Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

Motorola Moto E Unboxing

Motorola Moto E, the latest budget smartphone from the makers of the uber popular Moto G, was launched in India, a day before yesterday, at an event in New Delhi. Priced at a lowly Rs. 6,999, India was one of the International launch markets where Motorola has pursued the same strategy as before, for its Moto X and Moto G devices. The device will sell in an online-only model through one of the most popular e-commerce retailers in the country, Flipkart. Due to this efficient distribution model, we have already got the device in our labs, for the usual testing that we do, and of course, the first thing we did was unbox it and see what it packs. We also think it will benefit the online buyers as this is the closest one can get to checking it out in person. So here you go, the unboxing of the Motorola Moto E with an overview of the hardware and the software, including tidbits on the storage and RAM numbers –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaMZVUY4yjk

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Windows Phone 8.1 Preview updated, bug fixes and battery life improvements inbound

Windows Phone 8.1 debuted as a developer preview just a month ago, and today, it has received its first update, in preparation for a wider consumer launch later in the coming weeks or months. The update, first publicized by Windows Phone champion Joe Belfiore, reportedly brings many bug fixes, some new features and the much needed battery life improvements some users had wanted. The update is immediately available for download from the “Phone update” section under the Windows Phone settings menu.

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Close to 5,000 of Nokia’s Chennai Plant workers opt for VRS

Nokia’s Chennai plant, the one in Sri Perumbudur that used to assemble millions of phones, had come to a screeching halt when the Tamil Nadu High Court charged the Finnish company with tax evasion, to the tune of Rs. 3,000 crores. With some of the workers on indefinite leave and near-zero production at the plant, the whole ecosystem was thrown into imbalance, with clueless workers, indecisive management and painfully long court proceedings. With the future looking bleak, Nokia had offered its workers VRS (Voluntary retirement services), and about 5,000 of the ~7,500 employees have opted for it today.

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Monument Valley arrives on Android for Rs. 245

Monument Valley, one of the most beautiful looking puzzle games ever, has arrived on Android, as promised, for a similar price of Rs. 245 on the Google Play Store. Released back in April for iOS, the game garnered praise for its stunningly designed levels, sporting a minimalistic 3D approach. It is a beautiful combination of art and mathematics, as it incorporates the optical illusion of a penrose triangle in most of its levels and bases the gameplay on its design, using impossible architecture. From a different perspective, it is a simple game of getting from point A to point B, usually by solving puzzles with mechanical movements. It has 10 levels of eyegasmic goodness and we think it is totally worth a buy, if you are into visually enriching puzzle games. Here is the launch trailer and the download links –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC1jHHF_Wjo

Download on Google Play

Download on Apple App Store

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Popcorn Time is now available on Android

Popcorn time, a popular and upcoming streaming service for pirated movies and TV shows, has just launched itself as an app on Android. The app has already been pulled from the Google Play store but the APK has been made available on the service’s website, which already caters to the desktop platforms with respective apps. Touted to be a Netflix-like service for pirated content, the platform is based on a P2P network, and so, it manages to stay up, using the longstanding copyright loophole that the service doesn’t host content, but the many of its anonymous users do. This is very much like a torrent service, but you can stream the movies instead of downloading them. All the movies are available in 720p and 1080p as streams and it is possible to even choose different streams on the service. Anyway, here is a video of the app announcement –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtcTz-CPesQ

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iBerry Auxus Core X8 3G tablet Unboxing

iBerry, a manufacturer known for earlier products like the Auxus Nuclea N1 and the Nuclea N2, is now into tablets, with the Auxus Core X8 3G being one of them. Like many of its products, the Auxus Core X8 borrows heavily from Samsung, in terms of design, and that is no surprise, considering how similar the Nuclea N2 looked, with respect to the Galaxy Note 3. Here is a small time manufacturer, trying to ride on a wave created by biggies, but in the end, for some, the product alone matters, and for the price it comes at, the Auxus Core X8 has some really decent specifications and options. So, lets see what it is like on video –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNJ_Fl-AITQ

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Spotify finally gets a makeover on Windows Phone with new UI and features

Spotify, one of the world’s leading streaming music services, has long neglected the Windows Phone platform, even when it already had an archaic version for the yesteryear Windows Phone 7 operating system, but times are a changing. A much needed makeover has finally happened and the update is now available for all Windows Phone 8 users. The update not only includes a visual makeover, but also new features of the service like “Spotify Radio”, a Pandora-like auto-recommendations. But the biggest catch is, the app still requires you to have a premium account, whereas free streaming is available on other platforms since the end of last year. We should hopefully see another update to address this issue.

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Motorola updates Moto G in the UK with 4G and a micro SD slot, priced at 149 GBP unlocked

Moto G LTE

Moments after launching the Motorola Moto E in India, stirring up the mobile market once again is the launch of the newly updated Moto G in the UK, with 4G LTE and a micro SD slot. Two of the biggest complaints regarding the Moto G have been literally decimated with this updated model of an already successful device. This device, launched in the UK, caters to the newly upgraded networks in the country and the addition of expandable storage is just icing on the cake. The Moto G for the Indian market comes without 4G or a micro SD slot, but we certainly feel it could have launched with the latter, as 4G is still in its very early stages here. Priced at US$219 / 149 GBP, it is a bit costlier than before, but is still well within the budget of many, especially with LTE.

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Oracle wins copyright appeal against Google, new trial to follow

Remember when Google won the lawsuit against Oracle for Android’s copyright infringement on Java? That ruling, which was from a Districts court in San Francisco, has been overruled by a Federal Appeals court, which has practically rubbished the former’s decision. The new ruling states that Oracle’s Java APIs, the ones it acquired as a part of its Sun Microsystems acquisition, do fall under copyright and hence, a new trial on fair use and damages will follow. This is a big blow to Google, purveyor of the omnipresent Android operating system, as it would need to face a fresh set of trials, again. Oracle, on the other hand, will see this as an opportunity to get back at the Mountain View company.

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Yahoo News Digest now available for Android, adds International Edition

Yahoo News Digest, a product of its Summly acquisition, took form as an iOS app back in January, when it debuted as a beautiful news reader with many sources. The same app is now available for Android, and it looks almost exactly like its iOS counterpart, pixel to pixel, which is a good thing because we think the app is beautiful. However, you do get a really nice home screen widget that lets you browse the feed at a glance. Previously limited only to the US and the UK, the News Digest app goes global this time around with an International Edition and another country-focused Canadian edition. Users in US, UK and Canada will all get local editions along with the International edition, which in turn will be available for all the worldwide users.

Download Yahoo News Digest on Google Play

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Pebble gets a minor firmware update, iOS and Android apps also updated

The Pebble smartwatch, one of the forerunners in the rapidly expanding wearables market, has been going through a transformation in software rather than hardware for quite a while now, since the introduction of more capabilities in its v2.0 update. Today, it has gotten its .1 release, a minor update to the Smartwatch’s firmware which is mostly bug fixes and a couple of new features. Also updated are the official iOS and Android apps, which have gained a minor update with bug fixes mostly. The updates are a sign of platform maturity, as big feature releases for the hardware are almost done, in our opinion, but hey, we always love surprises.

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Microsoft’s Surface mini reportedly uses a Qualcomm processor

Microsoft is all set to unveil the Surface mini, a 8 inch Windows tablet at an event in New York City on the 20th of May. It is just 13 more days until the announcement, and we don’t even know how it looks, but are finally starting to see some bits and pieces of information floating around the internet. Bloomberg’s Dina Bass reports that the Surface Mini will come with a Qualcomm processor, unlike its bigger brothers Surface RT and Surface 2, which run on rival Nvidia’s chips. Nokia was the only other OEM to come out with a ARM based Windows tablet in 2013, which coincidentally ran on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

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Iran bans Whatsapp, cites “Zionist” Zuckerberg as the reason

Whatsapp, the massively popular instant messaging application, was recently acquired by Facebook for a huge sum of 19 billion dollars. The deal has not even closed, but troubles already seem to be starting to pile up for the company, starting with this – Iran, officially known as the Islamic Republic of Iran, has censored Whatsapp in its country, citing “Zionist” Zuckerberg as the reason for the ban.

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Lava Iris 504Q+ Unboxing

Lava’s Iris 504Q, a mid range phone that released last year, came with a great screen, a decent camera and good build quality. Fast forward to now, we have its successor, the Lava Iris 504Q+, which comes with some minor changes in specifications as well as build quality and more importantly, the camera. Priced at 13,990 Rs. the Iris 504Q+ sports a 10 MP Sony sensor and an upgraded in-built storage of 8 GB, which makes it slightly better than its predecessor. So, what does it pack in its box, and how does it look and feel, in terms of hardware and software? Our unboxing video can help answer these questions –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG8-Fz-C45I

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Microsoft to reveal a smaller Surface on May 20th, sends out invites

Microsoft’s strategic shift into a “Devices and Services” company saw the release of its own hardware range, under the “Surface” moniker, which was previously donned by the touchscreen tables, now called Pixel Sense. The Surface devices were tablets meant to show case Windows at its finest form. The Surface RT and the Surface Pro have seen two iterations already, with the former running on powerful ARM processors, while the latter, running on Ultrabook-grade specifications, meant to give high performance in a portable touchscreen form factor. Suffice to say, both of them have been met only with lukewarm response. With mini tablets gaining a large foothold, even Apple acknowledged the need with its iPad mini, and several OEM partners of Microsoft started releasing their own 8 inch Windows 8.1 tablets, once the OS was ready to support smaller screens. And now, it seems like Microsoft is ready to show the world what it can do with a smaller screen, on May 20th, as the company plans to reveal a new Surface device, at an event in New York city.

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