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Nokia Asha 502 Dual SIM Unboxing

The Nokia Asha 501 was the company’s pilot for the new Asha SW platform. The lineup grew to a full portfolio when they launched the Asha 500, 502 and 503 at the Nokia World event in Abu Dhabi. While we had taken a hands on look at these devices at the event, it was quickly clouded by the flashier lumias. But now we have a chance to check them out again, as these devices have finally launched into the retail market here in India. We have the Asha 502 here, which is basically the Asha 501 with a new cool chassis and a 5 megapixel camera with flash. For a better understanding of the device and the retail box contents, we unboxed the device for you on video, watch –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnvN7oVHN74

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Nokia Lumia 525 Unboxing

The Nokia Lumia 525 was announced a while back, with the sole intention of removing the 512 MB RAM limit that barred the original Lumia 520 from getting all the games and apps on the Windows Phone store. This is very similar to the 256 MB limit some of the devices had on Windows Phone 7.5, so Nokia made a quick revision by upping the RAM on the 520 and releasing it as the Lumia 525. This is, by no means, a generational successor to the 520, rather just a minor upgrade to the already popular best seller. We just got the retail version in India, which costs Rs. 10,400, as announced, so of course, we bring you the unboxing to see what’s in the box, and a quick hardware overview.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmuuuLywH20

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Pete Lau’s OnePlus and Cyanogen will partner to create the OnePlus One

Pete Lau, the distinguished engineer from Oppo, had announced earlier that he left the company to pursue something new. It was known that it involved CyanogenMod and its CTO Steve Kondik, but now we know what exactly they are upto. Pete Lau is now the CEO of a new hardware start up called OnePlus, and unsurprisingly, its software partner will be Cyanogen Inc. which will power its phones, starting with the flagship “OnePlus One”. No, we are not making that up.

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Huawei Ascend Mate 2 4G officially unveiled, packs LTE and a 13 MP camera

Huawei has just unveiled the Ascend Mate 2 4G at their CES 2014 press conference today in Las Vegas. The refreshed Ascend Mate, which was one of the first 6 inch devices to enter the world of phablets the same time last year, packs the same 6.1 inch 720p display, with a supposedly better IPS panel and finally incorporated 4G LTE inside. The Ascend Mate 2 4G is also slightly thinner than its predecessor and boasts a 200 MHz increase in clock speed featuring the 1.6 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor with Adreno 305 GPU. Sporting a new 13 MP BSI sensor on the back, it improves upon the 8MP one on its predecessor and also comes with a 5 MP front facing camera this time around.

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Xolo Q1000 Opus Unboxing

Xolo Q1000 Opus Unboxing

Broadcom, a company that powers most of the WiFiac chips inside smartphones these days had been very quiet in the SoC business, but they had recently announced new chips and a partnership with Xolo for their Quad Core low end chip. The fruition of that partnership is the Xolo Q1000 Opus, yet another Q1000 that looks and performs nothing like the other one. This low-mid range device, that launched to retail in December last year, is priced at Rs. 9,990 and has modest specifications to rival the competition in the same segment. We have got this phone for testing in our labs, so as a first order of business, here is our unboxing with a quick look at the hardware and an overview of the minimally modified software –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF_4qpUaOrA

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Nokia Lumia 1020 and Lumia 520 emerge as the favourites in #SmartFone13

2013 came to an end a few days back and so did our quest to see which two phones would emerge as the favourites in our #Smartfone13 championship for flagships as well as budget devices. Two major polls were run in parallel for about a week with several phones knocked out in the weeks before, to bring the tally to the final four. It was Sony Xperia Z1 vs the Nokia Lumia 1020 for the flagship battle and the Nokia Lumia 520 vs the Gionee Elife E6 for the budget devices battle, with the Lumias ending up as the winners. How? Go past the break to find out!

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Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 Review

Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 Review

The Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 is the much awaited successor to the S Duos which was the Samsung phone to get in the mid range not long ago. It had offered pretty much similar specifications as the Galaxy S but at a far lesser price making it a good deal, although only for a short time. Mainly because a lot of local players got aggressive with the pricing and offered a lot of better deals for a similar price, not to mention Nokia’s Lumia 520, which has been a popular device at a lesser price offering more value. With such renewed competition, Samsung hopes to offer a better deal with the Galaxy S Duos 2. How better of a deal is it? We find out in our review.

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Final – Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Sony Xperia Z1 #SmartFone13

After two rounds of really close battles between 8 smartphones, we have come to the finals of the SmartFone 13 championship for the best smartphone of 2013. Two devices have made it to the finals and they are – Nokia Lumia 1020 and the Sony Xperia Z1. Both the phones are awesome on their own and have beaten two other capable smartphones to reach this stage, which removes even an iota of doubt on how great these two devices are. Both being the companies’ respective flagships are packed with innovations as well as top class features. But which one do you think is the best of the two? Do you think one of them is good enough to earn the title of “Best Smartphone of 2013”?

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Nokia Lumia 525 Hands On

Nokia announced the Lumia 525 sometime back last month and basically, it was a Lumia 520 with a very slightly different design and 1 GB of RAM. The Lumia 525 is primarily for addressing the low RAM issue on Windows Phones. Phones with 512 MB of RAM, like the Lumia 520, were not allowed to download some apps and games from the Windows Phone Store because of them demanding more resources. This was partly solved with more optimizations from the developers’ side, but we still see a lot of new apps and games releasing with the limitation, so Nokia simply went the other way and updated the 520 with 1 GB of RAM, and that’s exactly the reason why 525 exists. It was revealed at an event in Goa today that the Lumia 525 will be arriving to India during the first week of January 2014. The Lumia 520 is already the best selling Windows Phone in India and we hope the 525 directly replaces it. That said, we went hands on with the Lumia 525 at the Annual Strategy Sharing Summit in Goa, you can find our impressions below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-oY6Hp5Zs

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Google Glass Unboxing in India

google-glass-explorer-edition-unboxing-16

We are lucky to have Google Glass at the FoneArena for an unboxing. We have managed to get hold of a Google Glass Explorer Edition 2013 version and we are bringing you the first ever unboxing of this innovative product in India. Watch the full unboxing below.Google Glass is probably one of most innovative products from Google and it was publicly announced at the Google IO developer conference in 2012. It is currently available only in the US on a invite only basis for a 1500 USD. Thanks to some of our friends who made this possible! Watch the unboxing below and make sure to subscribe to our channel and newsletter , we have some exciting stuff planned around Glass!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlHzWL305GY Continue reading “Google Glass Unboxing in India”

Sony Z Ultra Google Play Edition goes on sale for $649

Sony Z Ultra Google Play Edition

Care for a super sized phone running the cleanest build of Android around? Then the Sony Z Ultra Google Play Edition will be right up your alley. The phone was just spotted on the Google Play Store in the US and is available now at a price point of $649 before taxes . Interesting this is one of the first Sony devices running stock Android.

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Unknown SM-G900F is not the Samsung Galaxy S5, Here’s Why

Not even 8 months have passed since the Samsung Galaxy S4‘s launch but we are already seeing rumours and leaks of Samsung Galaxy S5 aplenty. Sure, Samsung’s flagship usually gets this attention every year, but we feel it is too soon this time. Amongst the various “leaks” floating around in the internet is one peculiar benchmark result from Browsermark. We may be wrong, but we have solid reasons why this is not the Samsung Galaxy S5. Firstly, lets see what this is all about. Apparently, an unknown device codenamed SM-G900F has appeared at the no. 3 position in Browsermark results page for Top 5 Web Phones, which some think, is the upcoming Galaxy S5. Is it?

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Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 Unboxing

Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 Unboxing

Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2, successor to the original S Duos, was officially launched in India just a day back, for a price of Rs. 10,990. This is out and out a mid range device from Samsung, building upon the success of the original, which was quite popular for its price tag and the value it offered. It just got better with the S Duos 2, but not as much as one would expect. Today, we bring you the unboxing of this device, just a day after launch, so that you can probably decide whether to go for this or not. Here’s the quick unboxing and overview of the Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoMHb8Z-tEc

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Xolo A600 Unboxing

Xolo A600 Unboxing

Xolo launched the A600, its mid range entry in the A-series sometime back in November. It’s a neat little device, powered by a MediaTek 6572W dual core processor and has modest specifications for its cheap price – Rs. 8,199. We have got it for unboxing today, and we kinda like how this device looks and feels. Yes, this is a cheap device, but that hasn’t stopped other similarly priced devices like the Nokia Lumia 520 to stop short on build quality, and we think there is something very similar happening here, with the Xolo A600. Watch our unboxing video to get a look at it –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF5QoTZtSvg

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YotaPhone with LCD and e-Ink screen launched for 499 Euros

Yota Devices has finally launched the YotaPhone at an event in Russia as we reported recently. The YotaPhone is priced at 499 Euros in Europe and costs 19,980 Rubles in Russia. The company showed off the phone with dual screens at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year. It has 4.3-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) LCD capacitive multi touch main screen and a 4.3-inch (360×640 pixels) E-Ink rear screen. It is powered by a 1.7 GHz Dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8960 processor and runs on Android 4.2.2 ( Jelly Bean). The phone also has special YotaPhone gestures and Put2Back applications for the back screen. Continue reading “YotaPhone with LCD and e-Ink screen launched for 499 Euros”