Oppo Find 7 Review: Built to Last

Oppo Find 7 Review: Built to Last

Ershad Kaleebullah

NDTV

Established manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, Sony and Apple have contenders in the race for the best high-end smartphone, and the entire world waits with bated breath for their latest iterations year after year. Chinese company Oppo demonstrated its intention to enter this race last year with the Oppo N1. It had a swivel camera and was the first phone to ship with Cyanogenmod out of the box.

Oppo introduced the N1 in India too, albeit without Cyanogenmod, but it failed to create inroads into the market. The company is back again; this time with a phone that features almost all the high-end features one expects from a flagship smartphone, plus a QHD (1440x2560) resolution screen and a new charging technology.

Does the world need another high-end smartphone? Will the Oppo Find 7 manage to wow buyers with its innovative features? We find answers to these questions and more in our review. 

Look and Feel

Oppo might be a Chinese brand but the design and the build quality of its smartphones belies the general perception of cheap phones created by Chinese manufacturers. More importantly, Oppo has been innovative. While the Oppo Find 7 doesn't break the mould as much as the N1 did, it is no doubt a well-built device that oozes premium appeal from every angle.

As we said in our initial hands-on with the device, the nondescript pitch black front of the Oppo Find 7 is mostly taken up by the large 5.5-inch screen and the front face doesn't have any visible branding. The bezels are thin but not LG G3-thin. The phone itself cannot be considered thin by today's standards with its 9.2mm girth, and it is also rather wide at 75mm. Its weight of 172g makes it heavier than a lot of other flagship devices. 

The subtle contours on the rear are supposed to aid grip, but the smooth matte material makes it slippery to hold. We received the Astro Black version for review, and the pattern on the rear remind us of the Motorola Razr's Kevlar back. Initially, we thought the rear cover was fixed in place since the construction is almost as good as any unibody smartphone. However it is indeed removable, and the SIM card slot and memory card slot are beneath it, apart from the battery.

Despite the mostly plastic body, the chamfered edges are metal. On the left edge is the power button and the right edge features the volume buttons. The 3.5mm jack is on top, and the micro-USB port for charging and data transfer is on the bottom. The front camera, earpiece and almost invisible array of sensors sit above the display. Oppo has decided to go with capacitive buttons for navigation. We like the pulsating blue lights below the screen which glow every time a notification pops up.

The diamond-cut bevels, which Dell proudly advertises on its website, form a ridge that makes it easy enough to open the laptop, although you still need to hold the base down with one hand. The hinge feels stiff and sturdy - Dell claims it can withstand over 20,000 uses. The screen is covered with edge-to-edge glass there's a full-sized backlit keyboard along with a number pad on the lower deck. The only things disrupting the premium metallic body's looks are the bright blue and green Intel and Nvidia stickers in the lower right corner. We wish these could have been left off or moved to the rear.

We've found plenty of reasons to criticise Dell's keyboards of late, and the one on the Insprion 15 7000 is no exception. Despite having room for an entire number pad, Dell still chose to squash the arrow keys and remove the Pause/Break, Insert and Windows menu keys. At least the 0 on the number pad doubles as an Insert key. For some reason there's no LED indicator on the Num Lock key and it's off by default unlike it usually is with pretty much every other computer. The secondary functions, such as Home, End and the arrows aren't printed on the key caps either. This could cause massive confusion, since people who aren't used to having a number pad close by could hit keys completely different to what they intended.

The trackpad is pretty spacious but isn't properly centred to the keyboard. Your right wrist will rest on the trackpad when typing, but luckily it's smart enough not to move the cursor around at the wrong time.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, we want to get the obvious out of the way - the QHD (1440x2560) resolution of the 5.5-inch screen is absolutely phenomenal. With its 538ppi density, the screen screams for attention and we couldn't take our eyes off it. Until the LG G3 hits Indian retail shelves, the Find 7 will be the only phone one can buy in India with a 2K resolution screen. Colours are accurately calibrated, viewing angles are great, and sunlight legibility is decent too. That said, when compared to the LG G Pro 2 (review), which has a 1080p 5.9-inch display, we couldn't really tell much difference in screen quality. While it's definitely nice to have, we are of the opinion that a QHD screen is overkill for a smartphone.

Features and Specifications

We aren't surprised that Oppo has fitted the Find 7 with the best components, considering it is their new flagship. It comes with the latest Snapdragon 801 SoC. The quad-core processor is clocked at 2.5GHz and there is 3GB of RAM for running apps without hiccups.

The phone has 32GB of internal storage which can be further expanded by 128GB using external micro-SD cards. On the connectivity front, the Find 7 can technically connect to LTE networks but since it does not operate on the 2,300MHz band it won't work with current Indian 4G networks. The phone has a 13-megapixel rear camera with a Sony Exmor IMX214 sensor and dual-LED flash. It also has a 5-megapixel front camera. Providing the juice is a 3,000MAh battery under the hood.

Software
Oppo has a dedicated research and development team that works on tweaking Android. In a meeting with executives from Oppo's India arm we were made to understand that updates to the ColorOS skin on top of Android take time to engineer, and as result the latest version of Android could not be used on their smartphones. Even so, nearly all other flagship smartphones (and quite a few budget smartphones) come with Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box. The Find 7 runs Android 4.3 Jellybean, and there is no word on an update yet.

The ColorOS skin is a visual departure from regular Android. It doesn't feel heavy and is mostly lag-free. The Find 7 is filled with the regular suite of Google apps and also a ton of Oppo's own apps, not all of which might be useful. For example, the Lock Now app merely replicates the function of the power button. Also present are O-Cloud, Power Manager, Data Monitor, and a ton of other apps which are meant to secure the device. A few boring Gameloft games are also pre-loaded.

In other countries, customers have the option of buying a Find 7 with Cyanogenmod preloaded instead of ColorOS, and we wish this option was also available here.

Camera
The 13-megapixel rear camera does a really good job of capturing detail and keeping noise levels to a minimum. Even the captured colours are accurate, and exposure levels are quite good.

In our daylight tests we found that green leaves on trees had incredible detail, and despite the overcast conditions, we managed to capture some good photographs. Even in low light the camera performs much better than a lot of other smartphone cameras. Of course there is a noise algorithm that works overtime but it is not too bad. Photos taken in low light look as good as if not better than what's possible with an iPhone 5/5c. The 5-megapixel front camera is also really good, thanks to its BIS sensor. The clarity surprised us, and we would go as far as to say that the Find 7's front camera is better than a lot of other smartphones' primary cameras. Selfie lovers will approve of this.

With respect to the quality of captured 4K video, all we have to say is if video recording is the main reason you're buying a smartphone, then look no further than the Oppo Find 7. This is by a huge margin the best phone for capturing video thanks to the crisp picture definition and near-accurate colours. On the flipside, the 120fps slow motion video capture mode has muted colours and doesn't really do a good job.

On the icon of the camera app it says 'Designed by Oppo' (thanks to the QHD screen it was legible) but the design looks like a mashup between Android's default camera for Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich. An icon floating over the on-screen viewfinder can be tapped to reveal the different camera modes. Scrolling through the vertical list was, however, a bit of a pain.

Performance
The powerful specifications on paper spring to life in our benchmark tests and even in real-life usage. Moving through home screens was a lag-free experience, and apps opened and closed without any hesitation.

In our AnTuTu and Quadrant benchmark tests, the Find 7 scored 37,347 and 23,101 points, respectively. This is the fastest phone we've tested till date. Since the Adreno 330 GPU has to power the QHD screen, the graphics benchmark scores were lower than we would have liked. The phone managed to log scores of 19.6fps in GFXbench and 17,278 in the intensive 3DMark Ice Storm test.

We weren't too surprised to find that the Find 7 managed to play all our test videos including the high-bitrate 1080p videos. We even played a 4K resolution video and the phone had no trouble. The loudspeaker on the phone is very powerful, and thankfully it is pretty clear too. We would easily equate the sound quality to that of HTC's BoomSound speakers on the One (M8). Even the bundled earphones are of premium quality and the bass, treble and mids are well defined.

A new feature in the Find 7 that Oppo is promoting via a melodramatic advertisement is the VOOC charging technology that claims to charge the battery from zero to 75 percent in around 30 minutes. We managed to achieve this in 37 minutes, using the rather bulky bundled charger. Users will probably appreciate this since the 3000mAh battery won't last more than a day. In our battery test the phone went from 100 to zero percent in six hours and 22 minutes. Call quality is decent and the phone manages to hold on to cellular networks even in areas with low signal strength.

Verdict
Oppo's entry into the Indian market was with the N1 and the company got the most important aspect of their retail strategy wrong - the pricing. For a brand that was looking to make inroads in a market saturated with options and dominated by Samsung, N1's premium price tag was a deterrent for buyers. With the Find 7, however, we think Oppo manages to get it somewhat right. It is priced at Rs. 37,990.

It is currently one of the cheapest high-end smartphones in the market and gives tough competition to the likes of the Samsungs, Sonys and HTCs of the smartphone world. The one standout feature of the Oppo Find 7, its QHD screen, is better than what the current crop of flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 (review), the HTC One (M8) (review), Sony Xperia Z2 (review) and even the Gionee Elife E7 (review) have to offer. The Find 7 is a contender for the top spot, and so eventually, it boils down to buyers' brand affinity.

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Canon PowerShot SX600 HS Review

Canon PowerShot SX600 HS Review: Petite And Powerful
by Ershad Kaleebullah
NDTV

It is not uncommon for us humans to ask for a little more. Buying coriander? Ask the grocer to put some more in the bunch. At a bargain store picking up something cheap? Ask the shopkeeper to give you a bigger discount. Bargaining is not just an Indian phenomenon but something seems to come naturally to all humans.

Canon might have developed the PowerShot SX600 HS with this attitude in mind, since it gives a little more of everything compared to other point-and-shoot cameras: greater optical zoom and compactness.

The PowerShot SX600 HS, which we have with us for review, comes with an 18x optical zoom lens in a pretty small body. We put it through its paces to figure out if it the photos it takes look as good as the camera itself does.

Design
Encased in a glossy plastic body, the Canon PowerShot SX600 HS is pleasing to the eye. It is almost unnatural that Canon managed to cram an 18x optical zoom lens into such a small camera, considering its dimensions of 103.8 x 61.0 x 26.0mm. The SX600 HS can even fit in a tight jeans pocket with ease. Weighing in at 188 grams, including the battery and memory card, it is quite light too. We received the red variant for review, but the PowerShot SX600 HS is also available in black and silver.

The front of the camera is dominated by the lens and there is a microphone as well. An angular ridge with a rubberised strip sits beside the lens and helps you keep your grip on the camera when you're using it with only one hand. The top edge has the shutter button release with a zoom ring around it, the power button, a  speaker and pop-up flash that sits flush with the body. The left edge has the trigger, which can be used to raise the flash. The holes for the lanyard loop, and the A/V out and micro-HDMI ports are on the right edge. The slots for battery and memory card, and the tripod socket are on the bottom.

A large 3-inch screen takes up most of the space on the back. To its right are the various function buttons. A mode switch in the upper right corner cycles between hybrid auto, creative shot and auto modes. Below it are the playback and video record buttons. There is a four-way navigation pad which doubles up as shortcuts to the flash, display, macro mode, exposure and Wi-Fi settings. There is a menu button below the pad, and a dedicated button to connect to mobile devices.

The camera on the whole is well built save for a few small buttons which were uncomfortable to use. However, it surely isn't tough enough to withstand falls.

Features and Specification
Canon's proprietary Digic 4+ imaging processor, also found on the higher end G1 X Mark II, is present in the PowerShot SX600 HS. The camera has a 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor. It also has 18x optical zoom with a focal length of 4.5mm (Wide) to 81mm (Telephoto). However, the aperture tops out at f/3.8 at the widest end. There is a ZoomPlus mode that allows users to stretch as far as 36x. This is just an enhanced version of the regular digital zoom trick that makes the software work to process the images.

The lens can get as close as 1cm to a subject in macro mode, which is great on paper. The camera has lens-shift type image stabilization. It has an ISO range of 100 to 3200 in 1-step increments. There are a ton of modes that one can play with, including Hybrid Auto, Creative Shot, Auto, Program, Portrait, SmartShutter, High-speed Burst, Handheld NightScene, Low Light, Fish-eye Effect, Miniature Effect, Toy, Camera Effect, Monochrome, Super Vivid, Poster Effect, Snow, Fireworks and Long Shutter. 

Note that it is the Program mode which allows the most flexibility with respect to choosing ISO settings, changing the exposure levels or playing with the metering modes. There is no fully manual mode, so this camera is definitely not for professional photographers.

The 3-inch screen has approximately 461,000 pixel dots, which is not too sharp. However, the screen makes up for its low resolution with bright, accurate colours and good sunlight legibility.

Performance

The Canon PowerShot SX600 HS's interface is easy to navigate but the most important mode, the Program mode, is buried under two levels of navigation. On the other hand, the animations are smooth. The camera has built-in Wi-Fi so you can pair it with a smart device to take photos and review them remotely. We tried it with an iPhone and it worked flawlessly.

The battery is rated to deliver 290 shots in high-performance mode but we found in our testing that went down from 40 percent to zero after taking only 75 shots, which is not good compared to the competition.

In our daylight tests, the camera managed to capture great details. Colours were natural, which isn't surprising considering Canon's warm tones are always pleasing. The 18x optical zoom is a big advantage, although you'll have to have a steady hand while zooming in all the way, or images will come out blurry more often than not. While detail is evident when viewed on screen, we did notice some smoothing and a little noise when reviewing photos at full size. This might be an issue for users who want to print blown-up images. Our more stringent ISO/noise test revealed that the camera captures decent images till IS0 800, which is good enough for most situations. The captured 1080p video plays smoothly without any screen tearing.

In low light, the camera does a decent job but it is not great. We found a lot of noise in our test shots. Despite the fact that in macro mode the camera can go as close as 1cm to a subject, we found that it couldn't focus properly at this distance, which was slightly disappointing. The flash, on the other hand, is rather powerful but casts a very artificial light, so we suggest using it only when absolutely necessary.

Verdict
Priced at Rs. 15,995 (with a slightly lower street price), the Canon PowerShot SX600 HS makes up for the loss of ruggedness with a compact design and long zoom lens. We think it is a great digital camera. 

If the requirement is a rugged camera we suggest taking a look at the Nikon Coolpix AW120. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ25 is another good option with 16x zoom in a similar compact body.


Price: Rs. 15,990

Pros

Compact body

18x optical zoom

Warm, natural colour reproduction

Cons

Average low-light performance

Small buttons

Ratings (Out of 5)

Build/Design: 3.5

Image Quality: 4

Video: 4

Battery Life: 3

Value For money: 3.5

Overall: 3.5

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Book review closed doors

Closed Doors

Closed Doors, by Lisa O'Donnell
Publisher: Harper
Publication date: May 20, 2014
Category: Fiction
Source: I received this e-galley via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.

I ended up sticking to one author, Lisa O'Donnell,for most of Bout of Books last week. I read The Death of Bees first (review here), so I expected something quite similar going into her new book,Closed Doors. However, I didn't find them very much alike.

Michael Murray, the eleven-year-old narrator, gives the reader all of his thoughts, all of the time. It was akin to listening to a mini version of Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, minus most of the swearing. Take heart, unlike Holden, Michael is not in the least bit annoying. His age explains much of what he thinks, says, and does. (Sorry Caulfield fans...I just rereadCatcher with my students, so Holden's gonna take a fall here.)

Instead of running away from all of his problems (*cough* Holden *cough*), Michael attempts to figure out and deal with the problems that begin plaguing his house one late night. Being eleven, none of the adults in his family make it easy for him, thinking him too young to handle anything remotely adult. So Michael does what any kid might do, he begins listening behind closed doors. Without the understanding of an adult, Michael begins to piece together what he hears, eventually telling the story of his mother's new sadness and his father's anger.

What I like about Michael (and makes me even more annoyed with Holden Caulfield) is that he isn't just dealing with this one problematic aspect within his family. He is also juggling school, friends, and girls. All parts of his life soon become tied to his family's problem and still the little bugger chugs along.

Any sense of suspense (and perhaps his ability to move along) comes from the fact that the narrator is too young to completely understand what is happening around him. Michael is not yet world-wise and so the reader is continually doing his/her own piecing together based on a broader knowledge of the world in which we live, as well as watching Michael come into his own.

In the end, the metaphorical closed doors of his family's sadness give Michael what he has wanted the whole time. Closed Doors is different than The Death of Bees, and just as enjoyable.

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Hands-On With The Nexus 6 And Android Lollipop

Hands-On With The Nexus 6 And Android Lollipop

Greg Kumparak,Kyle Russell

TechCrunch

Smack dab in the middle of last week, Google announced two new pieces of shiny: the Nexus 6 phone, and the Nexus 9 tablet.
Alas, both announcements came by way of blog post, rather than the standard fanfare-filled physical event — meaning no one actually got to touch the devices.
Until now!
While the amount of time I got to spend with each device is by no means enough for a full review, it was enough for those oh-so-important first impressions.
The short of it? These things are gorgeous.

The Nexus 6

The Nexus 6 is about twice the price of its Nexus 5 predecessor ($650 vs $350) – a difference that Google makes up, at least in part, in the device’s aesthetics. The Nexus 5 never felt cheap by any means; it was, at worst, generic. The Nexus 6 meanwhile is undeniably more polished, and looks like a higher-end smartphone should.
I was worried that the Nexus 6 would feel absurdly huge in my hand… but it didn’t. Bigger than my Nexus 5, of course — but if you’re comfortable holding an iPhone 6 Plus, you’d be fine with the Nexus 6. The two devices are absurdly similar in their dimensions and overall heft in the hand; close your eyes, and you’d probably have a hard time figuring out which is which without poking around to find the buttons.
We only got to spend a bit of time with the Nexus 6’s 13 megapixel camera (we’ll give it a proper spin in a review in the coming weeks), but it seems like an instant and immediate improvement over all Nexus prior. It boots quickly, and the shot-to-shot shutter speed seems as snappy as you could hope for.

The Nexus 9

You can find our hands-on with the Nexus 9 here.

Android 5.0 (Lollipop)

The Nexus 6 is running Android 5.0 – the very latest edition, otherwise known by it’s traditionally-sweet codename of “Lollipop”. While it brings many new APIs for developers to tinker with (Google estimates it at around 7,000), the most obvious change is an overhaul of its user interace.
At least running on a freshly-unboxed Nexus 6, Lollipop is smooth. Ridiculously smooth, even. Every animation (and Lollipop/Material Design uses a lot of animations and transitions) ran like butter, refusing to stutter even when I tried to trip it up by loading many apps in rapid fire.
A few neat things I noticed about Lollipop:

• If you use facial recognition to unlock your phone, Android’s lockscreen can now be set to detect your face passively as you read homescreen notifications. Your face will never show on screen, but the camera will be looking. Once detected, the handset will allow you to unlock it sans pin
• When setting up a Nexus 6 or 9, you can tap another NFC-enabled device to the back of your new handset to clone that device’s settings and apps. You’ll have to authorize this by entering your device’s pin, of course.
• the “Ok, Google” voice command should now work at all times, even when the handset is locked. While this has shown up in other Android devices before, Google now supports it at an OS level and suggests that Android handset makers integrate the required low-power voice recognition chip.

We look forward to giving all of the above — the Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and the Android 5.0 platform that ties them all together — in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for our full review in November.

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REVIEW: Samsung's Latest Galaxy Phone Is Built Like A Tank (T)

REVIEW: Samsung's Latest Galaxy Phone Is Built Like A Tank (T)

You carry your smartphone with you just about everywhere, so there's a decent expectation over its two-year life that you'll drop it. Get it wet. Dribble some food on it.
Samsung's answer to those everyday problems is the Galaxy S5 Active, a new smartphone that takes the company's flagship Galaxy S5 phone and wraps it in a sturdy shell built to withstand drops, dings, spills, and scratches. It's also water resistant and dustproof, meaning you can dunk it in shallow water for a few minutes and everything will still work perfectly.
The Galaxy S5 Active is only available on AT&T and costs $200 with a two-year contract. (The same price as the regular Galaxy S5.)
I've been using the Galaxy S5 Active for a few days. It works as advertised, but compromises a lot to bring you extra durability, especially design.
Here's a quick review The Galaxy S5 Active is almost the same phone as the regular Galaxy S5. The only thing it's really missing is the fingerprint sensor that can unlock the phone without a password. (That's probably a good thing, since Samsung's fingerprint sensor doesn't work very well.)
The Active has a sharp 5.1-inch screen, a heart rate monitor on the back, and most of the software extras Samsung added to Android in the standard Galaxy S5.
It's the outside that changed the most. The Active is built like a tank — complete with faux screws and plastic panels designed to look like metal plating. It comes in a few color options, including a very tacky camo green.
All that extra bulk is designed to increase the durability of the Galaxy S5 Active. It's also dust resistant and water resistant. You can dunk it in up to one meter of water for 30 minutes and it'll still work.

Is It Any Good?

Like I said above, the Active is basically the same phone as the regular Galaxy S5, so I won't waste time going over all the features Samsung introduced with that phone in April. This time it's all about the design.
The Active is indeed very durable, but it doesn't add much. In fact, I think the design is tacky and  ugly, as if Samsung's designers took the mandate to build a durable phone a little too literally and made this thing look like something an Army sergeant would want in the field of battle.
Plus, Samsung's regular Galaxy S5 is already water and dust resistant and its plastic body doesn't attract dings and scratches like metal phones do. There's not much of a reason to choose the Active over the standard model.

Conclusion

If you like Samsung phones, I think you're better off with the regular Galaxy S5. It's slimmer and more attractive, and it already has just about all the benefits of the Active, including water resistance.
I think this is an aesthetic choice. If you want a phone that feels big, thick, bulky, and substantial, go with the Galaxy S5 Active. If you want your phone to look good, go with the standard model.

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UK to allow driverless cars on roads

UK to allow driverless cars on roads

BBC News

The UK government has announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year.
It also invited cities to compete to host one of three trials of the tech, which would start at the same time.
In addition, ministers ordered a review of the UK's road regulations to provide appropriate guidelines.
The Department for Transport had originally pledged to let self-driving cars be trialled on public roads by the end of 2013.

Business Secretary Vince Cable revealed the details of the new plan at a research facility belonging to Mira, an automotive engineering firm based in the Midlands.
"Today's announcement will see driverless cars take to our streets in less than six months, putting us at the forefront of this transformational technology and opening up new opportunities for our economy and society," he said.

UK engineers, including a group at the University of Oxford, have been experimenting with driverless cars. But, concerns about legal and insurance issues have so far restricted the machines to private roads.
Other countries have, however, been swifter to provide access to public routes.
The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google's driverless car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.
In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan's first public road test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway.
And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 1,000 driverless cars - although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017.
Competition cash

UK cities wanting to host one of the trials have until the start of October to declare their interest.
The tests are then intended to run for between 18 to 36 months.
A £10m fund has been created to cover their costs, with the sum to be divided between the three winners.
Meanwhile, civil servants have been given until the end of this year to publish a review of road regulations.
This will cover the need for self-drive vehicles to comply with safety and traffic laws, and involve changes to the Highway Code, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.
Two area will be examined by the review: how the rules should apply to vehicles in which the driver can take back control at short notice, and how they should apply to vehicles in which there is no driver.
How do driverless cars work?

The label "driverless vehicle" actually covers a lot of different premises.
Indeed, the cruise control, automatic braking, anti-lane drift and self-parking functions already built into many vehicles offer a certain degree of autonomy.

But the term is generally used to refer to vehicles that take charge of steering, accelerating, indicating and braking during most if not all of a journey between two points, much in the same way aeroplanes can be set to autopilot.

Unlike the skies, however, the roads are much more crowded, and a range of technologies are being developed to tackle the problem.

One of the leading innovations is Lidar (light detection and ranging), a system that measures how lasers bounce off reflective surfaces to capture capture information about millions of small points surrounding the vehicle every second. The technology is already used to create the online maps used by Google and Nokia.

Another complimentary technique is "computer vision" - the use of software to make sense of 360-degree images captured by cameras attached to the vehicle, which can warn of pedestrians, cyclists, roadworks and other objects that might be in the vehicle's path.
Autonomous vehicles can also make use of global-positioning system (GPS) location data from satellites; radar; ultrasonic sensors to detect objects close to the car; and further sensors to accurately measure the vehicle's orientation and the rotation of its wheels, to help it understand its exact location.

The debate now is whether to allow cars, like the prototype unveiled by Google in May, to abandon controls including a steering wheel and pedals and rely on the vehicle's computer.
Or whether, instead, to allow the machine to drive, but insist a passenger be ready to wrest back control at a moment's notice.

International rivals
In May, Google unveiled plans to manufacture 100 self-driving vehicles.
The search-giant exhibited a prototype which has no steering wheel or pedals - just a stop-go button.
Google has also put its autonomous driving technology in cars built by other companies, including Toyota, Audi and Lexus.

Other major manufacturers, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and General Motors, are developing their own models.
Most recently, the Chinese search engine Baidu also declared an interest, saying its research labs were at an "early stage of development" on a driverless car project.

But concerns about the safety of driverless cars have been raised by politicians in the US and elsewhere.
Earlier this month, the FBI warned that driverless cars could be used as lethal weapons, predicting that the vehicles "will have a high impact on transforming what both law enforcement and its adversaries can operationally do with a car".

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How to Overcome Fear & Let Your Creativity Flourish

How to Overcome Fear & Let Your Creativity Flourish:

“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” – Sven Goran Eriksson

When you are happy you are confident, and you make choices that give you a better chance at success. When you procrastinate and resist change, that’s fear taking over.
It’s difficult to pull up that creativity anchor and let the “happy you” set sail.
Your fears are just trying to protect you from emotional pain. It’s self-preservation.

This is a weird dynamic that can stunt us from creating great stuff.

My Story

I was afraid of trying to get two of my novels published.
I didn’t want to put the time and effort into contacting agents only to be rejected (sad view, but true).
It was more important to me to avoid rejection than it was to make my novels a success.
I’m no longer afraid, but that’s because I’ve taken baby steps to overcome this. I’ve developed a blog that is read by 10’s of thousands of people. I realize that nothing I create will be perfect.
It came down to letting go of my fear in order to allow success to happen.
Your fear is only trying to protect you from the pain, but it is also holding you back from being truly happy.
After studying my own fear, I was able to create a system that’s simple and easy to apply in almost every circumstance.

Overcoming Fear

1. Listen to your self-talk.
2. Know that whatever you feel is okay.
3. Create a plan you can emotionally invest in.
4. Take small actions.
5. Review your progress.
6. Find the fun.
The only way you will overcome your fear and allow your creativity to flourish is by practicing. If you want to master your emotional intelligence, you have to have fun with the process. The great writers, musicians, and gardeners all make mistakes, but they still have fun improving on their mistakes.
Let’s break down how you can handle your fear and enjoy the process of being creative.

1. Listen to your self-talk

Your fear starts with how you communicate with yourself. If you feel energized by an idea but your thoughts start tearing the concept apart before you even begin, you will lose motivation quickly.
You need to sit down with yourself and watch the patterns that arise. Are you worried that people will laugh at your effort? Are you afraid that you will fail?
By sitting down with your thoughts and noticing what occurs, you will have a better grasp on what is stirring your fear.

2. Know that whatever you feel is okay

Your feelings have a right to be there. They are, after all, trying to protect you. It’s important to be compassionate you’re your emotions because you can’t change these feelings.
If you expect to overcome your fear, you have to accept your feelings and find a way to move in a more positive direction.
I’ve struggled with allowing my emotions to be as they are without trying to force myself to feel happier. I used to make the mistake of trying to force new feelings. For example I was rejected for a key note address because they wanted to take the concept in a new direction. I thought I was going to land the job, but instead I had to face this disappointment. I went for walks and practiced Yoga like a mad man trying to change my feelings. It wasn’t until I accepted this disappointment that I was able to move on.

3. Create a plan you can emotionally invest in

You can choose to wallow, or you can choose to create a plan of action that will focus your energy. You have to create a plan that will pull your emotions toward action. If you can’t get excited about the next plan then you will stay stuck.
I used to constantly make the mistake of trying practically the same plan without any changes. It’s important to create a new plan that will give you a better chance at success. This new plan should get that internal motivation back up and energized for a renewed effort.
Your new plan has to be more important than the previous pain of the last failure or else you won’t take action.

4. Take small actions

You have to take small actions that will help you build confidence. If you’ve created a plan that you can emotionally invest in, now it’s time to break down the goal into smaller pieces in order to quell your fear.
You must take actions on small goals because this makes it easier to feel successful. If you look at the project as a whole, it’s going to feel overwhelming. A series of small achievements will build confidence. When you believe you can accomplish a tough goal, you will have a better chance at success.
Once you are chipping away at the project you will gain momentum. A set back can easily slow that momentum down, so you need to make sure that you take the time to assess your accomplishments.

5. Review your progress

After completing small tasks, you should review your progress. Your motivation will dwindle if you don’t. So take the time to appreciate what you’ve accomplished and think about how you can be even more productive.
Fear is a tricky emotion. Fear may force you to see the negative in what you’ve accomplished, bringing down your mood and motivation. Remember #2 (Know that whatever you feel is okay). Acknowledge these feelings, but at the same time keep looking for the positive in what you’ve done.
I’ve been working on an ebook for this site. I want to give more in depth information about the emotional development that you can achieve at work. I have a tendency to finish a chapter, look back over it and internally beat myself up (Don’t do this to yourself). I’ve learned to stop this negative behavior (on most days).
Once these feelings pass, I settle myself and ask ‘What needs to be fixed?’ I’ll then start taking baby steps (Take small actions) to keep the process moving forward.

6. Find the Fun

The last step is to make the work as much fun as possible. If you aren’t having fun overcoming your fear then you are losing out on some amazing self teaching moments.
You need to discover a way to find the fun.
I used to hate editing. I would rather create something new all the time. The problem with disliking the editing process is that my unedited writing sounds like a 9^th grader wrote the piece.
When I edit I imagine myself as one of my favorite writers (Bukowski, Trunk, or Hemmingway), put on some masic (Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven), practice 60 seconds of deep breathing, put a little thanks into the universe for giving me the skills to reach wonderful people such as yourself and then I get started.
This set-up releases the hidden anger and impatience and allows me to enjoy the editing process.

Putting it All Together

Your fear is the heaviest detriment to your creativity. It can be an anchor on your imaginative thoughts.
When you let your fear hold you back, you are letting your emotions dictate your confidence.
You need to appreciate your fears and realize how they can help you, and then you need to let them go. This will allow you to do the great work that will bring you so much joy. You will soon find that every effort will fill you with so much passion that you can’t be stopped.
What do you do to let go of your fear so you can be creative at your job?

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Motorola Moto 360 review: beautiful smartwatch spoiled by poor battery life

Motorola Moto 360 review: beautiful smartwatch spoiled by poor battery life

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

The Motorola Moto 360 is the flagship Android Wear smartwatch and the first with a round screen that looks more like a traditional watch than a geeky gadget.
Like every other Android Wear watch it connects to an Android smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth and has very little functionality without that tether. It can tell the time, set alarms and timers, show steps and heart rate, or your agenda for the day. But that is about it.
When connected to a smartphone, notifications ping from the phone to the watch with a vibrating alert, allowing wearers to see who’s calling, chatting, emailing or any other notification.
Navigating via swipes is easy. Right to left opens more options like skipping tracks or sending dictated replies to Hangouts, left to right steps back through the menus and swiping upward reveals more. Swiping down mutes the notifications.

Wireless charging

The Moto 360 comes with a small inductive charging dock for over night charges. It will also charge on any Qi wireless charger, including the Google Nexus charging pad and others.
A complete charge takes about an hour and the watch displays a night screen with the time and a charging indicator when docked. It cannot be charged with the screen off, which could be an issue at night as the watch is quite bright.

Painless wearing

The Moto 360 is the size of a large man’s watch with a 46mm diameter and 11.5mm depth – but not as large as the super-sized watches popular with footballers and racing drivers. It has a leather strap and a smooth stainless steel back, is comfortable to wear and light on the wrist, weighing 49g. By way of comparison the Samsung Gear Live weighs 59g and the LG G Watch 63g.
Unlike the G Watch, the Moto 360 doesn’t make my wrist sweat and I soon forgot that I was wearing it. The 360 blends in with clothing, looking much more like a watch than other smartwatches: it is a smartwatch masquerading as a classic time piece rather than a piece of technology ostentatiously strapped to the arm.

Heart rate monitor

Unlike the Gear Live, the Moto 360’s heart rate monitor will periodically take readings, recording patterns and telling the wearer whether they are sufficiently active.
Unfortunately the data cannot be exported for use in other apps and the heart rate monitor cannot be turned off.

Flat-tyre screen

The main difference with other smartwatches is the circular screen. It is a flat tyre shape, with a little squared-off section at the bottom housing an ambient light sensor for automatically adjusting the backlight. Most other Android Wear smartwatches do not have automatic brightness adjustment.
No bezel makes the watch look like it’s all screen and with a good selection of attractive watch faces making it look and feel expensive.

Woeful battery

The Moto 360 looks great, works well and is comfortable to wear but its battery life is poor. Unlike most Android Wear watches, the screen cannot be kept on all the time, instead dimming when the wrist is moving, before switching itself off.
The “ambient display” mode can be switched off, which saves battery but also makes it harder to glance at the time, requiring a complete lift of the wrist (rather than a small movement), a tap on the screen or a press of the button on the side to light the screen.
With the ambient display on, using auto-brightness and using the watch to count steps, the 360 lasted from 7.30am till 9.30pm – 14 hours – before dying. That was not long enough to see me from my commute to bed time, which is inexcusable.
With step-counting turned off, the battery lasted from 7.30am till 11pm with 15% left. With ambient display mode turned off it lasted even longer but was much less useful as a watch: often when I tried to read the time with a quick glance it was not lit.

Price

At £200 the Motorola Moto 360 is currently the most expensive Android Wear smartwatch, and will be available in the UK from early October.

Verdict

I really wanted to love the Moto 360 but battery life that cannot see you through a full day’s use is unacceptable. LG’s G Watch will last two days with the screen on all the time, so it can be done.
Turning some features off made it last a day – step-counting I can live without – but unless you are prepared to take a charger with you, the Moto 360 will have to stay at home on weekends away.
The rest of the watch is great. Voice recognition is significantly more accurate and less prone to interference from background noise than the G Watch or the Gear Live, the screen is bright and crisp, the watch faces are attractive and it feels like an expensive time piece rather than a chintzy gadget.
The bezel-free design is a big step forward for smartwatches and Android Wear suits a circular face. Make it last two days and they would have a winner on their hands. Instead the 360 is great until it dies prematurely.
The Moto 360 goes on sale in the UK in October, which gives Motorola half a month to improve the software to last at least a day with all features active. I will continue to use it to see if the battery life improves and update this review accordingly.
Pros: beautiful round screen, light, comfortable to wear, stainless steel case, heart rate monitor, waterproof
Cons: poor battery life, have to disable features to last a day, cannot charge the watch without the screen on

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Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series Review:

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series Review:
NDTV
Jamshed Avari,

Dell really seems to be stepping it up as far as design is concerned. Its Inspiron laptops have so far been targeted at entry-level home users and students, with the primary focus being affordability. The Inspiron 7000 series laptops, however, have been designed for a much more premium audience.

We've already reviewed the 14-inch Inspiron 7000, and our impressions were quite mixed. We appreciated its style and portability, but weren't totally happy with the tradeoffs that were required to make it so. However, 15-inch laptops aren't that likely to be carried around everywhere, and so Dell has the opportunity to strike a different balance with the larger incarnation of the 7000 series. We have the Inspiron 15 7000 Series on our test bench today, so let's find out how it measures up.

Look and feel
The Inspiron 15 7000 looks pretty similar to its smaller sibling, with the same flat rounded rectangular shape. The main difference between the two is that the 15 doesn't have a protruding hinge. This also means that it can't lie totally flat when unfolded, which should not be a huge loss for anyone. However, the entire lid wobbles whenever you tap the screen. Weighing in at 2.6Kg, the Inspiron 14 7000 is definitely not a machine you'd want to travel with every day, but it wouldn't be too much of a problem to carry it around now and then.

The Inspiron 15 7000 has quite a healthy array of ports - there are two USB 3.0 ports on the left, and two more on the right alongside an Ethernet port, HDMI video out, headset jack and SD card slot. The ports are a bit too close together, which might be a problem. The card slot can also handle MMC and MemoryStick cards, but isn't covered and doesn't use a dummy card to keep dust out. Anyone who needs to plug their laptop into an older projector at school or work should note that there is no old-style VGA video out.

The diamond-cut bevels, which Dell proudly advertises on its website, form a ridge that makes it easy enough to open the laptop, although you still need to hold the base down with one hand. The hinge feels stiff and sturdy - Dell claims it can withstand over 20,000 uses. The screen is covered with edge-to-edge glass there's a full-sized backlit keyboard along with a number pad on the lower deck. The only things disrupting the premium metallic body's looks are the bright blue and green Intel and Nvidia stickers in the lower right corner. We wish these could have been left off or moved to the rear.

We've found plenty of reasons to criticise Dell's keyboards of late, and the one on the Insprion 15 7000 is no exception. Despite having room for an entire number pad, Dell still chose to squash the arrow keys and remove the Pause/Break, Insert and Windows menu keys. At least the 0 on the number pad doubles as an Insert key. For some reason there's no LED indicator on the Num Lock key and it's off by default unlike it usually is with pretty much every other computer. The secondary functions, such as Home, End and the arrows aren't printed on the key caps either. This could cause massive confusion, since people who aren't used to having a number pad close by could hit keys completely different to what they intended.

The trackpad is pretty spacious but isn't properly centred to the keyboard. Your right wrist will rest on the trackpad when typing, but luckily it's smart enough not to move the cursor around at the wrong time.

Features and specifications
The Inspiron 15 7000 is available in two models with very different specifications. The lower-priced one is based on an Intel Core i5-4200U and comes with 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and 1366x768-pixel touchscreen. The higher-end one has a Core i7-4500U, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and full-HD 1920x1080-pixel touchscreen. The hard drives are described as hybrid drives with 8GB flash memory caches. Both models also have discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics processors with 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 video memory.

We received the lower-end configuration for review, and frankly, we can't get over its terrible 1366x768 screen resolution. This is just criminally inferior on a laptop of today's standards, especially one that costs this much and also looks and feels so premium otherwise. Given the pretty powerful graphics processor and the rest of the specifications, we think it's absolutely ridiculous of Dell to try passing off this screen on this laptop. Everything looks cartoonishly oversized Customers deserve better, but unfortunately they'll have to pay a whole lot more for the higher-specced model to get it.

The rest of the features list is pretty standard - the Inspiron 15 7000 comes with Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, plus a "HD" webcam. Dell uses Waves MaxxAudio Pro to enhance sound output, which is pretty loud and clear, but very thin. Dell lists the 58WHr battery as "removable", but if that's the case, you'll need to unscrew the bottom panel to get to it.

There are enough ports and wireless options for most needs, so at least the Inspiron 15 7000 doesn't feel limited like its 14-inch counterpart did. However, neither is clearly better than the other. The choice between the two isn't simply about screen size and overall portability - you'll have to think about which features are important to you and whether flexibility is more important than weight.

The Inspirons are all supposed to run Windows 8.1, but our review unit came with Windows 8. The general lack of preinstalled rubbish was a pleasant surprise. Dell does preload a Microsoft Office trial and McAfee Security Center with a 15-month subscription, but these are both genuinely useful. There are a few Intel and Dell tools that cause annoying popups every so often, but these can be dismissed.

Performance
We ran into a bit of trouble when testing the Dell Inspiron 15 7000. It simply refused to use the discrete Nvidia GPU during benchmark runs, instead falling back to the integrated Intel processor graphics. We had to reset the laptop to its factory state twice and download fresh drivers. Nvidia's control panel, which was missing even after the factory resets, provides an option to make certain applications force the GPU to take over when running, which we finally used to get reliable results. The good news is that the GPU handover is completely seamless, but the bad news is that if users encounter the same problem, they might not even realise that they aren't tapping into the full power of the laptop they've paid for, and that things could be a whole lot better.

For the sake of comparison the initial 3DMark Ice Storm test result was 421 points overall, with a graphics subscrore of 463. These numbers rose to 1,783 and 1,934 respectively when the discrete GPU kicked in. CPU-bound tests were on par with those of the Inspiron 14 7000, which isn't surprising since the machines' configurations are nearly identical apart from the GPU. POVRay took 9 minutes and 3 seconds to run its built-in benchmark, and the Cinebench CPU test gave us a score of 192.

SiSoft SANDRA CPU test scores were also nearly identical between the two models, but the storage subsystem results were significantly different, most likely thanks to the use of a 32GB cache in the smaller model and a slower hybrid hard drive in the larger one.

The screen, as we've already said, is tragically low-resolution and so image quality takes a nosedive, but it is bright. Lateral viewing angles are good, but the problem is that the glass is incredibly reflective so it's really hard to see anything at an angle except in room without any lights shining near the device. The speakers, which are just under the front lip of the lower deck, sound pretty good. Music is tinny and lacks body in the low end, but this laptop can get reasonably loud and the sound doesn't distort at high volumes. The webcam is good enough for video chats but not for taking photos that you'd want to share or preserve.

Battery life was just about okay. We managed 2 hours, 35 minutes in our Battery Eater Pro test, with the screen set to 50 percent brightness. This test taxes the system, so more casual usage will yield much more runtime. The figure isn't too bad considering this laptop will mostly be deskbound. If you're a demanding road warrior, you'll want to look elsewhere.

Verdict
The lower-end version of the Inspiron 15 7000 costs about as much as the lower-end Inspiron 14 7000, and the same goes for the higher-end versions of both as well. That leaves us with an interesting set of choices. As far as the lower-end ones go, it's a fairly simple toss-up between portability and drive speed on one hand and connectivity and graphics horsepower on the other. You're saddled with an unfortunate low-res screen either way, so the particular variant that we've tested today comes out looking a bit unappealing.

There's more of a gulf between the two higher-end models; we step up to a decent 1080p screen and 1TB of storage space in addition to the processor upgrade. This is the version of the Inspiron 15 7000 that looks much more interesting, but pricewise, it's in a totally different league.

We really do like what Dell has accomplished here, but we would have been far more enthusiastic about this specific version of the Inspiron 15 7000 Series if it had had even a halfway decent screen. We wouldn't even have minded the awkward keyboard. As it stands though, we can't whole-heartedly endorse such a premium device with such a glaring weakness. If you can spend enough to get the higher-spec model, then by all means, go ahead and consider it.

Price: Rs. 68,090

Pros:

Adequate connectivity

Decent battery life

Discrete GPU

Great looks and build quality

Cons:

Awful low-resolution screen

Poor value for money compared to other variants

Ratings (out of 5):

Design: 4

Display: 3

Performance: 4

Software: 3.5

Battery Life: 3.5

Value for Money: 3

Overall: 3.5

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