Author
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
Think of the smartphone space as being a tight tug-of-war between Apple and Android. On one side, you have just one super-designed phone but with an ecosystem of usage-defining apps and a cult following that may well have a blind spot for anything else. On the other, you have the anti-Apple, led by the aggressive, undaunted Samsung but followed by others who together have more of the global smartphone share than Apple. Both are mini universes with their own appeal but of course they’re also always busy fighting each other. In this push-and-pull, the room for a third and fourth mega-player to break in is very tough to squeeze into. Unless Apple or the Android faction let the rope slacken or Microsoft and its partners or Research in Motion do something so ground-breaking that the other guys let go of the rope at least for a moment. And if they were to get a toe-hold and pull the rope in a third direction, we don’t know whether the crowd would cheer or jeer. In recent weeks, Nokia, Samsung and HTC have all teased with Windows 8 phones like the Lumia 920, ATIV and 8X — and yet, those phones remain unknown quantities because, one presumes, either the features of the OS or the hardware isn’t quite ready yet. Hardware, of course, isn’t nearly enough today, so we also need to see an ecosystem bursting with choices, like Apple’s is and like Android’s is growing to be, so that there’s something interesting to do on those expensive phones. While it won’t be long before the waiting world does finally see Windows 8 devices, they’d better have enough of a pleasant surprise to justify all the teasing. The ecosystem of apps may get there in time, but it’s the disruptive thing — huge features, enabling interface, never-thought-of innovations — that is more elusive. But since everyone was only allowed a superficial peek at Windows 8 phones, no one knows what they’re hiding. All we know is that in the foreseeable future, a few companies depend on it. But Windows has the advantage of being already present on computers and if we’re moving to an era where our devices will constantly talk to each other, Microsoft is doing all it can to ensure that seamless experience happens. It hasn’t sold many Windows phones yet because everyone knows those are not the final product. Come to think of it, it might have been a good thing if there weren’t a Windows Phone 7 and variations of it — then Windows 8 would have been a whole new well-timed take on mobile devices. As for Research in Motion; they’re also hoping to muscle in on the third place — though many point out that it’s where they already are, though for how long, one can’t say. Recently, RIM posted stronger than expected figures (or rather, losses for the third consecutive quarter, but not so bad) for the quarter ending September 1, surprising everyone, though not necessarily instilling confidence about an assured comeback because some of this is attributed to the number of jobs they have cut. It’s from strong sales in India, and the Philippines, Nigeria and other emerging countries. RIM has a bigger problem on its hands. Its BlackBerry 10 devices will only come early next year, provided they’re not delayed as they have been before. Every so often, RIM holds developer events and peels back a few more of the layers to let everyone see what their upcoming products will have — or at least what the interface and OS will be like. What’s been seen so far on the hardware front has been described as nothing particularly interesting — but that’s only the hardware and may not be the final devices we’ll see. On the software front the reactions are that there do seem to be impressive features such as the way all kinds of sharing is immediately accessible with an intuitive swipe of the finger, no matter where you are on the phone. And the overall Flow interface, as it’s called, is also interesting, but many features are known from other operating systems, specially WebOS. It’s also said to be a little complex and requiring a bit of getting used to — but that can be said for the new Windows as well. And Android is a constant learning process. But again, no one knows what the reception for BB10 devices will be like until they come and by which time there may well changes to the overall smartphone landscape. While choices apart from Apple and Android would be rather welcome, other players can’t afford to come in with anything less. Today consumers pay a lot. And expect solid value in return. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 15-10-2012)
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Lately, Nokia has been extra big on maps and location and directions. In fact, its chief, Stephen Elop, said he wanted Nokia to be the “where” company, sensing things nearby to give inputs to the user all the time. Using a Lumia phone’s accelerometer, GPS and camera, and combining that with maps, could give Windows phones a differentiating edge in a world where Android phones are beginning to look alarmingly alike and the iPhone is the iPhone. With an experimental app called the City Lens, Nokia has added a layer of augmented reality to the mix. Download the app free from betalabs.nokia.com/trials/nokia-city-lens-for-windows-phone, start it up, and go out into town. When you find yourself thinking you want to visit an interesting place or go eat somewhere, aim your phone at the places around you. The camera view will immediately acquire an overlay of tappable names and labels of places. You can tap to see stacks of information and checkout say, restaurants right where you are. You get distance, direction and star rating. You can tilt the phone to get a map view which you can touch-navigate to find more information, including how long it will take to get to a destination, each of which has an associated page with detailed information. The lot is shareable on social media, mail or SMS — just in case your friends are joining you. You can also save your searches for later use. There’s also a list view, if you want to avoid the augmented reality, but it’s more interesting to see AR making it to everyday use. The City Lens should be particularly nice for when you visit new cities and when you want to explore without feeling quite so lost. The News, Beautifully TrappedHow many ways can you do news? Many, it would seem, if you go by the number of news apps,specially for the iPad. Surprisingly, each one adds a new dimension or nuance to the way you can consume content. Trapit, which admittedly has a strange name for a news app, works by getting you to feed in an interest area by keyword or phrase and then trapping content based on that. In many ways, this has been done before. News-reading app Zite lets you build a magazine when you enter keywords representing your interests. Trapit just does it differently and just as beautifully. When you enter a keyword, the trapping begins and you soon have a row of tiles of pictures for the articles. Touch a tile and the screen opens to a full screen of the tiles for a particular trap. You can send to Instapaper, email or share on social networks for later reading —but scanning through what you want to read is the thing here. Trapit also learns your reading preferences. If you thumbs-up an article, the input goes into getting you similar stuff in the future. If you thumbs-down it, you are asked why — did you find it irrelevant, for example. At the time of writing, Trapit is quite happily free. If you get it free or in a sale, it’s worth a look.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 15-10-2012)
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The P510 from Nikon fits into that category that is nowhere near the casual point-and-shoot camera, far from the advanced look-and-shoot compacts with some settings to fiddle with, and not quite the proper D-SLR. It’s at the highest end of the compact camera bracket, even though it’s still a “Coolpix” where you have various photo-enthusiast devices, often with one strong distinguishing feature. It’s a category that professionals will not outright pooh-pooh and may even tap into for a second more portable device for some situations. The P510’s One Great Thing is its zoom — all 42x of it. If you plan to do some outdoor shooting without carrying heavy artillery, this is a camera to consider. It has a comfortable grip and rounded edges and comes in black and in red — which I personally dislike. Cameras just shouldn’t try to be red unless they’re housed in smartphones. This is a 16 megapixel camera with a focal range of 24-1000mm (equivalent). It isn’t portable in the throw-into-your-bag sense — in fact, it has to be treated with as much care as you would a D-SLR — but at 1.2 lb, it isn’t cumbersome to strap around you. There’s an extruding lens and its LCD screen slips out to tilt up or down but doesn’t swivel. There’s a pop-up flash. Controls are easy to get to and use but the menu, as almost all reviewers agree, needs to be smartened up. HUAWEI ASCEND G300: A stylish and capable budget Android phone that is slightly heavier than its peers; KOBIAN MERCURY MAGIQ: The smartphone tablet hybrid has a lot of features for its priceTo use this camera and its zoom, you have to have a pretty good idea about what you’re doing — it isn’t for the absolute novice though there are presets to use. Still focusing isn’t always easy. There are good noise reduction filters but that doesn’t mean it’s good for indoor or low-light shots. The price of the P510 is Rs 23,950 — pretty good value for money if you do the type of shooting it’s good for. Solid And Fast In India, Huawei recently launched the Ascend G300 (also called U8815), for Rs 13,490 (you may be able to get it for less) and it’s more than worth a look. It’s heavier than most 4-inch-sized phones. So it isn’t for those who want a slim sliver of a phone but for those who like to feel some reassuring weight in a gadget. The G300 has a silver back and white edges and some attempt has been made to make it stand out from the crowd of standard black slabs you see everywhere. In an Android world dominated by Samsung, HTC, Sony and LG phones, it’s a challenge for Huawei to enter the mix. That doesn’t mean it can’t make a good phone. Not just that, recently at the IFA show, it launched five Android devices and introduced an interface, Emotion, for its own take on how users should interact with apps on a phone. The phone works fine. You can’t expect blazing fast and slick, but it delivers value for money. It’s running Gingerbread and has a 1GHz Qualcomm processor. I found that the device charged pretty fast and had rather good battery life and standby on its 1350 mAh battery. The screen is very nice, specially for a budget phone. The interface is nice and stylised. I found browsing lightning fast. Surprisingly so. It comes with its own cloud service as well. If you’re okay with a phone that isn’t feather-light, this one is impressive.Now, A Dual-Sim TabThis is not a tablet you’d want to drop on your foot. Of course, there’s no tablet you’d be keen to drop anywhere, but in this case, while I can vouch for the tablet, I can’t answer for your foot. To put it more politely, Kobian’s Mercury MagiQ is heavy for a “phablet” if I may use a perfectly odious but increasingly common term. It’s a 5-inch device, smaller than the Samsung Notes and about the size of the Dell Streak. At Rs 12,700, the MagiQ sits in the low-cost tablets category. It’s a dual-SIM tablet — two neat slots for two SIMs underneath the plastic easily-openable back flap. It runs on a 1GHz single core processor with 512MB RAM and 4GB of expandable storage. It browses fast, handles videos just fine, doesn’t heat up, and behaves nicely. It has something going for it. There are other ways this little homegrown tablet is making a brave stand. It runs Android 4.0.3, has a nice non-annoying skin, (Geek for user interface) and importantly, a comfortable keyboard (virtual, please) which isn’t cramped. The MagiQ has both a primary and secondary camera, but I wouldn’t recommend either indoors or the front-facing in low light unless you don’t mind starring in a horror film. The rear camera claims to be a 5MP but “support” up to 12MP, but I could only coax blurry images out of it. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 15-10-2012)
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Dual-Sim DelightI was pleasantly surprised to see that the HTC Desire VC was a dual-sim smartphone. Seeing how popular they are in India, there’s been a need for more options in this category, especially in the upper range. A GSM-CDMA active dual, this phone has an absolutely wonderful feel to it. Its 4-inch screen fits in a body that feels just right when you hold it, narrow enough to curl your fingersCourtesy: Nokiaaround and wide enough to give you some essential screen real estate. If touch phones were friendly with one-thumb operation, the user would be in luck — but they aren’t. The build is weighty enough to feel like you’re getting a device of value and yet doesn’t cross that point where you begin to think it’s heavier than it should be. The back of the phone, which comes off real easy, is a ribbed plastic material which feels soft and smooth, yet non-slippery. Neither side attracts fingerprints and scratches. All in all, it seems to have hit a sweet spot where build is concerned. For a GSM-GSM option from HTC, look at the Desire V.Small In Size, Big On FeaturesAfter an initial grand struggle to open the back cover of the Nokia Asha 311 and pop in the Li-Ion 1110 mAh battery, I settled down to check out this feature-smart phone. It’s based on the S40 platform, meant for feature phones, but Nokia has brought it closer to a touchscreen smartphone and packed in many capabilities. With Asha, size matters. Small, that is. It’s nice to hold in your hand with its 3-inch display — TFT capacitive, 240 x 400 pixels. Nowhere near the bigger touchscreens, but then neither is it as intimidating to those who are scared of touch (and there are many) and who want a ‘budget’ phone. I would stop the comparison between this and higher-end smartphones right here if this one wasn’t so feature-filled. The 311 has a 1GHz processor, 128MB RAM, 140MB internal memory but with an SD card slot, and a 3.5 MP camera. But what’s nice about this phone is that it does all this for just Rs 7,139. Swipe through lots of apps (Java), browse the net fast, play games, and download lots of songs free, thanks to a bonus offered by Nokia. You can access the Nokia store and pick up apps, some of them free. You get Nokia maps, though no GPS. You have full connectivity options. For such a little phone, the text is quite nicely visible and the keys on its keyboard are spaced apart to reduce accidental touches. The nice thing is the battery life is longer than all the Android phones floating around. It’s value for money. LG’s Powerhouse Ah, another Android slab, is what you may find yourself saying when you see the LG Optimus 4X HD. It isn’t a charismatic phone, but has some nice design touches such as metallic high-tech-looking lines along the sides and a leathery back that makes the phone somewhat slip-proof. It’s an understated look and possibly even business-like. But LG has put everything it’s got into this understated yet premium device. It’s a huge phone. The 4.7 inch HD-IPS screen packs 720x1280 pixel with 312 ppi density. It’s just the phone to have been running Jelly Bean but instead it’s on Android’s pre-latest, Ice Cream Sandwich. The 4X HD runs on a quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A9 Tegra 3 processor and chipset. It has 16GB of internal storage (micro SD slot available) and 1 GB of RAM. There’s a 2150mAh battery. I like LG’s screen unlock animation with which you press anywhere on the screen to open in a rolling circle, and have no issues with its customisedCourtesy: Nikon/INCinterface except that it could do with better themes, colours and consistency. I found the keyboard a little small; there’s the danger of tapping the adjacent key to the one intended. The primary camera is an 8 megapixel and the big thing is the video, which is 1080p at 30fps and has additional touches like playback speed control and zoom. Overall, it’s a powerful phone, but would have done much better if it had appeared before the Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X. Specially, priced as it is at Rs 34,990.Field Of VisionNikon just unleashed an army of sports binoculars and other optical gadgets like fieldscopes and laser rangefinders in the Indian market. Nature lovers, and particularly bird watchers, have lots to choose from, with costs varying from Rs 3,750 to Rs 1,49,750 and size varying from the small and pocketable to serious heavyweights you’d want to carry as carefully as you would a camera. The binoculars also obviously differ in the amount of magnification and type of glass on offer. This optics range comes to India for the first time. Nikon has been launching new products regularly in India and is obviously confident it has a growing market in the country, were it not for our gloomy economy. Birding has recently seen a real popularity surge in India and it isn’t just about photography but getting to observe close up the habits of the thousands of bird species you can find without even having to go very far. It’s important, especially for prolonged watching, to have a good set of binoculars as poor ones can be damaging and straining on the eyes. Look at options in the EDG range for bright clear images right up to the periphery of the lens. Look at the Standard Action series for versatile binoculars suitable for tracking athletes heading for the finish line or the flitting movements of a bird. Or check out lightweights for mountaineering and nature watching.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 10-09-2012)
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The makers of the popular Camera360 for Android and iPhone now have a most enjoyable movie-taking app. For informal, fun videos, of course, though you can go up to a whole two-hour recording. Movie360: My Movies My Life! for the iOS makes shooting a movie a supremely easy job. Tap to start, tap to stop, etc. But the unique thing here is a bunch of Instagram-like filters you can use live. There are nostalgic and lomo filters, funky ones and arty ones that give a painting-like look to the film. The best is, you can change effects on the fly. And you can pause and pick up. There are three quality levels, high, medium and low, and you can go up to 960P recordings. To get the recordings off your device, you can send it off to your computer via wi-fi after you get a link to do so from the app. Or you can save it to your camera roll and do what you like from there. The app is priced at $4.99.The App KillerConsidered standard fare for an Android phone, Advanced Task Killer is an app that shuts down apps starting up and running in the background on your device. Why are these running in the first place? Well, how else will they give you updated info all the time? What would be the point of an always-on phone if you had to tap apps and wait for them to inform themselves and you? But the trade-off is that you get poor battery life, so much so, that when you want to make a phone call — which is after all something a phone is still supposed to do — you find no battery juice left for the job! The theory is that a task killer will end up saving you battery life because it keeps shutting down apps that work in the background. Try Advanced Task Killer (free) from the Google Play Store or Pro for no ads. When you download the app, you can see a list and check off which ones you want to kill. The developer recommends you manually kill apps but you can try both auto and manual ways. Touch To TimeTransparent screen app for android phones is meant to stop you walking into wallsReally meant to teach kids with special needs all about time, the Timer+Touch HD app is rather handy if you often need to quickly time a task. Free at the time of writing, this app for the iPad may cost you but looks too simple and straightforward to be costing anything. All the same, its simplicity is its attractiveness. No settings or dialogue boxes to fiddle with, just sweep your finger across the face of the clock to set the amount of time you want. If you sweep through an entire 60 minutes, the colour on the clock will change to indicate minutes above one hour. There’s a bunch of alarms to choose from. See-through ScreenHead to the Google Play store on your Android phone and download Transparent Screen for free. Watch that you don’t pick up any others with similar names. Open the app and choose your settings and press the Stop and Start button to activate the feature. And then press the home button to go to the rest of the phone without exiting the app. Get a good surprise as you now see your phone turn transparent. Open any app and you’ll find you can see through it. While this looks startling and makes for a good party trick, it’s actual use is meant to be for texting without falling into a pond or bumping smack into someone, or well, falling off the stairs. Depending on how good your eyesight is, what font settings you have and the transparency level you’ve chosen, you can text while still seeing what’s in front of you. Record Your ScreenDisplay Recorder for the iPhone, iPod and iPad used to be available only for “jailbroken” devices. That means only for those who took control of their devices outside of Apple’s App Store and updates to install whatever else they wanted. Now, this little app is on the App Store legally and costs $9.99. It lets you record whatever you’re doing on your screen — along with your voice. You can put that to whatever creative use you like. Demonstrate something on the iPad or show a bunch of your photos and add a commentary. You could even go to a website — say your own company’s — and talk about something to do with it. What you do is to start the app, press the button to record, and get out of it. The red bar on the top of the screen shows that you are in recording mode. You then start up whatever other application you want to show and talk. The screen, with all its movements, and your voice, will be recorded in an mp4 clip. You can then share or use this clip anyway you like. But the annoying thing is the recording shows the exit and entry to the recording app. Not very elegant. Magnify To ReadFree on the Google Play store is an app called Ultra Magnifier. Put it on your home screen for quick access and touch it when you need to read something in really small text. Such as those notoriously difficult-to-read medicine bottles. Or a manual or some fineprint designed to be glossed over. A slider lets you control the quantum of zoom. You can take a picture of the screen with the in-app camera button. There’s even a dedicated auto focus button so you can read more clearly. And should you need light, another button lights up the flash to make it a flashlight or beam. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 10-09-2012)
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Samsung’s Galaxy Note was such a hit that people have, for quite a while, been asking when its successor, the Note II, will arrive. Well, it has. Right on cue at the IFA show in Berlin, Samsung has unleashed a whole lot of products including a Galaxy Camera running Android, tablets running Windows and one of them also with a stylus, a huge Windows phone, and the Note II.After a show full of magic tricks and other theatricals which you can catch on the Web if you’re interested, the Note II was unveiled by JK Shin, President of IT and Mobile Communications at Samsung. The pitch of the Note II and any other device with an S-Pen seems to be creativity. Being that handy, the Note II is supposed to help creative people quickly capture their ideas and the S-Pen is supposed to help them build on these ideas. The digitiser layer comes from Wacom, the people who long ago made mouse-pad-like tablets used by designers who could draw and illustrate and do other things designers do very accurately. So, to get really creative, they had a bunch of creative types like architects and filmmakers “re-create Berlin” using just that one device, the Note II.But all that aside, the 5.5-inch superphone or mini-tablet, going by photos and videos online, looks like the Galaxy S3 on steroids. It’s a shade larger than the older Note, but lighter and thinner. The Super AMOLED screen is said to be brilliant. On the hardware front, the Note II runs on a 1.6GHz Quad-Core processor – that should be powerful enough for anyone. It’s also wearing Jelly Bean, Android 4.1, effectively silencing anyone who was about to criticise it for being a version behind, as has been the case with many Samsung devices including the Galaxy Note 800 which just launched a few days ago. There are 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions and a micro-SD slot can add yet more storage. The battery is a 3,100mAh. There’s an 8 megapixel primary camera and a 1.9 front-facing one. But nothing is known yet about which models will launch in India and at what price points. I think we can safely assume they’ll be expensive.Seeing how the Galaxy S3 does, there’s little doubt that the Note II will be a powerful performer. To support all they expect users to do on the gadget, Samsung has also put in more applications and features for use with the now bigger S-Pen, really making much of the stylus and the capabilities it can bring. One will need a good long time with the Note II to explore its performance and new enhancements – coming October.This time round, the Galaxy Note II launches in an environment that is very different from the one that greeted its predecessor, the Note. A year ago, there was a huge amount of scepticism about the in-between size of the Note and the very existence of a stylus, which many thought was a throwback to older times in technology. But I think you might say the Note thumbed its pen at those who didn’t quite believe in it and went on to become a much-loved gadget, no matter what category you want to place it in. Let’s see how it does this time.
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Cheers greeted a smiling and confident Tim Cook as he took to the stage for Apple’s “We have a little more to show you” event in San Jose on Tuesday the 23rd of October. It seems not so long ago that Apple’s fans, the media, and much of the company’s competition followed the word-by-word retelling of the launch of the iPhone 5. This time, Apple did the smart thing and actually broadcast the event live, probably taking all the tech media who were ready, all cylinders firing, to live blog the event. Wasting no time at all, Tim Cook dove straight into the statistics that have become the typical hors d'oeuvres at the Apple launch fests. All of these are thoroughly publicised, but nevertheless, they give Apple execs the chance to remind us how popular their products are. But with the audience having made suitable noises of appreciation at how 300 billion messages were sent using iMessages and 35 billion apps have been downloaded, Cook moved on to the first item on the launch list: the iBook app and iBookstore. This is Apple’s reader and book store which the company believes will popularise the iPad family further with schools in the US because it offers many educational books. Retina Comes To The 13-inch MacBook Pro – At A Stiff Price Handing over to Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Tim Cook made way for the first of the hardware product announcements, starting with a 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Retina display. At 0.75 inches it is 20 per cent thinner than the older version and also lighter. Schiller touted the displays features, already known from the larger MacBook Pro: 227 pixels per inch, higher contrast, vivid colurs, 178 degree viewing angle, 75 per cent less reflection and glare and said to be twice the number of pixels in an HD TV. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is based on flash storage and features a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor with the option to choose faster 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7 processors, Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8GB of 1600 MHz memory, and up to 768GB of flash storage. Two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports allow users to connect to multiple displays and high-performance devices, and a new HDMI port offers quick connectivity to an HDTV, according to Apple India’s communication to the media. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display also features a FaceTime HD camera, dual microphones, improved speakers, three-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a MagSafe 2 power port. It gives 7 hours of battery life. The prices for this laptop will range from Rs 114,900 to Rs 128,476. The iMac Goes Impossibly Thin And Gets Re-engineered To Fit The Mac Mini also received an update, but what was more unexpected was the unveiling of the 4 th generation iMac, a product Schiller referred to the iMac in general as a flagship product for product, epitomizing as it did, the company’s design and usability philosophy. The new iMac, revealed dramatically in an image that appeared slowly on screen before being shown for real, is now impossibly thin. It looks sleek and elegant. Phil Schiller described how the aluminum had been fused with the display and a previous air gap done away with to slim down the computer to just 5 mm. Yet, inside the thin body was housed all the parts of the machine. A quad-core Intel Core i5 processors that can be upgraded to Core i7 and an NVIDIA GeForce processor for advanced gaming and graphics intensive apps. There’s GB of 1600 MHz memory and a 1TB hard drive, and customers can choose to configure their iMac with up to 32GB of memory and a new 3TB hard drive, or 768GB of flash storage for ultimate performance, according to Apple. There are two Thunderbolt and four USB 3.0 ports. Depending on the configuration, the iMac will probably retail for between Rs 85,900 and 134,990. The Mini Is Basic While The Current iPad Gets A BumpGoing back to CEO Tim Cook for some more statistics, we learn that Apple recently sold its 100 millionth iPad. And with that, it was time to move on to the reason the event was referred to by those who were working hard at guessing as the iPad Mini launch. It had been rumored that the current generation iPad, (called the new iPad or iPad 3 by everyone else and just the iPad by Apple) would get a refresh. This turned out to be the case as we find that a 4th generation iPad will replace the iPad 3. It will sport am A6x chip, an improved front-facing camera and faster wireless.. It will stay at the same price and there are some reports that those who have recently bought the iPad 3 will get replacements from Apple. The iPad 3 will be discontinued. The iPad 2, it would seem, will still be available as an option for those who want to opt for a slightly less expensive tablet. The 7.9 inch iPad Mini would, however, join the iPad family and be available at a price of $329 for the 16GB model. Indian prices are not given yet as no date for the arrival of the Mini in India has been mentioned. Some countries are to get the iPad Mini this month, but India is not among them. While Steve Jobs was not known to be bullish on the smaller tablet form factor of 7 inches, the Mini was presented as a device you could hold in one hand. The device is thin and light (Phil Schiller compared it to a pencil) but will work with all the 250,000 iPad optimized apps on the Apple store. Schiller compared it derisively with an Android tablet running Jelly Bean and said that the Mini in fact had designed the tablet to allow for the maximum possible screen real estate. It runs on a dual-core A5 chip , has a 5 megapixel primary camera and a 1.3 Face Time one. They include image stabilisation and backside illumination. There is some disappointment that the there is no Retina display on the Mini but that would have taken it to a higher price bracket. Some confusion is expected between the Mini and the iPad 2 which while not a small form factor, is close in price. The competition will also heat up with tablets from Google being much cheaper.
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The countdown to Windows 8 begins. After almost a year of build-up, we hope it’s worth the hype, the secrecy and the wait. Through this one year, Microsoft has already changed in so many ways. As the world moved on from desktops to mobile devices, the company that was once synonymous with monopoly started to do what it should have long ago — stake its claim in the smartphone and tablet space. Partnering with Nokia was only one component. Creating Windows 8 with the idea of a unified system across devices was the larger part. And to the surprise of all, including its own partners, Microsoft turned towards hardware. Windows 8 is really a touch-oriented operating system and the company decided to control at least the initial experience from end to end. With only a few days to go before the formal launch of Windows 8, as well as that of Microsoft’s own tablet Surface and of Windows 8 phones soon after, PC makers are unleashing a fashion parade of innovative and interesting laptop-tablet devices that are now being called “convertibles”. First, we have Lenovo, which has moved ahead of the other PC makers, some analysts say, because of the versatility of its lineup and the ability to cater to different consumer segments. Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 13, showcased at the beginning of the year at the CES event, hinges upon its hinge which lets you push the screen all the way around until it meets the base, Then it becomes a tablet. You can also use the rotation to make the device stand. And since it’s said to have good sound and a vivid screen, you can use it as an entertainment gadget in that position, using touch to navigate content. There are two versions of the Yoga, which has been kept light and thin to make it more usable. Clever as this may be, another hinge innovation lets users swivel the screen in any direction on the Twist model, thought to be particularly useful in the business environment where you sometimes have several screens around you or where you need to share content for discussion with others. The Lynx is a tablet that docks to become a laptop. These convertibles come with good tech specs and battery life and some further innovations such as a 10-finger touch sensitivity. Like Microsoft, Dell too has been largely out of the mobile devices race, apart from its XPS lineup of ultrabooks. Its early tablet, the Streak, was expensive and didn’t do well at all. Dell’s phones also went the same way. But now the company is also coming up with its own hybrids, including a 12-inch touch ultrabook that flips over to become a Windows 8 tablet. Dell has also touch-enabled some all-in-one desktop systems. Very early on we saw some starting devices from Asus, including the Transformer series and the Padfone in which the phone slips into the tablet. Sony has also just released its Vaio Duo 11, a device in which the screen slips back over the keyboard just the way some tablet cases do, again, going from laptop to tablet. This combo even has a stylus. All these devices are, of course, running on Windows 8 and are touch screen. The coming of the new “reimagined” OS may well spur the availability of touch on laptops, something that hasn’t happened so far even though the capability exists. Now that there’s an operating system that comes into its own with touch and tablets have proved their popularity, PC makers are keen to have a go with form factors that centre around touch. Will convertibles be the future of computing? Many people imagine so, though it’s impossible to say. Who knows, for instance, whether gesture-based uses of some kind will come along and change the type of surfaces we need. Despite how attractive the new hybrids are, we may find them fiddly once we lay our hands on them. If the hybrids are to be docked to become laptops, then their landscape-ish orientation makes them less comfortable as tablets. Such is the case with Samsung’s Slate 7. On the other hand, making the screen a smaller and less tall tablet will end up compromising on the keyboard. Will we, in fact, have separate components and foldable keyboards such as may be revealed with Microsoft’s own Surface tablet? The months ahead will show whether there’s a perfect form factor. And if Windows 8 does re-energise the PC market because of the spate of hybrid tablet-laptops, will these devices do the same for Windows 8 and increase the chances of its adoption? Again, this is not easy to predict. Businesses, where the numbers come from, will not be ready to immediately jump to Windows 8 because of the retraining and other costs. The shift may take its time. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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Screencast SomethingThe night I discovered DoodlecastPro I didn’t sleep much as I began to enjoy myself thoroughly. Despite the fact that I’m always exploring apps, I never fail to get excited when I find something that takes a fresh twist on how to do something. Doodlecast is just such a delight. This app, for iOS, is a virtual whiteboard. You have a pen and colours and an eraser and you write or draw stuff. You can change background colours and fills and even pull in images from your camera roll. You can change the thickness and opacity of the pen and fills.DOODLECAST PRO But none of this is by itself very interesting because lots of whiteboard apps do all this and more. What’s nice about Doodlecast is that you can press the Record button to make a video of your session. Not only does it record whatever you do on the board, it also records your voice! So what you can end up with is a presentation with voiceover. You can use that to send an explanation or idea to someone, using pictures or screenshots along the way, drawing shapes and charts, talking through it. Or you could use it to create little training modules and guides, or even just send someone an email with pictures and spoken comments. You can pause and add new screens and images to make a full-fledged presentation and even move forward and back between screens. And you add things on the fly. There’s even an on-screen pointer. HANDYSCANOnce you’re done, you can choose to save the MOV file in the camera roll, email it, send to Dropbox or upload to YouTube. And you have three levels of recording quality to choose from. And off it goes! It’s really about sharing ideas rather than being a replacement for PowerPoint. DoodlecastPro costs $1.99 and has only gone free once since it was developed. There’s a version for kids. There are a few similar options on the App Store, including Explain Everything and Explain A Website. It’s worth doing a search for Doodlecast as there are many videos showing what it can do. Beautiful WidgetsOne of the most enjoyable things about owning an Android phone is the extent to which you can customise it, even without installing “ROMs”, which jailbreak the device. Widgets are one of the ways with which you make a phone your own by putting upfront whatever app or information you want. Beautiful Widgets is a pack of widgets with skins which you can use to give your phone some personality. BEAUTIFUL WIDGETS Clock, weather, and battery indication can be stylised in many ways including colours, graphics and size, to fit your background themes or the way you like them to look. You get into the app’s settings to choose and download skins and styles. The pack costs about Rs 200. There are many free ones as well, but with Android, always be careful what you download. Beautiful Widgets has been an Editors’ Choice. Scan AnythingThe free version of this Windows 7 app is not really worthwhile, except to see if you would be comfortable with it because functionality is limited. The paid version of HandyScan should be around $2.99 (app prices change as developers offer discounts frequently). When you use this app on your Windows phone, you can scan a document or object, which is then optimised. You have flash options as well. You can zoom, grayscale for clarity, align, crop, and skew to get the image you want. You can also create page collages and see thumbnails. You can add text to images, including digital signatures, and once you’re done, you can upload scanned documents to SkyDrive or Dropbox, backup all your sources to the cloud, send by email or convert to PDF or JPG. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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Combine satin red with the sleek, slim clean-cut lines of an ultrabook, and you have quite a looker on your hands — one that you would associate more with pleasure than with business. But the Fujitsu U772 Lifebook (how many books can the world handle?) is kitted out to be a business product. It has the kind of chipset, connectors and security features (such as biometrics) that will be welcomed at work. It has anti-theft protection and an optional port replicator, which allows docking and connection to a corporate network and peripherals. This thin, light 14-inch ultrabook runs on an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i4 processor, has 4GB of RAM and a 32GB solid state drive. The screen is comfortable and I was quickly able to customise the environment. It’s running on Windows 7 for now. It works fast enough, boots up quickly, and the battery lasts for about six hours of not-too-heavy use. Incidentally, you can use the laptop’s USB port to charge a device even when it’s asleep or off. While the look and feel of this ultrabook is premium, specially on the outside, it has one of the worst keyboards possible. The entire keyboard is deeply set in the chassis so that the keys — which are by no means soft and responsive anyway — have no play; no room to be pressed. The result is that the feedback that would normally go back through your fingers doesn’t, and you end up making mistakes, as the space bar also doesn’t press with the right amount of spring, making words run together. The surface of the keys is rough and the notches that denote the home keys for touch typists are confusingly placed. The keyboard is a real pity, considering that the ultrabook has a lot else going for it. But if you can’t type fast enough, no amount of hardware power, security features and looks can make up for it. There are more models in this series of ultrabooks and prices start from Rs 75,900. Enthusiasts, Go SmallSqueezed into a small, purse-fit black metallic body is a whole lot of capability you typically don’t see inSONY CYBERSHOT DSC RX100: A novice-friendly camera that is complex enough for enthusiastsa compact camera. The recently released Sony Cybershot DSC RX100 is being compared with the Canon S100 which is also at the top end of the point-and-shoot food chain, offering more than just casual photography. This one, as it turns out, is so capable that it’s being referred to as a DSLR in a compact body. The build of this camera is not to be glossed over. It has a solid, high-end finish and finesse, and doesn’t feel like the throwaround point-and-shoots you get these days. It has a 20-megapoxel 1-inch Exmor R sensor and F1.8-4.9 aperture in an extruding Carl Zeiss lens. It’s very fast and has great low-light performance — unlike many devices that promise this and don’t deliver. Focus is great. A beautifully built pop-up flash is instant and can be tilted to aim upwards and diffuse the light. The controls are nice with a function ring around the lens being particularly smooth and intuitive to use. It’s novice friendly and yet complex enough for enthusiasts. And yes, it does handle RAW files. Sony’s WhiteMagic technology is used on this, along with excellent image stabilisation. The colours are accurate and the pictures clear, and you get good depth of field. Obviously, it doesn’t match up to “real” DSLRs, but it certainly holds its own against entry-level ones. The RX100 is now available only from the main Sony Centres. Like everything else Sony, it is by noSONY XPERIA TIPO: Aimed at the youth, this Android phone is music-focused with preloaded apps for Bollywood songsmeans cheap at Rs 34,999. But here’s my disclosure. Not wanting to carry around a big camera, I went out and bought it after spending time with a review unit. The low light capabilities won me over completely. You can’t put the RX100 in your pocket — it’s a little too heavy for that. But in a small case hooked to your belt or slung carefully across to nestle on your hip, you won’t even feel it. Forever YoungExpected to be picked up by young people who may well be getting their first phone, the Sony Xperia tipo (also known as Tapioca) is priced at Rs 9,999 and comes in colours (red, white, blue and black) that are likely to appeal to the segment it’s meant for. Smartly, there’s a dual-sim (GSM-GSM) variant for Rs 10,449. Inter-estingly, it has also been introduced in the US, though it’s targeted at markets like India. This 3.2-inch phone is well designed and it’s light without feeling cheap. It’s hand-friendly, and allows your fingers curl to around it comfortably. Think one-handed texting. The back is a nice matte finish plastic like the HTC One X’s — that’s the way to do plastic. Buttons are minimalistic. Opening the back to get at the 1200 mAh battery isn’t difficult, but you do stop to wonder whether you might end up scratching the matte cover with your nails. The tipo is a standard Android phone, running ICS 4.0.4 on a single-core 800MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with the expected 512MB of RAM. There’s also the usual 4GB of internal storage and 50GB of cloud storage. The camera is a 3.2 megapixel one and well, don’t expect miracles from it. The screen, a TFT display with 480x320 pixel resolution, is okay. It is music-focused with preloaded apps for Bollywood songs. All in all, the tipo is a worthy contender to the Samsung Galaxy Y, (which has a marginally faster processor but less recent software) and other phones recently been launched in the Android budget category. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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