Lava Iris 458Q Review

In depth review of the lava iris 458q smartphone is on its way. Stay here for the latest updates! :)

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Blackberry Q10 to arrive in India on June 6

Blackberry is all set to introduce its Q10 in the Indian market on June 6. The Q10 is the first Blackberry QWERTY phone to run the BB10 OS. On May 28, Blackberry officially tweeted, “BlackBerry Q10 is coming to India soon. Stay tuned on our page for all the latest updates!”

Blackberry Q10 was unveiled in January along with the Z10 and since then have been available in global markets. The Z10 did hit the Indian market shortly after but the launch of Q10 was delayed.

The official Indian price is yet to be disclosed.

Here are some of the key specifications of the smartphone -

• 3.1″ Super AMOLED display – 720×720 pixels
• Dual-core ARM Cortex A9 – 1.5 GHz processor and PowerVR SGX544 graphics
• 2GB RAM
• 8 Megapixel Auto Focus camera with 1080p video recording.
• LED flash
• 2MP (720p) Front Facing Camera
• Quad Band 2G and Tri/Quad Band 3G
• 16GB storage with microSD expansion slot
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Bluetooth
• GPS
• Proximity Sensor, Light Sensor and Gravity Sensor
• 2100 mAh Battery
• BB10 OS

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Samsung announces Galaxy S4 Mini

It seems that the rumors surrounding this phone turned out to be correct. Samsung has officially unveiled another Galaxy – the galaxy S4 mini which sports a dual core 1.7GHz SnapDragon S4 processor and 1.5GB of RAM.  The phone features a 4.3″ qHD (960×540 pixels) Super AMOLED display of the non-pentile variety(a refreshing change from the 5″+ monsters), an 8MP primary AF camera with a front facing 1.9MP camera. There’s also 8gb of stoage on board with a microSD slot for further expansion. The phone is powered by a 1900 mAh battery.

The phone will run Android 4.2.2 out of the box. There’s going to be an LTE variant and also a dual-SIM version for selected markets. The device should be priced at somewhere around INR 24990. The phone will arrive in Q3, 2013 in black and white colours.

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Nokia Asha 210 revealed - dubbed as the ultimate social phone

Nokia has just announced the Nokia ASHA 210 phone. The phone offers a QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi connectivity and the first of its kind dedicated Whatsapp button. The phone comes in distinct Nokia design and offers a variety of colors to choose from.

The phone also features a 2 MP camera with a dedicated launch button on the front. Also on board is the  Nokia Slam Technology which lets one send files over bluetooth without the need for pairing devices.

For internet, the phone relies on Nokia's Xpress Browser which, like Opera Mini, uses cloud based compression to speed up loading of webpages on slow network connections.

The phone comes in both Single SIM and Dual SIM variants and one gets to choose from yellow, magenta, cyan, black and white colors.

The expected date of launch is Q3 2013 and prices before subsidies and taxes are around $72 (Rs. 3750).

Here you can watch the first hands on video - 

[video width="640" height="360" ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_b1yeSCdhU[/video]

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World's most expensive phone by Stuart Hughes-iPhone 5 Gold & Diamond

This beautiful handset iPhone 5 took 9 weeks of work to re-create the original chasis of the iphone in solid gold all of which was started and finished by hand by Stuart Hughes, a Liverpool-based jeweler had earlier built a diamond iPhone 4, Platinum MacBook Air and Gold iPad 2. Also a full gold dressing for the rear section with the logo in solid gold with 53 flawless diamonds amounting to 1ct . The outside casing of the smartphone is said to be made up for 24-carat gold & the home button consists of 26-carat black diamond. The Apple logo and the corners of the smartphone are built using the white diamonds. The device is encrusted with 600 precious stones, out of which, 53 are housed in the Apple logo at the back. The world's most expensive smartphone was ordered by a Chinese based businessman, who owns the black diamond that went into the construction.

The result was outstanding even down to the precise polishing to reveal its most beautiful harmonious appearance. The handset is 64GB and is available as a ltd edition of only 100.

iPhones are seen as premium products, with price-tags to match. But this phone is not a cup of tea even for cream class. This phone will cost you £10 million (about Rs 83,70,60,000/-)

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Russian market calls for Nokia Lumia 720-Priced higher than expected

Lumia 720 is now available in Russia and it costs much more than expected. Phone is priced at $485(Rs 26700/- approx.). This price is $150 more than what Nokia announced. But in India the phone is available for pre-order at Rs. 18500/-. You can book on Flipkart.com and if you pre-order now, you will also get a 16GB memory card free. You can also pre-order the phone from Nokia’s website but the price won’t be the same. However there is no update when the phone will be shipped. But yes you can expect the same in the third week of April. You can now have colorful Nokia phones again with 5 different color variants viz. Yellow, Cyan, Black, White & Red. The device is also the first uni-body design with micro SD support having 8GB internal memory.

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Mark Zuckerberg praises Google's Android for its open source code. Also, announces Facebook Home and the HTC first

Facebook home has gone official! Come April 12, selected devices will be able to download the app (which is built around "people") from Play Store. The devices include the Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and also the upcoming flagships - HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4. More devices will be supported soon.

In his press announcement, Mark Zuckerberg, pointed out how he sees the world using more and more smartphones as years pass by. The present phones are built around apps and Mark thinks that its time that we changed our approach towards how we use our phones.

Facebook home is not just a single app. Neither is it an operating system. Its a series of apps that helps us get the information about people we care about, on our home-screens.

Through a strategic partnership with HTC and AT&T, Facebook has also announced the HTC First - which it says, is the first phone that is optimized for Facebook Home.

Detailed specifications about the phone aren't available yet. The phone goes on sale in the US exclusively on AT&T, for a price of $99.99 on contract. It is available for pre-order now from AT&T's website though shipping will start from April 12.

Facebook Home for tablets is expected to arrive later this year.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 now on US Cellular & Verizon networks

Except AT&T now Us Cellular & Verizon will offer Galaxy S4. These network providers have also set up a pre order page on their website for the phone so that who are interested can sign up and get the latest updates on the availability.

Samsung phones are also going to land on Verizon's LTE network with 700MHz & AWS frequencies. On Verizon network Galaxy S4 will also support 3G radio(with 3G radio, radio channels can be used outside US borders).

You should not expect to get Exynos 5 Octa version by any of the carriers as US is getting snapdragon 600 for Galaxy S4.

The availability of CDMA version for Samsung Galaxy S4 in US is not yet clear in pricing or availability. But yes, you can hope the same by the end of this April.

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Google Play Store now offers Movies in India

After taking everyone by surprise with the introduction of Nexus 7 tablet in India, Google has also started selling movies to its android users in India.

The movies section works like other categories of the Play Store, where you can either search for a particular movie or browse through different categories - Action & Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, and Family.
The pricing is more or less in line with that of Apple's iTunes store in India.

Play Store now offers books, movies, apps, and 1 Nexus device (Nexus 7 16GB tablet) in India.

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Lenovo P770 Review - A mid-range phone with a high-end battery!

INTRODUCTION

When the world is going the octa core way (ala Samsung Galaxy S4), Lenovo has gotten inspired by Motorola. The Lenovo P770, at first sight, may seem like your ordinary mid-range android phone (which it is, actually) but uncover the back panel and boom! you find a monstrous battery. Does the USP of this device make it a worthy buy?
Lets find out..



Key Features

• 4.5" qHD IPS LCD display - 540x960 pixels 
• Mediatek MT6577 chipset 
• Dual-core ARM Cortex A9 - 1.2 GHz processor and PowerVR SGX531 graphics 
• 1GB RAM 
• 5 Megapixel Auto Focus camera with 720p video recording. 
• LED flash 
• 0.3MP (VGA) Front Facing Camera 
• Quad Band 2G and Single Band 3G with data speeds upto 7.2 Mbps DL and 5.76 Mbps UL - SIM 1 & Quad Band 2G - SIM 2 
• 4GB storage with microSD expansion slot 
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Bluetooth 
• GPS 
• Proximity Sensor, Light Sensor and Gravity Sensor 
• 3500 mAh Battery 
• Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean) OS 
• SAR Value - 0.43 W/Kg 

 

UNBOXING THE LENOVO P770

 

 

 Lenovo P770 comes in an attractive little box in which you will also find the battery, micro USB cable that doubles up as a charging cable for the A/C adaptor, single piece headset, an OTG cable and a warranty card with the list of authorised service centres in India.

There’s no microSD card bundled with the phone.

  DESIGN & BUILD QUALITY

At 162gms the phone is by all means heavy. You could very well pardon the heft because the phone features a monstrous battery! 
The phone houses a 4.5 inch qHD capacitive IPS TFT LCD display. Above it is the earpiece and next to the earpiece are the proximity and light sensors and also the notification LED. Beneath the display there are 3 backlit capacitive keys – Menu, Home, and Back. The keys are haptic feedback enabled. A microphone sits below these keys.

The left side of the P770 is completely bare.

 On the right side we find the volume rocker.

On the top side we have the 3.5mm headset jack and next to it are the micro USB port and power button.

The back of the device houses a 5 MP Auto Focus Camera with an LED Flash. On the bottom side we find the Lenovo insignia and the speakerphone grille is placed at the bottom right side.




Underneath the battery cover, we find a beefy 3500 mAh battery, the micro SD card slot and the dual SIM card slots. SIM 1 supports both 2G and 3G networks while SIM 2 slot supports only 2G networks. The back cover is glossy and attracts fingerprints. The display already has a screenguard applied to it.
Overall the handset looks decent, the build quality is quite good and you will definitely feel the handset's weight in your hand .

DISPLAY

Decent Display lacking contrast.

 

The Lenovo P770 features a 4.5 inch IPS display of qHD resolution (540x960 pixels) and pixel density of 245 ppi. Auto Brightness is available as the phone houses an ambient light sensor.
The onscreen images are quite crisp albeit with a little washed out colours. The blacks look grey and so the phone suffers on the contrast ratio as well. Viewing angles are quite good though though since the display is IPS. 

In comparison to the new phones from Indian manufacturers such as the Micromax Canvas HD A116 the display looks ordinary.
Don't get me wrong. Its still pretty sharp but the colors and contrast could definitely have been much better!

 

 

 

USER INTERFACE

The P770 runs Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. Lenovo has made some customizations to this phone, like including scrollable toggles on the notification bar, changing the color theme of the phone to white, removing the battery stats tab in settings, but installing a handful of useful applications on the phone.

The phone has a five-pane homescreen configuration and a standard set of widgets are included.
The notification bar has 13 toggles which include Energy Smart, Brigtness, Display Timeout, Auto Rotation Lock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data Connection, Airplane Mode, 4 Sound Profiles - General, Silent, Meeting and Outdoor.
The app drawer is pretty standard with 2 tabs. The first one is the apps tab which lists all the applications installed on the phone while widgets are listed under a separate tab.

PERFORMANCE

 

 

The Lenovo P770 is powered by a MediaTek MT6577 chipset which packs a 1.2GHz Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 1GB of RAM and PowerVR SGX531 GPU. It comes with 4GB of internal space out of which a total of 2 GB is reserved for Apps while 1.1 GB is available to the user.
 

Out of the 1 GB RAM, a good 981 MB is usable, out of which ~360 MB is freely available to the user after you've installed all the necessary apps. . During my time with the phone, no lags were witnessed which is a commendable job by Lenovo.
The CPU performance is average. It does pull its weight while executing apps and games and also making the interface feel relatively fluid but is by no means a good performer especially on a qHD display.
 
Games like Temple Run, Temple Run 2, Angry Birds, etc. run lag free though the phone gets slight hickups in coping with more high-end games like Dead Trigger, NFS Most Wanted.
Here are some of the benchmarks – 

TELEPHONY & MESSAGING

This is another area where Lenovo could have done better. The earpiece does not output loud volumes. Moreover, the in-call sound was unspectacular, if not poor. There was certainly some muffling and disturbance in the earpiece even when the phone was used on Airtel's 3G network. However, callers on the other end were pleased with the call quality. The phone offers nice reception and no dropped calls were experienced during the testing period.
The dialler has been customized by Lenovo. There are 2 call buttons on the bottom. Tapping on the first button lets you place an IP call and the second button will place the regular cellular call. To the right of the call buttons is the messaging button that takes you to the messaging app.

 



The dialler is just the first tab of the phone app, the other three being the Call log, the Contacts tab and the groups tab.
The dialler is fixed to a portrait mode even if auto rotation is turned on.

The speaker phone’s output is neither too loud nor too quiet. You will have no troubles hearing your phone ring in most places except in extremely noisy outdoor surroundings.

There is nothing special about the messaging app. It may look different but it is essentially the stock android app with lenovo's custom skin on top. It works like the stock Android messaging app which is a good thing in our books. Fortunately, Auto rotation works here.

GALLERY, VIDEO & MUSIC PLAYERS

The default view of the gallery is Albums. It lists all the folders with Photos and Videos in the phone.  Getting inside an album displays all the photos or videos in a rectangular grid, which is horizontally scrollable.

The Stock Video Player plays MP4 files upto 720p resolution. A 3rd party player such as MX Player or Dice Player solves the limited codec support problem. The processor handled 720p videos like a champ.  

The phone comes with Play Music as its default music app -

 

AUDIO QUALITY 

The audio quality is pretty darn good. The bundled earphones are very poor though and should be thrown in the garbage can straightaway..yes..we're serious. After using a better set of earphones, the sound quality was quite good though it slightly lacked the oomph bass and also minimal noise was present which is still better than loads of handsets in the market even from the ones manufactured by the likes of Samsung and LG. Overall, a very good performance in this department.

CAMERA - IMAGE QUALITY

As far as image quality is concerned, the Lenovo P770 produces some pleasing photos in broad daylight which are not only more-than-passable for Social Networking but also good enough for your 5x7 prints. Low Light performance is average and I suggest you to use the led flash as much as possible. Overall, it produces decent photos. You should still not replace your digital camera just yet.
The flash does overpower everything in close up photos.

Check out some of the camera samples here:-

For the High Resolution Samples click HERE

More photos will be uploaded soon.

VIDEO CAMERA

Due to the fairly capable processor, the Lenovo P770 manages to shoot videos upto 1280x720 pixels(720p). It uses 3gp container at a low bitrate which gives only passable videos.

The interface is identical to the still camera interface. There are options to change the video resolution and toggle capture sound. The various video resolutions in which the device can shoot are VGA(640x480 pixels), HVGA(480x240) and QCIF(176x144)..

The video quality is reminiscent of the still image quality. It will suffice for sending videos as MMS but is not worth framing memories.
Video sample will soon be uploaded on youtube

CONNECTIVITY

The phone supports 2 SIM Cards. The 1^st SIM Card slot supports 3G as well as 2G networks with 3G speeds maxing out at 7.2Mbps downlink & 5.76Mbps uplink. The 2^nd SIM card slot supports only 2G networks.
EDGE is supported on 2G networks for both the SIM slots.
The phone has no problems with receiving incoming calls even when data on the other SIM is being used.
Local connectivity includes Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot and Bluetooth.
The phone has a weak Wi-Fi antenna and although I could browse the internet comfortably from a distance of 10 metres over a Wi-Fi N signal, the signal disappeared totally as soon as I was 13 meters away from the router. At this point my Galaxy S2 showed a signal strength of 27%.

WEB BROWSER

The stock web browser on the phone has always been brilliant and here due to the decent processing power the browsing experience is pretty pretty good. It is miles ahead of Symbian browsers and also browsers of the yester years andoid phones. There are very minimal rare lags when trying to browse a multimedia rich webpage.
After having side-loaded Adobe’s Flash player from XDA-Forums, it worked just fine with YouTube videos.

BATTERY LIFE

This is the section you all have been waiting for. How does the 3500 mAh (the largest battery to have been put in a phone) perform? Well, its pretty good but call me skeptical, I'm sure the RAZR MAXX I've had in the past used to last longer with its 3300mAh battery. This does not, however, mean that the Lenovo's battery is incapable. It beats nearly all the phones in the market save for the RAZR MAXX and DROID RAZR MAXX HD.
The phone easily made it one full day with a 100% charge. With Auto brighntess and the phone constantly connected to a 3G data connection(when I was out of my wifi signal), the phone made it through the day with relatively heavy usage. The screen on time was 5.5 hours. GPS was on for around an hour. I watched an hour long video, listened to music for an hour and browsed the web for 4 hours(which included downloading data constantly for 1 hour). Apart from this, around half an hour worth of calls were made and received. I also used whatsapp for an additional half hour.
You just cannot kill the phone's battery in one day (if you're normal and have a life). As happy as I am with the battery life with this phone it still does not dethrone the RAZR MAXX & DROID RAZR MAXX HD - the former gave me an additional 20% stamina with a similar usage pattern. However, we should also note that the phone supports 2 SIM cards which I'm sure draws some additional power as well.

CONCLUSION

Lenovo's USP is its battery life and it DOES deliver. In this department, the P770 beats all phones which are presently available in the Indian Market. At a price range of INR 13500(even less if you find a good deal online), it is absolutely worth every single penny you pay for it.

If battery life is what you seek, look no further!!

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Dual-SIM HTC E1-Unveiled in China

The HTC 603e, which leaked last month, is now official and it's a mid-range smartphone. Today HTC announced the dual-SIM smartphone in China. it looks like the handset is not just a Chinese version of the HTC M4. It will be known officially as the HTC e1 and anyone who wants to pre-order one can do so starting today.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 expected higher on sales

An interesting news about S4 was revealed that the number of customers who took interest and registered to get new Samsung Galaxy S4 is 40% higher than that of S3 in the first 48 hours.

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Samsung Galaxy S IV with loaded new Smart scroll and Smart pause tech

In January 2013, Samsung trademarked Eye Scroll and Eye Pause. Finally Samsung released news about Eye Scroll and Eye Pause features which Galaxy S IV will have. This smart phone will have a front facing camera to track the eye gaze. It will start scrolling automatically when it detects that you’re looking at the screen.

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Nokia joins hands with P2i to make a nano-coated water resistant phone

P2i protects your phone on a molecular level making liquid substances bounce off the motherboard and various other internals. P2i's(Perform Protect Improve) nano-coating could cover something like a tissue and protect it from getting wet in water.

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Step Back Canvas HD, the UMI X2 is here!

It seems Micromax's A116 Canvas HD is going to feel the heat with UMI entering the Indian market. UMI is a chinese company but that should not shun you away from the fact that its soon-to-be-available X2 phone packs some impressive specifications.

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Samsung Galaxy S IV - Rumored Specifications

Unofficial pre-announced specifications for Samsung Galaxy S4

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Press image of HTC One in Black leaks out for US & Europe

The press image of the HTC One, which was previously known as HTC M7 was leaked in silver color variant earlier and now, a photo of the smartphone in black showed up.

A "trusted source" has informed HTC Source that the new flagship smartphone will debut as the HTC One in the U.S., but will keep the previously rumored HTC M7 moniker in Europe.

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Micromax A89 (Ninja) - Rooting Guide

If you're not familiar with the phone already, we suggest you to read our Review of the Micromax A89

PRE-REQUISITES

1. PC
2. Micromax A89 Ninja Phone
3. Essential Files - Download Link

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Micromax A89 Review

INTRODUCTION

First it were raining single cores, now its time for dual cores to dethrone their ancestors and invade the market. One can only begin to imagine how these Indian manufacturers, particularly Micromax and Karbonn can offer so much for so little money. 
A 4 inch Android smartphone powered by a 1 GHz Dual Core processor and 512 MB RAM priced at around Rs. 6500.
Ladies(We doubt) and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for Micromax A89 - Ninja.

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