Buying a smartphone has not been a smooth experience for a lot of users. It starts with researching and comparing the products, finding a product you like, selecting a store of choice from the many crowded stores, being pulled by the store promoters with puzzling alternatives and being pushed a product which you may not be intending to buy at the first place. We all have experienced this in one way or other. Apex Group has built an approach to tackle this tedious situation through Apex Digital.

Apex Digital has initiated the establishment of a chain of mobile phone stores referred as “smart stores”. The smart stores will be one of a kind experience stores where the customers will be able to touch and feel, and use the smartphones of different brands under the same roof. The stores focus on providing flexibility and convenience to the customers and ensure a smooth buying experience.

Two of the stores were opened today, one at the prime location of Pako,New Road and another at Thimi ,Bhaktapur. This chain of stores will not be limited within the valley. Three of its stores will be opened tomorrow at Dharan, Itahari, and Pokhara. Apex Digital plans expand its stores all over the country. Apex plans to expand upto 40 stores, within the next two years in a phase wise expansion strategy.

The store has several interactive booths for experiencing the phones. Each brand has been provided their own booth with their phones on display. Also, the flagship phones are placed at one booth. Upon picking up the phone and using it, the specifications of the phones are displayed on the interactive screen placed in front of each booth. On top of that upon holding two phones the interactive screen displays the comparisons between the two phones you have picked. Now that is something which we don’t experience on current stores.

Apex Digital has stated that customers will receive a variety of presents upon their purchase.Cash discount ranging from 5% to 50% will be given to the customers around the year as well as a tempered glass and a case, with every purchase.  Along with that customers will be given other gifts like cup, selfie stick, t-shirts, and lot more depending on their purchase. More to that,a lucky draw shall be conducted for a bumper prize. And this doesn’t stop here; customers will also be presented with Pamacare scents depending upon the purchase. Focusing on the large share of smartphone user which are students, Apex Digital plans to run an offer through which students would have a chance to study TOEFL, IELTS, SAT, GRE and GMAT for free.

Apex Digital has commenced a refreshing engagement in the current smartphone market of Nepal. Their determination is overwhelming and the accomplishment will most favor the customers who are eager for a hassle free shopping experience, for devices they seek. The smartphone market is booming at the current phase and the initiation of a nationwide chain of the smart store is definitely a turning point into a new direction. Apex Digital has focused on offering consistent as well as trustworthy service from their chain smart stores which seems promising to current customers not locally but nationally.

Facebook announced that messenger reached a Billion users mark early this year. This is a great achievement for any platform to have such a huge base of user profiles. Facebook is a global conglomerate and people all over the world use its services, and the messenger is the most used app from Facebook besides WhatsApp. But in the developing countries where internet connection are poor and people only use basic android devices, Facebook Messenger usually becomes unusable. So to tackle this problem and to expand the reach of messengers in every part of the world, Facebook today announced the trimmed down version of Facebook Messenger, the Messenger Lite as its campaign to connect the next Billion!

Messenger Lite is a slimmed version of the Messenger app without any compromises on the facility it provides. The Lite app has both SMS and messaging configuration, stickers, files, and other multimedia support. The app is just under 10MB so it is faster to install and operates more quickly. Not only that it also supports older devices, so my guesses are up to the devices that run Android Kitkat.

We have seen a similar release from Facebook earlier, the Lite version of the Facebook app, which has been successful to connect people with basic android devices. We all know how resource hungry the Facebook app and the Messenger app really is, which drags down the performance of our device. So the solution can be the lighter version of these apps, Facebook Lite and Messenger Lite. Both of these apps will also be useful when you’re not in a Wifi zone or you’re low on your data packs.

Messenger Lite is starting to roll out to people in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. We can look out for Messenger Lite in Nepal in the coming weeks.

In a market saturated with mid-range smartphones, Gionee has come up with yet another overkill mid-range phone. By the looks of it, the phone seems both premium and powerful. The newly announced S6 Pro is the successor to the last year’s Gionee S6, which was a pretty good phone for its price. The new S6 Pro comes with the full metal body, fingerprint sensor, 4GB of RAM and other specs to drool for, but there are some pros and setbacks compared to the last gen model.

Gionee S6 pro comes with a 5.5-inch display with 2.5D glass making the edges look seamless, but the screen lacks the Super AMOLED display from its predecessor, also the resolution is bumped up to full HD compared to 720p from last gen. The phone sports a unibody metal design for a premium look and feel; the body comprises of physical navigation buttons, the fingerprint sensor on the home button and houses a modest 3,130mAh battery under the hood.

Powering this device is the Helio P10 chipset clocked at 1.8Ghz, which is a fairly powerful midrange chipset used in devices like Elephone M3, Ulefone Future, and Oppo R9. Gionee S6 pro comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage, which is an upgrade from 3GB and 32GB storage from the Gionee S6.

When it comes to the camera, Gionee S6 Pro comes with 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) which will result in faster focus and better low light performance. Up front, it sports 8MP camera which is an upgrade from the 5MP camera of S6.

Gionee S6 Pro Specifications:

• 5.5 inches(1080 x 1920 pixels) @401 ppi
• Amigo OS 3.2 on top of Android OS, v6.0.1 (Marshmallow)
• Mediatek MT6755 Helio P10 Chipset
• Quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 & quad-core 1.0 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU
• Mali-T860MP2 GPU
• 4GB RAM
• 64GB Internal Storge, expandable up to 256GB
• 13 MP Rear Camera with f/2.0, phase-detection autofocus, LED flash
• 8MP Front Facing Camera
• Type-C 1.0 Reversible Connector (OTG support)
• Fingerprint Sensor
• Non-removable Li-Po 3130 mAh battery

Gionee S6 Pro is launched in Nepal with the Price tag of Rs.35,000.