BlackBerry Z3 Review: Sticking to What It Does Best

BlackBerry Z3 Review: Sticking to What It Does Best
NDTV
Jamshed Avari,

Rs. 15999

There's no denying the fact that BlackBerry (the company formerly known as Research In Motion) has serious problems. Five years ago, everyone from students to housewives to businessmen was willing to pay a lot of money to own a BlackBerry. Three years ago, Android and the iPhone began to make QWERTY phones feel seriously clunky and old-fashioned. Two years ago, we were hoping that the new BlackBerry 10 platform and devices based on it would reinvigorate the company, but ridiculous pricing and questionable decisions at every level destroyed any chance of that happening.

Ever since the launch of the Z10 a year and a half ago, we've been waiting for lower-priced models that might offer better value for money and wouldn't be completely overshadowed by Android. As it stands, there are very few BlackBerry loyalists left, and the majority of those who have moved on to Android or iOS are not going to give the company another chance without a lot of very good reasons. Let's find out if the new BlackBerry Z3 delivers.

Look and feel
BlackBerry really does know how to build beautiful phones. The Z3 is ridiculously good looking and its construction quality is impeccable. As of now, it's only available in black but we wouldn't be surprised to see a white edition in the future. The front is all smooth glass, and there really isn't much bezel space around the screen itself. The rear is made of a texturised soft-touch plastic with the classic BB logo in the centre. For better or worse, the battery is non-removable.

The camera and flash are in the top-left corner of the rear, much like they are on the older Z10. A plastic flap on the phone's right edge covers the SIM and microSD card slots, while the power button is placed towards the top of the left edge with the volume controls and voice command shortcut button below it. The Micro-USB port is on the bottom and 3.5mm headset port is on the top. The Z3 doesn't have a mini-HDMI port, which sets it apart from its higher-end siblings.

The Z3 feels good in the hand even if it is just a bit too heavy. It's slim, slick, and very well put-together. In fact it could put several high-end phones to shame in this regard.

Features, specifications and software

There's good news and bad news - while the Z3 is brand new and undoubtedly good-looking, it's built with mostly utilitarian components. The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 with integrated Adreno 305 graphics, but there's a generous 1.5GB of RAM to keep things humming along. The screen is a bit of a letdown at 540x960 pixels despite its large size. There's Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 along with A-GPS, FM radio, an accelerometer and a proximity sensor. There's only 8GB of internal storage space, but microSD cards of up to 32GB are supported (and 64GB cards might work unofficially).

The main attraction is of course the BlackBerry 10 OS. The Z3 comes with version 10.2.1 which is considerably improved over the version that originally shipped with the Z10. The phone might be physically similar to pretty much every other touchscreen smartphone out there, but the BlackBerry OS takes quite a bit of time and effort to get used to, even for users of older non-touch BlackBerrys. 

For starters, there are no buttons of any sort to help you move through the OS; you have to remember to use gestures instead. This is problematic because things aren't always laid out as you might expect them to be, making navigation unpredictable at times. For example, there's no universal "back" or "home" gesture, and getting in or out of the Hub (described later on) isn't the same as launching and quitting apps. Moreover, you have to move your thumb quite a lot over the large screen which takes longer and requires more effort than a simple button press would have.

The Z3's lock screen is pretty plain. There is of course a large clock, plus assorted status indicators. You'll see a list of notification icons down the left, and tapping on any of them will bring up details of your missed calls, messages, emails or social network alerts - you can choose not to display these details in the security settings. There's also a pull-down shade which takes you into bedside mode. This dims the screen and displays a large illuminated clock on which you can easily drag dots indicating the times each of your alarms will ring.

On unlocking the screen, you'll see four large thumbnails representing your most recently used apps. A swipe to the right will bring up the BlackBerry Hub, and swipes to the left will take you through as many pages of app icons as you have. The thumbnail page isn't like conventional app switchers - it shows only four apps - and so its utility is rather limited. You can never be sure that an app you want is going to be there - in fact it gets in the way when you need to get to the app shortcuts. 

This is also when we really miss having a home screen or at least a tray that frequently used apps can be pinned to. Of course you can rearrange app icons in the grid any way you like, but the grid itself is always at least one level away from whatever you're doing. You have to go through the recent apps screen to reach it. Android lets you pin shortcuts and widgets to home screens and even iOS has at least a dock that stays constant on all menu pages.

Exiting any app (with a swipe upwards from below the edge of the screen to above its middle point) brings you back to the page of recent apps. While performing the gesture, you'll notice a column of notification icons just like the ones on the lock screen. It's a great way to constantly be aware of things you might have missed. Incidentally, swiping down from the top of the screen brings up a set of quick shortcuts, but there are no notifications here. This is something every other platform has standardised on, so not finding them here is a little disorienting at first. The settings aren't consistent - sometimes you'll see the system-wide panel, sometimes you'll see app-specific controls, and sometimes you'll get nothing at all - which means you can't always quickly get to things like the screen brightness or Bluetooth.

You can get to the BlackBerry Hub by swiping to the right from the screen of thumbnails or by swiping up and then right from within any app (except if you're in landscape mode, in which the swipe-up motion is awkward and the swipe-up-and-right gesture doesn't work at all). The Hub is truly unique amongst all smartphone platforms, but like everything else, it takes a while to get used to.

This is where all your email, messages, app notifications and even missed call alerts can be found. You can add your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Evernote and calendar accounts as well. There is no separate email app; the hub is baked into the foundations of the phone's OS itself. For some reason, though, there's still a shortcut icon for Text Messaging in the launcher which leads you to the Hub. You just have to remember that you can't exit the Hub like it's a regular app; you can only swipe to the left.

BBM is still a major part of the BlackBerry ecosystem and there are more features for BlackBerry 10 users than there are for iPhone and Android users. It's also integrated into the Hub as a first-class citizen, whereas some other app alerts are just lumped under Notifications. BBM has several strong features compared to today's dominant messaging apps, especially in allowing you to control who can message you. Even so, none of this is enough to drive anyone to choose a BlackBerry phone over the competition. BBM just isn't the powerful draw it once was.

BlackBerry is also very proud of the keyboard it has developed for all-touch BlackBerry 10 devices. We found that in regular usage it was just a bit too large for comfortable typing. Either the company hasn't scaled it appropriately for this screen and resolution, or it's just too spaced out. Each row is separated by a thick bar reminiscent of the ones on the old BlackBerry Bold phones, which is just unnecessary. One very nice touch is that special characters are arranged exactly as they would be on a desktop keyboard.

The two major keyboard features are the Hinglish dictionary and the swipe-to-autocomplete gesture. Hinglish is pretty neat, since it mixes in transliterated Hindi words and suggests them in context as you type. You can scatter Hindi words into English sentences or just type as usual. If you've ever felt that your natural style was hampered by English autocorrect, you'll love this. Swiping to complete becomes natural fairly quickly

The Z3 comes with a number of useful apps: FourSquare, Evernote, DocsToGo, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Adobe Reader, YouTube and DropBox. Most of the built-in apps are quite polished - the Calculator, for instance, has a built-in unit convertor and even a tip calculator.

The BlackBerry World app is a bit of a pain to nagivate, and searching for anything will throw up app, music and game titles as results. Many common apps can be found natively for BB 10, but the appeal is that a huge number of Android apps will work as well. You can use third-party app stores such as Amazon or SildeMe, or find installable APK files anywhere on the Internet (if you're sure the source is safe). Installing is as simple as tapping the file name in the browser's Downloads list or in the File Manager app

The voice search and command feature isn't as capable of deciphering plainly spoken instructions as Siri or Google are, and will often search for exactly what you say. It's possible to tell the Z3 to compose a message, set alarms, get directions, and read your email out to you. The Z3 didn't do very well at filtering out noise to decipher commands (and of course had trouble with Indian names), but it's pretty versatile overall. 

Annoyingly, you can't plug the Z3 into a PC and access its internal storage space. A microSD card will show up as a removable drive if you're using one, but the only way to get media onto or off the phone itself is to use BlackBerry's included desktop software (or use the File Manager app to manually copy files to the microSD card or share them via email, BBM, etc).

Camera

The Z3 is a budget phone and it shouldn't be surprising that its camera isn't anything to get excited about. Still, shots are decent enough when the lighting is good, and you can post them to social networks without any problem. At full size, it's obvious that the camera struggles with details and that there's a lot of compression going on. We noticed that the camera had trouble focusing in low light, but the flash is surprisingly powerful. Video is again not spectacular, and the front camera is entirely forgettable.

The camera app is a bit too simplistic. You can't really compose shots or do anything but wait and hope that the camera focuses on what you want it to, since tapping anywhere on the screen takes a photo - presumably, the decision not to have a tappable button on screen was made more for aesthetics than usability. You can choose between a normal shooting mode, image stabilisation mode, burst, and HDR. There are also hardly any options - you can turn the flash on and off, choose between three image aspect ratios (but not sizes), and use one of only four scene modes (action, whiteboard, night and beach/snow). There is no manual control whatsoever, not even exposure, ISO or white balance.

Performance

Day-to-day usage was marked by occasional jitters, and there were sometimes momentary pauses on black screens while transitioning from one task to another. Despite looking and feeling like a high-end phone, the Z3 definitely does not deliver a premium experience. The gestures also frankly add a delay to getting things done, especially since they don't always work. Gestures might give BB 10 devices a clean look, but there's nothing as quick and simple as hitting a Home button.

Not all our Android benchmarks are available for the BlackBerry 10 platform. The browser-based tests, SunSpider and Mozilla Kraken, indicated performance on par with that of entry-level smartphones such as the Nokia Lumia 630. Quadrant scores were equally disappointing, although it should be noted that we ran the Android APK in the absence of a native BB 10 version.

The built-in speaker is pretty loud and works well for voice, but music is just too thin and tinny. Predictably, 1080p videos were jittery but 720p versions of the same clips seemed to play much better. We did notice that the phone got a bit warm when playing HD content. This is also when the low screen resolution really becomes apparent.

The battery test result was massively disappointing - the Z3 lasted only 4 hours and 55 minutes in our video loop test. For a phone that claims over 15 hours of talktime, this is not a good sign. With ordinary usage, consisting of sporadic calls, messages, Web browsing and a bit of gaming, we noticed that the Z3 lasted comfortably through a full day and night.

Verdict
The BlackBerry Z3 is priced just slightly lower than the now-ancient Z10 (Review), but thanks to rapid improvements in both hardware and design it's quite a bit better than its predecessor in some ways. Awkwardly for the company, it's also very competitive with the more recent Z30 (Review) which costs around twice as much. In terms of value for money, this is the best all-touch BlackBerry available right now.

But it's unclear who exactly would be interested in buying this phone - surely not the legions of former BB fans who have defected to Android and iOS over the past year or two, and surely not those still sticking with older BlackBerrys because of their keyboards.

It's too expensive to be most people's first smartphone, so that rules out another potential audience - BlackBerry has missed out on a potentially crucial market there, at least till the inevitable price cuts hit. 

Could it be anyone's second phone? One dedicated to work, alongside an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy for personal use and entertainment? Perhaps. The Z3 is fantastic for hardcore email and messaging - as long as you don't demand a physical keyboard. Notifications are top-notch and there are loads of useful shortcuts everywhere. The ability to prioritise, stay aware of and respond to communications is quite unmatched on other platforms. Those who have switched and miss having that kind of power might be tempted to give the Z3 a try.

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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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LG Lifeband Touch: First Impressions

LG Lifeband Touch: First Impressions

Associated Press

Smart capabilities have become the latest marketing pitch to sell more wristwatches, TVs, eyeglasses, refrigerators, cars and even toothbrushes. But have we figured out why they need to be smart?

I asked myself that as I wore LG's Lifeband Touch day and night for a week.

The new computerized wristband tracks workouts and calories burned and syncs with the LG Fitness app on an iPhone, iPad or Android device. It can also control music on a phone and alerts incoming calls and emails, at least for Android users.

The Lifeband marks the entry of LG Electronics Inc. into the fledgling market of wearable gadgets and follows smartwatches from Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Corp. and others. LG started selling the Lifeband in the US last month for $150. It will be available in parts of Asia and Europe in coming weeks.

The screen

As a fitness tracker, the Lifeband is meant to be used a lot outdoors. But its finger-length touch screen is hard to see in direct sunlight. I was unable to adjust the brightness, and I needed to find shade to make out the characters. For just $50 more, you can get

 Samsung's Gear Fit (Review) with a curved screen capable of displaying clear and vibrant colors and which is readable in direct sunlight. The LG's screen offers only black and white.

Odd fit

The Lifeband doesn't have a strap that can be fastened and adjusted to the size of the wearer's wrist. Rather, it has a bendable plastic band, with a gap that widens to let the wrist slip in. The band then locks itself in place once on the wrist.

Although not having a strap to buckle on and off makes the Lifeband easy to wear and remove, it will dangle if the band is too big. The Lifeband comes in three sizes, and if your wrist is narrower, you might have to pull the wristband toward your forearm. By contrast, you can adjust the Gear's strap.

I often had to take off the gadget while writing or typing on a computer because it was too thick and heavy. I described it to friends as a digital handcuff because it squeezed my arm and kept moving between my wrist and my forearm.

Fitness tracking

You click the device's timer before beginning a workout, such as a run. Afterward, the phone or tablet app shows the route along with the distance, calories consumed and speed.

The Lifeband also counts the number of steps walked throughout the day. It can also measure heart rate with a $180 companion earphone.

Fitness coaching

The Lifeband vibrated as I got closer to the goal I set of one hour of walking each day. At a quarter of the way in, it vibrated and displayed: "25 percent achieved." It also vibrates at random moments and tells you to "Stretch stretch" or "Move move."

That was more distracting than motivating. It's one thing to have a personal trainer at a gym tell you what to do. It's another to have a wristband that doesn't understand how my day was going. It wanted me to stretch when I was busy typing on a keyboard. It wanted me to move when I was having a coffee with a friend. Instead, I simply ignored the device.

I would have been more likely to exercise had the wristband been mindful of my daily routines. My only option was to turn this feature off.

Notifications

The Lifeband alerts you to incoming calls, but it cannot receive or make calls. I got a vibration for a call I would have missed with my iPhone in silent mode. To answer it, however, I still scratched my head wondering where I had left the phone.The Lifeband also gives notifications for incoming emails but not when it's paired with an iPhone or an iPad. With Android, you get the sender's name and subject line, but none of the message itself. It's a common problem with the small screens on wrist devices, and it left me wondering why I would need one.

The bright side

Its battery lasted as long as promised - five days on a full charge. But other fitness trackers offer similar functions, often at lower prices.

The case for it?

Not compelling.

If it's meant to be an outdoor fitness device, then it needs a display that works outdoors. If it's meant to encourage you to work out, then it needs to avoid nagging and let you work exercise into your schedule.

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Xolo Launches Play 6X-1000 and Q500s IPS With Android 4.4 KitKat

Xolo Launches Play 6X-1000 and Q500s IPS With Android 4.4 KitKat

Xolo has launched two new smartphones, the Q500s IPS and Play 6X-1000, which have been priced at Rs. 5,999 and Rs. 14,499 respectively. Both the smartphones run Android 4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box, and have been listed as new arrivals on the company's site.

The Xolo Q500s IPS is a dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) device that comes with a 4-inch WVGA (480x800 pixels) IPS display offering a pixel density of 233ppi. The Q500s IPS is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582M processor coupled with a Mali 400-MP2 GPU, and 512MB of RAM.

It sports a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, while there is a secondary 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera also onboard. The Xolo Q500s IPS has 4GB of inbuilt storage, which is further expandable via microSD (up to 32GB).

On the connectivity front, the Xolo Q500s IPS includes 3G, Wi-Fi, Micro-USB, GPS/ A-GPS and Bluetooth. It packs a 1500mAh battery, which is rated for up to 16.1 hours of talk time on 2G and up to 7.6 hours of talk time on 3G networks. The Xolo Q500s IPS measures 125x63.2x8.98mm and is available in Black, Blue, Green, Red and White colours.

The Xolo Play 6X-1000 is a dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) device that comes with a 5-inch (720x1280 pixels) HD IPS display offering a pixel density of 294ppi. The Play 6X-1000 is powered by a 1.5GHz hexa-core MediaTek MT6591 processor with a Mali 450 GPU, comes with 2GB of RAM.

It sports a 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and BSI sensor, while there is a secondary 2-megapixel front-facing camera also onboard. The Xolo Play 6X-1000 has 8GB of inbuilt storage, which is further expandable via microSD (up to 32GB).

On the connectivity front, the Xolo Play 6X-1000 includes 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS/ A-GPS and USB OTG. It packs a 2100mAh battery, which is rated for up to 24.68 hours of talk time on 2G, and up to 14.75 hours of talk time on 3G networks. It measures 139.9x70.2x8.5mm.

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Xolo Q1200 Review

Xolo Q1200 Review

Jamshed Avari

NDTV

We've been fairly impressed with some of the phones Xolo has released in the past six months. The company seems to be determined to break out of the mould of Indian-Chinese importers, and has stepped up to deliver good-looking, well-built devices for the mid-budget segment. 

The Xolo Q1200 follows the Q1010i and Q1000 Opus, with each iteration bringing new improvements to the company's formula. We've spent quite a bit of time with this device.

Look and feel

The Xolo Q1200 is a fairly solid phone. It feels a bit heavy and chunky in the hand, unlike many of today's devices which aim only to be light and slim. It's well constructed, but doesn't quite hit all the right notes in terms of aesthetics. Our review unit was white, and we noticed that the different plastic pieces on the front and rear had totally different shades and textures. The rear is split into three panels (with very iPhone 5-like proportions) but the white plastic ends above and below the metallic silver middle section look a bit cheap. A shiny chrome ring around the edges just adds to the confusion.

The front face is pretty standard. The three Android navigation buttons below the screen aren't backlit, but at least they're visible. The phone is completely sealed, so you can't get at the battery. There's a neat tray on the right edge which holds both, the Micro-SIM card and microSD card, and sits perfectly flush with the side of the device.

The power and volume buttons are on the left, which takes a bit of getting used to. The power button is in fact beneath the volume rocker, so it's really easy to hit the wrong key by accident. The camera lens sticks out quite a bit from the rear, which is always annoying as it could lead to scratches. The only Xolo logo on the whole device is relatively unobtrusive and placed in the centre of the silver panel. Interestingly, there appear to be twin stereo speakers on the rear as well. These are oriented in landscape mode, so we look forward to testing the audio and video playback experiences on this phone.

While the Q1200 itself looks quite solid, we can't say the same about its bundled accessories. The charger and headset feel extremely cheap, and even the bundled snap-on case isn't anything to get excited about.

Features, specifications and software

Xolo stays true to its budget roots with a MediaTek MT6582 processor with four cores running at 1.3GHz. There's 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage space, which are both standard for this price range. The 5-inch screen has a comfortable resolution of 720x1280 pixels - anything lower and we would have been quite annoyed! There's Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, and all the usual sensors. Overall there's nothing exciting at all about the Q1200's internals.

While we don't fault the budget hardware, it's disappointing to see that the Q1200 is still stuck on Android 4.2.2. That, combined with an unusually ugly default UI skin, really detracts from the usage experience. Xolo has really overdone the customisation here - app shortcuts and widgets are mixed haphazardly across the home screens, and there's no dedicated app drawer. An analog clock widget takes up an entire home screen, for example. The default wallpaper and icon set are way too busy, and it's really hard to see what's going on sometimes

Luckily, you can swap themes, wallpapers, and even lock screens without too much trouble. These are more than just cosmetic changes, though there's no indication of it. By trial and error, we discovered that the 'Business' theme was the most similar to classic Android, and even had a distinct app launcher. However most of the available choices (and even the ones downloadable from Xolo's online gallery) are just as ugly as the default 'Simple' theme.

There are various minor tweaks - a CPU usage meter in the About page of the settings, a totally customised notification area, configurable shortcuts, a data connection speed counter in the taskbar, a floating task manager and audio/video windows, a "game mode" that locks the Back and Menu keys, and a Read Mode that just always keeps the screen on.

Xolo's big push for the Q1200 is software customisation, including gesture and voice recognition features. For some reason, there's no easy way to discover or get to these features - we found some of the gestures and "cold screen access" features buried in assorted submenus in the Accessibility section of the Settings app. Even the most useful ones, such as allowing a double-tap to phone the screen from sleep, are hidden away and poorly labelled.

There's no explanation of what some items such as "non-touch operation" are, but we eventually discovered that you can tap and hold some of them to display a pop up explanation. Without the popups, there's no way to know what the differences between "generic mode" and "performance mode" are, or how things labelled "non-touch unlock" and "non-touch switch in launcher" are supposed to work. After playing with them for a while we were left with mixed feelings - some did work, and we can see potential here for users with mobility impairments, but we wish we could have switched gesture recognition on and off more easily. There's no shortcut in the notifications shade, and sometimes it isn't worth the lag and potential misinterpretation of gestures.

Also buried in the Accessibility options are the settings for voice control. This feature is extremely limited in scope, and pales in comparison to Siri, Google Now, or even the basic voice command features of older phones. You can only accept or reject incoming calls, trigger the camera shutter (when the app is already open), and silence or snooze alarms. That's it - we wish Xolo had just worked with Google's existing features instead.

There's a Xolo Care app for registration and contacting customer service, and a Xolo Secure app which lets you back up personal data and lock your phone if it's stolen (which Google already does). The Xolo Power app is the most useful of the three - it lets you set battery-saving options such as limiting background data, shows how long you can expect the phone to stay alive in various scenarios, and even lets you know which apps have been draining the battery the most.

Camera
Xolo's camera app is fairly good. There are shortcuts for the flash and voice command feature, plus a menu of options including HDR mode, panorama mode, "smile shot", and something called "professional mode". This opens up options related to the image size, white balance, scene mode, number of shots in burst mode, exposure compensation, self timer, ISO, hue, saturation, and auto exposure metering. 

There's a lot to play with, but we can't understand why some everyday options are buried here and why others are duplicated. You also get filters and effects such as pin focus, miniature, poster, nostalgia, mirror, and fisheye. There are also a few funny cutouts that you can superimpose over people's faces as you frame your shots.

In terms of image quality, the Xolo Q1200 is actually surprisingly good. We were very pleased with the level of detail and accuracy in captured images. The phone struggled a little with closeups, and also totally flattened longer-range landscape shots, leaving no trace of depth or distance. Everything was generally sharply in focus. We managed to take some great shots in daylight as well as indoors and in low light. The flash was a bit overpowering, and you'll have to judge the distance between your subjects and the camera order not to drown them out. The front camera was far less impressive. It's adequate for video chats, but not photos that you'd like to keep or share online.

Performance

Although it feels smooth in operation, we were surprised to see that the Q1200 often stalled when we were exiting apps. There was an annoying delay and a 'Please wait' message on screen before the home screen popped up. Other than this, there wasn't anything wrong with the device.

Benchmark scores were consistent with those of the Oppo R1 which is based on the same MediaTek MT6582 processor but costs twice as much as this phone does. Graphics scores were way too weak for any kind of 3D gaming, though casual titles will work just fine. The Q1200 managed to push out only 6.4fps in GFXbench and scored only 2871 in the 3DMark Ice Storm simulation. General performance tests were satisfactory, considering this phone's price.

The speakers on the rear are certainly loud, but the sound is really thin and shrill. Mids and lows are completely absent. They also can't handle any complex music - we suffered through a lot of distortion in all our test tracks. The Q1200 can play low-bitrate 1080p video files, but with occasional stutters.

The battery lasted 5 hours and 51 minutes in our video loop test, which isn't all that great. We were honestly hoping for a lot more considering this phone's size and heft. We also noticed that it heated up quite a lot when pushing any intensive workload. Call quality was unremarkable, with no problems on either end.

Verdict

We like what Xolo has done with the Q1200 - especially its price. This is a great phone for just under Rs. 13,000 (street price), and unlike several others in its class, this one doesn't cut corners when it comes to screen resolution or storage space. The camera is also quite remarkable.

It seems as though Xolo was targeting the Motorola Moto G, which has become the de facto model to recommend in this price range. Put side by side, the Moto G's processor and software look better, but the Q1200 has a microSD slot and a great camera. It's an even match between the two.

Our impressions of the Q1200 are positive overall though we do wish Xolo would stop messing around with the software unnecessarily. The company is well on its way to becoming a top-tier player in India, but needs to fine tune its products a little more before it can get there.

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FLOATING WING

The detached liner makeup artist Gucci Westman gave models backstage at Rag & Bone was inspired by the French yé-yé singers of the '60s. At first glance, it barely looks different from any other cat eye, but if you look closely, you'll notice that as the lines extend out, they float up above the lashes. To get the look, Westman painted a cream formula (Revlon ColorStay Crème Gel Eye Liner in Black) along the lash line with a fine-tipped brush, then traced liquid liner (Revlon ColorStay Liquid Eye Pen in Blackest Black) on top. "Layering the liquid over it helps set the gel," she explained.

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As we expect the eventual unveiling of Apple's next generation iPhone models, the rumour mill is churning out rumours on a daily basis. A report on Thursday suggested a new September 15 launch day for the alleged 4.7 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 models, while also claiming that the name of the larger 5.5-inch iPhone 6 variant will be iPhone Air.

New in the series of leaks is a video that claims to show the world how the new alleged iPhone 6 - 4.7 and 5.5-inch models' front glass panels looks.

The video, first spotted by Cult of Mac, also compares the front glass panels of the alleged 4.7-inch iPhone 6 model sporting thinner bezels to the current iPhone 5s with slightly broad bezels. In the video, the uploader is seen comparing the single hand experience on the iPhone 5s and the unannounced 4.7-inch iPhone 6.

The purported leaked video of the alleged iPhone 6 models further corroborate what's has been widely expected based on earlier leaks, that the next iPhone handsets will come with curved edges.

In addition, new leaked images claimed to be taken from a Google Glass camera have surfaced online. The images, first reported by Phone Arena, show what seem to be blueprints or final drafts of the alleged iPhone 6 design. The purported images show the front panel; Apple Touch ID below the screen (as rumoured in previous leaks); Apple logo at the back panel, and circular camera opening accompanied by dual LED flash cut-outs on the rear. The report citing the person who obtained the images notes that the iPhone 6 models will sport a full-metal body.

Based on previous leaks, Apple is said to debut its next iPhone models in new storage variants. The alleged 5.5-inch iPhone 6 variant is likely to feature a 128GB storage variant, alongside 32GB and 64GB models, which will be reportedly company's attempt to differentiate the bigger iPhone model (phablet) from other phones in the company's line-up.

Several previous image leaks also corroborated what's has been widely expected based on earlier leaks, that the next iPhone will house the power button on the right panel of the device, instead on the top panel seen on current iPhone models.

An earlier report citing a research note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo also suggested that the alleged 5.5-inch iPhone 6 would sport OIS (optical image stabilisation) for the rear camera. The report further claimed that the alleged 4.7-inch iPhone 6 will not come with OIS.

Another report suggested that the next iPhone might be able to measure temperature, air pressure, and altitude, with a new addition of a barometer sensor into the handset. The new sensor is said to be part of, and be powered by, the alleged iPhone 6's M8 motion co-processor that's expected to be a part of the A8 processor rumoured to debut on the alleged iPhone 6. The processor will allegedly bemanufactured by TSMC and Samsung.

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