Samsung announced the Galaxys S6 Edge Plus, the larger version of the S6 Edge, two weeks back in India and today the company has announced its flagship phablet smartphone, the Galaxy Note 5. Revealed last month, the Note 5 sees a number of new features the most relevant being its design. The Note 5 adopts Samsung’s new glass and metal design philosophy which was seen on the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and the S6 Edge Plus. The Note series has been quite popular ever since Samsung announced the first version back in 2011 and now we have the fifth generation which is sleek and feels a lot like a larger version of the Galaxy S6. The glass body does make it quite slippery which might not appeal to some. It comes with a 5.7-inch 2K (2560x1440 pixels) resolution Super AMOLED display, same as the last version, which looks amazing and is one of the best displays we have ever seen. Other new updates include a new Samsung made octa-core processor, similar to that as the Galaxy S6, 4GB of RAM and fixed storage options of 32GB and 64GB. The decision of not having expandable storage option could be deal breaker for some fans. In the camera department you get a 16MP camera at the back and a 5MP camera on the front which performs and offers similar photo quality as the S6 which proved to be one of the best smartphone cameras. The battery pack is slightly smaller and rates at 3000mAh but Samsung claims that it will not compromise on the backup and will provide a better battery life than the Note 4. It is also sealed unlike the last year’s model, something that is not usually seen on Samsung devices. However, like the Galaxy S6, comes with wireless charging which is always great to free yourself from getting cluttered with wires.The S-pen stylus, which has been the USP of the Note series has also been updated and now comes with a premium metal finish and a click button at the back which is basically a lock before you remove it from the smartphone, giving it a ball-pen resemblance. The Note 5 comes with a new feature where you can use the S-Pen to quickly make notes on the phablet even when the display is locked as Samsung has put in a feature where the handset can detect when S-Pen is taken out its holster and lets you scribble on the dark locked display.The new Galaxy Note 5 will be available from the 20th of September and is priced at Rs. 53,990 for the 32GB version and Rs. 59,990 for the 64GB version. There is a pre-order option as well where Samsung is bundling wireless charger along with the handset and a 24 month EMI option.
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Smartphones might be taking over our lives, but they have made things easier for us by providing information from around the world within no time. But since we are becoming dependent on smartphones for almost everything, be it shopping, reading the news or navigating around a city, we are cluttering our smartphones with so many apps. This is where apps like Zophop come in. This app is like an all-in-on app that helps you to make your daily commute easier if you are dependent on public transport. The app has an easy to use user interface and currently supports major cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur and Pune. More cities are expected to be added soon. After you have selected your city, you can navigate the app for local train, metro, monorail schedules as well as search for bus routes. Just feed in your start and end locations and the app will give you the cost, journey time and availability of trains. To make train and metro travel simple, the app is loaded with route maps for almost all the cities. The app is really useful as it helps when you are heading out for work and want to make sure you reach on time.Apart from bus, metro and local train info, the app has an interesting feature that shows you the closest Uber or Ola cabs around your area and gives you how long it will take to reach you. It also shows you the cab location on a map. You can book the nearest cab by simply tapping on it upon which you will be directed to the Uber or Ola app.This app is perfect for commuters who travel a lot using public transport and it certainly helps you unclutter your smartphone by providing a simple platform for all your daily commuting needs. The app is currently available free of cost for Android devices over here.
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Instagram now allows brands and individuals to post full landscape and portrait images and videos. The first thing that came to my mind when I read this news was Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report from May 2015. To quote her, "Something funny happened on the way to small screen", she said in her report. The report continues to present a surprising statistic – every day, on an average people spend 2.9 hours of viewing their phones in vertical orientation! (To give a perspective, TV is at 4.3 hours). The growth in last five years for this vertical viewing has been six times. Looks like vertical viewing is here to stay and poised to grow. Unlike Orkut and MySpace, successful social media platforms keep reinventing themselves to keep up with today’s generation who get bored easily. YouTube introduced 360 degree videos and more importantly offline videos; Pinterest Cinematic Pins are a delight to watch and the big daddy Facebook, finally started supporting GIF - the most loved meme format of today. In this logical order of things, Instagram promptly ‘heard’ their users and have now duly complied to allow posting full—size landscape and portrait images and video. On a lighter note, just like what they do on YouTube, now we can expect brands to recycle their TVCs on Instagram too! That being said, here’s a quick sum up of the good and the bad of this new feature: Serious photographers on Instagram who had previously taken to use apps like Square ready and Cropic can now natively post without the frustration of ‘letterbox effect’, which leaves a dead space on the edges of their pictures. Life got a lot better for brands, brand managers, and those glamorous models who make a living by posing with energy drinks and fashion accessories on Instagram. The canvas is now better, broader and less restrictive. Support for landscape is great but with vertical viewing becoming mainstream, thanks to the likes of Periscope, Meerkat and Snapchat, brands have to re-imagine the visuals to appeal to the audience on these platforms. Even if they imagine the concept to fit a vertical canvass, there’s the cost producing content for different platforms. Not every product fits the vertical orientation, and not every brand has the same sense of humour as Little Caesars Pizza. See the ‘Tap the Bacon Pizza’ video.In good old days of advertising, we were told to pick the message first and medium later, but with the rapidly changing times, looks like the media is leading the message and brands have no choice but to give in to this change to keep up the people. Sreeraman Thiagarajan, Publicis Beehive
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Success favours the bold as well as the interesting on social media, so don't hesitate to express your feelings and agenda, writes Guy Kawasaki At its foundation, social media is simple: if you share good stuff, people will reshare it, and you'll get more interaction and more followers. Everything else is optimisation (or delusion). This article (an edited excerpt from our new book) explains what it takes to create perfect posts that will add value to the lives of your followers, build your platform, and spread your story. We advocate the most aggressive sharing practices on social media, so buckle your seat belt, and put on your helmet. Be valuable. What do we mean by "share good stuff"? Your social media posts should come in four forms: What happened? Example: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says that he's open to reviewing the role of transgender people in the military.What does it mean? Example: Mother Jones explains why Uruguayan soccer star Luis Suárez's biting incident during the World Cup was a big hygienic deal.How can I do that? Example: CNET explains how texting to 911 works.What the hell? Example: Every year, two churches in Vrontados, Greece, stage a mock rocket war to celebrate Easter. The goal is to emulate the NPR model. National Public Radio provides great content 365 days a year. Every few months, it runs a pledge drive to raise money. It can do that because it provides such great value. Your goal is to earn the privilege to run your own "pledge drive," which in this context means promoting your organization, product, or service. Be interesting. Many people and most organisations mistakenly assume that their followers want to read about only a narrow band of subjects. Should we share only stories about entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology or about social media and blogging? Should Motorola share only stories about Motorola? The answer is no. To do so would be boring, and boring doesn't work on social media. You should think more broadly and take more chances. Here are some examples of how organizations can remain on-brand and at the same time be more interesting: Restaurants: Atomic particles help solve wine fraud; the scientific way to cut a cakeMotorola: The 100 best Android apps of 2014; six great Android tipsAirlines: The last drive-in theaters in America; mindful travel photography.Design agency: Why it's okay to have an ad below a Web page's fold; key findings about retail-customer loyaltyMonster: "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of Pharrell Williams's song "Happy"; fun/scary jumps If you share this kind of interesting stuff, you'll earn the NPR-esque right to promote yourself to your followers, and your followers will help you get more followers. #1 Be bold Success favours the bold as well as the interesting on social media, so don't hesitate to express your feelings and agenda. For example, if you think there should be more women CEOs, share an article that supports your perspective. People voluntarily followed you; they can voluntarily unfollow you if they don't like what you share. My theory is that if you're not pissing people off on social media, you're not using it right. There's much less leeway for organizations to be bold, although they can take strong stands on issues that affect them and their customers. For example, American tech firms can be bold about issues such as work visas for foreign citizens, and Planned Parenthood can be bold about pro-choice issues. But there are too many downsides, and it doesn't make sense, for example, for Apple to be bold about gun control. #2 Be brief Brevity beats verbosity on social media. You're competing with millions of posts every day. People make snap judgments and move right along if you don't capture their interest quickly. Our experience is that the sweet spot for posts of curated content is two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and 100 characters on Twitter. The sweet spot for created content is 500 to 1,000 words. #3 Be thankful Your created-content posts might not contain links, but when you're curating, by definition you're using outside sources so every post should contain a link. Links send traffic to the source as an act of gratitude; enable readers to learn more from the source; and increase your visibility and popularity with bloggers and websites. When you find content because of someone else's post, compose and share a post with a link to the source and then add a "hat tip" to the person who brought it to your attention. #4 Be visual Every post-literally every one-should contain "eye candy" in the form of a picture, graphic, or video. According to a study by content marketer Skyword, total views of its clients' content increased by 94% if a published article contained a relevant photograph or infographic, when compared to articles without an image in the same category. A great graphic or embedded video is as important for the success of a post as the text. #5 Be organised If your post on Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn is longer than four paragraphs, try to use a bulleted or numbered list. This makes it easier to read, because the information is organized into smaller chunks, and it reduces the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) effect. I tune out when there's paragraph after paragraph of text. If I want to read a novel, I'll buy an e-book. #6 Be sly I find posts titled "How to…," "Top Ten…," or "The Ultimate… " irresistible. These words say to me, this is going to be practical and useful. The folks at Twelveskip compiled a list of great title templates, so be sly and use it. Here are my top 10:1. How to Rock ___2. Quick Guide___3. A Complete Guide to___4. Questions You Should Ask Before___5. Rules for___6. Essential Steps to___7. Most Popular Ways to___8. Tips for Busy___9. Tactics to___10. What No One Tells You About___ #7 Be found Hashtags are a beautiful thing. They connect posts from people all over the world and add structure to an otherwise unstructured ecosystem. When you add a hashtag to a post, you are telling people the post is relevant to a shared topic. For example, #socialmediatips on Google+ connects posts that are about social media. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+ all support hashtags, and we recommend adding two or three to your posts. (If you use more, you look like an #idiot who's trying to #gamethesystem.) Also, don't use hashtags on Pinterest, because people hate them there-perhaps because they interfere with users' minimal-text sensibilities. #8 Be active By "active" we mean three to 20 different (that is, not repeated) posts per day. That's a guideline. As long as your posts are good, you can share more than that. But if you share one or two crappy posts per day, that's too much. Admittedly, you're reading a book coauthored by someone who repeats many tweets four times. But I'm sharing at a "hard-core" level - 3-4 Facebook posts, 8-10 Google+ posts, 4 LinkedIn posts, 10-12 Pinterest posts and 25 Tweets per day. When we decided to test the effect of repetition by sharing four identical posts with four different links to track clicks, we got about 1,300 clicks on the first, roughly the same on the second, 2,300 on the third and 2,700 on the fourth, for a total of 7,600 clicks. Would you be willing to risk complaints about repeated tweets to achieve 5.8 times more clicks? Those complainers will either get used to the increase or unfollow you. What matters is the net effect: are you adding followers and gaining reshares? #9 Be distributed Using tools to schedule and distribute posts isn't cheating. It's what smart people do to optimize their sharing. Anyone who insists that you must manually share your posts is silly. Most followers can't tell how a post was shared, and if you have a life outside social media, you probably can't manually share posts throughout the day. Services you can use to distribute your posts include Buffer, Do Share, Friends+ Me, Hootsuite, Post Planner, Sprout Social, Tailwind, and TweetDeck. In 30 minutes, you could plan a day's worth of posts by using any of them. #10 Be a mensch A "mensch," in case you haven't heard the term before, is a kind and honorable person who does the right thing the right way. "Give to others without having an agenda," says Mari Smith, the queen of Facebook. When you help others in this way, the reciprocity will surprise you. So share other people's posts, make positive and intelligent comments, suggest resources and solutions, and rack up points on the karmic scoreboard in the clouds. Goodness will eventually flow to your posts, I promise. Be promotional. We hardly ever do this, as a matter of pride and principle, but paying to promote posts on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter can work. The decision comes down to the math: does the revenue justify the expense of paying for the views? When Canva paid to promote to advertise a job opening, geo-targeting only to people in Australia, $60 brought approximately 14,000 views. If you refuse to pay to promote your posts (we'd respect you if this were your decision), you can "pin" your posts to the top of your page on Facebook and Twitter. This means that the post remains as the first visible story at the top of your Timeline. This isn't as effective as paying for promotion, but it's free. #11 Be multilingual Héctor García translates Japanese news into Spanish, and because he's often the first person to share the news, his posts become the de facto source. This is a clever idea. If you are bilingual (or multilingual), try translating breaking news into another language and see what happens. #12 Be analytical You can improve the relevance of your content (while keeping in mind my exhortations to share things that are interesting and bold) by analyzing the characteristics of the people who follow you. For example, Facebook's analytics are a rich resource for finding out who your fans are. Twitter provides extensive analytics for verified accounts, including the number of impressions per tweet and how many people engaged with each tweet (clicking, retweeting, replying, following, or favoriting). SocialBro reveals who follows you, helps you find new people to follow, and illustrates how your content is doing, and you can get similar reports in Sprout Social and Hootsuite. #13 Be curious If you asked five social-media "experts" a question, you'd get seven different answers. Our advice is to field-test common generalizations such as "Share on Facebook on the weekend" and "Share on Twitter in the morning." Jay Baer, author of Youtility, shares posts a few minutes before or after the top of the hour. His reasoning is that this is when people tend to check their social-media accounts because they are between meetings. Like most social-media advice, it's hard to test scientifically, but it's worth trying. Everyone's followers are different. ABC (always be curious) and experiment to find out what works for you. Products such as Tweriod and SocialBro for Twitter, LikeAlyzer and Post Planner for Facebook, and Tailwind for Pinterest can help you measure the effects of changing variables such as timing, frequency, and graphics use. #14 Be defiant In our opinion, most search engine optimization (SEO) is bullshit. There are 3,000 computer science PhDs at Google trying to make each search relevant, and then there's you trying to fool them. Who's going to win? Tricking Google is futile. Instead, you should let Google do what it does best: find great content. So defy all the SEO witchcraft out there and focus on creating, curating, and sharing great content. This is what's called SMO: social-media optimisation. (The author, Guy Kawasaki, is chief evangelist, Canva)
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The OnePlus 2, like its predecessor, is out to battle the most expensive smartphones with specs that are as good by Mala BhargavaConfession: the first time I saw the OnePlus One a year ago, I immediately fell in love. With the cable. A brilliant red flat wire, all coiled up neatly and held by a tie… I took several photographs of it before I even turned my attention to the phone.On the OnePlus 2, the cable is back again, looking as pretty as before, but now with the new USB Type-C connector, which first became famous on Apple’s newest MacBook. The connector means you can put it into the device any side up.The design of theOnePlus 2 is as distinctive as its cable though. On the back is that “sandstone” finish again. This time around, it’s rougher, like a man’s five o’clock shadow. Obviously, it gives the user a good grip on the device and it comes off easily enough to allow access to two nano SIM slots — but sorry, no memory expansion. There’s a 3,300mAh battery in there but you can’t take it out. It charged in about 2 hours 20 minutes but is less than stellar in the duration it lasts. I watched non-stop videos for about eight hours and coaxed it to last over a day with lighter use.Customers really liked the way the OnePlus One was designed, but the OnePlus 2 beats it. It’s not just that you can change the back panel, it also has an immediate feel of value, of technology put together with care. That may or may not be the case, but it nevertheless feels it. There’s an interesting unique addition on the left edge of the phone: a three-stage button that lets you control the notifications you want to allow to disturb you — no notifications, priority, and all notifications. I rather like that you can change this setting quickly without even waking up the phone.When it comes to waking up the device actually, there’s a home button that doesn’t push down but can be swiped. When the phone is sleeping, you can set fingerprint access. I found this worked very well except that you have to get used to how to set down your finger on the surface. The fingerprint scanner works quite fast. I didn’t think it was worth fussing with fingerprints all this time but the OnePlus 2 has converted me — with the obvious result that I’ll be annoyed not to see it on my other phones.But moving on to specs, the display is a 5.5-inch 1080x1920 p with 401ppi pixel density. It doesn’t match those of the flagship phones it’s trying to outdo, but it’s still very good. Colours are fine, legibility is fine including in outdoor light, and viewing angles are good enough. Powering that is the controversial 64-bit Snapdragon 810, known to have some problems of overheating. I didn’t face that issue but certainly talked with reviewers who have, especially when gaming heavily. There’s a full 4GB of RAM to enable smooth speedy performance.The camera is the one thing that is still differentiating the flagship phones from budget phones. The primary camera on the OnePlus 2 is a 13MP shooter with F2.0 aperture and optical image stabilisation. It doesn’t match up to the cameras on the cream of smartphones, but it’s nearly there with sharp photos and good colour representation in different light conditions. The front 5MP camera is also nice and clear and I actually found myself able to tolerate my selfies — for a short while. Annoyingly, there isn’t a gallery app and you have to head to Google Photos or look in the Files app for your pics. The camera takes 4K and 10-min slow motion video.The OnePlus 2 is not without its omissions. There’s no expandable storage, as I said, but there’s also no NFC and no fast charging. There is a dual SIM slot though. On the software front, the OnePlus One was famous for its Cyanogen Mod system, but the OnePlus 2 comes with its own layer on top of Android Lollipop 5.1, Oxygen OS 2.0. It is what brings a whole lot of customisation features onboard, including drawing an O to trigger the camera from a sleeping screen, changing the function of some buttons, etc.The OnePlus 2 is available online through its usual invite process as before. When initially asked whether I would recommend this phone, I held back, waiting to see what issues would come up, especially on the overheating and battery front. They don’t seem to be bad enough to de-recommend the OnePlus 2, but it’s difficult to guarantee that users won’t face these in this case. As reviewers we have received a number of updates to the device and I can’t be sure what a buyer is getting right now. But the whole point is, at Rs 24,999, you can surely take the risk. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 21-09-2015)
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The new Nikon D7200 is similar to its predecessor but there have been certain improvementsby Kunal KhullarNikon redefined its top-of-the-line DX range or APS-C sensor equipped DSLR with the D7000. The idea was to replace the outdated D300S with a more subtle and compact design. The D7000 evolved into the D7100 promising a better low light performance along with slightly better weather sealing and design. This year, Nikon has updated the DSLR once again and announced the D7200, which sounds like a nimble update to the D7100.The D7200 looks quite similar to its predecessor but there have been certain improvements. The new DSLR now comes with a new 24MP CMOS APS-C (23.5x15.6mm) sensor along with Nikon’s new EXPEED 4 image processor. This is same in terms of resolution as the previous version but has an improved auto-focus system and a higher ISO capability which means it can handle low light even better. Another important improvement is the buffer size which has increased 3x — an increment from six shots on 14-bit RAW (loseless) to 18 shots. In simpler terms, it means that it can shoot a lot more pictures in burst mode in RAW format before slowing down to save them to the memory card. Other important improvements include NFC and built-in Wi-Fi as well as better battery output. Overall, the construction and button layout is exactly the same as the D7100 which was and still is a solid DSLR. In fact the camera is quite similar to the D810 and the D750. So in case you have used any of the above-mentioned cameras, getting used to the D7200 will be easy. The LED display on the top right showing settings has undergone a slight change and now displays larger readings, but with this improvement has resulted in settings getting smaller.The camera can shoot six frames per second and up to seven frames when using the 1.3x built-in crop mode. The viewfinder coverage is claimed to be 100 per cent but it is just a little less, probably around 95-98 per cent, but is still impressive. For low-light, Nikon has further improved the capability of its sensor and has a ISO range of upto 25,600 and boosted option goes up to 1,02,400 which is just insane. Shots at 4,000 and even 5,000 ISO look great and almost without any noise, unless you crop the image. The inclusion of NFC and Wi-Fi is definitely a well-needed feature as it spares you from connecting wires or removing the memory after every shoot. The feature works well and you can easily copy pictures to your smartphone and even edit them. Another small but important improvement is the battery life. Whereas the D7100 can shoot about 900-1,000 shots on a full battery charge, the D7200 can go up to 1,100.In the video department, there isn’t a huge improvement; frankly speaking, it never needed one. Thanks to the high ISO capability, videos look amazing, and with the support of 60fps, they look smooth and crisp. The performance of the camera is just excellent, and with the new updated image processor, it makes the D7200 the best performer in the cropped-sensor category of DSLRs.The D7200 is a highly recommended DSLR if your requirement doesn’t include a full-frame sensor. It is probably the best high-end DX (APS-C sensor) DSLR from Nikon. Having said that, the difference in the quality when compared to its predecessor is not very substantial. Yes, there is improvement in the low light performance and not to mention the built-in Wi-Fi and NFC. But all comes down to the quality of pictures. So in case you are planning to upgrade from the D7100 or D7000 you should probably hold on. You could, however, go for it if you want to go up a notch from the D3000 series, the D5000 series or anything below that. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 21-09-2015)
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The photography world has moved on to the digital format but the feeling of a printed photograph just feels amazing. This is exactly what Polaroid believes and has been keeping the magic of physical photos alive with its instant cameras. Taking instant cameras to the next level, the company announced a new camera under its portfolio at IFA, Berlin called the Snap.The Snap is a simple 10MP digital camera that can store your images (sadly no videos) on to a microSD card and supports up to 32GB cards. But it is also an instant camera which means that the Snap can print out full 2x3-inch photos instantly without the need of any ink. The camera uses Zink Zero Ink Printing technology in which the Zink photo paper, made up of composite material along with cyan, yellow and magenta dye crystals and protective polymer overcoats. So basically the paper itself creates the magic. But how? Well the dye crystals are colourless but the Zink-enabled Printer colorizes the crystals using a heat activation method. It takes about a minute to get a single picture to be printed and a 50 pack of Polaroid’s 2×3 inch Zink photo paper will cost about $30 (Rs. 1800 approx).The camera will come with multiple capture modes including color, black and white and vintage. The camera will also come with a photo booth app and a self-timer feature. The photo booth app will allow you to take six pictures in ten seconds.The Polaroid Snap will be available at the end of this year for $99 (Rs. 6,300 approx).
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Oppo brought in the unique swivel camera equipped N1 smartphone when it entered India last year and ever since it has launched interesting smartphones in the country. However all of the smartphones that the company has launched has been met with bad pricing. Yesterday the company announced two new smartphones for the Indian market which offer a uni-body metal finish and a sleek design.The R7 Plus is a 6-inch phablet which has a sharp and bright looking full HD (1920x1080) Super AMOLED display, usually seen on Samsung and Microsoft smartphones. Oppo has also used a 2.5D glass over the actual display which has a slight curve on the edges, something what Vivo used on the X5Pro. On the inside there is a Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage which can be expanded further with a microSD card. There is a 13MP rear and an 8MP front camera combo, but the USP of the smartphone is the large 4,100mAH battery along with Oppo’s own version of fast charging called VOOC and the fingerprint scanner right underneath the rear camera.The R7 Lite is a more compact and slim variant which comes with a 5-inch 720p (1280x720) resolution Super AMOLED display with a similar 2.5D glass like its larger brother. This too runs on an octa-core processor but Oppo hasn’t confirmed the manufacturer, so assumingly it is not the Snapdragon chipset. There is 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, and the same 13MP rear and 8MP front cameras. The R7 Lite is also quite slim and with the metal body feels quite good in the hand.Both of the handsets run on Android 5.1 Lollipop with Oppo’s new and updated Android skin called Colour OS 2.1. Both the handset will also be 4G enabled. However the point to notice here is that both the handsets are variants of the R7 which has not been announced by the company, probably the company is playing it safe. The R7 Plus is priced at Rs. 29,990 and the R7 Lite for Rs. 17,990, which sounds a lot better than what Oppo usually prices its handsets at but still sounds slightly higher for the kind of hardware it offers.
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