Saturday, October 18, 2014

Motorola Nexus 6

The Motorola Nexus 6

Nexus 6 phones with Monument Valley screenshot
Google just unveiled its newest smartphone, the Nexus 6, and for those of you wondering, yes it does have a six inch screen. The Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9 will be the first two devices to ship with Android Lollipop out of the box. The phone is made by Motorola which is apparent.
Most people were put off by the fact that the Nexus 6 has a 5.92" screen but in reality the bezels on the screen are not very large and the phone is actually as tall as the iPhone 6 Plus. The phone looks like a blown up Moto X with the same design and materials. The phone continues with the same camera as the Moto X with the same ring flash. This is the first Nexus device with explicit branding of the maker in the form of the Motorola dimple in the back of the phone.
The screen of the Nexus 6 is a 6 inch Quad HD (or 2K) display AMOLED screen that gives high contrasts and deep blacks. The most amazing part of the Nexus 6 apart from the screen is the Snapdragon 805 processor clocked at 2.7 GHz that is backed by 3GB of RAM. This makes the Nexus 6 a monster of a device in every field possible. The phone comes with the signature front firing speakers of the other Moto devices. The device comes with a 3220 mAh battery that should last even the power users a whole day without dying on them.
On the whole the Nexus 6 is great if you like large phones, as it lets the designers fit a larger screen and battery in the device. 

Thursday, October 16, 2014

HTC Nexus 9


HTC Nexus 9




The Nexus 9 was unveiled along with the Nexus 6 and the Android TV. It is the first tablet running Lollipop (Android 5.0). This tablet is a blend of the Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10. The most eye catching features is the thin bezel and brushed metal sides.

This phone packs an 8.9" 1536x2048 display (just like the iPads with retina display) with a pixel density of 281 ppi.  It uses a quad core 64-bit Tegra K1 processor, 2.3 GHz with 2GB of RAM and uses a 192-core Kepler GPU. It has an 8 MP rear camera capable of shooting video in 1080p at 30 fps and a 1.6 MP front facing camera. It also has an LED flash. It uses a 6700 mAh battery.
This tablet also has the Boom Sound speakers found in most of HTC's devices which produces great sound quality.
HTC has also designed a keyboard case for the Nexus 9 that helps boost productivity and usability.

Pre-orders for the Nexus 9 starts on October 17th and releases on November 3rd. The Wifi-only 16GB model retails for $399, 32GB Wifi-only model retails for $479 and the 32GB LTE model retails for $599.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Samsung Galaxy Alpha

The Galaxy Alpha

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is a flash of light in new direction for the company. The company is now focusing on the design of their phones which was one of the sour points of Samsung phones for a while. Gone are the fake metal bands around the phone, that are now replaced by real aluminium bands all around the sides.
The phone feels great in the hand and the cold aluminium makes the device feel all the more premium. The back is still a removable plastic panel but it has a new rubbery finish. There are subtle curve on the left and right of the phone that makes the phone fit nicely in the hand. The buttons are thin but very clicky and tactile. The heart rate monitor on the back is now to the side of the camera module compare to it being under the camera in the Samsung Galaxy S5. It is no longer an indent in the phone rather it is flush with the back of the phone.
The phone comes with a 720p 4.7" display that is not the best in terms of pixel density but is vivid and has high levels of contrast as all Samsung displays do. The speaker grill on the phone is at the bottom of the phone and is easy to cover. The camera is a 12 MP snapper that has the usual Samsung camera interface that lets you take some crazy shots. The home button doubles as the fingerprint scanner that you have to slide your finger over. It has been improved and the success rate of it working has increased.
This phone does not come with expandable storage, has a 4.7" screen and uses a nano SIM, hinting that it is an alternative to the iPhone. Many would say that the device is underpowered and lacks flagship specs, but this is not aimed at spec heads. This phone is meant to impress the average Joe who wants a good looking and feeling phone.
The phone costs $659 in the US and 39990 in India.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

HTC Desire EYE

HTC Desire Eye

The HTC desire eye is the ultimate selfie cam-phone. It is the rumoured 13 MP camera HTC phone. Most thought it would be the back camera that was getting the spec boost, and it did, but the phone has the same camera facing forward. This is HTC's attempt to tap into the selfie crowd. The phone was supposed to have a metal chassis, like the One M8, but now we know it has a plastic casing.

The Desire EYE has a nicely designed body with the signature Boom Sound speakers which are now hidden between the chin of the phone and the screen and between the bezel and the screen in the top. Both cameras have a dual LED flash. The Desire has a 5.2" 1080p display which is sharp and bright. It does not have the metal build that many people wanted, but it has a polycarbonate frame that is IPX7 certified. This means it is waterproof but not dust proof.

The phone runs Android KitKat with HTC's skin on it (HTC Sense), so it gets the new Blinkfeed for news and entertainment.

There are still rumours of a One M8 with a 13 MP camera, but we have to wait and see if it is true or not.

Update: Looks like the HTC One M8 Eye rumours are true, but it's only available in Asian markets. Nothing has been said about the phone releasing in Indian and North American markets yet.
Here is the link for the HTC One M8 Eye: http://eshop.htc.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Banner03?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-7

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Moto G 2nd gen

The Moto G 2nd gen

Motorola Moto G (2014)


Motorola's middle range phone has gotten a refresh to keep with the times. Facing stiff competition from smaller OEMs in developing markets like India, Motorola has had to refresh the Moto G to keep the masses interested.

The phone continues Motorola's family look. It has the Motorola dimple and the curved back that lets it fit perfectly in the hand.

The Moto G now has a 5" display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The phone now gets front facing speakers that give stereo sound. The Moto G is powered by the same Snapdragon 400 processor as before.The camera on the Moto G is an 8 MP camera that is an upgrade from last year's 5 MP camera. It gets a 2 MP front camera that is good for Skype calls and the occasional selfie. A big bonus for the Indian market is the addition of a microSD card slot, which allows expandability upto 32 GB of space.

There is not much different in the new Moto G from last years model. Motorla has stuck to the basics and has given us yet another well engineered phone that should be more than enough to keep the average consumer happy. The added Motorola logo adds a sense of reliability to the phone and should boost the sales of this phone.

This phone runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat and is upgradable to Android Lollipop when it releases.




Review


I've been using the new Moto G for almost a month now. The first thing I noticed when I held the phone was how comfortable the back shell was and how it snugly fit in my hand. So far, I have never encountered any stutter or lag. None of the apps have crashed- not even once. KitKat runs smoothly and stock android is just beautiful.

The 720p display is decent. I use an iPad with a retina display and I feel the displays are more or less the same. However, the Moto G seems to have a greater pixel density than the retina iPad, although it has a lower ppi than its predecessor.

5 inches is the perfect size. At first, it was big for me but now I've gotten used to it.

The battery lasts for a little more than a day with regular use with its 2070 mAH battery. That is pretty decent battery life for a low end phone.

The new Moto G is very sturdy. I've dropped my phone a few times and I haven't got anything- not even a scratch. Although I would recommend using a case.

The camera is an upgrade from last model's camera- from 5 MP to 8 MP. The pictures are decent. Video, however is not that great. It shoots video at 720p, which is not satisfactory as its competitors can shoot video at 1080p.

The front facing 2 MP camera is great for taking selfies and for video conferences.

Only the 16 GB variant is available on Flipkart and storage can be expanded upto 32 GB, which is enough storage (for a person like me).

The dual speakers are brilliant, but not the best (when compared to HTCs boom sound speakers).

Overall, the phone is brilliant and runs smoothly. It is worth every penny although the rear camera could have been improved for video (taking 1080p videos).

KitKat runs smoothly and is beautiful. This will change for the better when Android Lollipop comes out.

This phone is one of the best in its price range. I would give it an overall rating of 8.7.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

LG G3





The LG G3 is LG's latest flagship smartphone. This smartphone packs a 2.5 GHz quad core GPU along with a Snapdragon 801 chipset with 3 GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU. It has a 5.5" screen with a 1440p (or 2K) display with a pixel density of 534 ppi. The phones features a 13 MP camera capable of recording video in 2160p (4K) at 30 frames per second and it uses phase detection/laser autofocus technology with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). The front facing camera is a 2.1 MP camera and records video at 1080p at 30 frames per second.

The phone has  practically no bezels around the screen which creates a very nive viewing experince when using the phone or watching video. The back cover of the phone is given a brushed aluminium finish though it still is plastic. The phone looks sleek and the rear facing buttons are a signature lg style.

It comes with KitKat (Android 4.4.2) out of the box. LG has remained silent about the update for Android L for now but we should see an update for this phone at least a few months after the release of Android L.

Other features include NFC, an infrared port and wireless charging. The phone comes in Metallic Black, Silk White, Shine Gold, Moon Violet and Burgundy Red. It starts at $649 (or 42,999 in India).

Monday, October 6, 2014

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr)

Ubuntu? What's that?



Ubuntu is the most popular distribution in the Linux family of Operating Systems. It serves as a viable alternative to Windows users who are looking for a change and are willing to explore new ways of computing. Ubuntu differentiates itself from the multitude of Linux distributions available today by being the most user friendly of all. It has features that may seem new to even Windows 8 users. The best thing is that it's free for all and so is most of the software available for it. 

On top of all this, Ubuntu is one of the only Linux Distributions that is built to defend against unauthorized access of your files out of the box and hence it is very very secure and competent in defending against any kind of malware. All software updates are filtered in the update manager according to priority making it very easy for users to update everything from one place. And fear not, Ubuntu provides alternatives to all major Windows and OS X applications.

LibreOffice Impress - For Presentations
LibreOffice is the Office Suite of choice and gives an experience that is similar to using Word, PowerPoint and Excel

Thunderbird
The default email app is Thunderbird and works similar to outlook. 


The notification bar is also a joy to use and is much more functional out of the box as compared to Windows.


14.04 LTS

The Version we're talking about is 14.04 which is also the latest. Canonical (The developer of Ubuntu) follows a rather strange naming system for its releases. The version number consists of the year of release before the decimal and the month number of release after the decimal. Also new versions come out once every April and Later in October every year. The naming also follows an alphabetical order and is named after animals starting from that letter. This naming method has led to rather quirky names names such as Raring Ringtail, Saucy Salamander, Quantal Quetzal etc... 

LTS means Long Term Support. This essentially guarantees complete support in terms of updates and security from Canonical for the next 5 years. LTS is special and comes bundles with new releases only once every two years. 

For people who multitask a lot, Ubuntu provides workspaces that can be switched. Each workspace can contain multiple windows. The terminal is also a very powerful tool to navigate and control your machine in ways you would have never thought of.

Ubuntu is much lighter than Windows or OS X and can revive even slow and old machines.
But if you have a powerful machine at your disposal, I would not recommend installing Ubuntu as a first choice because the issue of not optimizing its software for the hardware still remains and does not allow your machine to perform to its potential. If you still want to try it though, the best option is to install it on Virtual Machine like VMware Fusion.

Fortunately Steam was released for Ubuntu a few months back making gaming also possible. Each new version on Ubuntu also comes with an amazing set of wallpapers that never cease to amaze.
Ubuntu 14.04 also brings in touch support for use on touch enabled machines but what remains to be seen is that if there is adequate driver support for multi touch to be used seamlessly.

Stay tuned for more reviews every week. Share, Like and Comment if you liked it and tell us what you want us to write about in the future. 




Friday, October 3, 2014

HTC One M8




HTCs current flagship is the HTC One M8. The M8 carries forward HTC's mantra of good built quality and great speakers.
The new HTC One M8 comes in a new, more rounded off metal chassis. The cold metal feel is what people love about the phone. HTC sells the phone in 3 colors: 1. Amber Gold, 2. Gunmetal Grey 3. Glacial Silver. The front facing speakers, though not branded 'beats audio' anymore, still give a great stereo sound experience when watching video or playing games.

The HTC One M8 comes with HTC's new blink feed which keeps you updated with its news feed.
HTC's skin over android is intrusive but not as bloated as touchwiz from Samsung.The phone runs kitkat and is slated to get updates.
The M8 has almost the same camera as last year with improved optics but it loses optical image stabilization. There is a second lens that allows another angle to your photographs and lets you change the focus after the photo has been taken. The HTC photo gallery lets you see view an interactive version of the image. the accelerometer and gyroscope work together to give a parallax effect. Most think it is just a gimmick with inconsistent performance and varied results. The ultrapixel branding of the camera sensor has not managed to wow people except for in low light. The front facing camera has a 5MP sensor that actually has a higher mega pixel count than the back camera.
The phone has a 5" 1080p display that is crisp and bright. Text is sharp and looks good.

The HTC One M8 is a great phone but it is mostly overshadowed by the two big boys of the tech world and has a niche fanfollowing.
The one is supposed to get an update with a new 13 MP camera for Indian and Chinese markets where camera quality is judged merely on megapixel count.

Windows 10

Windows_Product_Family_9-30-Event
Let’s admit it. We all loved Windows 7. It was refreshing after the Vista failure. When Windows 8 launched in 2012, the concept was brilliant, but the execution was disastrous. Microsoft tried to hybridize the PC and tablet experiences into one, but eventually diluted both. The UI looked alien, cluttered with detail, and excruciatingly painful to use on touchless devices. Many decided to stick to Windows 7, and those who did move to Windows 8 (a mere 12%) were not completely satisfied with the new experience.

Fast forward 2 years. Microsoft, out of the blue (pun intended) decides to release the preview to the next version of Windows. Funnily enough, Microsoft was off by one in naming the next Windows. Why not Windows 9, you ask? Remember Windows 95 and 98? Apparently, naming Windows as 9 would have resulted in a clash in the code written for that legacy software and that for the new version and potentially lead to big problems for developers.

Moving to the important topic, what’s new with Windows 10? I’d call it the only “Hybrid” you would ever want. It removes most of the problems that Windows 8 had and exemplifies what Windows 8 should have been.

It needed to improve the PC experience and it definitely does that. Windows could not be resized as needed on PCs and only 3 windows could be snapped together side-by-side. But in Windows 10, not only can you resize every app as required but also snap four apps in a quadrant kind of view. Also multiple desktops like the ones seen on OS X and Ubuntu are supported to provide more workspaces. There’s also a new overview that’s called “Taskview”.


Back from exile, the start menu also features healthy additions in the form of 7-like vertically stacked recently used apps and also a custom space for pinned apps and social feeds in the form of live tiles.  

There is also a special provision for the hybrids like the surface family. While the keyboard is attached, the device operates in desktop mode. But when the keyboard is snapped off, the device prompts the user to turn on tablet mode. This brings up a new look version of the Windows 8 Modern UI which look much better suited for tablets than how Windows 8 was. 

Microsoft has created this platform for all its devices, so they will be sharing the same application store and other Microsoft programs. The UI will be tweaked to give the best experience (in Microsoft's mind) for each style of device. So desktops will get a more mouse and keyboard friendly interface while the phones and tablets will get a more touch oriented interface.
  
Signing off, Windows 10 is the brilliant revision Windows 8 was supposed to be and is the true successor of Windows 7. Having said all this, keep in mind that this is still only a preview.



Android ONE

Google has an ambitious plan of putting a high-quality but affordable smart phone into the hands of the next billion people. In countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia, the lower end smart phones have often had underpowered processors and bad screens. Google's ONE campaign is here to change all this.

Google has partnered with 3 OEMs in India to kick off this project. Google has chosen OEMs that have shown promise and make good phones at an affordable price. To start with, Google has chosen Spice, Karbonn and Micromax.

The phones share lots of components to keep the price down. The phones have 4.5" FWVGA displays, 1.3 GHz quad core Cortex A7 processors, front and rear cameras, dual SIM capabilities and 4 GB of storage with expandable memory up to 32 GB.
These phones are slated to receive updates for 2 years by Google.

Performance

The Cortex A7 processors on the three phones are coupled with 1 GB of RAM so the phones should run smoothly with basic tasks and games.

Display  

The 4.5" screens on these phones have a resolution of 480x854, which is not bad for the price they come at.

Cameras

All three phones come with a 5 MP back camera with LED flash lights. They take average pictures with best pictures in sunlight. The front cameras are 2 MP cameras that are pretty good for selfies and video calls. 

The Difference

The Spice Android One Dream UNO Mi-498, Micromax Canvas A1 and the Karbonn Android One Sparkle V Blue are identical on paper but have a few differences. The biggest difference is the back cover and design of the three phones.

The Micromax Canvas A1, Spice Android One Dream UNO Mi-498 and Karbonn Android One Sparkle V Blue are available exclusively on Amazon.in, Flipkart and Snapdeal respectively.