Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

Lenovo K900 Unboxing and First Impressions

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UPDATE – You can read the full review here.

The K900 is Lenovo’s massive flagship device that recently launched in India for Rs. 32,999. Boasting some impressive specs, it has landed in our labs for testing. The huge 5.5 inch 1080p IPS screen is coupled with powerful internals such as the 2 GHz dual core Intel CloverTrail processor and the 13 megapixel Sony Stacked CMOS sensor camera, making it a very impressive package. This got us excited for the unboxing and the initial walkthrough of the device, which we captured in a video here –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnwXRcLlff4

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Nokia Lumia 925 Unboxing and First Impressions

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“Too fat and heavy” some shouted, and Nokia listened. The Nokia Lumia 925 fixes the two biggest complaints of then prospective Lumia 920 buyers, its thickness and weight. While the 925 does have some more features(or lack thereof) for differentiation, it was mostly like a hotfix patch for the Lumia 920. We had checked out the device earlier at the launch event in London. It looked a lot different and shied away from the colourful Lumia legacy with a more conservative look with Nokia having brought back aluminium into its fold again. But personally, not having had a personal hands on experience with the Lumia 925(unlike Varun) made me skeptical of the design, until now. Yes, the ritualistic unboxing shattered some pre-conceived notions of mine. We have thus documented the box contents and my initial impressions of the device in this video, watch –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS4HJHri7b0

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Zen Ultrafone 701 HD Review

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The Zen Ultrafone 701 HD is one of the many mid range 5 inch devices that have been flooding the Indian smartphone scene. If you take a look at some of our recent reviews, you’ll know what we are talking about. With almost identical specs, it is pretty hard even for the manufacturers to differentiate within their ecosystem. So, they try to differentiate with price or with features. In this case it’s the price and some more. At Rs. 11,999 is the cheapest 5 inch 720p device really worth its dough? Lets find out.

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HTC reportedly hiring Iron Man superstar Robert Downey Jr. for a $12 Million Ad Campaign

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According to a report from Bloomberg, HTC is supposedly in talks with Iron Man superstar for a $12 million ad deal to promote its Smartphones. The “billionaire, industrialist, playboy” Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. has been at the fore front of the massive success of the Disney-Marvel franchise, and apparently plays a key role in selecting the creative elements for this campaign too. Bloomberg also reports that Robert Dwoney Jr. will be featured in the campaign as himself and not as one of his characters, like Sherlock Holmes or the Iron Man.

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Samsung is now no.1 in India, leaps ahead of Nokia in overall mobile shipments

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Amidst tough competition from various home brands like Karbonn, Micromax and Lava, Samsung has finally snatched the no.1 spot from Nokia as the leader in overall mobile shipments. The market in India is currently highly saturated with numerous models from various homegrown manufacturers but the two stalwarts of the mobile industry have so far been the leaders when it comes to overall share. Nokia had been the no. 1 in overall shipments for a long time in India, mainly because the country was a feature phone market. But as the market has now matured, Nokia is finding it tough to adapt with its new Windows Phone strategy. Samsung has finally achieved what it always secretly wanted, to trump Nokia in India, and it has done it now.

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Disney’s Monsters University game now available on Android and iOS

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Monsters University, the fun animated prequel to the Monsters Inc. movie that released a long time back, has just landed in theatres worldwide today and co-inciding with the release is a brand new game from Disney – Monsters University(yes, the same name as the movie) for iOS and Android. The game features two mini games inside it, and promises to bring more mini games in future updates. It is available for download on the iTunes app store for iOS and the Google Play Store for Android.

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Whatsapp crosses 250 million active users, bigger than Twitter

Whatsapp, one of the most popular online messaging services, has revealed a very important statistic to the Wall Street Journal that it has crossed 250 million active monthly users, which is incidentally bigger than Twitter which recently announced 200 million monthly active users. This makes Whatsapp one of the largest messaging platforms. In comparison, Skype has 280 million monthly active users, and for a 4 year old company such as Whatsapp, a number close to that is actually a great achievement.

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Sony Xperia ZL Android 4.2.2 Jellybean update starts rolling out

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After making its presence felt at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas this year, the Sony Xperia ZL, a full HD smartphone from Sony landed in various countries alongside its thinner brother, the Xperia Z. Running on Android 4.1.2 at launch, the device had a custom Xperia UI on top like usual, and now news comes our way that the Android 4.2.2 update for the Xperia ZL has started to roll out, starting today.

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Microsoft almost bought Nokia’s phone business – WSJ

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Wall Street Journal, the publication that is always bang on target with rumours and speculations reports that Microsoft recently held talks with Nokia to acquire its mobile phone business. The recently held meetings apparently broke down due to various reasons like price and market position. The most interesting thing is that these meetings were held recently and not a thing of the past. Recently there was a non-news that Huawei was planning to acquire Nokia and later completely denied it.

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Opinion – Why 3G Fair Usage Policy is Retarded

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Interrupting my usual Internet binging over a daily 2 hour commute, was a message from my operator. The message said I had exhausted my 2 GB limit for high speed internet this month, and now will be forced to a ridiculously low speed of 64 kbps. Say what?! Yes, I understand the concept of a fair usage policy thank you very much, and hey, apparently, I can either go through with the reduced speeds or order an add-on pack for an additional 250 rupees for a GB of 3G data. How lovely!

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Nvidia announces GPU licensing starting with Kepler, to compete with PowerVR

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Nvidia, one of the world’s leading graphics providers, has announced that it will start licensing its GPU technology for other SoC manufacturers, starting with the Kepler series of GPUs. This move comes at a time when most smartphone manufacturers have moved away from Nvidia’s Tegra SoC, which was supposed to provide the much needed boost to the company’s flailing mobile portfolio. Nvidia Tegra, while good at games, lacked in raw performance and most importantly, battery life. Tegra chips were Nvidia’s SoC play at the mobile market, and now, like their core PC business, the Kepler based GPUs will be licensed to willing manufacturers.

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Developer page indicates upcoming Snapdragon 800 based Nokia Windows RT tablet?

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Take this with a pinch of salt but some of the deep rooted developer pages belonging to Nokia have recently added references to “Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8974” and “Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8274” both of which are part of the new range of Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoCs, which are currently the fastest chips on the market, alas with not a single device based on it yet. Qualcomm just announced its support for Windows RT 8.1 by readying its Snapdragon 800 chipsets for it. And now we are seeing Nokia add references to it on its website, co-incidence? While the recently leaked phablet comes to mind, there’s always a possibility of a Windows RT tablet from Nokia, as it has been rumored for a long time now.

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Huawei Ascend Mate Unboxing

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The Huawei Ascend Mate was launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and has then evaded the Indian market until now. Today, the company has launched its ambitious phablet device with a massive 6.1 inch screen at a price tag of Rs. 24,900, just weeks after Samsung continued their trend of releasing phablet devices with the Galaxy Mega series. The Indian market seems to have likened to the big screen phenomena and the Ascend Mate is hoping to address at least a part of it. The device just landed in our labs and here is our ritualistic unboxing video below –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3QcGRsn2bU

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Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 Review

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The Galaxy Note 8.0 launched way back in February, at the Mobile World Congress as the first 8 inch screened device in the Galaxy Note series. The surprising addition was that the cellular edition of the device could make calls and lets you use it like a phone thanks to the on-device ear piece. It was extremely awkward to see people holding a huge device to their face but worry not, we have got the 16 GB WiFi only version for review here and we are going to see whether the Note 8.0 is really worth your money. Lets find out in the full review then.

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Xolo Q1000 Unboxing

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Amidst a sea of 5 inch phablets in the mid range category comes Xolo’s entry, the Q1000. Launched a while back, for a price of Rs. 14,999, the device has landed in our labs for testing. The 5 inch 720p screen has been a standard in most devices in this price range and they all come with very similar specs, so we went ahead and unboxed the Xolo Q1000 for you, with an unsuspecting view of the retail box contents and some initial thoughts on the device, watch the video –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ7MNrYMmKY

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