We’ve been able to confirm that Samsung will launch the Galaxy S4 in India on April 26, that’s this Friday. Earlier it was believed that the Galaxy S4 will launch on April 25th. The flagship Android smartphone from Samsung should be available at retail stores, both online and offline, in a few days from the official launch.

The Galaxy S4 is Samsung’s entry to the list of premium Android smartphones in the currently. The smartphone will compete with other handsets from Sony, LG and HTC amongst others. HTC has been slightly unlucky with its HTC One shipments lately and the smartphone won’t arrive in until before May. It will be a major setback for HTC since Samsung has a strong marketing nexus in the country and it’ll push its Galaxy S4 sales to the top. Or at least it’ll hope to.
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It seems like HTC is having a hard time shipping the HTC One to markets across the globe. A retailer has claimed that the HTC One will only arrive in India by May this year. That comes after a series of speculations that HTC India would launch the new flagship device in the country by the end of April. The HTC One would have met the Galaxy S4 at retail shelves across the country.

While it’s still not clear when the Samsung Galaxy S4 will launch in India, it seems to be headed for a late April launch here. That means Samsung will make the most of HTC’s shipping fiasco with consumers, hopefully, opting for the Galaxy S4 instead of the HTC One.
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The Nokia Lumia 720 is now selling in India at a price of Rs. 18,999. The Windows Phone 8 based smartphone is available for pre-orders on Flipkart, Snapdeal and eBay. It seems like the Lumia 720 will carry a MRP of the same amount. A retailer on eBay is selling the Lumia 720 for somewhere around Rs. 17,720. Nokia India had earlier announced both Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 in India. The latter is already available in India while Lumia 720 is expected to hit retail shelves across the country in the last week of April.

Even at a MRP of Rs. 18,999, the Lumia 720 seems like a good buy considering the Lumia 820 has been put up at Rs. 23,500 in India. Lumia 720 was announced at MWC (Mobile World Congress) earlier this year. The mid-range Windows Phone 8 based smartphone looks very good on paper.
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Samsung will launch the Galaxy S4 in India on April 25, according to a report by IBN Live. The new channel’s website quotes a source who believes that Samsung’s latest flagship device – Galaxy S4 – will launch on April 25 and will be available in the market by April 27 for “less than Rs. 40,000″. I highly doubt the pricing but the launch date seems realistic to me.

Samsung launched the Galaxy S III last year in India around the last week of May. The smartphone was priced at Rs. 43,180 (MRP) at launch. It’ll be really interesting if Samsung can pull off a price point of below Rs. 40,000, according to the report, for Galaxy S4 in India. It will be very hard considering the recent jump in excise duty for mobile phones above Rs. 2,000 in India.
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While there’s no official confirmation from Google or LG on the official launch of Nexus 4 in India, we’ll take anything that seems like a ray of hope. A listing for the Nexus 4 16GB smartphone has gone up on Indian online retailer Saholic, with a sweet “coming soon” signal. If the listing turns out to be true – Nexus 4 16GB will launch in India on April 20th, 2013 for somewhere around Rs. 30,000 ($546).

Yes, of course the listing doesn’t say the launch date or the pricing for that matter. But if you click on the “Tell Me When Available” button on the Nexus 4 listing, a small pop-up asks for your e-mail address and says, rather boldly, “Nexus 4 16GB will be available by April 20″. If you dig the source code for the page, the description says, “Buy LG E960 Nexus 4 16GB at 30000″.

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Lumia 720 was recently launched in India along with Lumia 520. Both the Windows Phone 8 smartphones are expected to hit retail shelves across the country by the end of April. A listing for Lumia 720 seems to have appeared on eBay India, accepting pre-orders for Rs. 16,399 (around $300). According to the listing, Lumia 720 is expected to Launch at a price tag of Rs. 16,990.

Nokia India is yet to announce an official price for the Lumia 720 in India but the company’s executives were comfortable in announcing that the phone will indeed come at a price that will be less than Rs. 20,000.

At the time of writing this, the eBay listing has been able to sell 20 Lumia 720 devices with more than 10 still remaining in stock. The seller is obviously cashing in on the uncertainty around the pricing of the Lumia 720 in India. However we don’t expect the price to be anything sweeter than 16,000 officially.

Lumia 720 is by far one of the most anticipated devices because of its price point as well as the value for money package that it looks to offer. The smartphone comes with a 4.3-inch IPS ClearBlack display. Lumia 720 runs on Windows Phone 8 operating system and is powered by a Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor clocked at 1GHz. It has a 6.7 MP rear camera and a 1.3 MP front-facing camera.

Via WPXBOX

Facebook just made a huge announcement for Android users. The company has launched Facebook Home – a free app on Android that offers a complete Facebook experience – or in other words a total smartphone hijack. Users can download and install Facebook Home on their Android smartphone and it will turn their smartphone into almost a Facebook branded device. It’s like plastering your smartphone with Facebook all over it.

An interesting feature included in Facebook Home is Chat Heads. Not butt heads but Chat Heads. The messaging feature, that integrated with both text and Facebook messaging, will allow users to send and receive messages on top of other apps. So if you’re doing something on your smartphone, you wouldn’t need to switch to messaging to reply to a text or a Facebook Message. It can be done on top of the app you’re currently using. Simple. Right? No.

Here’s what will make Chat Heads so annoying you’ll want to smash your friend’s head:
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Facebook just announced a new launcher for Android smartphones – Facebook Home. The announcement marks an end to all those speculations that pointed at the social network building its own smartphone device. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Facebook, announced that the company is just not interested in building a mobile operating system, neither the world’s most popular social network is investing in the mobile hardware business. Facebook has chosen the smart, and cost effective, way out – to exploit the open nature of Android and to build a launcher application that works for the company.

Facebook Home will be available as a free download on the Google Play Store starting 12 April. The launcher will be available on select devices at launch day while the company announced support for more devices and a strict monthly update cycle for Facebook Home. Mark also announced the Facebook Home program where it will partner with hardware manufacturers and mobile operators to bring Facebook Home to more devices in the near future. The company has collaborated with HTC and AT&T to launch the world’s first smartphone with Facebook Home available out of the box.
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According to a recent report by CMR India, 15.2 million smartphones were shipped in India for the calender year 2012. A total of 221.6 million mobile phones were shipped during the same time period. Smartphone shipments have shown a massive 75% growth in the second half of 2012 while overall the growth was marked at 35.7% for the entire year. The numbers speak for themselves.

While feature phones (read dumb phones) still sell more than smartphones in the country, a new wave of highly affordable range of smartphones will make these figures the opposite of what they are currently pointing at. Of course it will take some time before we see that but at the rate at which new smartphones are making their way in to the country, it won’t be a long wait after all.
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Nexus 4 is still officially unavailable in the country. But that doesn’t mean you can’t buy the Nexus 4 in India. There are a couple of ways you can get your hands around Google’s flagship Android smartphone. The Nexus 4 is probably one of the best Android smartphones in the market today, at a very attractive price tag. While its Indian launch has received a dull response from both Google and LG so far, the smartphone might launch on Google’s Play Store in a couple of months, if not weeks.

The Nexus 4 features a 4.7-inch WXGA IPS display at a resolution of 1280×768. The display has a Gorilla Glass 2 coating which makes it less prone to minor scratches and handling. The smartphone includes an 8MP primary camera and a 1.3MP front-facing camera. At its heart, the Nexus 4 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor supported by 2GB of RAM. The device runs on Android 4.2 and comes with 8GB and 16GB variants.

Till then, here’s how you can get your hands on a Nexus 4 in India:
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