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).

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. 

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

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.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4

The Note line of phones was an experiment by Samsung that has payed off big time as it sparked the big phone (phablet) race. The new Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is not a radical departure from the previous Note line up but it is improved in every field possible.

The Note 4 is a big leap forward for Samsung in terms of quality of materials used. The phone now has a metal chassis which is cold to the touch and does wonders for the feel in the hand. The fauxe leather on the back cover is carried over, but the gaudy stitching is no longer there. 

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is set to pack a 5.7" screen (same as the Note 3) but with a 1440p (or 2K) display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It has a 2.7 GHz quad core processor with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset and has 3 GB of RAM. It comes with Android 4.4.4 KitKat out of the box with the standard TouchWiz UI. It has a 16 MP rear camera with optical image stabilization and it is capable of shooting video in 2160p (or 4K) at 60 frames per second. It also has a 3.7 MP front facing camera with 1080p recording at 30 frames per second. It also has a heart rate monitor and a fingerpringt sensor just like the Samsung Galaxy S5. It has a 3220 mAh battery.


The Note 4 uses a microUSB 2.0 unlike the microUSB 3.0 from last years Note 3.
The Note 4 is compatible with the Gear VR- Samsung's Virtual Reality headset and right now, it is the only phone that is compatible with it.

The standard S-Pen stylus is now better than ever. It's more sensitive than the previous generations of Note's S Pens thus making it feel more like a pen while drawing or writing. The s pen in ow more useful as you can select multiple pictures or lines of text easily to share or save them.
Now you can run as many as 5 apps at the same time in windows that you can minimize to pinheads on your home screen. you can now copy and paste media from one window to another window, which does not seem like a big feature but it is in daily use.
The note4 is one of the best big screen phones you can buy and the new materials make the device a nice buy for the people who like getting things done on the go.

The Motorola Moto X

The Moto x (Gen 2)

Motorola just launched its new flagship, that is a revision to its model from last year called the Moto X. The phone follows the family design language.
All the new phones unveiled by Motorola now get front facing speakers, including the new Moto X. The phone is really well built with an aluminium frame with a slew of customization to the trim, back and boot up animation (though this only in the USA). For those of you who were wondering, the phone does not bend like the iPhone despite its aluminium frame. Reports from Unbox Therapy have shown that the phone doesn't as much as creak under pressure and is probably one of the most sturdiest phones in the market.

This phone has a 5.2" 1080p, having a pixel density of 423 ppi with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It includes a 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad core CPU and has 2 GB of RAM with an Adreno 330 GPU. Only the 16 GB variant is available in India however, a 32 GB model is sold abroad. It has a 13 MP rear camera capable of 4K recording and a 2 MP front facing camera. It comes with Android 4.4.4 KitKat out of the box and is upgradable to android L when it releases. It has a 2300 mAh battery. The phone also has NFC and bluetooth 4.0 and is water resistant.

It also comes with enhanced voice controls and compatibility with the Moto Hint.

This phone is a huge improvement over its predecessor, the Moto X (1st generation). However, the camera is average and does not have a great battery life as compared to its rivals.