Amidst all the speculations and rumors, Samsung in a musical unpacked event unveiled its Galaxy S 4. The successor to the best-selling Galaxy S III just got bigger and smarter and Samsung showed the world how a successor is produced by incorporating some of the beautiful technologies in one single smartphone. With a lot of hustle and bustle at the Times Square and the Radio City Hall in New York, the press conference started with the little secret messenger Jeremy accompanied by Will chase and an orchestra for the Musical launch. Later, JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung took over and gave a pre-look of the device as he said, “With the GALAXY S 4, Samsung is again going to enhance the way we live. All the innovative features of GALAXY S 4 were developed based on the insights and needs we found from our consumers all around the world. Following the successful GALAXY S series, this phone is yet another great proof point of people-inspired innovation. At Samsung we’ll never stop pursuing innovation conceived by people, so we can inspire them in return.” A few hours into the event, Samsung rewarded JK Shin by making him and Yoo Boo-keun, the head of the consumer electronics division one of the three CEO’s that will now run the company.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 will be rolling out to 327 carriers in 155 countries with the first phase of rollout starting 26th April.

The design of the Galaxy S 4 stays much like the SIII’s pebble outlook but Samsung finally gave up the plasticity and now it feels a premium device as it features a polycarbonate body with some of the best hardware and software combinations in it. It measures a 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm and is quite thinner and lighter than its predecessor at 130 g. The device is available in two colours namely, Black Mist and White Frost.

The Galaxy S 4 has a 5 inch Full HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels with the pixel density going up to 441 ppi. The display uses PenTile pixel distribution which is unfortunate but at such resolutions and pixel density it is not a problem at all. The Full HD display is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 as well. A feature I would like to mention here is that the display can work with the gloves on which is only found in the Lumia 920.

Samsung Galaxy S 4 is high on software enhancements and a slew of them are found on the 13 megapixel snapper and a 2.1 megapixel front camera. The autofocus zero shutter lag camera has some amazing features such as Eraser, Cinema Photo, Drama Shot, Story Album, Sound & Shot, Dual Shot, Dual recording, Dual video Call among others. The snappers can also record Full HD videos at 30 fps and one can also record video and simultaneously click images.

The Galaxy S 4 derives its raw power from the Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chipset which features Quad-core Cortex-A15 processor clocked at 1.6 GHz & Quad-core Cortex-A7 clocked at 1.2 GHz with the PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU as the support for graphical rendering and 2 GB DDR3 RAM. Additionally, for the US variant there is a different chipset in the form of Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor.

Samsung Galaxy S 4 runs on Android 4.2.2 which is the first for a non-nexus smartphone stitched with a light TouchWiz UI with lots of customizations.

The device will be available in 16/32/64 GB memory variants which is further expandable up to 64 GB via micro-SD card.

On the connectivity front, Samsung Galaxy S 4 incorporates all the 4G LTE Global frequencies apart from the 3G connectivity and has features like Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, NFC, DLNA, IR-blaster port for using the device as a remote control. It has the normal set of sensors but only with an addition of temperature & humidity sensors apart from the Accelerometer, Gyro, Proximity, Compass, Barometer and Gesture.

The Galaxy S 4 has a massive 2600 mAh Li-Ion battery with wireless charging capabilities through the wireless charging pad.

As for the Samsung Galaxy S 4, it is built on the success of its predecessor and the real beauty lies in the software of the device. Samsung has added a plethora of features in the Galaxy S 4 and I will further try and explain them here.

Air View- It is the same feature from Galaxy Note II which helps preview content by just hovering your finger over it.
Samsung Smart Pause- While watching a video if you look away from the screen the video will get paused and will play again when you look at the screen.
Samsung Smart Scroll- The front camera detects the movement of your eyes whilst reading on the Galaxy S 4 and scrolls the content automatically.
Samsung WatchOn- It uses the IR blaster and helps you remote control your TV, Set-top box, air conditioner and likes which use IR sensor.
Optical Reader- Recognises information while seeing it from the camera and the dictionary is also incorporated in this.
Group Play- It allows Galaxy S 4 users to share audio/video content without Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. One can share content on up to 8 Galaxy S 4’s with also some multiplayer games on board.
Eraser- Erase unwanted objects from the picture.
Cinema Shot- A feature which records a video in which a part of picture is moving giving it an animated feel.
Drama Shot- This feature click 100 images in 4 seconds and creates a preview collage merging all the images in one.
Sound & Shot- It enables to add a background sound to a picture for some seconds.
Dual Shot- It uses front and rear camera simultaneously that produces a picture embedding the picture shot from the front camera.
Dual Recording- It is the same as the dual shot feature except for the fact that it is a video recorder embedding the video shot from the front camera.
Dual Video Call- Uses front and rear camera while a video call.
S Translator- It translates a sentence into another language and also in text format.
S Health- Monitors your health, body movements, daily habits. The Galaxy S 4 is also the first device to feature temperature sensor as in a thermometer. Also, Samsung is offering an S-Band accessory that works via Bluetooth in the S Health app.
S Travel- A travel application with facility to book tickets.
Samsung Knox- It is a feature for the enterprise users which allows the possibility of dual persona of the device, while a part is used for personal content and the other for professional content.

So that was it, some of the most talked about features of the Samsung Galaxy S 4.
The Samsung Galaxy S 4 carries the legacy of the super smartphone in the world only to become a device with immense stature.

Further down in the Official specification sheet for the galaxy S 4 for you all to have a look at the beauty and the accessories list out of the factory.

Samsung GALAXY S 4 Product Specifications:

List of Accessories

BlackBerry’s much awaited smartphone, Z10 was launched in India today. At a price of Rs.42,000 it is more of a deal-breaker when one sees the specs sheet.

*Display: 4.2-inch, 1280 x 768 pixel resolution at 355 ppi.
*Camera: 8-megapixel rear facing camera, 2-megapixel front facing camera, 1080p and 720p HD video recording respectively.
*Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon
*Processor: 1.5GHz Dual Krait core.
*GPU: Adreno 225
*OS: BlackBerry 10 OS
*Memory: 2GB RAM, 16GB Internal Storage, expandable up to 64 GB
*Battery: 1800mAh Removable
*Talk Time: up to 10 hours on 3G; Standby Time: up to 305 hours on 3G, up to 316 hours on 2G.
*Usual set of sensors and connectivity features.

Now when we look at these specifications and compare it to the other smartphones available at the same or below the price tag of Rs.42,000; A BlackBerry Boy will only invest in an overpriced device that will be outdated in few months. The phone has the specifications that match some of the mid-range smartphones and I cannot stop to wonder as to why a company whose future is shadowy, set a premium tag on a phone that could have been successful if it had been in the market few months back. They even could have launched the BlackBerry Q10 as BlackBerry was always know for its rigid qwerty smartphones.

I do not deny that the BB10 OS is a different OS altogether, but the price tag is not at all justified. The technology is shifting from 8 megapixels to 13 megapixels and Ultrapixels, from quad-core to octa-core and BlackBerry just seems to be out of league for a premium smartphone like the Z10. An effective price strategy should have been chosen instead of just queuing it among some of the best smartphones.

Design & Dimensions
The smartphone feels extraordinarily slim and thin in respect to its size- weight distribution of the inner components. It measures just 9mm at its thickest point further extending to 5mm at its ends. On paper it measures 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3 mm and weighs 143g which is proportionally a bit heavier than iPhone 5 at 112g, the Samsung Galaxy S3 at 133g and the HTC One X at 130g. It features a silver, brushed aluminum chassis and will be available in Black & Red variants also.
HTC One has a unibody aluminum body which gives it a premium and sturdy finish. The Stereo speakers are placed on the top and bottom front which gives a new design to it as well as are better for audio output. The Power On/Off button is placed on top edge which also behaves as an IR sensor. Additionally, the Volume keys are located on the right edge of the device. There are only ‘Back’ and ‘Home’ capacitive keys placed adjacent to a HTC logo below the screen.

Display & Interface
HTC One houses a brilliant 4.7 inch Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2 fused Super LCD3 display with a full HD resolution (1080 x 1920 pixels) and a jaw dropping pixel density of 468 ppi, even the iPhone 5 has 326 ppi density.
The Display sports exactly the same lamination as that of HTC One X, which helps the smartphone to have an excellent viewing angle irrespective of the tilting.
The HTC One runs on butter smooth Android Jelly Bean (4.1.2, upgradable to 4.2.2) out of the package integrated with a newer HTC Sense UI v5 which is obviously better than the previous iterations but the UI brings in a lot of new features keeping it as simple as possible resulting in a very familiar Sense UI.
One of its pretty much volatile feature is the HTC BlinkFeed which is a new home screen integrated beautifully in the UI. It allows a user to receive news feeds in the form of pictures which one can easily scroll down through to see. Furthermore, users can customize it by selecting the specific feeds one prefers to receive. It has an option for Facebook integration too which allows a user to quickly access all of the updates from the Facebook app, the catch being that you won’t have to open the Facebook app hence saving time in return.

Next of it, comes a feature called HTC BoomSound, which is a revised innovation done to HTC Beats Audio technology. As a result, the stereo speakers are transferred to the front face of the Smartphone which provides a better sound clarity and great audibility in noisy conditions.
The new Sense UI also combines of HTC Sense TV (remember the IR sensor I mentioned above!), which functions as a TV remote.
HTC is also providing its customers a Cloud Storage of 25GB for a period of 2 years on Dropbox. One can have more than enough content stacked in it.
The new Sense UI v5 is undoubtedly great and users are going to become fond of it.

Camera

There had been certain talks originated much before HTC One’s launch about the new camera technology and yes it is there in the One as Ultrapixel sensor. HTC took a brave move by dropped the megapixel count; which has always been consumers obsession, and focused more on a sensor. So the autofocus snapper is held at 4 megapixels providing a resolution of 2688 x 1520 pixels.

According to HTC, every 4 million Ultrapixels absorbs a surprisingly 313% more light than an average 13 megapixel sensor resulting in far better images in low lit conditions.
The original notion is to focus on an individual pixel size rather than pixel count, as the latter doesn’t essentially mean better pictures, although we understand that the UltaPixel camera will have a 4 megapixel sensor but wait, HTC has its own reign on aperture scale elaboration giving away f/2.0 lens, iPhone 5 has a f/2.4 lens and Samsung Galaxy SIII has f/2.6 lens; This makes HTC One rich of specifications at sensor level. It clearly defines that HTC One is innovated with the thought of low light photography, which is therefore fantastic in terms of moderate conditions.

The Camera also constitutes Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), a User can record HDR footage in 720p High-Definition at 60fps & in 1080p at 30fps which is just amazing to have.

HTC has also introduced a feature called Zoe Mode named after ‘Zoetrope’. For those of you who do not know about Zoetrope, it is a device which creates a video like illusions for pictures. On the HTC One it enables a user to simultaneously shoot both high definition video and still images in burst mode records both before and after the shutter button is pressed. By performing this action, the device is capable of creating ‘Zoes’ which is a 3-seconds video clips, where each of frame can be isolated as an individual shot.

Additionally, the Zoes can be shared to HTC’s Zoe Share portal, where it will be live for 180 days for free. There is not any proposed plan further after this free service as reported from HTC.

Processor & OS
The HTC One bags a powerful CPU combining a Quad Krait 300-core at a clock rate of 1.7GHz fabricated on the Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 chipset.
The Adreno 320 is the integrated GPU which is wonderfully capable of rendering media, graphic motion activities and 3D games. The hardware is further supported with a 2GB RAM.

Connectivity
On the networking connectivity front the device boasts of Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, A-GPS support and GLONASS.
Storage: The HTC One comes with an option to choose between internal storages of 32/64GB but it lacks memory expansion.

Battery
It contains a non-removable Lithium-Polymer 2300 mAh battery which is somewhat sufficient for normal everyday use.

Verdict

HTC One is unbiasedly an excellent smartphone, for sure. It feels pretty awesome when looked at its well-built and beautifully cherished aesthetics. It sports what matters the most. HTC has used its styling culture again, very intelligently I must say, so well that is makes a point when one owns it.

We actually don’t want to get ourselves buried into pre-phone physics as it is yet to be made available. The features are the quotients which define a smartphone’s destiny but having said that, we will certainly review it ones it come ashore.

HTC One will start rolling out globally starting March. In India, HTC has tied up with RCom (Reliance Communications) making it the Indian carrier but we think HTC ONE will be available factory unlocked as well.

This Preview is written by Rachit Verma

All those rumors about a possible 128GB variant of the iPad have now been proven to be true as Apple today launched a 128 GB variant of iPad fourth generation. The price in India will start from Rs.49,900 for the Wi-Fi ONLY version and Rs 56,900 for the cellular version and the devices will go on sale starting the 5th of Feburary.

The iPad with retina display has been bumped up with a 128GB storage and the latest iOS 6.1 which was launched a night before. Rest of the specifications remain identical. The iPad flaunts a 9.7 inch Retina Display, a 5-megapixel rear camera and a front facing one too. It is powered by the A6X chip suppoted with 1GB of RAM and now available in 128GB storage option among 16/32/64 GB

The Canvas HD features a 5 inch HD IPS display with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels with a 294 ppi. Now here comes the big part, it has a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 processor packed in MediaTek MT6589 supported by a 1 GB RAM and added up is the PowerVR SGX5 GPU. It has an internal memory of 4GB which is further expandable.
Additionally, the Micromax Canvas HD runs on Android 4.1 a.k.a JellyBean out of the box which the company says will will get an update to Android 4.2 sooner. The device has an 8 MP rear camera and a VGA front camera for video calling purposes. The capacity of the battery provided is 2,100mAh.

The price of Canvas HD will be less than Rs.15,000 as quoted by the company and it will be starting the pre-orders next week to be available in shops from the first week of Feburary.

Size & Dimensions
The Samsung Galaxy SIII saw a newer design as opposed to the normal anomaly of being a rectangular casing enclosing the world’s most powerful integration of Hardware and Software. Samsung called it “inspired by the nature”, gave it a curved corners, thinner bezel which resulted more of a pebble like design.
Now as Samsung always does; the use of plastic in its smartphones which has not gone through well with the public, the SIII has been given a hyper glazed coating over the plastic back. The edges of device have a metal encasing too, but that will wear out eventually. The Samsung Galaxy SIII is quite low on the looks front let’s say when compared to the HTC ONE X.
Overall the smartphone is a big having dimensions, 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm and weighs about 133 g.
At the time when the device was launched, it was only available in two colors, Pebble blue and Marble white but with its great success Samsung added Amber brown, Garnet red, Sapphire black, Titanium grey, La Fleur to its color palates.

Display & Interface
It features a Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2 protected 4.8 inch Super AMOLED display with the screen resolution being 1280 x 720 pixels and a pixel density of 306ppi. The display is based on PenTile matrix form which many users complained to be a backdrop whereas I personally find it awesome unless you’re one of those humans who view the display under a microscope.

Samsung Galaxy SIII saw a revamped TouchWiz UI dubbed as Nature UX and now, with the JellyBean update it has been integrated into the “Project Butter” which is said to increment the animation part up to 60 frames per second. Having said that, the Samsung Galaxy SIII was always buttering on the UI and as such except for some delicate changes there is nothing much to experience more. The notification area now has a brightness control, expandable notifications, and digital clock among others. One of the most talked about feature is the Google Now, which in the simplest of terms is Siri for Android but with a deeper integration in the OS. It replies and understands a language much more quickly than its competitor and also keeps a track of your usage patterns and displays cards which is more or less notifications about the trending topics of your search. For instance, you’re a Manchester United fan and frequently search them on your device, Google now will hunt down every upcoming event, news and place it in the cards which you can access more quickly. A new feature termed as Blocking Mode will be seen after the JellyBean update which is similar to the Do not disturb feature on the iOS and there are many customizable options to choose from.

Camera

Samsung Galaxy SIII features an 8MP camera capturing images of up to 3264×2448 pixels. With a Quad core processor onboard one can record HD video and capture image simultaneously. Additionally, image stabilization, HDR recording, burst shot are some of the new features embedded in the camera console. The video recording capability of the phone is excellent and output videos are splendid. It records video with resolution of 1080p @ 30fps. The 1.9MP secondary camera is also capable of recording video with 720p resolution @ 30fps. A new feature that came with the JellyBean update is that now you will get a play/pause button while recording videos for creating multi clip file, this is pretty useful.

Processor and OS
Originally Samsung Galaxy SIII came with Android OS v4.0.4 Ice-Cream Sandwich which was then upgraded to v4.1.2 Jellybean. The device has 1 GB of RAM.
The processor is a Quad core 1.4 GHz clocked on Exynos 4412 Quad chipset supported by Mali- 400MP GPU. The Samsung Galaxy SIII beats every other smartphone in the arena to be the fastest till date and the benchmarks prove the same.

Connectivity
The Samsung Galaxy SIII comes with plethora of newer connectivity supports apart from Wi-Fi connectivity and 3G support. Added are the latest Bluetooth v4.0 with a transfer rate topping up to 25Mbps, Wi-Fi Direct, NFC, All Share Play and All Share Cast. It also supports micro USB v2.0 with USB on the go support.

Storage Capacity
The Galaxy SIII comes in internal storage variants of 16/32/64 GB which can be further expandable up to 64GB microSD card.

Battery
It comes with 2100 mAh Li-Ion battery that is capable of providing 11h and 40 min of talk time and up to 790 h of stand by time

Verdict

Samsung Galaxy SIII is no doubt the most advanced android smartphone money can buy. If you’re in a search of the best android available, this is it. Samsung has beefed up everything in this device from its predecessor with the technology developing rapidly we will always see newer versions coming up. But for the time being it is going to rule the arena as it has been from its launch. Rumors have now been building up for the fourth iteration of the device close to its launch but well, that’s for another story.

The current price of the Samsung Galaxy SIII 16GB variant is Rs.31,900 and that of the 32GB is Rs.34,900 but one may get it for less in the brick and mortar enclosures.

Size and Dimension:
Not sure If Nokia will be able to sell millions of Lumia 920 but the bold color choices is sure to garner plenty of looks. The bold glossy yellow, red or matt cyan stands out from the crowd but I prefer to the black and the white. The use of polycarbonate plastics make it feel premium as well as stand a longer time to the wear and tear. The phone is quiet hefty weighing 185g but it shouldn’t bother a user much. It’s pretty thick having a breadth of 10.7mm but as far as the current scenario is concerned where the size is dominated by every hardware upgrade, its dismissible to the fact that we made smartphones like the Galaxy Note and Co. a success.

Display
It features a giant 4.5 inch IPS LCD display having a mind blowing resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels and a pixel density of 332 ppi. The sharp colorful display stands out of the world which Nokia calls as PureMotion HD + Clear Black display imparting towards the 60fps transition rate which beefs up the Windows Phone 8 interface. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2.

Camera
It features a PureView 8.7 MP camera which vouches for it being the best camera technology out there in the market. Having a resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels the camera features Carl Zeiss optics, optical image stabilization, geo-tagging, touch focus and dual-LED flash. It is able to record 1080p video @ 30fps and features Floating lens technology. Additionally it has a 1.3 MP secondary camera.

Processor and OS
The Windows 8 powered Nokia Lumia 920 comes with a 1.5 GHz krait Dual-core processor supported by Adreno 225 GPU and 1 GB RAM. The configuration is at par with the interface of Windows Phone 8 and is blazing fast.
Windows Phone 8, indeed a new beginning but has a lot of loopholes that need to be fixed apart from the many fixes it brings from the predecessors.

Connectivity
It is equipped with all the normal sensors on any smartphone. The Wi-Fi is dual-band and supports DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot. Bluetooth v3.1 comes with A2DP and EDR support. Audio quality is coupled with Dolby Headphone sound enhancement when on a headset. It also supports microUSB v2.0

Storage Capacity
The phone comes with an internal memory of 32GB that is not expandable.

Battery
The 2000 mAh battery is non removable and supports talk time up to 10h and standby up to 400h on 3G. You can play music up to 67 hrs.
Also, the Lumia 920 comes with wireless charging technology based on the induction pad which is given as an accessory.

Verdict
Nokia Lumia 920 is the best smartphone available in terms of camera but yes, it won’t be able to please the consumers due to the Windows Phone 8 limitations and apps catalogue. But if one is looking for the bestest of the best Windows Phone 8 smartphone, nothing better than the Nokia Lumia 920.
Nokia Lumia 920 is priced at Rs 38,199 .

Central Standard Timing (CST) has shown the world’s thinnest watch measuring just 0.8mm in thickness. The components come from the E Ink’s electronic paper display cased in 0.5mm pocket above stainless steel.

The watch is powered by Thinergy Micro-Energy Cell which charges the watch in 10 minutes and runs a month on that single charge. The lifetime of this battery is 15 Years.

Video of CST-01

Samsung Exynos 5 Octa as the name clearly says is an 8 core chipset based on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture which has a clear motto, Incredible performance without compromising the battery life. It has a combination of four Cortex-A15 cores coupled with four Cortex-A7 cores. The Exynos 5 Octa is upto three times greater the Exynos 4 Quad found on Galaxy SIII and Note II.

There will be only four cores working at a time for a process depending upon the type of process. Cortex-A15 will ensure high performance on multimedia and gaming front while the A7 will be initiated for lower processes and will be more responsible in energy saving.

The Exynos 5 Octa chipset will be powering the Samsung’s next Galaxy flagship device.

Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 have been launched in India. Nokia has been constantly calling the Lumia 920 the most wonderful smartphone and has priced it at Rs 38,199 and its sibling at Rs 27,559.

Both the phones are on Pre-order at Flipkart.com at Rs. 38199 for Lumia 920 and Rs. 27559 for Lumia 820 and they will be available till the end of January.
You can check out Flipkart.com’s pages here:

Nokia Lumia 920 & Nokia Lumia 820