HTC Rhyme
MRP: Rs 30,000

Every Android smartphone in the market brags about CPUs and RAM. However, for the fairer sex, all that doesn’t matter much at all. With that in mind, HTC has come out with an Android smartphone called the Rhyme to woo the ladies. It comes with a special purse accessory called the Charm. Let’s find out whether HTC makes it attractive enough to impress its intended audience.

Design And Build Quality
The retail box contains the phone, a charger with a detachable USB cable, a pair of good quality earphones, and the Charm. The Rhyme measures 4.7″ (l) x 2.4″ (w) x 0.4″ (d) and weighs 135 grammes. The device’s front is made of brushed metal, giving it a premium feel. However, a combination of three colours at the back looks out of place.

The Rhyme’s 3.7″ screen has pixel dimensions of 480×800. Viewing angles are excellent, and the screen is scratch-resistant. However, lack of daylight legibility is a dampener. Overall, like most HTC devices, the Rhyme has a great build quality.

The phone is powered by a 1 GHz CPU and Adreno 205 GPU. Other bells and whistles include 768 MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a 5 MP main and a front VGA camera, 3.5 mm headphone jack, and a 1600 mAh battery.

Unfortunately, the phone has a major signal reception issue. Its top area is prone to what I like to call “the death-grip” – holding it near the 3.5 mm jack can kill the Wi-Fi signal within seconds. This is very annoying if you browse the web in landscape mode, which most of us do.

Charm, UI, And Applications
The product comes with a unique accessory called the Charm, which is an LED cube attached to a cord with a 3.5 mm plug. It fits in the phone’s jack and is meant to dangle out of a woman’s handbag. The accessory flashes to intimate the user about calls and messages, which comes in handy if the phone is kept deep inside the bag.

The device runs on Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) with the Sense 3.5 UI. The interface hasn’t changed much from its previous iteration – the lock screen featuring an unlock ring and four customisable shortcuts are all still intact.
The default web browser is Flash-enabled and supports tabs. The page rendering is quick, but the Wi-Fi reception issue mentioned earlier spoils the experience. The GPS receiver’s performance isn’t good either, failing to lock onto satellites until the A-GPS (Assisted GPS) option is turned on.

The phone comes pre-installed with Dropbox, Facebook, Fb Chat, Polaris Office, and Reader. More importantly for the ladies, HTC has also included the Mirror app, which transforms the screen into a mirror by using the front camera.

Multimedia
The music player has a familiar interface, as seen on many other HTC devices. The device’s sound quality is great through the bundled earphones. Additionally, plenty of equalizer settings are available, while the SRS enhancementdoes a good job of enhancing the surround sound. The phone comes with an FM radio that supports RDS (Radio Data System), which has become the norm these days.
The only change worth mentioning is that you can add and delete home screens from the overview mode. Apart from that, Sense UI is smooth as usual. While the main menu lags a bit, this is more of an Android optimisation issue.
The Rhyme can handle 720p MP4 videos without a problem. Third-party apps such as Rockplayer allow you to play XviD, DivX, and WMV files, but at 720p the playback is choppy. Thus, there is a lot of room for improvement in this area.

The device’s camera has face detection and touch-focus support. It also features effects such as depth of field, cold and warm filters, and posterization, to name a few. The resulting images are strictly OK though. The snaps offer good details, but jagged edges spoil the party. What’s worse is that the colours look washed out in bright scenes.
The device is capable of recording 720p video at 20 fps. Clips are saved in the MP4 format, but the playback is choppy. Another issue is that the videos sport a pink tint. The only saving grace is the 2x slow motion mode, which is fun to play with.

Telephony And Messaging
HTC’s People app hasn’t changed a bit; it still takes care of every contact detail, including the Facebook profile. The call quality was good throughout testing. Likewise, the phone didn’t have any issues with 3G reception, so its Wi-Fi seems to be the only weak spot here.

Messages are displayed in threaded fashion, and the copy-paste function has been implemented throughout the UI. The on-screen portrait keypad is not too accurate, but the landscape one is well-spaced and good to type on.

Battery And Verdict
The 1600 mAh battery managed to keep the device up only for about 5 hours under heavy use. This is surely not good for a phone that comes with a single-core CPU.

The Rhyme has great build quality, beautiful customisation, great earphones, and an interesting accessory. However, its specs are nothing out of the ordinary. A single-core CPU  is quite common for Android phones these days, and a 5 MP camera is also nothing to write home about. The Wi-Fi reception issue only damages its cause further. All in all, this phone isn’t a great deal, especially with its Rs 26,000 price tag.

BlackBerry Curve 9360

MRP: Rs 20,000

With the 9360, BlackBerry returns to its roots with a QWERTY keypad. The device sports the new BlackBerry OS 7, a pixel-packed screen, and a relatively faster CPU than its predecessors. The phone seems like a good upgrade for existing BB users, but let’s find out how it fares against the competition.

Design And Build Quality
The retail box packs in a phone, USB cable, charger, and earphones. The package also contains a 4 GB microSD card, but we didn’t receive one with the review unit.

The device measures 4.3″ (l) x 2.4″ (w) x 0.4″ (d), and weighs 99 grammes. It looks similar to the Curve 8520 and Bold 9780, except for the slim body. The glossy plastic on the front looks ok, but having the same finish on the back doesn’t do anything for the grip. Having said that, at least it looks better than previous BlackBerrys.

I was expecting a touch-and-type interface, which I enjoyed in the Nokia E6. However, this phone lacks a touchscreen; thus, navigation is taken care of by five physical buttons: [Call], [Hang Up], [Menu], [Back], and an optical trackpad. The physical keyboard is a standard BlackBerry affair. The keys are reasonably spaced and perfectly sized – a treat for heavy texters.

The phone is powered by an 800 MHz CPU and has 512 MB of RAM. Other specs include NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a 5 MP camera, 3.5 mm jack, microSD card slot, and a 1230 mAh battery. NFC can be used to pair supported devices by tapping them together. Moreover, it can be used to read tags and share data (such as contacts) easily.

The 2.4″ LED-lit screen has pixel dimensions of 480×360. The display is bright and crisp. Moreover, it has great viewing angles. On the flipside, the manufacturer is just so wrong in not including scratch-resistant glass on such an expensive device.

UI And Applications
The device features the new BB OS, similar to that on the recently reviewed Torch 9860. However, OS 7 is not very pleasant sans a touchscreen. Having said that, I’m sure BB fans will get used to it in no time. The interface features an app drawer, status area, and a notification bar that has been already explained in the Torch 9860′s review. Multitasking is duly covered, and you can switch between apps with a long press of the [Menu] button.
All in all, I found the UI fast for the most part, but it becomes sluggish in the App World. Worse, the handset restarted quite a few times during testing. RIM should quickly address these issues in order to make the OS usable.

The device comes preinstalled with the Documents To Go app for editing documents. For those wanting more, App World is your friend. However, watch out for the expensive apps!

The web browser renders pages speedily, and text reflow works well. However, it has a major stability issue and crashes very often. Also, BlackBerry Maps is not very useful since it lacks voice-guided navigation. RIM should focus on this issue, since a capable navigation solution will definitely appeal to its audience.

Multimedia
The phone’s sound quality is ok, but I was expecting something better after being impressed by the 9860′s audio performance. On the other hand, the video player is quite capable, supporting MP4, DivX, XviD, and WMV videos up to 720p. I’m aware that 720p is excessive for a 2.4″ screen, but it’s always good to have a device that can play most videos without having to convert them.

The onboard 5 MP fixed-focus camera is accompanied by a single LED flash. While outdoors, it reproduces good colours, but jagged edges and excessive noise play spoilsport. What’s more, the camera cannot handle close-ups or low-light shots properly.

The device is also capable of 480p video recording, but the results aren’t pleasant. Clips are saved in the 3GP format, which again is a downer due to its lack of quality.

Telephony And Messaging
It’s always great to have a physical call button, since it also provides quick access to the call log. Additionally, the device’s voice quality and signal reception are up to the mark.

The physical QWERTY keypad makes messaging a pleasant affair. Likewise, BlackBerry Messenger is a great feature if you have a group of BB users. On the other hand, I found the device’s dependability on the BlackBerry Internet Servicequite annoying. It’s time for RIM to allow users the freedom to choose from existing internet plans to set up their personal mailboxes.

Battery And Verdict
The 1000 mAh battery’s performance is good; expect it to last an entire day under normal use. Heavy use will keep it powered on for at least 8 hours.

The Curve 9360 will serve well as a messaging device. However, considering its asking price of Rs 19,200, it should have had a touchscreen. In sum, if your company is sponsoring a BB phone for you, get this one – you’ll appreciate its slim looks and new UI. On the other hand, if you’re going to spend your hard-earned money, get the Nokia E6, which humbles the 9360 on every front and yet manages to cost almost Rs 3000 less.

BlackBerry Torch 9860
MRP: Rs 28,500

A BlackBerry without a QWERTY keypad sounds as weird as a Bollywood movie without a song. Seems like the 9860 wants to challenge touchscreen smartphones with its 3.7″ display, powerful CPU, and a spanking new BlackBerry 7OS. Nevertheless, is it good enough to stand a chance against the high-end Androids? More importantly, will the BB purist embrace this QWERTY-less mobile?

Design And Build Quality
The retail box comes with a phone, USB cable, charger, and earphones. No complimentary memory card, which is odd considering the internal storage is just 2.5 GB.

The device measures 4.7″ (l) x 2.4″ (w) x 0.5″ (d), and weighs 135 grammes. It looks slightly bigger than other 3.7″ mobiles due to its large bezel. The front is all glossy, which I personally don’t find classy for a premium device. On the other hand though, the metallic back with its rubberised grip looks impressive.

Five physical buttons are present below the screen: [Call], [Hang-Up], [Menu], [Back], and an optical trackpad. These buttons are well-spaced, making sure you won’t end up hitting the wrong keys.

The phone is powered by a 1.2 GHz CPU and has 768 MB of RAM. Other features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a 5 MP camera, 3.5 mm jack, microSD card slot, a 1230 mAh battery, and a bunch of sensors.

Display
The 3.7″ LED-lit touchscreen has pixel dimensions of 800×480. The display is bright and produces crisp images. Viewing angles are also good, but a colour shift is noticeable at extreme inclinations. While the lack of Gorilla Glass is a downer, what’s worse is that the screen is prone to scratches.

UI And Applications
The new BlackBerry OS has brought in colourful and touch-friendly icons. It’s a welcome change; but the icons look slightly tacky and may not please corporate types. On the other hand, the transparent menu backgrounds look decent. Instead of multiple homescreens, the BB7 OS features a drawer that reveals apps and settings when slid upwards.
Although you can navigate using just the touchscreen, the trackpad provides a functional alternative. It is indeed useful where precision matters, especially while editing Word files in the Documents To Go app. Overall, the UI is fast, but I experienced random freezes occasionally. Moreover, the system became sluggish quite a few times while browsing the app store. Let’s hope RIM will iron out these bugs soon.

The App World is where you can get apps for your BlackBerry. Unfortunately, the useful apps are paid, and their pricing is not friendly either. For example, the Wi-Fi hotspot app called Tether is priced at an atrocious Rs 1400! Thankfully, you also have free apps such as Zombie Attack (an Angry Birds rip-off), and Fruits and Ninja (a Fruit Ninja clone). The games are strictly ok, but surprisingly the 1.2 GHz CPU failed to run them smoothly.

The phone has a GPS receiver, but it constantly requires an internet connection. Navigation is taken care of byBlackBerry Maps, but those looking for voice guidance will be disappointed. The web browser is snappy, and makes good use of the CPU. It supports all the features of modern-day browsers, such as pinch-to-zoom, text reflow, etc. However, Flash-based sites are a no-go.

Multimedia
The music player’s interface borrows heavily from the iPhone‘s Cover Flow. However, I’m not complaining as it makes for good eye candy. Equaliser presets are present, and the sound quality though the earphones is great.

The video player supports MP4, DivX, XviD, and WMV videos up to 720p. Strangely, it failed to play most 720p WMV videos, probably due to some codec issues. Overall though, the multimedia performance is great when compared to previous BlackBerrys.

The onboard 5 MP camera is accompanied by a single LED flash. It produces good images in daylight, correctly reproducing natural colours and a good amount of detail. However, the low-light performance is unimpressive, with the resultant images containing a lot of noise.

Telephony And Messaging
The 9860 lets you sort contacts into Business and Personal groups, which can be very useful. For example, if you leave a job, you can get rid of all your colleagues simply by clearing the Business contacts.

The physical [Call] and [Hang Up] buttons make the phone experience better. More importantly, there were no reception or voice quality issues throughout the testing.

BlackBerrys are renowned for their messaging solutions. Little wonder then that the 9860 supports everything from SMSs to IMs. The virtual keyboard is not as accurate in portrait mode, but its landscape version is good. Even so, the experience is nowhere near BB’s good old physical QWERTY keypad.

A major drawback here is the device’s dependability on the BlackBerry Internet Service. The phone doesn’t allow you to set up an email account without subscribing to BB’s services. What makes things worse is that these services are available with only a limited number of telecom providers. For example, my provider Loop Mobile does not offer this service.

I agree that RIM offers superior security, but not allowing users to utilise their Wi-Fi and existing internet plans to set up a mailbox is totally unacceptable. The only saving grace is BlackBerry Messenger, which works with any internet plan.

Battery And Verdict
The 1320 mAh battery is good enough to keep the device on from 9 am to 11 pm under normal use. With heavy use, it powers the device for roughly 8 hours and 30 minutes before running out of juice.

The 9860 offers a proper touchscreen experience, thanks to the new BlackBerry 7 OS. To justify the product’s price tag, RIM has incorporated a 1.2 GHz CPU and a decent screen, leading to good multimedia performance. On the other hand, the OS has a few bugs, the phone lacks scratch-resistant glass, and is heavily dependent on the BlackBerry Internet Service.

All things considered, the phone is overpriced at Rs 27,500. Inevitably, its pricing puts it up against merciless droids such as the Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation – we all know how that will end.

Product Details

Product Specifications

PRICE (RS.)

35,000.00

Product Details

The Vodafone Blue 555 phone is targeted at the millions of Facebook users who are addicted to the social networking site and would love to get and post updates on the go.

Design And Build Quality
The device is well-designed, with a silver-white plastic casing and rounded corners that fit in your palm comfortably. It’s definitely a tough competitor to the HTC ChaCha with its well laid-out QWERTY keyboard. And yes, it does have a Facebook button, which acts as a shortcut to your News Feed. It also has a shortcut button for the camera.

The phone weighs nearly 100 grammes, and with a dimension of 4.3″ (l) x 2.4″ (w) x 0.5″ (d), fits into your pocket quite easily. Other features include a 2 MP camera with LED flash, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and a microSD card slot that supports up to 16 GB.

A small button at the centre of the navigation pad acts as a trackpad for navigating through the interface. A volume control button on the right side and a charging port on the left are also present. The phone has a 2.4″ display with pixel dimensions of 320×240. The connectivity of the phone isn’t that great since it has only EDGE support, which isn’t sufficient for fast access to the internet. At least a 3G facility should have been made available for this price.

UI And Applications
The moment it’s switched on, the device prompts you to log into your FB account. After you get past that screen, you are greeted with the What’s on your mind? field, from where you can post updates directly to Facebook

The phone has a Java-based operating system, but with just a 200 MHz processor, it is not speedy enough to run even the installed applications smoothly, degrading the user experience. Navigating through the menus is easy, thanks to the responsive trackpad and keyboard shortcuts, such as [alt] + [B] for Bluetooth, [alt] + [F] for News Feed, and [alt] + [M] for the music app. One major complaint is that while the News Feed is supposed to be updated automatically, this never happens, forcing you to manually refresh the page for the latest updates.

The applications included with the phone fail to impress, with lacklustre examples that include a weather app, calculator, organiser, note taker, and some Java games such as Sims 3. The only bright spots are a Java-based Facebook chat application that allows communicating with multiple friends, as well as Palringo that supports multiple IM accounts.

Multimedia And Camera
Fortunately, the Blue 555 has a decent music player and FM radio with RDS for displaying the song and artiste information. The major audio formats supported include MP3, AAC, and WMA. Strangely enough, the phone doesn’t have a dedicated video player, but it supports video playback for MP4, 3GP, and H.263 files directly through the Gallery. The sound quality of the speaker is decent, but the bundled earphones seem to be inferior as the music tends to distort at higher sound levels.

The 2 MP camera isn’t good enough to capture detailed snaps, even though it includes an LED flash. I wish the manufacturer had added basic editing features, which could have made the images more viewable. On the bright side, the device surprisingly keeps colours true to life. There’s also an option to share images via e-mail, Bluetooth, MMS, or upload them straight to FB.

Capturing video on the Blue 555 also isn’t a good experience due to the lack of basic editing features. Moreover, videos cannot be shared online due to a lack of connectivity features, as they are too large to be uploaded through the EDGE connection.

Telephony And Messaging
One of the few impressive features is the ability to integrate your Facebook contacts with the local contacts list from the SIM card. Once you’ve logged in to your account, the phonebook integrates the list of your FB friends with SIM contacts that have the same name. Even if someone is left out, you can always choose the Merge To Facebook option.

Battery And Verdict
With a 1000 mAH Li-ion battery, the phone gives a talk time of 6 hours and a standby time of 60 hours, allowing me to use the phone for two complete days on a single charge.

The Vodafone Blue 555 is aimed at the young market. Making the phone attractive-looking, with a decent bit of features and Facebook integration is Vodafone’s USP. However, a generation obsessed with smartphones may not like this product due to the lack of connectivity features such as 3G and Wi-Fi. All said and done though, this is still a decent device available at a very competitive price.

Features: 3/5
Design And Build Quality: 3.5/5
Performance: 2.5/5
Value For Money: 3.5/5
Mojo: 3/5

Overall: 3/5

Details over on the blog.

Running Android Apps On Tizen

Nokia continues to lead the mobile space by moving 417.1 million devices, and accounting for 27% of the total market.Samsung notched up 329.4 million units to grab 21.3% of the market share. Interestingly, Apple managed to grab the third spot by pushing LG down to fourth place. Considering that Apple only ships high-end phones, the fact that it has managed to find a place in a list that includes low-end phones as well is impressive. On the other hand, LG was the biggest loser with a whopping 25% decline in sales. Surprisingly, the relatively obscure Chinese manufacture ZTE has emerged as the worlds fifth biggest manufacturer.

Other big names such as Sony Ericsson and Motorola couldn’t even make it to the top five. This probably means that abandoning their mass-market phones to focus on Android devices wasn’t really a smart move.

I have been priviledged to use this magnificient camera phone. It has been a pure joy to shoot pictures and videos with it.

All videos shot using only Nokia 808 and tripod. NO macro lenses or other lenses used.
All video samples in this video are straight from the camera. I have not done any processing to the video but only pasted them together using Sony Vegas video editor. The audio is also separately recorded with Nokia 808 phone. I wanted to switch the original audio tracks because they were so noisy because of the wind.

Additional Info:
Shooting with Nokia 808 when capturing starts the CAF (Continuous AutoFocus) is on but it can be overridden simply by tapping the screen at point where one wants the focus to be. Most of the scenes I tapped the sceen in the beginning of capturing in order to master the focus where I wanted it to be. (Naturally I edited this part away at editor)

I used automatic mode at the scenes where I switched the focus from near to far away or wise versa. Even with automatic mode it is possible to shoot quite close. The flower scenes were shot at macro mode along with the snail clips. At automatic mode it is not possible to focus far away or to infinity.

Someone commented somewhere that it is possible to rule out those focus transitions since it does not look artistic. Well, I wanted to leave them to the video so that people will get right impression who the focus works. Naturally these transitions can be eliminated at video editor.