, but from a software standpoint. In a post on the Chinese social media platform, Thomas reveals that along with the aforementioned heat-dissipation hardware, the Mi 10 will make use of software to analyze the temperature control point data and dynamically adjust the power consumption. This could, in effect, help the Xiaomi Mi 10 achieve unparalleled thermal performance.

What’s your take on the Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro? Do you think Xiaomi’s value flagships will have what it takes to compete with flagships from more premium brands?

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Source: Weibo (1, 2, 3)

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Samsung shows off its clamshell foldable Galaxy Z Flip two days before Unpacked

Just two days ahead of Samsung’s Unpacked keynote for 2020, the company has shared a teaser for its second foldable smartphone — the Galaxy Z Flip. The teaser in question was aired at this year’s Academy Awards and it shows off the phone in its entirety. We already had quite a bit of information about the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip, thanks to previous leaks, but now the company has gone ahead and confirmed some of the information.

Samsung just showed off the entire Z Flip during its Oscars ad. Small print says screen crease is normal, heh pic.twitter.com/uBesJ0FonT

— nilay patel (@reckless) February 10, 2020

The teaser showcases the Galaxy Z Flip sitting on a table at a 90-degree angle by itself, which suggests that users will be able to close the phone halfway, in order to use just the top half of the display for things like video calls. The video also shows the device folded all the way, but unlike the Moto Razr, it doesn’t seem to fold completely flat. Another difference between the Galaxy Z Flip and the Moto Razr is that the former will, most likely, have a crease running through the middle of the display. Samsung has included some small print in the app which says, “You may notice a small crease in the center of the main screen, which is a natural characteristic of the screen.”

Additionally, the ad also shows off the display on the outside, which is quite tiny but appears to have touch support and full-color output. The ad shows the screen displaying caller ID information for an incoming call, along with a slider for accepting or rejecting calls. We also get our first look at the two color options for the Galaxy Z Flip — purple and black. Samsung will officially release the device at the upcoming Unpacked event on February 11th. Along with the Galaxy Z Flip, the company will also be announcing its flagship Galaxy S20 lineup at the event.

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Via: The Verge

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Vivo plans to open 600 stores in 400 cities across India by the end of 2020

After a successful 2019, Vivo is planning to double down on its offline retail strategy in India. The company recently announced that it plans to launch 250 new exclusive brand stores in 2020 across the country. The announcement comes alongside the launch of Vivo’s experiential flagship store in Thane, Maharashtra. This new experiential center will allow users to experience all the latest offerings from the company including accessories and smart home devices in one place. The center will have dedicated interactive zones for gaming, VR and photography where Vivo’s various software features such as Ultra Game Mode and AI-powered camera processing will be on display.

Vivo says it plans to launch 20 more such experience stores across metro cities and state capitals. Along with the goal to open 250 more brand stores, Vivo aims to build a network of 600 exclusive stores by the end of 2020 to tighten its grip on the offline retail market.

“Keeping customer centricity at the core, we at Vivo strive to offer our customers unique retail experiences. The offline channel has been an essential part of our GTM strategy, and we shall continue to invest in this channel. We intend to launch more than 250 exclusive stores in 2020, taking the total number to 600.”

Nipun Marya, Director-Brand Strategy, Vivo India

In Q4 2019, Vivo overtook Samsung to become the second-largest smartphone brand in India, registering an impressive 76% YoY growth in 2019. The company’s aggressive push in online retail has also been successful. The online-exclusive Vivo Z and U series accounted for 20% of the total shipments in 2019, making Vivo the third-largest online brand in India. In the offline segment, Vivo is currently ranked number one with a market share of 24.7%. This focus on brand-exclusive stores comes on the heels of the competition such as Xiaomi and OnePlus tasting success with their own individual takes, as it allows them to showcase the entire comprehensive brand experience in one place to the customer.

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