Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

Lenovo A706 launched in India, 4.5 inch FWGA display, Quad Core processor and 2000 mAH battery for Rs. 15949

Lenovo A706 india

Lenovo has launched a total of six smartphones today, at an event in New Delhi, India. Amongst the six, the Lenovo A706 is a mid range model with modest specs and a equally modest price. With a 4.5 inch FWGA 854×480 display, the A706 might be lacking when directly compared with the 5 inch 720p displays in competing phones of the same price range, but it makes up for it in having an IPS display. The device is powered by a 1GHz quad core processor, and if our assumptions are true, it is a slightly underclocked version of the Snapdragon 200 MSM8225Q with Adreno 203 graphics. Priced at Rs. 15,949, this is Lenovo’s play at the mid range.

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Intel boasts its first LTE solution in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 inch

GALAXY Tab 3 10.1-inch (1)

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 inch was just announced yesterday along with the Galaxy Tab 3 8 inch version. One of the main takeaways from the announcement is the presence of an Intel chip inside the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 inch version. Intel was particularly proud of the fact and boasted about its first low power LTE implementation for the same, in its blog. Sporting a Intel Z2560 “CloverTrail+” chip, the device has connectivity powered by the Intel XMM7160 multi mode LTE modem in some markets.

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Halo – Spartan Assault announced for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8

Halo-Spartan-Assault-windows-phone-8

Halo, the multi billion dollar game franchise that rapidly achieved cult status along with the launch of the Original Xbox, is finally coming to other Microsoft platforms including Windows 8 as a metro style app and Windows Phone 8. The game, called “Spartan Assault” is a fill-in story set in the years between Halo 3 and Halo 4. The top down single player resembles games like GunBros for example, with controls on the screen in the case of a touchscreen. The story revolves around the history of human-covenant conflict, the rise of commander Sarah Palmer, who is a part of the Spartan special ops program and more.

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

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Toshibha unveils Excite Pure Android 4.2 tablet for 299$ alongside Pro and Write with 10 inch 2560×1600 displays and Tegra 4

Toshibha just unveiled its refreshed range of Excite tablets at Computex, Taiwan, consisting of three models – Excite Pure, Excite Pro and Excite Write. All the three 10.1 inch Android tablets are aimed at different price ranges and target consumers. These tablets are priced between 299$ and 599$ and Toshibha hopes to ship them out by June 25th, available directly from their website. Lets see the models in detail then.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 to power future Windows RT 8.1 tablets

qualcomm-windows-8-1-snapdragon-800-rt

It is a well known fact that Qualcomm is one of the leading chip providers for the Windows RT ecosystem as well as the Windows Phone ecosystem. At the Computex event in Taipei, they have gone ahead and announced that their Snapdragon 800 series of powerful high end chipsets will include support for the Windows RT 8.1 platform. Powered by quad core processors with upto 2.2 GHz clock speeds per core, this marks a huge upgrade from the yesteryear dual core S4 plus chipsets that were used for the first Windows RT tablets, like the Dell XPS 10 for example. The Adreno 330 graphics is supposed to offer even greater graphics performance, and with additional support of in-built LTE and USB 3.0, the performance and feature gains for the Windows RT 8.1 are massive.

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Chrome 27 for iOS brings improved voice search and faster reloads

After launching Chrome 27 for the desktop and then for Android, Google has gone ahead, like promised, and launched the Chrome 27 for iOS. The new version adds an improved version of voice search, with a persistent bar for immediate access and faster page reloads by efficient use of the cache. The update is live on the app store and you can get it here.

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Qualcomm unveils new Snapdragon 400 Quad Core chip MSM8926, with in-built multi mode LTE

qualcomm-snapdragon-8926

Qualcomm, one of the leading chip manufacturers for mobile devices, has just unveiled a new variant of the Snapdragon 400 chipset, with support for Quad Core processors and multi mode 3G/4G LTE connectivity. This move enables Qualcomm to capture some of the lost low-end chip marketshare that has been recently been inundated with chipsets from companies like MediaTek. The MSM8926 chip, as it is codenamed, adds support for quad core Cortex A7 processors and mainly, multi mode 3G/4G LTE connectivity, which will enable mass market devices to sport LTE modems at very low prices.

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Apple pushes for license deals as music streaming service launch at WWDC beckons

iTunes-apple-streaming-wwdc

Apple, especially, Steve Jobs, is known to be a hard negotiator. Having revolutionized the digital music industry with the iTunes store, the media industry is no stranger to the ways and methods of Apple negotiations. But recently, Apple seems to have been going through a hard time negotiating with record labels and artists for one little reason, they are late. The music streaming service, which was pioneered by various start ups like Pandora in the US and Spotify in the Europe, is a novel way to listen to music, for free. Supported by advertising, the streaming services apparently make far less money than the traditional a la carte way of buying music, like the iTunes. They might be late but that doesn’t stop Apple from launching their own streaming service, because that’s the demand of the day.

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Zen ultrafone 701 HD Unboxing

zen-ultrafone-701-hd-unboxing-6

The Zen Ultrafone 701 HD is yet another entrant into the already crowded “5 inch 720p screen, quad core processor” market that has been flooded with a lot of phones this year. However, with a price tag of Rs. 11,999 this seems to be the cheapest of the lot in that range. Equipped with very similar specs to that of the various other smartphones in this price range, the device has landed in our office for testing. So, as a ritualistic start to the way of things, we start with the unboxing of the device, to see what’s special inside the box. Here’s the video –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxZ2LUOJrXE

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Nokia 105 Unboxing

nokia-105-unboxing-2

There is always a time when a phone is either your very first ever mobile phone or your go-to back up phone that lies somewhere in your home for months on a single charge. Targeting these exact specific markets, the Nokia 105 was launched at the Mobile World Congress with Nokia claiming it to be its cheapest device ever, retailing at just a 1000 INR in India. It is the no-nonsense feature phone one expects nothing from, other than the basic needs of course. So, without any expectations, we unboxed the Nokia 105, just for fun here in our studio, watch –

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

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Windows Phone 8 sync app for the desktop comes out of beta, adds new features

windows-phone-app-desktop-beta

The Windows Phone desktop app for Windows Phone 8 devices has finally come out of the beta, after over six months in preview form. The app, which is used to manage files and sync media with your Windows Phone 8 device has been hardly a replacement for the excellent Zune solution for the earlier generation Windows Phone 7 devices. But with Windows Phone 8 adding the MTP protocol for file management, the Zune app has been useless, while the Windows Phone app, with its limited features, proved of little utility. Anyway, the app has now added more features and is now available for download, in case you are craving for a decent sync app for Windows Phone 8, and don’t want to go down the explorer route.

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MediaTek announces new MT8125 Quad Core chip for tablets

MediaTek

MediaTek, the well known chip manufacturer, famous for the low cost powerful SoCs, has launched another SoC, codenamed the MT8125 specifically aimed at tablets. The tablet market as we know is currently dominated by the smaller ones, that are of the mid range segment, driving volume for the overall market, according to IDC. At this crucial time, MediaTek seems to want to take advantage, by releasing its own solution for tablets after the success of its MT6589 Quad Core chips in various phones in the low-mid range. The Quad Core Cortex A7 processor will support frequencies upto 1.5 GHz and will be powered by the PowerVR Series5XT graphics.

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Samsung Galaxy family screen size comparison

samsung-galaxy-family-screen-size-comparison-1

Samsung, with a mad obsession with large screened devices, a market they themselves help pioneer, launched two huge handsets fit for their name, namely the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 and the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3, with the respective screen sizes appended to their name. We found them quite huge, unsurprisingly, and we wanted to see how the trend has been with the Samsung’s Galaxy family of Android devices with respect to growing screen sizes. So yes, we took some devices we had with us to the launch event and put them side to side to see how the screen sizes fared against each other. Free Internet upvotes for whoever names all the devices in the above images correctly, in the comments section below. Go!

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

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Tablet shipments expected to exceed total PC shipments in 2015

tablet-marketshare-idc

IDC, the analysis company that analyses several markets every quarter has released a report that Tablet shipments are all set to overtake total PC shipments in 2015. With a rapidly growing tablet market, IDC notes that the landscape is changing after the flood of low cost Android tablets with screen sizes less than 8 inches, which might contribute as much as 57% of the total tablet market in 2017, while the rest is constituted by bigger tablets, mostly the iPad. The iPad mini too might be a proven driver in the sales of small tablets.

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Xolo Q1000 goes official, 5 inch HD display, Quad Core processor and Android 4.2 for Rs. 14,999

Xolo Q1000

Initially spotted online, the Xolo Q1000 has finally gone official, with a price tag of Rs. 14,999/- Powered by a Quad Core processor, the Xolo Q1000 has a 5 inch 1280×720 HD display, which seems to the be the benchmark of all the mid range phablet-like devices in the Indian market these days. The display is similar to the one on the Xolo A1000 launched earlier this year, and the 1.2 GHz Quad Core processor and GPU are similar to that of the Xolo Q800. Consistent with other recent Android phone releases from other brands, the Xolo Q1000 is also running on Android 4.2 Jellybean, with lockscreen widgets and notification toggles.

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