Android 4.4.2 KitKat update starts rolling for Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 10

Android 4.4.2 KitKat update starts rolling for Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 10.

Within weeks of the Android 4.4.1 update rolling out to Nexus 5 smartphones, Google has now started rolling out a new update dubbed Android 4.4.2 for the Nexus devices (Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10). The Android 4.4.2 update comes with build number KOT49H and is supposedly a minor update for the Nexus device range. Notably, the Android 4.4.2 update will be accessible OTA (over-the-air).
The size of the Android 4.4.2 update varies: on the Nexus 5, the update is about 54MB, while on the Nexus 7 tablet, the update is about 40MB. The Android 4.4.2 update brings system enhancements for the entire Nexus device range. Specifically, on the Nexus 7, the Android 4.4.2 system update claims to bring performance, stability and bug fixes.

On the other hand, the Nexus 5's Android 4.4.2 update notification surprisingly claims to bring camera improvements (faster shooting, less shutter lag and motion blur, more accurate focusing and exposures, better white balancing for true colours) and performance improvements and bug fixes.

This is surprising, as earlier this month, Google had announced the Android 4.4.1 update for the Nexus 5, which had primarily introduced camera enhancements for the smartphone. The Android 4.4.1 update brought camera improvements like faster focussing, particularly in low light situations; quicker white balancing for truer colours; ability to pinch-zoom the viewfinder in HDR+ mode and less shutter lag.

In November, almost two weeks after the release of the operating system, Google officially rolled out the Android 4.4 KitKat update for its Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets.

However, it took some time for the Android 4.4 KitKat update to reach Indian shores as Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 users reportedly only received the update in the last week of November.

Top 8 Games of Sony Playstation 4

Top Games of Sony Playstation 4

Sony's PlayStation 4 is now in stores, ushering in a new era of high-definition video games. Perhaps you've already read the largely enthusiastic reviews, pored over the tech specs and watched the eye-catching online videos. And you've decided to fork over $400 and invite the new machine into your home.

Of course, you have to buy some games too. That's easier than ever, thanks to the online PlayStation Store, through which you can download any of the 22 PS4 games now available. If you prefer the more traditional approach - buying a game on a disc that comes in a plastic box - you can drive back to the mall and grab 14 of those items.

Whichever way you go, here are the best titles available so far for the PS4:

* "Need for Speed Rivals" (Electronic Arts, $59.99): This addictive arcade racer pits cops against crooks in an alternate California that's blissfully free of traffic jams. The cars and environments look gorgeous, but what makes "Rivals" compelling is the smooth flow of events. You can start off in an innocuous head-to-head race and end up on the run from half the highway patrol.

* "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" (Ubisoft, $59.99): This swashbuckling pirate adventure, set in the Caribbean during the 1700s, is even more rousing with the PS4's vivid graphics. When the waves are crashing onto the deck of your ship, you can almost taste the salt water.

* "NBA 2K14" (2K Sports, $59.99): The reigning champion of sports sims bounces into the next generation with a new "Eco-Motion" engine. Not only are physics, lighting and player animations more realistic, but the ballers seem to react emotionally to events during the game. You don't want to make Kobe Bryant angry.

* "Battlefield 4" (Electronic Arts, $59.99): Console warriors have never before seen combat on such an epic scale. You can join forces with or against up to 63 other humans online, and EA's "Levolution" system turns the theater of war into a constantly changing circus of destruction. Think gunfire is scary? How about having a skyscraper collapse on you?

* "Killzone: Shadow Fall" (Sony, $59.99): The only shooter built from the ground up for the PS4, "Killzone" is a somewhat hackneyed tale of humans fighting a relentless alien foe. But it looks phenomenal, showing off the machine's graphic power with breathtaking landscapes and an uncanny attention to detail.

* "Skylanders Swap Force" (Activision, $74.99): The Skylanders phenomenon - collectible figurines who come to life on your TV screen - has exploded over the past two years. "Swap Force" was already the best of the Skylanders adventures, but on the PS4, the animation approaches Pixar quality. Best of all: If your kids already own a bunch of the figurines from earlier years, they can still play with them on the PS4.

The following are available via download only:

* "Resogun" (Sony, $14.99): This retro outer-space shoot-em-up will appeal to fans of the arcade classic "Defender." It's a fast-paced, nerve-racking test of reflexes as you fight off wave after wave of smartly designed alien invaders. Before you set off that smart bomb, be prepared for a jaw-dropping fireworks show.

* "Flower" (thatgamecompany, free): This mellow, contemplative journey you control the wind as it races across a meadow - is even more hypnotic on the PS4, whose graphic prowess brings every bit of grass to life. And Sony's new DualShock 4 controller, with its upgraded motion sensors, makes exploring this peaceable kingdom smoother and more intuitive than ever.

PlayStation 4 vs Xbox One: Which Wins the Battle?

PlayStation 4 vs Xbox One: Which Wins the Battle?

The video game console is dead, and the body has been cold for a long time. Sure, Sony and Microsoft are releasing what everyone describes as new game consoles, but the term is a misnomer. The Sony PlayStation 4, and Microsoft's Xbox One, are game consoles in the same way that the iPhone is a telephone.

There hasn't been a true game console under most TV sets for almost a decade, maybe longer. The aging Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which begin their descent into obsolescence this week, do a lot more than play games. So does Nintendo's high-definition Wii U, which was released a year ago.

You could watch National Football League and Major League Baseball games on the PlayStation 3. You could watch ESPN and HBO Go on the Xbox 360. You could surf the Internet, listen to music, connect with friends and feast on a buffet of streaming-video options - YouTube, Amazon, Hulu, Vudu and more - on both. Even the original Wii played Netflix.

The new machines - especially the Xbox One - accelerate this multipurpose evolution. They will compete with products like Roku and Apple TV in addition to the Wii U and the personal computer. Yet consoles face new competitors, too. There are now more places to play games than ever before: hand-held devices, computers, smartphones and tablets. New entrants like the independent console Ouya arrived this year, and Valve's Steam Machines, living-room versions of the dominant PC gaming marketplace, are expected in 2014.

With this uncertain environment in mind, we put our hands on the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One this week. What follows is a preview of what they offer.

PlayStation 4

In a world of Swiss army entertainment devices, Sony is promoting the PlayStation 4 as something closer to a Swiss clock, elegantly designed for a single use. From the start, granted, its new console will include 11 entertainment applications - Amazon Instant Video, Redbox Instant, Netflix, Hulu and the like - with more to come. But Sony has pushed the new PlayStation as a games-first console that, at $399, is $100 cheaper than its rival.

The breadth of the price difference is deceptive. You have to buy a $60 camera to enable voice and facial recognition, or even just to play the three free mini-games that come bundled as the Playroom, a technical demonstration of how game designers might use two new features on the PlayStation 4 controller - a touch pad and a light bar that can change colors - to create new forms of play.

In one demo, a player can swipe the touch pad to make it appear on screen as if a small army of robots were being flicked out of the controller and into the living room. The camera acts as a sort of mirror, reflecting back an animated-robot-augmented version of the actual room. The robots waved back to a friendly hand gesture and were comically toppled by the cord from a set of headphones.

The PlayStation 4 controller is a significant improvement over the PlayStation 3's, which had mushy bumpers instead of triggers on the back, making it inferior to the Xbox 360 controller for shooting games.

The importance of a controller to interactive entertainment is one way that new consoles are not quite the equivalent of innovations in movie theaters, like cup holders or stadium seating. A movie may be more enjoyable in a more comfortable theater, but the essential nature of the film doesn't change with such perks. By contrast, the player's relationship to the controller is at the very heart of interactivity.

Perhaps the most visible change on the PlayStation 4 controller is the removal of the "start" and "select" buttons that have been with us since the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System in the 1980s, in favor of buttons labeled "options" and "share." Press share, and you can upload a screen shot of your game play to Facebook or Twitter, or a video to Facebook. (The system is perpetually recording the last 15 minutes of play. You can post the whole thing or quickly edit a snippet.) The PlayStation 4 also makes it simple to broadcast your play live on the services Twitch and Ustream.

The share button is part of a shift toward consoles as social networks, a transformation that began years ago with Microsoft's Xbox Live and its friends list. More so than Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 is constantly notifying you what your friends have been doing with their consoles. And if players consent, the system will use their real names instead of the anonymous CB-style handles that, perhaps, encourage the culture of harassment and bullying that afflicts online play. In a notable change, the PlayStation 4, following the Xbox model, requires a subscription to compete with others over the Internet.

A big difference between video games and most other forms of entertainment is that they can be exclusive to a device, which inhibits games from reaching a broader audience. When you buy a new television, you don't have to choose a whole new set of programs to watch. Nor do you have to buy one TV to watch "The Good Wife" on CBS and another to watch "The Americans" on FX.

When you buy a new game console, however, you end up doing something very similar. And yet, on release day, the games-first PlayStation 4 does not have an exclusive title that fulfills the console's potential as a showcase for excellence and experimentalism in the medium, even as "Knack" and "Killzone: Shadow Fall" demonstrate the console's graphical abilities, and "Resogun," a reimagining of the 1980s arcade shooter "Defender," signals Sony's support for independent game designers. The rest of the 30 games scheduled to come out for the system by January will be available on at least one competing platform, including the PlayStation 3.

Xbox One

Like the PS4, the Xbox One plays games, Blu-ray movies and streamed or downloaded television shows, movies and music. The "One" part of the name signals an intent to be the conduit for all electronic entertainment. To that end, Microsoft's new console can also serve as an intermediary between a cable box or any other device that traditionally plugs into a TV through an HDMI connection.

Microsoft's proposition is that you'd rather watch cable TV that is funneled through an Xbox One, because, when it is, you can do more with your TV signal. You can use the Xbox One's voice commands to change channels or use its "snap" feature to multitask. For instance, you can have the show that your cable box is emitting play in one corner of your screen while the rest of the space displays a video game or a Skype call or maybe a fitness app. This split-screen "snap" feature is the Xbox One's best trick.

Unfortunately, the Xbox One doesn't entirely upgrade whatever signal is passing through it. When introduced to the public, the box will reduce any surround-sound signal coming from a cable box to stereo. Microsoft intends to enable full surround sound through the console, although it's not clear when.

The Xbox One offers surprisingly effective, if optional, voice control, which is detected by a new generation of the visual and audio Kinect sensor. The Kinect must be placed above or below your television. When the sensor's on, you can turn on the Xbox (and the television and cable box) by saying "Xbox On." Voice commands also allow you to switch channels, shop for movies, start a Skype call and capture 30-second moments of games. When the TV volume is cranked, we found, you have to speak loudly to get the Kinect to respond, but otherwise a conversational tone will get the console's attention. A tip to frustrated significant others everywhere: Say "Xbox turn off," and then quickly say "Yes," and that annoying game being played will be shut down right away.

Microsoft's hub approach is appealing. Thankfully, in testing of a near-final version of the software, the console provided a smooth experience. It switched from a cable TV feed to a video game to Internet Explorer with little delay. Skype calls took longer to connect, making us fear that the caller would give up after so much ringing.

Microsoft's hub approach is also presumptive. The company wagers that the television is still the screen around which people want to congregate and connect their entertainment. The rapid uptake of smartphones and tablets, however, has diminished the primacy of the TV screen. Time-shifted television viewing may also undermine the Xbox One's potential for pairing apps to any live feeds coursing through it.

A console is only as good as its games, and to the extent that the Xbox One is still at its core a game machine, it now faces at least five years of ups and downs. The system's first-day lineup, which we've experienced a half-hour here and a half-hour there, has visual stunners like "Ryse" and "Forza MotorSport 5" but nothing with the magnetism of the simple, rapturous "Wii Sports" games for the 2006 Wii or the revelatory first-person-shooter "Halo" introduced with the original 2001 Xbox.

Games get better as a system ages. So, too, will Microsoft's software, which starts impressively enough. The console is somewhat held back by its bulky industrial design: It is boxy and seems to resemble a VCR. With its power brick and the Kinect, it pushes three hunks of plastic and metal into a living room. The skinny PlayStation 4 and its tiny add-on camera feel invisible by comparison. What's inside the box is still remarkable and potentially paradigm shifting in how we use our television sets.

Sony Xperia leaks Z1S

Sony Xperia leaks Z1S

The upcoming Sony Xperia Z1S made yet another appearance this week. This time around the smartphone got caught on camera next to its bigger brother, the 5” display toting Sony Xperia Z1.

A juicy bit regarding the specs of the Sony Xperia Z1S came alongside the photo you seen above. Allegedly, the pocket-friendly Android powerhouse will feature an IPS display panel. Should the report pan out to be the real deal, the Z1S display is certain to be a massive improvement over the far from perfect TFT displays Sony currently uses.

The Sony Xperia Z1S is expected to bring the powerful internals and camera of the Xperia Z1 in a smaller form factor. It will swap the 5” display of the flagship for a 4.3” unit.
Previous reports have pointed that the Xperia Z1S might launch in late November.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs. Galaxy S4: Which Is Best?

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs. Galaxy S4: Which Phone Is Best?

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 are two of the hottest smartphones on the planet. And though they come from the same company and offer similar features, there are a host of differences between the two handsets. The 5-inch, quad-core-powered S4 is meant to appeal to the widest range of users.


The Note 3, on the other hand, sports a much larger 5.7-inch display and is designed to take advantage of its built-in stylus and superpowered multitasking features. But only one of these smartphones can rule Samsung’s galaxy. We pitted the S4 and Note 3 against each other in an eight-round battle royale.  Spoiler alert: It’s not even close.

Design

The Galaxy S4 uses a plastic design that’s light, but not very premium-looking. The back picks up fingerprints fairly quickly. The Note 3 is also made of plastic, but has a more refined look; it offers a faux leather rear panel meant to simulate a paper notebook, complete with a stitched leather aesthetic around the edge.

If you’re looking for a handset that will easily fit into one hand, the Galaxy Note 3 is not the phone for you. At 6.0 x 3.1 x 0.33 inches and 5.9 ounces, the Note 3 has quite a large footprint, but at least it’s lighter than competing phablets.

The Galaxy S4 measures 5.3 x 2.7 x 0.25 inches and weighs 4.6 ounces. That’s considerably smaller and lighter than the Note 3, making the S4 fairly easy to use with one hand. Both phones also feature removeable back panels, something we’re always happy to see on a smartphone.

Winner: Tie. The Galaxy Note 3 sports more sophisticated looks, while the Galaxy S4 offers a more compact, lightweight design, resulting in both handsets getting points for this round.

Display

The Galaxy Note 3’s 5.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 resolution Super AMOLED display looked absolutely gorgeous during our testing. Colors were warm and vibrant and appeared to pop off of the screen. Text and images looked especially sharp. The S4 also features a 1920 x 1080 resolution Super AMOLED display, albeit at a smaller 5 inches. Between the two, the Note 3 offered deeper blacks than the S4.

While watching a trailer for the film “Ender’s Game,” an image of the titular character looked just as colorful and sharp on the Note 3 as it did on the S4. But the size difference between the Note 3 and the S4, 0.5 inches, is great enough as to make viewing things on the Note 3’s display far wider than on the Galaxy S4’s. The larger text and images on the Note 3 meant we could hold it farther away from our faces than the S4 while watching a movie or reading an article.

The Note 3’s screen is also brighter than the S4. Using our light meter, Samsung’s phablet registered 539 lux, compared with 460 lux for the smaller Galaxy.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 may use the same display technology, but the Note 3’s larger and brighter screen makes for a better viewing experience.

Audio

The Galaxy Note 3’s external speaker is positioned on its bottom edge. By contrast, the Galaxy S4’s speaker sits on the bottom of its rear panel. Between the two phones, the Galaxy S4 provided the loudest audio, offering 73 decibels of sound, while the Note 3 came in at 71 dB.

Overall, audio sounded slightly better on the Galaxy S4, with the handset focusing more on higher notes. The Note 3 seemed to focus on lower, bass-heavy notes. While listening to TV on the Radio’s “Will Do,” bells and high-pitched guitar riffs rang out on the S4, though bass was a bit lacking. The opposite was true for the Note 3, with guitar riffs lacking and bass hits coming through clearly. In the end, neither handset provided particularly high- quality audio.

Winner: Tie. The Galaxy S4 is slightly louder, but the handsets are similarly mediocre otherwise when it comes to audio.

Interface and Software

The Galaxy Note 3 comes with Google’s Android 4.3 right out of the box. The Galaxy S4, meanwhile, includes Google’s older Android 4.2.2 OS (it should get Android 4.3 fairly soon). In truth, you won’t notice much of a difference between the two operating systems from a functionality standpoint, though 4.3 does allow for compatibility with Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch. Both smartphones also include Samsung’s Touchwiz overlay with its myriad quick settings and helpful notifications menu.

The Note 3 gets a few key features that the S4 doesn’t, namely the My Magazine app. Powered by Flipboard, My Magazine gives you a single destination to check out what’s happening in the news and your social circles. The app is broken down into four image-heavy pages, including News, Personal, Here and Now and Social.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3 not only comes packing the newer version of Android Jelly Bean, it offers the slick My Magazine app.

Performance

The Galaxy Note 3 is a processing behemoth, packing a 2.3-GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 3GB of RAM. The Galaxy S4 features Qualcomm’s last-generation Snapdragon 600 processor and 2GB of RAM. Both handsets proved snappy during everyday use, with neither showing noticeable signs of lag.

That kind of horsepower lets the Note 3 easily run the latest and most demanding Android games, including “N.O.V.A. 3” and “Riptide GP 2” with ease. The Note 3 also opened its Camera app a tick faster than the S4 (2.5 versus 3 seconds). We saw a larger differential when opening “N.O.V.A. 3,” with the Note 3 taking just 13 seconds and the S4 taking 15.

That said, we didn’t see any differences between the Note 3 and S4 when exiting apps to the home screen or changing screen orientation in the Web browser.

The Note 3 transcoded a 204MB, 1080p video file to 480p using the VidTrim app in just 5 minutes and 15 seconds. The S4 and its older processor took 7:25 to finish the test. Both handsets, however, beat out the smartphone category average of 8:26.

On the Quadrant benchmark, which tests a device’s overall performance, the Note 3 scored a sky-high 22,383, obliterating the Galaxy S4’s score of 12,251. The smartphone category average hit just 7,119.

Similarly, on the Geekbench 3 test, the Note 3 hit a monstrously high 2,979. This showing crushed the Galaxy S4’s score of 1,838.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3’s quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and 3GB of RAM help it blow away both the Galaxy S4 and smartphone category averages across multiple tests.

Camera

The Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 both offer 13-megapixel rear shooters. And while Samsung representatives said the company doesn’t comment on specific camera sensor hardware, they did let slip that they may have different image sensors.

Despite that, the handsets offered incredibly similar images in both low light and normal shooting situations. A low-light photo of a young woman taken without flash with the Note 3 offered better focus than the S4, which captured a grainer image. Neither photo looked particularly good, though.

A photo of a flower looked colorful and sharp when taken with both the Galaxy Note 3 and S4, though colors were a bit more vibrant in the Note 3’s photo. Conversely, in an image of a busy intersection, the S4 offered slightly more vibrant colors than the Note 3. We noted the same kind of results across multiple images, with one phone’s shots looking better than the other’s by the slimmest of margins. In truth, you’d have to study photos taken with both handsets very closely to notice the difference.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3. The 13-megapixel camera sensors on both the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 produced similarly sharp and colorful images, but the Note 3’s 4K video capabilities put it over the top.

Special Features

All of the special features found on Samsung’s Galaxy S4, including the built-in IR blaster for controlling your TV, are present and accounted for on the Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3, however, ups the ante with Samsung’s S Pen and its myriad functions. For its third-gweneration Note, Samsung offers a new Air Command app, which gives users access to five different utilities: Action Memo, Scrapbooker, Screen Write, S Finder and Pen Window.

Action Memo lets you create a digital Post-it note that lets you write quick memos, such as phone numbers or street addresses, and lets you quickly save them to your Contact list, dial them or look them up on Google Maps. Scrapbooker allows you to circle any information you see on your phone’s screen and save it for later use. Not only does it pull in things like addresses, but it makes them actionable, as well. Better still, the tool will copy metadata from whatever you copied, so you can visit the website you got it from without having to search for it again.

The Screen Write utility simply lets you take a screenshot and write on it. S Finder is a universal search that scours your emails, videos you’ve watched, Web pages you’ve gone to and more. Pen Window is perhaps the coolest of the Air Command tools, allowing you to sketch a window in which you can run an app on your Note 3’s display.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3 offers all of the features found on the Galaxy S4, but ups the ante with its S Pen and Air Command utilities.

Battery Life

The Galaxy Note 3 is an endurance champ, thanks to its 3,200 mAh battery. A T-Mobile version of the handset lasted a marathon 11 hours and 15 minutes on our LAPTOP Battery Test, which includes continuous Web surfing over 4G LTE with the display set to 40 percent brightness. The Verizon version lasted nearly 10 hours.

The Galaxy S4’s smaller 2,600 mAh battery lasted 6:41 on T-Mobile’s network before calling it quits. That’s more than 4 hours short of the Note 3’s time. If you’re looking for incredible battery life, the choice is clear. The Verizon version lasted 5:25.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3’s awesome battery life will get you through the entire workday and then some without ever having to search for an outlet.

Pricing

The Galaxy S4 is available through AT&T and Verizon for $199. Sprint users can pick up the phone for $99.99. If you’re a T-Mobile customer, the S4 will cost $49.99 up front and 24 equal monthly payments of $22.

The larger Galaxy Note 3 costs $299 on AT&T and Verizon and $249 on Sprint. T-Mobile users will pay $179 up front and 24 equal monthly payments of $21.

Winner: Galaxy S4. The Galaxy S4 easily beats the Note 3 in the value category thanks to its much lower cost on the Big Four carriers.

Overall Winner: Galaxy Note 3

Samsung’s $199 Galaxy S4 and $299 Galaxy Note 3 are both top-notch handsets that offer boatloads of features. However, the only two things the Galaxy S4 have going for it over the Note 4 are its lower price and more compact design. Otherwise, the Galaxy Note 3 is the hands-down winner. Speaking of hands, you’ll need two to handle this phablet, but the Galaxy Note 3’s more than justifies its larger size with its faster performance, much longer battery life and enhanced S Pen.

As a result, the Note 3 ran away with this face-off, taking 6 of 9 rounds and tying the S4 in 2, while the S4 took just 1 outright. The Note 3 is easily the best smartphone Samsung has ever made, making it the ruler of the Galaxy.

Reviews about blogspot and posts are welcome... :)

Review of Samsung Galaxy Note 3 octa core: The Best

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 octa core - Review

     Same as for many other people, Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 had impressed us a lot. So when the Korean handset giant came out with Note 3 a few months back we expected nothing less.

Note 3 from the very start generated a lot of hope with its features, which included a huge 5.7 inch display, octa core processor, 3 GB RAM, 32 GB internal storage etc. In fact, it had the best features among all flagship products of MNC players, barring a few features like Lumia 1020's 41 megapixel camera or the metallic body of HTC One and iPhone 5.

As its features suggest as well, it is priced very steeply; these days for around Rs 47,000. So is it worth that much, considering it has opponents like Apple iPhone 5s, HTC One and Nokia Lumia 1020?

We had the opportunity to use Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for quite some time, during which we tried to inspect it from all possible angles and here is a brief account of what we found.

Design 

     In a premium smartphone not only do the insides, but the appearance matters a lot as well. Samsung Galaxy Note 3, though, entices a lot as a product; while its looks are loathsome.

It's not that Samsung has not worked on looks, but just that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Note 3 is in fact very different from all other Samsung devices. Instead of a shiny, slippery plastic back panel - a blot associated with most Samsung smartphones - the Note 3 has used a faux leather rear panel.

But all these good things do not make it as gorgeous as the HTC One or iPhone 5s. Perhaps, Samsung has avoided a metal panel for fear of increasing its weight (it weighs only 168 grams) or of making it slippery, which would have been devastating as a slippery 5.7 inch smartphone would be virtually impossible to use. Also, a metal panel would have forced Samsung to use a non-removable back panel in Note 3, which has the disadvantages we have seen in many devices. In a nutshell, I would like to say that the Note 3's design is made keeping utility in mind, and not looks.

Display

     Note 3 with its 5.7 inch display is among the few devices of its size in the market. The huge display makes it almost like a tablet where you could do a lot of work effortlessly. But it is not size that makes it so good. The display has full HD resolution with an astonishing 480 ppi pixel density. The sharpness, colour output, viewing angle, and even brightness are top notch.

Performance

     This is of course the USP of the phone. First of all, Note 3 comes with an octa core processor which is assisted by a huge 3 GB RAM. And it has Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. It would be foolish to think the device won't perform while gaming and multi-tasking.


Yet it is not muscle that makes it so special but the user interface that impressed us the most. TouchWiz user interface in Note 3 brings the old goodies like Multi Window. There is a magazine-like home screen; just a quick tap on the home button brings up the page where you can see your phone's content, updates from social networks, and news apps like Flipboard all arranged in a nice magazine like format - something like in HTC's Blinkfeed UI.

Note 3 comes with the very useful S Pen. The moment you take out the S Pen, a notification comes up at the top telling you that that's what you did. You can switch off this feature to save battery. The S Pen in Note 3 comes with Air Command - action memo, scrap booker, screen writer, S finder, and pen window. Action memo allows you to quickly open the memo page to note down something while the scrap booker lets you capture a page and write anything on that. Another great utility of the S Pen is its handwriting option; just use the S Pen to write on an entry area in your natural style; no need to use the onscreen keyboard.

Camera

     The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 comes with a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel front camera. There is an LED flash in the rear panel to help the primary camera. The rear camera is able to capture full HD resolution videos at 30 frames per second.

The camera application is quite fast; it takes a fraction of a second to process an image. The app is also quite simple. On the right side the video and image capture buttons are located alongside the modes menu, which has auto, beauty face, panorama, best photo, animated photo and many other options.

Battery, storage, connectivity & other features

     Note 3 has a 3200 mAh Li-Ion removable battery. Though it looks a bit small in view of its huge display it does a good job thanks to the Snapdragon 800 processor, which combines a 1.9 GHz A15 core and a 1.3 GHz A7 core and is meant to save power. On average use involving a few minutes of calls, gaming, music and web browsing, the phone easily lasts for a days' time. However, it has a proprietary charging port, which means that you cannot charge it with any other charger; you have to keep its charging cable with you all the time.

Note 3 has a huge 32 GB internal storage and 64 GB micro SD card slot. Besides, it has a massive 3 GB RAM. This again makes it the best smartphone under Rs 50,000 in terms of memory.

The octa core version of Note 3 is sadly a non-LTE device (its quad core version is not compatible with India's TDD LTE version either). Otherwise, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is quite rich in terms of connectivity with its WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth, NFC, MHL (HDMI) and micro USB. It has GPS and Glonass support for navigation.

Note 3 has all the sensors that you could think a phone would have including Gesture, Accelerometer, Geo-magnetic, Gyroscope, RGB, Proximity, Barometer, Temperature & Humidity, and Hall Sensor.

Conclusion

     The Galaxy Note 3 has everything that even an advance user would like to see in his/her smartphone. The noticeable absentees are support for TDD LTE and a universal charging port. But in any case no smartphone currently supports the TDD LTE version of 4G so Note 3 cannot be singled out about this. It would have been nice if the device was water and dust proof but in that case it would need a non-removable battery, and that would complicate matters.

So in a nutshell, the Galaxy Note 3 is a well balanced and well made smartphone with features that make it truly a smartphone. Its design is entirely a different matter and you are the only one to decide whether it is good or not.

Review-Samsung Galaxy Note 3 octa core Specifications
Network	2G, 3G
Operating System	Android 4.3
Dimensions	151.2 x 79.2 x 8.3 mm, Weight: 168
Display	Super AMOLED, 16M colors
Input Method	Touchscreen
Processor	Quad-core 1.9 GHz Cortex-A15 & quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7
Memory	3 GB RAM, Internal Memory: 32 GB, Expandable: 64 GB
Connectivity	GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, WiFi, HDMI, USB
Multimedia	Supports all major audio file types
Camera	Rear Camera 13 MP, Front Camera 2 MP
GPS	With A-GPS and GLONASS
Additional features
Battery	3200 mAh, Li-Ion
Warranty	1 year
Price	Rs. 46,899

WhatsApp, SnapChat And LINE: Does Mobile Messaging Apps Are Taking Teens Away From Facebook?

WhatsApp, SnapChat And LINE: Why Mobile Messaging Apps Are Taking Teens Away From Facebook

When Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) disclosed its third quarter earnings a couple of weeks ago, David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer, noted that the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social network had seen a decrease in daily usage amongst teenagers. It turns out that more and more young users are instead communicating with each other on mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp, LINE, Kik and many others like them.

WhatsApp now has more than 350 million active users (omg :o), making the world’s most popular messaging app and even more active users than Twitter. The Gaurdian estimates that WhatsApp is on more than 95 percent of all smartphones in Spain and that the majority of these users are under 25.

A part of the reason is that Facebook just isn’t cool anymore. While Facebook is proud of its 1.2 billion monthly active users, younger people don’t like their News Feeds filled with updates about their Aunt and her cat, or have their parents “Liking” everything they post. (Lol :D)

Messaging apps are also more private. It’s safer and more intimate to directly share a status, picture or video through a private message than to post on Facebook.

Just look at the success of Snapchat, which deletes an image or video just a few seconds after they are seen, allowing teens to send images that won’t be permanently recorded online. Snapchat now has about 5 million monthly active users and valued between $2 billion and $4 billion.

Messaging apps have become so popular, they have even become like social networks in their own right and have added features beyond simple messaging. Kakoa Talk in South Korea, WeChat in China, LINE in Japan and Kik in Canada allow users to send stickers, play games and share music. These features have generated millions in sales. Though WhatsApp sticks to just messaging, its rolling out an API to make it easy for users to share content through WhatsApp, sort of like the Facebook “Like” button that is now ubiquitous on websites.

Facebook tried to downplay the trend, saying that it’s difficult to get accurate metrics on young users, but it is obvious that the social network has taken notice. Facebook has been giving its own Messenger service more attention lately, including a redesigned stand-alone app.

After reporting that it made $425 million in the previous quarter, it’s doubtful that Facebook is too worried at this point. But with more and more young people using messaging apps instead of the social network, it can only be a matter of time before older people catch on as well.

Do you use messaging apps instead of Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

Trigger Finger - Apple fires biometrics into the mainstream

Trigger Finger - Apple fires biometrics into the mainstream

Although Apple's executives said at Tuesday's launch that its Touch ID technology embedded into the iPhone 5S' home button would only provide fingerprint access to the phone and its own online stores, analysts said Apple's embrace of such technology, called biometrics, would be key to wider adoption.

"It really propels biometrics into the mainstream," said specialist Alan Goode, the UK-based managing director of research consultancy Goode Intelligence.

Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, hinted of its future in a video presentation at the launch.

"Touch ID defines the next step of how you use your iPhone," he said, "making something as important as security so effortless and so simple."

Passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) have long been the mainstay of access to devices, bank accounts and online services, despite their poor record. Many passwords can easily be guessed, while others can be hacked by brute-force attacks - essentially a computer program running through all possible permutations.

They also involve one too many steps for lots of users: Apple said that half of smartphone users don't bother to password-protect their devices.

Hence the appeal of biometrics, which take something unique to the individual - a fingerprint, an iris, voice or facial features - as authentication.

COMFORT FOR COMMERCE

Apple's move may not have an immediate impact beyond improving the way users unlock their devices and interact with Apple services like iTunes and its App Store.

But that is itself a significant step. Apple has more than 500 million iTunes accounts. Anything that increases security and removes steps in the payment process is bound to boost online purchases.

It will also raise the comfort levels of companies supplying the content to a mobile commerce sector expected to reach $40 billion next year in the United States alone, according to Euromonitor estimates.

Users afraid of using their mobile device to make purchases online or in the real world because they fear it will be stolen or their password seen may feel liberated using a fingerprint, said Michael Chasen, CEO of SocialRadar, which is building location-based mobile applications for social networking.

For mobile commerce, he said, that could "be the missing piece".

Beyond the web, Apple could combine the Touch ID with its existing "Passbook" app that stores coupons, tickets to events and boarding passes on an iPhone and allow event organizers and airline companies to validate those documents, said Sebastien Taveau, chief technology officer at California-based Validity Sensors, which makes sensors for other manufacturers.

"Apple wants to make deals with music and entertainment companies with very strong opinions on digital rights management," Taveau said. The fingerprint scanner, when used in transactions with these companies, could "reassure all these industries".

Biometric security should also appeal to enterprises nervous about allowing the personal devices of employees on the office network, analysts and industry insiders said.

"If this has been implemented right, every enterprise that enforces a password or PIN lock on the device will begin using the fingerprint sensor instead," said Song Chuang, Singapore-based research director at Gartner.

Apple is not the first to try to make biometrics work for the consumer.

Fingerprint scanners have already found their way into laptops, external hard-drives and electronic wallets. Companies like Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc, Fujitsu Ltd and Pantech Co Ltd have incorporated fingerprint scanners into their mobile phones.

But none has really taken off.

Partly, that's because of cost and partly because there's been little in the way of an ecosystem to build support for the products.

"Biometrics have been historically viewed as a more expensive 'nice to have' component, rather than a 'must have'," said Bill Morelli, an analyst at IHS.

Also, fingerprint scanners have tended to make things harder rather than easier for users.

Chuang at Gartner said it could take users up to six swipes for a sensor to 'learn' a user's fingerprint. "This is not a great user experience," he said.

All things, say some, that Apple was put on this earth to fix. Ben Thompson, a Taipei-based industry observer who writes a blog at stratechery.com, said Apple was focusing on the apparently trivial problem of entering a password - but one that irked users dozens of times a day.

"It's classic Apple to expend tremendous energy on simplifying a small irritation, even if it's not a classic feature list item."

BADLY KEPT SECRET BOOSTS INDUSTRY

The badly kept secret of Apple's biometric plans had already given the industry a boost long before Tuesday. The company has been filing patents on biometric security since at least 2009.

"Apple has been working on it for more than two years and they have extremely competent engineers," said Validity's Taveau.

Apple reached out two to three years ago to Microlatch, an Australian company, to license and test its peripheral fingerprint sensors. Apple asked it to build a Bluetooth connection to the phone and accompanying software, Microlatch managing director and founder Chris Burke said, so Apple could gauge user reactions and habits, particularly in e-commerce strongholds like China.

"In their roadmap it was clear there would be fingerprint scans, so they'd plot their course, rather than just trying something," Burke said in a phone interview.

Last year Apple also paid about $350 million for AuthenTec, a key player in fingerprint sensors and until its purchase a supplier to Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc, Lenovo Group Ltd and Fujitsu.

Apple's moves have reawakened interest in the space.

Swedish biometric component maker Fingerprint Cards AB, for example, has seen its share price rise 1,400 percent in the past year. The company predicts the industry will ship up to 100 million consumer electronic devices embedded with fingerprint scanners this year, rising to more than 1 billion in 2015 as biometrics finds its way into TV remotes, gaming consoles and cameras.

DOWNSIDE OF NICE, NOT NECESSARY

There are downsides to fingerprint technology. It is not as accurate as companies touting its benefits make it sound, and PINs and passwords can be reset or changed if someone steals them.

"Fingerprint recognition is not perfect," said Geppy Parziale, biometrics expert and CEO of Invasivecode, a firm that develops applications for Apple's mobile devices. Then there's the problem of the fingerprints themselves: acquiring a large enough set of them to test the accuracy of such devices is complicated by privacy and legal issues, Parziale said.

But if anyone can bring this technology into the mainstream, experts say, it's Apple. It has, for example, embedded the scanner into the iPhone's home button, while other mobile devices usually have it on the back, making it awkward for the user and increasing the number of failed attempts.

Samsung and fellow South Korean electronics manufacturer LG Electronics Inc have had problems incorporating the technology into finished products.

LG's head of domestic marketing, Ma Chang-Min, last month said the company had abandoned efforts to include a fingerprint sensor to the back cover of its flagship G2 smartphone "as we need more work to improve reliability and usability".

That gives Apple a headstart. It can also build the sensing and security deep into its operating system and the A7 mobile chip which Apple itself designed, putting it ahead of rivals such like Google, which develops the Android mobile OS and licenses it to manufacturers like Samsung, said Taipei-based KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

But its edge may not last.

Microsoft Corp, for one, is building fingerprint recognition into the latest update of its Windows operating system and, said Taveau of Validity Sensors, "it is fair to assume that the Android community won't be long to react".


Source: http://www.reuters.com