Gadgets

oppo-f27-pro-plus-5g-good-display-and-sleek-design

Tue Jun 18 14:02:02 IST 2024

Oppo has recently launched its new F series smartphone – F27 Pro+, which is priced at Rs 27,999 for the base model. Let’s try and see if it delivers enough for the price tag. The F27 Pro+ features a vegan leather back with siloxane coating to go with it with the circular dual camera setup. The phone’s quite slim at just under 8 mm in thickness and weighing under 180 grams.

The phone’s 6.7-inch display has Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top, while the phone is IP69 water, dust and high temperature resistant with SGS rating for higher strength and hardware toughness. I dropped the phone accidentally twice and didn’t see any scratches on scuffs on the display or at the back.

Sporting a full HD+ (2412 x 1080) OLED display with support for up to 120 Hz refresh rates, this is perhaps the best part about the device. It’s bright and sharp and does a good job of handling high resolution videos and images. No HDR support here, though, but it’s otherwise a really nice display that’s sufficiently bright for outdoor usage.

Under the hood, the device is equipped with MediaTek’s 7050 chipset (up to 2.6Ghz octa core processor, Mali G68 MC4 GPU) along with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS3.1 internal storage (also comes in 256GB option). It runs on ColorOS 14 based on Android 14 with the May security patch installed.

The phone handles day to day task without much trouble – switching between apps and watching high resolution videos. There were some ghost touches and weird taps typing that’s mainly due to the curve. There are a lot of pre-installed apps on the phone and you can uninstall most of them and also need to spend a bit to disable things like Glance Screen if you don’t want these. Oppo has added AI Eraser tool for photos and it works quite well provided your photo is clear enough in the first place.

For gaming, this isn’t a very capable chipset considering the price tag – heavy games like Genshin Impact and CoD Mobile can’t be played smoothly anywhere close to their highest settings while games such as Monument Valley run fine without any glitches to report.

Coming to the camera performance, the rear houses a dual camera setup – a 64MP (f/1.7) main camera and a 2MP (f/2.4) portrait camera. The phone can take strictly decent shots in daylight when your subject is still and you aren’t moving either. It tends to take over-sharpened shots a lot of times and the pro mode comes in handy to adjust some settings every now and then. The front-facing 8MP (f/2.0) takes much better portrait shots than the rear camera in terms of details, edges as well as colour gradation. Overall, the camera performance does leave a little on the table especially considering it’s often one of Oppo’s strengths.

The phone is powered by a 5,000 mAh battery unit and lasted ma day quite frequently even on mid to heavy usage. It can be charged from 1 per cent to full using the bundled 67 watts SuperVooc charger in about and hour or so without any major heating issues.

5G network reception on the device is quite good and reliable for using it on the go. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS didn’t show any glitches throughout my usage. Loudspeaker on the device is okay at best, not able to cover for the missing dual stereo speaker setup that has become pretty common at this price range.

In a nutshell, the Oppo F27 Pro+ comes across as a sturdy and well made device that leaves underwhelming impressions otherwise, including the camera performance and chipset capabilities at its price point.

lenovo-legion-7-pro-a-very-expensive-gaming-machine-with-a-great-display-and-keyboard

Sat Jun 15 14:13:59 IST 2024

Lenovo’s Legion brand of gaming laptops has gradually earned a decent name in the gaming market despite its niche target. The Legion 7 Pro (16IRX9H), a premium gaming laptop priced at Rs 3,55,179, aims to fulfil pretty much all your gaming needs with a slight bit of mobility with it.

Let’s try and see if it’s really worth that price tag: First things first, this laptop clearly prioritises performance over portability. It weighs a little over 2.6 kg while measuring an inch in thickness. Both the top and bottom casing is done out anodised aluminium and the laptop does feel really well-built with no obvious build quality issues.

The keyboard casing area is all plastic but it doesn’t feel cheap at all. The front side that’s parallel to the user has an LED strip that’s quite bright, adding a bit of a gaming character to go with that RGB backlit keyboard. The keyboard has a full number keys partition on the right and the keys here are some of the most comfortable I have seen on a laptop in a while. Even though it might not be this gaming laptop’s biggest USP, the Legion team has really made a quality keyboard with no flex issues that I could notice. The mouse trackpad is standard for a Lenovo laptop and does a fine job of tracking taps reliably and for basic Windows gestures.

On the left side, you have large vents, USB A 2.1 Gen 1 port and a USB C 3.2 Gen 2 with Thunderbolt 4; while the right side has more vents, another USB A 3.2 Gen 1 port along with the privacy shutter button for the webcam and 3.5mm audio jack. The back has some more vents most of the ports – LAN port, power connector, HDMI 2.1, another USB type C port but with fast charging at 140watts and DisplayPort 1.4. The I/O options are quite a lot and should be sufficient for pretty much all kinds of users. At the bottom, you have long rubberised short height stands and some more vents.

The laptop has a 16-inch WQXGA (2560x1600) IPS display with an aspect ratio of 16:10. This is a really nice and sufficiently bright display with support for higher refresh rates of up 240Hz. This is how you know it’s a high-end gaming machine. The display is sharp with good viewing angles and doesn’t have any retention issues when playing something fast moving, be it games or videos.

The Legion 7 Pro runs on Windows 11 Home (version 23H2) and is equipped with Intel’s 14th gen i9 chip (i9-14900HX up to 2.2Ghz and 5.8Ghz boost) plus Intel UHD graphics, along with 32GB DDR6 RAM, 1 TB of m.2 SSD, and nVidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. Again, these tell you how high-end a machine this is. Some might even say that 4090 for a gaming machine like this a little bit of an overkill. You can expect to play games like Horizon Dawn Zero at above around 100FPS and above 130FPS if nVidia’s DLSS has been enabled for giving frame rates a boost. If you’ve plugged in power, then that GPU and highest resolution isn’t going to be a problem, but if it’s on battery, might want to tone down settings inside the game you’re playing, which is pretty much a norm for a gaming laptop.

Another thing is, you have to keep a watch on the laptop’s temperature when playing these games for longer hours, given temperatures these days. You should be using it with sufficient cooling space around. This is also a good laptop if you need to do video editing and some graphic designing work given its display as well as GPU power available underneath.

Battery life on the laptop is quite average, lasting about 4.5 hours with an hour of Dirt Rider while doing other tasks things such as watching YouTube videos, writing Word documents and downloading a large file in the background. This is with the display brightness at 50 per cent at most times and keyboard lighting switched on.

All in all, the Legion 7 Pro is a tank of a laptop that’s meant to give you plenty of gaming power when plugged in to a power source. It can handle some of the most graphic-intensive games at their highest settings smoothly and doesn’t let you down with its keyboard and display quality either. It might be advisable that you get a decent 4k display powered by the laptop to really use that GPU underneath to even a higher potential for your gaming requirements.

sony-ult-wear--unleash-the-power-of-deep-bass

Wed Jun 12 11:47:41 IST 2024

Sony’s flagship series of wireless headphones – WH1000XM – are touted to be amongst the best when it comes to audio performance done wirelessly on the go. But these are premium and often more than what you might be looking for. Sony has recently launched its ULT series of audio products, among which is the ULT Wear. A pair of wireless over-the-ear headphones that’s priced at Rs. 16,990 currently and aim to offer a lot of those goodies. Let’s find out how they really perform: The ULT Wear have the familiar Sony cup design but these do fold to fit in the neat cloth case that you get when you purchase it. The cups have enough 40mm earpads cushioning and the middle rod also carries decent amount of cushion. The cups are all plastic with somewhat tacky looking buttons, though. There’s nothing premium or attractive about it, I would have expected the buttons and whole matte-finish casing to be a little more premium in looks and feel. The left earcup carries these buttons – power/pairing key, Noise Cancellation/Ambient Sound key, USB type C port for charging only and 3.5mm audio jack along with the ULT button. On the right earcup, you can gesture up or down with your finger to adjust the volume, scroll forward or backward to change tracks, cup the whole area with your palm to change noise cancellation mode, and of course double tap it to pause or resume play. These gestures are responsive work reliably to not take out your phone every single time. There’s also noise-cancellation mics at the top of the cups that you can see if you tilt them a little.

I found the headphones quite comfortable to wear with good cushioning and fit for using them on the go. But the downside of that cushioning is that, given peak summers, you will get sweat on them if you’ve them on in a warm place and even for 10-15 minutes.

Coming to the audio quality, the ULT Wear supports Bluetooth 5.3 and SBC, AAC plus LDAC audio codecs. As emphasized by Sony itself, the headphones are big on the bass. Perhaps a little too much you might feel that it can take some toll on the other aspects of your music. Changing EQ in the Headphones Connect App does help, making the sound brighter using the Brights EQ preset. Pressing the ULT button on the left earcup switches between ULT1 and ULT2 EQ presets. The headphones are loud and have punchy tones as long as you’ve done your hit and trial for sound instead of the default out-of-the-box settings. It also helps in making the bass clearer without sacrificing on the vocals and instruments in the background. Noise cancellation on these headphones is pretty decent, cancelling out on low-pitched noises outside and indoors consistently and keeping the audio in check that a lot of headphones at this price point and under can struggle with.

Mic quality on these headphones is decent at best, more suited for indoor usage as it doesn’t cut out on noise with windy outdoor conditions when used for calls. Initial pairing is quite straight-forward and using multi-connect, you can use it with two different Bluetooth source devices.

Talking about its battery life, it lasted me about 30-32 hours in total with ANC switched on for about half of that, so it would last more with ANC switched off at all times, so battery life’s definitely a strength of this Sony pair. And of course you can also use these with the bundled 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio 1.2 meters cable if it suits your audio source.

Concluding this review, the new Sony ULT Wear, other than having much simpler naming scheme than the flagship WH1000XM series, does offer some bits at a much lower price. It has good ANC performance for outdoor and indoor use while giving solid battery life, too. It has overemphasized bass and requires you to tweak EQ settings a bit just to see where your preference lies to get cleaner vocals as well as treble along with that bass. So, if this does match your taste, then you can consider this new Sony pair, but if not, there’s a lot of other pairs to choose from in the wireless space these days

poco-f6--solid-performance-for-the-price-tag-with-reliable-batte

Wed Jun 12 15:53:21 IST 2024

Poco’s flagship F series has seen its ups and downs since the first launch of the F1. The F5 brought back some of its glory, being one of the best performers in its price range earlier this year. Now, the F6 is starts at a price of Rs. 29,999, trying to compete in a pretty competitive segment. Let’s try and see what all it can do well:

The Poco F6 features a 6.67-inch display (20:9 aspect ratio) with a glass panel back and rounded corners. It has thin bezels with the bottom bar slightly thicker than the other ones around the display. The phone’s right side carries the volume buttons and Power/lock key in the middle; while the left side if left all plain. The top side houses one outlet for stereo speakers, infrared port and the secondary mic; and at the bottom you have the dual SIM card tray, primary mic, USB type C port and the other outlet for loudspeakers. The phone feels decent but nothing great to call it premium to go with the price tag. It doesn’t catch smudges very quickly but requires a quick wipe once in a while.

Sporting a 6.67-inch full HD+ (1220x2712) AMOLED display supporting up to 120Hz refresh rates as well as HDR and Dolby Vision playback. It’s a brighter display than the one on the F5 and usable under direct sunlight. The display has good colour contrast and viewing angles to go with it. HDR is handled better than the predecessor, too, in terms of details and shadow scenes when watching a TV series in HDR.

The device sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen chipset (up to 3Ghz octa core processor, Adreno 735 GPU and x70 5G modem) along with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS4.0 internal storage (also comes in 8GB plus 256GB options). It runs on Xiaomi’s HyperOS 1.0.2 OS based on Android 14 with the march security patch in place. Performance is clearly one of the better parts about the F6. There’s no issue to report for playing YouTube videos at the highest supported resolution, scrolling inside WhatsApp, Instagram or viewing images in the Gallery app. You can expect to play graphicintensive games like Genshin Impact and CoD: Mobile smoothly without any frequent frame drops.

Having said that, the device does get quite a bit hot when playing such games for over half an hour. On the other hand, there are a lot of pre-installed apps on the phone out of the box, which is

expected from a Poco smartphone. You can uninstall most of these and also disable things like Glance for Mi, but you get notified about enabling them more than initially. It’s a feature-rich OS with some added AI bits now such as AI editor for editing photos, which does work well for things like detecting and copying text from photos or removing objects from your photos if the shot is clear enough.

Coming to the camera performance, the F6 sports a dual camera system on the back – a 50MP (f/1.59) main camera and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera – this isn’t the phone’s strength by any means. It can take some sharp shots in good lighting condition and OIS can help a bit on low-light shots, but don’t expect to get well stitched photos with colour accuracy. Image processing seems to be one thing Poco can focus a little more on to ger their camera. The front-facing 20MP (f/2.2) camera can take some nice shots with good focus and isn’t bad among other phones at this price range when it comes to low-light shots, including for video calls.

Powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, the phone ships with a 120 watts fast charger in the box. I found the phone to last me a day quite frequently even with some heavy usage on the go at times. There weren’t any battery drainage issues during my usage. The phone charges from 1% to full in a little over an hour but it get a bit warm almost every single time I charged it. Also, it can charge at slower speeds if you’re gaming alongside.

Dual speakers on the phone are really loud and clear and definitely usable for your video playback and gaming needs. 5G reception on the phone was reliable but not as good as the Realme GT 6T and OnePlus 12R when using it as a WiFi hotspot on the go. Call quality and WiFi reception of the phone were glitch–free.

All in all, the Poco F6 is a good performer if you want a smooth Android performer under Rs. 30,000 but at the same time, don’t particularly value rear camera performance as much. On top of that, there’s also a quality display and reliable battery life to make it a considerable option around Rs. 30,000.

google-pixel-8a-review-packs-in-a-lot-of-things-pixel-8-offers-at-a-much-higher-price

Sat Jun 01 11:00:50 IST 2024

The Google Pixel A series of smartphones started as more of a more budget-friendly offering compared to their higher-end brothers, but gradually this price point has been increasing and getting closer to the higher-end offering itself.

The new Pixel 8A starts at Rs. 52,999 for the base model. Is this price tag justified? Let us try and find out:

The Pixel 8A looks and feels a lot like the Pixel 8 in the hand with less protruding camera visor on the back and a polycarbonate back with matte finish that doesn’t catch on to smudges and fingerprints quickly. The 6.1-inch display (20:9 aspect ratio) has the dated Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top. The device’s right side has the Power/lock key and the volume buttons at the middle part; while the left side has only the SIM card tray in the lower half.

The top locates the secondary mic; and the bottom has one outlet for loudspeakers, USB type C and primary mic. The ear-speaker grille is neatly tucked in along with the front-facing camera in the top-middle part.

The phone isn’t very slim and is a little heavier than what you might expect it to be before picking it up for the first time. It has rounded corners and doesn’t feel slippery at all with no visible issues when it comes to the build quality. I tried and liked its Porcelain colour, while the phone also comes in Aloe, Bay and Obsidian colour options.

The 6.1-inch full HD+ (1980x2400) OLED display supports up to 120Hz refresh rates, and it is honestly the biggest upgrade over the Pixel 7A and that’s not just for the higher refresh rates but also better colour reproduction. It has good viewing angles and has what it takes
to handle higher refresh content. Its HDR output is pretty much on par with the Pixel 8’s, which isn’t too bad. The display is bright enough and usable under direct sunlight, too.

The device sports a very similar dual camera setup – a 64MP (f/1.89) main camera, a 13MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera with added ultra HDR support. The phone can handle daylight and to some extent low light shots arguably better than any smartphone around 50k today.

It gives crips shows for still subjects and features like top shots can help in a moving situation at times.

One thing I noticed is its slight shutter lag when taking shots in low light,
which is what’s otherwise a reliable camera performer. The cameras have not been upgraded on the hardware front, though. The front-facing 13MP (f/2.2) camera takes generally well-calibrated shots with not too much skin sharpening and overexposure.

Powered by Google’s Tensor G3 chipset (up to 2.9GHz octa core processor, Mali-G715 GPU and Titan M2 security coprocessor) it comes with 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 128GB UFS 3.1 storage (also comes in 256GB UFS 3.1 for the higher variant). The phone does your day-to-day tasks without any stuttering or lags.

It can handle your video calls, YouTube videos, multiple Chrome tabs and music playing in the background just fine. Regarding gaming, it handles CoD: Mobile smoothly and Genshin Impact quite well too. The only place where I saw some frame drops was when switching to a 2160p HDR video in the YouTube and you initially see a bit of a hiccup but a second later it’s all fine.

It is Google’s own take on Android and it is smooth, responsive and without any third-party apps that you would have to uninstall out of the box. At the same time, it is not quite most feature-rich Android flavour out of the box – things like double tap to lock and wake the phone, quickly checking devices connected to your WiFi hotspot and data connection speeds on the status bar are missing. But what you do get is AI features such as Circle to Search and Best take for the camera. Oh, and 7 years of software updates, which is pretty nice to see.

The phone is equipped with a 4,492mAh battery unit and comes with a USB type C to C cable in the box along with a USB type A to C converter in the box (no charger). It generalled me a little under a day on heavy use and a day on moderate use. One thing, as seen on previous Pixel devices, is it charges rather slowly compared to many smartphones in this price range. Supporting up to 18watts, the phone charges from 1 per cent to full in over 1.5 hours using a compatible power delivery charger.

The dual speakers on the phone have good depth and are loud for your gaming and video playback needs indoors. It sounds quite crisp and the only thing it sometimes struggles with it quick are dialogues in a video.

When it comes to 5G, the Pixel 8a has been a better performer than how the Pixel 8 was at its launch, which is due to the updates Google has released to improve the 5G performance on both devices. Though it is still not quite as good as many other 5G devices even at lower prices, (including the OnePlus 12R), it’s not much more usable for your data needs on the go.

Concluding this review, the Pixel a series of smartphones isn’t quite as a budget option as it used to be. It’s now much closer to the elder brother in terms of pricing and performance. So, if you were looking for a Pixel device, the Pixel 8A might make more sense compared to the Pixel 8 given their Indian pricing.

asus-vivobook-s-14-oled-2024-a-good-work-laptop-with-decent-battery

Sat Jun 01 11:05:46 IST 2024

ASUS has been among the most popular brands in the PC space, especially the laptop side, when it comes to the Indian market for a while now. The Zenbook has been doing fine in the higher end segment, and the Vivobook has come a long way in terms of hardware improvements and tweaks since it first launched years back. Now, there’s the new Vivobook S 14 OLED (M5406) launched at a base price of Rs 89,999.

The laptop is made of aluminium alloy with the hinge going back as much as 180 degrees. The hinge, though, is quite small and not very noticeable, giving it a bit of neat look, one can say. The 16:10 14-inch display has narrow bezels around it and sports a webcam with physical shutter on it. The left side features HDMI 2.1, two thunderbolt USB 3.2 type C ports, microSD card slot and 3.5mm audio jack; while the right side carries two USB 3.2 type A ports along with two little LEDs for charging and processing status. The vents sit at the back and plus at the bottom along with the Harman-Kardon speakers.

The trackpad has now been increased in length and breadth, making it one of the bigger ones on a consumer laptop now. It has a metallic plate and feels nice and premium to use. During my usage, I found it to be tracking gestures for Windows and taps for clicks reliably for day-to-day use. The keys on the keyboard are single-source LED backlit and have decent travel to them. These keys produce lower click-ity sound volume than what usually laptops have at this price range, which a lot of people who work in quiet environments might like. Oh, and the keyboard has a Copilot key (in place of the right Control key) to bring up Copilot whenever and wherever you want to (no additional subscription provided). I am not exactly a fan of having it but then I didn’t really need to use Copilot frequently, either, yet. The keyboard’s RGB lighting can be customized via Windows’ Dynamic Ligthing settings in place, and it works nicely.

The 14-inch WUXGA (1,920x1,220) Lumina OLED display is a quality panel used by ASUS here. It’s bright, has good viewing angles at most angles, is a bit glossy, and produces sharp output for high resolution images and videos, too. Though it’s usable when outdoors during day, it’s not the best performer in these conditions for working. HDR output is also pretty good in terms of details and handling low-light scenes without sacrificing on colours and contrast with it.

The laptop packs in Ryzen’s 5 series chip (6-core 7535HS clocked at up to with turbo boost at up to 4.8GHz) and AMD Radeon graphics, along with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe m.2 SSD. It runs on Windows 11 Home OS (23H2 version). You can also get it in 8GB + 512GB configuration. The machine is capable of handling tasks such as running Office apps, multiple Edge and Firefox tabs, music playing in the background plus a file downloading in the background – I didn’t really see any major issues here. ASUS also seems to have made the sleep to wake up time a little less, or should I say not buggy, which we had seen several previous models, including Vivobook models. For gaming, though, there’s clearly a ceiling, as you can play a game like Fortnite and low to medium settings at under 60FPS and don’t expect get any further performance enhancements with other graphic-intensive games. Having said that, this isn’t meant to be your gaming centre, so it’s expected. The one weird thing I noticed, not sure if it’s intentional, is that the processing status LED stayed on instead of blinking or going off when the laptop was in sleep mode.

The built-in Harman-Kardon speakers are quite loud and clear sounding for a laptop and can be used for watching videos or event movies or series when you’re indoors with not a lot of chatter around. The Vivobook S 14 OLED sports a 75watt hour battery unit and can be charged from 1 per cent to full using the bundled 65 watts fast charger in about 2.5 hours or so. The laptop lasted me 7.5-8 hours on the go, which is acceptable and nothing outstanding for a work machine.

All in all, the Vivobook S 14 OLED is a well-built Windows 11 machine that can handle pretty much all your day-to-day tasks without any major barriers and that display and keyboard in place only make the experience better. It has decent battery life with little to medium gaming capabilities, which is what’s otherwise a good work laptop.

realme-gt-6t-great-battery-life-and-a-quality-display

Sat Jun 01 11:08:41 IST 2024

Though Realme has launched a lot of phones past year or so, its GT series hasn’t seen any new modes for the Indian market for two years or so now. The series is more known for its performance than anything else, and now the company has come with the new GT 6T, priced at Rs 30,999 for the base variant. Let’s try and see if this new offering is worth your consideration.

The Realme GT 6T comes with a 6.78-inch curved display with an entire plastic back and frame to go with it. The front has narrow bezels, and though all are not symmetric, the chin is also not very broad. The polycarbonate back sports the dual camera plus dual LED flash setup on a glossy rectangle near the top, while the realme branding is near the bottom. The right side features the volume buttons and Power/lock key near the middle – both are quite narrow but still comfortable enough to press; the left side is all plain. The bottom locates the dual SIM card tray, primary mic, USB type C port and one outlet for loudspeaker; while the top carries the other outlet with ear-speaker, infrared port and secondary mic. The display houses the centrally placed punch-hole front camera at the top and optical fingerprint scanner at the bottom. The phone weighs about 192grams and is slightly slippery but not too much. It does attract a lot of dust quickly, including on the lenses at the back and frames all around sides.

The 6.78-inch full HD+ (2780x1264) OLED LTPO display with support for variable refresh rates of up to 120Hz. This is a bright and clear display, perhaps the brightest in this price range and is readable under direct sunlight. The colour reproduction is also pretty good for watching high resolution videos and viewing images. There’s better HDR output than before in terms of handling sheer brightness and dark scenes to some extent as compared to previous models.

Coming to the camera performance, the phone sports dual camera setup on the back – a 50MP (f/1.88) main camera (with OIS) and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The camera performance seems to have better picture tweaking than before, but colour reproduction could have been a little better in low light shots. The phone can take detailed and vivid shots in good lighting with night mode giving slightly less grainy shots as compared to the realme’s 12 series. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.4) camera is pretty quick to use and takes well lit shots in decent lighting conditions, its dynamic range could have been a little better but it’s more than good enough for video calling, too.

Running on realme 5.0 UI based on Android 14 with the April security patch in place, the phone is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset (up to 2.8GHz octa core processor, Adreno 732 GPU and X63 5G modem) along with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage (also comes in 8GB + 128GB UFS 3.1, 12GB + 128GB UFS 3.1, 12GB + 256GB UFS 4.0). The phone is generally a smooth operator with no visible lags while watching YouTube videos, scrolling within messaging and social media apps or having Google Maps navigation working with music playing side by side. A lot of the third party apps run on 120FPS without any consistent drops in frames while scrolling. For gaming, you can expect to play a game like BGMI at a little under 60FPS at medium to high (but not highest) settings. There are no major heating issues or stuttering happening while gaming at such settings on the device but don’t expect to play the most graphic#intensive games at their highest settings with absolute smoothness here. There are a few third party apps pre-installed on the device (lower than what it used to be earlier) but these can be uninstalled the usual way.

When it comes to the battery life, the realme GT 6T performs among the best in this price range. Boasting (dual 2,750mAh batteries) 5,500mAh battery, the phone lasted me a day comfortably around 9/10 times despite using it on 5G on the go with WiFi hotspot in use for consecutive 2-3 hours, with brightness at around 35%, and so on. Using the bundled 120watts SuperVooc (and GaN) charger, you can charge the device from 1% to full in about in under an hour, and a little if smart charging has been enabled (it’s switched on by default).

The phone’s dual stereo speakers are quite a bit top-centric taking its toll on the stereo effect when playing music especially at high volumes, though otherwise, it’s quite loud, but nothing special. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS performance on the device didn’t show any troubles and worked as these should. 5G network reception on it is not bad, too, with the phone latching on to 5G in areas wherever it’s available when outdoors, including on the go.

In a nutshell, the GT 6T is a welcome addition to the GT series, which hadn’t been launched in India for the past two years. It has feature rich software in place, smooth performance, not for most graphic-intensive games, but capable otherwise. To top it, its battery life is among the segment leading with no heating issues.

imoo-z7--the-smartwatch-that-puts-parents--minds-at-ease

Fri May 10 14:36:55 IST 2024

There are plenty of smartwatches available in the Indian market today—some good, some not so great. However, all of these are primarily aimed at adults who already have another smartphone and perhaps more personal gadgets to go about their daily lives. Oppo and Vivo’s sister company, imoo, recently launched its Z7 watch phone that’s made specifically for kids. Priced at Rs. 14,990, let’s see what it offers for kids and if it does so well enough.

The Z7 has a square 1.3-inch display with either Powder Pink and Blue color options. These straps feel premium and are pretty comfortable to wear, even for hours on the go. The watch isn’t too light for a kid, though, but then this isn’t supposed to be a conventional kids' watch, at around 65 grams. The right side of the watch has the power/lock button, while on the top side of the display, you have a front-facing camera. The left side houses the charging port, and on the back, it packs a SIM card slot and some sensors for health measurements. The top side locates a push button, by which the top of the watch comes off its base crown to reveal the rear camera (more on that later)."

The watch is equipped with a 740mAh battery, which comfortably lasts for two days. It takes under two hours to charge the watch from 1% to full.

Powered by a Speadtrum W317 chipset along with 128MB of RAM and 4Gb of internal storage, the Z7 runs on Android OS and comes with a few useful features for parents to keep a little check on their child’s wellbeing. You can install the binding app on your smartphone to make certain adjustments and settings to the watch. For instance, set contacts that the watch can make and receive calls with, check the location continuously, check the kid’s temperature and so on.

When you make a call to the watch, The 5MP rear camera and the 2MP front camera can be used simultaneously to see the background with the rear camera and the kid themselves from the front camera.

Swiping down on the Home screen brings you connectivity options. Swiping left is to go back to the previous menu, while doing so at the home screen takes you to the dialer and messaging. Swiping right takes you to apps (very few of them) and Settings. Apps include stopwatch,. AI scanner to detect items over the Internet, and App Center to install more apps from. There’s WiFi but it only supports 2.4Ghz networks and you can’t add a hidden WiFi SSD either. For calling and messaging, 4G connectivity via a SIM card is present. There's a PPG sensor as well as something mood detector (not exactly sure what it runs). Heart rate monitoring doesn’t seem like the most accurate of them all but it;s just there for the namesake, I guess. There’s temperature monitoring for the parents to keep a check on their kid’s body temperature as and when required. There’s no option for always-on display, though.

With some useful features like these, the Z7 is a pretty interesting watch that might fulfil a kid’s need to have a gadget with them while also giving their parents something extra to keep an eye on their child’s safety and health. I would have liked to see the companion app work a little more smoothly, the watch display to be a little brighter and also the watch offered in more than just two standard colour options considering this is meant to be worn by kids.

lava-prowatch-zn--unveiling-lava-s-first-smartwatch

Wed May 08 16:25:55 IST 2024

Lava recently entered the smartwatch space with the launch of its Prowatch series of smartwatches – Prowatch ZN and VN being the first two. The Prowatch ZN is the higher-end one that’s priced at Rs. 2,599 for the silicon variant and Rs. 2,999 for the metallic strap variant. Does it pack enough to be a contender in this already crowded segment? Let’s try and check:

The first thing you might notice about the Prowatch ZN is that it’s lightweight and the silicon strap is comfortable to wear along. Throughout my usage, I didn’t once feel any discomfort or irritation while having the watch on my wrist. The watch features a 1.43-inch circular display (metal dial) with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 coating on top. The right side has two physical buttons – both of which don’t exactly feel the nicest set of buttons on a smartwatch when you press these but they are responsive and work reliably enough. It’s an IP68 water and dust-resistant smartwatch with corrosive-free warranty of 1 year from the company (for the metallic variant).

The 1.43-inch (466x466) AMOLED display is just about bright enough to be usable under direct sunlight and handles text and UI elements fine. It’s a 60Hz display and is not a very sharp display but it’s good enough for the price tag and to not be a hurdle in your user experience – whether for reading notifictions or quick short replies to text messages. The Prowatch ZN is equipped with Realtek’s RTL8763EWE-VP chipset and 32MB RAM. There’s also 4GB of internal storage. The watch runs on Lava’s own proprietry operating system and requires ProSpot app on your smartphone to setup and sync data and notifications. General performance on this smartwatch is not bad at all – you can change watch faces without any issues, close and open pre-installed apps without any bugs noticeable. Animations are generally smooth but can be drop a few frames once in a while, but it’s not deal breaker. You can choose from 150 watchfaces, some are really suitable and good looking for this watch’s aesthetics with some other useful details also shown. This watch has SpO2, heart rate monitor, sleep monitoring and stress measurement along with the activity tracker. The fitness tracking on this budget smartwatch is actually not that off in terms of accuracy. When checked against a much higher priced Apple Watch Series 7 and Ultrahuman Ring Air, the Prowatch ZN was in the ballpark of 10%-15% quite a few times for steps measuring and Spo2 against an Spo2 sensor. Stress measurement notifications aren;t as prompt, as say, the onePlus Watch 2, but of course that one is priced 10 times this, so it’s not a fair comparison. So, for fitness it;’s basically good enough for step tracking, and maybe odd Spo2 measurement, but don’t rely on it for the latter completely.

The Prowatch ZN also features Bluetooth calling, so you can make and receive calls using the in-built mic and it works decently, howsoever awkward it might look to others around you, if you really want to use it.

Powered by a 350mAh battery unit, the Prowatch lasted 4-5 days on most full charges, and if always-on display for switched on, it lasted a little over 2 days, which is better than what most smartwatches can claim these days. You can charge the Prowatch ZN from 1% to full in a little over an hour without any heating issues to worry about.

All in all, Lava’s first take on a smartwatch does seem quite promising and value for money for this price tag. It doesn’t have the smoothest or most feature rich OS in place, but the Prowatch has a solid battery life, decent build quality, good display and is not bad for step counting either.

is-the-moto-g64-worth-it--exploring-its-features--performance--a

Tue Apr 30 12:05:27 IST 2024

Motorola has been more active in the Indian market over the past year or so when it comes to launching smartphones than it was before. The company has released products in both the budget and mid-range segments, with the new Moto G64 priced at Rs. 14,999 for the base model and Rs. 16,999 for the higher model. Let’s try and see what this Moto device brings to the table:

The Moto G64 features a matte textured finish back that doesn’t catch fingerprints and smudges too quickly. The front has a 6.5-inch 20:9 aspect ratio display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 on top. The corners are curved, and the sides are made flat. The bezels aren’t too thick, but the bottom one (chin) is significantly thicker than the others on the sides, which doesn’t kind of stand out, sadly. The right side carries the volume buttons and Power/lock key, both of which aren’t exactly the most clicky buttons seen on a budget smartphone. The left side locates the dual SIM card plus microSD card hybrid slot tray near the top. The top only has the secondary mic with the Dolby Atmos branding, while the bottom houses the 3.5mm audio jack, primary mic, USB Type-C port, and one outlet for loudspeakers (the other one being next to the front camera). The phone is IP52 water and dust-repellant and weighs under 195 grams. It isn’t too heavy nor slippery for a phone with a 6,000mAh battery unit. It comes in Ice Lilac, Pearl Blue, and Mint Green (the one I tried) colour options..

The 6.5-inch full HD+ (1080x2400) IPS LCD display is a pretty good display, delivering well-calibrated colors and able to handle high-resolution videos and images without sacrificing quality. It’s a 120Hz higher refresh rate display that’s also bright enough to be usable under direct sunlight outdoors. It doesn’t have the deep, rich black levels of a nice AMOLED display, but it’s still a good LCD panel in itself for the price tag.

The back has the dual camera system on a protruding rectangular cutout – a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera (with OIS) and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The camera performance has been pretty decent but nothing outstanding, in my experience. The shots are consistent and there’s no oversaturation seen on most occasions on daylight shots. For low-light shots, Night mode does help in retaining details and exposure but you might have to retake your shots to cut down on noise in the photo. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.4) takes about okay shots even in suitable lighting conditions and isn’t something much to write about for your selfie needs.

The phone is the first to be powered by MediaTek’s 7025 chipset (up to 2.5Ghz octa-core processor and IMG BXM-8-256 GPU) and also comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB UFS2.2 internal storage (also comes in 8GB + 128GB configurations). The phone’s UI looks quite close to how it’s on the Pixel devices but it’s pretty different in use. Firstly, Moto has added quite a few third-party apps pre-installed out of the box. Most of which can be uninstalled without much fuss. There’s also something called Family Spaces 2.0 where you can share your device’s screen selected content with somebody to get assistance or remotely control another supported device. MotoHub allows you to customize themes, widgets, homescreen, and lock screen from a single place quite conveniently with a lot of options to choose from. The phone handles day-to-day tasks, watching YouTube videos, scrolling inside Instagram, messaging across multiple apps while having some Chrome tabs opened in the background without any major issues albeit a few frame drops here and there. It can handle low-intensive games okay, but games such as BGMI or CoD show a lot of stuttering and is clearly not meant to be played on medium to highest settings on this device. Powered by a 6,000mAh battery unit, the phone ships with a 33-watt Turbo charger and is PD3.0 compatible. The Moto G64 comfortably lasted me a day almost every single time and frequently had a bit of juice left for the next day, too. The bundled charger charges the device from 1% to full in about 90-95 minutes in one go.

The physical fingerprint scanner mounted on the power/lock key is reliable and quick enough to be used daily. The loudspeakers are decently punchy for gaming as well as videos, although they aren’t the loudest in this price range. The 5G reception on the device is really good, providing reliable network reception for usage on the go for your continued work. The call quality, WiFi, and GPS performance of the phone didn’t show any issues throughout my usage.

All in all, the Moto G64 comes across as a reliable device for those who want to have a reliable and stutter-free experience when it comes to calling, messaging, watching videos online, or playing music in the background while surfing the web. This isn’t a gaming-centric device by any means, where other devices such as the realme P1 seemed to perform better. Additionally, with a few pre-installed apps out of the box, the Moto G64 is a pretty good option for your first 5G device under 15k.

realme-p1-great-battery-life-and-refreshing-colour-options

Mon Apr 22 14:30:28 IST 2024

Another month, another new smartphone from the house of Realme but this time it’s a new series they are launching – P series, with the new P1 and P1 Pro. I have been using the P1 for a few days now, and this is how the Rs 14,999 phone performed:

The phone looks and feels in the hand like other recent Realme devices. With rounded corners, rounded watch-like camera setup on back and punch-hole front camera on the display – pretty familiar. But the device has a nice patterned back in Peacock Green (also comes in a Phoenix Red option) that I tried. The right side has the volume buttons and power/lock key but there is nothing on the left side. The top houses the 3.5mm audio jack, one outlet for loudspeakers and secondary mic; and the bottom houses the dual SIM card and microSD hybrid card slot tray, USB Type C and primary mic. The phone measures just under 8 mm in thickness and slightly under 190 gram in weight and is a decently comfortable device to carry around for a 6.67-inch display.

Speaking of that 6.67-inch full HD+ (2400x1080) AMOLED display, it’s a bright enough display that doesn’t struggle to be readable under direct sunlight. The display is fairly sharp and has punchy colours with smooth touch response and no major issues to report. YouTube videos in 1080p don’t lose out on much details though HDR output is strictly average, and text is sharp and readable whether for messages or email.

The phone boasts of a dual camera system on the back – 50MP (f/1.8) main camera, a 2 MP (f/2.4) black and white camera. The phone takes sharp and detailed shots in good lighting conditions with a little over-saturated shots at times. The low-light performance is expectedly not too great, with the photo looking grainy and the subject losing out on details quite frequently. An added mode called Street Mode gives you 27mm and 54mm shots. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.45) camera can take sharp but too smoothened selfie shots, switching filter and beauty mode off does help, but we have seen from better front cameras from Realme than this.

Running on Realme UI 5.0 based on Android 14 with the March security patch, the phone is equipped with MediaTek 7050 chipset (up to 2.6Ghz octa core processor, Mali G68 MC4 GPU) along with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 internal storage (base model has 128GB). The phone handles day-to-day tasks quite well and doesn’t show any slowdowns with little gaming thrown in. Games like CoD can be played at medium settings but don’t expect more than that. Playing full HD YouTube videos, with multiple Chrome tabs opened in the background and having a few other apps in the recent apps list didn’t trouble the phone’s experience. The software experience out of the box has been tweaked a bit with fewer apps pre-installed, but you be uninstall most of the remaining ones without much fuss. Realme has said two major OS updates and three years of security updates for the device, which isn’t bad compared to most other phones in this price range.

The device is powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, which lasted me a day regularly, and the phone didn’t show any unusual battery drainage issues. The bundled 45 watt SuperVooc charger charges the device from 1 per cent to full in about 75 minutes. The overall battery experience is surely one of the best parts about using this device.

The dual speakers are loud enough for your gaming and video playback needs. 5G reception on the phone is on par with other devices in the price range with reliable network reception on the move, including for Wi-Fi hotspot. The optical fingerprint scanner is reliable and quick enough for daily use, something a lot of smartphones at this price point can struggle with.

In brief, the new P1 from Realme seems like a good offering for those who want a good design, refreshing colour, reliable day to day performance but aren’t into gaming much. You might have expected a little better camera performance in what’s otherwise a phone with a good battery experience.

the-oneplus-nord-ce4--evaluating-battery-longevity-and-software-

Sat Apr 13 14:36:03 IST 2024

OnePlus’ Nord series of smartphones, though not always super clear in terms of naming scheme, has been the cash cow for the company for the past several quarters. There’s Nord, Nord CE, and also Nord CE Lite, the latest being the Nord CE4, which is priced at Rs. 24,999 for the base model and Rs. 26,999 for the beefier model. Let’s try and see if the device packs enough to be a considerable option in this price segment.

The Nord CE4 comes in Celadon Marble and Dark Chrome colour options, with the former being the one I tried. I liked its slightly refreshed look and feel in the hand. The patterned back features the OnePlus logo in the middle, along with the dual camera and LED (that’s probably disguised as another lens) on an elevated cutout. The back is slightly curved towards the sides, making the device comfortable to handle.

The right side carries the volume buttons and Power/lock key near the middle, while the left side is plain. The top houses the infrared port, an outlet for loudspeakers, and a secondary mic, while the bottom features the dual SIM card plus microSD hybrid card tray slot, USB type C port, and another outlet for loudspeakers. The ear-speaker grille is right next to the front-facing camera, neatly tucked in on the display.

The phone weighs about 186 grams and is IP54 water and dust-resistant.

The 6.7-inch full HD+ (2412x1080) AMOLED display supports 120Hz, providing a bright and vibrant viewing experience with excellent detail for high-resolution videos and images. It handles HDR10 content adequately and meets expectations for handling shadows within its price range.

The phone features a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera with OIS and EIS, as well as an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. During daylight, the camera performs well, capturing sharp, well-focused images with a decent dynamic range and the PRoXDR effect. However, low-light shots tend to be grainy and lack detail in colour reproduction. The night mode does provide some improvement in clarity for subjects. The 16MP (f/2.4) front-facing camera with EIS performs well for taking selfie shots in various lighting conditions and is suitable for video calls.

The device is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset (up to 2.6Ghz octa core processor, Adreno 720 GPU and X63 5G modem). It’s running on OxygenOS 14 based on Android 14 with the March security patch installed. There are very few third party apps pre-installed on the device provided you don’t consent to installing additional ones during the initial setup. OnePlus has made a few small changes in design such as a bigger hotspot pop-up when you tap on the badge in the status bar, there are also now more options on long-pressing the app icons. The phone handles daily tasks such as messaging over multiple apps, calling, browsing with multiple Chrome tabs and playing some music in the background without any troubles. You get an 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 internal storage (also comes in 128GB for the base model). Though 8GB isn’t less, some people might have expected 12GB, but it doesn’t seem like a bottleneck in day-to day usage, including playing HDR content in OTT apps. But don’t expect to play graphic-intensive games like Genshin Impact at their highest settings with any stutters. The one Bug I saw is the now playing tile continues to show a track playing over Chromecast even after it has been paused and stopped and the playing app has also been removed from recent apps list. Otherwise, it is a reliable and smooth software experience with the company promising two major Android updates and three years of security patches.

The device is powered by a 5,500mAh battery unit and comes with a 100-watt SuperVooc charger in the box. The phone comfortably lasted me a day and then some most of the time. It didn’t struggle to last a full working day with moderate to heavy usage. The bundled charger is able to charge the device from 1% to full in about 35-40 minutes without any overheating issues.

Call quality, WiFi, and GPS all performed as expected on the smartphone without any major glitches. The 5G network reception is also decent, although not quite comparable to OnePlus’ flagship devices, especially in terms of continuous reception on the go. Nevertheless, it is still among the better-performing smartphones for using 5G. The dual stereo speakers are quite loud and punchy, similar to those of the realme 12 Pro+, making them suitable for gaming and video needs.

All in all, the OnePlus Nord CE4 performs as one of the better and smoother devices available around the 25k price point today. It offers a great battery experience, decent but not great camera performance, a good display, a comfortable design, and a more refreshing colour.

vivo-t3-5g--a-budget-contender-with-strong-battery-life-and-disp

Mon Apr 08 17:55:01 IST 2024

Vivo’s new T3 5G handset, priced at Rs. 19,999, is aimed at a highly competitive budget segment, which has seen a lot of new products in the last two to three months. Vivo has been among the top performers in the Indian market for a while now. Let’s try and see if the T3 packs enough to be a considerable option for its price tag or not.

The device features a crystal-patterned back panel with a dual camera plus flicker sensor. It has rounded edges and flat sides, with the right side carrying the volume buttons and Power/Lock key near the middle. The top has the secondary mic, while the bottom houses the dual SIM card and microSD card tray, primary mic, USB type C port, and outlet for loudspeakers. The other outlet for speakers is next to the ear-speaker grille on the display, which is tucked next to the punch-hole front camera. The phone comes in Crystal Flake and Cosmic Blue color options and is IP54-rated for water and dust resistance. Despite its 6.67-inch display with thin but asymmetrical bezels, the phone weighs about 185 grams, making it comfortable to hold and non-slippery to carry around.

The 6.67-inch full HD+ (1080x2400) AMOLED display supports up to 120Hz refresh rates. It is bright enough to be usable under very bright sunlight with the brightness cranked up above 60%. The display has decent viewing angles and punchy colors on the default color mode. However, the professional color mode offers more accurate color reproduction. Users have the option to enable high refresh rates or choose dynamic refresh rates from the display settings. The display does a good job of handling high-resolution videos in terms of details and colours.

The phone features a dual camera system, including: Main Camera: 50MP (f/1.79) and Bokeh Camera: 2MP (f/2.4). The main camera excels in capturing detailed shots in daylight conditions, exhibiting good dynamic range and color reproduction. However, the portrait mode's performance, even in favorable lighting conditions, falls short of expectations for this price range. It's worth noting that the flicker sensor does provide some assistance in mitigating ambient light effects, especially when capturing indoor shots.

The camera app is user-friendly and allows for easy adjustment of settings. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.0) camera effectively handles skin tones, particularly when filters and effects are disabled. This makes it suitable for social media usage and video calls. Overall, while the camera performance is decent, there may be an expectation for enhanced capabilities, especially considering this is a Vivo smartphone.

The Vivo T3 is equipped with MediaTek’s Dimensity 7200 chipset (up to 2.8GHz octa-core processor, Mali G68 GC4 GPU), along with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS2.2 internal storage (also available in 256GB). The phone runs on Funtouch OS 14 based on Android 14 with the March security patch installed. The phone’s general day-to-day performance has been satisfactory – it handles switching between apps, scrolling inside social media apps, messaging, and calling without any issues. Its animation could have been a little smoother, given the higher refresh rate display, but it’s not a major concern. One can expect to play a game like BGMI at around 55 to 60FPS without too many frame drops and overheating issues. The OS is quite feature-rich but comes with a lot of pre-installed third-party apps. These can be uninstalled, but doing so would also require disabling some notifications and features like the lockscreen Poster, which is asked to be turned on more than once after being turned off during the device setup. Although Vivo’s own gallery app is stable to use, there’s no option to change the default app for it within the app settings, unlike for other features such as the browser and app launcher.

Boasting a 5,000mAh battery unit, the Vivo T3 lasted me a full day more often than not even at moderate to heavy use. The bundled 44 watt FastCharge charger is able to charge the device from 1% to full in around 75 minutes.

The stereo speakers on the phone are pretty decent, with the audio booster helping a bit for playback. However, they do tend to distort at higher volume levels. Call quality and WiFi reception are top-notch, while 5G network reception is decent enough to be relied upon for data needs on the go.

In conclusion, the Vivo T3 has several things going for it – great battery life, good display, and a decent gaming performance for the price tag. However, the software experience out of the box could have been a bit better. Hopefully, Vivo’s 2 years of OS updates and 3 years of security patches policy can help keep the device running smoothly without any major bugs, making it a decent option under 20k (base model) for those valuing battery life and sturdy build quality over other things.

hp-omen-transcend-14--gaming-laptop-that-s-not-short-on-comfort

Thu Apr 04 11:17:23 IST 2024

Gaming laptops are often aimed solely at gaming. Seldom are they also slim and designed so that carrying them along for other activities isn’t a hassle. However, that seems to be the case with HP’s Omen Transcend 14 gaming laptop. Priced at Rs. 1,74,999, this 14-inch laptop isn’t heavy for your backpack. But does it have enough power and features? Let’s try and see.

The Omen Transcend 14 boasts two standout features: its design and display. The laptop measures about 18mm in thickness when closed and weighs approximately 1.64kg, making it one of the more portable laptops with gaming capabilities. It features an aluminum chassis with vents at the back, housing two ports – HDMI 2.1 and USB type C with power delivery and DisplayPort. On the left side, you'll find the 3.5mm audio jack and USB type C with Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort near the middle, while the right side houses two USB type A 3.2 Gen 2 ports in the far corner. The display sports thin bezels, except for a broader and more reflective chin that includes the Omen logo. The laptop's dual hinges are positioned on either side from the middle and are raised across other areas.

The keyboard is of a slightly different build and design compared to usual HP laptops, but it has decent travel and click-ability for its keys. These are four-zone RGB backlit keys (and not per key) with lighting that extends plenty on and around the keys. You can configure RGB using Omen Gaming Hub. The keys are comfortable for gaming or usual typing needs, even for longer periods of use. The trackpad next to it is large enough and performed decently when it came to picking up the usual Windows gestures for scrolling and switching between apps, but its click mechanism could have been a little more refined in terms of responsiveness.

The 14-inch 2.8k (2880 x 1800) OLED display is highlighted for its exceptional brightness and sharpness, making it suitable for various use cases. Additionally, it is noted as an IMAX-certified display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, catering to content creation needs such as video editing while maintaining HDR content quality, particularly for shadowy scenes. The display's 120Hz higher refresh rate is emphasized for vibrant visuals and punchy colours, meeting the requirements for both video and gaming. Furthermore, the display is praised for its good text rendering, viewing angles, and colour depth, contributing to its overall appeal.

The laptop is equipped with Intel’s 16-core Ultra 7 155H that can reach clock speeds of up to 4.8GHz for turbo needs, coupled with Intel Arc Graphics, 24MB L3 cache, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 (65-watt variant) GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB m.2 SSD. When it comes to gaming performance, the Omen 14 handled Returnal at around 70 frames per second when played at 1080p resolution, while Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition ran at around 47FPS, and Elden Ring maintained an almost consistent 60FPS at 1080p. However, for a demanding game like Cyberpunk 2077, it's unlikely to exceed 50FPS at 1080p resolution on this laptop. Despite this, it can still hold its own for the most part with the hardware and slim profile in place. The laptop’s fan can get a bit noisy during gaming, but it isn’t the loudest by any means. For general use, the performance meets the standard. It demonstrated sequential read and write speeds of about 6.9GBPS and 4.3GBPS, respectively, which is satisfactory.

The laptop runs on Windows 11 Home (version 23H2) and handles Office apps, web browsing, and background music playing without issues. However, it did show some performance issues when waking up from sleep, with the OS at times taking 10-15 seconds longer than expected. This occurred multiple times despite rebooting the laptop. Other than that, there aren’t many performance issues. The WiFi performance is top-notch for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies. Overall, the laptop's gaming performance may not be the best, but it can handle general use and offers satisfactory hardware and slim design.

The bottom-firing speakers are quite loud and provide decent depth for bass and vocals, but they are not the cleanest or most depthful for your gaming needs.

The laptop is powered by a 71Wh battery and comes with a 140-watt USB Type-C charger, which can charge it in around two hours. The Omen 14 lasted around 4 to 4.5 hours on most workdays, and much less if you play games for longer, which is significantly less than what you would want from a laptop that's expected to handle heavy workloads.

All in all, the Omen Transcend 14 is a well-made 14-inch gaming laptop that looks nice and weighs less for a gaming machine. It offers pretty decent performance when it comes to gaming and boasts a great display. However, its battery life does disappoint compared to other departments. Nevertheless, it still comes across as a good option for those looking for a gaming laptop that isn’t too heavy to be carried and can handle most games at medium to highest settings.

oneplus-watch-2-better-than-original-oneplus-watch-but-still-some-way-to-go

Tue Apr 02 17:31:57 IST 2024

OnePlus has tried its hand at smartwatches a couple of times with its original Watch and Nord Watch, but neither really caught the attention of a lot of consumers. The Watch didn’t have great performance and software experience, while the budget-friendly Nord Watch hasn’t stood out against a number of domestic players. With the OnePlus Watch 2, the company has come out with first WearOS smartwatch. It’s priced at Rs 24,999, and goes straight up against the likes of Samsung as well as Apple. Can it pose a challenge? Let’s try and check.

The Watch 2 is made up of steel and has a round sapphire crystal-protected 1.43-inch watch face, weighing around 80 grams with the fluoro-rubber strap added in (which also has stainless steel buckle). The watch comes in only 47mm case size and 22mm strap size, which seems like a decent size to me, but may not be everybody’s tea of cup. The rubber strap is sturdy enough and smooth to wear and didn’t seem uncomfortable on the wrist at any time.

It’s an IP68-rated water and dust-resistant smartwatch that comes in two colours – Radiant Steel (which I tried) and Black Steel. The brushed and subtle steel gives a pretty look; nothing flashy like some other smartwatches. Plus, you aren’t stuck with the default strap and can get any other standard 22mm for the watch. During my usage, I didn’t notice any scratches or marks on the watch despite a few bumps with various soft and hard objects.

The right side has two buttons – crown and action button, both are multi-function buttons that can be long pressed or double pressed to open Google Assistant, a workout app, or any other installed app. Oddly, the crown button does scroll but doesn’t do anything such as scrolling on a page. The buttons feel nice and tactile with no cheap build and materials to be seen.

The 1.43-inch (466x466 resolution) display is bright enough to be used outdoors and is quite sharp and smooth to handle your notifications, iconography and text without any noticeable sacrifices.

Running on Wear OS 4 + RTOS dual architecture, to connect and sync the Watch 2 to your smartphone, you have to install an app called OHealth – initial setup and connection is straightforward. You can use the app to choose which apps on your phone can show notifications on the watch, choose from different watchfaces, or check your daily fitness metrics (you can do so on the watch itself, too, of course). Notably, if you change connected devices, you would have to reset the watch and restart with the O Health app.

You can also connect a pair of wireless earbuds over Bluetooth directly with the Watch 2 to listen to music.

The Watch 2 has plenty of sensors, including accelerometer, gyroscope, optical heart rate sensor, optical pulse oximeter, geomagnetic sensor, light sensor, barometer and PPG. Expectedly, there’s no blood pressure monitoring and ELG here, and it only comes with Bluetooth + WiFi connectivity option and no 4G/LTE.

Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 chipset along with lower-powered BES 2700 chipset, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, general performance, animations, swiping, opening apps and checking notifications work without any lag and the watch is able to handle widgets quite well.

What doesn’t quite work well seems to be its fitness tracking, when it comes to accuracy. The Watch 2 was able to notify stress detection almost every single time it detected some heart rate variability, but things like sleep tracking and steps count seemed off.

Comparing it with Apple Watch Series 7 and Ultrahuman Ring Air, the steps counting as well as sleep tracking was off for the Watch 2 in the range of overestimating by around 15 per cent to 20 per cent. Though changing its positions did help a bit, it still wasn’t very reliable.

There are dedicated modes for badminton, skiing and tennis.

The OnePlus Watch 2 is equipped with a 500mAh battery unit and is charged with a pug-like accessory with a USB type C port (no permanent cable attached). It charges from 1 per cent to full in around an hour at 7.5watts. The Watch 2 lasted me a 2-3 days on average, with always-on display and animations turned on. This got further extended to 3-4 days with always-on display turned off, so yeah, it would be safe to say it’s among the best performers when it comes to

battery experience on a smartwatch today. That low-powered chip and RTOS to go with Wear OS are really working well for the battery department.

OnePlus’s The Watch 2 is a better watch than its predecessor. It has quality build (albeit only one size available), a nice display and has great battery life, but it doesn’t quite do justice as a fitness and activity tracker.

Having said that, the company says the two years of software updates can improve on some of those missed targets. It might make it a competitor to the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6.

nothing-phone--2a--review--a-unique-blend-of-design-and-customis

Wed Mar 27 17:37:37 IST 2024

Nothing is a relatively new player in the smartphone market, having recently launched its third phone, the Nothing Phone (2a). The company appears to be performing well in the mid-range segment with its unique-looking devices and distinctive names, which set them apart from established brands. Priced at Rs. 23,999 for the base model and Rs. 27,999 for the highest one, the Phone (2a) targets a highly competitive market segment that is currently seeing an influx of 5G devices. Can it be considered a recommendable option? Let's explore further.

The Phone's biggest USP, at first glance, is its transparent back, which houses LEDs. This feature is reminiscent of Nothing's previous two phones, although this time the back is made of plastic and has fewer LEDs, which are only located in the top half. On the back, you can see the screws, coil, a red block, and a few other components. The dual camera setup is positioned near the top and is surrounded by LEDs. The device is available in black and white color options (although there is also a milk color, but it's unclear how it can be obtained). The black variant quickly attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints, and if this is a concern, it would require frequent cleaning.

Moving to the front, the 6.7-inch display, topped with Corning's Gorilla Glass 5, is surrounded by thin and symmetrical bezels. The front-facing camera is located at the top-middle, underneath which the ear-speaker grille is positioned, appearing as a bit of a blemish at the top. The device weighs 190 grams, has rounded corners, and features matte plastic sides that provide a grippy and comfortable feel, despite not being a compact phone by any means.

The 6.7-inch full HD+ (1084 x 2412) AMOLED display features variable refresh rates ranging from 30 to 120Hz. It is bright and remains usable under direct sunlight, although you may need to increase the brightness if it has not been done already. The display is vibrant, with punchy colors and deep blacks, making it capable of handling high-resolution videos and images effectively. While it can handle HDR content okay-ish in terms of color contrast, don't expect much more.

The phone features a dual camera setup on the back, comprising a 50MP (f/1.88) main camera with OIS and EIS, and a 50MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The camera performs decently for daylight and portrait shots, but it doesn't quite match the best in its segment, such as Realme and Redmi. It can capture detailed shots with still subjects, but in slightly low lighting, it tends to lose out on details and produce rather grainy shots. However, the ultra-wide camera performed slightly better in handling exposure and dynamic range. The camera app is quick and offers numerous options, which are easily accessible. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.2) camera can capture nice selfie shots with good exposure and is more than capable for video calls.

Running on Nothing OS 2.5.2, based on Android 14 with the February security update, the phone comes with MediaTek’s Dimensity 7200 Pro chipset (up to 2.8Ghz octa-core processor and Mali G68 MC4 GPU) along with 12GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS2.2 storage (also comes in 8GB + 128GB or 256GB variants). The phone’s Glyph interface, powered by LEDs on the back, adds a somewhat unique flavor to Nothing devices. You can choose to light up the LEDs for notifications, calls, or adjust the pattern for a particular caller or even a notification from an app, which can be useful when the phone is placed screen-down. Nothing OS itself has almost no third-party apps installed out of the box. It follows a dotted UI pattern for icons, UI elements, including widgets and Settings, which looks nice and clean, but of course, that’s subjective. By default, you have the dark mode enabled, which goes well with the overall aesthetics of the OS. Notably, there’s no Gallery app or even a compass app as part of Nothing OS.

The Nothing OS itself has almost no third-party apps installed out of the box. It follows a dotted UI pattern for icons, UI elements, including widgets and Settings, which looks nice and clean, but of course that’s subjective. By default, you have the dark mode enabled, which goes well with the overall aesthetics of the OS. Notably, there’s no Gallery app or even a compass app part of Nothing OS.

The phone's WiFi, Bluetooth, and call quality were all fine, but it did show some odd orientation behavior with its gyroscope, especially when using Google Maps while the phone is sitting idle. The 5G reception was pretty good and in line with competitors in this price segment, which is nice to see that a new entrant in this budget segment is not compromising on it.

The phone is powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, which typically lasts about 22-24 hours, rarely requiring a charge during heavy use. The phone supports up to 45-watt charging (no charger and case included in the box) using a compatible PD charger, taking 60-65 minutes to charge from 1% to full.

In summary, Nothing’s new Phone (2a) isn’t a complete home run when it comes to performance and the camera, but it also has a lot of things to like about it – the software experience and customizable OS out of the box, good battery life, and a somewhat unique design, though you might only find Glyph still gimmicky. So, for those who value these things more, this is a considerable option around 25k today.

samsung-galaxy-xcover-7-review-its-a-tough-nut

Fri Mar 22 17:35:32 IST 2024

Samsung recently launched their XCover 7 smartphone that’s targeted towards enterprise users who want a smartphone that lets them perform their work tasks without having to worry about the phone’s handling. The XCover 7 is only available from Samsung’s site and for enterprise users at Rs 22,024 with the Samsung Know Suite subscription bundled for an year.

The very first thing you might notice as you unbox the device is its user-replaceable battery unit. Some of you might remember this to be a norm rather than exception in the smartphone space. The device allows you to change the battery while you have put the device on charge and put the new one in place without the device shutting down if you do it within 10 seconds. The back panel can be quickly removed with a slid opening given near the corner. Removing the back panel would also reveal the SIM card slot and microSD card slot. The diagonal patterned hard polycarbonate back and sides are pretty grippy and never felt slippery, having said that the phone weighs 240grams, which isn’t exactly light. It’s an IP68 water and dust-resistant device that is also MIL-STD-810H1 to be usable in tougher weather conditions, including rain and extreme temperatures.

The front features a 6.6-inch (6.4-inch if you exclude rounded corners) (20:9 aspect ratio) display with expectedly thick and unsymmetrical bezels around it. The display also has Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus+ on top for added protection. The left side has an XCover button that you can be mapped to open any app, but by default it’s set to open flashlight. The right side locates the volume buttons and Power/lock key, which can also be configured to open any installed app when double pressed. The top houses the 3.5mm audio jack and secondary mic ; while at the bottom you have pogo pins, USB type C port, primary mic and loudspeaker.

The 6.6-inch full HD+ (2408x1080) TFT LCD display with support for standard 60Hz refresh rates. This is not a spectacular display by any means. It’s bright and usable under direct sunlight, which would be an essential point considering the whole rugged theme. The display’s touch functionality doesn’t completely go away with some drops of water on it and is also usable while wearing gloves. Other than that, it’s sharp enough and okay for watching videos or viewing images for work but it’s certainly not Samsung’s best display for media consumption at this price point.

The phone sports a 4,050mAh (15watt) battery unit that lasted me nearly a day quite frequently. With WiFi hotspot switched on while using 5G and 4G/LTE depending on coverage on the move, the phone lasted over 20 hours on a full charge. Its 5G network reception is also decent, not quite best in the price segment when it comes to latching to 5G continuously, but still fine to not be a deal breaker. Call quality and GPS, though, performed without any issues with clear voice on both sides and quick location lock-in whenever required.

You get a 50MP (f/1.8) rear camera (with dual flash) that can read multiple barcode and QR codes at once. It produces strictly okay photos and isn’t something for showing off which places you visited or what food you had. But it’s usable for scanning documents, scanning QR codes, basically what its main purposes are. The front-facing 5MP (f/2.0) can fulfil your video calling needs and that’s about it.

The XCover 7 comes equipped with MediaTek’s Dimensity 6100+ chipset (up to 2.2Ghz octa core processor and Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU) along with 6GB of RAM and 128GB UFS (expandable to 1TB using a microSD card). It runs on One UI 6.0 based on Android 14 with the February security patch installed. The performance is expectedly not the phone’s strength. You can expect to perform messaging, calling, play full HD YouTube videos and scroll one social media app fine, but don’t expect buttery smooth animations and scrolling. The device takes about 2-3 minutes for a restart. The mono loudspeaker is quite loud for gaming and music playback indoors.

Except little quirks, such as you can’t use WiFi and WiFi hotspot at the same time, something you can on a number of smartphones, including from Samsung; it’s a full fledged Samsung device inside where you can customise the how the OS looks as per your preference.

In a nutshell, the XCover 7 is pretty much in line with what’s expected from a mid-range rugged smartphone – it’s physically a tough nut, requires no extra physical care, can take care of your messaging, calling and call recording needs with work related camera tasks, but not much more than that – all with a decent battery life.

unveiling-nothing-s-cmf-brand--are-the-neckband-pro-and-buds-wor

Wed Mar 20 16:38:13 IST 2024

In a short time, Nothing has made a notable presence for itself in the Indian tech space. The Nothing brand launched its sub-brand CMF a year ago, which consists of wearable tech products. While Nothing has recently launched its new phone (2a), we will take a closer look at it in a few days. Under the CMF brand, they unveiled the Buds at Rs. 2,499 and the Neckband Pro at Rs. 1,799. Let’s assess whether these products are worth it in these competitive segments.

The first thing you would notice about these products is their rather different orange color, which not many companies go for, whether in audio products or phones. The Neckband Pro manages to be a little more interesting than the Buds with its circular Smart Dial that doubles up as a button too. You can rotate it either way in order to adjust the volume, or press it, long-press it, or double or even triple press it for different functions such as noise cancellation, going to the next song, or going back to the previous song. The other side of the neckband features a small conventional button called the functional button that’s used to put the band into pairing mode or connect it to the previously connected device by double pressing it. The two earbuds attach to each other magnetically on the back to switch off, and they instantly switch on and then connect to your device when detached. It’s a very useful and reliable feature, especially if you use these for calls regularly. The Buds come in a square box case that doesn’t catch any smudges or fingerprints too quickly. On one corner of the case, you have a grey fidget spinner where you can attach a lanyard. You get two pairs of different-sized tips with the Buds. On the other side, you have the USB type C port alongside the pairing button. The Buds have a stem design and are all made out of plastic with silicone tips. The stems also carry the CMF logo in white. Both of these come in exactly the same color options -- dark grey, light grey, and orange. While the Neckbands Pro weigh about 30 grams, the Buds weigh 53 grams with the case (around 4.6 grams each otherwise).

In the audio department, the Neckband Pro comes with 13.6mm drivers. It supports fast pair for Android as well as Swift Pair for Windows. The pair didn't show any trouble in the initial pairing or at any other time, and they were quick to connect as soon as you detach the buds from themselves. They support Bluetooth 5.3 and allow you to pair and switch between two devices. With a total of 5 mics, I found the call quality of the Neckband Pro to be quite good and reliable. Even when outdoors, the pair didn't struggle to handle noise and provided decent voice clarity on the other side.

In terms of sound, you get a bass-heavy output with okay mids and lows to go along with clear vocals for most genres. For people looking for bass oomph to go with their music, the pair does deliver for the price tag, but it can get a little too heavy for those that prefer a more neutral tone. Regarding active noise cancellation, you can expect to cancel out some chatter and low volume music around you to get your work done, but nothing much else, which seems to fit the bill.

Regarding the Buds, they feature 12.4mm drivers and support the same codecs as the neckbands – AAC and SBC with Bluetooth 5.3. They offer very similar ANC to their neckband for outdoor usage, provided you get a good in-ear fit. I found them comfortable to wear even for a couple of hours and didn’t have to adjust them frequently when commuting. You can expect clear and loud sound from the Buds without sacrificing on mids and lows for rock and metal genres. For Bollywood content, they handle vocals quite well, but handling different instruments can be a bit of a struggle. In terms of call quality, they do a fine job, but the neckbands Pro outperform them outdoors. They have standard gestures to skip forward, answer or hang up calls, pause or play, and switch between noise cancellation. There’s a little bit of lag when used for playing games or for high bitrate 4K videos, and low lag mode is supported only on Nothing phones for now. You can use the Nothing X app for both products to tweak settings as per your preference.

The IP55-rated water and dust-resistant Neckband Pro is powered by a 220mAh battery. The IP54-rated water and dust-resistant Buds have a 45mAh battery for each bud, and the case has a 460mAh battery. The Neckband Pro is really good when it comes to battery life, lasting a week when used for 3-4 hours per day, including calls and music. The LED on one side indicates the charging status, the same as the small LED on the Buds’ carrying case. The Buds, on the other hand, can last around 6-7 hours and add two more cycles with the case. With ANC always on, this comes down to around 3.5 hours and three more cycles with the case on. Both of these also support fast charging with compatible PD chargers, with the Neckband Pro charging to full in a little over an hour, while the Buds took a bit over 2 hours with the case plugged in.

The CMF Neckband Pro and Buds are competitive products that seem to be overall good performers. The former stands out in terms of design, audio, and mic performance, while the Buds have a sturdy design and comfortable fit. However, they are not exactly a home run when it comes to gestures and battery life. Nevertheless, they can still compete with the likes of Oppo Enco Buds 2 and OnePlus Nord 2 in terms of audio quality.

lava-blaze-curve-a-budget-friendly-curved-smartphone-with-premiu

Mon Mar 18 17:51:30 IST 2024

Curved smartphones have been available for many years, with options ranging from flagships to mid-range and high-end smartphones. However, finding one for under Rs. 20,000 isn’t common. Lava’s new Blaze Curve comes with a curved display and a curved back, aiming to provide a premium look. Does it justify its base price of Rs. 17,999 (and Rs. 18,999 for the higher variant)? Let’s explore and find out.

The phone has a matte glass back with three protruding rings for the camera system and curved sides. The back doesn’t catch any smudges and fingerprints. On the front, the 6.67-inch display has Gorilla Glass 3 on top for protection and also houses a punch-hole designed front camera next to the ear-speaker grille, which doesn’t collect lint too quickly from what I have seen. The sides are all plastic and they do catch onto dust and fingerprints quite quickly. The top houses one outlet for loudspeakers and a secondary mic, while the bottom houses the dual SIM card tray, primary mic, USB Type-C port, and another outlet for loudspeakers. The left side is left plain, while the right side has the volume buttons as well as the power/lock key – these keys feel a little too narrow to use at first. The phone weighs under 190 grams and sort of reminds me of Samsung Galaxy S series and OnePlus phones from 4-5 years back. It does appear sturdy and premium-looking, standing out a bit from phones around this price range.

The phone’s highlight is the 6.67-inch full HD (2400x1080) AMOLED display, which supports up to 120Hz refresh rates and HDR content. The display is sufficiently bright for outdoor usage and has punchy colors, making text sharp and easy to read. It does a decent job of handling high-resolution videos and images, but struggles a bit with contrast and overall colors for HDR, which isn’t surprising given its price tag. Other than that, this is a pretty good display that doesn’t disappoint when it comes to watching standard videos.

The phone features a triple rear camera system – a 64MP (f/1.9) main camera, an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP macro camera. By default, the phone takes photos in 16MP from the main camera, and the performance is just about okay. At times, the phone tries to make highlights too punchy with HDR and struggles with the subject, even if it's still, in low-light shots. You can take decent and detailed shots if the light is adequate and your subject is still, but don’t expect much else from the camera performance here. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.5) camera does a fine job for taking selfie shots and making video calls, if you aren’t pixel peeping much in your photos.

The Lava Blaze Curve is powered by MediaTek’s 7050 chipset (up to 2.6GHz octa-core processor, MaliG68 MC4 GPU) with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB (also available in 256GB) UFS3.1 internal storage. The internal hardware is not lacking much for this price segment, but what’s missing is the latest Android OS – it runs on Android 13 with very little changed from vanilla stock Android. There are hardly any third-party apps, and Lava has added a couple of useful features, such as call recording and the ability to stream YouTube in the background even if you don’t have a YouTube Premium subscription.

There are some odd choices that have been made, such as the absence of an option to have the back button on the left side when using navigation buttons instead of gestures. Another thing I noticed is that the icons, such as 5G and VoLTE in the status bar, look a little off in terms of their pixel and alignment, but it's probably nitpicking here. You can expect the phone to handle social media apps, multiple messaging apps, watching YouTube videos, or playing music in the background without any issues. For gaming, it can handle BGMI and CoD at low to medium settings pretty well, but starts to drop frames and show stuttering for higher-end graphic-intensive games.

The phone comes with a 5,000mAh battery unit and a 33-watt power delivery charger, which charges the phone in about 70 minutes. I observed the phone to last a full day more often than not under medium to heavy usage. It didn’t show any heating issues either.

The loudspeakers on this phone are really loud and have decent depth to them for playing games or for music needs if you aren’t around many people. GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth performance also didn’t show any troubles. There’s also Quick Share for sharing files with other Android phones quickly, and it worked fine. The 5G performance of the phone is okay for usage on the go. I wouldn’t say it’s the best in the segment compared to realme and OnePlus, but it’s still good enough to not be a deal breake

Verdict: Lava has tried to keep this device look different from other devices under Rs. 20,000, and it seems to have done a good job in terms of design and build quality. While the camera performance isn’t satisfactory, the loudspeakers, display quality, and battery experience generally don’t disappoint. The company promises two years of Android OS updates and three years of security patches, and hopefully continues to add useful features and refine the software.

unveiling-the-realme-12---a-comprehensive-review-of-features-and

Thu Mar 14 15:17:16 IST 2024

Realme has been launching a range of new smartphones in the first quarter of this year and the latest one is 12 series – realme 12+ and realme 12. The realme 12+ follows a pretty similar design to the recently launched realme 12 Pro+, which was priced at Rs. 29,999, but this one is Rs. 20,999. The phone has a vegan leather back with a watch-like dial for the triple camera setup while a stitching line runs across the middle vertically. The curved corners and frame, though, unlike the realme 12 Pro+’s, is made out of plastic and the faux paint done on it to give it a metal look is quite clear once you hold the phone. The right side has the volume buttons and power/lock key, while the left side is all plain. The top locates the 3.5mm audio jack one outlet for loudspeakers and secondary mic; while the bottom houses the dual SIM card tray, USB type C port, another outlet for loudspeakers and primary mic. The phone measures about 7.9mm in thickness and weighs about 190 grams, and feels comfortable to hold. The 6.67-inch display has the front-facing camera in a punch-hole design and with the ear-speaker grille tucked in next to it, while bezels around it are slim they aren’t symmetrical, which is not surprising.

The 6.67-inch full HD+ (2400x1080) AMOLED display supports up to 120Hz refresh rates and is sufficiently bright to be used outdoors. It supports HDR10+ content though output isn’t too great compared to standard video, where it delivers punchy colors without much sacrifice to the contrast and shadows. The display has decent viewing angles and is sharp to read text and vibrant on and watch videos or view images.

Coming to the triple camera system – there’s a 50MP (f/1.88) main camera; an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP (f/2.4) macro camera. The main camera that’s a Sony LYT-600 camera with OIS is the highlight here, something we haven’t seen much of in this price range. The phone takes pretty sharp shots with very little shutter lag in good lighting conditions. The daylight shots showed decent dynamic range and didn’t appear to lack on depth of color range, including from the ultra-wide camera. Portrait mode is also something you might like on this phone, giving pretty good bokeh effect for a phone priced at this point, though at times the subject tends to be a bit oversaturated. Low-light shots do leave a bit on the table with some grainy shots and blurry subjects so you would have to retake your shots. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.45) camera is a fine performer for taking selfie shots for your social media use or making video calls.

The realme 12+ is equipped with MediaTek’s 7050 chipset (up to 2.6Ghz octa-core processor, MaliG68 MC4 GPU) along with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS3.1 internal storage (also comes in 6GB + 128GB option). The phone can handle regular tasks of playing high-resolution videos on YouTube, browsing web pages in Chrome, scrolling through social media apps, switching between messaging apps, and calling without any hiccups. You wouldn’t have a problem with that performance part, but what might irk some users is its experience out of the box. Running on realmeUI 5.0 based on Android 14 with the February security patch, the phone has a lot of third-party apps, some not popular ones, pre-installed. You can uninstall and remove notifications first, though it doesn’t take very long, it still seems like a required step to make the software experience better in what’s otherwise a feature-rich skin. For gaming, something like Asphalt 9 did fine but you might notice the phone warming up a little after playing for about half an hour. And don’t expect to play any further graphic-intensive games on the smartphone at high settings. Also, realme UI seems to be a little extra aggressive in closing background apps and processes on this phone, where you would have to wait for a slight bit when you switch back to an app and start from where you left off.

Powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, the phone lasted me a full day frequently and didn’t show any battery drain issues. With the bundled 67-watt SuperVooc charger, you can charge the phone from 1% to full in about 60 minutes.

a-closer-look-at-belkin-s-boostcharge-series--marvel-and-disney-

Wed Mar 13 17:38:35 IST 2024

Belkin has long been a prominent name in the smartphone accessories industry, offering a range of products from basic cables and chargers to wireless induction power banks. Recently, the company unveiled its BoostCharge series featuring themed power banks, USB-C cables, and wall chargers, available in Marvel and Disney character themes such as Iron Man, Mickey Mouse, Elsa, and Lotso.

The first product in the series is the BoostCharge, a magnetic 5,000mAh (rated 3,200mAh capacity) wireless power bank (3.6V) designed to attach to the back of an iPhone, providing on-the-go charging. This compact power bank measures about 94mm in height and weighs 150 grams, attaching magnetically to the phone. MFi compatibility allows for use with a MagSafe-compatible cover or case on the iPhone, although it cannot be used with a MagSafe wallet attached. Made of plastic, one side features Marvel icons etched on soft cloth, while the other side displays the Iron Man figure and includes a fold-out stand for resting the phone on a flat surface. The power bank charged an iPhone 12 or iPhone 15 Pro from 1% to 95% at 7.5 watts in approximately 2.5 hours, with a physical button indicating the remaining charge. While it can also charge Android phones, the hold may not be as strong, requiring precise placement for charging.

Coming to the BoostCharge Pro Flex, this is a 6.6-feet braided silicone USB type C to C cable that can supports PD (power delivery) fast charge of up to 60 watts. This is a USB-IF certified cable for better compatibility across your smartphones – whether Android or iOS, tablets or laptops. What’s missing is that it’s a USB2.0 cable and not 3.0 or 3.2, so your data transfer speeds are capped at 480mbps or so. For charging, I found it reliable and do the job as it said. Perhaps the most interesting part about is its magnetic cable management system – you can loop the cable through the magnetic ring and attach the external magnetic ring to something like your wall or drawer so that the cable doesn’t dangle around and it stays in one place. The magnetic loop is all Marvel themed on this one and adds a nice little touch.

Last but not the least, the BoostCharge Pro is Belkin’s dual USB charger that’s GaN supported, meaning it has a certain industry standard to work across devices while being efficient to a certain extent. The charger supports 65 watts in total, and if you have both its ports plugged at once, then it gives 45 watts in one and 20 watts in the other – both USB type C ports. The charger has the Marvel and Belkin logo on the sides and Iron Man on the top. Whenever you attach or detach from one port the other port also stops charge for a second or so. I found it to charge the devices as expected. The charger did become a little too warm if plugged in to both ports for over an hour.

While the themed accessories are premium-priced, they offer practical utility. The BoostCharge Marvel and Disney themed magnetic power bank is priced at Rs. 8,999, the regular version at Rs. 4,999. The BoostCharge Pro Flex cable is priced at Rs. 3,499, and the dual USB (GaN) charger is priced at Rs. 6,999, catering to a range of modern connected devices.

oppo-f25-pro--comparison-with-competitors-in-the-sub-25k-market

Mon Mar 11 17:34:55 IST 2024

Oppo has recently announced its new F25 Pro under its F series of smartphones, starting at Rs. 23,999 for the base model and Rs. 25,999 for the higher one. The company seems to be highlighting the device’s design cand camera capabilities more than anything else. Let’s try and see if the device brings anything worthy to this competitive price segment.

Available in Lava Red (the one I tried) and Ocea Blue colour options, the first thing I noticed about the device is its shimmery yet subtle dark red back with slightly glossy feel to it. You get curved corners and a 6.7-inch display with thin bezels (that are not perfectly symmetrical) with Panda glass on top for protection. The back carries triple camera system on the back placed an elevated rectangular cut-out, while the Oppo logo sits near the bottom. The right side locates the volume buttons and Power/lock key near the middle; while the left side only has the dual SIM card plus microSD card tray near the top corner. The top only has the secondary mic; the bottom carries the primary mic, USB type C port and loudspeakers. The front-facing camera and ear-speaker grille are tucked nicely next to each other without being an eye sore.

The F25 Pro weighs under 180 grams and measures about 7.54mm in thickness, making it one of the thinnest 5G smartphones out there. The rest of the body is made of polycarbonate with resin compound added, as per Oppo. The phone feels sturdy to hold and carry around and isn’t very slippery either.

Sporting a 6.7-inch full HD+ (2412x1080) OLED panel with up to 120Hz refresh rates, the phone doesn’t really compromise on sharpness. This is a pretty nice panel for the price tag with good viewing angles, clear to read text and view high resolution images or for watching high resolution videos, including over YouTube. It’s an HDR10+ certified display, so you can play compatible content over Netflix, giving decent but not too great HDR output, which is kind of common for this price range, but what’s otherwise a good display.

The triple camera system on the back is another point among highlights of this phone – 64MP (f/1.7) main camera, 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP (f/2.4) macro camera. The phone can take detailed shots with decent dynamic range in good lighting conditions. Portrait mode is a bit of a hit and miss, when it delivers, it can really produce nice bokeh effect with edges and even hair for your subject, but a lot of times it would produce undercooked shots with the loss of colour for the subject. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.4) camera is a really good one, definitely one of the best among

Android phones under 25k when it comes to colour calibration and skin tones provided retouch has been disabled and without any added filters, in my opinion.

The phone is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 7050 chipset (up to 2.6Ghz octa core processor, Mali-G68 MC4 GPU) and runs on ColorOS 14 based on Android 14 with the February security patch installed. The phone handled basic tasks such messaging, switching between social media apps, scrolling between media heavy apps and so on without any stuttering noticeable. The phone didn’t heat up with games such as Genshin Impact at low settings, gameplay quite smoothly but of course not at its highest settings, while a game like Monument Valley were handled pretty smoothly. ColorOS comes with a lot of third party apps pre-loaded, some perhaps you may have never used or have any intentions to use, most of these can be uninstalled pretty quickly, but it takes a few minutes and steps back and forth to uninstall these and disable things such as Hot Games.

Otherwise, the ColorOS is a feature-rich Android skin that doesn’t have too many misses. Many of the supported third party apps ran in 90Hz, and the phone didn’t show any lags while using these. The one place the phone did heat up a bit was during extensive use of the camera when outdoors. Powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, the phone lasted ma day quite frequently and didn’t show any unnecessary battery drains during my usage. The bundled 67watt SuperVooc charger charges the phone from 1% to full in about 50 minutes or so without any heating issues.

Call quality, 5G reception and GPS didn’t show any unusual drops during my usage. One thing that does feel a bit of a miss is the single bottom-facing speaker with no stereo pair to go with it, so the loudspeaker output is just okay for gaming and multimedia consumption.

Verdict: The sub 25k market seems to be really getting competitive again, with the likes of the Realme 12 Pro, Samsung Galaxy M34 and OnePlus Nord 3CE, and it seems the Oppo’s F25 Pro has a lot of things going around it to take on the competition. It has its flaws such as too many third party apps out of the box (which can be dealt with by the user), hit or miss low-light camera performance, and loudspeaker quality, but overall it performs really well on the battery, display and design departments.

asus-zenbook-ux3405ma-familiar-premium-design-performance-in-the-price-segment-makes-it-worth

Mon Mar 11 17:29:28 IST 2024

You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking though ASUS launches several laptops every year, much like other brands in the market, it is the Zenbook 14 lineup that often gets recognised the most.

The new Zenbook UX3405MA follows the premium look and feel of previous Zenbooks and adds a new Intel Ultra chip along with Intel Arc graphics.

Starting at Rs. 1,09,990, let’s see how this model fares.

The Zenbook 14 (UX3405MA) comes with a 14-inch touch display (16:10 aspect ratio) with its hinge extending 180 degrees. It comes in Ponder Blue and Foggy Silver colour options, the former being the one I tried.

It boasts an aluminium lid with the patterned design that we have seen in ASUS for a while. The laptop weighs 1.2 kg and is about 15-mm thick and it would be safe to say that this is a portable Windows machine by any standard. There’s a slight mesh around the trackpad area and is otherwise well-built, with no sacrifices made in that department.

The 14-inch (2880x1800) OLED display is a quality panel. It has good viewing angles and does justice to high-resolution videos, including HDR content, something a lot of Windows laptops still struggle with.

I don't use the touch functionality that often, but it works just fine. It supports 120Hz refresh rates, which makes it a good option for editing higher frame rate videos and some relatively heavy but not too intense games since this isn’t a gaming laptop. The colours on the display look punchy and the text appears sharp to read.

The left side features a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port plus vent while the right side carries two Thunderbolt 4 ports supporting power delivery as well as display out, an HDMI 2.1 port, and the 3.5mm combo audio jack. It would have been nicer to have a microSD card slot and an ethernet LAN port too, but then the latter wouldn’t go with the laptop’s thin profile.

The trackpad and keyboard are two of the best parts of this laptop. The trackpad is sufficiently large and is reliable to work with. It catches the usual Windows gestures for scrolling and switching between apps without any issues. The trackpad (no buttons) also has ASUS’s LED NumPad 2.0 that you can switch on from the top left corner of the trackpad, which can be used for the calculator or shortcuts such as jump while playing a video, on say, YouTube.

The backlit keys can be switched to three levels of lighting. The keys used here have decent travel and I found them comfortable to use for long documents or quick Emails. The navigation keys could have been bigger which now seem out of place compared to the rest of the keyboard where keys are well spaced out and placed.

You get Harmon/Kardon speakers that are bottom-facing and do a pretty good job for laptop speakers. They get loud and clear for watching something off YouTube or Netflix and have enough depth to not miss out on details.

Coming to its battery, the laptop is powered by a 75whrs battery unit and charges from 1% to full in about 2.5 hours or so. It lasts a whole working day from 7-8.5 hours without much trouble, but much less if you are watching some movies or TV shows at high brightness.

The laptop runs on Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H processor clocked at up to 3.8GHz alongside Intel’s Arc graphics plus 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. It’s running on Windows 11 Home OS version 23H2.

The laptop is more than capable do everyday tasks such as using Office apps alongside having several web browser tabs, and playing music in the background while you sync your files with something like OneDrive or Dropbox.

It takes about 20 seconds for a fresh boot and 5-7 seconds to wake from sleep before you can start using it. Graphics performance from the Arc chip seems to be fine for watching high-resolution videos or editing videos (but not for the sole purpose) and a game like Forza Horizon 5 but not for heavier games at high settings by any means.

In a nutshell, the Zenbook 14 is an all-around pretty well-made package – whether it’s the design part, display or trackpad. On top, you get good battery life for work on the go. This price segment has started to be competitive past year or so, and the new launches from ASUS appear to be another worthy contender if a lot of work and entertainment plus a bit of gaming are your use cases.

samsung-galaxy-s24-and-s24-review-tweaked-up-versions-with-great-displays-and-build-quality

Mon Mar 11 17:26:56 IST 2024

Samsung has this time decided to bring their two models of the Galaxy S series with the Exyn5os model and only the Ultra model with the Qualcomm Snapdragon chip for select regions. The Galaxy S24+ starts at Rs. 99,999 while the S24 starts at Rs. 79,999 for the base model. Let’s try and see how these perform and whether they are worth their price tags over their predecessor or not.

Both the devices look and feel in the hand pretty similar to the S23+60 and S23, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The displays here are slightly bigger with the S24+ having a 6.7-inch display (over the 6.6-inch on the S23+), and the S24 has a 6.2-inch display (instead of the 6.1-inch on the S23). The phones have an aluminium armour frame that’s supposed to be more pressure-resistant than the S23 series. Unlike the S24 Ultra, which has sharp edges, both these devices have curved corners with the S24+ weighing 196 grams and the S24 at 167 grams and hardly any difference in their thickness (with the S24 being slightly thinner at 7.6mm).

Both devices have Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top of the display with matte finish glass at the back. They are grippy and comfortable to carry around, unsurprisingly more than the bulkier S24 Ultra.

The right side carries the volume buttons and then the Power/lock key near the middle, which I would have probably preferred to be the other way around in terms of placement of the Power/lock key on the regular S24. The left side is all left plain. The top locates the secondary mic and one outlet for loudspeakers; while the bottom has the dual SIM tray slot, USB type C port and another outlet for loudspeakers.

The displays on Samsung’s flagship devices have generally been some of the best in terms of sharpness, colour calibration and HDR output, and it seems to be the case with these two devices s well. The S24’s 6.2-inch full HD+ (1080x2340) Dynamic AMOLED appears to have a slightly cooler colour temperature than the S24+’s 6.7-inch quad HD+ (1440x3120) Dynamic AMOLED display. They are usable under direct sunlight without much trouble and have good viewing angles. The displays have dynamic refresh rates from 1 to 120Hz with the LTPO technology in place.

The S24 series has added HDR support for Instagram and you can clearly see the difference while uploading and viewing HDR photos on Instagram. One of the more talked-about changes with the S24 and S24+ is Samsung going with their Exynos 2400 chipset (up to 3.21Ghz deca core processor, Xclipse 940 GPU). This has been coupled with 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM on the S24 and 12GB on the S24+ base models.

You get 128GB UFS4.0 storage (also comes in 256 and 512GB) on the S24 base model while the S24+ has it as 256GB (also comes in 512GB). It runs on Android 14 with OneUI 6.1 running with the February security patch in place.

I found the phone to handle regular tasks without any issues. Regarding gaming, you can expect to play a heavy game like Genshin Impact at its highest settings without having to worry about any heating issues.

But when the phones's WiFi hotspot was turned on for about 45 minutes, they did heat up quite a bit -- something I didn’t see much on the S24 Ultra.

While call quality, Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi performance are top-notch, the 5G reception isn’t quite as good as the S24 Ultra or the OnePlus 12, both of which have a competing high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. This is really my only complaint with this Exynos chip, which otherwise performs really well and seems to have been much improved over its predecessors.

There’s another feature in the Gallery app that basically allows you to remove objects from your photos, for instance, you can remove somebody in the background of your own photo and it worked really well, including for photos taken with some other device.

Coming to the triple camera system – you get a 50 MP (f/1.8) main camera, a 10 MP (f/2.4) telephoto camera, and a 12 MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera – for both smartphones. The phones take detailed and punchy shots and the last software update seems to have improved the shutter lag, which is especially useful when taking photos of kids or pets. Taking shots in low light can require a bit of fiddling around with the camera app, which is pretty snappy and feature-rich to begin with.

You can also shoot in RAW format for a more in-depth editing option, or HEIF for a lower size than JPEG generally. For videos, you can shoot 8K videos at 30FPS and 4K videos at 30 and 60FPS. The camera seems to have better output under low light in super-steady mode for videos.

The front-facing 12MP (f/2.2) camera generally takes detailed and well-stitched shots, though at times overexposing the subject, but not always, definitely good enough for your social media and video calling. The S24+ is powered by a 4,900 mAh battery unit while the S24 gets 4,000 mAh, with the S24+ I rarely had to charge it again on the same day, leaving about 15% after a medium to heavy day of usage.

With the S24, it used to be much less and on a heavy day, the S24 required to be charged again. The S24+ charged from 1% to full in about 1.5 hours, while this took 80 minutes or so for the S24. Both phones support up to 25 watts (power delivery) of charging, and it’s worth noting, that there’s no charger included in the box.

All in all, the S24+ and S24, despite their 7 years of promised OS updates, show that the S23+ and S23 (five years of updates from the launch time) are still very much capable and the jump isn’t that huge. If you’re getting a good deal on either the S23+ or S23 (depending on your size preference, mainly), you might want to consider those. But for those looking for the latest from Samsung in these price segments, other than Exynos 2400’s network quality issue, the S24+ and S24 do not disappoint.

oneplus-buds-3-review--affordable-tws-with-strong-audio-performa

Fri Mar 01 10:45:58 IST 2024

OnePlus’ audio products have been quite popular among TWS buyers, but not all of them have been good performers in terms of sales figures or audio performance. I really liked the original OnePlus Buds Pro, but not as much as the Buds Pro 2. And now we have the more budget-friendly OnePlus Buds 3 from the company, priced at Rs. 5,499. I have been trying to put these through their paces, and here’s how the experience has been.

The OnePlus Buds 3 come in Metallic Gray (which I tried) or Splendid Blue and are made out of metal and carry a dual matte plus glossy finish that isn’t too blingy. These stem-cell design buds are IP55 water and dust-resistant. The stem is slightly curved inwards with rubberized eartips. I found the OnePlus Buds 3 comfortable to wear for long durations and didn’t have to adjust their in-ear fit frequently either, whether sitting indoors or while commuting. The stems have capacitive touch controls on them; you can swipe up or down to change the volume, tap once to answer a call or change tracks, long-press to change noise cancellation mode, but there’s no gesture to pause or play your music again by default. You can change these from the HeyMelody app or from within Bluetooth settings if you have a OnePlus or Oppo device. The touch controls are fairly responsive and reliable. The charging case carries the OnePlus logo at the top, with a pairing button inside between where the buds rest; while the USB type C port sits behind outside. Each bud weighs about 5 grams while the case adds a little over 40 grams to it.

The OnePlus Buds 3 boast 10.4mm dual drivers, support Bluetooth 5.3, and come with LHDC 5.0 audio codec, in addition to the usual SBC and AAC (for other Android and iOS devices). These also have multiple device pairing, plus Google’s Fast Pair, which definitely made pairing with an Android device a little quicker.

The OnePlus Buds 3 do not disappoint in terms of audio quality. They deliver a fairly bass-heavy sound without any noticeable distortion. You won’t have to crank up the volume much to get a good thump from the buds. However, for lows and mids, the OnePlus Buds 3 can be a little overly aggressive at times, but they generally perform well in handling instruments, although voice may seem a bit more balanced. The default EQ mode may not be ideal for every type of song, so adjusting the EQ from the settings as per your preference is recommended.

The quality of the buds' mics is pretty good for making calls while wearing them. Even when outdoors, the mic quality is sufficiently good for ensuring that the person on the other end can clearly hear your voice.

When it comes to active noise cancellation, the OnePlus Buds 3 do a pretty decent job, especially considering the price tag. The sound quality is still preferred with it switched off, but with the ANC switched on, the surrounding noise does decrease considerably. Additionally, with the transparency mode on, you can hear your surrounding people well enough to not need to take the buds off.

The OnePlus Buds 3 perform well when syncing video and audio, even when playing high-bitrate content. Additionally, the gaming mode effectively minimizes latency, ensuring a smooth gaming experience without any noticeable issues. The automatic stop and resume feature when removing and reinserting the buds functions reliably.

The battery life on the OnePlus Buds 3 is impressive, lasting approximately 7.5 hours with ANC switched on and an additional 3 hours with ANC switched off. This is primarily when the LHDC codec is being used while paired with a OnePlus device (OnePlus 12 and Pad).

All in all, the OnePlus Buds 3 are a complete package to take on the likes of the Oppo Enco Air3 Pro. You get really nice audio quality, which is a bit bass-heavy, good battery life, decent ANC for the price tag, all while being comfortable to wear.

exploring-the-features-of-the-remarkable-2--a-comprehensive-user

Fri Mar 01 10:51:58 IST 2024

Norwegian tech brand reMarkable recently entered India with its reMarkable 2 paper tablet. The tablet was globally launched quite a while back but the company says it got a stronger response from potential buyers in India compared to what they had previously anticipated, took them a while but it’s now here. Available for Rs. Rs. 43,999 for the base model, this tablet is not meant to be the one-stop machine for all your needs. It is meant to do very few tasks on it, help you disconnect from always-on digital life while also doing your work on it – whatever few things it does.

The reMarkable 2 tablet is very much minimalistic in looks and feel just like its whole purpose seems to be. This paper tablet is thin (measuring 4.7mm) and does not feel too heavy (slightly under 405 grams) when holding with one hand while sitting. It carries an aluminium frame and does feel well crafted and something somewhat premium to handle. The top left corner locates the Power/lock key; while the bottom houses the USB type C port in the middle. The left side has pogo pins where you attach the Marker Plus pen and also folio case, in case you plan to buy these. For the folio plus the tablet (and the pen), you would have to shell out Rs. 53,999.

The 10.3-inch e-ink (1872x1404 resolution) display does its job – it’s easier on the eye to read long documents on, has decent refresh rates for an e-ink display and doesn’t struggle with text-based documents in any way. In order to go to the next page, you simply swipe right from extreme left, and do totally opposite to go to the previous page. To come out of your currently opened document, you can either swipe down from the top or press the x button on top right. You can press the Power key once to turn the display off or long-press it to switch the tablet off. While the display is turned off (sleep mode), the display reads ‘’reMarkable is sleeping’’, and ‘’reMarkable is powered off’ when it’s switched off.’ The tablet takes about 15 seconds to turn back on completely.

With a 1.2Ghz dual core ARM processor and running on a custom Linux-based operating system called Codex (currently on version 3.9.5.2026), unsurprisingly, it’s far from a feature rich and densely connected OS. For starters, you can make notes on the tablet, read PDFs, share notes from the tablet directly over Email and also edit PDFs. The reMarkable website allows you to upload and sync documents from other devices to the reMarkable 2 and it works pretty smoothly. Though only file type PDF, PNG, JPG and EPUB are supported here.

There are no menus, no app drawers and no app icons here – you’re presented with a nice slate where you can choose to add a notebook, make a new folder or make a quick sheet from a set of templates. At all times on the screen, you’re also shown the WiFi icon and battery status at the bottom, and search icon at the top right.

Out of the box, the tablet had a little over 6GB of available internal storage. Users are given a year's worth of Connect subscription. What Connect gives you is unlimited document syncing, without it, you can sync documents where it's kept for as long as 50 days before getting removed from your synced data. There’s an app available for Android, iOS, plus you can simply login via a Web browser and import your files. There is also a Chrome browser extension available with which you can save an opened web page into a PDF or EPUB format and then have it synced to your reMarkable 2 - neat little feature. You can also, if required, send your Word and PowerPoint files as PDFs to the tablet using its Office add-on called Read on reMarkable. The subscription here of Rs. 299 per month does seem a little steep considering you can only sync those four file formats. The company’s website also has something called Room to Think, which basically gives you music tracks that can play in the background (on another device) while you’re writing or jotting down or just thinking aloud for some task.

The Marker Plus has an eraser at the top and is quite smooth to write with. I could write with it on the tablet without getting much used to, though in order to convert your written text to a regular document, where the tablet converts your writing to text, requires pretty good legible handwriting for it to do it in a usable form. The display detects your palm, so it doesn’t cause any issues when you’re writing down on it using the Marker Plus. There’s ample broders around the display (especially at the bottom) to hold it with your fingers. You can set whether you’re left handed or right during the initial setup or from Settings at any time.

This e-ink tablet does what few thing it’s meant to do and does it really well – not once did it struggle with any typing using the keyboard, rendering black and white PDFs (though it can take a little to show coloured pages in EPUB format), writing with the Parker Plus or journaling as your daily habit. You can also lock your documents down though this is only behind a four-digit code and not six or more nor include letters. The OS is just about smooth in transitions and isn’t quick or snappy by any means and while using the keyboard there is a noticeable latency, but it is not exactly required to handle anything heavy. The display can fail to register your finger taps every once in a while, but it didn’t feel like a deal breaker.

Powered by a 3,000mAh battery unit, the battery life on this device seems good so far; I saw it go to 60% from full when using it with always-on WiFi for about 2-3 hours a day. Of course this battery life would be longer with the airplane mode on. You can give your documents tags and then search and filter them accordingly. But I couldn’t find any way to copy-paste folders, nor was there a way to change the screen brightness, which I didn’t need to do very frequently, but having it for reading under different lighting conditions once in a while would have been nice.

oneplus-12-review-unveiling-the-powerhouse-of-innovation-and-sty

Thu Feb 22 16:59:27 IST 2024

The OnePlus 12 is OnePlus' latest high-end device that upgrades the chipset, wireless induction charging, and telephoto camera while bringing a bigger display over its predecessor. It is priced at Rs. 64,999 for the base model and Rs. 69,999 for the higher model. Should you consider this over the OnePlus 11 or even the 12R? Let’s try and find out.

Design

In terms of looks, the OnePlus 12 is pretty similar to the 12R. It features a wheel-like camera and dual LED flash setup on the back, along with Hasselblad branding and OnePlus branding in the middle of the back itself. The phone comes in a shimmery Silky Black color and also in Emerald Green. The display features Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top, while the back has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection. The phone weighs about 220 grams and measures around 9.2mm, making it somewhat big and heavy.

Display

The device boasts a 6.82-inch OLED QHD+ (3168x1440) ProXDR display that supports variable refresh rates up to 120Hz. The display is bright and usable under direct sunlight and has good viewing angles. It handles HDR content without sacrificing much in terms of contrast and dark scenes. The curved sides are reflective. Overall, it offers a sharp panel that handles high-resolution videos and images without any troubles.

Software and Performance

The phone comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 3 chipset, paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM (base model comes in 12GB + 128GB configuration). It's running on OxygenOS 14 based on Android 14 with the January 2024 security patch in place. The phone handles games and app switching with ease, and it performs well in terms of software and performance.

Camera

Sporting a triple camera system on the back – a 50MP (f/1.6) main camera, a 64MP (f/2.6), and a 48MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The phone’s camera app is generally quick to capture shots, and the Master mode offers a lot of filters to choose from. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.4) camera also performs well in daylight and low-light conditions.

Battery

The OnePlus 12 features a 5,400mAh battery unit and a 100-watt SuperVOOC charger in the box. The phone lasted a full day most of the time and can be charged from 1% to full in about 40 minutes using the bundled charger. The phone also supports wireless induction charging at up to 50 watts using OnePlus’ new AirVOOC charger.

Other Features

Loudspeakers on the OnePlus 12 are crisp and loud, and the phone's Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS/GLONASS performance, and call quality are top-notch. The phone does not support eSIM as of now.

Verdict

In terms of getting value for money, the OnePlus 12R does 90% of the things as well as the OnePlus 12, and now quite near to the OnePlus 12 for most people. The OnePlus 12’s camera and chip difference may not be for everybody. The OnePlus 12 is a solid smartphone that excels in areas such as battery life, design, and overall user experience, making it a recommendable choice for a smartphone around 65k.

realme-12-pro-impressive-battery-life-and-camera-setup-at-an-aff

Wed Feb 14 18:05:40 IST 2024

Realme recently launched its new 12 series in India, including the 12 Pro+ and 12 Pro. I have been using the higher-end 12 Pro+ model, which is priced at Rs. 29,999 for the base variant and Rs. 33,999 for the higher variant. The company has made several upgrades and changes to the hardware and software of the device. Let's take a closer look at whether this phone is worth considering:

Design: The first thing that catches your attention is the vegan leather back and the unique watch-like camera setup. The leather back seems well-fitted, although only time will tell how it ages. The phone features a 6.7-inch (20:9 aspect ratio) display with the front camera placed in the middle. The volume buttons and power/lock key are located on the right side, while the left side is plain. The top of the phone houses one loudspeaker outlet and a secondary mic, while the bottom has the dual SIM card tray, primary mic, USB type C port, and another loudspeaker outlet. With a thickness of under 8.8mm and weighing just under 200 grams, the phone is tall, narrow, and comfortable to hold. It also boasts an IP65 water and dust resistance rating and comes in three color options – Submarine Blue, Navigator Beige, and Explorer Red.

Display: The phone features a 6.7-inch OLED display that supports a 120Hz refresh rate. The display is excellent, with good viewing angles and color reproduction when using the natural mode. However, it is not very bright and requires maximum brightness when used under direct sunlight. One downside is the absence of HDR support in Netflix. Nevertheless, the display is sharp and smooth for watching videos and reading text.

Cameras: The device is equipped with a triple camera system on the back, including a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera, a 64MP (f/2.6) telephoto camera, and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The portrait capabilities of this phone are particularly impressive, with good quality portrait shots and minimal sacrifice in contrast and details. The camera app is quick to load, and there's minimal shutter lag. The ProXDR image mode offers enhanced brightness and contrast, which many users may prefer. However, the camera performance in low-light conditions, especially with the ultra-wide camera, is a bit hit and miss. The Night mode helps reduce graininess to some extent. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.4) camera delivers detailed and well-stitched selfie shots.

Software and Performance: The phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, with an octa-core processor clocked at up to 2.4GHz, Adreno 710 GPU, and X62 5G modem. It comes with 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS2.2 internal storage (also available in 8GB + 128GB and 8GB + 256GB configurations). The device runs on realme UI 5.0 based on Android 14, with the December security patch. The phone offers a responsive and smooth experience, with no noticeable stutters when switching between apps or scrolling within social media apps. While it can handle less intensive games at 60FPS, it struggles to provide consistent smooth gameplay for more demanding games like Genshin Impact. However, it performs well for games like Diablo Immortal, maintaining around 30FPS most of the time. The phone does not experience any heating issues.

Realme has made some improvements to the software, removing a few pre-loaded apps and allowing users to uninstall most remaining third-party apps easily. The company promises two years of OS updates and three years of security updates, which is decent but falls short of the three plus four years policy becoming more common in this segment.

Battery Life: The phone is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery and comes with a 67-watt SuperVooc charger. Despite the smaller charger compared to its predecessor, the phone still charges from 1% to full in about 50 minutes, which is impressively fast. The battery life is excellent, with the phone lasting a day and still having 15%-20% battery remaining, even with heavy usage like using WiFi hotspot over 5G for a couple of hours. The display settings I used were auto refresh rate enabled and Adaptive sleep disabled.

Other Features: The call quality and 5G reception on the phone are impressive, with fast bandwidth and reliable 5G connectivity wherever available. The loudspeakers provide clear and loud audio for gaming and video playback. WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS perform without any issues when used individually or together. The fingerprint scanner, while not the quickest, works well enough for regular use.

Verdict: The realme 12 Pro+ is a camera-centric phone that stands out for its price. It offers excellent battery life, a decent display, and a familiar yet premium design. Within just 12 days of using the device, I received three OS updates, including camera improvements and software optimization. Hopefully, realme continues to improve and enhance the user experience throughout the promised update period.

oneplus-12r--a-compelling-alternative-to-flagship-android-phones

Mon Feb 12 21:05:36 IST 2024

OnePlus recently announced its new 12 series in India and globally, which expectedly had two devices – 12 and 12R (no model named Pro). While the OnePlus 12 is the company’s high-end device, the 12R is its successor to the much-acclaimed OnePlus 11R from last year, priced at Rs. 39,999 for the base model and Rs. 45,999 for the higher model. Does this model have enough to justify that price tag and be a worthy successor? Let’s try and find out:

Design: The OnePlus 12R has aluminum frames and, as per OnePlus, magnesium aluminum alloy internals. The phone has a 6.78-inch (19.8:9 aspect ratio) display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top of it. The back has Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 that has a slightly glossy finish to it on the Cool Blue model (also comes in Iron Gray), which does catch smudges quite a bit, while the protruding wheel-like triple camera system rests on the left corner and the OnePlus branding in the middle. The aluminum frame is all matte finish – the phone’s right side carries the volume buttons and Power/lock key, the left side has the alert slider (to quickly put the phone on mute, vibrate only, or ring on) near the top. The top locates one outlet for the loudspeakers, infrared port, and the secondary mic; the bottom houses the dual SIM card tray, primary mic, USB type C port, and another outlet for loudspeakers. The top and bottom are quite flat while the corners are curved and so are the sides. This IP64 certified water and dust-resistant phone weighs about 207 grams while measuring under 9mm – it isn’t a very heavy or wide phone to carry around, but it still can’t quite be called a compact phone.

Display: Featuring a 6.78-inch (2780x1264) AMOLED ProXDR display with support for variable refresh rates up to 120Hz, it is clearly one of the best parts about the device. The display has good viewing angles, doesn’t miss out on details when viewing high-resolution images, and doesn’t struggle to keep up when used outdoors under direct sunlight. The only thing that might bug you are accidental touches on the curved sides when watching something in landscape mode. It’s an HDR10+ enabled display that doesn’t struggle with handling dark scenes and contrast in general when playing HDR content on it. You can choose to use the display at the default standard (2376x1080) display or at its highest resolution. I preferred using this display with the cinematic mode, but some might like other modes such as natural or vivid among others.

Performance and software experience: The phone runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset (up to 3.2GHz octa-core processor, Adreno GPU, plus x70 5G modem), 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM along with 256GB UFS3.1 internal storage (also comes in 8GB + 128GB UFS3.1 combination). It runs on OxygenOS 14 based on Android 14 with the December security patch in place.

In terms of performance, this phone doesn’t disappoint at all. You can expect a really responsive app usage experience, switching between apps without any stuttering and playing high-resolution videos without any lags, too, whether in the YouTube app or locally saved videos.

Heavy games such as Genshin Impact can be played at medium to high settings with HDR enabled without the phone becoming too warm during 30 minutes or gameplay, and it was consistently at 60 frames per second. Having said that, whenever I switched to another app and switched back to the game, it would take a few seconds to resume from where it was left.

OnePlus, though, has removed background streaming capability from Smart Sidebar, which allowed you to stream something off YouTube without having the app opened on your screen.

Cameras: Sporting a triple camera system – a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera, an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP (f/2.4) macro camera. The phone can take some vibrant and detailed shots in daylight, though there’s also slightly longer shutter lag here than I can remember on the OnePlus 11. It can struggle a bit with low-light shots plus moving objects. Night mode does help a bit in capturing clearer frames of your subject, but even that can only help so much. The camera app has a lot of settings and filters to choose from and isn’t very complicated to get used to.

The front has a 16MP (f/2.4) camera with screen flash support, and it can take fairly good shots in terms of colors and details for most use cases and doesn’t disappoint for video calls either.

I think it would be fair to say the camera department isn’t quite the device’s strength – while it’s not a bad camera setup, there are some clear downsides compared to the competition.

Battery: OnePlus’ 12R boasts a 5,500mAh battery unit and supports up to 100-watt charging using the SuperVooc charger that comes in the box. The phone charges from 1% to full in about 30-35 minutes, which is really fast and importantly doesn’t heat up any time when it’s put on charge. The phone regularly lasted me a little over a day with moderate to heavy use – display set to high refresh rates and using a single SIM card with WiFi hotspot used for around an hour.

Other bits: The phone’s in-screen fingerprint scanner is placed a little higher on the display that some may prefer, but it does the job quickly and reliably, better than most of the in-screen fingerprint scanners in other phones. The dual stereo speakers are clear and sufficiently loud though not the best I have seen from OnePlus in terms of depth. WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS performance of the phone showed no glitches, while 5G connectivity on the device is on par with some of the best 5G phones today with good reception and speeds wherever available.

Verdict: While OnePlus hasn’t dramatically changed the 12R in terms of design or even camera performance over its predecessor, the phone doesn’t have any major weakness points in the price range, especially for the base model. The phone has great battery life, a quality display panel, and nearly no bloatware and smooth OS in place.

samsung-galaxy-s24-ultra-top-notch-display-smooth-performance-ai-features-its-highlight

Wed Jan 31 12:11:55 IST 2024

Samsung’s lead in the global smartphone race came to a halt recently when it fell to the second spot after well over a decade, a lot of that because of the company’s flagship Galaxy S series performing and giving way in to the newest technology for its other smartphones, too.

The new Galaxy S24 series, just like previous times, has three different models, with the S24 Ultra being the biggest and most beefed up model of the three. It’s priced at Rs. 1,29,999 for the base model and goes to Rs. 1,59,999, though there’s a good chance you get a decent deal to get it for significantly less online or from a physical store. Let’s try and see what Samsung brought to the table with the S24 Ultra.

Design: The biggest difference between the S24 Ultra and the S23 Ultra is that the new one carries a titanium frame now (instead of aluminium). Plus, you get the Corning Gorilla Armor on top of the flat 6.8-inch display for not only improved protection but also getting a less reflective screen. The back has the Corning Gorilla Victus with a matte finish that doesn’t catch too many fingerprints and smudges. The back carries the four-camera system plus laser focus that are all directly attached to the back with no separate rectangular cutouts in between.

The right side holds the volume buttons and the power/lock key near the middle; while the left side is plain. The top houses the secondary mic and one outlet for loudspeakers; the bottom has the S Pen slot, second outlet for the loudspeakers, USB type C port as well as the primary mic and dual SIM card tray.

This phone is big, wide and not light by any means, weighing a little over 230 grams, and its edges could have been made out to be a little curved instead of the somewhat sharp corners.

Display: The S24 features a 6.8-inch QHD+ (3120x1440) AMOLED display with support for 120Hz variable refresh rates. You can change the display resolution setting, which is set at FHD+ (2340x1080) by default. The display here is brighter than before and again usable under direct sunlight without much problem. Colour calibration and contrast are in line with what you would usually expect from a Samsung device, and that new Gorilla Armor does make it less reflective to use, a useful addition.

You can expect to watch HDR content over YouTube or Netflix on it with good details and get a balanced output, including in dark scenes and with good skin tones in general.

Software, AI and performance: The phone is equipped with the slightly customised Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset (up to 3.4Ghz octa core processor, Adreno 750 GPU and X75 5G modem) along with a 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 4.0 internal storage (also comes in 512GB or 1TB storage). It runs on One UI 6.1 based on Android 14 with the January security patches installed.

The headlines features here include new Galaxy AI features announced by Samsung. The one I found the most useful so far is Circle to search – long press the Home button and simply circle (doesn’t have to be precise) the part of what’s on your screen that you want to know more about. Saves 2-3 steps from reverse Google Image search or Google Lens by taking a screenshot and then searching for it.

Samsung has also introduced an AI feature where you can summarise or translate a webpage in its Internet browser. It seems to be in the testing stage, as it sometimes just doesn’t work so far. There’s also Live Translate where you can have a call with somebody speaking another language to yours and have it translated instantly, but it’s still not very accurate, though somewhat usable.

There’s an editing feature for photos where you can remove shadows, edit the main subject’s position or size, and so on; something we have seen on Pixels and iPhones, too. You can also make AI generated wallpapers as per your instructions for the phone. All the AI stuff can be made to be done on device only (can be selected inside Settings) and is all based on Google’s Gemini AI, supposedly available for free on the device till next year.

General performance and gaming performance of the S24 ultra is top notch here. Switching between apps, using two apps side by side, taking a call while downloading a heavy file – all work without any stuttering troubles. You can play heavy games such as Genshin Impact at near 60FPS and BGMI at near 90FPS without frames dropped.

Cameras: There’s a four-camera system on the back – a 200MP (f/1.7) main camera, a 12MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, a new 50MP (f/3.4) telephoto camera, and a 10MP (f/2.4) telephoto camera. The camera performance seems to be very near to its predecessor with slightly better portrait shots in both daylight and low light conditions. The camera app is feature rich and is quite straightforward to use. There’s very little shutter lag to take shots of your kids and pets. The overall shots appear to have punchy colours, well detailed with over exposure at times.

You can edit a photo from a regular to a portrait shot when the Gallery app detects the subject fine enough. The front-facing 12MP (f/2.2) camera is quick to take shots and is reliable for taking sharp selfies and video calling purposes most of the time. The AI generated photos have a watermark at the bottom and some added metadata to confirm that it’s AI generated, though the watermark can be removed using the default editor itself.

Battery: Sporting a 5,000 mAh battery unit, the phone lasted me a day more often than not while the display settings were set at FHD+ and 2-3 hours less with QHD+ resolution, all at adaptive refresh rate selected. There’s no charger in the box, but only a USB type C to C cable, but it supports up to 45 watt charging and charges from 1% to full in about 80 minutes without any heating issues.

Other bits: I didn’t see any noticeable issues regarding WiFi, GPS, call quality and Bluetooth performance, though in-ear speaker volume could have been a little louder. Loudspeakers are crisp and loud enough for playing videos and games.

Verdict: The S24 Ultra is among Samsung’s first devices that’s aimed with the AI all over it. The device has some nice new AI tricks up its sleeves, which are quite useful but definitely not completely developed to be called a finished product for now. The phone has top notch internal hardware, smooth software and great but not much improved camera in place. There would be some nice deals going on for the S23 series now (which is expected to get AI features with an update in a few months), but if you want the bleeding edge in smartphones, you can probably still get a decent deal on Samsung’s latest flagship device that has some refinements over the predecessor.

oppo-reno11--a-budget-friendly-option-for-camera-enthusiasts

Mon Jan 29 18:19:08 IST 2024

Oppo's Reno series is its flagship camera series of smartphones, where the company showcases the best it has to offer in terms of imaging. The new Reno11 is another new phone from Oppo that continues that legacy. Priced at Rs. 29,999, let's see how it performs, including in the camera department.

Design: The phone features a 6.7-inch curved display with slim bezels that are not symmetrical. Despite this, I didn't accidentally press it too frequently, which can happen with curved displays. The front-facing camera is located in the top-middle of the display, next to the ear-speaker grille. It is not very noticeable from a distance. The rounded edges and corners, along with the glossy sides, give the phone a premium finish. Moving to the back of the phone, there is an oval-shaped cutout for the triple camera system. The patterned design also stands out. The back has a shimmery, but not overly shiny, appearance, which contributes to the phone's overall design aesthetics. The right side of the phone houses the volume buttons and the power/lock key, which is located near the middle. The left side is left plain without any buttons or features.

On the top of the phone, there is a single outlet for loudspeakers, an infrared port, and a secondary microphone. The bottom of the phone has a dual SIM card tray, a primary microphone, a USB Type-C port, and a second outlet for loudspeakers. The phone weighs approximately 183 grams and has a thickness of around 8mm. It never felt slippery or too heavy to carry around. I tried the Rock grey color option, but it is also available in Wave Green, which has a more noticeable patterned texture on the back.

Display: The Reno11 features a 6.7-inch curved OLED display that supports HDR10+ and up to 120Hz high refresh rates. The display is known for its good viewing angles, vibrant colors, and high contrast, making it suitable for watching high-resolution videos and images. I prefer to use the display in natural mode over vivid for watching content throughout my use. It’s not the best display I have used on an Oppo device, but it’s still a sharp panel that doesn’t compromise on details. For HDR content, it does a decent job of handling bright as well shadow-y scenes without sacrificing on skin tones.

Cameras: Featuring a triple-camera system on the back – a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera (with OIS), a 32MP (f/2.0) telephoto camera, and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera – it’s pretty much the USP of this smartphone. The main Sony LYT600 sensor really shines when it comes to taking well-stitched and detailed shots from the phone. The colors and skin tones are more natural than previous Reno series phones, and low-light shots also seem to be improved in terms of less graininess and better focus on the subject. The Sony IMX709 sensor in the telephoto camera gives well-defined portrait shots where the bokeh effects don't appear too unnatural, offering a more refined take than some of the other phones in this price range, up to 2x zoom. The low-light performance can be a bit hit or miss. If you’re standing still with your subject not moving quickly, you can expect shots with good exposure and details in place, but that isn't the case very frequently. The camera app is quick and smooth to open and work with. There’s an added option where you can change the exposure settings while taking a shot, something you might like if you like to fiddle with your camera settings. The front-facing 32MP (f/2.4) camera takes sharp and well-lit shots that generally wouldn’t disappoint for your social media or personal use.

The Oppo Reno11 5G comes with MediaTek's Dimensity 7050 chipset, which includes an up to 2Ghz octa-core processor and Mali G68 GPU. It also features 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS2.2 internal storage (the base model has 8GB + 128GB). The phone runs on Oppo's ColorOS 14.0, which is based on Android 14 and comes with the January 2024 security patch.

In terms of day-to-day tasks, the Oppo Reno11 5G handles calling, messaging, and web browsing with multiple tabs open without any issues. It can also handle tasks like watching YouTube while scrolling through social media apps. However, it would have been better if Oppo had used a more up-to-date chipset instead of the Dimensity 7050. While you can play games like Badland and Asphalt 8 smoothly, the phone may struggle with more demanding games like Fortnite or BGMI at medium to highest settings.

ColorOS 14 has a couple of nice features, such as File Dock, which allows you to copy and paste files from a side-handing dock, and Smart Extract, which lets you extract text or information from a screenshot. However, apart from these new features, ColorOS largely looks and feels similar to previous versions. It also comes with several pre-installed third-party apps, though they can be uninstalled if desired.

Performance and software: The Oppo Reno11 5G comes with MediaTek's Dimensity 7050 chipset (up to 2GHz octa-core processor, Mali G68 GPU), along with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS2.2 internal storage (the base model comes with 8GB + 128GB). It runs on Oppo's ColorOS 14.0, based on Android 14, with the January 2024 security patch. The phone handles day-to-day tasks such as calling, messaging, web browsing with 5-6 tabs open, and watching YouTube in the background while scrolling through social media apps just fine. It would have been better if Oppo had upgraded the chipset from the dated Dimensity 7050 to something more up-to-date. However, you can play games such as Badland and Asphalt 8 smoothly. The phone is unable to handle games like Fortnite or BGMI at medium to highest settings without showing any sluggishness. There are a couple of nice features in ColorOS 14, such as File Dock, which allows you to copy any file, keep it in the side-handing dock, and paste or use that file anywhere else by dragging it from the dock whenever you need to. Another useful feature is Smart Extract, which allows you to extract text or information from a screenshot that you just took. Other than these new features, ColorOS looks and feels very similar to how it has been for a while, with quite a few third-party apps pre-installed out of the box that can be uninstalled. Oppo promises 3 years of OS upgrades and 4 years of security updates for this device.

Battery: The phone is powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit and comes with a 67-watt SuperVooc charger inside the box. I usually get about a day's worth of usage from a full charge under similar workloads, and I rarely run out of battery in the middle of work. The phone charges from 1% to full in about 50 minutes without any major heating issues.

Other bits: The phone's WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth performance is nothing to worry about, while the loudspeakers are also loud and clear for videos and gaming purposes when you aren't around many people.

Verdict: The strengths and weaknesses of the Oppo Reno11 are quite clear. It excels in the camera and battery departments, and it also boasts a sleek design. However, its chipset and gaming performance are not as impressive. Therefore, this smartphone is ideal for people who prioritise camera performance, whether it's the rear or front camera, over gaming and having the latest chipset available in the market today.

poco-x6-and-x6-pro--budget-friendly-5g-phones-with-premium-featu

Thu Jan 18 17:31:26 IST 2024

Poco has been a name often associated with value in the smartphone world. The company's F5 was one of the better and more affordable options available last year. This time, Poco has launched the X6 Pro, priced at ₹26,999 for the base model, and the X6 starting at ₹21,999. Do they have what it takes to compete in these price segments? Let's try to find out.

Design: Both the Poco X6 and X6 Pro are made of polycarbonate materials with smooth edges and slightly curved backs towards the borders. The Poco X6 has Gorilla Glass 5 on top of its 6.67-inch display, while the Poco X6 Pro has Gorilla Glass Victus protection. On the right side, you'll find the volume buttons and power/lock keys, which are tactile enough. The left side is plain with no buttons or ports. The top features an infrared port, an outlet for the loudspeaker, and a secondary microphone. The Poco X6 also includes a 3.5mm audio jack. At the bottom, you'll find the primary microphone, the USB Type-C port, and another outlet for the loudspeaker. The back of both Poco X6 and Poco x6 Pro houses the camera setup, which is placed in a rectangular cutout. While some people may not like this cutout, I don't believe it's a major deal breaker. Both phones weigh less than 190 grams, with the Poco X6 Pro being slightly heavier. They both measure around 8mm in thickness, with the Poco X6 Pro being slightly thicker. Neither phone has any creaks or alarming bends, and they don't feel cheap in the hand. The Poco X6 comes in black, white, and blue colors, while the Poco X6 Pro is available in black, grey, and yellow, featuring a vegan leather back.

Display: You get 6.67-inch displays in both phones, with support for 120Hz refresh rates. The Poco X6 Pro probably has the best display used by Poco in a phone so far, in terms of brightness, color calibration, and contrast. Both phones support Dolby Vision playback under Netflix, where the extra bits of brightness come in handy for handling shadow scenes and contrast in general, better than Poco's previous phones.

Camera: These phones come with a triple camera system, consisting of a 64MP (f/1.7) main camera, an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP (f/2.4) camera. The HDR effect can be turned on to capture sharp and contrast-y looking photos, especially on the Pro model. In low-light conditions, the phone can deliver okay shots as long as there is no movement from both the user and the subject. Switching to 64MP shots doesn't cause much stutter, and there is not a significant shutter delay. Portrait shots are in line with the F5, with slightly enhanced skin tones. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.4) camera can take decent portrait shots in daylight and regular shots in less than ideal lighting conditions when using the Night mode. Overall, these phones offer some of the better camera combinations available in their price ranges today.

Performance and software experience: While the Poco X6 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra chipset (up to 3.35GHz octa-core processor, Mali-G615 GPU) along with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage (also available in the 8GB + 256GB option), the Poco X6 is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset (up to 2.4GHz octa-core processor and Adreno 710 GPU) alongside 12GB LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB UFS 2.2 storage (also available in 8GB + 256GB and 12GB + 256GB configurations).

The Poco X6 Pro comes with HyperOS 1 based on Android 14 with the December security patch out of the box, while the Poco X6 runs on MIUI 14 for Poco that's based on Android 13.

In terms of performance, the Poco X6 Pro can handle games like World War II at its highest settings or BGMI at 90FPS with HDR enabled, experiencing very few frame drops and no major heating issues even after playing for 30 minutes or so. However, the battery drain should be watched out for. On the other hand, the Poco X6 may not be able to handle such games at high settings, but it can provide smooth gameplay for games like Asphalt 8 and Badland.

Both phones perform well in day-to-day tasks, including switching between apps and animations. HyperOS seems to have improved memory management compared to MIUI, and it also offers enhanced theming options. It's worth mentioning that Poco promises 3 major OS updates and 4 years of security updates for these phones.

Battery: The Poco X6 features a 5,100mAh battery unit, while the X6 Pro has a 5,000mAh battery unit. Both batteries last about 22-24 hours on average with similar workloads at auto refresh. This workload includes two email accounts, display brightness set at about 35%, 5G usage for approximately 90 minutes, and a lot of web browsing. The phones charge from 1% to full in around 50 minutes using the 67-watt bundled chargers.

Other aspects: The 5G network reception is pretty good, especially on the Poco X6 Pro, even while working on the go. Both phones have clear and sufficiently loud loudspeakers for video and gaming use. GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth performance didn't show any unusual glitches during my usage. The in-screen fingerprint scanner is quick enough, although we have seen better ones at a similar price range in terms of reliability, but the difference isn't significant.

Verdict: The X6 Pro seems like another great value for money option from Poco, especially for those who want to play games on their smartphone. It is available under Rs. 30,000 and can also take good shots while not disappointing in the battery department. The Poco X6, although not as impressive, is also a pretty good offering with a decent design, capable cameras, and 5G connectivity.

redmi-note-13-5g--a-powerful-choice-for-seamless-5g-connectivity

Tue Jan 09 14:02:18 IST 2024

Xiaomi’s Redmi Note series has been known for bringing upgraded tech at not-so-high prices ever since the company entered the Indian shores. The latest Redmi Note 13 series tries to capture three different price segments, with the Redmi Note 13 5G being the most affordable in the series – priced at Rs. 17,999 to Rs. 21,999 (before any offers). Does it pack enough to be a great option in this highly competitive segment? Let’s try and find out.

Design: The Redmi Note 13 has a 6.67-inch display with decently slim bezels, though it would have been better if these were symmetrical, but it isn’t very common in this price range. The display has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on top and also carries the front-facing camera in a punch-hole format at the top middle. The phone is made of polycarbonate with a glossy, patterned, and shiny back, and more matte-finished sides. The back houses the triple camera system on a protruding rectangle cutout, while the Redmi branding sits near the bottom.

The right side locates the volume buttons and Power/lock key (which also houses the physical fingerprint scanner) near the middle, while the left side carries the dual SIM card plus microSD card tray. The bottom has the primary mic, USB Type-C port, and loudspeakers, and the top carries the secondary mic, 3.5mm audio jack, and the infrared port. Being IP54 water and dust resistant, the phone comes in Arctic White (the one I tried), Black, and Golden color options. It weighs a little under 175 grams, measures 7.6mm in thickness, and feels decent and grippy enough in the hand.

Display: The phone boasts a 6.67-inch pOLED Full HD+ (2400x1080) display that supports 120Hz refresh rates. When turned to high brightness, the screen is usable under direct sunlight without much problem. The display has good viewing angles and sharpness for watching high-resolution videos or viewing images. I wouldn't say its HDR output is excellent, but it's fine for watching something on Netflix. The higher refresh rates also help in playing games or scrolling inside apps. Its color calibration could have been a bit better, in my opinion, but it's still a fine display for a phone at this price point.

Camera: The device features a triple camera system on the back, consisting of a 108MP (f/1.7) main camera, an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP macro camera. The camera app is quick to open and responsive, allowing you to take shots efficiently. In good lighting conditions, you can expect to capture detailed and well-stitched shots with good dynamic range. The camera also performs decently in portrait shots. However, in low light situations, you may need to experiment with different angles and modes to capture a correctly exposed shot of your subject.

The front-facing camera of the device is a 16MP (f/2.45) camera. It is more than sufficient for video calls and can capture sharp selfies with minimal grain. With filters and beauty mode turned off, the front camera produces more natural tones .

Software and Performance: Running on MIUI 14.0.1 based on Android 13 with the November security patch in place, the phone offers a smooth user experience. The device is powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 6080 chipset, which includes a 2.4 GHz octa-core processor and a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. It is equipped with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 2.2 internal storage. The phone is available in three configurations: 6+128GB, 8+256GB, and 12+256GB.

Xiaomi has said that the much-awaited HyperOS upgrade will be released soon. However, it has not yet been rolled out to all devices, and the user is still waiting for it. Xiaomi has mentioned that the upgrade will be available for devices released after the Xiaomi 13 Pro and Pad 6.

The phone handles day-to-day tasks such as messaging, background playback of YouTube Music, and running Google Maps without any issues. Users can switch between these apps smoothly without experiencing any hiccups. However, the phone may struggle with intensive gaming, causing stuttering or lags. The phone supports a 90Hz refresh rate, which allows for smooth scrolling within social media apps. While the chipset is not designed for high-end gaming, it can handle games like Shadow Survival Premium without any problems.

The phone features a side-mounted physical fingerprint scanner, which is reliable and quick to unlock the device on a daily basis. Xiaomi has committed to providing three major OS updates, including the HyperOS upgrade, as well as four years of security patches.

Battery life: The phone is powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit and comes with a 33-watt charger in the box. The phone needs to be charged again within a day if the display settings are set to a high refresh rate, but generally lasts about one day when set to auto refresh under similar task loads. The phone takes about 90 minutes or so to charge from 1% to full using the bundled charger."

Other bits: Call quality, GPS, and WiFi reception on the phone weren't something to worry about throughout my usage. The 5G reception is also pretty good, although not as reliable as a high-end smartphone. Nevertheless, it is still reliable enough for you to use the phone as a hotspot and go about your business on the go. The loudspeakers are sufficiently loud and clear for your occasional video and gaming needs.

Verdict: The Redmi Note 13 5G is a good performer when it comes to display and 5G reception. I would have liked to try HyperOS on it already, but hopefully, that won't be too long away for this device. Having showcased its performance across different aspects, I would say the Redmi Note 13 makes more sense with a base price of Rs. 15,000 for the base model. However, taking it above Rs. 22,000 for its highest model might be a little bit of a stretch considering the chipset and competing products. Having said that, if you're looking for an IP54 rated 5G smartphone with a good display that also has a 3.5mm audio jack, priced under 20k, and importantly, offers are available for purchasing this device, the Redmi Note 13 would be a viable option.

lg-c3-oled-evo--a-premium-upgrade-for-your-home-entertainment

Fri Dec 22 17:56:25 IST 2023

LG has been one of the few trusted names when it comes to OLED TVs over the years. Although OLED technology has been in the mainstream for a while now, it is often not adapted very well or the panel quality can often be subpar. However, LG's C series is a popular line of OLED TVs that has received an upgrade with the Evo C3. The price of the TV ranges from Rs. 1,50,000 to Rs. 1,62,551, depending on where you purchase it from. Let's explore the capabilities of this LG TV and see what it can really do.

Design: The TV is metallic with a plastic casing in the front. The main panel is incredibly slim, measuring about 1.8 inches if you include the back panel that houses all the ports and machinery. The screen itself is less than 1cm thick, so its sides wouldn't hang completely flat against the wall due to the bulge in the middle at the back. If you want to table-mount the TV, there's a centrally mounted metal stand (not included in the box) that looks premium and feels just as sturdy as the rest of the TV. The back housing is also not flimsy and doesn't have any easily bendable spots or dings, which is good to see. The TV weighs a little over 14 kg, and adding the stand adds nearly 2 kg to it. The bezels around the display are thin and symmetrical. At the bottom, there is an LED with a physical button next to it for switching the TV on or off, as well as bringing up the menu by long-pressing it. The TV comes with LG's Magic Air remote, which resembles a standard TV remote with power, volume, channel, and number keys, along with a scroll wheel, okay button, and app shortcuts. It's not as small as the remote controls seen with Android TVs these days, but it isn't overly large for a TV either.

Display and performance: The TV sports a 55-inch 4K (3840x2160) W-OLED display with support for up to 120Hz refresh rates with Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG. It runs on webOS 23 with AirPlay 2 and Smart Hub for controlling your smart connected devices through the TV or watching their feed on your TV itself. It’s powered by a quad core α9 Gen6 AI processor and carries 8GB of internal storage space.

The OLED display used here by LG is slightly glossy but has an anti-reflective coating on it, which does an okay job against lights in your room. The panel used by LG is a quality one with really good viewing angles even when used in a medium to large room, plus rich black levels and high contrast for multiple formats. The display is vivid and sharp to view your content on without worry you might be missing out on any major details. It touches 800 nits when playing HDR and Dolby Vision content, which isn’t too high when compared to other TVs around the price range, but still handles the content keeping dark scenes and contrast in place when using apps such as Apple TV and Netflix on it. On the back, you get four HDMI 2.1 ports (one with eARC), three USB 2.0 ports, one ethernet LAN port, one optical in, one infrared out and one CI Plus 2.0 port.

The evo C3 can do variable refresh rates up to 120Hz along with auto low latency mode, which are specially useful if you’re going to connect with a gaming console, such as a PlayStation, Xbox or even your gaming PC, and considering there’s nVidia’s G-Sync and AMD’s Freesync support, too, it would only make your gameplay experience better and more compatible across different gaming platforms. There’s a gaming picture mode that’s recommended for playing higher refresh rate and high resolution games. But in general, I prefered the Filmmaker mode on the TV to watching TV shows and movies most of the time as it seems to give a more accurate picture while keeping high dynamic range and shadows in place, too. For sports, the TV doesn’t break a sweat for handling 50 or 60FPS live streams whether inside a streaming app, including SonyLiv, JioCinema and even Twitch, without any stuttering, though you might notice a little judder for very low frame rate videos. Though Android TV has far more apps and a bigger ecosystem in place, you wouldn’t be missing out on any major OTT or streaming service app on webOS. You can set the TV to switch to an input mode that was on last time when before the TV was turned off so you don’t have to manually switch to it after turning the TV on again.

Sound: The C3 evo features 40 watt down firing 2.1.2 speakers that are surprisingly decent. Don’t get me wrong, you’re definitely better off investing in a dedicated set of speakers to go with the TV, especially for a large room, but for the TV speakers, they do a decent job of offering clean bass, clear dialogues as well as not mushing out on background details very often. They can struggle little when it comes to mids and mids to high when you’re playing music or during a soundtrack in a movie or show. The TV supports Dolby Atmos, DTS as well as aptX (for Bluetooth 5.0) provided your source is also having it.

Verdict: With a great display in place, a premium design (including the table-top stand), and a decent set of speakers, the LG C3 OLED evo doesn’t disappoint. You can nitpick that its brightness could have been a little better while LG could have provided some additional freebies (such as a subscription bundled with it), but it’s certainly not a deal breaker. So, if you have been eyeing a premium TV for your entertainment at home, it may not be only movies and shows but also for playing games on, the C3 OLED evo is a well-performing option worth your consideration.

hp-pavilion-plus-14--a-solid-choice-for-work-and-entertainment

Sat Dec 16 12:26:00 IST 2023

HP’s Pavilion series has been synonymous with the company’s laptop offerings for many years now. The HP Pavilion Plus 14 (2023) aims to be a one machine for all your work eeds as well as some entertainment taken care of on the go. Starting at a price point of Rs. 91,999, let’s try and see what it gets right and what it doesn’t:

Design: The laptop is made mostly of aluminium and HP says there’s some recycled aluminium and plastic used for the construction here. It features a 14-inch 16:10 aspect ratio display with thin but not very thin borders around it. The top has a 5MP Wide Vision webcam (with a physical shutter over it) that supports HP’s Presence 2.0 feature to have better focus on you during your video calls.

The left side houses the 3.5mm audio jack along with USB type A port; while the right side carries another USB type A port, an HDMI 2.1 port and 2 USB type C ports. The laptop weighs under 1.5kg and measures 17/5mm in thickness, and it’s one of the highlights of this machine – not once did it feel bulky to be carries around or working with on the go.

Display and keyboard: You get a 14-inch (2880x1800) 10-bit OLED display that supports full IMAX content with added support for 120Hz refresh rates. It’s not exactly a non-glossy display but you wouldn't need to wipe it clean frequently, plus it does not struggle with viewing angles when watching something. It okay when it comes to brightness though sharpness and colour reproduction don’t disappoint as the display does a good job when used for playing high resolution videos or viewing images. The keyboard is a white backlit keyboard that is really comfortable to type on. You get a satisfying feel thanks to its clickity and tactile keys that are spaced out well and have just enough travel.

Performance and software: The Pavilion Plus 14 is powered by Intel’s 13th gen. Core i7-1355U chip, integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics along with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, running Windows 11 Home edition (23H2 version). I found the laptop to handle Web browsing plus Office apps plus a music player playing in the background without breaking a sweat. It comes with a 1TB SSD, which helped in opening and closing of apps quickly while having decent read and write speeds for files from and to an external drive. It’s not a gaming laptop, but you can play low intensive games at low to medium settings with decent, but not too great, gameplay. On the other hand, it handles higher frame rate videos at high resolution well enough to not be a bottleneck for your work mode.

Battery life: The device is powered by a 68Wh battery unit and comes with a 65watt USB type C charger, but you can also charge it with another compatible USb type C charger. The laptop lasted me 6.5-7 hours most of the time, for similar tasks as office apps, one Web browser and a music player in the background.

Verdict: All in all, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 comes across as a reliable Windows machine for getting stuff done on the go, whether it is for documents, spreadsheets or Web browsing or for having your entertainment capsule for the day. Its battery life could have been a little better, but it certainly has the design, B&S speakers and keyboard under its strengths to make it a consideration for a consumer laptop in the crowded market today.

oneplus-open-offers-compelling-option-in-the-foldable-smartphone

Thu Nov 30 11:38:16 IST 2023

The foldable smartphone market has seen increased competition in recent years, with companies like Moto, Samsung, and Oppo releasing multiple devices. Now, OnePlus, a subsidiary of Oppo, has entered the foldable smartphone space with its OnePlus Open. Priced at Rs. 1,39,999, the OnePlus Open is not a mass-market device, but it aims to compete with established players like Samsung. Let's explore whether the OnePlus Open has enough to take on Samsung in this segment.

Design: One of the first noticeable features of the OnePlus Open is its lightweight design, weighing about 245 grams. The phone measures 11.7mm thick when folded and 5.8mm thick when unfolded. The camera bump is quite large, but aside from that, the crease on the main display (when unfolded) is less noticeable compared to Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold5. The outer display has a 6.3-inch (20:9 aspect ratio), while the main display is 7.82-inch (1.07:1 aspect ratio). The hinge is lighter than other foldable devices, making it a more lightweight option. The phone's physical buttons and ports are well-placed, and the hinge feels sturdy and reliable. However, it does not have an IP rating for water or dust resistance.

Displays: The OnePlus Open features a 6.3-inch AMOLED (LTPO) outer display with refresh rates ranging from 10 to 120Hz. The outer display is bright and sharp, even under direct sunlight. The main display is a 7.82-inch flexi-fluid AMOLED (LTPO) with a resolution of 2440x2268 and supports refresh rates from 1 to 120Hz. The main display handles high-resolution videos and images well, without sacrificing sharpness. However, due to the aspect ratio, thick black bars may appear when watching videos.

Camera: The OnePlus Open boasts a triple camera system with Hasselblad branding. It includes a 48MP (f/1.7) main camera, a 64MP (f/2.6) telephoto camera, and a 48MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The camera performance has improved in terms of color accuracy with recent updates. It captures good details and white balance in broad daylight and performs reasonably well in low light. The telephoto lens is quick and retains details for still subjects but may struggle with moving subjects. The front-facing cameras, both on the outer display (32MP) and inner display (20MP), produce decent selfie shots and are suitable for video calls. The phone can shoot 4K videos at 30FPS, but the quality and stabilization may not match those of the rear camera's 1080p videos.

Performance and software experience: The OnePlus Open is equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Gen 2 (up to 3.2GHz octa-core processor, Adreno GPU, and x70 5G modem), 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and 512GB of UFS4.0 storage. It runs on Oxygen 13.2 based on Android 13, with the September security patch. The operating system allows for running multiple apps side by side, and with updates, the phone feels more stable and smoother in terms of app switching, animations, and multimedia playback. It can handle high-end games at the highest settings without overheating.

Battery life: The phone is powered by a 4,805mAh battery and comes with an 80-watt charger. With typical usage, the phone lasts a full day, including around 1-1.5 hours of inner display usage. The bundled charger can charge the phone from 1% to full in less than an hour.

Other features: The OnePlus Open offers excellent call quality, GPS, and WiFi performance. The 5G network reception is decent, although other OnePlus models may have slightly better reception. The loudspeakers on the device are loud and clear, enhancing the video and gaming playback experience.

Verdict: As OnePlus' first foldable smartphone, the OnePlus Open showcases their parent company Oppo's experience in this space. It impresses with its less intrusive crease, conventional smartphone-like feel when closed, good battery life, and overall design. The quality of the hinge compared to Samsung and Moto remains to be seen, and it would have been nice to have wireless charging at this price point. However, the OnePlus Open is a compelling option for those willing to invest in a foldable smartphone.

true-wireless-earbuds-decoding-the-pros-and-cons-of-boult-curve-

Thu Nov 09 16:23:49 IST 2023

Boult has been in the Indian audio industry for a while now, and they have been known to come up with new products every now and then with perhaps not many changes over the previous ones. The Curve Buds Pro is another pair of true wireless earbuds that is said to be offering a premium design, as per the company, despite being priced at Rs. 1,299. Let's look at what it really offers for that:

Design: The Boult Curve Buds Pro true wireless earbuds feature a matte-finish charging case with a sturdy lid. The case has an LED indicator on the front and a USB Type-C port at the bottom. The earbuds themselves are made of plastic but do not feel cheap. Each bud has a small LED light near the touch control area for pairing and charging. The package includes a short USB Type-C cable and two extra pairs of different-sized eartips.

In terms of comfort, some users find the Curve Buds Pro to be okay for short periods of use, but not as comfortable as other options in the same price range, such as the Redmi Buds 4 Active. I found the buds to be okay in terms of comfort, having worn them for 30-40 minutes, when really needed, but after that had to put it back down. I prefer the Redmi Buds 4 Active in that department, which are priced quite close to these. You can pause or resume your music with a signe tap on either bud, and enable Google Assistant or Siri with a long tap.

Audio quality: The Boult Curve Buds Pro support Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity and come with SBC and AAC codecs. The earbuds deliver deep bass, as expected, but the mids are somewhat weaker in comparison. It handles vocals, especially for Bollywood stuff, decently but instruments in the background alongside could have been handled a little better in terms of details. You can expect good output for genres such as hip hop/rap in terms of high and low stereo vocals. I noticed a little better soundstage with environmental noise cancellation (ENC) turned off, and only had END switched on indoors which is where they seemed useful anyway. Having said that, you should probably not expect much in the noise cancellation department from true wireless earbuds at this price point to begin with.

Battery life: The Boult Curve Buds Pro provide about 8-9 hours of battery life on a single full charge, with an additional two rounds of charging using the included charging case. Each earbud has a 40mAh battery unit, while the case carries a 700mAh battery. It's nice to see Boult go with USB type C instead of arguably outdated micro USB at this price point.

Verdict: The Boult Curve Buds Pro true wireless earbuds offer punchy bass and decent vocal output, making them a suitable option for some users, especially considering their price tag. However, they may not be the most comfortable option under Rs. 1,500. The earbuds come with a premium-looking charging case and provide a long battery life.

exploring-the-oneplus-pad-go-a-closer-look-at-its-features-and-p

Tue Nov 07 12:16:31 IST 2023

OnePlus has expanded its product lineup in recent years, venturing into new categories such as smartwatches, tablets, and now foldable phones. The company recently released its budget Android tablet, the OnePlus Pad Go, which is priced at Rs. 19,999 for the base model and Rs. 23,999 for the highest model. Let's take a closer look at what this new Android tablet has to offer.

What it gets right:

Design: The OnePlus Pad Go boasts a strikingly similar design to the OnePlus Pad, with its curved sides and edges, complemented by a dual-tone matte and glossy bar running along the back in the elegant Twin Mint color. Its 11.35-inch LCD display showcases a 7:5 aspect ratio, providing a visually immersive experience. In terms of button placement, the volume buttons are located on the top when the device is in horizontal mode. On the left-hand side, you'll find the SIM card slot and the power/lock key, while the right-hand side houses the USB Type-C port and the primary microphone. Additionally, the Pad Go features quad speakers, strategically positioned around the metal unibody, ensuring an exceptional audio experience.

The device weighs a little above 530 grams and is overall quite comfortable and grippy to carry around. The bezels around the display are not the slimmest we have seen but they aren't too thick either.

Display: You get an 11.35-inch LCD (LTPS kind) 2.4k (2408x1720) display with support for up to 90Hz refresh rates. The display is just about bright enough to be used outdoors under direct sunlight. For watching movies and videos, there's sufficient detail and colour calibration looks decent enough. This being perhaps the most important part for a device that you're going to consume your content on, I would say the Pad Go handles text rendering for reading and colour rendering for videos without any major lapses. The tablet can play videos up to 1440p on YouTube with very very stutters and frame drops, making it a pretty good option for video consumption.

Audio: The quad speakers on the tablet are loud and punchy to be used for watching videos or playing some game when you're not outdoors, and I think it might be more important in a tablet than its rear camera for consuming content. These speakers support Dolby Atmos provided your source is delivering that to begin with. They aren't the loudset you would have heard on a tablet, ever, but they still give pretty clear sound and pack a decent punch for the price tag. For wireless audio, it has Bluetooth 5.2 with SBC, AAC as well as LDAC codec support for higher resolution audio delivery.

Battery life: Powered by an 8,000mAh battery unit, the tablet lasts me 2-2.5 days when used for about 8-10 hours a day over WiFi and 4-5 hours less with 4G/LTE in use. The bundled 33-watt SuperVooc charger can charge the tablet from 1% to full in a little under 1.5 hours, which is fast for a tablet.

What it doesn't do very well:

Performance: Packing a MediaTek Helio G99 chipset (up to 2.2GHz octa core processor, Mali G57 MP2 GPU), 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS2.2 storage (base model comes in 128GB). The tablet showed frame drops and stuttering every now and then during my usage, and even after an OS update, the performance didn't really improve. You can switch between apps such YouTube and Chrome or Telegram and Instagram without any worries but you can notice the tablet taking somewhat more time to load the app you're switching to. While videos play smoothly (as mentioned above), general performance and for gaming purposes, the Pad Go is far from a top performer.

Running on Android 13-based OxygenOS 13.2, the tablet offers a plethora of familiar customization options. These include options for customizing icons, theming wallpapers, and the ability to open two apps simultaneously using the recent files shortcut. This feature is particularly useful for the tablet form factor. However, it's worth noting that the styles and keyboard introduced by OnePlus with the OnePlus Pad earlier this year are not compatible with the Pad Go.

I never experienced excessive heating issues while using the tablet.

Verdict: If you're looking for an Android tablet that is good for reading PDFs and long webpages, plays videos at a decently high resolution without too much stuttering, and delivers really punchy and loud audio, plus has a reliable battery experience, the OnePlus Pad Go can be an option you can look at. However, if you are somebody who wants buttery smooth performance and something with gaming capabilities, then the Pad Go would fall short of your expectations.

immersive-sound-experience-with-the-lg-sc9s-soundbar

Tue Nov 07 12:22:24 IST 2023

I have reviewed several TVs – both big and small, budget-friendly and high-end – but what is not covered nearly as often, despite being very important, is the sound system that accompanies them. Many times, the TV's performance lacks the punch to deliver on the audio front. This is where a soundbar, like LG's SC9S, comes into the picture – to complete the home entertainment package. Priced at Rs. 34,991 (current offer price), I recently had the opportunity to try out the LG SC9S soundbar + subwoofer combination. Let's dive in and see if it fulfills its audio promise or not:

Design and Setup: The soundbar and subwoofer come in one big box, along with a wall mount and remote control. The soundbar itself is about 39 inches wide and weighs around 4.1kg. It is made out of plastic with metal grills in the front. LEDs on the front grill indicate power and volume adjustment. The back of the soundbar houses HDMI in, HDMI out, USB A port, 3.5mm audio jack, and digital optical inputs. On the top, there are touch control buttons for WiFi, Bluetooth, power, volume controls, input switching, and track changing. The subwoofer weighs about 7.8kg and measures around 15.5 inches in height.

Setting up the soundbar is a straightforward process. You can connect it to your TV using wires or use it while playing media over WiFi or Bluetooth, depending on the app. For example, if you use Spotify, you can use Spotify Connect, which works flawlessly and even syncs volume control.

The LG SC9S soundbar also supports audio passthrough, allowing you to attach it to one HDMI port of your TV while connecting a media box (like Chromecast or Apple TV) to another HDMI port. It seamlessly handles audio from the media box without any additional setup required. This feature worked well for me right from the start, without any unnecessary adjustments. Not every premium audio setup can claim this level of convenience.

Sound and Experience: The LG SC9S Soundbar app allows you to update firmware, adjust sound settings, add another speaker to the setup, or even add an Amazon Alexa compatible speaker. It also offers sound calibration for the room where the soundbar is placed, along with the subwoofer. The SC9S supports Bluetooth 5.0 (with SBC and AAC codec), WiFi, as well as Chromecast and AirPlay 2.

Using the 3.1.3 channel, 400-watt soundbar for watching movies and TV shows, I was impressed by the clarity with which it delivers dialogue. The improved clarity enhances the viewing experience with the TV. You can change EQ presets to find the best sound for the TV show or movie you're watching, or the streaming app you're using. The soundbar supports IMAX Enhanced sound, Dolby Atmos, and HDR audio, along with 120HZ VRR ALL for better gaming and video experiences. Not many soundbars at this price point can handle all of these features. LG suggests pairing it with an LG OLED TV for the best performance, although I was unable to test this specific combination. However, I did not encounter any issues while using IMAX, Dolby Vision, or HDR content.

The LG SC9S soundbar features three upfiring drivers to complement the 220-watt subwoofer. When listening to music via Spotify Connect or Tidal Connect, the audio output is clean and clear, with a focus on vocal notes and instruments. The bass is clean but not the deepest or loudest that you can get from a subwoofer. You can experiment with different settings to find your preferred sound profile. While the lows are handled well, they may not deliver the thumpiest bass.

I also found that the soundbar handles MQA from Tidal and Nugs without any technical issues. However, I still prefer actual lossless FLAC or ALAC playback, which the soundbar supports from Tidal as well as from a USB disk drive. Apple Music can be played over Chromecast, but keep in mind that Chromecast does not support Apple's lossless codec, ALAC. The one area where the SC9S seemed to lack was Dolby Atmos output. It did not deliver as immersive an experience as I expected from an LG device with Dolby Atmos, whether it was from a streaming app or a music app with Dolby Atmos albums. It's possible that a firmware upgrade or an additional speaker is required to fully experience Dolby Atmos with this soundbar. That being said, for other use cases such as music, movies, TV shows, and gaming, the SC9S is well-equipped and handles nearly all content without any issues.

Verdict: At the current offer price, the LG SC9S soundbar seems like a good buy to complement your TV and complete your home entertainment package. While I would have liked it to provide a higher volume output overall, it is sufficient for a room measuring 15x15 feet. Although Dolby Atmos is its weak spot, the SC9S delivers clear dialogues for movies and TV shows, has clean bass, and offers good connectivity options with no major glitches when connecting to different devices. Overall, it is a worthy contender for your audio needs.

pixel-8-a-flagship-contender-unveiling-the-features-and-performa

Mon Oct 30 18:07:46 IST 2023

Google's Pixel lineup of smartphones has been steadily gaining traction in certain markets in terms of sales. While it may not be a complete success just yet, the Pixel team has been consistently making significant improvements with each annual update. With the release of the new Pixel 8 series, the pricing has increased. The Google Pixel 8 is now priced at Rs. 75,999, while the Pixel 8 Pro is priced at Rs. 106,999. Let's explore the advancements it brings and determine whether it justifies the higher price tag.

Design: The Pixel 8 very much carries the familiar Pixel look that we have been seen from google – with a camera bar at the back, Google logo in the middle and a somewhat industrial feel to the package with its aluminium frames. What's changed, though, is it's now a bit more curved from the sides and definitely more comfortable to carry around. The back and front glass are a little glossy but they don't catch on fingerprints and smudges that quickly that you would need to clean them up every few hours. The right side houses the Power and volume buttons - both require a little more pressure than what we usually see on a smartphone, but it's not too much to be a worry in any way. The left side has the SIM card tray towards the bottom. The top only has the secondary mic; while the bottom carries the primary mic, one outlet of loudspeakers and USB type C port in the middle. Bezels around the display are nearly all symmetrical and give a nice look to the phone from the front, despite that camera notch on the top of the 6.2-inch display (20:9 aspect ratio) is under Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus, with the ear-speaker grille hidden subtly near the top. The Pixel 8 comes in Hazel, Obsidian and Rose colour options, Hazel being the one I tried, which looks more grey-ish than green-ish in colour. Also, it's an IP68 certified dust and water resistant device.

Display: Sporting a 6.2-inch full HD+ (1080x2400) OLED display with refresh rates of up to 120Hz supported. It's a bright display that's usable outdoors under direct sunlight and is also able to handle HDR content a little better than before in terms of contrast and shadow scenes in general. There's also better output for ultra HDR photos, something that's added to the OA as well. Seeing 90 to 120Hz rates in certain apps is nice and you can tell the difference if you're more used to using a 60Hz display previously when scrolling between those apps.

Camera: The Pixel 8 sports a dual camera system on the back – 50MP (f/1.68) main camera and a 12MP ultra-wide (f/2.2) camera. The camera shots here seem to be really well stitched even in harsh lighting conditions. Night mode can take a little more time to take a shot but otherwise there's very little shutter lag to be seen here. Google highlighted the best take and auto eraser mode, which allows you to take one best shot in, say, a group of photos you took with some people. So you can "alter" and take a shot where everybody is smiling or everybody is looking at the camera in one shot, which may not have actually happened, but with Google's AI and camera capabilities combined, it can be achieved and quite quickly too.

There's an audio magic eraser feature that allows you to basically cut out some noises and sounds in a video that's not required leaving you to your subject and necessary background sound. Again, a feature dependent on Google's AI and cloud. On the front, you get a 10.5MP (f/2.2) camera that's quick to take shots and able to handle portrait shots producing decent details and colours without too much highlight boosting.

Performance and software experience: Running on the latest Android 14 OS with October security patch installed, the Pixel 8 is Google's first device that comes with promised 7 years of OS and security updates. This is a significant deal since even Google hasn't provided updates for its Pixel devices for anywhere close to this long a period. Though Android's updates situation has been improving the past two years or so, this should help it a little further, highlighting which companies actually care about providing updates and bug fixes well after a device has been released.

Some of the added features in Android 14 include voice typing in multiple laguages with the Google Assistant, Generative AI wallpapers allow wallpapers generated from a set of themes. One improvement made is that face unlock is a little faster and more secure and can be used for unlocking more third party apps. The OS now handles HDR photos in a much better way – giving more details and highlights as intended in an HDR shot.

The phone boasts of Google's Tensor G3 chipset (up to 2.9GHz octa core processor, Mali-G715 GPU) along with Titan M2 security coprocessor, 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 128GB UFS 3.1 storage (alse comes in 256GB). I found the phone to handle day to day tasks of watching videos, taking and receiving calls, playing music in the background while messaging without much issues. You can expect to get decent gaming playback for games such as League of Legends and Genshin Impact at medium to high settings but the phone tends to heat up quite a bit. Even without any gaming done, the phone can heat up under regular tasks and it happened repeatedly during my usage. This is my biggest worry with the device, how quickly and frequently it could heat up when you're not using it for playing games or editing any videos either. That's certainly a place where Google needs to improve its G3 chipset for various use cases applicable for almost all users.

Battery life: There's a 4,545mAh battery unit that supports PD 3.0 for charging. I found the phone to last me about a day a little more regularly than its predecessor, such that heavy battery drainage isn't any issue. The phone charges from 1% to full in nearly 2 hours, which is something we have been seeing from Pixel devices.

Other bits: I found call quality and WiFi reception on the Pixel 8 yo be top notch, but what is a little less impressive is its 5G connectivity, which pales in comparison to flagship devices from the likes of Samsung, OnePlus and Apple. A lot of times 5G would hop on to 4G/LTE sitting at the same place for 10-15 minutes while another device would still be on 5G using the same network operator services. It's certainly better than the Pixel 7 and 7a at launch, but hopefully there are some updates and software patches made to further improve it for 5G reception.

Verdict: The Pixel 8 clearly has a lot of things going for it – an excellent set of cameras that can take on any other smartphone camera when it comes to still shots, great display and a decent battery life experience. Its chipset performs well for tasks and even gaming for most users, but it does have heating issues as of now, and, while 5G connectivity is something that has been improved from the previous Pixel phones, is something that still has a clear room for improvement. If you're somebody who likes camera AI enhancements, cares about software updates and don't mind the odd heating issue with the chipset for now, the Pixel 8 is a pretty good package to consider.

lava-blaze-pro-5g-a-strong-contender-in-the-budget-5g-smartphone

Thu Oct 26 14:54:25 IST 2023

Lava recently made a triumphant return to the Indian market, exceeding their own expectations in terms of demand and supply. The company's latest offering, the Blaze Pro 5G, aims to capture the 5G battleground in the sub 15k price segment, which is being fiercely contested by various smartphone brands, both domestic and international. With a price tag of Rs. 12,499, let's delve into whether this device deserves your attention or not.

What it gets right:

Design: The phone has a very familiar yet good enough design and build quality without any major misses in the department. The device’s 6.78-inch display (20.5:9 aspect ratio) has a punch-hole front-facing camera with the ear-speaker grille next to it. It doesn’t catch on to a lot of dust, which can be quite irritating to deal with if happening frequently. The back, carrying the dual camera system near the top left corner in a glossy looking rectangular cutout, has a shimmery plastic material that doesn’t bend anywhere and doesn’t have a cheap look to it, feeling quite sturdy to use along. The right side has the Power/lock key (with the physical fingerprint scanner) and volume buttons that are click-y. On the left you have the dual SIm card + microSD card tray near the top corner. The top houses the secondary mic; while the bottom has the USB type C cable, primary mic and one (and only) outlet of loudspeakers, plus the 3.5mm audio jack.

Display: Featuring a 6.78-inch full HD+ (1080x2460) LCD display with refresh rates supported up to 120Hz. It is bright enough for outdoor usage under direct sunlight provided brightness has been set at a high level. It does a decent job at handling high resolution images and videos without stuttering much. The highest refresh rate I noticed during my use was 90Hz a little under that or so in some apps, but never higher than that. I preferred the normal mode under display settings instead of vivid mode right from the start.

Battery life: Powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, the phone comes bundled with a 33watt charger and a USB type C to C cable, which is not common at this price point, so it’s nice to see Lava bundling this cable. Remember, smartphones series like Galaxy S23 and liPhone 15 come with such cables, so you can use the same charger to charge other devices, too. The phone lasted me a day almost every single day even with some heavy 5G use over hotspot tethered to 1 or even 2 devices at times. And it charged from 1% to full in about 80 minutes or so.

What’s decent enough:

Software and performance: The phone comes with MediaTek’s Dimensity 6020 chipset (up to 2.2GHz octa core processor, Mali-G57 MP2) along with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS2.2 storage. The phone can handle tasks such as watching 1080p YouTube videos, checking Email, switching between these apps or calling and messaging while listening to music in the background just fine, but you would notice a bot of lag when unlocking the device or some frames dropped during the process. Might be nitpicking here, but it is reproducible. Having said that, apps don’t stutter often and loading one or switching between two is handled quite smoothly majority of the time. Heavy games such as Fortnite don’t play above 30FPS but a game like Call of Duty can go above 50FPS, giving better gameplay. You can expect to play less intensive games at medium settings but don’t expect very high frame rates and the most immersive gameplay on a smartphone at this price point.

5G connectivity: Being one of the key features of the device, I found the 5G network reception to be pretty good outdoors, but a little less impressive indoors where other devices could latch on to 5G just fine. What makes it a little more weird is the phone, at times, won’t fall back to 4G/LTE when 5G isn’t available to it, meaning no data connectivity in between. Hopefully, Lava can fix this issue with an OTA update, because, otherwise, when outdoors with 5G reception, the phone is able to provide high speeds and low latency despite the price tag.

What’s strictly okay:

Camera: featuring a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera and a camera system on the back that can produce detailed 12MP shots (default resolution) when used in good lighting with suitable backgrounds. But anything else and you can figure out the camera isn’t the phone strongest suits by any means. The camera app can be opened by double-pressing the Power/lock key even when the phone is locked and it doesn’t take too long before you can capture a shot.

Verdict: At Rs. 12,499 and the performance the phone is able to deliver across different factors, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Lava might well have a worthy 5G contender in its hands now.

Lava has also introduced a convenient service called "Lava Service at Home" for their after-sales support. This service allows customers to get troubleshooting and repairs done without the need to personally visit a service center. It includes home pick-up and delivery of the device. The quality of this service will naturally depend on the specific issue and the customer's location. However, it demonstrates Lava's commitment to long-term customer satisfaction by ensuring a seamless and hassle-free experience.

sony-wf-1000xm5-exploring-the-upgraded-audio-performance

Wed Oct 18 13:01:12 IST 2023

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Sony has been one of the most recognizable names when it comes to true wireless earbuds in the market for a while now, and it isn’t just because of their name in the audio industry from decades but also what the company brings to the table for TWS. The Sony WF-1000XM5 are the latest pair of wireless buds in the WF-1000 series that is priced at Rs. 21,990 (pre-booking offer price, otherwise Rs. 24,990) and go against the likes of Apple and Bose. Do they justify the price tag and what all the improve compared to the predecessor, let’s try and find out:

Design: the buds are now lighter and a little smaller than before. The outer shell is more glossy now while the touch control button area is matte. There are three mics on each bud now. The eartips are a bit more flexible as per Sony and they pack in an extra pair of small size in the box. Oh, and the packaging box is made from recycled paper.

The charging case is all semi-matte finish with LED light on the front and USB type C plus physical pairing button on the back. There’s Sony branding at the top and the rest is all plain black except for regulatory print at the bottom. The case, too, is smaller in size compared to the previous model.

The buds are comfortable to wear and I didn't have to twist or adjust their placement too much in order to fit them in the ears even for the first listen. They didn’t feel jarring and bulky even when worn for over an hour.

Sound quality and features: The earbuds support Bluetooth 5.3 (with LE audio) along with SBC, AAC, LC3 and Sony’s own LDAC audio codec (no aptX or aptX HD here).

You can connect the buds to two devices and jump between one and another as required without too much fiddling required and this feature works pretty well. These also support auto pausing when an earbud is removed from the ear, and you can also choose to use one bud at a time.

You can use Sony’s Headphones app to choose EQ profiles, switch between ANC and transparency mode, enable 360 Reality Audio and update the firmware. You can also try Sony’s Autoplay app that sets up listening sessions based on your location or current activity.

Coming to the sound check, the WF-1000XM5, the pair features upgraded 8.4mm drivers and are powered by dual processors – main processor V2 and the HD noise cancelling processor QN2e. I found the buds to have deeper bass now compared to the previous model, at least trying out default sound settings. These offer really clear and full vocals without sacrificing on the instruments played alongside. There’s good headroom given to treble and midrange with more prominence given to lows (as mentioned earlier). Worth adding that overall soundstage and details seem a bit better than the predecessor with spatial audio and 360 audio realitcy enabled, though it would heavily depend on your source app, too.

Active noise cancellation is a headline feature of this series and it would appear the WF-1000XM5 continues that with really compact cancellation of low to mid pitched noises on most occasions without too heavy of a toll seen on audio quality. There’s ambient sound mode where you can opt to hear some external sounds (transparency mode). You can, of course, choose to switch both these modes off and listen to your music in regular mode, which would probably give you the “least filtered” sound from the buds.

Battery life and other bits: The buds last about 7-8 hours when used with ANC switched on and a 2-3 hours more with ANC turned off, which is really good for the TWS category. Add the charging case and you can expect to get twice more juice on the go. Charging the case completely plus buds in one go can take a little over two hours. The charging case also supports Qi wireless induction charging.

Call quality including mic from the buds is decent enough and usable for outdoor use. Sony says they have added AI noise cancelling for calls on the go, though I am not sure i noticed any significant changes there, but call and mic quality aren’t bad in the first go for a wireless pair of earbuds.

I found pairing these with Android and iOS devices to be a no-hassle process and didn’t see any significant lag when used for watching high resolution videos on phones.

Verdict: Sony’s WF-1000XM5 are quite a pricey pair of TWS that do offer a lot of good stuff for it. They offer top notch active noise cancellation, full and detailed sound for a TWS pair and don’t sacrifice on looks or battery life, importantly, to top it off. So, if you’re looking for a premium pair of wireless earbuds and care about noise cancellation along with sound quality, this offering from Sony might well be worth a look.

amazon-flipkart-sale-which-smartphones-to-gift-this-festive-seas

Wed Oct 18 12:14:30 IST 2023

The festive season is here, and along with it comes the much-awaited online mega deals season. Whether it's Amazon, Flipkart, or other portals, they are all vying for your attention with their enticing new deals. However, with the plethora of options available, it can be quite overwhelming to decide on the perfect gift for someone close or even for yourself, especially when it comes to smartphones. To help you navigate through this maze of deals, here’s a curated list of smartphones across different price segments that not only have attractive discounts but are also worth considering for your purchase:

OnePlus 11R: With a great build quality and excellent battery experience, the OnePlus 11R is one of the more value for money options under 40k today. It has a really nice display and a capable set of cameras that don’t disappoint in most use cases. A really responsive, clean and bloatware-free software experience out of the box, plus, OnePlus promises three major OS updates and four years of security patches.

Usual base price: Rs, 39,999 plus Rs. 2000 bank discount and Rs. 3000 coupon discount.
Buyers also get a complimentary pair of OnePlus Buds Z2 alongside

Moto Razr 40: If you want to have your first smartphone with a foldable display and don’t want to shell out over 50k the Moto Razr 40 is a pretty good option these days. With a clean OS that doesn’t stutter or lag for most tasks, a decent battery life and, importantly, a reliable hinge mechanism in place, the razr 40 also got pretty looks when closed in with its vegan leather clamshell.

Usual price: Rs. 59,999
Deal price: Rs. 49,999

Poco F5: If you want (or want to gift somebody) a smartphone that gives you dozens of customization options for its software, doesn’t compromise on the build quality and also has a good battery life, then Poco’s F5 is one of the better options around Rs. 25,000. The phone also has good 5G network reception and supports 67 watt fast charging. There’s also call recording feature that continues to be asked for by many users.

Usual price: Rs. 27,999
Deal price: Rs. 20,999

Realme 11x: The device gives great battery life with support for fast charging, doesn’t heat up too much even if using 5G on the go for hours with hotspot enabled and also has a shimmery back that some people prefer. The realme 11x has a lot of customization options for its OS, plus a generally reliable physical fingerprint scanner on the side.

Usual base price: Rs. 14,999 plus Rs 2000 deal discount plus Rs 1000 bank discount, so deal price Rs. 11,999

Please be aware that the deals mentioned may have limited availability and may not be in stock at the time of checking.

apple-iphone-15-pro-an-in-depth-exploration-of-the-cutting-edge-

Thu Oct 05 11:04:31 IST 2023

Apple unveiled its range of new devices just a few weeks back in Cupertino that also included four new iPhones with its iPhone 15 series. The iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max – from lowest priced to highest are Apple’s latest new smartphones. The 15 Pro, which I have been using for a while now, sits between the regular iPhone 15 and the beefy iPhone 15 Pro Max. With a base price of Rs. 1,34,900 and going to Rs. 1,84,900 (of course there are deals and bank offers), let’s try and see what the iPhone 15 Pro really brings to thetable:

Design: The new iPhone 15 Pros come in grade 5 titanium framing instead of steel from earlier. They also sport matte finish glass at the back. The edges are also slightly curved and more tapered now. What all this meant, lighter and grippier devices that are more comfortable to carry around than the predecessor. The front has a 6.1-inch display with ceramic glass shield on top (and thinner bezels around it compared to the iPhone 14 series), Dynamic Island setup with the ear-speaker grille next to it. The right side houses the Power/lock key; while the left side locates the new Action button (replacing the Alert slider) as well as separate volume buttons and the SIM card tray. All these buttons feel nice and not super sharp to use in whatever way you’re holding the phone. On the bottom, you get the USB type C port (replacing the decade old lightning port), primary mic and one outlet of loudspeakers. Coming to the back, you get a triple camera system with dual tone LED flash and LiDAR scanner – all situated on a curved rectangular cutout that’s protruding from the body.

The phone comes in Natural Titanium, Blue Titanium (the one I used), White Titanium and Black Titanium. Thankfully, there’s no discolouration on the unit I have, but there have been some reports of it for the Natural Titanium colour. It weighs slightly under 190 grams and measures about one third of an inch. Despite being a little thicker, I definitely prefer how it feels in the hand over the iPhone14 series. Oh, and it continues the be IP68 water and dust resistance certifications from before.

Display: Featuring a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED (2556x1179) display with adaptive refresh rates of up to 120Hz. It’s not significantly different from before except being a little brighter as per Apple. This is a high quality display that does a good job of handling hgih resolution videos and images with colour calibration that we are used to seeing on iPhones by now. Watching something over Netflix or Apple TV+, you can see how well it handles darker scenes transitioning to really bright scenes without any colour retention from before. It’s usable direct sunlight without having to crank it to highest brightness either. By default, higher refresh rates ProMotion is enabled and the display does a fine job of keeping up with its during different use cases such as playing games or just regular scrolling inside apps.

Camera: The device sports a triple camera system on the back – 48MP (f/1.78) main camera, 12MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera and a 12MP (f/2.8) telephoto camera. The phone now takes 24MP shots from the main camera by default up from 12MP that used to be the case for years. The shots from the device look really sharp and detailed, slightly better if you zoom in to the photos compared to last year. You can shoot 4K ProRes videos but only if an external storage disk is attached even for a 1TB iPhone 15 Pro. There’s also a new log mode for videos that’s generally not seen on smartphones and gives a less processed and something to play around with plenty of details intact. The camera app is smooth to use and shows less shutter lag when processing regular shots or HDR. You can now change regular shots to portrait shots after taking a photo thanks to the new Image Processing chip and tweaked software in place. The 12MP (f/1.9) front-facing camera generally takes really good, well-toned shots for your social media use.

Performance and software experience: Running on iOS 17.0.2, the iPhone 15 Pro is powered by Apple’s A17 Pro (not “Bionic”) chipset (hexacore processor, Qualcomm 5G modem), which is the first chip based on 3nm technology on a smartphone; this is alongside 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage space (also comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB options). With the new Action button, iOS now allows you to set it to either mute or ring, or you can customize it to open any app or any particular action within an app using Shortcuts, which is a really nice and useful addition, in my opinion. What could make it even better is if Apple allows you to add another action by double pressing the buddon in addition to the current long-press. A new feature called StandBy mode allows you to turn the device into sort of a smart display when left in landscape mode while charging – giving you time, weather, alarm and your chosen widgets one screen. With Always on Display enabled, this is a nice little feature especially if you have a wireless charger stand to lap the device on. Apple has also improved the iOS keyboard’s autocorrection and learning abilities, but I am not sure I have noticed anything remarkably improved there, maybe it will be more apparent with longer usage. Another addition is under Messages, you can now swipe to right to reply to that message.

Widgets are now more interactive so you can check stuff or tap within a widget on your homescreen to do a task without having to open its app.

The phone handled day to day tasks, shuffling between apps, switching between videos and photos and installing and updating apps without any troubles. I didn’t see many frames drops or any delays to get such things done. For gaming, the phone can handle the most graphic intensive games such as Call of Duty and Genshin Impact at 60FPS, apparently its update for higher refresh rates is in the pipeline. Gaming playback is pretty smooth but I did notice the device heating up a big after 20 minutes of gaming.

Battery life: The phone comes with a 3,274mAh battery unit and comes with a USB type C to C braided cable in the box. It charged from 1% to full in about 2 hours, but noticeably got hotter during the 50% to 70% stage almost every single time. The phone lasted me a day quite frequently, leaving about 10% in the tank with low power mode not enabled.

Other bits: I found 5G performance to be generally reliable whether outdoors or indoors with very infrequent switches to 4G/LTE. Call quality, WiFi reception and GPS performance are top notch here. Also, the loudspeakers on the phone are really loud and punchy with a deeper bass that I can remember from before, definitely makes watching videos and playing games a better experience.

Verdict: Folks, the new iPhone 15 Pro does bring much awaited USB C to the iPhone with which you can attach a host of accessories (with USB 3 data transfer speeds), use sable cable to charge and transfer data as many Android phones, or simply use another phone to charge it. Though the design – look and feel – of the phone is better this time, there’s some thermals issue when the phone is being charged or you’re playing games, otherwise these things do get fixed quickly by Apple. Other than that, this is a really well performing high-end device from Apple that has industry-leading video camera capabilities, a great set of photo cameras and a solid display with reliable and strong haptics feedback to top it off. So, if you have an iPhone 14, does it make sense to upgrade already? Not quite. An iPhone 13 Pro, if it’s still in good condition, I would say nope, but earlier models, then yup, you’re gonna see some noticeable improvements and can look to upgrade with an exchange offer considering the online sale season has begun.

hp-victus-16-review-gaming-powerhouse-or-mid-tange-performer

Tue Sep 26 17:29:06 IST 2023

HP Victus is an entry-level gaming laptop with a great keyboard, good display, and build quality, which is evident in its performance with demanding games.

HP has been making efforts to enhance its gaming offerings in the Indian market, and as a result, the company has introduced several new gaming laptops under its Omen and Victus sub-brands. The most recent addition to this lineup is the Victus 16, which is priced starting at Rs. 86,999 (s0095AX) for the base model. I have had the opportunity to use this laptop for a couple of weeks, and I will now share my experience with it.

Design: The Victus 16 comes in Performance Blue colour that is close to navy blue with the silver Victus logo on the lid. The laptop has a plastic chassis carrying slightly glossy finish that can catch fingerprints but doesn’t require to be cleaned up every single day. You get three vents including one on the back right next to the hinge.

The Victus 16 boasts a 16.1-inch display with an anti-glare coating. It houses a 1080p webcam on the top and a small Victus logo on the bottom bezel. The laptop has a wedge design with horizontal cuts on both sides. It weighs approximately 2.3kg and measures 2.3cm in thickness, making it a relatively heavy gaming machine.

The keyboard here is a full-sized backlit one with number keys and Ome gaming hub shortcut key. This keyboard is really comfortable and well-spaced to type on or used it for gaming. Typing long documents on it isa really nice experience thanks to the soft keys, one of the better parts about the whole experience of using this notebook, in my opinion. The trackpad is large enough and tracked standard gestures quite reliably during my usage.

Overall, the design of the HP Victus 16 offers a visually appealing gaming laptop with a comfortable keyboard and reliable trackpad.

On the left, there’s a LAN port, USB A 3.0 port and 3.5mm audio jack; while the right side houses the charging port, an HDMI 2.1 port, two USB A 3.0 ports and a USB type C port with DisplayPort 1.4.

Display: You get a 16.1-inch full HD (1920x1080) LED display with refresh rates of up to 144Hz. The display is not the brightest seen on a laptop at this price point but it’s still okay. The picture looks share and detailed for video playback as well as most of the AAA games. Higher refresh rates and sRGB colour gamut do help in animations and gameplay and seems like an essential need for a gaming laptop’s display today.

Performance and software experience: The Victus 16 sports AMD’s Ryzen 7840HS chip (up to 5.1Ghz octa core processor) & Radeon 780M Graphics, 16GB DDR5 RAM along with NVidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 GPU (with 6GB DDR6 dedicated) and 512GB PCIe Gen4 NVMe m.2 SSD. It runs on Windows 11 Home edition (22H2 version) with a few HP apps pre-loaded such as Omni Gaming Hub, HP Smart, Dropbox, McAfee, but not too many and these can be uninstalled too. Playing games like The Witcher 3, the laptop handles it at high to highest settings fairly well, keeping gameplay at about 65 frames per second without too much heating to report. You can expect to play other games like Sim at highest settings too but playing very demanding titles such as Forza Horizon 5 and Dying Light 2 and you can see the laptop show its limited headroom, displaying somewhat choppy performance if these games were set at their highest settings, though they were much smoother if these games were played at high settings, giving close to 100FPS under such loads. Basically, it can handle the most graphic-intensive settings at medium to high settings but not at the highest settings, and games that are a little less demanding at their highest settings well enough. You can customize keyboard lighting, themes and wallpapers, make a gaming launcher for a list of your installed games or even boost the internal clock speeds when a game is played using the Omen Gaming Hub app.

Battery life: Powered by a 70Wh battery unit with support for fast charge, the laptop ran for about 4-5 hours most of the days, with an hour of gameplay and mainly Web browsing and music playback for rest of the times. It charges from 1% to full in a little over two hours.

Other bits: WiFi and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity on the laptop are top notch with no major lags or glitches seen during my use. It comes with dual Bang & Olufsen speakers, which are decently punchy but not quite loud and deep for gaming needs or even videos, they aren’t bad, but they could have been better considering the use case here.

Verdict: In a nutshell, the Victus 16 clearly has its strengths and weakness when it comes to gaming performance. As mentioned, most of the games are handled at higher refresh rates with little to no choppiness, however, it shows its limited horsepower when playing the most graphic-intensive games. With this great keyboard, good display and build quality, a price tag of under 80k seems a little more justified, so if you get such a deal in the festive season with eyes on a gaming laptop, the HP Victus 16 might be worth a consideration.

redmi-new-43-inch-smart-tv-is-it-worth-it

Sat Sep 23 14:47:53 IST 2023

Redmi's inaugural Fire TV smart TV was a 32-inch model that delivered considerable value earlier this year. Now, the company has unveiled a larger 43-inch model with upgraded hardware specifications. Priced at an introductory rate of £269.99, this TV faces stiff competition from rivals like OnePlus, Hisense, and even Xiaomi's own offerings. Does the new Smart Fire TV 43 have what it takes to compete? Let's delve into it:

Design: At first glance, the Redmi Smart TV 43 closely resembles the Redmi X series of televisions introduced some time ago. The front sports slim bezels around the 43-inch display, with a thicker lower bezel bearing the Redmi logo, a white LED, and a physical power button. The all-plastic back houses all the ports: a bottom-facing LAN port (100 Mbps), a 3.5mm audio jack, AV input, antenna and optical inputs, and side-facing 3 HDMI 2.1 ports (one of which supports eARC), along with 2 USB-A 2.0 ports. Weighing approximately 7kg, attaching the two tabletop feet is straightforward with the required screwdriver. For wall mounting, it's compatible with standard wall mounts, although you may need to purchase one separately if you don't already have it.

Display and Performance: The TV boasts a 43-inch 4K (3840x2160) LED LCD panel with up to 60Hz refresh rates and HDR support. Most content tested on the TV was handled satisfactorily. The picture is sharp and detailed, with vibrant blues and reds and minimal issues with grays during high-bitrate video playback. In SDR, the TV performs well, but it reveals its budget nature when it comes to HDR, especially in terms of contrast and brightness in dark scenes. Even at 50 to 60FPS, you can expect smooth playback for live sports without frame drops or jarring effects.

Powered by a quad-core CPU and Mali G52MC1 GPU, along with 2GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage (with only about 2.5GB available out of the box), the TV runs on Fire OS 7.6.6.2 with Xiaomi's Patchwall. The operating system, even for those unfamiliar with it, is relatively user-friendly. It's divided into Input, Find, Live TV sources, and your purchased or rented content. You can also press the Apps button on the remote control to access your list of installed apps and long-press the Home button for quick settings, regardless of your location within the OS.

Streaming content through apps like Apple TV, SonyLiv, and Netflix is a smooth experience. The TV not only navigates these apps seamlessly but also moves between menus and settings without glitches or lags. Bluetooth 5.0 and WiFi consistently maintain good performance and connectivity during usage.

Audio: The TV features a dual-speaker setup with a total output of 24 watts, supporting Dolby Atmos and DTS: Virtual X. It delivers loud and punchy sound suitable for a 15x15 room with a couple of viewers. However, for significantly larger spaces with more people, it's advisable to connect dedicated speakers to the TV. It handles dialogue reasonably well but excels in background and foreground audio. Lows and mids are adequately handled unless the volume is cranked to its highest level.

Notably, there's a horizontal ad bar near the center of the display under the Home tab, sponsored by Amazon. It's not overly intrusive but is almost always present. The TV supports Miracast and AirPlay 2, allowing you to cast YouTube from any smartphone and mirror content from Miracast-compatible and iOS devices without any issues.

Long-pressing the Alexa voice button provides options for issuing commands or controlling your Alexa-enabled devices on the same network. Xiaomi has also added a picture-in-picture mode (PiP) that enables you to view the live feed from an Alexa-enabled smart security camera alongside your main content. This eliminates the need to switch between apps to access the security camera feed, a handy feature for those with a full security camera setup.

Verdict: The Redmi Smart Fire TV 43 presents itself as a value-for-money smart TV that doesn’t disappoint in handling basics - offering snappy performance (a challenge for many smart TVs in this price range), good SDR video playback quality, and a decent speaker setup suitable for small to medium-sized rooms. Additionally, it includes thoughtful features like AirPlay support and PiP mode for security cameras, alongside a user-friendly remote control. This makes it a commendable package overall.

lenovo-yoga-9i-pro-a-mixed-bag-for-gamers-and-professionals

Wed Sep 20 15:38:32 IST 2023

Lenovo’s Yoga 9i Pro is said to be a Windows machine that’s aimed to cater to both work and play users. It’s part of a somewhat crowded portfolio of product offerings from the company, and may not necessarily have distinct features, but then it might not be a bad performer on any count either, so let’s try and see where it excels and where it might not.

Design: I tried the laptop in Tidal teal colour (also comes in Storm Grey) and really liked its sober look and feel made of recycled aluminium and plastic. It follows a somewhat matte finish throughout the body and doesn’t catch many fingerprints and smudge that quickly. On the right side, you get the power key with an LED indicator, two USb type A ports, 3.5mm audio jack and camera shutter key; while the left side houses the HDMi port (can run an 8K display at 60Hz), two USB type C ports with power delivery and Displayport 1.4 and an SD card slot. The laptop has good build quality with no creeks or bends. The lid, hinge and palm rest are all well-built with no complaints. The only complaint I could see was the bottom panel with the fan vents that appears to be slightly wonky in design compared to other parts of the hardware. Measuring about 1.65kg and 0.67 inches in thickness, it’s not the most portable laptop in the Yoga series but it’s still not massive enough to be a huge burden for carrying it around every now and then.

Display: The laptop comes in different display sizes 16-inch and 14.5-inch (3072x1920) display (which is the one I tried) in Mini LED and LCD options, up to 165Hz. The Mini LED is really punchy in colours and good contrast levels with peak brightness of about 1,200nits, providing decent output for HDR content, which a lot of laptops tend to struggle with. The 10-bit display panel here seems to be of good enough quality that you can edit your images and videos keeping colour correctness in mind. It’s probably the best part about this Lenovo laptop, though it doesn’t go full 360 degrees and only goes flat 180 degrees despite being a touchscreen.

Performance: the device runs on Windows 11 Pro and comes Intel’s 13 th Gen. i9 (13905H) chip (clocked at up to 3Ghz along with nVidia’s 4070 GPU with 8GB VRAM, all this to go with whopping 64GB of LPDDRX5 RAM, 1 TB of m.2 SSD. It’s a filled package with a lot of high-end hardware up its sleeve. I found the laptop to handle smooth graphics and gameplay, make sure you have enabled 165Hz from settings along with HDR. It does tend to get hot near fan vents. You can expect to play AAA titles at highest settings for pretty much any Windows game here without the feeling your hardware requires extra headroom. For editing videos, too, provided you have placed the laptop on a flat surface so there’s sufficient space for cooling at the bottom, you can edit a 4K video while having your

Web browser open and some Microsoft Office app open, too. There are a couple of Lenovo apps that come pre-installed though I am not sure either of them really added anything valuable, perhaps battery stats and performance mode from the Lenovo Vantage app, but that’s about it. Also, it does wake up from sleep quicker than the Yoga 9i, but it could still be further improved despite having performance mode enabled (and battery saver off).

Keyboard: You get a full-sized and backlit keyboard with no numpad. The keys have sufficient travel and are tactile and comfortable to use for longer durations, not even once during my usage I found anything that I would perhaps like to change with the keyboard in any major way. The trackpad is plenty big and works smoothly with the usual Windows gestures and doesn’t miss a beat when scrolling, pinching or using multiple fingers gestures.

Battery life: The laptop features a 75Wh battery unit that lasted around 6-7 hours on a stretech with screen brightness at 40%, WiFi always on, watching an hour of video, having Web browser always open with a Microsoft Office app in the background.

Since I didn't have a compatible charger for the notebook that is compatible with Indian plugs, I couldn't test the charging speed with the bundled charger. However, I want to mention that both USB Type-C ports on the notebook can be used for charging.

Verdict: All in all, the Yoga Pro 9i seems like a good enough but not too great a choice for a gaming laptop and even less than that for working considering the price tag of Rs. 2,06,100. It has a great display and keyboard, but an okay battery life and it also shows heating issues every now and then under heavy loads including gaming.

galaxy-watch6-review-a-stylish-and-feature-packed-smartwatch

Sat Sep 16 13:01:32 IST 2023

Samsung launched its new foldable smartphones just a few weeks ago, and with them came its new wearables as well. The new Samsung Galaxy Watch6 comes at a base price of Rs. 29,999 for the Bluetooth-only 40mm model and goes up to Rs. 36,999 for the Bluetooth + LTE 44mm model. Does the new Watch6 have enough to justify being your wrist accessory to go with your phone? Let’s try and find that out.

Design: The Galaxy Watch6 comes in an aluminium finish with crystal sapphire glass on top of its 1.5-inch circular display. The back houses all the sensors that would rest against your wrist area. The watch has standard 20mm silicone straps that you can remove with just a press of the small buttons located at the back of each strap (default ones) and use any other such strap to go with it. You can buy such straps from Samsung, too, including ones made out of fabric. This isn’t a very heavy smartwatch (about 34 grams), but it has sufficient heft to be felt on your wrist. It’s an IP68 water and dust-resistant device and should withstand light rain and showers, and of course, gym use. The watch didn’t catch any scratches on the glass or on the sides during my few days of usage, but I would expect it to show more scratches with rougher use when used daily for a longer period. The watch is comfortable to wear and not rough on the skin so far, as I have tried. The 44mm size I tried required being hooked to the last hole in the strap to be snug enough.

Display: the 1.5-inch AMOLED (480x480) circular display is a little brighter than before and is usable under direct sunlight or gloomy conditions outdoors. The text and graphics on the display are clear and sharp enough for you to read your notifications, check map routes or write a short reply to a message.

Software and features: The Galaxy Watch6 runs on Wear OS 4 with One UI 5 on top and the June security patch in place. It looks and feels rather different from any other non-Samsung WearOS smartwatch but very much like the Watch5. On the inside, you get the Exynos E930 chipset (1.4GHz dual-core processor) alongside 2GB of RAM and 16GB (only 7GB available) of internal storage space. The watch is responsive to touches and swipes while also not showing too many drops in animations.

You can swipe down one the Home screen to get to connectivity shortcuts; swipe from the left to right to get to notifications; swipe up to get to all your apps; and swipe to go to different watch modes and fitness measures. You can add more tiles to the right side Home screen. Paired with a Samsung phone, you can pay over NFC using the Watch6. You would need to have Samsung Wallet set up, which is exclusive to Samsung phones. You can pay with Samsung Wallet on an NFC-enabled PoS machine (need to add your debit or credit card in the app beforehand), and it does work well.

You can also control media playback including on any Galaxy Buds from the watch.Another thing, you can reply to a pending message using the on-screen keyboard, if you’re okay with typing on the display.

With the Watch6, you can keep track of your body measurement and any changes made regularly. You can also tag different measurements done, such as if it was done pre exercise or post, etc. You can track the hours of your deep sleep, step counts (which I found fairly accurate) and also take a note of stress measures in your body at a time.

The watch supports rotating on its display’s edges to navigate between screens (compared to a physical rotating bezel on the Watch6 Classic) and it seems to work just fine. You can assign the Home button for going to the most recent app or go to an exercise mode. Same way, the back button can be assigned to either go back or show the recent apps. Noticeably, the ability to do ECG reading (with AFbi) is still missing from the Galaxy Watch6 in India, which was the case with earlier models, too. I found the haptics on the watch to notify you to be pretty strong and reliable even when commuting.

Battery life: The Watch6 44mm sports a 425mAh battery unit, which lasted me a little above a day most of the time. With LTE switched off, I found it required to be charged the next day every time. But with LTE (using your phone SIM card’s data), it is needed to be charged again within the same day. The Watch6 took about 80-90 minutes to charge from 1% to full.

Verdict: The Watch6 would make sense if you’re ready to splurge on a high-end, well-performing smartwatch that needs to be paired with your Samsung smartphone (not for any other Android phone either). With a slightly improved battery life and display and added Samsung Wallet feature, the Watch6 is a worthy contender if these points satisfy your requirement and budget. Having said that, I would suggest looking out for deals, especially during the festive season, since Samsung’s wearables (along with others) might pop-up with some nice deals during that time.

bass-lovers-rejoice-realme-buds-t300-review-and-analysis

Wed Sep 13 15:51:18 IST 2023

"The sub-3,000 TWS segment seems to be crowded by the week. We have many options available these days from the likes of OnePlus, Oppo, JBL, and now Realme has launched its Buds T300 TWS at Rs. 2,299. Let’s try to find out if they can stand out with their performance or not.

Design: The buds T300 come in a matte finish plastic case that has the realme branding on the front, USB type C port at the bottom and a small LED between them. The interiors of the case have wooden-like brown colour (same for the realme branding outside) that looks nice. The buds fit in well and I didn’t notice any shifts or movements inside while carrying them around in the case. The charging case may not be the most premium built case but it still feels sturdy enough when closing or opening the lid.

The buds have stem-cell design with rubber eartips and these also come with two extra pairs in the box for different sizes. The case weighs about 41grams and buds weigh 4.1grams each and were found to be quite comfortable to wear for even extended periods. You have small left and right indicators marked on the respective bud, which also carry 4 mics for noise cancellation.

The Buds T300 are IP55 water and dust resistant, so using them in the gym and under light splashes should be okay.

Sound and features: The buds come with Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity and support SBC, AAC codec along with Dolby Atmos (if your phone and source stream support it too). They are powered by 12.4mm drivers that we have seen on previous realme buds, too. There’s 360-degree Spatial Audio audio support, again if your source has it.

In terms of sound quality, the buds are high on the bass, clearly. They are aggressive with the lows and tend to give it more weightage compared to other frequencies. It handles vocals well, but sound is a bit melow for trebles and various instruments when played together and so is the soundstage, but that’s expected for a wireless pair of earbuds at this price point.

Talking about its active noise cancellation, the buds have decent ANC quality for low frequency noises, but the sound quality does tend to suffer a bit with ANC switched on.

There’s transparency mode, too. There’s very little lag in the earbuds for watching videos and even for gaming, it’s not that much with Game mode enabled using the realme Link app.

Each earbud features touch controls for pause or resume playback, ANC on or off, changing track, answering a call and turning on Google Assistant. These do not have Google’s Fast pair connectivity, though I did find them to pair with a smartphone pretty quickly most of the times

Battery life: Each bud has 43mAh battery pack while the case carries 460mAh battery. You can expect 6-7 hours of playback on a single charge (with ANC turned off) and over a day and a half of total playback with the charging case as power backup.

Verdict: In a nutshell, the Buds T300 don’t have the most accomplished sound quality at this price point, but what they do have is a bass-heavy sound output with great battery life. If these two are your priorities for wireless earbuds, then you should consider these Realme earbuds; otherwise, the Redmi Buds 4 Active and Realme’s own Buds Air 3 Neo are still the ones to consider."

tecno-pova-5-pro-review-a-mixed-bag-of-a-device

Tue Sep 12 16:43:04 IST 2023

We saw Infinix’s GT 10 Pro just a few weeks back, and we now have its sister company Tecno’s new Pova 5 pro 5G device. Starting at a price of Rs. 14,999, the phone tries to stand out with its quirky design and gaming performance. Let’s try and find out if this new 5G device is worth your attention.

Design: One of the first things you would notice about the device is its different looking back, which has multiple RGB LED strips on it that glow up under different tasks (more on that later). The company calls it ARC design. The back also houses the dual camera setup in a rather unique cutout that’s quite familiar for Tecno phones by now. On the front, with a thicker bezel at the bottom compared to other sides, you have a 6.78-inch display (20.5:9 aspect ratio) that has Panda glass on top for protection and comes with a punch-hole front camera in the middle near the top.

The right side locates the volume buttons and Power/lock key near the middle (both keys have very little travel); while the left side only has the dual SIM card + microSD card tray near the top corner. On the top, you get one outlet of loudspeakers; and the bottom has the 3.5mm audio jack, primary mic, second outlet of loudspeakers and USB type-C port. The corners of the phone are curved with its sides being flat. The phone is made up of polycarbonate and is a little thicker than most phones we see these days, weighing a little under 210 grams and measuring 9mm in thickness. The phone isn’t slippery at all, but some people may find it a little bulky. It is available in two colours – Dark Illusion (which I tried) and Silver Fantasy.

Display: The phone sports a 6.78-inch IPS LCD full HD+ (1080x2460) display with refresh rates supported up to 120Hz. It’s bright enough and usable under direct sunlight outdoors. You can expect decent colour reproduction and viewing angles here. Full HD videos and high-resolution images are handled just well enough with enough details. Backlight and refresh rates could have been handled better in terms of consistency and smooth transition, otherwise, this is not a bad display.

Camera: You get a dual camera system on the back – 50MP (f/1.6) main camera and a 0.8MP portrait camera. The main camera can take decent portrait shots at 124MP by default. Expect detailed but often over-sharpened shots even in daylight at times with too much smoothening of faces and struggling with dynamic range. 50MP mode gave better results in terms of colours and details but it does leave that AI retouch feel, too. The camera app is not very quick to open and take shots but it’s quite straightforward to get around different camera options and modes. On the front, you get a 16MP (f/2.0) camera, which can take well-focused shots and perform okay in terms of colours provided no beauty modes, even in the super light mode, it can give shots good enough for your social media use.

Performance and software experience: Pova 5 Pro is equipped with MediaTek’s Dimensity 6080 chipset (up to 2.4Ghz octa-core processor, Mali-G57 MC2 GPU), 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB uMCP storage. It runs on HiOS 13.1 (no points for guessing what that name sounds a lot like) based on Android 13 with the June security patch. The software's look and feel are very much like XOS that we saw on the Infinix GT 10 Pro. It’s a customizable and feature-loaded skin where you can have dual apps, live translation with Ella, try new themes from the theme store, or play YouTube videos as audio in the background. There are many apps pre-installed on the phone, most of which can be uninstalled, but what was surprising to see is getting a little pop-up at the bottom asking if you would like to reinstall one of those pre-installed apps that were uninstalled. This seemed absolutely unnecessary. Swiping top down from the left gives you notifications; while from the right gives you shortcut tiles. There’s an added shortcut in the dropdown pane that allows you to quickly switch between 5G and 4G with one tap and comes in handy at times. I found the phone to be sufficiently responsive in terms of handling multiple apps and switching between one and another. It can drop frames every now and then. You can expect to play a game like BGMI with frames per second at about 40. The phone rarely heats up and even then nothing too much. I did notice the phone switched off randomly when sitting idle, once every 203 days, which was odd, but I couldn’t repeat it since there was no set pattern to it.

Battery life: Powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, the phone comes with a 68watt fast charger in the box (you also get basic a transparent protective case), which is not common for this price range, so credit to Tecno for bundling it. The phone lasted a day 7 out of 10 times, and didn’t show any weird battery drops. You can expect to charge the phone from 1 per cent to full in about 70 minutes.

Other bits: As far as 5G connectivity goes, the phone does satisfactorily, latching on to 5G wherever available for most of the time. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS performance are also nothing to worry about. Top and bottom-facing loudspeakers are just about okay in terms of loudness for watching videos and playing games, but they don’t necessarily sound distorted at higher volumes. Call and voice quality with the in-ear speaker could have been a little louder but it’s just about okay for outdoors and noisy environments. You can customize the LED backlight for notifications, calls, gaming, startup, charging and even music playback

Verdict: The Tecno Pova 5 Pro clearly is a mixed bag of a device. It has some performance issues and some questionable software choices taken, while providing a good gaming experience and connectivity as a smartphone. For a budget of around Rs 15,000, you might be better off with the likes of the Realme 11x but If you’re somebody who might want a quirky-looking Android phone that you can play high-end games at medium settings, the Pova 5 Pro is a decent option to check out.