Category: Tech

Apple Mac Turns 30: Apple posts 30 years of mac Video on Homepage

Its been 30 years since Apple first introduced Mac. Its been a long journey for Apple then. They’ve had the best years so far and it seems like it will continue for a long time from now. Apple Macs were once perceived as a media professional device, but now each and every one of us use one. Its still not anywhere close to Windows systems’ install base, but it sure has marked its presence in various segments in the market.

Apple is really focussing on all markets these days than just focussing on US and Europe. Apple’s iPhone and iPad is widely popular and is also giving people a taste of what Mac feels like through iOS. I’ve been using a Mac for almost seven years now and loves it to very single bit. And I can only regret that why I didnt make the switch any earlier. How long have you been using a Mac ? Or do you switch to a Mac soon ?

Sony Xperia Tablet Z Review

Sony has been making headlines with their latest series of Xperia devices. The new Xperia Z and Xperia Z Ultra has been one of the user favourite devices. Both device have stunning design and eye catching features like water and dust resistance. The Xperia Tablet Z is no exception. With its unique crafted omni-balance design, its one of the irresistible Android tablets in the market. And the company has also succeeded in making it water and dust resistant. Yes you can take it to the pool or tub !!

Xperia Tablet Z was announced a few months back at Mobile World Congress held at Barcelona this year. And you must have seen our coverage on the blog. This 10.1 inch LTE capable tablet is also the thinnest tablet in the market at just 6.9mm and weighs only 495g. The tablet has a really eye catching design. Just as they mentioned in the ad, the tablet really blends to its surroundings. The highly reflective screen just blends to the environment around it and one can’t deny that it is a very fashionable device. The tablet in portrait orientation may look a little taller than other conventional tablets. Personally, I haven’t been a fan of this awfully long design. But it did become quite useful while reading long articles on certain websites and Instapaper. Holding the tablet Z is quite comfrotable in hands. The weight is very negligible and the thickness is way less that it feels smooth and comfortable in hands. A lot of friends and family who saw this device really fell in love with simple thin design of the Tablet Z. Most of them also agreed that it has a better design than the iPad. People particularly appreciated the even distribution of the thickness throughout the design against the iPad which has a curved back. Check out the photos below. 

The tablet’s display is powered by the Sony Mobile Bravia Engine 2 which gives one of the best in class display in the market. The display is one of the best features of Tablet Z that makes it stand out from the crowd. Photos and videos look stuninng on the display. I copied several videos on to the tablet Z and found them really mind blowing on the display. The colour production is so great and vivid. The display also stood up very well against outdoor usage or in environments with more light sources. Moreover, you already know how stunning the Bravia display looks on the Sony TVs and now its on your tablet too as Mobile Bravia Engine 2. The high resolution screen also displays the websites perfectly and text looks very sharp and crisp. If you’ve liked the retina display on the iPad, then you’re gonna love this one. Book lovers will also love the tablet as the tablet offers great reading experience. Kindle and Google Play books are a must have on this tablet. The surrounding bezel on the screen is little too wide. It would’ve been more eye catching if it had thinner bezel as thinner bezels make the screen look bigger. But that’s in no way a turn off for a potential customer. Its just one of the things we like to see improved in the next version hopefully. Towards the top left of the bezel, you’ll notice the Sony branding and towards the centre you’ll find the front facing camera which is 2MP. Even though the device looks all elegant and premium, its still designed to survive tough conditions. Lets recall our worst nightmares for a device. Say spilling water over it or dropping it to the pool Or even lots of dust over it. Well, the tablet Z can withstand all these without any trouble. It has IP55 & IP57 certifications which makes it water and dust resistant. It can stay underwater for 30 minutes up to a depth of 1.5 metres. So next time you drop your tablet in the tub or pool, remember to dive and swim with it. And for this very reason, the device has a completely sealed design. i.e. all ports are to be covered when not in use. There are plastic caps that should be placed on ports when not in use. And these caps are not detachable from the tablet either. It can be a little annoying for having to remove these caps each time from the ports when you want to connect them to the charger or earphones.
The left hand side of the Tablet Z houses the 3.5mm headphone jack, stylish power button, charging dock connector, notification light and the single piece volume button. The design of the power button itself tells how much the company wanted this device to a fashion statement as well. And yes, as mentioned above, the headphone jack also has the plastic cover which can be used to cover the port when not in use protecting it from water and dust. The charging connector ports are only useful if you have a dock as it auto charges the device without the need of a separate cable. Below is the picture of the tablet Z being charged via the dock connector. The single piece volume button is decently long enough. Usually, the designers put smaller volume adjusters that you confront with some difficulties while adjusting volume without actually looking. Say, while watching a video and you don’t want to take  your eyes off. 
The notification led has different colours to indicate different situation like a dark red for low battery, green for full charge and white for awaiting notifications. The needle sized notification led does light very brightly grabbing quick attention. Trust me, you won’t go to bed without getting that light to turn off. And the last item on the left hand side of the tablet is the speaker. There’s one on the other side as well. Speakers are very loud and you can adjust the sound output by fiddling with the equaliser settings. Since speakers are on two different sides, you’ll always hear alerts and sounds even if one of the speaker is covered due to the position you’re holding the tablet.  It’s surprising to see so many ports on such a very thin device. The amount of engineering that has gone to this device is amazing. The engineers behind tablet Z has been very kind that they’ve installed some high quality high performing hardware to keep the tablet working smoothly. The 1.7Ghz Quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor will ensure all your tablet apps are running fine and smooth with the aid of the 1GB RAM that comes in it. The Adreno 320 GPU will also ensure that gaming and other graphics intensive apps run smoothly giving you the best experience. We tried playing the Real Racing 3 game on iOS. The graphics was not the finest and there were some stuttering as well. But many other games with less graphics performed just fine. I’ve previously reviewed and used many Android tablets. What frustrated me with them was the intermittent stuck screen and unresponsive menus. Sometimes the device would just stop performing or accepting any inputs as its still stuck in the last operation. Luckily, I encountered none of that with the Xperia Tablet Z. The hardware really keeps up and performs smoothly. We also loaded plenty of apps and media to the tablet that it was almost full. However, the tablet showed no sign of slowing down or any delay in loading any selected item. 

Some interesting things to note about Tablet Z when it comes to gaming is that the device supports Playstation controllers. i.e. you can play games with it. So if you’re a frequent PlayStation gamer, this should give you same or similar performance. Not to mention the convenience of not having to hold something as big as a tablet up close. Controls were smoothly. I didn’t face any issues with it. The gameplay went smooth as it should be. 

And for those who wish to go a little tough on their tablet, the  will come in handy as they indicate that the tablet is water and dust resistant. You heard that right. The tablet can stay under water up to 30 minutes up to a depth of 1.5m. These features are getting a lot of attention these days. Life is getting busier by the day and we can’t always be very cautious about our devices. Sometimes we spill some water or wine over phone or tablet. Or our little ones give the device a lovely bath in the tub or pool. And that’s one of the most tragic thing to happen as these devices carry almost everything that’s important to us in it. All our emails, files, photos, videos, apps and what not. Losing them can’t be a nightmare. And setting them back on a new device from your back up or the cloud isn’t that easy either. But all that’s not a worry on the Sony’s Tablet Z. I gotta say it, I wasn’t really excited about this feature first, but now I realise how much it means to me as I recently had a device that got damaged and lost everything. And I’ve decided that my next purchase will definitely have water and dust proof features in top priority.

The tablet runs Android Jelly Bean 4.1 with additional Sony exclusive services. Sony has also incorporated an infrared sensor to the device that lets you use your tablet as tv or dvr or home theatre remote. The tablet can also store over 7-8 configurations of several devices you wish to control with it. If you think that’s awesome, then you will surprised to hear about the NFC capabilities of the device. Anything that you’re currently viewing on the tablet can be instantly streamed on to your supported tv just by tapping the NFC capable remote on to the tablet. The camera quality is decent with the 8.1MP camera at the back and 2MP camera on the front. 

I really enjoyed my time with Xperia Tablet Z. It has very good battery life, amazing display, great fashionable overall design, additional eye catching features like water and dust resistance, plethora of Sony exclusive apps and above all, the timescale UI is really beautiful and stylish. if I were  in the market for an Android tablet, I would definitely pick this one without any second thoughts. And I think you should too. 

Nokia Lumia 925 Review

Lumia925

Nokia has been doing a tremendous job with Windows Phone. Whether you like it or not, Windows Phone is picking up in sales and overall adoption. Its outselling iPhones in some countries which is pretty good achievement knowing the iPhone fever among the customers today. Nokia has been doing their best to make this platform appealing to the customers. I don’t need to go down the Nokia services lane again as you’re aware of Nokia exclusive services like Nokia Drive, Nokia Music etc. In Windows Phones, Nokia has not only created the services mentioned above, but also some impressive utility apps for which you can’t thank Nokia enough. You know how terrible the process of switching phones can be. And these utility apps make it a bliss. When I switched to Lumia 925 from my iPhone 5, the Transfer data app transferred all my contacts from iPhone in less than 2 minutes over bluetooth. Just like that !!
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But with Lumia 925, Nokia has improved what is best about Lumia phones. The eye catching design of Nokia Lumia devices are well appreciated around the world. All of us have at one point or other have really wished if our phones had those funky red, yellow or the green shade. Not to forget, even the white and black are also interesting. For some, the plastic built was a turn off. Besides, the market is getting filled with Aluminium built phones and Nokia as usual has stepped up to the competition with an aluminium built phone to give the premium feel one want in a phone. Holding this phone in hand definitely feels great. It feels stronger and more sturdier now. And yeah, the shiny metallic look on phone is a die for. 
Lets go in detail. The front of the the Nokia Lumia 925 is gorgeous 4.5 inch AMOLED with 332ppi which is amazing for reading books, browsing the web or even watching videos. I usually stick to 4 inch screens. But this was no hassle to use. Holding the phone in hand felt good. Both the combined feel of Aluminium with a not too big not too small screen was perfect. If you’re wondering, the screen resolution is 768×1280 pixels which is more than enough. People blindly wish for 1080p displays when the difference doesn’t make any changes to what you see on a small screen like on the phone. Full HD displays only matter when we’re dealing with huge displays like the TV. Apart from the screen, you’ll notice the the three standard buttons below it. The back button, the windows button aka menu button and the search button. On top, the Nokia branding as usual, the earpiece and the front facing camera. And through out the sides, you can see the gorgeous Aluminium running through all the side of the phone. The unit we have here is the white unit and the aluminium has a silver colour which gives it even more classy look.
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On the left side, you won’t notice any buttons. Its a plain design. In other words, its just pure aluminium running top to bottom on that side. 
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However on the right side of the phone, you can see the volume rocker button which is a single piece button. Some of you may not be a fan of single piece buttons, but this worked fine and is not something you should worry about. Right below it, you can see the power/sleep button. For a phone with 4.5 inches, it may be a little difficult for a few users to get to the top of the phone to put it to sleep or permanently turn off. Hence, Nokia has wisely put it on to the side which easily accessible for any user. And way towards the bottom, you can see the dedicated camera button. It would be a shame if these Nokia didn’t have a dedicated camera button being a great camera phone. 
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The top of the phone has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, the microUSB connector for charging and data transfer and a micro sim card slot which can only be accessed by ejecting with the help of an ejector pin that comes in the box. There’s also a microphone next to the headphone jack. In case if you’re wondering, its the tiny needle hole you’re seeing in the picture above. The bottom of the phone again is plain and clean with no ports or buttons. 
Lumia925back
The back of the phone is a plastic case. Ugh !! I wonder why. The phone so far as we’ve seen features the beautiful aluminium and for the back, the designers decided to go with plastic. I’ve never been a fan of plastic. It has a cheap look. And I would never want it in an expensive phone. However, considering the price at which the Lumia 925 sells now, one can’t argue much about it. But not to forget, the Lumia 925 launched with a hefty price tag to the market at first. The good news is, it doesn’t look as bad as a all plastic phone with the presence of aluminium all around it. 
The back is all flat with the Nokia and Pureview branding. There’s also a carl zeiss branding which you can see in the picture above. The lens is well fitted to the back with out any disturbing protrusion. This helps the lens from attracting the scratches from daily use. Besides, it keeps the design neat and clean. The lens at the back is accompanied by the dual led flash. The camera is 8MP and the pictures it delivers are breathtaking. 
925Case
Towards the bottom of the phone, you’ll notice three wireless charging points. And don’t get confused here, the wireless charging does not work until you put a wireless charging case over it that supports the technology. Personally, I’m not excited for this technology in its current way of implementation. The idea of wireless charging is to avoid the hassle of connecting and removing cables. But then, that should not come with an added task of putting on an extra case to make it useable. Remember, the idea is to make things easy, not difficult. So, when Nokia says the phone comes with built in wireless charging technology, that’s when I’ll hop and scream yay !!
Speakers are the bottom of the case. A few dotted holes represent the speakers. I gotta say it, I love this no nonsense design. At first, I couldn’t really believe that they were the speakers until it started blasting off my music very loud and clear. That’s right, the sound quality is fantastic. Being a person, who likes to enjoy his music very loud, the speaker on this phone is a blessing. 
Lumia 925 isn’t just about the built quality of the phone, the camera has also gotten better. Yeah, as if you didn’t see that coming in a Nokia phone 😉
Camera has always been better on Nokia phones. And with the advent of PureView technology, they’ve been making huge leaps. Nokia Lumia 920 was the first Windows Phone feature with the PureView technology and now Lumia 925 comes with the same technology but only better. Nokia added a 6th lens to the phone’s camera unit which should supposedly take better, brighter and sharp images. You’ll see them as the review advances.
925Lens
The lens unit is a simple design. Its a small lens with a dual led flash. Even though the unit is all powerful, it just stays there like an innocent guy unlike the Lumia 1020 camera unit or even the Galaxy S4 Zoom device. The camera and the LED flash is accompanied by the PureView and Carl Zeiss branding followed by the Nokia brand name. The camera takes stunning pictures. The PureView continues to amaze me especially in the low light. One can’t just ignore this phones camera power. And since Windows Phone is very social device, sharing these great snaps are very easy. I like phones with great camera, but I’m easily turned off if getting a good picture requires lot of effort like adjusting ISO, exposure, white balance etc. Mostly because, I have no idea about them. And I’m sure I’m not alone. Lumia 925 camera delivers very good pictures which I will put in par with iPhone 5/5s or other high end Galaxy devices. But, if you know how to play with those camera settings well, then you get a lot more high quality images with great clarity.
Videos shot with Lumia 925 were also very good. Full HD videos looked really good. Low light videos didn’t shine as good as the low light photos. 
Battery life of the Lumia 925 was also good. I could squeeze up to 9 hours with 3G on. But if you’re one of those guys who checks Twitter and Facebook every ten minutes, I would deduct two hours. But still, the battery holds up pretty well. My previous iPhone 5 would only last 6-7 hours where Lumia stayed up to 8 or 9 hours. Call quality was also excellent. There were no distortions or noise. Lumia 925 came to the market in a bad time. In many ways, its similar to Lumia 920. But its improved design puts it in a different league. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look that different to average eyes. Plus, its thunder was immediately stolen by the Lumia 1020. However, the price it sells for keeps the Lumia 925 still in the game. 

iOS 7 Impressions

After a long hesitation, I finally decided to install iOS 7 on my iPhone 5. Today afternoon, as I downloaded the OS, my only concern was how many of the apps will run properly in iOS 7. And to top it all, the question, how I can put up with the new ugly icons was killing me. If not now, its going to be the end of September. One or other day, these icons will find their place in my iPhone and I’m just gonna have to deal with that. So, I thought no more. I went ahead and did the necessary to get iOS 7 up and running in my phone. 

iOS 7 is a complete overhaul over the existing iOS. Make no mistake, this still doesn’t support widgets on home screen or other features you wished it had. But its a lot closer now and in some cases even better than what you thought it would be. 

The Icons:

The icons haven’t really got a make over to be honest. Instead they look more vivid, less solid than before and cartoonish as I would call it. It’s a lot similar to the Touchwhiz icons on Samsung phones. Many people like the new icons, at the same time there are a bunch of people like me who’re not really happy with it. The Settings icon, the iTunes Store icon, the AppStore icon, the Safari icon etc look horrible while others are tolerable. 

But one thing I noticed here is that, once you install all your third party apps and rearrange icons according to your preference, you’ll find the icons ok. The total outlook changes which is a good thing. And from the look of things, we’ll see a lot of major changes in the UI in the upcoming betas as well. The current look and finish just doesn’t look as if its quite ready. 

Control Center:

Controls like Airport Mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Music Widget, Torch light or adjusting brightness are features you use frequently, but not always. And for that very reason, they don’t have to be in your notification centre all the time consuming space which otherwise could be allotted to notifications from apps and the OS itself. And this doesn’t mean that they need to be buried deep under the OS either. Apple has wisely found a way to place them all in one place called “Control Center”

Control Center is located on the iPhone screen regardless which app you’re on. A swipe from the bottom to top calls up the Control Center menu which brings up a nonsense menu with all the necessary controls one might quickly want to access. This includes Airport Mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, Lock Orientation Control, Brightness Slider, Music Player, Air Drop, Torchlight, Clock App, Calculator and Camera app launcher. This is in fact much better than what you see on Android. And like I said, it does not eat up the space in the Notification Center. The only option I wished they added was the 3G/4G option. And some of you may also wish if you could add the Cellular Data switch as well. That aside, Control Center is one of the exciting features in iOS 7.

Notification Center:

Notification Center is pretty much the same with a slightly revamped drawer. The drawer is now translucent and shows a blurred view of the icons beneath it. So if you pull the drawer down while you are in any app, it then gives you a blurred view of those items. Another thing new in the notification centre is the three new tabs- Today, All and Missed. Today of course shows all the notifications due for that day, All will show all the notifications that are due today and in the upcoming days. And finally, the Missed tab will shows all the missed notifications like Calls, Messages etc. 

The weather is now shown as a description. Again, not a big fan of that. One has to really look into it to see the weather whereas previously a quick glimpse revealed the weather level. You can also configure stocks to see as a list of stocks you’re tracking in the notification centre. And that’s pretty much about the Notification Center in iOS 7.

Multitasking Menu:

iOS handles background running apps in a decent way currenty. But it has its on demerits. First, you have to double click home button. This brings up the multitasking screen with icons of the apps running in the background. Next you have to press and hold until each icon gets a quit icon on them. The problem here is that, you only see the app icon. You may remember what you were doing on one or two apps. But there will be a lot of apps open and you can’t really remember exactly what you were doing or where you left of. So if you’ve paused a game or a video, that’s lost when you quit it. However, with the new multitasking menu, we can see all the apps in resized window which gives you glimpse of what you were doing. 

To quit apps, you just have to swipe up and its exited. This procedure also saves time as the whole process is limited to double clicking Home button and then swiping up on the apps you want to quit. 

Phone App, Messaging & FaceTime:

Phone app is pretty much the same except for the dialler which has got a small UI makeover. The numbers are now bigger and rounded in shape and the call button is long flat button than the previous tiny rectangular call button. Trust me, it makes things a lot better now. Another thing I noted in the dialler was, when you press each number it becomes translucent to give you a blurred view of the background. Not something huge, but a tiny little neat feature. Because, that can be considered as an indication to whether the number was pressed or not. 

Its apps like messaging that makes you feel that Apple used cues from Windows Phone OS to develop the iOS 7 UI. It looks a lot similar. So is the case with the multitasking UI discussed above as its rip off of the Palm OS multitasking menu. As usual, the blue box indicates iMessage and green represents Messages. Luckily, now you can block contacts and also see avatars of people in group chats. What shocked me the most was, the photo transfer speed. Photos actually went faster now than before. And its a remarkable improvement. Its surprising to see that Apple took this long to speed the process of photo transfer. I often use Whatsapp with people who I share photos frequently even though I know that it kills quality. But from iOS 7 onwards, I guess I don’t have to switch often. 

FaceTime is now a separate app on iOS. It has been so on Mac for a while now and its not that surprising to see the same change in iOS. The only use so far is that you get to see the list of recently FaceTime’d contacts now. As you can see in the screenshot, the window has live video background. I’ve got to say it, features like these makes the OS looks so advanced and stylish.

Music Player:

Remember when you were wowed each time she you tilted your phone to landscape mode when in Music Player ? The amazing Cover Flow is now history. Its been replaced with three rows of music album art of all the music in your library. Tapping on each album art zooms that album with all the available tracks in it. 

The Now Playing screen has also received its fair share of UI changes. For some it may look like black over white against the previous white over black UI. But if you look carefully, some options have been moved here and there. And Yay to continued lyrics support. Note, lyrics were added manually. 

Portrait view is the same as you see above whether you’re in Artist tab, album tab or Songs tab. 

Safari:

Apple has finally learned. Bookmarks are now on Safari’s launch screen instead of dedicated menu inside Safari. Apple has its on strengths in app design, but sometimes they come with the most stupid design. The address bar is now also the Google search bar thus making it one big long box on top. A pretty welcomed change. 

Tab view is now more graphical and three dimensional. And the limits on tabs have been removed. You can also see that private browsing option is now inside Safari which previously was hidden inside Settings. Again another example of how stupidly Apple designs certain apps. 

Camera:

Camera now has filters inbuilt. So for all those die hard Instagram fans, this is going to be a really lovely feature. Come on, there has been times when you wished if you could apply some filter on to a photo but not post it online. Unfortunately, Instagram does not allow that. Well, that’s solved now. 

If that’s not enough for you, you can now take photos in Square resolution as well. That’s just perfect for taking photos for your profile picture.

iOS is not like you know it anymore. While the basic actions/operations continue to be same, the new UI and some controls may put you in doubt. iOS, which has been famous for its simplicity is now a little advanced for normal people. Its however far from being Android complex, but its still not as simple as it used to be. But the good news is, its just a matter of getting used to. With 3-4 days of continued use, one may master it. 

So that’s pretty much everything new in iOS 7. Not to forget, these are some visible changes. There are even a lot more changes within the OS. Well, I will let you discover them as you start using the OS hopefully by end of September. 

Blackberry Z10 Review: Worthy Contender

First pic blackberry Z10

It all started with RIM being rebranded as Blackberry. That’s right. The Blackberry maker will now be known as Blackberry and not RIM. The rebranding was announced during the Blackberry 10 launch on January 30th. It hasn’t been a good time for Blackberry in the market so far. They were kind of having a Nokia situation. You know, being the uncool kid in town. As iPhone and Android sales surged due to apps, variety of phones etc, Blackberry boys felt the heat than anyone else and had to switch. 
Blackberry was quick enough to understand their mistakes and immediately made plans for a better OS that would live up to the demands of today’s users. And that’s Blackberry 10. Blackberry is undoubtedly famous for their email and instant messaging service. It has been attracting youths and corporates a lot. So how would an iPhone like device with Blackberry services and decent amounts of apps at start do ? Well, the answer is Blackberry Z10.
I was really excited to try the Blackberry Z10 mostly because I’ve never been a Blackberry fan myself and always hated the dated UI on its phones. However, I was quite intrigued when I saw the Blackberry 10 OS. It had everything Blackberry has been missing out so far. And it did feel like a worthy OS that needs our attention. The best thing what I like about Blackberry is that, instead of abandoning the platform, they actually went back to their desks and made a much better version of the OS showing what it’s capable of. This not only makes it appealing to new customers but also existing customers who are using the previous versions of Blackberry OS. Or else, the existing users would feel abandoned and cheated. Here in Dubai, the sales have been astounding. From day one, I started seeing Arabs and a few others walking around with Z10. That really surprised me. 
Design:
The Blackberry Z10 comes with a very appealing design. We’ve got the white here for review and I gotta say it, its one good looking device. At 137.5g, the phone is neither too light nor too heavy. And the 4.2 inch screen doesn’t make the phone any harder to hold and use with one hand. The phone is fully touch based and has no buttons on the front. Not even a home button as seen on the rival phones. The OS is all gesture based and it works flawlessly. The front of the phone is mostly the 4.2 inch screen with Blackberry inscription at the bottom of the screen. On the top you’ll find the ear piece, front facing camera and the proximity sensor. 
The left side of the phone has the ports for MicroUSB cable and Micro HDMI cable. The top of the phone has a power button placed right in the middle, 3.5mm headphone jack and a microphone for noise cancellation. On the right you can see three buttons. Two of which serves the purpose of volume adjustments while the third positioned between the volume rockrs acts a play/pause button.
Z10 Back
The bottom of the phone is plain with no ports but just a microphone and the speakers. On the rear, you’ll find the 8MP camera with LED flash and the Blackberry logo. The back case of the phone is removable unlike most of the smartphones in the market today. The case is very thin. In fact, it reminded me of the rear case seen on the Galaxy SII which is so thin that you fear you may break it while removing it. The case also has a rugged back so you can boldly keep it on it surface without fearing marks or visible scratches on it. 
Z10 CaseOpen
The back case opens up to reveal the battery which obviously is removable, the sim card slot which by the way is micro sim card slot and the microSD card slot that can read cards upto 32GB. I wouldn’t say the phone feels completely premium in hands. But its nothing short of being a decent phone. Perhaps its the plastic casing that kills some of its premium feel, but it does no injustice to the look of the phone. The phone looks classy and is appealing. 

Software:
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Blackberry Z10 is loaded with latest Blackberry OS iteration called Blackberry 10. Its a really refreshing experience in a world where you’re stuck with iOS, Android and Windows Phone. And the best part is, even the existing Blackberry users find the Blackberry 10 as a completely new experience. And that’s a good thing. Blackberry 10 has some amazing set of new features like the Blackberry Hub and the peak which are two of my favourite features. If you’re a smartphone user, you would know how many times you pull down that notification centre in just 5 minutes to see whats happening with your social networks. Now think of notification center which is always there just a swipe away. So what makes it special ? The interesting thing is that it does not just cover up your entire screen to show whats happening. Instead it just puts up these tiny little icons to let you know if somethings new. So if you see a twitter bird, you know that there’s a new twitter activity, similarly Facebook logo denote Facebook activity or the phone icon denotes a missed call and so on. 
Now if you really decide to see what that is, you just have to completely swipe to the right from left to unveil the hub which includes all the notifications from all the apps on the phone. Your phone calls including missed, received and dialled, your text messages, your emails, your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare etc are all there in just one place. A further swipe from left to right reveals a quick access menu where you can choose to individually view the notifications from a particular app. For e.g. you can choose to see just the phone calls, BBMs, Facebook notifications, Twitter, LinkedIn or in short every group of notifications that makes its way to the Notification hub. Tapping on each notification takes us to the corresponding app so that you can act on it. You can also individually delete any notifications that you don’t want to be on the hub.
We already have notification centre on iOS and Android. But everything there lasts only for a while unless you either check that pending event on the notification centre or clear manually to get more space in there or to have even more important things to take the top position for immediate attention. Whereas on the Hub, you have a completely dedicated pull out notification window that can accommodate everything in a single group rather than sorting it app by app.
The overall Blackberry 10  OS structure is similar to iOS and Android where in which you swipe through apps. You get a 4 apps a row layout spread as in four columns. At the bottom, you can see the Phone icon, Search lens and the Camera icon. These three apps stay docked when you swipe though different apps list. Again, similar to what you’ve seen on iOS. However, Blackberry 10 takes a different direction with the multitasking interface. The open apps are shown as live windows that gives you a preview of the app page. A swipe that begins from the bottom of the screen towards up reveals the apps running in the background. In a single view you get to see upto four background apps in the window. If you scroll up from the there you can see more apps that are running in the background. Each window also has an immediate close button to quit it immediately if required. Tapping on any of these windows zooms you in to the app making the task of app switching a breeze. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll really start loving switching apps, peeking for notifications or jumping right into the Blackberry hub. It definitely saves a lot of time as you don’t have to take your hands off the screen to access any hard buttons. 
And everything works just smooth. I would really put it next to or in par with iOS. Surprisingly everything is just so smooth and lag free. And I always felt I was using iOS on a different hardware. It was that smooth and a lot better in many situations. The developers have really thought this through before they started developing Blackberry 10. It acknowledges almost all the disappointments you have while using a touch based OS like the multitasking enabler where you always have to rely on a hardware button which interrupts your workflow, a full on notification centre rather than a temporary space that clears up with time or usage. And the multitasking app thumbnails than the app icons in the multitasking interface reminds you what exactly you were doing in an app before you switched which helps you a lot to prevent digital distraction. Come on, we’ve all been there. Everyday.
The Appstore known as the Blackberry world is not at its finest hour. However, one can’t deny that they’ve started of pretty well. You’ll see some familiar icons there like Angry birds, Asphalt racing game, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook etc. And apps like Whatsapp, Instagram and Skype are about to launch or some of these may have already launched by the time you read this. The layout of Appstore is also well thought. You can quickly jump through categories and featured sections. Weirdly, the store does not ask you to enter your password while downloading apps or updating them. The initial sign in that you do when you set up your Blackberry qualifies as a license to every app including BBM. I would definitely want Appstore to ask for confirmation by entering password at least when an app is downloaded for the first time. Looks like people at Blackberry didn’t think so. The app updates page is also little far to reach. Its buried under the hidden options that’s only revealed when you perform a swipe from left to right. Its strange that they just didn’t bother to place that next to the categories tab when there’s so much room left in there. 
As you would expect, each apps also have a reviews page that you can look at. The Appstore also loads very fast and works without any hiccups. In supported countries, mostly European countries can purchase and download songs, videos and ringtones. However, UAE is not one of the supported countries and hence I couldn’t check them out.
Camera:
Camera
The Blackberry Z10 comes with an 8MP camera on the back with LED flash. And a 1.3MP front facing camera for video calls and self portraits. The camera was never a biggest selling point of Blackberry so far. And it doesn’t seem to have changed much. In my test, the 8Mp camera did some decent shots. The performance was not a let down, but that didn’t cheer me up either. However, under extreme sunlight, it did deliver some great results. But under lowlight ?? Not so much. Macro photography was good. Videos again were decent. The phone shoots videos at 720p by default. But if you dive into the settings, you can change it to 1080p. Let the samples talk for themselves. Check out the gallery below.
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But the exciting feature of the camera is the Tilt shift feature which comes very handy when you take a picture of a group of people or playing baby. its always hard to get the best shot where everyone’s paying attention or giving a smile than a funny face. But Tilt-shift just lets you get the best shot as it takes multiple shots at a time.

The Blackberry World already has a couple of picture editing apps that will let you further enhance the pictures and videos you shoot. And not to forget, Instagram for Blackberry 10 is on the way.
Battery: 

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Blackberry Z10 lasted decent through our tests. I had to charge only every 1.5 days with data and 3G off and all activities limited to WiFi. But on a 3G connection, we found it to last till the evening after a full charge. Even after watching a video or playing a game, the drop in battery percentage was comparatively less than that of other contenders in the same segment. However, the only turn off was that you can’t tell the battery level exactly as it doesn’t show you battery percentage. Come on, Blackberry this is 2013. 
The battery on the Blackberry Z10 is removable and has a capacity of 1800mAh. That seems a tad less compared to 2000mAh+ standard that we see today. So if battery life is one of your biggest priorities, you may want to think again. But mind you, battery life could get batter with more software updates that bring more optimisations to the software. Blackberry seems to be really hard at work. We’ve seen two round of updates already. So, things can only get better. And for those who still look for removable battery option, you may rejoice because this one does have it. So if you’re comfortable with switching battery when one of them is out, you should love this. Changing/Removing battery is as easy as removing the back casing which by the way is very thin. That said, opening the rear casing will also unveil the micro sim card slot and the MicroSD card slot. 
To conclude, Blackberry Z10 was one of the finest devices I’ve ever used. Its got a good design, a fresh new OS for those who want a break from iOS and Android, besides it understands your work life and helps you switch seamlessly between work and personal life. The Blackberry Z10 is also “that” iPhone like Blackberry device you’ve been craving for. It may not have the most gorgeous design of all the devices in the market, but its nothing short of elegance. If you’re on the verge of switching, I definitely think you should give Z10 a try. And who wouldn’t like to stand out from the crowd. Blackberry Z10 retails officially for Rs 43,190/-. Before you walk away, do check the prices with your nearest retailer as most of them are selling the device for Rs 38,500 or less. In the Middle East, the device is available for AED 2399 approximately. 

Check Out The Backberry Z10 Camera Samples

BlackBerry recently unveiled their latest flagship to the market. We were lucky to have a sample device and we’ve also done a sample unboxing if you missed it you can watch it here.

We’ve been very impressed with the phone. The design is cool, the operating system is very very fluid and works pretty smooth. I was once a hater of Blackberry thinking they weren’t cool enough, now I can’t stop using this Z10. Blackberry has added an 8MP camera to the Z10. You already know about the camera features like Time-shift etc. But what about the clarity ? Well, we’ve put it to test and we came up with this.

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We were also curious about the video quality of the camera, so we went ahead and shot a video as well. Make sure you switch to HD mode when you start viewing the video.

Liked what you saw ? Let us know in the comments section.

Blackberry Z10 Unboxing

The Blackberry Z10 and Q10 was announced last week. Ever since Blackberry 10 was announced, I was very curious to try it out. And when I saw the devices that Blackberry announced I was really excited. And today, I finally got hold of one device. Thanks to Blackberry for sending us one for review.  The device looks really stunning. Its thin, gorgeous and weighs decent. Check out the video below to know more about the device and also stay tuned for the upcoming review.

Blackberry Z10 is currently available in UAE for AED 2,599/-. And is available in both white and black.

Nokia Lumia 920: First Impressions

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Our urge to always try something new never ends. Nokia’s Lumia series especially the Lumia 920 isn’t just about a Windows Phone experience. It is far beyond that. While you get all the new features in Windows Phone 8 like the resizable tiles, kids corner and many other little new features, you also get the best of Nokia which obviously includes a phone with tough build quality. You know, unlike the phones that sheds their skin even while shipping 😉 Nokia has added a lot of their exciting services to Windows Phone. Now you get Nokia Music with a year long subscription that gives you access to unlimited music downloads, their excellent Maps app that can take you to your favourite destinations with turn by turn voice navigation and it doesn’t end there. Nokia has also developed many other useful apps like Nokia City Lens, Creative studio, Transfer my data app, Photobeamer and more. Finally, Nokia has always been a pioneer in one more thing. That is the Camera. Nokia has included the Pureview technology in the camera for Lumia 920. This means, you get stunning photos and videos everyday from your phone’s camera.

To be honest, when I first got the Lumia 800, I got really bored of it quickly. Within a day or two, I ran out of features and exciting apps to check out. And it just remained as a regular mobile phone to me. However, Lumia 920 with the new Windows Phone 8 OS and the special Nokia apps with this stunning hardware continues to keep me amazed and excited. 

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The first thing you note about this phone is the huge screen. The phone comes with 4.5″ screen with Puremotion HD display. When I first heard of it, I really took it granted for a fancy name that these manufacturers come up with. However, its more than that. The screen is really crisp and sharp, thanks to the Clear Black Display. And the PureMotion HD+ display delivers a very bright screen with extra high touch sensitivity. This means, your phone can respond to your touch even when you’re wearing gloves. That’s pretty impressive. 

And when you’re using the Lumia 920, you sure know there’s something about the camera that makes this phone special. So yeah, I immediately fired up the camera app after I was done checking out the display and home screen. Lumia 920 has a dedicated camera button to launch the camera app. The camera is 8.7MP to be precise and comes with Pureview technology. I took a few pictures and found them good but not blown away to be honest until I took it for a party. The party was at night and oh boy, you wouldn’t believe the results. I usually take iPhone 5 with me everywhere and we all know it takes good pictures. But the phone always fails to take good shots in low light. I usually end up with poor pictures that has more grains and uneven light distribution caused by the flash. But Lumia 920 really delivered great pictures. It has this feature called focus assist and when that’s turned on, you get some really amazing photos. Be sure to read our full review with samples. 

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Lumia 920 comes with 32GB memory. Yes, let’s say goodbye to the old 16GB base model phones. I think its really high time that we move to 32GB and higher for the base models. Phones these days shoot and play 1080p videos, apps and games always a few hundred megabytes and some even hit gigabytes in size. It would really be foolish of companies to not provide enough storage to fit them all in the device. It only proves how much less they know about their own product. Overall, the phone is really smooth. The Windows Phone OS is butter smooth and the accompanying hardware of the phone really makes the experience lag free. The phone also gave us impressive battery life. After all, its not that easy to use up the entire 2000mAh battery. On a decently high usage, we squeezed up more than 1.5 days where the device used WiFi all the time for internet connectivity. The phone weighs 185g. Some people call it overweight. I felt it decent. Most of all, the weight gives you a solid feel in the hands. 

I’m continuously using the phone more and more to discover and experience everything that this phone has to offer. Windows Phone OS may alone won’t be tempting to many of you out there, but a Windows Phone built by Nokia is really worth considering. Nokia really completes the Windows Phone OS to a great extent. Be sure to check out our full detailed review and videos which will be published soon. Got questions ? Give us a shout out below in the comments section.  

Sony Xperia ION Review

Android has always been my second choice to iOS. I find Android equally good as iOS or even better when it comes to customisability and a few other advanced features. But I never used an Android device as my primary device for a long period. I remember the time when I tried switching to a Galaxy SII and Galaxy Note. But it didn’t workout well. I give a lot of importance to the quality of things I use. And that’s exactly where me and Android couldn’t work things out. So we broke up. There are plenty of Android manufacturers out there in the market. I’ve lost the count. You can get Android devices at any price range. An Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich with decent hardware is now available for as low as $200. Its a good thing. But the problem is when you go high end. Even when you pay prices as high as $600-700 what you get is almost the same. Of course, there’s a bump in the hardware packaging, but there isn’t much leap forward in terms of style and build quality. I think people tend to consider all these things as we climb up the price range. We won’t be ready to compromise much at this price point. Besides, we need a differentiation. That’s why we shell out more. Same was the case with me. I wanted a device with great build quality, impressive design and performance. Although, Galaxy SII and Galaxy Note gave me the performance boost I wanted, they failed to give me the quality I wished for. That’s when I came across the announcement of the Sony branded phones. Yes, they make phones of their own now. Ericsson is no more a part of it. I saw the Xperia ION on the website and was seriously impressed with the device. It had the style I wanted, build quality looked great and the hardware was great too. So, here, check out my full review below.

Box Package:

The Xperia ION comes in slim but big package. It doesn’t follow the current style of packaging that others follow. It’s not something one should worry about anyway. The box package contains the smartphone, a microUSB data cable, a power adaptor and in-ear microphones. You’ll also find a lot manuals in many different languages that you can’t speak. Don’t worry, English manual is also included although you wouldn’t really need one to set up your phone. Sony suggests that you charge your phone at least 30minutes before using it for the first time. I would recommend a straight 2 hours charge though.

Design:

Sony’s Xperia 2012 line up has got one of the best designs of all time. I really liked the look and feel of the device in hand. And as I mentioned earlier, this is the design and quality I’ve been expecting from a high end Android device. The front side of the phone is mostly the display. Its LED backlit and measures 4.55 inches. Sony also claims it to be scratch resistant. I dare you not challenge it. You’ll also notice the front facing camera and the Sony branding on top. Towards the bottom, you’ll find the default Android soft buttons like Menu, Home Back and Search. These days most Android phones only have 3 soft buttons including its little brother Xperia S. This, however, came with four.

The top of the phone is clean with just one 3.5mm headphone jack. The power button, volume buttons and the dedicated camera button are located on the right side of the phone. The volume buttons looks a bit smaller than usual. On the left side we have the microUSB port and the micro HDMI port. They are covered with a small plastic cover so that they don’t collect dust or other particles when not in use. Its a little hassle to remove it each time when you want to charge your phone as the phone also charges through the same microUSB port. At the bottom of the phone, you’ll find nothing more than a tiny microphone. And at the back of the phone, you’ll see an aluminium casing which gives slight brushed metal look. There’s a 12MP camera on the back. Right below it you’ll notice the LED flashlight and the speaker. Towards the bottom, you’ll find the Sony Ericsson logo which is a bit confusing as Ericsson is no longer a part of Sony Mobile.

The phone feels really good in hands. In fact, it feels much better than the Xperia S which has plastic casing at the back. The aluminium casing at the back gives it a premium feel in hand. And the way they’ve designed the back is also very appealing. Its hard for someone to be unnoticed when someone walks by with this phone. It definitely is an eye turner and drool worthy. The only problem is that, Sony is making a lot of variant of these designs like Samsung did with the Galaxy. So sometimes you may feel inferior when a lower priced device looks almost the same as yours. Also this causes confusion to a lot of consumers.

Display:

One of the eye catching features of the Xperia ION is the dazzling display. It features the Sony Mobile Bravia Engine which can be assumed as the little brother of the original Bravia display seen on their range of TVs. The Bravia Mobile technology is a stand out display technology and looks amazing on this huge 4.55 inch display. With 720×1280 resolution, there’s nothing more you can ask more from this department. Pictures and videos look so amazing. I love watching videos on this display. Its so vivid and lovely. If you watch a lot of videos on the phone including movies and those from the internet, this huge screen and the Mobile Bravia Engine is going to be really useful to you. Photos look great too. With this level of clarity on the display, even the minute detail in the photo are very visible. And when you browse the internet and read tonnes of content from various websites, you’ll really thank the inclusion of 323ppi. That’s close to the Retina Display on iPhone. Reading the sharp non fuzzy text is something you can’t get tired of. I don’t usually read on small screens but I found this 4.5 inch display comfortable enough. It had the clarity and quality I wanted. And the size of the screen wasn’t too small or too big as far as reading was concerned. Plus, with Apps like Amazon Kindle, Instapaper, Flipboard and Pocket, you get a fine reading experience on the phone.

While the display quality did quite well, there were a few hiccups with it as well. The display is glossy which means you’ll see a lot of yourself on the display when you try to look at it in the sunlight. Its sometimes very annoying as you can’t concentrate on what’s on the screen. However, you can correct it to a good extend by turning on the backlight using the widgets or from the display menu under settings. But if you still find it difficult, you may just have to deal with it. Another problem, I’ve confronted with the display is that it attracts finger prints and smudges very well. There isn’t a oleo phobic coating on the Xperia ion which usually prevents the finger prints to some extend. The smudges and finger prints are notable only when the display is off. They never cause a problem when the display is on. And its not any serious problem that a soft cloth can’t solve. But its worth noting though. Sony also has a scratch resistant film on the screen. The phone ships with the film by default and it’s hardly noticeable. It’s a good addition it can prevent direct scratches on the screen to a great extend.

In short, the display is really great. It serves well for videos, web browsing and regular reading. And the Mobile Bravia Engine really lives up to the name.

Camera:

When its a phone from Sony, you really look forward to the Camera of the phone. Sony was an often spoken name in the past when it came to camera phones. It looks like they still have got the magic. The camera on the Xperia ion delivered great quality both in stills and  videos. If you’re a geek who likes to fiddle around with different settings, then you’ll love the camera UI. There’s a lot of menus to customise depending on the scene you’re planning to snap. I’m no expert in the camera segment, but taking great pictures felt simple and good. There’s also a dedicated camera button on the ion. So you can immediately launch the camera using that button and use the same for snapping pictures. When you launch the camera using this button, it immediately snaps a photo automatically to ensure that you don’t miss what you want to shoot. Its a nice addition. Sometimes great moments waits for none. The camera also supports Panorama feature which is nice. It does Panorama in 3D as well. Taking Panorama photos are limited to landscape mode. When selected, turn the phone to landscape mode and start sweeping the phone from left to right by default or change the direction of sweeping to up, down or right.

When you take photos in 12MP clarity, they have a ratio of 4:3 which will look letter boxed on widescreen TVs and displays including your phone. So, you can choose to snap photos in 9MP clarity which takes photos in 16:9. So your photos look great as they fill up the entire screen of the aforementioned devices. Here are a few photos we took with the Xperia ion. The clarity and detail is amazing. I didn’t have to dive in to camera settings much to achieve this quality. Everything was set to default and focus was set to Touch to focus for close-up shots. I’m really impressed with the clarity. They also looked good on the big screen.

The phone also does great full HD videos. The videos recorded are at 30fps and obviously at 1080p. The quality is great. The audio clarity on the videos also require special mention. The audio sounded pretty good when I took a sample outside the house where the surroundings was a little noisy. The video is embedded below for your judgement.

While recording video you get the option to shoot using the front camera or the back camera. You can also choose different scenes, adjust exposure levels and keep flashlight on if situation demands it. These settings have to selected before you begin to capture. The video sample here is the same place where we shot our iPhone 5 camera sample as well. If you would like to see how good that is, click here.

Software:

Xperia Ion runs Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box and is scheduled to get Jellybean in early 2013. Ice Cream Sandwich powered with Sony’s Timescale UI gives you a very good experience with the phone. The Timescape UI is very rich and gives more standard look to the software. It also brings a few customisations and some apps in the package. You’ll find apps like the smart connect, Track ID, Play Now and more. These are extra software additions that are exclusive to Sony devices. Icons and animations in the Timescape UI is also eye candy. Sony has also integrated major social media services in to the Timescape UI to give you a much better experience. If you compare it with Touchwhiz UI on the Samsung Galaxy series, the Timescape looks far more superior in style. However, if you try to compare it side by side with the number of features, then Touchwhiz UI may have some lead. But that may be negligible to many. As for apps, you can enjoy all of the great apps that are available from Android’s Play Store. Apps run quite fast on this Xperia hardware. I didn’t experience any kind of lags or much delays while multitasking either. With Android’s Play Store matching Apple AppStore in the total number of apps, you will hardly find yourself returning from the Play store without finding a new app to try out.

As I mentioned above, the Timescape UI really makes the Android experience stylish. The theme of the UI is elegant and there a couple of themes you can choose as well to match your mood and style. Timescape has given the music player a massive facelift compared to Google’s stock music player. The music player on Xperia Ion lets you switch between songs by swiping the album art left/right. The album arts are beautifully stacked and the music player’s background adjusts its colour to match the most dominating colour on the artwork that’s being played. You can also easily choose Play On feature to wirelessly play the music to your home theatre system. This feature uses DLNA technology to stream music to other devices. Hence, make sure you’re connected to the same WiFi network as the device to which you’re streaming. The Gallery app is also beautiful. It displays all your photos as thumbnails beautifully arranged and some thumbnails really stand out of the collection. The size of thumbnails can be adjusted by pinching in and out from the gallery value which is really cool. As usual, you’ll also find a plethora of options to share your photos or edit them using another app.

There’s also a dedicated app for accessing all your social content like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare etc. It pulls all the updates from all these networks and shows them in one place in a stacked UI. In landscape orientation, they beautifully re-orients to form a cover flow like UI. Other apps inlcude Back Up and Restore app that creates back up of the phone contents to restore later at any case of data loss and wipe off. Sony also has a software, something I would like to describe as an intelligent software that can act according to certain situations if preset. For example, you can assign it to run the music player when you connect the earphones. Or you can set it to run the Back Up and Restore app when you connect it to a charger etc.  The app is called LiveWare manager and works flawlessly. Sony also has included the Track ID app that works pretty similar to Shazam or Soundhound. The app can listen to music and then fetch you the song details in seconds. It also provides link to the purchase the song online which is cool. Talking about music, if you fall in to any supported countries of Sony’s Music and Video unlimited service, then you can enjoy great collection of song and videos right on your phone. It’s really interesting to see what Sony has done to Android using Timescape UI. The phone is expected to get Jelly Bean soon in early 2013 as Sony is now customising the same with Timescape.

Sony also has a PC client and a Mac client to sync your phone with computer. We used it with a Mac and the client Sony Bridge for Mac worked quite perfectly. You can easily sync music from iTunes, sync photos from iPhoto or even import the photos from your phone to computer. You can also explore files on the phone using the app. During our period of review, we also received a firmware update via the client and the phone was updated easily without any failures or other hassles.

To conclude, we loved the Xperia Ion. It’s got a gorgeous design, a big feature set and perfect software that can give you a smooth experience, plus some Sony exclusive services. However, if you’re not a fan of big phones, then this may not be the one for you. Its got a 4.5 inch display which may not suite everyone. Not to mention, the audio output from the speaker was also underwhelming. It wasn’t really clear and there were a lot of noise during playback. That aside, the phone is great considering the Mobile Bravia display, 12MP camera and decent battery life that can easily get you through a day easily.  Sony Xperia Ion is priced at Rs 30,000/- approximately.