Almost all of us have smartphones. Almost all of us also crib about the terrible battery life. The battery is such a huge bottleneck that it very nearly defeats the entire purpose of owning a smartphone in the first place. The faces of people who use a Nokia 101 and tell you that they charge twice a week #LikeABoss are another problem. But we’ll help you fightback and revel in all your smartphone glory with the Battery-asana; a 27 second routine wherein you can considerably improve the running time of your phone.

1) Reduce screen brightness

Your display uses a large majority of power. Close to 80% of the phone’s battery goes to making sure that display looks nice and bright enough to light a village. So it is imperative that we attack it right away and NOT because I have nothing better to say at the beginning of this piece. When indoors or during the evenings, turn the brightness to level you perceive bright enough and not what the light sensor perceives.

How - Settings > Display > Brightness and slide the slider until it feels right. Perverts, get out of the class.

2) Turn off background data
A smartphone is deemed smart because it does certain things by itself. Like synchronizing your mail, tweets et al. Turn off Background Data to squeeze an extra few hours out of your device. You also have the option of turning off Auto Sync which is a much better trade off than turning background data off completely. Also, WhatsApp works just fine even with background data completely turned off.

How – Settings > Accounts & Sync and uncheck Auto Sync and/or Background Data

3) Switch to a 2G network
Just because 2G spectrum wasn’t auctioned, doesn’t mean that you stay away from it. 3G requires far more battery than does 2G. So, unless you need high speed networks at all times, shut up and use a 2G network. We know you were using it a year ago.

How – Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks > Network Mode and switch to GSM only

4) Turn off Bluetooth, GPS and Wifi
Although Android is smarter with the aforementioned chips turned on, it helps to deactivate them. So, unless you don’t need them, turn them off. True for everything on the phone.

Settings > Wireless & Networks for Bluetooth and WiFi

Settings > Uncheck Use GPS satellites.

Alternatively, you could place the Power Control widget on your homescreen.

5) Switch to WiFi whenever possible
This one contrasts with the one above but transmitting data on a Wifi zone hugely helps enhance battery life. So when in a hotspot, latch on to it like it’s the last time you will ever access the interwebs.

6) Buy an extended battery/keep a spare/carry a battery booster
All of the aforementioned hacks are not exactly very elegant solutions, but they do get the job done. This one is great for people without a girlfriend.

7) Apps to manage battery life

There are quite a few apps available on the Google Play store (JuiceDefender, Easy Battery Saver etc.) that will help you manage your battery life and do pretty much whatever is mentioned above. Some of them also cause performance drops on lower end phones. So, to conclude, it’s the difference between owning a car with a manual gearbox vis a vis an automatic one. Which one would you want?

Never leave home without a charger
Whoever you are, whatever  you do, never leave home without your charger. It won’t be long before the sobbing, make up laden soap opera bahu starts spouting dialogue like , ‘apna charger lete huey jaana’ in lieu of ‘apna batwaa lena mat bhoolna‘.

Which raises more questions than it answers. Do they use Android smartphones in the housewife entertainment segment? Do they even know how to use them? Do they apply makeup to the smartphone as well? Does everything in their phone slide into view 4 times from all the four different corners?

Battery-asana. Don’t forget. Cheers.

Till last week, if someone needed to put files somewhere on some server, Dropbox would have been just fine. But this week we have Microsoft giving SkyDrive a shot in the arm and Google sprucing up Docs to Drive. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Storage

Dropbox comes with 2GB of storage  to start with but the nice folks at this particular cloud storage startup keep doling out free space by the MB. You’ve got referrals, bonuses etc. Just stay tuned to their Twitter handle and you will come across some promotion every now and then. Heck, I’ve got 20GB of awesome cloud storage for free by shamelessly referring it to other people since 2009.

Google Drive comes with 5GB and you can pretty much plonk any file type into it. Frankly, it’s just a spruced up Google Docs which they are now calling Drive. Meh.

MS’s Skydrive has been around for quite some time now and has been offering 25GB of space. But they’ve now cut back to 7GB which is still acceptable, by all means. I mean, just how much larger can that folder full of your mug shots labelled ‘display pictures’ possibly balloon to?

Winner – Skydrive

Supported Platforms

Dropbox is the most platform friendly bloke here. PC, Mac, iOS, Android AND Blackberry! They still make cool apps for that Canadian platform! If only they were to support Windows Phone, I’d parcel them a crunchy vada pav. With 2 salted, green chillies. (BoxFiles is your 3rd party WinPho alternative, here)

Google Drive supports Android (like, duh) and PC. They say an iOS app is in the works, but who cares.

Skydrive supports PC, Mac, Windows Phone and iOS. No word on an Android app.

Winner – Dropbox

Cool Features

Dropbox was the first provider to provide file management right inside Windows Explorer. You add one file via one device and it’s there on all the devices! Heck, that is when I understood what true sync really means. Besides, I just love their ‘Public Folder’ feature. You can actually host entire websites out of there. Plus, Dropbox has had a fairly open API and there are tonnes of apps that connect to it.

Google Drive has nothing cool, really. It’s as if Google hurriedly wanted to launch something when MS revamped Skydrive. It’s like Shankar Singh Vaghela going on a fast to protest Narendra Modi’s fast just so that he can tell the Congress High Command that he did ‘something’. Besides, you can’t really edit files offline. Google will open the browser for you.

Look Ma, the whole PC!

Skydrive has this awesome feature called ‘File Fetch’ which allows you to access any damn file on your computer from anywhere in the world! All you have to do is enter a code that you receive via SMS and you’ve got your entire hard disk at your disposal. Even system files! How cool is that! So many exclamation marks in this paragraph! Microsoft had better give me lots of free storage!

Price

Much as I like Dropbox, it now looks like the most expensive of the lot. 50 GB for $9.99/month and 100GB for $19.99/month. I’m sure they will respond with a price cut soon, but till then, you will be shelling out a lot of monies.

Do you even want to know about Google Drive? Alright, fine. Its $2.49 for 25GB and $4.9 for 50GB. Yawn.

Skydrive actually sells you space in Indian rupees. Oh, my. *gets taken aback as though someone complemented his solar plexus* 520, 1300 and 2600 is what you’d have to shell out for 20, 50 and 100GB. For a year, mind.

Winner  - Skydrive

Verdict

- I’ve used Dropbox in every team I’ve worked with and it has never failed me. So, if you are already a Dropbox user, the only real reason to jump ship would be Skydrive’s file fetch feature. Google Drive isn’t even in the conversation here. It’s so boring that it makes HD Deve Gowda look like an immensely interesting personality. On the other hand, Skydrive feels really solid and if you don’t have an account with either of the services mentioned here, I suggest Microsoft’s cloud.

How many times have you wanted to run an Android application on your PC? Alright, lets re-word that question. How many times have you wanted to run an Android based game on your PC? Many times, we know. Fret not, because the world now has BlueStacks, which is essentially a well designed app emulator for dummies. Me included.

Apart from just running silly games, there are times when we would like a larger screen to view our apps on. Those thrifty tablet apps, that goddamned feed reader that won’t run anywhere else except your device and such like. Also, those times when you’d like to give the app a test run before it joins the elite list of apps on your phone/tablet.

Before we had BlueStacks, the only way to fiddle with apps on your PC would have been to download the SDK, download an emulator and some such similar horse manure most of us wont bother with. Which means, it’d be limited to the XDA frequenting diaspora. Unless you are crazy, the effort of setting up the whole shindig would cancel out any benefit from emulating the app on the PC.

BlueStacks plugs into a bunch of app stores from where it can download apps, like Amazon, GetJar apart from the Android Market. And the best part is, you don’t have to worry about where the app is being downloaded from. We at TYX here, just love technologies that silently do their job without raising a dust storm about it. In other news, we hear Narendra Modi isn’t too happy about BlueStacks. #fakingnews

Watch the video below to get a feel of things with Bluestacks.

However, not everything is rosy. Apps built for an Android phone are optimized for the touchscreen, not a keyboard and mouse. So, unless you have a touchscreen on your PC, you’re not going to be able to milk BlueStacks for all its worth. Also, you cannot run this without having an Android phone in the first place.

A true win would be when synced apps have their data synced on the phone and the PC. I should be able to seamlessly shift between Bluestacks and the phone. Heck, I want to control my phone from the PC when both the devices are in the same WiFi network. While that is possible, with a whole lot of tinkering, we do need a simpler solution where you do not need to hack and crack the lifeblood out of the phone.

So, until the time we have more synchronicity in our app experience, let stuff like BlueStacks feed our frenzy.

The interwebs are always abuzz with excitement when an Apple product nears its launch date. Every tech blog worth its salt is speculating about every feature that the new product could possibly have. All the more when it’s known that this was the last device Steve Jobs personally looked into. The new iPad, apart from putting 1st generation iPad owners in a fix, ticks all the right boxes and pushes the envelope for what a tablet device should be.
Although it looks only like an incremental update, it’s half a head and a shoulder above any tablet out there. But should you buy it? Or 1 share of AAPL on the NYSE instead? Allow us to help.

The Good

THE Screen
What good is a tablet if it doesn’t have a great touch screen adorning its front? The new iPad comes with a humongous 2048×1536 resolution. That’s 3 million pixels. More than that full HD TV in your living room. But packed into less than 10 inches. In other news, the girlfriends of people who’ve used the new iPad have reportedly left them because that’s all they can talk about.

Hardware
Who can make 3 million pixels dance in unison? The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee? No. The upgraded quad core GPU on the new iPad. The trusty A5 dual core CPU has been retained and the RAM has been doubled to a full gigabyte. There is also the option of an LTE iPad which allows you to browse at a theoretical maximum of 72mbps. Who needs oil wells when you’ve got LTE?

Battery
With hardware like that, the battery life sure must have taken a beating, right? Wrong. It remains the same at around 10 hours on LTE. That’s thanks to a battery that’s rated some 60% higher than the earlier one. Infact, its a wee bit thicker and 60 grams heavier. Go to the gym, build some muscles and the new iPad should be featherweight. Just as ‘ol Jobs would like it.

Apps
We like the fact that apps like iSight and Garageband allow you to create serious content. The tablet is very much moving from being a purely consumption device to a creation device. We’re not there yet, but yes, we’re very much headed there.

Camera
5 mega pixels. That’s the new camera on the iPad. It’s got some stuff to make it better, but I don’t really care. You should also know that I’m the one who points and laughs at people trying to click photographs at places like the Blue Frog or Hard Rock Cafe with a tablet.

Price
The new iPad starts at $499 and goes upto $849, which is the same as the one it replaces. Apple is playing it smart here in a bid to ward off competition from the Android army. It also means that the iPad2 is now available for much less.

The Bad

Mono speaker
I don’t really understand why the new iPad doesn’t come equipped with a stereo speaker. While the mono speaker is loud enough, a stereo speaker could have made those Facetime chats and video watching sessions seem more natural. I suggest you try out the Sony Tablet S to get a feel of stereo speakers on a tablet.

Voice dictation
Apple hasn’t given Siri to the new iPad. Come to think of it, this device needs Siri far more than the 4S. Don’t even get me started about typing and general tablet inputting woes. Instead, there’s this half baked voice dictation feature which also needs to be connected to the internet to function. Bewilderment, I tell you.

The iPad2 is still a great device.
The iPad2 still has that awesome dual core processor, a nice 9.7″ screen and a lakh+ apps going for it. If you don’t really need all those pixels, the iPad2 is a solid buy. All the more because every model is a full $100 cheaper. Also, if you have someone flying in from Malaysia , ask them to get it. Even cheaper. Merry Christmas.

The camera’s not 8MP
You can safely call me a hypocrite or a nit picker or both, but why doesn’t the new iPad have the iPhone 4S’ 8MP sensor? At least the tablet shooters would have had some justification when bad people like me pointed and laughed at them. How cruel, Apple.

The Fugly

Front camera’s from the stone age.
The optics become the bone of contention yet again. The front camera is a paltry 0.3MP VGA camera. Which is good only when you have a pimply face. Otherwise, things aren’t going to be nice on that screen. We’re ready to bet anything that the next update will have an 8MP shooter at the back and atleast 1.3MP’s at the front. But that’s an obvious redundancy. I’d rather have that gorgeous swivelling camera unit from the Notion Ink Adam, thank you very much.

Take a look inside.
Samsung makes a majority of the components for the iPad 3. Which means the Koreans are going to make a device that’s very, very similar and very, very soon. Waiting for it is obvious if you’re the type who spends questionable amounts of time on XDA.

What’s with the name, yaar?
Everyone and their uncles on the web predicted that the new tablet from Apple would probably be called the iPadHD. Or iPad3, at best. But just ‘iPad’? Although, Apple has been referring it to as the ‘new iPad’, MBAs across the planet are going crazy with that simple a nomenclature.
Which means there’ll be a mad rush for affixing the word ‘new’ to, well, everything new. Expect babies to be christened ‘New Malhotra’, ‘New Chadda’ and such like.
Usage – “Oh ji, aapka New Arora toh bada sona hai ji”.
We also predict higher self esteem amongst first generation iPad owners.

Who should buy the iPad?
Let’s get this straight. The new iPad with all its bells and whistles is but an incremental update. If you are already an iPad2 owner, we don’t see much of an upside investing in the new iPad. Invest in one stock of Apple on the NYSE, instead.
However, 1st generation iPad owners could consider laying their monies on this. We also recommend it to the frustrated owners of Android tablets. Most of all, we recommend it to all the MLAs of the BJP. Heck, that screen is pure Lok Sabha material. Bhai, porn ho to shaan se.
And iPad2 owners, by the time the 4th generation iPad is out, the Apple stock will be closer to $800-900 based on earnings forecasts. You can sell the stock, get a new iPad, accessories and still be left with money to treat your lady/gent to a nice dinner. Win, then.

Originally written for The Youth Express

While the Windows 8 consumer preview seems to be clocking downloads faster than Redmond can handle, everyone seems to be of the singular opinion. Metro is not good enough desktop tech. Everyone loves the UI, but it just feels built for touchscreens. Here then is a video of Windows 8 on a (rather large looking) tablet and the iPad 2. I leave you to conclude what you feel about each of the platforms. And yes, be warned, Joshua Topolsky says ‘its pretty straightforward’ like a gazillion times.

[via Nikhil Daphale]

Just so you get the context, that's a bird taking flight...

Let’s face it. This country loves free music. Free-er the merrier. But within this free music demanding junta, there is an India that does want to pay for the music it consumes. An India that understands the effort that goes behind publishing art.

We have seen efforts at peddling music by our mobile and DTH operators but industry insiders will tell you that it ain’t really working.
Long have we waited for a credible outlet from where we can buy high quality music legally. Flipkart seems to have hit the sweet spot with timing the launch of their music retailing efforts. There is a growing amount of good music making its way into Bollywood and there’s an equal amount of artists waiting to be heard. Can Flyte serve as a good platform where musicians can hope for steady revenue? Will Flipkart support independent musicians without the backing of big labels?

Flipkart is clearly playing the volume game here with songs starting at 6 bucks a pop and selling for not more than 15. And when you buy the whole album, the cost/song goes down even further. You can download tracks in varying bitrates and it’s all DRM free. I still cannot believe that I got an entire Dire Straits album for 99 bucks! That’s just $2! Ah, the joys of cheap, quality stuff.

But it’s not all dripping awesomeness. You can download a track only 4 times. And they don’t really provide album covers. You’d have to rely on the vagaries of your music player for that. Besides, the download manager needs work. It involves downloading a ‘.fkdm’ file and then opening it through the download manager. It all feels very cumbersome. A simple login box that connects you with their Digital Library should be more like it.

In case Flyte does pull in big money for the music industry, Bollywood will start churning out more music to appeal to the upwardly mobile, digital, crowd who don’t think twice before clicking the ‘proceed to checkout’ button. Besides, I want them to really step up and make it easy for independent artists to sell on their store. Cheesy as it may sound, that will be the true flight for the Indian music industry.

[Flyte]

[Image Courtesy]

P.S. Even if they don’t give indie music a push, we know that the Horlicks loving junta at OML & NH7 are gearing up for a digital music store. I am betting the kitchen sink that it’ll be far better than Flyte when it comes to overall experience.

We live in a world where there exist certain beauty ‘guidelines’. A somewhat hypocritical world where we judge people on how they look. So naturally, people go to great lengths to look the part. This video, which stars Adobe Photoshop is an excellent mockery of our desire to fit into these beauty guidelines. And do that without actually exercising or doing anything harmful to one of the most beautiful creations ever; the human body.

I’m not exactly a fan of user manuals. I think they are huge waste of paper and in today’s deeply intertwined world, its not even a necessity. But when something is this intuitive, bring it on!
(awesome video after the break)

via Hari Chakyar

Vitamins Design

1. Gorgeous damned design. Finally a tablet that looks like more than just a big screen cousin of a phone. You have to love the wedge at the side. Allows for easy holding, feels solid and makes it a tad more easier to type when you rest it on a desk. And oh, there are these tiny dots on the back which make holding it a joy. Latecomers to the market can be forgiven when the design is this sexy.
   
2. Modifications done to the Honeycomb flavour of Android are minimal and functional. Someone sure kept a leash on those kid-in-a-candy-store programmers when told that its got a Tegra 2 inside. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 can just stick it. This is the best Android tablet you can lay your hands upon. Of course, Android being flawed to no end is another story for another day, but good job Sony.
3. The screen is 9.4 inches and not 10.1 inches. Sony understands that this is not about bigger-better-faster. This one feels good when you hold it and you don’t really miss the missing three quarters of an inch anyway. Sony’s raided its parts bin and added the Bravia engine to this thing. Makes colours shine through and look really bright.
4. The piece de resistance in this tablet is the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. That, coupled with the 1 gigabyte of RAM, the trusty GeForce ULP and the Tablet S (what a retarded name, you gaiz) is ready for anything you throw at it. I’d go far as to say that it irons out the flaws of the Honeycomb flavour and the Android platform in general. Nevertheless, best Android tablet experience ever. Touchwiz can stick it.
   
5. To its credit, people across the range found the tablet really intuitive, not just nutcase geeks like me. I replaced my technophobe Dad’s daily dead wood newspaper, the Economic Times with the tablet app and he found it a breeze to use. ‘I don’t have to depend on the vagaries of the paperwallah’ said he. I even gave the tablet to a 3 yr old kindergartner and she had a blast with the sketching app. A for Apple was made without much fuss. Red apple with green leaf, mind.  Thanks, Steve. The tablet truly is a more intimate experience.
   

   Yours Truly doing some posing.

6. I’m not really a tablet person but this one is a smashing reading device. I was reading Sir Richard Branson’s Business Stripped Bare via the physical book. Given the microscopic font, my pace was far from good. I got the tablet, promptly downloaded an ebook and finished reading the book in no time at all. In the Mumbai locals. General compartment.
   Apart from books, magazines are fun to read on this as well. Zinio got me a free copy of the latest Harvard Business Review and it made the stoic, boring language on it a joy to read as well. Google Currents too, is amazing on this one. So is Feedly. Ekdum jhakaas. Me gusta.
7. I do not have comprehensive tests to give you, but like every smartphone, you have to turn the screen brightness down a few notches to make sure it lasts throughout the day. And oh yeah, turn off the radio when not in a WiFi zone. Given the bulk and wedge design, Sony could have packed a better battery. Or maybe its the inefficiency of Android. Lets hope future software versions improve it.
   
8. This one does have a decent 5MP shooter (without flash, mind) but, to me, cameras on tablets are about as useful as a vestigial organ. Who wants to click with such huge devices? Oh, document scanning, AR and all? Ok. Everyone, please copy the swiveling camera unit from the Notion Ink Adam. Or just call that damned factory in Shenzhen which does it…
9. Sony’s packed an Infrared blaster into the tablet and it doubles as a pretty good remote control for all your devices. It silenced the universal-remote-control-skeptic in me and did its job admirably. I am still zonked it worked.
10. DLNA worked like a charm as well, no problems at all. And the best part is, you don’t need Sony products for it. They work with everything. Don’t you just love it when these wireless technologies just work? I have a customary tribal dance to go along whenever such things happen.
    

    Propreitary charging port. This. Is. NOWNSAINS.

11. If there’s one thing that got my goat, it had to be the godawful proprietary charging/docking port. In trying to improve upon the iPad, they even copied this feature for ‘structural stability’ purposes when attached to the dock or some such similar horse manure. But wait! I’m not done. There’s a little flap to the left, which when flicked open reveals a mini USB port. NOT a microUSB. They sell an adapter to hook you up with USB devices. Ah, see?

    Dear Sony, you are not going to wipe that big red blot in your balance sheet by selling adapters and proprietary accessories. And snap out of it, you’re no Apple. These aren’t the 1980′s and you’re no longer the leader of the pack. Conform to the norm and join the party like a happy bunny or be left out. Or just start innovating like crazy again. I still treasure my decade old Sony Walkman for keeps. Revolution mangta humko, evolution nahi.

    

    SD card slot and miniUSB port. NOT microUSB.

12. The Tablet S is one of the few devices that are Play Station certified and can play select PSOne titles with consummate ease. The experience leaves a lot to be desired since the games weren’t designed to be played on a touchscreen in the first place, but it could bring back to life some age old classics. Hope we get a few simple gems out of this exercise.
13. Transferring files from your computer to the tablet is quite a pain. Since the boffins didn’t provide a USB cable, I recommend using something like SwiFTP or AirDroid.
14. The Tablet S is blessed with stereo speakers, but I have to admit, they sound tinny. Which is where software gimmickry comes in. Sony’s got 2 signal enhancement tech coined XLoud and ClearPhase which do well to improve the output, but are limited to the music app. I wish they were implemented across the board. Much joy would happen.
    Sony also gives you a free 6 month trial to their Music Unlimited service. Not available in India. Chuck. Moving on.
    
15. I must warn you that there is this really bright LED at the side and you should turn it off at night. Or go to the app settings of your mail and social client, turn it off for good. The pulsating effect can wreak havoc if you are a light sleeper. If someone tells me that I shouldn’t be keeping the tablet by my bedside, I’ll ask them to promptly buzz off. A tablet is meant to be more personal than a netbook/laptop.
    

    The front camera.

16. There are absolutely no hardware/soft touch buttons on the front panel. Which is a smart design move but may the heavens save you if an app crashes or the screen freezes. Dude, this is Android. Bound to happen. You said something? No, I didn’t hear that.
17. Just a friendly reminder that this doesn’t really have 3G. In India, this renders the device useless the moment you step out of home/office. If any smarty pants geek is going to suggest turning a smartphone into a 3G hotspot, I’d be then left with 2 useless devices without any radio capabilities.
18. The tablet is not nearly as good at covering your face from the sun when hauled up against the Samsung 10.1′s screen. It’s 0.7 inches better than this one. Yeah, I just had to say this. To put things in perspective…
    

    Kids let loose with SketchXpress

19. The Tablet S is priced at friggin INR 29,900. Rubbish. NOWNSAINS pricing. All you get in the box is the tablet and its charger. Not even a cover. Wouldn’t I just rather buy an iPad2, then? Read point no. 11 if anyone wants to justify the stratospheric price. Accessories are very pricey as well. This just makes Sony look real cheap wanting to make a quick buck.
    Simple suggestion for Sony India All Stars MBA Mktg team. 25k as is and 30k with all the accessories. No, don’t argue with me. I know its available for $399 in Yankeeland.
    The 3G version (whenever that comes out) can retail for no more than 33k, all accessories included. May I point you to this Economist article on Kodak vs. Fujifilm. Do not try to use the legacy of the brand, lean on the ad agencies and take the easy way out. Price responsibly and deliver convenience in a manner never seen before. The consumer has many more options to choose from, otherwise.
    

    Even a corrupt, uneducated politician knows... (Thank you for this awesome pronunciation, Singham)

20. There is no taking away the fact that the Sony Tablet S is the best Android tablet out there. Be a nice person and get it from Flipkart. I don’t drink anymore. So your money will go to a good street food shop. I assure you.

Pictures by Rutavi Mehta/Photokatha A few by me as well. Edits by Kukku Thampi.
Thanks to Perfect Relations for loaning me the device.

Every year, I look forward to two events. CES and MWC. The Consumer Electronics Show, at Las Vegas is a showcase of the evolution of mankind, although this doesn’t make a good case for the “evolution of mankind” part.  Let’s see the “WOW” of CES 2012.

1)  LG launched its first full OLED TV, the 55 inch LG 55EM9600. Being a completely OLED display( unlike the  LED backlit LCD’s available in the market), it shows deeper blacks, richer colors and consumes lesser power.  Full specs for this 4mm thin beauty can be found here.

2)  It’s finally here. Intel joins the smartphone chipset bandwagon and ties up with Lenovo to produce its first Intel Medfield running phone. The Lenovo Racer-A  has a 4.5 inch 720p HD display with a 1.6GHz dual core Intel Medfield SoC. Other specs include 8MP camera, HD recording and the standard connectivity package. Here’s  a look at the phone.

On the windows phone side, we had two new announcements. Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC titanII. Both of them are fit to be the titans of the windows phone game. Lumia 900 has a beefed up 4.3” display and LTE but retains most of the Lumia 800 internals. Whilst the Titan II is a behemoth of a phone at 4.7” and a 16MP (yes, 16 MegaPixels) camera.  With the fluid WP7.5, operating these phones will sure be a breeze.

4) Coming to tablets, we had a lot of tablets announed and launched by various companies. As far as the specs go, Asus  transformer prime  TF700 and Acer Iconia  tab 2012 are Full HD screen monsters with an equally jawdropping quad core processor. However, the best tablet of CES 2012 goes to Asus MeMO 370T. At $249, you get a 7-inch HD screen, quad core processor, 8MP snapper with HD recording and other bells and whistles. I can already see Kindle Fire’s and the Nook Tablets running for cover.

But the real star for me would be the philanthropic OLPC XO-3 tablet. (Hit this link to know more about the One Laptop Per Child project)Its a rugged tablet running a Fedora core. It can be charged with a hand crank or the solar panel which doubles up as a cover for the tablet. Lets hope this takes learning well beyond our reverend universities and into the hands of the poor. Learning just received a shot in the arm. We wish them well.

OLPC XO-3 Gallery by TheVerge.com

These are the “wow” worthy moments of CES 2012. Faster-better-cheaper ultrabooks were present dime a dozen at CES 2012, so were the DSLR’s (I liked the Nikon D4 but it should be priced aggresively.) and there were almost no netbooks this year. This year’s CES had very little to show for innovation. Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX crammed a 3300 mAH battery in an eight mm body, but that was about it.

CES showed an incremental trend in technology. Apple pulled out and so did many others. Technology firms probably want their own space to control everything that they can to put up a big show. Just like Vegas, maybe, CES is too noisy for them. Come on CES, get them back. Give us more consumer, less electronics.