Reliance Industries has made a slew of Jio announcements, ranging from the Jio Phone 2 to the much-awaited Jio GigaFiber broadband service. It is anticipated that the Jio GigaFiber service will bring affordable high-speed internet access to households across India. While Reliance Jio has refrained from revealing full details about its upcoming service, Jio GigaFiber registrations will begin from August 15 on the MyJio app and Jio.com.

In addition to these announcements, Reliance Jio also announced a new smart home solution that includes Jio GigaTV, security cameras, home appliances and more.

Reliance Jio announcements roundup

Jio GigaFiber

One of the biggest highlights of today’s Jio announcements is the Jio GigaFiber broadband service. Jio has been testing its internet service in a few cities in India for a few months now, but the company seems to be ready finally to launch it officially now.

According to Reliance Jio, the Jio GigaFiber service will be rolled out in 1100 cities across India, making it “the largest greenfield fixed-line broadband rollout anywhere in the world,”. The company has not revealed any tariff details yet, but old rumors have suggested that plans could start from Rs 500 for 100 Mbps speeds.

Jio GigaTV

Reliance Jio will also be offering a complete smart home solution tied in with Jio GigaFiber and GigaTV services. The Jio GigaTV set top box will be complemented by the JioTV, JioCinema and JioTV Video Calling apps – you can watch regular TV shows, stream movies and make multi-party video calls using a single set of connected solutions.

To complete a smart home setup, Reliance Jio will also be offering a range of Jio Smart Home Accessories like Door Sensor, Smart Plugs, Smart Speakers, Smart Doorbells, and more.

JioPhone 2

Reliance Jio also announced the JioPhone 2 running on KaiOS and featuring a QWERTY keypad, VoLTE, VoWi-Fi and LTE Cat.4 which supports download speeds up to 150 Mbps. The JioPhone 2 also includes dual SIM support, allowing buyers to use two SIM cards at the same time.

Coming to the other specifications, the JioPhone 2 features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 4-way navigation button, 512MB RAM and 4GB internal storage, which can be expanded up to 128GB using a microSD card. The phone runs on KaiOS and includes support for WhatsApp, YouTube and Facebook – users will be able to download these apps from the built-in app store.

The JioPhone 2 comes with a price tag of Rs 2,999 and will be available starting August 15th.

Jio Phone Monsoon Hungama offer

To make the JioPhone 2 even more interesting to prospective buyers, Reliance Jio has announced a new Jio Phone Monsoon Hungama offer. Under this offer, buyers can exchange their old feature phone and pay just Rs 501 for the new JioPhone 2, effectively giving a discount of Rs 2,498 to buyers. Additional offer details are not known yet, but Reliance Jio says these details should be updated on Jio.com soon.

http://www.techradar.com/news/heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-jiophone-2-gigatv-and-gigafiber

Apple has just designated the original Retina MacBook Pro as ‘vintage’, which means that Apple, and Apple Authorized Service Providers, are no longer obliged to provide service or parts for the laptop. 

If you’re still running an original Retina MacBook Pro and something goes wrong, then you may now find it trickier to fix, as Apple will no longer be providing support.

This applies to the mid-2012 model with a 15-inch display, but if you are in Turkey or California then you may still be able to obtain service and parts for the device due to local laws.

Apple devices that have not been manufactured by Apple for five years are designated vintage, while products that are older than seven years are deemed obsolete. Apple has a list of vintage and obsolete products on its website.

What should you do?

If you own a mid-2012 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, then you should still be able to contact Apple’s support team for help and software troubleshooting. However, if you rely on it for work, you may want to consider buying a new MacBook. Check out our list of the best Macs of 2018 for inspiration.

The late 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina hasn’t been designated vintage just yet, so you still have time to have it fixed and serviced, but that might not be the case for long.

http://www.techradar.com/news/the-original-retina-macbook-pro-is-now-vintage-according-to-apple

It very much looks like Microsoft has a cheaper set of Surfaces in the pipeline, and thanks to some excellent digging on the part of WinFuture, we now have a better idea of how the price will be kept down: with Intel Pentium processors.

The Intel Pentium Silver N5000, Intel Pentium Gold 4410Y and Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y will be the chips lined up for the new configurations of the Surface, according to WinFuture’s source. Apologies to anyone who was hoping for an Intel Core m3 chip, as it looks like you’re out of luck.

Those processors are likely to be combined with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, according to benchmarks on the web that might well be the new devices in testing. These specs could change before the new Surfaces see the light of day, of course.

Keep taking the tablets

A less expensive line of Surface tablets makes a lot of sense when you consider that Apple’s latest iPad comes in at $329/£319/AU$469. The opening price point for the upcoming Surface refresh is rumored to be in the region of $400 (about £300/AU$540).

Exactly when we’re going to see these new tablets remains to be seen – Microsoft has said nothing about them officially up to this point – but considering they’ve just popped up at the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the US, we’d say they’ll be showing up sooner rather than later.

The devices are said to have a screen size of 10 inches, and include USB-C ports, unlike the more powerful and more expensive Surface Pro. As soon as we’ve got any formal announcements from Microsoft, we’ll let you know.

Via The Verge

http://www.techradar.com/news/these-could-be-the-specs-inside-microsofts-new-cheaper-surface