Google Pixel 2 now available in India

NEW DELHI: Tech giant Google on Wednesday said it has started retailing its flagship smartphone, Pixel 2 in the Indian market from Wednesday. Google had launched the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL in October this year. The devices, which compete in the premium segment with gadgets like Apple's iPhone 8 and X as well as Samsung's Note 8, will be available in markets like the US, the UK and Australia apart from India. Pixel 2 will be available in India on Flipkart (online) and through offline partners like Reliance Digital, Croma, Poorvika, Sangeetha Mobiles, Vijay Sales and others, Google said in a statement. Pixel 2 sports an aluminium unibody design with a hybrid coating and comes with IP67 water and dust resistance. Pixel 2 runs the latest Android 8 Oreo operating system (OS) and sports 5-inch full HD (1920x1080) AMOLED display. The smartphone is powered by top-notch Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor and 2,700mAh battery. In terms of camera specs, there is 12MP f/1.8 primary camera with optical and electronic stabilisation and an 8MP f/2.4 selfie camera. Pixel 2 comes pre-loaded with Google Assistant and a new feature called "Active Edge" that works when the phone is squeezed. Other features include front-firing stereo speakers, Wi-Fi 2.4/5GHz 802.11 a/b/c/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC. The phone uses an aluminium unibody with a hybrid coating, and is IP67 water and dust resistant. Pixel 2 64GB varient is priced priced at Rs 61,000. The 128GB version is available at Rs 70,000. Both the variants are available in "Just Black", "Clearly White" and "Kinda Blue" coloured variants. Google will bring its Pixel 2 XL (6-inch display) into the Indian market from November 15 onwards. In a separate statement, Google said its first Cloud Region has gone live in Mumbai, a move that will help the tech giant offer cloud platform services to developers and enterprise customers in India. The India region offers several services including compute, Big Data, storage and networking, Google said. "The new region will help customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area," Dave Stiver, Product Manager at Google Cloud Platform, said. He added that hosting applications in the new region can improve latency for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru compared to hosting them in the other closest region, Singapore. Google, however, did not disclose the investments made. The new Mumbai region joins cities like Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in Asia Pacific that house a similar infrastructure