| | | Good morning! The past few weeks, I’ve been embroiled in a rather unique review. One, of a phone that isn’t likely to be launched in India anytime soon, but is at the same time made sense because of its flagship spec composition. The Oppo Find X8 Ultra could have and should have been on the India portfolio alongside the Find X8 and Find X8 Pro, but for now, my experience has been with the China-spec version. That means, it’s the Chinese version of ColorOS without the Google apps that you and I are so familiar with in Android phones. One could always side load Google apps you say, and you’d be spot on, but it isn’t always as simple to turn an otherwise fantastic smartphone, presently listed for sale in the Chinese market, into one that delivers on expectations of users in other countries.  I’ll take you through the hardware, as the start point. At 8.78mm, this is thinner than its closest rival, the very impressive Xiaomi 15 Ultra that measures 9.35mm — both phones, have to find space for elaborate camera setups, which I’ll get into in a bit. The Find X8 Ultra is nice to hold, feels fairly well balanced and not as top heavy as one may expect it to be, whilst also adding to the visual element with a ‘Cosmos Ring’ around the camera module. The phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which so far is the flagship chip, along with 16GB memory, a 6.82-inch display, and a large 6100mAh battery. This specifically is a silicon-carbon composition, that delivers the sort of day-and-a-half stamina that you’d expect from this sort of capacity. The Find X8 Ultra is as reasonable as you’d expect a flagship phone to be, as far as multi-tasking and app behaviour is concerned. And equally true is the phone’s ability to transition some heat through the back, when you use the camera over an extended period of time.  Camera performance is where Oppo (and OnePlus) phones have a serious advantage with the Hasselblad expertise in the mix. It is a troika of smartphone brands which have found genuine value with camera makers providing inputs for their flagship cameras (Xiaomi with Leica and Vivo with Zeiss , being the other ones). In case of the Find X8 Ultra, the 50-megapixel quad consists of a wide (the highlight being, this is a still-rare 1-inch sensor), an ultra-wide and a periscope with 3x optical zoom for telemacro photos, and a longer periscope with 6x that is equivalent to 135mm focal length. The photography results, as far as an overall tonality is concerned, are a reminder of OnePlus’ flagships . This is elite category of photography focused flagships. Now to the primary stumble, which is the software that is specific for the Chinese market. It simply wouldn’t be useful in other countries. There is first the disconcerting sight of about 80% of the preloaded apps exclusively speaking back to you in Mandarin. It could be a case of muscle memory, but long pressing the power button kept invoking Oppo’s Breeno assistant (again an app that sticks to Mandarin) — you can get this configured to access Google Gemini but that’ll need a lot more work with third-party apps. It takes time to get this iteration of the Find X8 Ultra running close to how you’d curate your flagship smartphone experience, and at that point, the takeaway is very clear — Oppo must consider the Find X8 Ultra for more markets worldwide, including India. | | | | SUPERINTELLIGENCE My Tech Tonic column this week talked about what Meta’s trying to do with its new Superintelligence Labs. Lot of money is being used to fuel the company’s latest strategic move in artificial intelligence, which may well represent one of the most ambitious and expensive bets in the company’s history. Is it borne more out of Zuckerberg’s frustration with Meta’s less than ideal position in an AI race that also features OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Perplexity, than anything else?  (Premium): Tech Tonic | What is Meta’s play with the Superintelligence Labs? There have been some high profile hirings done by Meta for their latest aspiration realignment under Scale’s CEO Alexandr Wang, and after my column was written and before you read this, add another one to the roster over at Meta — reports suggest Apple’s foundation AI model leader, Ruoming Pang, will also be joining Mark Zuckerberg’s new team soon. A few days earlier, former Apple AI lead Daniel Gross confirmed his departure from Ilya Sutskever’s startup Safe Superintelligence Inc., reportedly to also join Meta’s team. But as I asked in my column, what is Meta’s play here? Meta’s Superintelligence Labs initiative has several important implications for the broader AI industry. First, it validates the growing consensus that AGI and superintelligence represent the ultimate competitive battleground in artificial intelligence. Second, it demonstrates that achieving these goals will require massive financial commitments and organisational focus that may be beyond the reach of smaller players. It is unlikely Superintelligence, or AGI, will be delivered in a DeepSeek-esque moment. Yet, there is no guarantee the collective approach will succeed. | | REALIGNMENT Perhaps a few years too late, but as India’s fiber broadband space is crying out for some competition and pricing value, Tata Play Fiber has finally stepped up with some pricing changes to its subscription plans. This comes weeks after Airtel realigned Xstream broadband plans and those changes marked an upward pricing trajectory. A snapshot of what Airtel did — eliminated the 200Mbps plan and instead replaced at the same price (that is Rs 999) with a 100Mbps plan that bundles streaming subscriptions including Netflix, Amazon Prime and JioHotstar. In many cities, Tata Play Fiber is going in the opposite direction. For instance, they’ve added a new 50Mbps Fiber-only plan that costs Rs 699 per month, and that’s something in savings compared with the same speed plans that bundle streaming subscriptions (those prices can get as high as Rs 950 per month depending on how many subscriptions you bundle). Snapshot: India’s mobile broadband subscribers (this would be 5G and 4G) according to the TRAI official data were pegged at 945.16 million in January this year, with a slight dip registered in February at 944.04 million, with March (944.12 million), April (943.09 million) and May (974.87 million) bringing slight volatility — and signifies slowing mobile subscriber growth to a certain degree. However, compare this with wired broadband figures — 37.04 million at the end of March this year, 37.41 million in April and 38.66 million reported at the close of May. The wired broadband numbers are just a small part of the overall connectivity puzzle. Something has to give. The thing is, it has been years since India’s broadband tariffs had any sort of a shake-up. In fact, the continuity has been reinforced by the launch of the 5G fixed wireless access services by Airtel and Reliance Jio, at the same price points as their wired broadband plans. It keeps bringing me back to the same point — India’s broadband subscriber base (I don’t consider having 5G on the phone as a ‘broadband’ connection at home or at work — the pandemic era has illustrated that in the real world) is growing very, very slowly. For a country that has great digital aspirations, that shouldn’t be the case. Something has to give, and rather than those token measures of pitiable plans that offer 10Mbps or 30Mbps speeds, the 100Mbps, 200Mbps, 300Mbps and 1Gbps plans need to go down the pricing ladder. But I’ll be honest, don’t see that happening anytime soon. | | | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | Written and edited by Vishal Shanker Mathur. Produced by Md Shad Hasnain. | | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
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