Nokia has long been rumoured to be moving beyond the 4.5-inch screen range for its Lumia devices, even supposedly working on a 7-inch Windows RT tablet.
With the impending release of a Microsoft’s GDR3 update for Windows Phone 8, which should increase the maximum screen resolution of its partners’ smartphones to 1920×1080 pixels, it’s safe to say that Nokia is looking for a way to differentiate itself in the highly-competitive smartphone market.
This latest leak which supposedly comes from a factory floor in China brings a phablet Lumia device from Nokia one step closer to reality, the kind that would compete against the increasingly popular Galaxy Note series from Samsung.. It measures 6-inches in diagonal and is supposedly already being mass-produced by Nokia.
The updated software is also rumoured to bring support for quad-core processors, likely from Qualcomm, adding extra CPU and GPU horsepower to continue Windows Phone’s consistently-high framerates.
Nokia recently launched it’s flagship device, the Nokia Lumia 1020 with a 4.5-inch, 1280×768 pixel LCD display with PureMotion HD+ and Super Touch Sensitivity.
Just hours after the unveiling of the Google Nexus 7 we’ve heard word that the Nexus 10 could also be getting an update soon.
According to Google’s Sundar Pichai, the new 10-incher refresh isn’t far away. While we haven’t heard anything from Pichai publicly, The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati has been recounting his experience at today’s Google event on Twitter, and mentions that Pichai advised that a Samsung-made follow-up to last year’s Nexus 10 should be launching “in the near future.”
The new Nexus 7 launched last night, packing a high-res 323ppi display, 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU, 2GB of RAM and Android 4.3.
Unfortunately apart from the confirmation that a new Nexus 10 is in the works, the exact specifications of the tablet were not shared, obviously, but he did state that we can expect to learn more about it in the near future.
Samsung will most likely pack the new Nexus 10 with it’s latest Exynos octa-core processor. Guess we’ll have to wait and see!
Sony Mobile officially confirmed the upcoming availability of the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system for some of its latest Xperia smartphones out there, including the Xperia Z and Xperia Z Ultra.
A post on the company’s blog says it is “already getting stuck in” and is working to develop updates for the Xperia Z, Xperia ZL, Xperia ZR, Xperia Tablet Z, Xperia SP and Xperia Z Ultra.
Some older Xperia phones running Android 4.1 are still under examination. There’s a possibility that at least some of them will be updated straight to Android 4.3, but no names have been confirmed yet.
Sony, however, is not known for being quick with Android rollouts so customers will probably need to be patient once again. Back in December 2012, the company promised Android 4.2 updates for 10 of its 2012 Xperia range, and that process was only completed last month.
It admits that the Android 4.1 upgrade “process hasn’t been as succinct or as timely as you might’ve expected”, which leads us to believe that this may happen once again with the roll-out of the third Jelly Bean iteration.
With Android 4.3, many of the updates appear to be under the hood. Among the front-end changes is the addition of a Multi-User Restricted Profiles feature.
Sony posted a video of the Xperia Tablet Z already running the AOSP version of Android 4.3, as they previously did with 4.2.
Allison Howard, American graduate student at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, Georgia purchased a Nissan Leaf earlier this month. That Nissan Leaf was the 1,00,000th zero-emission car sold by the Renault-Nissan alliance.
The age of the mainstream zero-emission vehicle is here. We expect demand to keep growing as the charging infrastructure develops – and we remain 100 percent committed to zero-emission technology for the long term.
– Carlos Ghosn, CEO, Renault-Nissan
Renault-Nissan has sold more zero-emission cars than all other automotive manufacturers put together. Electric cars sold by the French-Japanese alliance have driven approximately 841 million kilometers, enough to circle the earth more than 20,000 times, and they have produced no-emissions while doing so. Together, they have saved 53 million litres of oil and prevented emissions of 124 million kg of CO2.
The Nissan Leaf makes up more than half of all global sales of pure electric driven cars. More than 71,000 sales comfortably makes it the world’s best-selling electric vehicle. The Nissan Leaf won the 2011 World Car of the Year, European Car of the Year 2011 and Car of the Year Japan 2011-2012 awards.The top markets for the Leaf are the United States with about 30,000 units, Japan with 28,000 units, and Europe with 12,000 units.
Comparatively, Renault has sold 30,000 electric vehicles since late 2011, looking after other segments of the EV market with the Kangoo Z.E., Zoe, Twizy and Fluence Z.E.
Google has announced the new Nexus 7 today, updating the look with a thinner, taller design and a 1920×1200 pixel IPS display.
The updated tablet is 2mm thinner and 50g lighter than its predecessor, but boasts a bunch of improved specs, such as a quad-core 1.5Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8064 SoC with Adreno 320 graphics and 2GB of RAM, a 5MP rear camera and 1.2MP front-facing shooter, a battery that lasts for 10 hours, and the brand new Android 4.3 software. There’s also dual speakers (on the back), NFC, HDMI, wireless charging and Bluetooth 4.0 on board, in case you needed more reasons to upgrade.
Three versions of the Nexus 7 tablet will be available: Wi-Fi only 16GB and 32GB models for $229 and $269 respectively, and the 4G LTE version launching in the coming weeks. Indian pricing and availability has not been announced yet.
Google has once again tapped Asus as the manufacturing partner for its own-branded tablet, and that’s great news for that OEM as the previous generation of the Nexus 7 was its best-selling tablet by most accounts.
Google’s latest foray into hardware arrives as competition in the tablet space continues to heat up, with options such as Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab series.
Google today announced the latest iteration of Android – Android 4.3 Jelly Bean during a press breakfast in San Francisco.
The long-awaited OS update will be coming to Android device users based on their devices. The Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update will start rolling out today to the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. The “Google Play Edition” versions of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 can expect it soon, most likely August or September.
As ArsTechnica reports, the new operating system will feature multi-user restricted profiles. This will let users control access to contents and apps per user—so parents, for example, can control which applications their kids can access. When accessed from restricted profiles, applications behave differently. On stage, Hugo Barra demonstrated this by showing a puzzle game whose in-app purchase functionality was automatically disabled when it was accessed on the kid’s restricted profile.
Other features include built-in OpenGL ES 3.0 support, DRM APIs for providing hardware-based encryption for protecting content, which will allow it to provide 1080p video to its tablets. The first partner is Netflix, which supports 1080p HD streaming. The Nexus 7 is the first device to support it.
Android 4.3 also introduces many other features, including support for Bluetooth Smart devices, background Wi-Fi location, more language support and “easier text input.”
We’ll bring you more on the new release as it comes. In the meantime, share your thoughts down in the comments.
Bike-manufacturer Triumph’s entry into the Indian two-wheeler market has been making the rounds for a long time now. According to rumours, Triumph motorbikes may be available in the market as soon as the 2013 festive season. However, we are slightly skeptical of these rumours, given the history of ups and downs of Triumph’s attempts at foraying into the Indian scene.
The 2012 Auto Expo witnessed the famous British marque’s announcement of aggressive pricing for a model range of seven big-bikes. However, not much has happened since then with the only worthwhile news being that of an upcoming factory located on the outskirts of Bengaluru. A major reason for this delay is Triumph’s intelligent business strategy, which involves bringing bikes through the CKD (Completely Knocked Down) route instead of the much more expensive CBU (Completely Built Unit) route. According to other rumours, the iconic English company is already in process of setting up a compact, efficient motorcycle assembly unit in Manesar, on the outskirts of New Delhi, which will help bring in Triumph motorbikes without further delay.
The CKD units can be expected to be competitively priced, close to their announced target prices from the 2012 Auto Expo. Triumph will be directly competing with other high-end motorcycle marques such as Harley-Davidson which has been present in India for much longer, and the upcoming Indian and Victory brands.
Renault will be heading to the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show and has already made some exciting announcements. Apart from a new concept car, it has promised the introduction of an all-new Duster at the popular auto show.
The new concept is an interesting prospect, with Renault’s press release mentioning a “new brand identity. However we believe the big newsmaker will be the second incarnation of the French automaker’s successful compact SUV.
The Duster which is sold in India under the Renault badge, is manufactured and sold globally under the badge of Renault’s Romanian budget brand, Dacia. Introduced in 2010, the Dacia Duster has been a massive hit in markets such as the UK, Russia and India, becoming Renault’s best-selling global model. Clearly, the new Duster will have big shoes to fill, and all eyes will be on Renault’s pavilion in Frankfurt, come September 10.
Spyshots of test models have been spotted more than once on the internet. Multiple shots of the new Duster testing in and around Europe show evident cosmetic changes both inside and outside. Exterior changes to the Duster include revised headlights and tail lights, grille, bumpers. It is believed that inside, the new Duster will get most of the upgrades that were shown on the 2013 Dacia Logan sedan. A slightly revised version was spotted testing in Romania five months ago and featured a revised instrument cluster and cruise control. The interior will get a brand new dashboard, better electronics such as a touch screen display, higher quality upholstery and lots more. A lot of these upgrades may not make it to India, but we’re hoping Renault includes the more important ones.
Back in March, NVIDIA showed off its roadmap of its Tegra SoCs and what we can expect from them. Well, it may be late July, and we may be still waiting on Tegra 4 devices to pop up, but NVIDIA clearly hasn’t stopped working. The company recently showcased some of the features in Project Logan, with a large focus on Mobile Kepler.
Today the company revealed that its upcoming mobile chip will utilize the same Kepler graphics architecture found in its latest desktop and laptop GPUs, bringing graphics that exceed PS3 and rival current PCs to smartphones and tablets. Behold Project Logan.
“I think this is the biggest breakthrough in graphics since we introduced the GeForce 256 (graphics chip) 14 years ago,” said Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of corporate and strategic marketing at Nvidia in Santa Clara, Calif., in an interview with GamesBeat. “But this is 400 times more powerful than the original GeForce. This is the most efficient mobile processor ever designed.”
Kepler supports the full spectrum of OpenGL – including the just-announced OpenGL 4.4 full-featured graphics specification and the OpenGL ES 3.0 embedded standard. It also supports DirectX 11, Microsoft’s latest graphics API.
Nvidia’s first Project Logan prototype chips have been back from the factories for only a few weeks, but the company says they are running cool demos such as Ira already.
Hacker gang the Syrian Electronic Army broke into the systems of Viber, the popular mobile chat service, and dumped its user account records online.
“The Israeli-based ‘Viber’ is spying and tracking you . We weren’t able to hack all Viber systems, but most of it is designed for spying and tracking.” Hackers said in the defacement.
Image Courtesy : eHackingNews
To demonstrate that they’ve gained access to Viber’s systems, the hackers have published several screenshots showing data records stolen from the company. Furthermore, on the defacement page, they have listed the names, phone numbers and email addresses of Viber administrators.
Currently, the support.viber.com website has been taken offline. The hackers have told E Hacking News that they still have access to the company’s systems.
The phone numbers of the individuals exposed in the defacement began with the international dialling code of 963, the code for Syria. The page also revealed Viber administrators’ contact details, such as their names, phone numbers and email addresses.
In a statement, Viber admitted its computer defences were breached after a support staffer was tricked by a phishing email. It said the hack looked worse than it was, but nonetheless resolved to beef up the security of its systems anyway.
Viber is the third company targeted by the Syrian Electronic Army over the past week. First, they have hacked the systems of global phone directory Truecaller.
Sony has decided that it wants a piece of the fast car pie, and it’s pressing ahead with a movie based on its massively successful Gran Turismo series of videogames. What angle it’s going to take is unclear at this stage, but producers Dana Brunetti and Mike De Luca have the job of working some of that out. They’re also producing Fifty Shades Of Grey, incidentally.
In addition to De Luca and Brunetti, Elizabeth Cantillon, DeVon Franklin, and Hannah Minghella will oversee the project for Sony. No director, writer, or stars have been announced at this time. The games have no real plot to speak of — they’re racing simulations, pure and simple — so we’ll have to wait and see what the filmmakers cook up. The lack of an in-game narrative should allow them plenty of freedom to work with.
Developed by Kazunori Yamauchi and Polyphony Studios, Gran Turismo is one of the biggest franchises from the Playstation. The series has sold over 70 million copies worldwide. However, it remains to be seen if the game’s popularity will translate into box office success.
The success of Fast and Furious 6 has prompted a number of studios to move forward with their own car-oriented action flicks. DreamWorks Pictures is presently putting together an adaptation of Need for Speed starring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, Michael Keaton, Dominic Cooper, and Imogen Poots.
The latest game in the long-running PlayStation-exclusive franchise, Gran Turismo 6, is currently slated to ship on the PS3 some time during 2013.
NVIDIA has announced at Siggraph, the annual computer graphics conference, the Kepler-based Quadro K6000. The company says it’s “the fastest and most capable GPU ever built” with twice the graphics capability of the Quadro 6000 predecessor.
The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 GPU is actually a graphics card with the full-featured GK110 graphics processor (Kepler architecture).It comes with 2,880 streaming multiprocessor (SMX) cores (faster visualization and compute horsepower) and 12 GB of GDDR5 ultra-fast memory.
Between that and four simultaneous display links (up to 4K resolution with DisplayPort 1.2), the adapter is five times as fast as the NVIDIA Quadro 6000 GPU (its predecessor) and has twice the graphics capability.
“The Kepler features are key to our next generation of real-time lighting and geometry handling. We were thrilled to get an early look at the K6000. The added memory and other features allow our artists to see much more of the final scene in a real-time, interactive form, and allow many more artistic iterations.” -Guido Quaroni, Pixar vice president of Software R&D
The “world’s largest and fastest” DDR5 graphics memory enables companies like Nissan to load nearly complete vehicle models, for instance.
The Quadro K6000 is set to hit the market in autumn and will be available through vendors such as HP, Dell and Lenovo, as well as system integrators and partners like PNY.
It is only with Apple that analysts would express disappointment in a year over year quarterly drop from $8.8 billion to $6.9 billion, but a drop it was. Apple posted strong fiscal Q3 earnings today with revenue of $35.3 billion, up slightly from the same period a year ago and ahead of expectations.
As expected, the numbers posted today, which include the period between March 31 and June 30, were massive, with 31.2 million iPhones and 14.6 million iPads sold. The average sales price of the two devices has dropped — $581 for the iPhone; $436 for the iPad — likely due to the introduction of the iPad mini and the wider availability of the iPhone 4 and 4S as “value” devices in developing countries, but the overall number of iPhones sold increased year over year and set a new June record, according to Apple. The total number of iPads sold dropped, however, from 17 million in Q3 2012.
Earnings per share were $7.47, ahead of analysts’ expectations but down from $9.32 last year this time. Gross margin continues to tick downwards, at 36.9% versus 42.8% Q3 2012.
Apple is predicting revenue of between $34 and $37 billion for next quarter, with gross margins stable between 36 and 37%.
Tim Cook said in a prepared statement that Apple is “really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014.”
Micromax has forever been associated with cheap and budget phones, earlier with feature phones now with budget Android phones. With the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 the company tries to find a balance between the desires of the market and a stable ecosystem. The Micromax Canvas 4 A210 has been perceived a big negative mark on the company’s ever tarnished reputation, So is the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 the marvel of innovation Micromax claims it to be? or is it just another attempt at making more money, lets find out.
Build Quality and Hardware
The Micromax Canvas 4 A210 is exceptionally well built, it uses the two elements found in the worlds most popular handsets, the steel bezel and frame of the iPhone and the plastic back panel of the Samsung Galaxy series. The end result is a beautiful looking device that fits well in the hand and feels great to use. The plastics on the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 are cleverly used and remain at a minimal, whereas no serious strengthening has been utilized to the glass.
On the inside of this phone is a Mediatek 6589 chipset that offers up 1.2 GHz on Quad cores and a sufficient Power VR SGX GPU. On the inside is 16 GB of Storage and 1 GB of RAM, whereas the cameras are fitted with a 13 MP BSI Sony Sensor with full HD capabilities and a front facing 5 MP shooter also with 1080p capabilities. The display is a 1280 x 720p 5 inch display and the overall device offers quite a balanced mix of hardware and build quality. Although many companies are offering higher specs with similar handsets, the build quality on the Micromax Canvas 4 comes out on top.
The Micromax Canvas 4 A210 uses a new type of display, unseen on any of the company’s earlier devices, the display has a serious blue hue imbalance, but is exceptionally visible outdoors compared to the previous Gen display. The 1280 x 720p resolution was a major let down for many a buyers because of many rumors that pitted the phone equipped with a 1080p display. All “unethical journalism” aside the display is great for almost all requirements including gaming and multimedia, however it never hurts to get more resolution even if you don’t need it.
The touchscreen is very responsive and the display is perfectly fused into the body of the device, a lower resolution display also ensures better battery life considering that this device only has a 2000 mAh battery which you can read more about in the battery section below.
Multimedia, Gaming and OS
The Micromax Canvas 4 A210 is based on Android 4.2 and is mostly a vanilla interface, some basic customizations have been added to give additional UI features. “Blow to Unlock” for one is and example of a feature that has been added which may actually be liked by some, we personally feel that it is a waste of battery and a serious red flag to safe mobile phone usage.
Micromax has also added some features like smart pause on Samsung devices, a software feature which uses the sensors and front camera to detect when a user looks away, while watching a video , and pauses the video. Some fun UI elements like bouncing notifications and alerts in the lock screen add to the user experience.
We feel that Micromax now needs to work on a proprietary UI for Android on their devices, much like TouchWiz or Sense, they need to develop a UI which will truly make their devices unique. For now the Micromax Canvas 4 is based on vanilla android and mostly third party modifications which may or may not be activated.
If you aim to do some gaming on the Canvas 4, you will be happy to know that most games work out of the box and work well. On the occasion some heavy spec’d games will hang or crash, which can only be expected.
Watching videos and movies is great especially thanks to the great display and loud speaker, but you do start to miss a full HD experience if you have had one.
One thing which really changes the perception of the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 is the camera with its f2.2 lens equipped Sony BSI 13 MP sensor. The camera is the same unit used in the Xperia Z and performs exceptionally well. The camera also works great in low light conditions and captures great videos. The front facing camera is a bit of overkill, unless you do a lot of self portraits. The front camera is great but only if you have ample lighting, and honestly we don’t deny that sometime soon in the future front cameras may also start to get a dedicated flash diode.
The camera module is far too advanced for the software that has been included in the Canvas 4, and if you manage to root your device using our method, you can easily install the camera app ported from other devices. Any camera app that will give you additional manual controls is the app you are looking for.
A word to the wise, if you plan on doing macro photography with this camera, Autofocus will not be your friend. An add on lens might also be helpful.
The camera has great image composition ensuring great color reproduction and great crisp focus. If you intend to use auto mode the included app works fairly well and will not disappoint. Wait for our detailed camera review.
Performance
if you are looking for extreme performance on this smartphone you are actually looking in the wrong place, you are better off buying a Nexus or HTC One if that is your objective. The Micromax Canvas 4 A210 aims to achieve a few things and extreme performance is not one of them. The phone is pretty good for what its worth, gaming is decent, day to day usage is excellent, multitasking works great and for once the OS is quite stable.
The Micromax Canvas 4 A210 will get you through most of the tasks you can put it through and then some, but it will not satisfy the tweak hungry junkies. The chipset has its limitations and they can’t be witnessed in the day to day usage of an average user.
Micromax as a Company
We take off from the regular review process to point out a couple of things to our readers, The Micromax Canvas 4 is very identical to the Blu Life One, in fact it may as well be the same phone. Both companies Micromax and Blu have many things in common, they are both young companies and they both have the same vendors. But, Blu handsets will never come to India, because the company is presently focused in the Americas, just like Micromax’s main focus is in India. Even though we got many requests to compare the two handsets we feel it is unnecessary at the least.
Micromax has taken a bold step and tried to take care of the biggest concern of users with the improved build of their handset, in doing so the cost of their handset has gone up considerably . That tied with the inflated cost of the US $ made it a pricing fail for the company, and we feel Micromax is a bit premature to be entering the sub 20k market with handsets based on Mediatek chipsets in fact the same chipset that goes in sub 10k handsets. But, what most people are neglecting is the use of quality materials and components is bound to raise costs, the Sony 13 MP sensor itself justifies such a bump in pricing.
Micromax is no Samsung when it comes to customer satisfaction, hell even Samsung are not that great. The company aims to become a big mobile brand, but it is presently far from that goal simply because of their dependence on readily available products and components.
Battery Life
The Canvas 4 has slightly low battery life and the constant use of included apps does not help. On average you will get 3-4 hours of continuos talk time. Features like smart pause and blow to unlock will really mould your battery life usage and are best avoided. Real Life Tests:
Talk Time : 4 Hours on 3G / 6 Hours on 2G
Internet : 3 Hours on 3G / 5 hours on Wifi
Music : Upto 12 Hours
Video : 3 Hours
The Good
Micromax has for once tried to focus on the user experience more than the specs, the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 is extremely well built when compared to competition and even their own previous phones. The warranty for the Canvas 4 ensures that if your phone is damaged or defective (within warranty guidelines) you instantly get a replacement phone. Software elements like smart stay and smart pause that usually require expensive devices to begin with.
The cameras are also an advantage on the Canvas 4 and those with a taste for mobile photography will truly come to appreciate the device for that. The phone achieves what most phones by sector 2 manufacturers dont, premium feel.
The Bad
The price for one is a little off the mark, a 15k price point would appear to be a more worthy option for the Canvas 4. The OS is still mostly stock and with the added bloatware and software gimmicks, we are not impressed.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 is the best Canvas / Micromax phone till date, but with the impending release of iBerry Nuclea N1 and a series of devices already in the market. The decision is truly in the hands of the buyer, the company is attempting to change its ranks in the smartphone market and the Micromax Canvas 4 A210 may be that very device. Once Micromax realizes the market status and drops the price by 1500- 2000 this very well may be the best smartphone in the market in the Rs. 15000 price bracket, but until then this seems like an investment which may not yield a return worth of value.
The Blackberry A10 is the next device in the company’s lineup of Blackberry 10 devices, and its not much of a secret. In the latest leak from Tinhte.vn, the smartphone is shown off in a hands-on video, which confirms that the A10 will have a large 2,800mAh battery and 5-inch HD AMOLED display not an LCD.
The Blackberry A10 is the next phone to be launched after the Q5 which has seen roaring demands unlike predictions from experts. The A10 is said to be the company’s next flagship with a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, 16GB of internal storage, LTE connectivity, a 2,800 mAh battery, NFC, a microSD slot and BlackBerry 10.2.
The video below is in Vietnamese, so you can view it to get a glimpse of the device unless you know the language.
