Motorola's latest P30 smartphone is making headlines this week, but not for an impressive feature set or a unique design. As it turns out, Motorola has opted to copy the design of the iPhone X, resulting in an Android smartphone that's nearly identical to Apple's flagship device. The P30, which features a 6.2-inch display, is by far the most iPhone X-like Android smartphone that we've seen yet, with a frontal design that includes rounded corners, a notch that's similar to the iPhone X notch in size and shape, and an edge-to-edge design. There's a small bezel at the bottom, which is the only feature that distinguishes the P30 from the iPhone X. At the back, the P30 features a dual-lens camera setup in a vertical orientation much like the iPhone X, and it replaces the Apple logo with a Motorola logo that doubles as a fingerprint sensor. The colorful metallic body of the device is reminiscent of the Huawei P20, making the rear of the smartphone look like a P20/iPhone X hybrid. Black and white versions look a little more like the iPhone X, and Motorola has even been marketing the device with iPhone-style wallpapers. Motorola's P30 is available in China and isn't being distributed in the United States just yet, and while it has an iPhone X-style design, it is positioned as a mid-range device that's more affordable, perhaps attempting to lure customers who want the iPhone X look but aren't able to shell out $1,000. Inside the Motorola P30, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 chip, 6GB RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 3,000mAh battery. The two rear cameras feature 5 and 16-megapixel sensors while there's a 12-megapixel front-facing camera. Despite the notch, there's no front-facing facial recognition system. As The Verge humorously pointed out, the P30 looks so similar to the iPhone X that when doing a Google image search based on the P30, Google guesses that it's an iPhone X. Since the iPhone X launched last November, many Android smartphone makers have adopted the notched design to allow for maximum screen space to compete with the iPhone lineup. Smartphones from manufacturers that include LG, Leagoo, Huawei, OnePlus, Asus, Vivo, Oppo, and others have adopted the notch design. Even Google is set to copy the iPhone X's notch with the upcoming Google Pixel 3 XL, based on leaked images. Apple is planning to unveil three additional smartphones that use the notch design introduced with the iPhone X, and we're just a few weeks away from their debut. Based on rumors, we can count on a second-generation 5.8-inch iPhone X with an OLED display, a larger-screened 6.5-inch OLED iPhone that can be thought of as an "iPhone X Plus," and a 6.1-inch device with an LCD display and a lower price tag. play All three will feature an edge-to-edge display with a notch that houses a TrueDepth camera system, doing away with the Home button in the iPhone lineup. Apple is expected to introduce the new 2018 iPhone lineup right around the second week of September, perhaps on September 11 or September 12.<doc-sep>Get email updates with the day's biggest stories Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Smartphone fans have slammed Motorola ’s new P30 smartphone , dubbing it a ‘shameless’ copy of Apple ’s iPhone X . Like the iPhone X , the P30 features a ‘notch’ at the top of the display, as well as a vertical dual-lens camera on the back. Reviewers were quick to notice the similarities, and said the P30 was a ‘brazen’ rip-off of Apple’s smartphone. Technology blogger Marques Brownlee called it the ‘most shameless rip yet’, while Technobuffalo described it as an ‘egregious clone’. And Mashable pointed out that Motorola ‘even went so far as to adorn the screen with a wallpaper that's a dead ringer for Apple's default wallpaper.' Speaking to the BBC , Ben Wood, an analyst form the CCS Insight consultancy, said: “The growing number of identikit smartphone designs is a depressing trend and it's little wonder consumer apathy is on the rise and replacement rates are slowing. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel Play now "One starts to wonder whether Jony Ive's design group at Apple has become the de facto owner for the reference design for all high-end smartphones. "Phone makers need to innovate and find ways to differentiate if they want to maintain consumer desire to upgrade their phones.” Lenovo, who own Motorola, are yet to comment on the issue.<doc-sep>Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- As Covid-19 continues to ravage India, financial professionals across the country are grappling with an increasingly surreal disconnect between the epidemic’s devastation and a record-breaking boom in local markets.The world’s worst coronavirus outbreak has battered India’s economy and lifted its official Covid death toll to more than 318,000 -- a figure that experts say is likely a significant undercount.And yet investors continue to snap up Indian assets, fueling a 65% rally in the Nifty 50 Index over the past 12 months that has outpaced every other major equity benchmark worldwide. The measure’s surge to a record on Thursday has coincided with the fastest rate of Indian initial public offerings since 2017 and an unprecedented flood of foreign-currency bond issuance by local companies.While the combination of pandemic pain and financial-market euphoria is hardly unique to India, nowhere else has the contrast been so extreme.Bulls say the gains are justified by central bank stimulus at home and abroad, along with signs that the current virus wave may be peaking and optimism that India’s long-term economic growth potential will emerge from the crisis intact. Skeptics point to overly rosy earnings estimates and the risk of further outbreaks in a country where vaccination rates remain stubbornly low. India’s central bank weighed in on Thursday, warning in its annual report that the surge in stocks “poses the risk of a bubble.”What’s clear is that financiers on all sides of the debate are stretched thin. Booming markets have left the industry swamped with work at a time when many employees have been sickened by the virus. Some have had to franticly search for medical help after hospitals were overrun and oxygen supplies fell short. Almost everyone has at least one friend or family member who has died.“You feel numb, as if we are in the midst of a war and are losing people one after the other,” said Vikaas Sachdeva, the Mumbai-based chief executive officer of Emkay Investment Managers Ltd., who lost four members of his extended family to the virus.Sachdeva expects Indian markets to be volatile in the near term as investors weigh uncertainties around the vaccination program and the possibility of a third wave. His firm has been buying shares of Indian companies with “high quality” management, betting that the country’s long-term investment case remains intact.India’s $2.9 trillion stock market has been buoyed in part by resilient demand from international investors, who’ve purchased a net $34.9 billion of shares over the past 12 months. While they pared holdings in April and early May, buying by local mutual funds and insurance companies has helped fill the gap. A steady decline in reported Covid cases since mid-May -- along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to avoid another nationwide lockdown -- have added weight to calls for further market gains.Indian companies have taken advantage of the exuberance in markets to raise about $4 billion via public offerings since the start of the year, on track for the busiest first-half since 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.“The IPO boom is being driven by Indian technology companies coming of age with businesses doing better than expected,” said Sunil Khaitan, India head of global capital markets at Bank of America. “Tech companies are advancing their fundraising plans and financial sponsors also believe this is a good time to bring in public market investors in these companies amidst ample global liquidity.”Khaitan expects India IPO volumes to more than double in 2021 from the previous year.The surge in activity has left some financial firms scrambling to complete deals after employees were sidelined by the virus. The head of equity capital markets at a Mumbai-based investment bank, who asked not be named discussing private matters, said that at one point 25% of his 40-person group was infected.About 200,000 Indian bank employees have been infected and 1,200 have died since the pandemic began, the industry’s largest union estimated this month.Among the biggest risks for India market optimists is another virus wave. Just 3.2% of the population has been fully vaccinated, versus 39.7% in the U.S. and 10.1% in Brazil, according to Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Tracker.The Indian economy’s recovery from last year’s recession is already showing signs of sputtering. The country lost 10 million jobs in May, according to private research firm Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Among the 40 companies in the Nifty 50 index that have posted quarterly results so far, more than half have missed analysts’ estimates. While India’s central bank predicts the economy will grow at a 10.5% pace this fiscal year, other forecasters including S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service have recently cut their estimates to below 10%.“If this Covid situation keeps affecting newer areas and new strains keep emerging, then there is a problem for the near term,” said Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at HDFC Securities Ltd.Sachdeva, the Emkay CEO, said Covid will impact him and his colleagues in ways that go far beyond their work in finance. He’s reading “The Difficulty of Being Good” by Gurcharan Das, who writes about his search for a meaningful life.“The pandemic has brought about a change in many of us and we are more aware of things that matter most in life,” Sachdeva said. “We would though have to see if this is indeed a permanent change when life comes back normal.”(Updates death toll in second paragraph)More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.<doc-sep>
The Motorola P30 was announced earlier this week in parent company Lenovo's home country of China, and while the phone is a midrange device whose features and specifications are far removed from those of your average flagship handset, it appears that it's gaining attention for a rather unusual reason: it looks almost identical to Apple's iPhone X. With its 6.2-inch display, the P30 is slightly larger than the present-generation iPhone X, which has a 5.8-inch screen, but apart from the size difference and a few minor details, MacRumors opined that Motorola's newly unveiled device is a "blatant" copy and "by far the most iPhone X-like Android smartphone" its writers have ever seen. Likewise, Android Authority referred to the P30 as "one of the most shameless iPhone X ripoffs of the year" ahead of its launch. As far as iPhone X design similarities go, the P30 comes with rounded corners, an edge-to-edge screen setup, and a notch on the top portion that almost resembles that of Apple's 2017 flagship phone. According to MacRumors, it's only the thin bottom bezel that truly differentiates the P30 from the iPhone X in terms of design features. The physical similarities between the Motorola P30 and the iPhone X continue on the back, as the former phone has a dual-lens rear camera set up in an almost identical manner to the latter. Logo placement was also mentioned as another near-identical design feature, as the only difference between both phones is the Motorola logo on the P30 in lieu of an Apple logo. The logo on the P30, however, also functions as a fingerprint sensor, allowing Motorola's device to stand out in terms of technical features. Motorola is basically making an iPhone X that runs Android. But is that so bad? 🤔 https://t.co/kqbj5zB1yq — Android Central (@androidcentral) August 14, 2018 While MacRumors focused mainly on how the P30 resembles the iPhone X, The Verge highlighted one common design feature Motorola's new phone shares with another device, the similarly named Huawei P20. Both phones are sold in an unusual color scheme that allows the device to appear deep purple or blue depending on the lighting conditions, with Huawei calling its color variant "Twilight" and Motorola using the name "Aurora." At the moment, it remains unclear if or when the Motorola P30 will be sold in the United States, but both MacRumors and The Verge stressed that the device ships with basic specifications that aren't as impressive as Samsung's Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9, and other high-end phones. The P30 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor and 6GB RAM and comes with a 6.2-inch screen with 2246 x 1080 resolution, a 12-megapixel front camera, 16-megapixel and 5-megapixel rear cameras, and a 3,000 mAh battery. The Motorola P30 will be released in China on September 15, with pricing set at 2,099 yuan ($305) for the version with 64GB storage and 2,499 yuan ($364) for the 128GB variant.