Samsung Galaxy S4 review

Expectations were sky high when Samsung announced the Galaxy S4, since the South Korean giant had to better its very own offering, the Galaxy S III, which not only ruled the Android world, but also went on to become one of the best selling smartphones of all times.

The company unveiled the Galaxy S4 amidst much fanfare and did not disappoint in terms of upping the game in terms of hardware specifications, which included an octa-core processor and a big bright high-definition screen. It also endowed the phone with some unique 'smart' features and added all sorts of sensors and motion detection controls.

However, the phone doesn't look much different from its predecessor; though it fits a larger screen in an even more compact form factor and comes with a more refined build. Some believe that the lack of cosmetic changes may harm the phone's prospects. So is the Galaxy S4 the best phone that money can buy? Is it a worthy upgrade if you already own a Galaxy S III? We try to answer these and other questions.

Build/ Design
As we mentioned earlier, the Galaxy S4 looks very similar to the Galaxy S III. Someone may even take them for the same phone from a distance. However, if you compare the two at close quarters, you'll notice that the S4 is thinner and sleeker.

Just like its predecessor, the phone is built from polycarbonate (read plastic) materials and doesn't feel alluring when compared to the likes of the iPhone 5 and HTC One. In fact, the plastic doesn't compare favourably with Nokia's Lumia range either.

From the front, the Galaxy S4 is not beveled above and below the screen and is flatter compared to the Galaxy S III. The phone's front panel is surrounded by a chrome frame, which gives a premium feel to the otherwise staid form factor.

The phone is available in two colours - Black Mist and White Frost, and we got a Black Mist phone as our review unit. The phone doesn't feel bulky and for a device that packs in a 5-inch screen, the Galaxy S4 feels more like a phone and less like a phablet thanks to its narrow frame and thinner bezel.

The front of the phone still features a physical Home button and two capacitive touch buttons for Menu and Back controls. The different sensors, front camera, notification light and earpiece grill sit above the screen.

You see a power button on the right side of the phone, volume rocker on the left, a 3.5mm headset jack and Infrared receiver on the top and Micro-USB port at the bottom. We like the fact that Samsung has placed the power button on the side and not on the top, in line with other large screen phones.

The back of the phone features the 13-megapixel-camera lens, with the LED flash right below it. The back still has that pseudo textured finish on the glossy plastic surface that attracts a lot of fingerprints. The Indian version of the Galaxy S4 doesn't feature the Galaxy S4 branding at the back. There's a small speaker outlet towards the bottom.

The back is removable and unfortunately you actually get to experience how flimsy the build is when you remove the back cover. The SIM card, microSD card slot, NFC module and battery are hidden inside. Samsung has been able to please people who advocate the use of a removable battery and memory card slot, but we must confess to be fans of the unibody designs.

Display
The year 2013 has seen phone makers like HTC and Sony offering HD screens with their flagship smartphones. So how could Samsung stay behind? The Galaxy S4 comes with a 5-inch full-HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels packing 441 pixels per inch.

While we weren't too impressed with the Galaxy S4's build, the moment we turned the phone on, we were smitten by its vibrant display. It's among the best displays we've seen so far.

While AMOLED displays are usually known to render a little over-satuarated colour, Samsung offers what it calls, Adapt Display, to optimise colours according to ambient light conditions. You can choose between four manual modes (Dynamic, Standard, Professional Photo and Movie) and seven automatic modes if you select the Adapt Display option.

We found that text, images and icons appear extremely sharp. Reading text and browsing the web was a joyful experience. Once you get used to an HD display, it's hard to go back.

The display was not very reflective and under sun visibility was great. The viewing angles on the phone are excellent.

While the HTC One offers more pixels per inch on its display, we couldn't notice much difference between the displays of the two phones on that front.

Software/ User Interface
The Samsung Galaxy S4 runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of the OS and TouchWiz Nature UX, Samsung's own UI that includes custom apps in addition to a skinned interface.

While some people prefer stock Android to any kind of skinning, Samsung's TouchWiz UI has been panned for employing big, glossy and cartoon-like icons and menus. The intent might be to make the UI user-friendly, but it ends up looking anything but pleasant. The Galaxy S4's HD screen, however, makes it look tolerable.

Thanks to Samsung shipping the Galaxy S4 with Android 4.2, the phone gets lock screen widgets. Although these are not enabled by default, users can place select third party widgets, in addition to a choice between access to their favourite apps and camera. Users can also enable lock screen shortcuts that allow them to unlock directly into their respective apps. The phone offers a choice between the familiar Ripple effect and the new Light effect for the unlock animation.

The phone offers up to seven home screens that can be populated with widgets and app shortcuts or folders. The pinch-in gesture lets you add or remove home screens.

The app plus widgets drawer lets you arrange app shortcuts as per your own preference or alphabetically.

The drop down notification tray features a settings shortcut and a clear all notifications button, along with expandable notifications (expanded with the two finger pull gesture). Toggles for 20 settings are also located on the tray - which makes it look rather silly albeit very convenient - and you can choose to scroll through them horizontally or expand to get a grid of all the settings on one screen.

One can navigate the phone through the Back and Menu capacitive touch buttons and the Home physical key. The Home button on long press takes you to the app switcher and you can fire up the task manager, kill all apps or access Google now through the shortcuts offered with the task switcher. Double pressing the Home key launches S-Voice, Samsung's voice assistant. Long pressing the Menu key also launches Search.

Samsung also offers some of its pre-loaded apps including S Planner, Voice Recorder, ChatOn messaging app, Samsung Apps app store, Samsung Hub content store, Samsung Link for transferring and syncing content to other devices via cloud services like Dropbox, WatchON - a universal remote control software that also offers program guide functionality, S Translator, Optical Reader, S Memo, S Health, Story Album and Group Play.

Samsung Hub is a content store that offers video, books, games and learning content (in the Indian market). All content stores are integrated in one central Samsung Hubs app as well as available through individual Video Player and Music player apps.

S Health is a fitness-tracking app where you can create your health profile, set goals and keep count of your workout regimen. It also detects the ambient temperature and humidity through the phone's built in sensors.

The WatchOn app allows you to use the phone's IR blaster as a universal remote. You can configure it to work with televisions, set top boxes, DVD players and other AV equipment. We were able to use it with Samsung and Toshiba TVs and Dish TV's Zenega and Tata Sky's HD+ set top boxes.

The S Translator supports speech to text and text-to-text translation for English, French, German, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Korean.

In our usage we found that Samsung's voice assistant app, S Voice, works well with Indian accents and offers good functionality.

The Group Play feature allows you to transfer and instantly view or play documents, music files, photos, and other content to other Galaxy S4 handsets with just a simple tap. All phones need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

But the major attraction of the Galaxy S4 is its motion and hand gesture driven controls. The Air gestures include Quick Glance that lets you glance at information like missed calls, time and unread message count when you move your hand over the phone, Air Jump that lets you move up and down web pages and emails when you move your hands, Air Browse to essentially browse the Gallery, web pages, music tracks and memo notes, Air move to move icons or S planner events with one hand while you're holding them with the other, and even accept calls with the wave of your hand. Motion gestures allow you to tilt your phone to zoom in while looking at an image or turn over the phone to mute while receiving a call.

The Smart screen features include Smart Stay which keeps the screen on as long as you're looking at it, Smart Pause that pauses a running video when you look away and Smart Scroll that scrolls webpages or emails according to the angle at which you tilt your head or the phone.

Another similar feature is Air View that lets you preview text inside emails and SMS or images inside a folder when you hover your finger over the screen. This even works for speed-dial contacts and for tracking progress bars while watching videos.

It's worth pointing out that Air gestures can track the user's hand up to 7cm and only native apps support them, for the time being. We might see some developers bringing support for these gestures in the future, though.

In our experience of using the phone, we observed that at times you have to try a little longer for the gestures to work. This might be because the phone's sensors take time to initialise. It does display an indicator when the phone's ready. Features like Smart Scroll are a hit and miss and don't work if you're wearing spectacles. We've said this before, the gesture controls are gimmicky at best and you'll probably not even remember them after a week or two of showing them off to your family, friends and co-workers.

The phone also offers voice commands for accepting and rejecting calls, taking pictures and controlling music. In our use we observed that it worked intermittently.

Camera
The Galaxy S4 features a 13-megapixel rear camera that takes great shots in day light and artificial light. We found that pictures clicked with the phone had good amount of detail and looked very close to life with accurate colour reproduction.

While it excels at daylight shots, low-light shots are the Galaxy S4 camera's major weakness. Pictures come out dark, distorted and noisy if it's dark. If you throw in some light and use the night mode, the camera manages to click shots that are bester but come out grainy and still can't match the low-light performance of the HTC One and the iPhone 5. That being said, the Galaxy S4 takes much better pictures than the HTC One in good lighting conditions, while it matches up with the iPhone 5, which is still one of the best camera-phones around.

The Galaxy S4 also adds lots of new camera tricks including Cinemagram like Animated photo mode, an Eraser mode to delete moving objects from 5 consecutive photos, Drama shot that takes multiple photos of a moving object and merges them all to denote action, and Best face that allows selecting the best face shot in group photos, in addition to the usual Burst mode that takes 20 continuous shots, HDR mode and Panorama mode. It also allows you to shoot through both the front and rear lenses simultaneously and put a stamp-sized photo of yours in a photo that you're clicking with the rear camera.

We believe that the new tricks would not find much use beyond the initial phase of the consumer's purchase but the best face and eraser shot could be handy at times. We've already seen this in the Nokia Lumia phones through the implementation of lenses.


The Galaxy S4's front camera does a decent job when it comes to video chats but takes grainy pictures indoors.

The phone is capable of recording 1080p video and performs well. It also offers video stabilisation to let you take steady shots.

Performance/ Battery Life
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is powered by Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa processor which is essentially a set of two quad-core processors- a 1.2GHz Cortex A7 quad-core processor and a 1.6GHz Cortex A15 quad-core processor that work together to optimise processing. It has 2GB RAM onboard, and a PowerVR SGX 544MP chip for processing graphics. Our review unit had 16GB of expandable internal storage out of which 8.89GB was available for our use.

With Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the overall experience of navigation through the interface was extremely impressive, thanks to Project Butter and all the power under the hood. We did not experience much lag except while launching the camera app and getting back to the home screen. Other than that, we had no issue while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps. Performance wise the Galaxy S4 is a power horse, compared to the other Android flagships in the market at this point in time and even the HTC One trails behind if one looks at synthetic benchmarks.

The Galaxy S4 offers Chrome in addition to the default browser. The default browser does not offer Adobe flash. It also offers a reader mode for reading text heavy web pages.

We were able to play full-HD clips, though some formats including .mov, were not supported natively (this was easily fixed by the use of third party apps). The speaker outlet on the phone delivers good quality sound at average volume levels.

Call quality was great and the phone is able to latch on to cellular networks even in weak signal areas.

The phone lacks FM radio functionality (read here why), which will surely disappoint many, especially in our Indian audience.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with a 2600mAh battery, and in our usage, it lasted us a full workday. We charged the phone in the morning (at around 9am), and with medium to heavy usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, two email accounts with push notifications, playing some music, taking some photographs, Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats, the phone lasted a good 9-10 hours. It's worth pointing out that we had turned off Wi-Fi and auto-brightness, and the phone was hooked to a 3G network with the screen brightness at the highest level. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern.

Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is undeniably the most powerful Android smartphone available in the market in terms of hardware. It's got a great camera if you discount the low-light shots, and it runs the latest version of Android. All this along with the gorgeous Super-AMOLED HD screen makes the Galaxy S4 a great package.

It's also ahead of the competition if you consider synthetic benchmarks.

Having said that, we're not really impressed with the sensor based motion and air gestures that are one of the USPs of the phone and found them to be a gimmick to pull potential customers and give them another reason to pick it up over other options. We're sure you'll not be using them when you're in a crunch situation and just need to get work done. In fact, you'll be better off disabling them.

At a price of Rs. 41,500, Samsung has priced the phone well, keeping in consideration the pricing of some of the recently launched flagships including the HTC One, its direct competitor, which, unfortunately, is still not available in the market at the time of writing this, despite the company having announced it weeks before the Galaxy S4.

We prefer the One over the Galaxy S4 when it comes to design, build quality and the materials used in the construction of the phone. But without any marketing push and retail presence, it looks like the One is already lagging behind as far as capturing the market is concerned.

Combine all these factors, with Samsung's strong marketing push and retail network, and you get a winner as far as sales are concerned.

So should you upgrade if you already own the Galaxy S III? Well, if you're someone who likes owning the best phone, no matter what, and wish to use to a smartphone that has an HD screen, we'd surely recommend that you make the switch.  However, existing Galaxy S III owners are likely to get some of the phone's software features via an update and the sensor based gimmicks are not really worth it. Also, you won't notice the power boost in day-to-day tasks. So you can perhaps skip this one and wait for the next generation Galaxy (or some other better option).

If one compares the Galaxy S4 to non-HD screen flagships, the price is a bit steep, though. You may consider other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S III, which are now available at attractive discounts compared to their launch price. Large screen enthusiasts may also prefer the Galaxy Note II.

If you're willing to look at non-Android phones, the iPhone 5 is still the best smartphone available in this price range.

Price: Rs. 41,500

Nokia Lumia 520 review

Surbhi Chawla, April 12, 2013

Nokia has been trying hard to make its mark in the smartphone race. The company had earlier launched its high-end and mid-range Windows Phone 8 offerings in the form of Lumia 920 and Lumia 820. The Finnish giant now seems to be gunning for the budget smartphone market. It had launched the Lumia 620 at the sub Rs. 15,000 price point in March 2013.

The company has now launched the Nokia Lumia 520 for Rs. 10,499. It is by far the cheapest Windows Phone 8 offering but does the smartphone make significant compromises to get to this price point? Or is it a good value buy? We find out in this review.

Build/ Design
Nokia Lumia 520 follows the same design philosophy as its other Lumia siblings. It comes in a host of colours such as yellow, blue, red along with the usual black and white. You can also change the rear casing (at an extra cost) in order to the match the colour of your smartphone as per your mood. We got our hands on a yellow unit.
It is not a unibody smartphone, which means one can access the battery and the SIM slot. Opening the back casing of the Lumia 520 is child's play in comparison to the Lumia 820.
The polycarbonate body of the smartphone oozes sturdiness. Nokia Lumia 520 is slimmer and lighter than the Lumia 620 and Lumia 820. In fact it looks slightly premium in terms of looks when compared with the Lumia 620. The Lumia 520 has a soft, matte-finish, which we preferred over the glossy finish of the Lumia 820.
The Nokia Lumia 520 is 9.9 thick and weighs 124 grams, and is nowhere close to the size zero smartphones floating around. At the same time, it is does not feel heavy in the hand. Its curved back makes it easy to grip and on the overall gives it a nice feel.
Most of the front is taken by 4-inch screen, which is scratch resistant. However, the screen surface of Lumia 520 feels slightly rough as compared to screens of the other Lumia devices. There are three capacitive Windows Phone buttons - Back, Start and Search placed just below the screen.
The right panel houses the volume rocker, power/ standby button as well as the camera shortcut key. Having all the physical buttons on one panel can be a bit confusing and you will have to fidget a bit to get used to the button placement. On the positive side, the buttons are fairly sized and reasonably responsive.
Display
Most of the smartphones under the Lumia range come with ClearBack LCD display. The Lumia 520 is an exception in this regards. To make the smartphone cost effective, the Finnish smartphone maker has opted for a 4-inch IPS LCD with an 480x800 pixel resolution at 233ppi. Hence the picture clarity of the screen is not that great compared to other Lumia smartphones, but it not bad when compared with other smartphones offered at a similar price point.
Text, videos and pictures look sharp and crisp on the Lumia 520. However, it is on the contrast front that the screen of Lumia 520 takes a hit. The viewing angles of the Lumia 520 are good and so is the under sun legibility.
The touch response of Nokia Lumia 520 is very good. As a matter of fact, Lumia 520 deploys super-sensitive touchscreen technology that enables you to operate the screen even with your fingernails or while you are wearing gloves. The smartphone takes a little while to get used to the touch but post that there is simply no looking back.
The screen is reflective and is also a finger print magnet.
Camera
The Nokia Lumia 520 comes with 5-megapixel camera at the rear which can record video at up to 720p. The good thing about the camera is that it is an autofocus rather than fixed focus system, which is usually on-board most budget smartphones.
The pictures clicked are clear and sharp. However, the colour reproduction of the camera is not very good. The colours look brighter than what they actually are.
Moreover, there's no flash on the rear, so the pictures clicked indoors or when the light is not adequate are grainy and not really up to the mark.
Sadly, there is no front camera available on this smartphone.
User Interface/ Software
The Nokia Lumia 520 comes with Windows Phone 8, which is the latest iteration of Microsoft's mobile-OS. It offers features like enhanced performance, USSD commands support, resizable live tiles and more.
Microsoft strives to keep a unified experience across all its Windows Phone 8 smartphones and that is quite evident in the Lumia 520. In terms of user experience the smartphones feels much like its older siblings.
Just like the other Lumia devices, Nokia Lumia 520 comes with several exclusive (and non-exclusive) Nokia apps such as the HERE Drive+, HERE Maps and Nokia Music. However, the popular City Lens app is not available on the Lumia 520 as it does not have a compass.
On the positive side, the operating system comes with mobile version of Microsoft Office, Skype integration and a respectable email client. The new Twitter client for Windows Phone 8 is also a welcome addition and makes micro-blogging experience lot more fun.

Having said that, many of the popular apps such as Instagram are yet to make an appearance on Windows Store. There have news reports suggesting that Instagram will be soon making its way to Windows Phone 8 but as of now that seems like a reverie. Games like Temple Run are finally here, but the hardware requirements mean they do not work on the Lumia 520.
Additionally, popular apps such as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, which are available for free on Android cost at least Rs. 50 on Windows Store - like they do on iOS.
The operating system does not support FM radio and that may be a deal breaker for some. Rumour has it that a future software update will enable dormant FM radio will enable in Lumia smartphones, but until it actually happens, take that as a rumour.
Performance/ Battery Life
The Lumia 520 is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and Adreno 305 GPU. It comes with 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, which is expandable by another 64GB via a microSD card. The company is also offering 7GB of cloud storage via SkyDrive for this smartphone.
Though 512MB of RAM seems a bit less, but it does not significantly hamper the performance of this smartphone. The apps load quickly on the smartphones and browsing between menus is slick. Scrolling web pages in Internet Explorer is breezy. However, as noted earlier, it will prevent you from playing some popular games like Temple Run that require a ridiculous 1GB of RAM.
The audio playback quality of the Lumia 520 through speakers is good. We were able to play full-HD clips, and all popular formats including .MOV and .AVI were natively supported by the phone.
We tried playing games such as AE Fruit Slash (which is similar to the popular game Fruit Ninja), PopStar! and Asphalt 5 through this smartphone. The gaming experience is largely good. The only issue is that while playing Asphalt 5 for over 5-10 minutes, the smartphone gets noticeably warm.
The Lumia 520 comes with a 1430mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the 1300mAh battery on the Lumia 620. The fully charged battery easily lasted a complete day with our usage. Our usage ranged from medium to heavy, including 2-2.5 hours of voice calls, one email account with push notifications, playing some music and videos, Twitter and Facebook notifications, with the display on auto-brightness.
The call quality of the smartphone is also loud and clear.
Verdict
If you are looking for a budget smartphone for around Rs.10,000 that is not running on Android, then look no further than the Nokia Lumia 520. The smartphone looks decent and packs in enough punch for a smartphone of this range. Moreover, this smartphone comes with a Nokia brand name, and a build quality that few, if any, that can match at this price-point. On the down side, the screen of the smartphone is not the best available at this price point and it does not score high on the camera department too.
If you are open to Android alternatives then you might want to give Sony's recently launched Xperia E a good look. It is an Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) smartphone that comes for Rs. 9,999. Sony Xperia E has a smaller 3.5-inch screen and packs in 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7227A processor along with 512MB of RAM. The smartphone has a larger 1,530mAh battery. Watch out for a detailed review shortly.
If your buying decision is unlikely to be swayed by the brand value, then you can even check out Micromax A110 Canvas 2 (Review | Pictures), Spice Stellar Virtuoso Mi-495 (Review) and Karbonn Titanium S1 (Review). All these Android smartphones have a larger screen than the Nokia Lumia 520 and are priced between Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 11,000.

Xolo Q1000S

 Xolo Q1000S

Among the Indian handset players Xolo has been regularly launching smartphones that have something different in them. Xolo Q1000S has continued this legacy forward.

At 6.98 mm thickness, Xolo Q1000S is also one of the thinnest smartphones of the world, preceded by Huawei Ascend P6, which has 6.2 mm thickness. The phone is priced at Rs 16,999.

Inside the box 

When you purchase Xolo Q1000S, inside the box you will get handset, screen guard, charger, micro USB cable, earphone, SIM card removing pin, warranty card and a start guide.

Specs and hardware 

The Xolo Q1000S comes with a 5 inch display with HD (1280 x 720 pixel) resolution. Its HD IPS screen with OGS (One Glass Solution) display technology is said to make colors more vibrant and the touchscreen more responsive.

Besides, it has a 1.5 GHz quad core MediaTek MT6589T processor, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system, a 13 megapixel rear camera, 5 megapixel front camera, 1 GB RAM, and 16 GB internal storage. Its rear camera can record videos in full HD (1080p) resolution. The Xolo Q1000S has Bluetooth 4.0, USB 2.0, WiFi, GPS and a 2500 mAh battery.

Design and user interface 

Once you hold Xolo Q 1000S in your hand, I am sure you will say wow! It is very slim and light. It measures just 6.9 mm in thickness and weighs 158 grams. Also here team Xolo deserves to be complimented for making the device sturdy inspite of its light weight and slim waist line.

Xolo Q1000S has side panels made of metal and its back panel, which is of plastic has a black matte finish. It comes in a unibody design, which means it does not have a removable back panel.
Below the 5 inch display you have standard capacitive buttons - menu, home and back. The rear houses a 13 megapixel camera with flash as well as a speaker at the bottom. The left panel of the Xolo Q1000S houses the volume rocker along with power button. This seems to be the only placement flaw as most phones have a power button on the right or the top panel. Also, more often than not one will press the volume rocker instead of the power button to switch on the phone.
Also, one will find a micro USB slot and a 3.5 mm audio jack on the top panel.

Display 

The OGS display of Xolo Q1000S has played a key role in reducing the display thickness, which is 6.9 mm. The 5 inch display has brilliant 1280 x 720 pixel resolution giving it 293 ppi pixel density. There are five home screens, you can add or remove the number of home screens.

The display supports wide viewing angles and looks quite bright. Reading text, browsing the internet, playing games, watching movies or even navigating is a pleasurable task on Q1000S in low and good lighting. In bright light the display output is found wanting.
Typing on the big screen of Q1000S is not an issue as placement of keys in the stock Android keyboard is quite comfortable. The only drawback in the display is that it is a fingerprint magnet.

Performance 

Xolo Q1000S runs on Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean and comes with all the goodies of Android. Playing regular games life Dead Trigger or Temple Run is a smooth affair on the device. The problem arises when you want to play Real Racing 3 And Xolo Q1000S refuses to obey you.



Nonetheless, multi-tasking is not an issue. We didn't face any delay while using multiple apps on the device. Even connectivity was quite good and we didn't face any calls drops or sudden loss of signal.



The Q1000S comes preloaded with proprietor apps Xolo Secure and Xolo Power. Xolo Secure is a security app that is meant to save your phone data in case you lose your smartphone. On the other hand, Xolo Power app informs you of battery usage and how to improve device performance.
Memory
In Xolo Q1000S out of 1 GB of RAM you will get 971 MB of usable RAM and out of 16 GB of phone storage you get about 11.35 GB of usable storage. Q1000 S doesn't support an external memory card but one can use cloud storage if the need arises.

Camera 

The rear camera of Xolo Q1000S has a 13 megapixel lens and in decent lighting it performs quite well, but in low light it is not up to the mark. If we compare it with other smartphones in the same price bracket the rear camera is quite good. The front camera is good as well and delivers even in dim light.


The auto focus feature of the rear camera is quite effective and delivers good results. Even the flash is good and supports the camera quite well.



The camera can take pictures in different modes like HDR, panorama and smile. Also, when the camera is active one can toggle between the front and rear cameras.

Battery 

Xolo X1000 S has a 2500 mAh battery. On average use the phone battery will be good for a day and if you use it smartly you will prolong it to 1.5 days.

Final Take 

Most of the smartphones available in the Rs 15-20,000 price bracket have a dual Sim and expandable memory slot, which is lacking in Xolo Q1000S.

Nonetheless, the phone has a good design and display. Even performance is lag free. So if the dual Sim feature is not a must-have you can consider buying Xolo Q1000S.

Lenovo P780

Lenovo P780

Lenovo P780 comes with dual-SIM facility, 5 inch display, quad core processor and a massive battery. While the smartphone sounds good on paper, let's find out what the device is actually worth.

Look and Feel 

Lenovo P780 has a big 5 inch display and the manufacturer has tried its level best to make the device sleek as much as possible. The handset comes with glossy front and matte Black color rear panel, accented with metallic trimmings on the sides; overall, it looks great and classy.
The front of the device has been protected with the use of Corning Gorilla Glass which provides some protection from scratches. The flush front is accented with three hardware feather touch keys with variable control for backlighting for battery savings. The key placement of the device is a bit of a hassle as the power key has been placed right on top making it difficult to access considering the big size of the device.

The back panel of the smartphone has been constructed entirely of metal and that too adds durability to the device. Another interesting innovation that Lenovo has adopted for the Lenovo P780 is that they have used the back cover as a heat radiator source for the battery with proper metallic buffer being provided at specific points on battery and between the back plates for better heat dissipation.

Lenovo has also announced a magic flip cover for the P780. However, to reduce cost the flip cover is not included in the box. Users can get it form the seller separately. The magic flip cover actually enables the auto display turn on and off feature for the Lenovo P780. What that means for the user is that they no longer need to manually lock the device by pushing the hardware button anymore all they need to do is close the flip cover and device goes to standby .
The Lenovo P780 at 176 grams is too heavy for a smartphone but you should also consider the fact that it has a massive 4000 mAh battery.

Display 

The 5 inch display of the Lenovo P780 has 1280 x 780 pixel resolution. The IPS technology based display offers better contrast as well as brightness and colour vibrancy too. The maximum brightness supported by the display makes it perfect device to be used even in bright light conditions such as outdoors.

The display is for sure the biggest battery consuming hardware on the device followed closely by the processor. And the Lenovo P780's 5 inch display is bright enough to deplete the battery in one whole day. But to control that the Lenovo P780 gets a very accurate ambient light sensor and the integrated battery saving utility that control display's brightness optimally to offer maximum battery performance.

Hardware and Operating system 

The Lenovo P780 utilises the Mediatek 6589 chipset that includes a 1.2 GHz quad core processor and PowerVR SGX 544 GPU. The processor and graphics chip combination gives the Lenovo P780 enough muscle to tackle most daily tasks with ease along with some HD games as well. The device performs well and fluid thanks to Android Jelly Bean operating system and Lenovo's custom user interface.
The phone has 1 GB RAM and 4 GB of internal storage or ROM of which users only get to use the 2.7 GB memory, which is decent and anyway you can expand its memory by another 32 GB using a micro SD card.

The Lenovo P780 smartphone comes with Android Jelly Bean 4.2. Along with that Lenovo has done a number of customisations on the user interface on this device that are very functional as well. Overall the software optimisation for the device is great and complements the device in every way. Along with that the User interface comes with a number of themes with separate icon packs.
The user interface is very easy to get around on the device plus at any point of time it does not put any additional load on the device's hardware and the memory consumption of the device stays well below 400 MB in most conditions. Along with that most utilities one would need for smooth usage of the device including a task manager, file explorer are already available on the device.

Performance and usage 

Lenovo P780, during the course of the review, underwent a lot of application testing and stressing but the device never hung or froze. But in the odd case of device being frozen or unresponsive, users should not panic because of the non-removable battery - you can take out the battery to reset it. Also, there is a reset button that has been provided under the slave SIM slot.
On performance front, the Lenovo P780 scored 13,575 in Antutu benchmark. This in simpler words puts it at the toes of the older HTC One X in terms of performance while Quadrant benchmarking utility ranks the Lenovo P780 above the HTC One X. To further stress test the hardware we tested the device using Vellamo from Qulacomm in which the device neared Samsung Galaxy Note with 413 points in Metal or hardware test while scoring 1443 point in the HTML 5 test on which most web application work these days. Overall the device offers ample performance but the internal memory of 4 GB is a big turn off as we weren't able to install HD games on it as only 2.4 GB is available.

The onscreen keypad which by default is Google's updated keyboard with Swipe to type functionality is nice and offers great utility. Although people with fat fingers might have slight discomfort while using this phone but this problem can also be overcome with swipe functionality.

We had no issued with the call performance of the phone. The calls are received and made without any issue. The earpiece and loudspeaker volume is abundant and the microphone offers clear sounds to the receiver. The Lenovo P780 smartphone features dual SIM but it has Single ISM active which means if one SIM is busy the other SIM also gets a busy tone.
It has a second microphone for noise cancellation. The second microphone at the device's back identifies noises and cancels them to offer better sound for the receiver of the call.

Camera and Multimedia 

The Lenovo P780 comes with a very useful 8 megapixel camera with an LED flash for additional illumination. The camera although is non BSI (back Side Illumination) sensor based it still manages low light shots pretty well. The image quality of the camera is good in both the outdoor and indoor modes and the light provided by the flash light is sufficient enough for bearing objects. The colours are captured nicely with details but indoor pictures capture some noise which is a turn off.

This smartphone can capture Full HD (1080p) videos at 30 frames per second and the videos are good and smooth at all times. The handset also features a HD front facing camera that is good for video calling and can record 720p resolution videos as well.
Lenovo P780 features support for all generic video formats and anyway since it is an Android smartphone, you can install applications from Google Play store to extend its multimedia capabilities.

Battery backup 

Battery life is among one of the major advantaged of the Lenovo P780. With nominal gaming, audio video use and web browsing over both 3G and WiFi the device usually lasts above and beyond for 2 days between full recharges.

Further, it has a battery saving utility called the 'Energy Smart'. The application promotes battery savings plus it gets intelligent CPU control as well, which put unused CPU cores to sleep when they are not required.
But one thing that Lenovo has creatively added to the device is the capability to charge other devices as well. Yes that's right you can use the cell phone's USB port to charge other devices. Technically Lenovo has managed to do this by adding extra power to the USB port, which also means that it can be used to run USB powered devices as well if need be.

Conclusion 

At Rs 18,799, the Lenovo P780 brings in a good battery backup which is one of most crucial things today for a smartphone. Along with that it has speedy hardware and a superb build quality complete with a metallic back panel that has been very innovatively used as a heat radiator as well. But the smallish internal storage for a mid-range device is one of its major turn offs.

The smartphone has a sweet camera and a great display. And overall the dual SIM functionality comes in real handy. So it's for those who seek a decent smartphone that has it all and surely the Lenovo P780 has got it all.

Nokia Lumia 625

Nokia Lumia 625 review

The Lumia 625 is Nokia's first large screen Windows Phone smartphone, in line with the current trend of big screen phones, which was ignited by Android OEMs. Clearly, Nokia wants to cover all segments with a range of devices and form factors. The Lumia 625 is currently the largest screen Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices at 4.7-inches, larger than the flagship Lumia 920 and 925, which have 4.5-inch displays.

Nokia's Lumia 625 improvises on the Lumia 620, and offers a bigger screen packed in a pleasantly built casing. However, it's targeted at people looking for a value for money smartphone. Keeping this is in mind, it is fitting that Nokia has cut corners in a number of areas to keep the price of the phone low. Despite this, does the Lumia 625 manage to deliver on all fronts? Is it the first big screen Windows Phone handset that will lure people away from Android phablets? We find out in our review. 

Build / Design
Judging by the nomenclature and just looking at the phone from some distance, the Nokia Lumia 625 appears to be the bigger version of the Lumia 620. However, on closer inspection you'd see a number of differences, such as a sleeker and more refined form factor. Also, unlike the Lumia 620, the 625's back cover doesn't wraparound the display or show up along the edges of the front panel.

Like some of the earlier phones of the Lumia product line, the phone is available in multiple colours, including Black, White, Yellow, Green, and Orange. The Lumia 625's colour is rendered purely by the back cover, which as we mentioned earlier, wraps around most of the phone, barring the display and front panel.

Similar to the Lumia 620, Nokia uses a 'dual-shot' layering technique with the Lumia 625's back cover, which helps in creating new colours and textures for this smartphone. The 'dual shot' finish implies two layers of polycarbonate, a single base layer in one colour, and a second translucent layer in another colour, to produce depth effects and secondary colour blends. For example, Yellow and Cyan are combined to produce a lime Green colour. We had a Yellow colour phone as our review unit.

The finish on the cover is better than that seen on the Lumia 620, with an overall matte finish.

The Lumia 625 also sports a more natural pillow-like form factor, with more rounded edges compared to other devices in the Lumia family. On the whole, the phone feels really good to hold thanks to the improved ergonomics.

The front of the Lumia 625 is dominated by the 3.8-inch screen, with the three capacitive Windows Phone buttons - Back, Start and Search - sitting below it, while the front camera lens, light and proximity sensors and the earpiece are located above it. There's minimalist Nokia branding at the centre. Unfortunately, the capacitive keys are not backlit, most likely done to save costs. This may become a problem in low-light scenarios, though understandably, the user could after a teething period, operate the phone by feel.

The back of the Lumia 625 features the rear camera lens and the LED flash. There's a small hole for the speaker grill and the speaker is located inside it. This design ensures the speaker is not too close to the surface, preventing the muffling of sound.

The right side of the Lumia 625 features the volume rocker, power button/screen-lock key, and a camera button, all in plastic and in the same colour as that of the phone's rear shell - unlike the Lumia 620's black-coloured keys.

The Lumia 625's keys were responsive, but do not really offer good tactile feedback. At times, we instinctively looked for the power button towards the upper part of the right side, however, this is where the volume rocker is located - this may take some getting used to for some users, but is not a serious usability issue. There are no keys or ports at the left side of the phone. The Micro-USB port and the primary microphone are located at the bottom, while the 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top of the Lumia 625.

The back cover of the Lumia 625 is secured so tightly that the phone's construction is easily mistaken as unibody. After spending some time trying to figure out the trick to open the device, we realized that you just need to exert some pressure at the middle and remove the case with the rest of your fingers from the bottom. Credit goes to Nokia for making the cover latch on the phone in such manner that there are no creaks and wobbles at all.

Unlike the Lumia 620, the 625's 3.5mm jack is not integrated with the cover, and users will be able to use the port even if the cover has been removed.

Removing the Lumia 625's cover reveals a sealed battery compartment. Yes, the battery cannot be replaced by the user. Towards the right hand side you'd find a stacked micro-SIM card and microSD card slot, which could be a little confusing for a user, making both the cards relatively inaccessible, and tedious to insert.

Overall, the Lumia 625 feels solid yet pleasing to hold and see, making it one of the best in its segment.

Display
The Nokia Lumia 625 features the biggest display ever seen on a Nokia phone. Measuring 4.7-inches diagonally, the IPS LCD display sports a resolution of 480x800 pixels (giving it a pixel density of just 199ppi), which unfortunately defeats the purpose of a big screen. The low resolution display makes images and text appear pixelated. Even the Live Tiles on the phone's Start screen appear pixelated when you look at them closely. We also noticed some backlight leakage from the bottom edge. We're not sure if the issue is just limited to our review unit, however.

Nokia has cut corners in this department and it shows. The Lumia 625's big screen should ideally have been a value-add boosting the phone's video playback capabilities but the low resolution makes it much less attractive.

We also found the brightness levels to be much lower and colours a tad dull, compared to devices like the Lumia 925. The sunlight legibility of the phone's screen is decent, despite the panel being a bit reflective. Viewing angles were average as well. Ironically, the Lumia 625's big display is among its biggest weaknesses.

Camera
The Lumia 625 sports a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash. The Windows Phone 8 camera app on the phone allows you to tinker with various settings including selecting scenes, camera effects, ISO, white balance, contrast, saturation, flash and sharpness, among others. Windows Phone 8 brings camera lens apps that extend the functionality of the camera. The Lumia 625 ships with Bing Vision, Cinemagraph and Smart Cam lenses.

The 625's camera turns out to be another weakness for the phone. Pictures taken outdoors in good light turned out to be decent in terms of clarity and detail, but we noticed that they were not as bright as the actual scene where they were shot - the photos tend to be a little underexposed. Pictures taken indoors came out really grainy and missed out on details. Low light photos also didn't come out well and there was a high level of noise.

Colour reproduction was satisfactory, with objects appearing close to their true colour. We also found a minor lag in the Lumia 625's shutter timings compared to high-end phones and focus went haywire at times. The phone's video recorder allows taking 1080p videos at 30 frames per second, and we found the videos taken with it to be pretty decent.

The Lumia 625 also features a VGA front-facing camera which is functional at best, and can be used for video chat with apps like Skype or Tango.

Software / User Interface
The Lumia 625 comes with Windows Phone 8 featuring the Amber update that is essentially the Windows Phone GDR2 update with Nokia's own tweaks. While the update doesn't bring any major changes in terms of the user interface or features, it does bring FM radio, improvements to the camera software, the Smart Cam app, the flip to silence gesture, and some other minor changes including the Data sense app (which helps you to keep a tab on your data usage) now being compatible with all carriers and the ability to block calls and SMS. The GDR2 update also brings the Glance screen feature and the double tap to unlock gesture, but both of these are not available in the Lumia 625.

The Amber update also brings support for Google services for Calendar and Contacts through CalDAV and CardDAV, and for Gmail through IMAP. This means that it's future proof and users will continue to be able to use these services after Google ends support for Exchange Active Sync which pre-GDR2 phones use. We were able to use Gmail smoothly and received emails via Push without any hiccups.

Other than these new features, Windows Phone 8 has not changed much compared to its first iteration.

Unlike Android, Windows Phone 8 doesn't offer much flexibility to the manufacturer in terms of customising the OS, however Nokia has included its own apps that may well prove to be the differentiator compared to the competing Windows Phone 8 devices.

The Lumia 625 comes with several exclusive (and non-exclusive) Nokia apps, such as HERE Drive, HERE Maps and Nokia Music, as well as other Nokia apps like Nokia Care and HERE City Lens. We love the HERE Drive app that offers offline navigation complete with turn-by-turn directions. As we mentioned in our previous reviews, Nokia continues to set the benchmark in navigation apps, even ahead of Google Maps.

The other services included on the Lumia 625 are HERE Maps, which is a huge improvement over the stock Bing Maps, and Nokia Music, that offers unlimited music free for six months. The software suite on the phone also includes the mobile version of Microsoft Office, Skype integration and a great native email client.

As mentioned in the Camera section, the phone comes with some lenses, which also show up as stand-alone apps (Bing Vision, Cinemagraph, and Nokia Smart Cam). PhotoBeamer is another interesting app that lets you beam your photos to any computer over Wi-Fi, providing an instant, wireless slideshow you can see over a large screen. During our tests, this worked as advertised.

We also love the software keyboard on the Lumia 625, which is the standard Windows Phone 8 keyboard, and the size of the display definitely helps making it user-friendly even for those with thick fingers.

The Lumia 625 also comes with a host of pre-installed apps like BIGFLIX (entertainment), BookMyShow (for booking movie/concert tickets), Cosmopolitan (lifestyle magazine), Flipkart eBooks, TripAdvisor (travel guide) and Zomato (food/restaurants guide). The phone also includes You Movies which offers free movies for a period of three months. The app boasts of 3,000 Hollywood, Bollywood, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali and Bhojpuri movie titles and lets users download the full movie for offline viewing. The app is not available in the Windows Phone Store at the time of writing this post.

The Lumia 625 also offers Draw Something and Words With Friends games, that come preinstalled.

However, the annoyances with the Windows Phone 8 OS still remain. The biggest among them is the lack of quality apps. Many mainstream apps including Instagram, Path and even Pocket are absent from the Windows Store, though you can find some third-party alternatives. For instance 6tag is a nice third party app for Instagram. The new Facebook app now levels up to its Android and iOS counterparts while the native Twitter app is also good enough.
The lack of a centralised notification tray/ hub is still a pain point. The 'Me tile' tries to fill that gap, at least for social networking needs, but the experience is a little crippled. For instance, it's not possible to do a reply all for tweets.

Performance / Battery Life
The Lumia 625 is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor with 512MB of RAM and Adreno 305 graphics. It comes with 8GB of built-in storage, which is expandable by another 64GB via a microSD card. Windows Phone 8 is not a power hungry OS and the hardware has been optimised for good performance. We did not experience any lag at all while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages in Internet Explorer or switching between apps. We were able to play games like Asphalt 7 and Gravity Guy without experiencing any issues. However, it's worth pointing out that not all games will work on the phone due to its limited memory.

As for video playback, we were able to play Full HD clips on the Lumia 625, and all formats (barring MKV) were natively supported by the phone. The speaker delivers decent quality sound at high volume levels, and the loudness is above average. The speaker grill is placed inside a hole at the back; so, as we mentioned earlier, while the sound doesn't get muffled when the phone is placed on a hard surface, it does get affected otherwise.
Playing videos and music through the memory card was really smooth, though the Lumia 625 did take some time to read the card. Windows Phone 8 supports Bluetooth file transfers but we faced some issues transferring large image files from a Galaxy Nexus.  The phone does not include NFC connectivity.

 
The Lumia 625's call quality was top-notch and the phone was able to easily latch on to the network even in weak signal areas. We were very satisfied with the network reception, and there were no call drops.

The phone comes with a 2,000mAh battery, and in our usage, it lasted us a full working day. We charged the Lumia 625 in the morning, and our usage ranged from medium to heavy, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, three e-mail accounts with push notifications, playing some music (both on the phone and via Internet radio), Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats. It's worth pointing out that we had turned off Wi-Fi and auto-brightness, and the phone was hooked to a 3G network with the screen brightness at the highest level. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern.

Verdict
With the Lumia 520, 620 and 720, Nokia has in a way already addressed the budget and the mid-range smartphone segments. However, with the Lumia 625, the company is trying to target users who demand a large screen at a price that doesn't burn a hole in their pockets. In the Indian market, domestic brands like Micromax, Karbonn and Lava already offer Android smartphones that come in 5-inch+ screen sizes, in the budget and mid-range segments.


Samsung's Galaxy Grand Duos is also a popular big screen phone/phablet. Perhaps Nokia wanted to address this very segment of consumers. However, at a price point of Rs. 20,000, we're not sure if consumers would opt for the Lumia 625, majorly because of its mediocre specifications. It offers a big screen but the low-resolution is a major dampener. The phone's camera is also not that great, and to cut costs Nokia has removed NFC functionality and even sensors like compass and gyroscope, which means you won't be able to use apps like Nokia City Lens.

Nokia has priced it above the Lumia 720, which in our opinion is a better phone. This might be due to the impact of the diminishing value of the Rupee against the Dollar, but we'd still recommend buying a Lumia 720 over the 625.

If you're open to buying a large-screen Android phone at that price range, then there are a number of options that you could consider including the Panasonic P51 and the Sony Xperia SP.