Sale price extended! Grab headphones, earbuds, smartwatches and more at up to 70% off
You can still get up to 70% off on popular picks from brands like Samsung, OnePlus, Redmi, boAt, and others. This is the perfect time to bring home the gadgets you've been planning to buy, from daily fitness companions to wireless audio essentials. The extended sale includes both premium and budget-friendly options, making it easier to find something that matches your style and needs.
Many of these devices come with smart features like Bluetooth calling, health tracking, noise cancellation, and long battery life. But hurry, these extended offers are only available for a short time.
Sale prices extended on smartwatches
The Amazon Great Freedom Festival Sale may be over, but smartwatch deals are still going strong. Top models from Samsung, OnePlus, Noise, Fire-Boltt, and more are available at massive discounts of up to 70%.
These smartwatches bring calling features, health tracking, long battery life, and stylish designs at prices that won't pinch your pocket. From premium choices to budget-friendly picks, there's something for everyone. Don't miss this chance to grab your favourite wearable before the offers end.
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Prices slashed on earbuds
Prices have dropped on a wide range of earbuds from top brands like boAt, OnePlus, Sony, JBL, Noise, and more on Amazon. These limited-time deals bring you clear sound, powerful bass, and long-lasting battery life at prices that are hard to beat.
From basic models to advanced options with noise cancellation and touch controls, there's plenty to choose from. If you've been planning to buy a new pair, now is the time to shop before stocks run out.
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Deals on headphones
Amazon is still offering big discounts on headphones even after the Great Freedom Festival Sale. Popular picks from Sony, JBL, boAt, Boult, and other trusted brands are now available at up to 70% off. Choose from wired and wireless models with features like deep bass, clear calling, long battery life, and foldable designs.
Ideal for music, calls, or work-from-home use, these deals won't last long. Grab your preferred pair before the prices return to normal or stocks sell out.
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Amazon deals on smart rings
Smart rings are now part of the ongoing Amazon deals, with prices reduced on select models. These compact wearables offer features like activity tracking, heart rate monitoring, sleep analysis, and more, all packed into a lightweight design.
Brands like boAt and other emerging players have made these rings a popular choice for those who prefer minimal yet functional tech. Perfect for daily use, these smart rings are now more affordable than ever. Shop now before the limited-time offers come to an end.
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Amazon Great Freedom Festival Sale 2025 live now with top deals on best gadgets and save up to 70% on big brands
Sale prices extended Is the Amazon Great Freedom Festival Sale still live? The main sale has ended, but Amazon has extended discounts on select wearables like headphones, earbuds, and smartwatches for a limited time.
What kind of discounts can I expect on wearables? You can get up to 70% off on top brands such as Samsung, OnePlus, Redmi, boAt, and more during the extended sale.
Are these deals available on all wearable brands? No, the extended offers apply to select products and brands only. Availability and pricing may vary based on stock and location.
Are these products eligible for free delivery?
Yes, most wearables are eligible for free delivery, especially for Amazon Prime members. Delivery times may vary by location.
Disclaimer: At Hindustan Times, we help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and products. Hindustan Times has an affiliate partnership, so we may get a part of the revenue when you make a purchase. We shall not be liable for any claim under applicable laws, including but not limited to the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, with respect to the products. The products listed in this article are in no particular order of priority.
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Indian Express
4 hours ago
- Indian Express
Alexa got an AI brain transplant. How smart is it now?
For the last few years, I've been waiting for Alexa's AI glow-up. I've been a loyal user of Alexa, the voice assistant that powers Amazon's home devices and smart speakers, for more than a decade. I have five Alexa-enabled speakers scattered throughout my house, and while I don't use them for anything complicated — playing music, setting timers and getting the weather forecast are basically it — they're good at what they do. But since 2023, when ChatGPT added an AI voice mode that could answer questions in a fluid, conversational way, it has been obvious that Alexa would need a brain transplant — a new AI system built around the same large language models, or LLMs, that power ChatGPT and other products. LLM-based systems are smarter and more versatile than older systems. They can handle more complex requests, making them an obvious pick for a next-generation voice assistant. Amazon agrees. For the last few years, the company has been working feverishly to upgrade the AI inside Alexa. It has been a slog. Replacing the AI technology inside a voice assistant isn't as easy as swapping in a new model, and the Alexa remodel was reportedly delayed by internal struggles and technical challenges along the way. LLMs also aren't a perfect match for this kind of product, which not only needs to work with tons of preexisting services and millions of Alexa-enabled devices but also needs to reliably perform basic tasks. But finally, the new Alexa — known as Alexa+ — is here. It's a big, ambitious remodel that is trying to marry the conversational skills of generative AI chatbots with the daily tasks that the old Alexa did well. Alexa+, which has been available to testers through an early-access program for a few months, is now being rolled out more widely. I got it recently after I bought a compatible device (the Echo Show 8, which has an 8-inch screen) and enrolled in the upgraded version. (Prime members will get Alexa+ at no cost, while non-Prime members will have to pay $19.99 per month.) The New York Times recently announced a licensing deal with Amazon, which will allow Amazon to use Times content in its AI systems, including Alexa+. The Times is also suing OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Microsoft for alleged copyright violations related to the training of AI systems. I have good news and bad news for my fellow Alexa-heads. The good news is that the new Alexa+ is, in fact, more fun to talk to than the old one, with more realistic synthetic voices and a more humanlike cadence. (There are eight voices to choose from; I used the default setting, an upbeat female voice.) And I liked some of Alexa+'s new capabilities, such as booking a table at a restaurant and generating long stories and reading them to my 3-year-old. The new Alexa is also better at handling multistep requests. 'Set three kitchen timers for 15, 25 and 45 minutes' and 'write a one-day itinerary for a trip to San Diego and send it to my email' were two prompts that worked for me. And Alexa+ doesn't require you to say its wake word every time you talk to it, so you can go back and forth or ask it follow-up questions, which is a nice change. The bad news is that despite its new capabilities, Alexa+ is too buggy and unreliable for me to recommend. In my testing, it not only lagged behind ChatGPT's voice mode and other AI voice assistants I've tried but also was noticeably worse than the original Alexa at some basic tasks. When I asked Alexa+ to cancel an alarm the other morning — a request I had made to the old Alexa hundreds of times with no issues — it simply ignored me. When I emailed a research paper to alexa@ in order to hear Alexa+ summarize it while I washed the dishes, I got an error message saying the document couldn't be found. Alexa+ also hallucinated some facts and made some inexplicable errors. When I asked it to look up Wirecutter's recommended box grater and add it to my Amazon cart, it responded that 'according to Wirecutter, the best box grater is the OXO Good Grips Box Grater.' Wirecutter's actual box grater pick is the Cuisipro 4-Sided Box Grater. Luckily, I caught the mistake before ordering. When I asked Alexa+ to walk me through installing a new AI model on my laptop, it got tripped up and started repeating, 'Oh, no, my wires got crossed.' And I didn't have access to some of the new Alexa+ features Amazon advertised, such as a 'routine' feature that triggers several different actions when a user enters a room. (I wanted to have Alexa+ greet me in the mornings with a motivational speech and a high-volume rendition of 'Eye of the Tiger,' but the presence-sensing feature hasn't been turned on yet, according to an Amazon spokesperson.) Daniel Rausch, the Amazon vice president who oversees Alexa and Echo, told me in a recent podcast interview that many of these flaws would be fixed soon as Alexa+ rolled out more widely and more of its features came online. 'We've got some edges to sand,' he said. Alexa, Give Me 500 Words on the History of Kitchen Timers Rausch said the biggest challenge in building generative AI models into Alexa was that they were fundamentally different types of systems. The old Alexa, he said, was built on a complicated web of rule-based, deterministic algorithms. Setting timers, playing songs on Spotify, turning off the lamp in your living room — all of these features required calling up different tools and connecting with different interfaces, and they all had to be programmed one by one. Adding generative AI to Alexa forced Amazon to rebuild many of these processes, Rausch said. Large language models, he said, are 'stochastic,' meaning they operate on probabilities rather than a strict set of rules. That made Alexa more creative but less reliable. It also made the voice assistant slow. Rausch recalled an early internal demo in which Alexa+ took more than 30 seconds to play a song — an 'excruciating' delay, he said, that led the team to rethink its approach. 'These models are slow to respond when they're following a deep set of instructions,' he said. 'We're asking them to do something quite hard.' Another challenge to overcome, Rausch said, was generative AI's wordiness. Initially, when engineers hooked Alexa up to large language models, the system would sometimes produce long, verbose answers or introduce needless complexity. Alexa+ might respond to a user's request for a 10-minute kitchen timer with a 500-word essay about the history of kitchen timers. The solution, Rausch said, was to spend several years combining more than 70 AI models — some Amazon's proprietary models and some from outside providers, like Anthropic's Claude — into a single, voice-based interface, with an orchestration system that routes a user's request to the model that is best suited to handle it. 'The magic, when it is working really well, is to get those new ways of speaking to Alexa to interface with those predictable outcomes or behaviors,' he said. There are other barriers, too. One of them, Rausch said, is that many longtime users have learned how to 'speak Alexa,' phrasing their daily requests in familiar commands that they know the system will understand. 'We all sort of came up with our way of setting a timer to get the pasta done on time,' he said. But Alexa+ processes language in a more fluid way. Users can talk to it as they would talk to a human — no robot pidgin required — and that may necessitate some retraining. I assume that many of the flaws will be ironed out and that most users will acclimate to the new way of speaking to Alexa+. I'm also inclined to cut Amazon some slack, since building LLM-based technology into a reliable voice assistant seems like a thorny technical problem, and it's not like anyone else has solved it. (Apple, which has been struggling to give Siri an AI upgrade for years, certainly hasn't.) I also don't think the limitations of Alexa+ suggest that generative AI models are inherently unreliable or that they'll never work as personal voice assistants. Ultimately, I think it's just really hard to combine generative AI with older, legacy systems — a lesson many companies, both inside and outside tech, are learning the hard way right now — and it's going to take some time to work out all the kinks. For now, I'm going to downgrade my devices to the older, less intelligent version of Alexa and leave the beta testing to others. With AI, as with humans, sometimes raw intelligence matters less than how you use it.
Time of India
5 hours ago
- Time of India
Alexa got an AI brain transplant: How smart is it now
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads For the last few years, I've been waiting for Alexa 's AI glow-up.I've been a loyal user of Alexa, the voice assistant that powers Amazon 's home devices and smart speakers, for more than a decade. I have five Alexa-enabled speakers scattered throughout my house, and while I don't use them for anything complicated -- playing music, setting timers and getting the weather forecast are basically it -- they're good at what they since 2023, when ChatGPT added an AI voice mode that could answer questions in a fluid, conversational way, it has been obvious that Alexa would need a brain transplant -- a new AI system built around the same large language models, or LLMs, that power ChatGPT and other products. LLM-based systems are smarter and more versatile than older systems. They can handle more complex requests, making them an obvious pick for a next-generation voice agrees. For the last few years, the company has been working feverishly to upgrade the AI inside Alexa. It has been a slog. Replacing the AI technology inside a voice assistant isn't as easy as swapping in a new model, and the Alexa remodel was reportedly delayed by internal struggles and technical challenges along the way. LLMs also aren't a perfect match for this kind of product, which not only needs to work with tons of preexisting services and millions of Alexa-enabled devices but also needs to reliably perform basic finally, the new Alexa -- known as Alexa+ -- is here. It's a big, ambitious remodel that is trying to marry the conversational skills of generative AI chatbots with the daily tasks that the old Alexa did which has been available to testers through an early-access program for a few months, is now being rolled out more widely. I got it recently after I bought a compatible device (the Echo Show 8, which has an 8-inch screen) and enrolled in the upgraded version. (Prime members will get Alexa+ at no cost, while non-Prime members will have to pay $19.99 per month.)The New York Times recently announced a licensing deal with Amazon, which will allow Amazon to use Times content in its AI systems, including Alexa+. The Times is also suing OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Microsoft for alleged copyright violations related to the training of AI systems.I have good news and bad news for my fellow good news is that the new Alexa+ is, in fact, more fun to talk to than the old one, with more realistic synthetic voices and a more humanlike cadence. (There are eight voices to choose from; I used the default setting, an upbeat female voice.)And I liked some of Alexa+'s new capabilities, such as booking a table at a restaurant and generating long stories and reading them to my new Alexa is also better at handling multistep requests. "Set three kitchen timers for 15, 25 and 45 minutes" and "write a one-day itinerary for a trip to San Diego and send it to my email" were two prompts that worked for Alexa+ doesn't require you to say its wake word every time you talk to it, so you can go back and forth or ask it follow-up questions, which is a nice bad news is that despite its new capabilities, Alexa+ is too buggy and unreliable for me to recommend. In my testing, it not only lagged behind ChatGPT's voice mode and other AI voice assistants I've tried but also was noticeably worse than the original Alexa at some basic I asked Alexa+ to cancel an alarm the other morning -- a request I had made to the old Alexa hundreds of times with no issues -- it simply ignored I emailed a research paper to alexa@ in order to hear Alexa+ summarize it while I washed the dishes, I got an error message saying the document couldn't be also hallucinated some facts and made some inexplicable errors. When I asked it to look up Wirecutter 's recommended box grater and add it to my Amazon cart, it responded that "according to Wirecutter, the best box grater is the OXO Good Grips Box Grater." Wirecutter's actual box grater pick is the Cuisipro 4-Sided Box Grater. Luckily, I caught the mistake before ordering. When I asked Alexa+ to walk me through installing a new AI model on my laptop, it got tripped up and started repeating, "Oh, no, my wires got crossed."And I didn't have access to some of the new Alexa+ features Amazon advertised, such as a "routine" feature that triggers several different actions when a user enters a room. (I wanted to have Alexa+ greet me in the mornings with a motivational speech and a high-volume rendition of "Eye of the Tiger," but the presence-sensing feature hasn't been turned on yet, according to an Amazon spokesperson.)Daniel Rausch , the Amazon vice president who oversees Alexa and Echo, told me in a recent podcast interview that many of these flaws would be fixed soon as Alexa+ rolled out more widely and more of its features came online."We've got some edges to sand," he said the biggest challenge in building generative AI models into Alexa was that they were fundamentally different types of old Alexa, he said, was built on a complicated web of rule-based, deterministic algorithms. Setting timers, playing songs on Spotify, turning off the lamp in your living room -- all of these features required calling up different tools and connecting with different interfaces, and they all had to be programmed one by generative AI to Alexa forced Amazon to rebuild many of these processes, Rausch said. Large language models, he said, are "stochastic," meaning they operate on probabilities rather than a strict set of rules. That made Alexa more creative but less also made the voice assistant slow. Rausch recalled an early internal demo in which Alexa+ took more than 30 seconds to play a song -- an "excruciating" delay, he said, that led the team to rethink its approach."These models are slow to respond when they're following a deep set of instructions," he said. "We're asking them to do something quite hard."Another challenge to overcome, Rausch said, was generative AI's wordiness. Initially, when engineers hooked Alexa up to large language models, the system would sometimes produce long, verbose answers or introduce needless complexity. Alexa+ might respond to a user's request for a 10-minute kitchen timer with a 500-word essay about the history of kitchen solution, Rausch said, was to spend several years combining more than 70 AI models -- some Amazon's proprietary models and some from outside providers, like Anthropic's Claude -- into a single, voice-based interface, with an orchestration system that routes a user's request to the model that is best suited to handle it."The magic, when it is working really well, is to get those new ways of speaking to Alexa to interface with those predictable outcomes or behaviors," he are other barriers, too. One of them, Rausch said, is that many longtime users have learned how to "speak Alexa," phrasing their daily requests in familiar commands that they know the system will understand."We all sort of came up with our way of setting a timer to get the pasta done on time," he Alexa+ processes language in a more fluid way. Users can talk to it as they would talk to a human -- no robot pidgin required -- and that may necessitate some retraining.I assume that many of the flaws will be ironed out and that most users will acclimate to the new way of speaking to Alexa+. I'm also inclined to cut Amazon some slack, since building LLM-based technology into a reliable voice assistant seems like a thorny technical problem, and it's not like anyone else has solved it. ( Apple , which has been struggling to give Siri an AI upgrade for years, certainly hasn't.)I also don't think the limitations of Alexa+ suggest that generative AI models are inherently unreliable or that they'll never work as personal voice assistants. Ultimately, I think it's just really hard to combine generative AI with older, legacy systems -- a lesson many companies, both inside and outside tech, are learning the hard way right now -- and it's going to take some time to work out all the now, I'm going to downgrade my devices to the older, less intelligent version of Alexa and leave the beta testing to others. With AI, as with humans, sometimes raw intelligence matters less than how you use it.
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Business Standard
6 hours ago
- Business Standard
US inflation likely to rise in July as higher tariffs drive up prices
By Vince Golle and Craig Stirling US consumers probably experienced a slight pickup in underlying inflation in July as retailers gradually raised prices on a variety of items subject to higher import duties. The core consumer price index, regarded as a measure of underlying inflation because it strips out volatile food and energy costs, rose 0.3 per cent in July, according to the median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists. In June, core CPI edged up 0.2 per cent from the prior month. While that would be the biggest gain since the start of the year, Americans — at least those who drive — are finding some offset at the gas pump. Cheaper gasoline probably helped limit the overall CPI to a 0.2 per cent gain, the government's report on Tuesday is expected to show. Higher US tariffs have started to filter through to consumers in categories such as household furnishings and recreational goods. But a separate measure of core services inflation has so far remained tame. Still, many economists expect higher import duties to keep gradually feeding through. That's the dilemma for Federal Reserve officials who've kept interest rates unchanged this year in hopes of gaining clarity on whether tariffs will lead to sustained inflation. At the same time, the labor market — the other half of their dual policy mandate — is showing signs of losing momentum. As concerns build about the durability of the job market, many companies are exploring ways to limit the tariff pass-through to price-sensitive consumers. Economists expect government figures on Friday to show a solid gain in July retail sales as incentives helped fuel vehicle purchases and Amazon's Prime Day sale drew in online shoppers. What Bloomberg Economics Says: 'One reason firms are having trouble hiking prices is that households' real disposable income growth has been dismal — running at a third of the pandemic peak. Incorporating payroll revisions, we estimate that real income growth actually contracted in June. Yet nominal retail sales were likely robust in July. We caution against equating a strong headline print with resilient consumption.' —Anna Wong, Stuart Paul, Eliza Winger, Estelle Ou and Chris G. Collins, economists. Excluding auto dealers, economists have penciled in a more moderate advance. And when adjusted for price changes, the retail sales figures will likely underscore an uninspiring consumer spending environment. Among other economic data in the coming week, a Fed report is likely to show stagnant factory output as manufacturers contend with evolving tariffs policy. A preliminary trade truce between the US and China is set to expire on Tuesday, but a move to extend the detente is still possible. The Bank of Canada will release a summary of the deliberations that led it to hold its benchmark rate at 2.75 per cent for a third consecutive meeting; it also left the door open to more cuts if the economy weakens and inflation is contained. Home sales data for July will reveal whether sales gains continued for a third straight month. Elsewhere, several Chinese data releases, gross domestic product readings for the UK and Switzerland, and a possible rate cut in Australia are among the highlights. Asia Asia has a hectic data calendar, led by a wave of Chinese indicators, GDP reports from several economies, and a closely-watched rate decision in Australia. The week will see credit numbers from China, which will be assessed for signs that policymakers' efforts to revive economic growth are beginning to bear fruit. Money supply data will offer a complementary signal on underlying liquidity conditions. On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia is poised to lower policy rates for a third time this year after second-quarter inflation cooled further. A gauge of Australian business confidence due the same day will offer a timely read on sentiment heading into the second half. Wednesday brings Australia's wages data, followed by the employment report on Thursday. India reports CPI data on Tuesday, which will likely show prices cooled further in July from a year ago. Wholesale prices follow on Thursday, and will indicate whether cost pass-through remains muted. Trade figures during the week will show how strong India's external sector was before Trump imposed an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods over its ongoing purchases of Russian energy, taking the total import levy to 50 per cent. On Wednesday, Thailand's central bank is expected to cut rates amid subdued price pressures and weak economic growth. The same day, New Zealand releases retail card spending data, South Korea publishes its unemployment rate for July, and Japan releases its producer price index — a gauge of wholesale inflation. China's big reveal comes on Friday, with a suite of July activity data including industrial production, retail sales, fixed asset investment, and jobless figures. Also on Friday, Japan publishes preliminary estimates of second-quarter GDP, with forecasts suggesting the country likely avoided a recession. Europe, Middle East, Africa The UK will take prominence again with some key data reports. Following Thursday's Bank of England rate cut, after which officials said they're on 'alert' for second-round effects from a spike in inflation, wage data will be released on Tuesday. Economists anticipate a slight slowdown in pay growth for private-sector workers. Meanwhile, second-quarter GDP is expected to show economic momentum slowing sharply after a growth spurt at the start of the year, meshing with the BOE's view that the economy has started to show more slack. Much of continental Europe will be on holiday on Friday, and data may be sparse too. Germany's ZEW index of investor sentiment comes on Tuesday. In the wider euro region, a second take of GDP, along with June industrial production, will be published on Thursday. In Switzerland, still reeling from Trump's imposition of a 39 per cent tariff, initial data on Friday may reveal that the economy suddenly contracted in the second quarter, even before that trade shock hit. Norwegian inflation is set for Monday. Three days later, the central bank in Oslo is likely to keep its rate at 4.25 per cent after its first post-pandemic cut in June surprised investors. Recent data included weaker retail sales, rising unemployment and gloomier industrial sentiment, though price pressures have also appeared to be stickier. Most economists expect two more quarter-point cuts in Norway this year, in September and December. Some monetary decisions are also due in Africa: On Tuesday, Kenya's central bank will probably adjust the key rate lower for a seventh straight time, from 9.75 per cent, with inflation expected to remain below the 5 per cent midpoint of its target range in the near term. Uganda's policymakers will probably leave their rate at 9.75 per cent to gauge the impact of US tariffs on inflation and keep local debt and swaps attractive to investors. On Wednesday, the Bank of Zambia may cut borrowing costs. Its real interest rate is the highest in six years, with the spread between the policy benchmark and the annual inflation rate at 1.5 percentage points in July after price growth eased. Namibia may also lower its rate, to 6.5 per cent from 6.75 per cent, in a bid to boost the economy. Inflation there is near the floor of its 3 per cent to 6 per cent target range. In Russia on Wednesday, analysts expect inflation to have fallen below 9 per cent in July from 9.4 per cent a month earlier. Turkish central bank Governor Fatih Karahan will present the latest 2025 inflation outlook at a quarterly meeting on Thursday. And finally, on Friday in Israel, inflation is expected to have eased to 3.1 per cent in July from 3.3 per cent a month earlier. Latin America Brazil's central bank gets the week rolling with its Focus survey of market expectations. Analysts have been slowly trimming their consumer price forecasts, but all estimates remain well above the 3 per cent target through the forecast horizon. Data on Tuesday should show that Brazilian consumer prices for July ticked down ever so slightly from June's 5.35 per cent print, substantiating the central bank's hawkish rate hold at 15 per cent on July 30. Chile's central bank on Wednesday publishes the minutes of its July 29 meeting, at which policymakers delivered their first cut of 2025, voting unanimously for a quarter-point reduction, to 4.75 per cent. The post-decision statement maintained guidance for more monetary easing in the coming quarters due to a weak labor market and slowing inflation. Also due on Wednesday is Argentina's July consumer prices report. Analysts surveyed by the central bank expect a slight uptick in the monthly reading from June's 1.6 per cent, with the year-on-year figure drifting lower from 39.4 per cent. Inflation in Peru's megacity capital of Lima has been below the 2 per cent midpoint of the central bank's target range all year, but the early consensus expects the central bank to keep its key rate unchanged at 4.5 per cent for a third straight meeting. Colombia is all but certain to have posted an eighth straight quarter of growth in the three months through June. The nation's central bank, which in June highlighted that the economy had gained momentum, is forecasting a 2.7 per cent rise in GDP this year and 2.9 per cent in 2026, up from 1.7 per cent in 2024.
