Zync Launches an Android 4.0 Tablet

Another day, another tablet. However the latest offering from Zync, the Z-990 stands out for delivering Android 4.0 experience to the masses. Apart from the new Android OS, the 7" tablet promises 1080p video playback.

Despite being affordable, the tablet is powered by a 1.2 GHz CPU and has 1 GB of RAM. Other specs include Wi-Fi, front VGA camera, a full sized USB OTG (On The Go) port, 3.5 mm jack, 4 GB inbuilt memory, and a microSD card slot. Additionally, this tablet can be hooked up to an HD TV using the onboard HDMI port. However, to keep the pricing down, the tablet does away with the main camera and Bluetooth connectivity. According Zync, its 3600 mAh battery can last up to 6 hours under heavy use.

I did get my hands on the Z-990, and I can tell that it handles Android 4.0 reasonably well. It gives access to the official Play Store as well. However, despite having a front facing camera, it doesn't have the Face Unlock feature.

The tablet is available for Rs 8500 at online stores such as Letsbuy.com and HomeShop18.com. However, you might want to hold your purchase until we publish the review in a week or two.

Dell XPS Arrives In India

The much hyped Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook has finally arrived in India. The laptop sports a 13.3" screen with a relatively thin bezel. According to specifications, the XPS 13 is 18 mm thick and weighs less than 1.4 kg. For toughness, its base has been made of carbon fibre, and display is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass.
Dell lets you choose configurations based on the Intel Core i5 2467M and Core i7 2637M. Others specs include 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, 128 \ 256 GB SSD, Intel HD 3000 graphics, LED display with pixel dimensions of 1366x768, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and 1.3 MP webcam with dual array microphones. The company claims that the 47 WH 6-cell battery can keep the device up for almost 9 hours.

The XPS 13 comes with Windows 7 Home Premium, and is available at the starting price of Rs 80,000. It can be bought from the Dell exclusive stores and other electronics retailers throughout India.

Intex Enters Tablet Market with i-Tab

Intex has entered the tablet space with the i-Tab - a Rs 12,000 tab sporting an unusual 8" form factor. The Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) device incorporates a 1 GHz Cortex A8 processor complemented by 512 MB of RAM. The 8" display features two-point capacitive touch sensing capability. It has 8 GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 32 GB. Other goodies include an inbuilt gyroscope, GPS, front camera, and 3.5 mm audio jack. It also has an ample 5000 mAh battery, which claims to give 5-6 hours of talktime.
Connectivity options feature Wi-Fi as standard, whereas 3G connectivity is provided through the "Intex dongle", which is offered free of cost with the product. The manufacturer also throws in an Intex 3G data card, LAN adaptor, leather cover, and a pair of Reebok sunglasses to sweeten the deal.

Uninor Offer

Uninor today announced the launch of 2 new special offers, the MEGA-TOPPER49 and the TRIPLE-TOPPER129 for its customers in Tamil Nadu. Making its existing customers happy and luring in more customers into its fold, these offers are special tariff vouchers (STV) at Rs 49 (MEGA-TOPPER49) and Rs 129(TRIPLE-TOPPER).
With both these plans Uninor customers can continue to enjoy local calls as low as 0.29 per minute and STD calls at 0.49 from the first minute. MEGATOPPER offer has a tariff validity extended to 30 days and the TRIPLE-TOPPER has a tariff validity extended to 90 days.
This gives the customer the freedom to go for a fresh STV recharge or opt for another plan additional freebies come to the customer by way of 100 minutes of free talk time in the MEGATOPPER pack for Uninor to Uninor calls and 300 minutes free talk-time in the TRIPLE-TOPPER pack for Uninor to Uninor calls.
Particulars MEGA-TOPPER49 TRIPLE-TOPPER 129
Validity 30 Days 90 Days
Free Talk-time 100 (onnet) 300(onnet)
Local Calls 0.29 0.29
STD Calls 0.49 0.49
Overall, a Uninor customer enjoys free talktime, call charges at 29 paise and 49 paise for the MEGATOPPER and TRIPLE-TOPPER respectively and the freedom to choose between plans.
Mr Stefan Kercza, Hub Head, Tamil Nadu & Kerala quoted, “At Uninor, we listen to what our customers want. We have designed our product offering based on their specific needs. The current product package from Uninor addresses both -customers who have short conversations and those who have long conversations. Ultimately it is about providing value to the customer.”

Tata docomo free browsing sites

By makig a big blast fra tata docomo launched really juicy gift for buddy net users Tata DoCoMo which came into the india with their pay-per-second billing plans and marketing blitz, has now expanded its BuddyNet service to include free GPRS access to social networks Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and Nimbuzz, apart from professional networking site LinkedIn.Embedded applications and external URLs/Links will be charged at Re. 0.1/kb), and users will have to pay to subscribe to BuddyNet.
This initiative is in line with a similar move I’d suggest for 3G: that telecom operators should make GPRS access free for a limited in order to encourage GPRS usage, the way they did many years ago with SMS.
And this is a limited offer:
– Time Limit: It is valid only till May 15, 2010, and there’s a Fair Usage Policy (ugh) limit for these specific sites of 2GB per month.
– (Un)Fair Usage Limit: Albeit large, there is still a large “fair usage” limit a month. Then again, if you’re using up 2G a month on the low bandwidth mobile sites of these social networks, frankly, you need help (or a life).
– Still No Internet Telephony: The other thing to note is that Tata Docomo continues to block access to Internet Telephony access on Nimbuzz. Enabling free VoIP on Nimbuzz would eat into Tata DoCoMo’s voice revenues, which they wouldn’t want to risk.
– No Indian sites: Any guesses why there aren’t any Indian sites in the list? Perhaps because Indian social networks just aren’t popular enough.
As such, this is part of Tata DoCoMo’s massive sign-up drive. BuddyNet, which will cost Rs. 7 per week, offers users on the network the ability to call other BuddyNet members at 1p/6sec, STD calls at 1p/2 sec, gifting a recharge to other DoCoMo customers, and share talktime with buddies. The idea here is to create an interlinked community that benefits from being on the same network, hence increasing network utilization, at the same time, less willing to churn out since they would simultaneously lose the benefits. It’s a like a social network by itself: you’re less likely to taste out if all your friends are there.

Tata Docomo 99 Recharge Free GPRS

As we said long back that tata docomo will finally provide 1 year free gprs that dre is now am came true
now tata docomo is come up with this plan in our favourite circle maharashtra and pune
by doing 99 FRC On a new sim card customers can get these benifits 2 lakh tata to tata (virgin, indicom, docomo) seconds for one year and 1 GB GPRS free per month for 1 year
existing customers can get all this in Rs. 94 recharge so what you are waiting dude be docomo and get these type great offers

LG Prada 3.0

Key features:

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA speed
• 4.3" 16M-color IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen (480 x 800 pixels) with 800-nit brightness
• Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread with custom monochrome skin, ICS confirmed
• 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX540, TI OMAP 4430 chipset, 1GB of RAM
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash
• Up to 1080p video recording @ 30fps
• Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n; DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
• 8GB internal storage, microSD slot
• Accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port
• 1.3MP secondary video-call camera, HD video
• Stereo FM radio
• Exceptional video playback

Main disadvantages:

• Leather-like pattern of the back cover doesn't look good in plastic
• Color icons and widgets make a mess of the monochrome UI
• Awkwardly placed camera button, no half-press
• Not the latest in processing power, screen resolution
• Passive lockscreen notifications

The LG Prada 3.0 is all about making an impression and it gets busy right away. We're about to start exploring the handset and - in our usual routine - we'll have to get past the Prada packaging to discover the Android device inside.

Amazon Kindle Fire Review

Key features

• 7" 16:9 IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen of WSVGA resolution (1024 x 600) pixels
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity
• 1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX540 GPU, TI OMAP 4430 chipset
• License-free Android-based OS
• 8GB of on-board storage, free cloud storage for all Amazon content
• Weight of 413 grams
• Accelerometer
• Excellent HTML5 browser
• Adobe Flash support, Flash videos up to 720p
• Standard microUSB port, mass storage
• 3.5mm audio jack

Main disadvantages

• No 3G
• No memory card slot, limited inbuilt storage
• Reflective screen of poor brightness
• Very limited video codec support
• No camera
• No physical volume controls
• Non replaceable battery
• No native Google apps, no access to the Android Market
• Some features unavailable without an Amazon Prime account
• Video streaming not available outside US

The Kindle Fire is not an e-reader. It's a multimedia device with web browsing and email - and that's a lot more than an e-book reader. Yet, the backlit LCD screen is obviously no match for e-ink. The Kindle Fire is touted as a reading device - as much as it's for Internet browsing, listening and watching. If it's mags and comics, we'd agree. For e-books, any other Kindle would do a much better job. The Fire is actually for users who have a Kindle already. It's an addition - not a replacement - to any generation of Amazon's e-ink devices.
An older-gen Kindle e-reader and a Fire combined cost less than most tablets out there. The Kindle is so cheap because it lacks many basic features. The sub-200 dollar price tag is meant to encourage Amazon subscribers to keep on shopping for music, video, apps and games as they've been for books on their Kindle readers.

Sony Overview

Sony's back in the mobile game and it brought three phones to Barcelona. The Xperia S was uncovered at CES and has now started shipping. The other two are brand new - the Xperia P and Xperia U.
Both of those feature NovaThor U8500 chipsets with two 1GHz cores and Mali-400MP GPUs, while the Xperia S uses a more traditional Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core.
Sony also showed some PlayStation games running on the Xperia S and talked about improvements to the Xperia P display (spoiler: it's brighter).

HTC Overview

The HTC press conference pulled the curtain off what had been keeping the Taiwanese busy, and they certainly got the audience impressed. HTC unveiled their new One series of smartphones, all four of which have Beats audio and feature enhanced video and photo capabilities.
We also caught wind of an upcoming release of HTC's Sense 4.0 UI, which holds some neat improvements over the previous version.
HTC is also keen to give certain incentives to encourage consumers to buy more of the upcoming devices, including free Dropbox cloud storage of up to 25 GB over two years within purchase.

Samsung Wave Y review

Key features

• 3.2" HVGA capacitive touchscreen (320 x 480 pixels)
• Bada OS 2.0 with Samsung Apps
• 832 MHz single-core CPU
• Quad-band GSM support with dual-band HSPA
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, Wi-Fi Direct support, Wi-Fi tethering
• Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, digital compass
• 2 GB microSD card bundled in, support for up to 32 GB via hot-swappable slot
• Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Webkit-based Samsung Dolphin Browser
• YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration, including Samsung's ChatON messaging app
• Shake-to-unlock and turn-to-mute
• H.263/H.264/MP4 video support with subtitles, AC3 audio support
• Voice recognition for both dictation and commands

Main disadvantages

• Bada OS has limited number of available applications
• Fixed focus 2 MP camera, no flash
• No screen haptics
• No proper Smart Dialling
• SatNav software only a 30-day trial
• Poor loudspeaker performance

For people coming from Android, the limited supply in Samsung's app store will be a major question mark. But the Bada app store has been slowly building up content. And to be honest, the likely Wave Y buyers are not coming from another smartphone. Samsung's Y models are targeting the young and the Wave Y will most probably compete with the Galaxy Y for the favor of the brand's loyal users looking to replace a feature phone.

Sony Xperia S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II

Processor aside, the Sony Xperia S brings a high-pixel-density 4.3" screen with 720p resolution and Mobile BRAVIA engine. Then there's the 12MP camera with 1080p video recording, a notable advantage as most new recently announced phones use 8MP shooters. There's also excellent connectivity and so on.
The 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and Adreno 220 GPU showed promising performance, beating most dual-cores too. Here's the summary of the pros and cons of going for the Sony Xperia S.

Sony Xperia S over Samsung Galaxy S II:

• 4.3" 720p screen (342ppi) over 4.3" WVGA screen (217ppi)
• 12MP still camera over 8MP
• 1.5GHz Scorpion CPU over 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU
• Standard microHDMI port over MHL port (requires adapter for HDMI out)
• GLONASS support in addition to A-GPS
• All units have NFC over optional support in the S II
• 1750mAh battery over 1650mAh
• 3D sweep panorama and Multi Angle modes

Samsung Galaxy S II over Sony Xperia S:

• SuperAMOLED Plus screen has excellent black levels and better viewing angles
• Expandable storage, 16GB/32GB built-in over 32GB fixed storage
• 8.5mm thick (with some thicker areas) over 10.6mm (with thinner areas)
• Weighs 116g over 144g
• Bluetooth 3.0+HS over Bluetooth 2.1
• 2MP front-facing camera over 1.3MP front-facing camera

Both phones have features that we wish the other had, so there's no clear winner. Also, we'll be doing thorough testing too match the performance in seemingly equal areas (e.g. 1080p video capture) and also if the differences change the end user-experience (1.5GHz CPU vs. 1.2GHz, 1750mAh battery over 1650mAh and so on).
You should already be familiar with the structure of these head to head articles - we'll start off with a general comparison and then dig into the specifics, like screens, cameras, battery life and so on.

Huawei Vision review

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Android OS v2.3.5 Gingerbread
• SPB Shell 3D launcher preloaded
• Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset, 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU,
• 512 MB of RAM and 2 GB ROM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging
• 720p video recording @ 30fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA, hotspot functionality
• GPS with A-GPS
• microSD slot, up to 32GB
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Front facing camera
• Compact aluminum unibody

Main disadvantages

• Below-par sunlight legibility
• No dedicated camera key
• No video calling out of the box
• Non-user-replaceable battery
• SPB Shell 3D launcher looks messy
• Non-hot-swappable microSD slot

The Vision reports to the Honor in the previous generation of the Huawei Android lineup. By far the better-equipped smartphone, the Honor was let down by a stark lack of style. The Huawei Vision must've been quick to grab the chance. Not that it's propelled to staggering heights of finesse but the unibody design is a source of st

Nokia X2-02 Review

Key features

• Dual-SIM, dual-standby phone
• SIM manager with dedicated settings for up to five SIM cards
• Dual-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 2.2" 256K-color TFT QVGA display
• S40 6th edition
• 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera
• QCIF video recording at 15fps
• Stereo FM radio with RDS, Built-in antenna, radio recording
• FM transmitter
• Facebook and Twitter apps
• Bluetooth v2.1 (with A2DP)
• Standard microUSB port
• microSD card slot (32 GB supported)
• 3.5mm audio jack

Main disadvantages

• No 3G
• Basic still camera and video
• Doesn't charge off USB
• No screen brightness control
• No smart dialing
• No flashlight

Phones like the Nokia X2-02 are at the bottom of the food chain. Most of the time, a flashlight is all the extra functionality one can hope for. A 2MP fixed focus camera and blurry choppy videos are the closest to luxury you can get at this price. Dual-SIM telephony is the main course, but in the X2-02 the side dish may be just as tasty.