On the day that Yu Televentures launched its flagship killer Yutopia at a mouth-watering price of Rs 25,000, LG has slashed the price of its Nexus 5X by Rs 2,000 to Rs 23,000.
With this, the Nexus 5X has seen two price drops since its launch in October at a massive price of Rs 32,000. The total price decline is nearly 30% in a matter of two months — unprecedented in India, even for Sony’s models.
The 5.2 inch phone is sold in India by Cloudtail, which is linked to Infosys founder Narayana Murthy.
The Nexus 5X was widely seen as extremely overpriced at the time of launch. The phone entered the Indian market along with the other Nexus device, Huawei 6P, which continues to carry the original tag of Rs 39,999.
However, unlike the 6P, which has the best hardware configuration in India including a 5.7-inch AMOLED display, the 5X came with mid-range specifications and a high-end price.
For example, the LG device came with a 13 MP camera, a full HD LCD display and a Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor.
Not surprisingly therefore, Yu — an online only brand associated with Micromax — chose to contrast the value offered by its latest phone — Yutopia — using examples such as the 5X. Before the price cut, the 5X and Yutopia were both priced at Rs 24,999.
For example, the Yutopia offers 4 GB of superior DDR4 RAM while the LG model has 2GB of the older DDR3 RAM.
The Yutopia comes with a 21 megapixel camera with Sony’s most advanced IMX230 sensor and optical image stabilization. Similarly, the Yutopia has 4 mln pixels (dots) on its 5.2 inch display, while the Nexus phone has only 2 mln pixels.
The only two things still going for the LG device was the brand name of the Korean company and Google’s promise of the phone having the most up-to-date software all the time.
But in a value-conscious country like India, the hardware divide was too much for most people to stomach.
However, the price cut indicates that LG intends to compete and doesn’t intend the device to be a showpiece only. The reduction also makes the phone a viable alternative to the OnePlus 2, also priced at Rs 23,000. While the OP2 comes with 3 GB of RAM and a 5.5 inch display, the 5X does offer Android Marshmallow and possibly better support than OP in India.
While availability was an issue with OnePlus Two earlier, that has been sorted now because of Yu Yutopia. With potential consumers waiting for the launch of the Yu device, the Chinese company was finally able to let go of the invite system and offer the OnePlus Two to anyone who wanted one.
Meanwhile, expect long delays in getting hold of the new Yu device as the company is unlikely to be able to meet the full demand at least for the next 2-3 months.