Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

Half of the Angry Birds games go free for Windows Phone 8

Angry Birds has been a longstanding mega hit gaming franchise from Rovio and usually, a copy sells for 99 cents, or 55 Indian rupees, in the local currency. There was a time when the original game went free for a while, as a part of Nokia’s promotion, but suddenly now, half of the collection has gone free. We are not sure if this is a store glitch or something, but exactly half of the Angry Birds collection has gone free in the Indian Windows Phone 8 Store. The games that have gone free are – Original Angry Birds, Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Star Wars II, while the Seasons, Rio and Space are still showing as paid.

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Grand Theft Auto: Truck carrying 22,500 LG G2 Smartphones stolen in Indiana

“Bring me the LG G2, a truck load.” said Mrs. Phillips, and Trevor did, only to return and find his mom missing. But that was in a weird alternate reality gaming universe where “Deludamol” was called LG G2. But in reality, a bizarre incident reveals its similarities with the former, where not one, not two, but a truck, full of LG G2 Smartphones(total 22,500), has been stolen in Indiana, USA. CNet reports that the theft happened when the truck driver, who was on his way to one of the Sprint distribution centers in Kentucky, was taking a bathroom break. Seemingly confirmed by a LG spokesperson, the damage due to this theft is roughly around 12 million USD. That’s a lot of money.

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Panasonic P11 Unboxing

Panasonic might have announced its retirement from the consumer smartphone market worldwide, but weirdly enough, that has not stopped the company from launching devices in India. One of them is the Panasonic P11, which seems like a specced down version of the P51 that we reviewed earlier. The P11 has almost the same specifications as the P51, with a quad core 1.2 GHz processor, 4GB of internal storage, but running on the older Android 4.1 operating system. But what’s striking is the outer shell, in a radical fluorescent green colour. But not to worry, there are replaceable covers in the box, which we show you in the unboxing video here –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlh2k911Qps

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Dhoom 3 game exclusively arrives on Windows Phone 8

Another day, another exclusive game/app for Windows Phone in India. Just after Krrish3, we now have Dhoom 3, another highly awaited multi starrer sequel in Bollywood this year, is getting its own game. Publishing games for movies is kind of a new marketing avenue for the respective movie producers and Yash Raj Films, Dhoom 3’s maker acknowledges this, by partnering with game dev 99Games Online Private Limited to release the Dhoom 3 game. It is an endless 3D moto racing game, which follows the popular formula of Temple Run and Subway Surfers with perks, power ups and feels like a good fit in this genre. You play Aamir Khan, whose bike you maneuver, who is being chased by Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra in two other bikes, and thus begins the endless chase to fight your boredom.

You can download the game from the Windows Phone Store here. And here’s a trailer for the game, it’s CG and does not represent actual gameplay –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0zuM-sWROs

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RedBus.in app for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 gets a limited time offer for tickets

RedBus.in is one of India’s most popular bus ticket booking and reservation service, which incidentally released apps for the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms earlier, with a great Metro UI based experience. But now, they have not only released updates to these apps, but also added a bit of an exclusive offer to them. With the RedBus.in app on Windows 8, you get Rs. 75/- off on a ticket, if it costs more than Rs. 500/-, till December 31st, 2013. Considering this is the holiday season when a lot of bookings are done, this seems like a perfect match for Windows 8 users wanting to book tickets for most destinations in India.

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Apple iPad Mini refreshed with a retina display, A7 64 bit processor and a $399 price tag

Along with the new iPad Air, Apple has also refreshed the “mini” version. Yes, the iPad mini has gained the much awaited retina display upgrade along with the new A7 64 bit processor that debuted on the iPhone 5s recently. Otherwise, the device is almost untouched but to be frank, the iPad mini’s retina display and the A7 are substantial upgrades to the device, and it will make it much more viable than before. This is now really just a smaller version of the iPad, the complete functions in a smaller form. It is priced at a higher $399 for the retina version while the original iPad mini now retails at a lesser $299 along with the newer version.

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Apple iPad Air with a new thin and light design and A7 64 bit processor announced

Apple has just announced the refresh to its iPad lineup with the new iPad Air and the iPad mini with retina display. The iPad Air not just gains a new name, it also gains a new thin and light design. Learning from the engineering of its own iPad mini, the iPad Air loses a lot of weight to weigh just a pound, while thinning down its bezels and overall thickness to just 7.5 mm. The iPad Air also looks a lot like the iPad mini in terms of the design language with beautifully rounded corners, chamfered edges and a smooth finish for the back. The internals also gain a generational boost with the new A7 64 bit processor that debuted on the iPhone 5s. Apple marks a 72x increase in graphics performance when compared to the original iPad which makes things interesting.

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Nokia Lumia 2520 Photo Gallery

Nokia’s device division might be acquired by Microsoft soon, but that hasn’t stopped the company from bringing back its mobility vision in computers back into its portfolio. We saw the yesteryear Booklet 3G, which was one of the very few notebooks that could use a SIM and now we see a similar vision in the LTE enabled Lumia 2520, one of the first tablets to launch without a WiFi-only variant. It’s a bold step by Nokia, wanting to fill the void created by WiFi only tablets that are seemingly used only at home. Launching it with a beautiful power keyboard as an accessory for some extra bucks, the tablet envisions portable productivity with standard Nokia influences in hardware showing off. We took the Lumia 2520 for a spin in front of our camera, so here is a photo gallery, for your viewing pleasure.

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Whatsapp for Nokia Asha 501 coming next month, announces 350 million active users per month

Way back, when evleaks had leaked the Asha 500 press image(the same one that got announced today), one icon that stood out was that of Whatsapp. The most awaited app on the platform is finally revealed as coming next month with all the new Asha devices announced today at the Nokia World. And yes, it will be coming to the only Asha SW platform based device on the market today too, the Asha 501. I have been personally holding up on recommending the Asha 501 due to the lack of Whatsapp and now it’s a huge sigh of relief that it’s finally here, at least by the next month.

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Nokia Story Teller, Beamer, Nokia Camera and more coming with Lumia Black Firmware update

The Nokia Lumia 1520 and the Nokia Lumia 1320 are the two new Lumia smartphones that have launched today at the Nokia World event in Abu Dhabi. Hardware differentiators like a massive screen and unibody build aside, Nokia has also announced that its own “Lumia Black” firmware will be running on top of the Windows Phone GDR3 update that started rolling out recently. This is the successor to the Amber update that is currently available for all Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices and it brings all sorts of new app experiences and improvements to the new devices launched today and eventually to other phones too. The new apps shown off today, as a part of this update are – Nokia Story Teller, Nokia Beamer and Nokia camera amongst others.

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Nokia’s Refocus app for the Lumia 1020 and the 1520 lets you focus after you have taken the photo

Lytro camera made one innovation really popular. It allowed people to refocus a photo AFTER taking one. This provided really nice possibilities for people to not care about focus and just look at composition. But the Lytro had a few drawbacks like low resolution images and proprietary controller, but then we saw news of Oppo planning to release the first MEMS camera with auto focus so fast that it could take 6 full resolution images in a split second with different focus points. But guess who is doing it first, with just an app? None other than Nokia. After launching the Lumia 1520, the Lumia 1320 and the Lumia 2520 devices, the company has let loose a lot of new camera related features for its PureView devices. The Refocus app is one them. Yes, they just announced that the Nokia Refocus app will be able to let you change the focus after you take a photo, or you can keep the complete photo in focus. Just like the Lytro camera.

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Nokia Lumia 1520 Photo Gallery

There is new meaning to the popular “see more” marketing tagline from Nokia, as it aptly applies to the newly launched Nokia Lumia 1520 and its huge 6 inches of screen real estate. As you can see from the image above, you can literally “see more” of our webpage on that massive screen. It helps that it is full HD resolution too, and finally has that much needed upgrade to the faster Snapdragon 800 SoC. This phone aims to be the jack of all trades and aims to offer everything in a huge screen, which is currently the awkward trend in Smartphones. So, how does it look in real? We have got a complete photo walkthrough of the device, in glorious yellow. Read past the break to take a look at them.

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Nokia announces RAW support for the Lumia 1020 and the Lumia 1520

This is a biggie. Just fresh off all the device announcements, Nokia have announced RAW support for its premiere photography products – the Nokia Lumia 1020 and the just launched Nokia Lumia 1520. Both the devices will be getting support for capturing a pure RAW image in the DNG format that can simultaneously be taken along with a JPEG, just like before, yet the full resolution too was in JPEG. This is actually excellent news for photographers who want COMPLETE control over the images they take. For example, any one who is serious about Pro photography will always have a RAW sample of their photos. Think of it like a negative that you can process anytime in Lightroom and Photoshop and produce an image, or many images out of it. Providing this functionality on a mobile phone is something amazing, and really sees the potential of the Lumia 1020 and the 1520’s cameras.

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Asphalt 8, Temple Run 2, Danger Dash, FIFA 14 and more games coming to Windows Phone 8

Along with the new device announcements at Nokia World, several major apps and games also have been announced as “coming soon” to Windows Phone 8 devices. Instagram, Vien and Flipboard aside, there are a lot of big games coming to the platform too, albeit a bit later than its Android and iOS counterparts. Some of the big names include Asphalt 8: Airborne, Temple Run 2 and Danger Dash. Other notable additions are My Talking Tom, which has been a favorite on iPhones for a long time, and Ubisoft’s Rabbid Big Bangs and the popular platformer Rayman Fiesta Run.

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Nokia Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 tablet announced – 10.1″ full HD, 32 GB, LTE and 11 hour battery life

The Nokia Lumia 2520 has been officially launched at the Nokia World event in Abu Dhabi today. The Windows RT tablet from Nokia has been leaked before, and has since been much awaited for a long time. But now Nokia has made it clear that they are in the tablet market and are aiming to make the device more mobile than other tablets have been. Stephen Elop specifically mentioned in the keynote how Nokia is targeting the usage times that the traditional tablets cannot work in, like during the day other than mornings or evenings, by adding 4G LTE functionality, better portability and better battery life. The 10.1 tablet, running on Windows RT is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 – MSM8974 chipset which provides the LTE functionality as well as blazing fast Quad Core performance for the Lumia 2520. Before we dive in to the details, here’s an official hands on video from Nokia –

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

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