BenQ Joybee GP2 | Review

Officially said that pico projectors have landed, and from the looks of things, they are here to stay, at least in the foreseeable future.

Intex iTab | Review

Tablets in the sub-15k category have been attracting a lot of attention in the recent past with Zync pricing its ICS tablet at 9,000. Micromax has its Funbook and in the midst of all these brands, there’s an Ainol Novo 7 Paladin with its super affordable tag. Can Intex's new muse, the iTab, tip the scales, though? Let’s find out. 

The iTab

Design and Build Quality

The iTab comes in a complete black outfit; the front has a matte steel finish with a silver lining between the bezel and the screen, giving the tablet a sophisticated look. The back though is a fingerprint magnet due to the glossy finish. We’d have loved a similar matte finish at the back. The 8-inch screen size makes it stand out in a crowd of 7-inch low budget tablets currently in the market. Let’s take a quick tour of the device.

The front camera and buttons

The front consists of the large 8-inch (800 x 600 pixels) capacitive touchscreen with a G-sensor. There’s also a VGA camera on the top right, along with a rather unwanted icon of a tower depicting the tablet's Wi-Fi capabilities. All the connectivity options are located on the right. There’s a USB slot, microSD card slot, mini USB, 3.5mm headphone jack, power slot, microHDMI, Reset slot, microphone and power ON button – all on that one side. The volume rocker keys and back and menu button are located on the top, while the speaker is located at the back.

Connectivity options

Owing to the fact that it's an 8 incher and not the usual run of the mill 7-inch tablet, the form factor deserves a special mention. It’s easy to hold the tablet in both, portrait and landscape orientations, as there’s equal weight distribution. The uniform bezel on all sides is another plus, as we saw with the Funbook that uneven bezel widths don’t really contribute to the tablet’s looks. At 457 grams, it’s not the lightest tablet in the market, but with this form factor and ergonomics, we’re definitely not complaining.

The iTab is predominantly made up of plastic, but we didn’t observe any creaking parts even with a substantial amount of pressure applied. The screen itself does catch a lot of fingerprints, but that’s unavoidable. With the iTab, Intex has managed to conjure up quite a looker of a tablet.

Features and Performance
Interface
The iTab is powered by a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor with 512 MB of RAM and 8 gigs of internal storage. Intex has put a custom ROM atop the stock Gingerbread user interface and have pretty much made it look like Ice Cream Sandwich for tablets. It's quick, smooth and extremely user friendly. We're mentioning user friendly because Gingerbread on the tablets that we reviewed in the past was definitely not up to the mark. The iTab though, is the exception out here. It has a well customizable home screen, an ICS-esque menu and a fairly quick interface. Next up, synthetic benchmarks.

The interface

Linpack gave us a single thread score of 16.326 points and a multi thread score of 15.107, slightly higher than what we received on the Funbook. AnTuTu gave us a score of 2262 placing the iTab below the Galaxy S and the Nexus S. Quadrant on the other hand, gave it a score of 1502 placing the iTab above the Nexus S.

The synthetic benchmarks

Media
The media interface of the iTab is plain boring, it’s the stock Gingerbread version. Once you’re over that bit though, there’s a lot of usability that this section boasts of. Audio drivers are great and due to that, media playback via headphones is brilliant. There’s a bunch of preset equalizers to adjust your music according to your tastes. Speakers are loud enough for personal viewing. This, along with the Ainol Novo 7 Paladin, was one of the few tablets in this price range that managed to play FLAC content with the default media player.

Media options

The iTab played 1080p content seamlessly out of the box. WMV, AVI, MOV formats are supported as well. Though FLV and MKV weren’t playing out of the box, 720p MKV videos played smoothly on third party media applications. Though the viewing angles aren’t the best, the iTab makes for a great personal media player.

Connectivity
The company has given quite a few connectivity options with the iTab. The all-important USB slot allows you to connect keyboards, mice and there’s on the go support for flash drives and portable hard drives as well. 1080p media content from our 32GB NTFS flash drive and 1TB portable hard disk played seamlessly on the iTab. It’s important to note here that the Funbook wasn’t capable of reading that same portable hard disk.

Connectivity options well covered

The iTab also comes with a USB to LAN port adaptor and in our tests, it performed just as expected. It’s as simple as connect your LAN cable and you’re ready to go. The company also provides a 3G USB stick so you can put in your 3G SIM card and access the Internet on-the-go. Wi-Fi is there, but Bluetooth, however, isn’t included.

Great as an eBook reader

The inbuilt browser supports flash and browsing the Internet is a pleasant experience, due to both the form factor and the lag free experience. Manouevring through image heavy flash websites was slightly jittery, but we’re not complaining. The iTab’s form factor makes it one of the better eBook readers in the market right now. The tablet is easy to hold in both the portrait and the landscape modes and makes for a nifty reading-on-the-go device. Something that reminded us of the Tablet P’s eBook reading capabilities.

Misc. Features
There’s not much out here, besides Arcus Dictionary, Apk Installer, File Explorer, Hanuman Chalisa, Gita and Office Suite. An app called Intex Zone has been included as well, and it basically accumulates all your bookmarks into one app. Besides the devotional content, there’s nothing special, but that’s why you’ve got the Google Play store.

Poor viewing angles

Camera
The iTab is equipped with a front facing VGA camera, and a rear camera. Who needs a back camera on a tablet anyway, right? That could be a debate for another article. Anyway, coming back to the front camera, it’s decent enough for video calling. We did have a few issues with Skype compatibility initially, but it was pretty smooth thereafter. It’s decent enough for self-portraits as well.

Battery Life
This 8-inch tablet is equipped with a 5000 mAh non-removable battery and in our video calling test with brightness set at 75 percent and connectivity options turned off, the iTab lasted for ten and a half hours, which surpasses the time set by other tablets. The Ainol Novo 7 Paladin, its closest competitor, came in at nine hours and twenty minutes. Under normal usage, you’ll easily manage to get close to one and a half days of usage, which is pretty impressive, making it one of the strong points of the iTab.

Worth a buy?

Verdict
The Intex iTab is priced at an MRP of 11,900. For this amount, you get a 3G data card (with SIM slot), LAN adaptor, leather cover and a pair of Reebok sunglasses. If the omission of the last accessory would have resulted in a one or two thousand buck price cut in the overall pricing of this tablet, we’d have definitely given it more marks. At this price, it’s a very good tablet with great multimedia capabilities, but the relatively high price and the fact that it comes with Gingerbread, holds it back from being a must have.

Source :  Tech2

Micromax Funbook P300 Review

DataWind’s Ubislate 7C will be the cheapest Android tablet when it launches at the end of May but till then, we can occupy ourselves with plenty of other cheap Android tablets , the latest one being from Micromax. The Funbook sparked quite a bit of interest when it launched as it’s currently one of the cheapest Android 4.0-based tablets in the market. But as is the case with most cheap Android tablets, besides media consumption, it isn’t really good for anything else. Could the Micromax Funbook change that trend? Let’s find out.

Design and Build
According to Micromax, this is the first tablet to be developed in India. While that isn’t saying much, it is one of the better built sub-10K Android tablets you’ll find. What we really love about it is how incredibly light it feels in your hand. It’s quite slim as well, making it a very good eBook reader. There are no creaking parts even if you apply pressure around the corners. The glass protection for the screen does attract a lot of fingerprints but that’s unavoidable.

Good build quality

We just wish the bezel had been thinner as it’s too thick and makes the screen appear tiny. There are also physical buttons for ‘Home’, ‘Options’ and ‘Back’ which we feel are unnecessary and simply add to the space.
All the connections are grouped together which include a miniUSB port, microHDMI, SD Card slot and a charging port. The USB port also supports USB-on-the-go and Micromax bundles along the cable as well in the box.

 

On video: Micromax Funbook

Features
Interface
The Funbook comes with Android 4.0.3 without any skin running on top so you get the pure ICS experience. While the interface is quick to respond, there are times when it will slow down and get a bit sluggish. The touch sensitivity is strictly average for a tablet in this price bracket. The one annoyance we have with the Funbook is the time it takes waking the tablet up from sleep mode. After pressing the power button, you need to wait a whole 2 seconds (at times, even more) before the screen turns on. This is strange since it packs in a pretty powerful SoC.

A familiar interface

Micromax uses an ARM Cortex-A8 single-core CPU running at 1.2GHz along with the NEON instruction set for decoding video files. The NEON technology from ARM works in tandem with the Mali-400 MP GPU allowing it to easily offload and decode almost any type of video file, no matter what the container or codec. Along with 512MB of RAM, this ensures a very good multimedia experience which we’ll get into in a bit. AnTuTu gave us a score of 2892 while Linpack gave us a single threaded score of 15 and a multi-thread score of 14.7. While the Mali-400 MP GPU is quite capable, not all games played very smoothly. Shadowgun for instance had quite a bit of framing but other games like Angry Birds Space ran just fine.

Android 4.0

The screen’s resolution isn’t great (800 x 480) so icons and text have a lot of jaggies around them. Also, the whole aspect ratio of the display seems a bit off as the menus and home screen comes across as stretched. It’s very minor, but it’s there. Also, some of the bundled apps don’t seem to scale well in full screen mode. GTalk for instance has a very weird layout on this tablet.

Media
Micromax hasn’t messed around with the music player so it’s the one from stock ICS. This is not particularly a bad thing since you get equalizer presets and audio enhancements out of the box. The audio quality with a good pair of IEMs is pretty good. The speaker on the Funbook is incredibly powerful as well and will easily fill a small room, although it does tend to distort a bit at high volumes.

A very good video player

Now, coming to the video player, Micromax has used an app called “Super-HD Player”, which is nowhere to be found on the Play Store but does one heck of a job in playing back video files. First off, it can playback any files type in almost any format. It just breezed through 1080p MKVs. The screen is not too bad for watching movies and the low resolution isn’t much of a problem. The player also has a few tricks up its sleeve like the ability to switch any video to stereoscopic or anaglyph 3D

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Connectivity
While there isn’t a slot for a 3G SIM card, the tablet does support USB 3G dongles. USB-on-the-go works well even with a 32GB NTFS formatted pen drive. Portable hard drives don’t work as expected since the tablet doesn’t have enough power to spin the drive. Other features include Wi-Fi b/g but strangely, there’s no Bluetooth. You also get an option for Ethernet in the settings menu which means you can use it via an adapter. Micromax also has their own store called MStore from where one can download games, educational videos, movies, etc. You can even watch live TV through Zenga TV but that’s a paid service. 

The Micromax store gives you access to lots of stuff

Camera
You only get a front facing VGA camera which isn’t too bad for self-portraits under the right lighting conditions. The frame rate is also pretty good and not as choppy as one would expect. 

Not a bad VGA camera

Misc. App
Other apps that are bundled along include a File Manager, audio recorder, Aldiko books and Flash player.

Battery Life
With brightness set to 50 per cent and Wi-Fi off, we managed to get exactly 7hours of battery life while playing a DVD video in a loop. This is not too bad but we’ve seen better, like the Ainol Novo 7 for example.

Physical buttons are a bit wasted

Verdict
For Rs.6,499 it’s certainly one of the cheaper Android 4.0 alternatives in the market but it’s far from the best. While it does have good multimedia playback capabilities, the screen resolution isn’t the best for reading text or surfing the Internet. The Ainol Novo 7 Paladin still seem like a better option for a little more money.

Source Tech2

Ubislate 7+ and 7C - Price

Datawind has travelled down a long and controversial path to officially launching the commercial version of the Aakash tablet, the Ubislate. And they Looks Like
Datawind has travelled down a long and controversial path to officially launching the commercial version of the Aakash tablet, the Ubislate. And they did seem highly excited about it, repeatedly claiming: “This is not a product launch, this is a revolution.” But are such hyperbole justified
for a product that is so late to the game that it has left many who pre-ordered with a bad taste in their mouth? Will it really trigger a digital revolution among the masses, or will it fizzle out into the dark annals of public memory? We go hands-on to find some answers.

Encased tablets side by side

Let’s start with the specs, both the Ubislates, 7+ and 7C are pretty much identical, save for the resistive screen on the 7+ and the capacitive screen on the 7C:

• 7.0-inch display with an 840x480 pixel resolution
• 800 MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, with a graphics accelerator and HD video processor.
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS
• Memory:  7+: 256mb RAM with 2 GB internal flash storage  /  7c: 256mb RAM with 4 GB internal flash storage

• Memory expandable up to 32GB with a microSD card
• One full USB 2.0 port
• GPRS with Wi-Fi a/b/g
• Rated with 3 hours of battery life with a 3200 mAh battery

As far as hardware goes, both Ubislates feel sufficiently sturdy, with a matte plastic finish that feels pretty good in the hand, and does not betray its price. There were a few visible compromises though, such as the microSD card slot, which has been fashioned in such a way that the card juts out of the main body of the tablet and goes only about halfway in. We can easily imagine a fall breaking the microSD card, or even the internals of the slot itself. Coming back to the physical body of the device, it lives in that middle ground of thin and fat that is quite ergonomic to hold and we were quite pleased with it, considering the price.

The tablet , powered on running the Android 2.3 OS

On the software front, they ran a stock version of Android 2.3, modified a bit to run with on-screen touch buttons, which are one of our major gripes with the tablet. The touch buttons basically live on the notification bar, and thus, one can imagine how small and finicky they were. More than half the time during our hands-on we would not be able to make them work and they didn’t exactly spell intuitive. There was also a physical Home button, which was sufficiently springy, but a bit oblong and hard to notice.

Another one of our gripes is the exclusion of all Google services from the device. Instead, Datawind has opted to go for Yahoo integration as far as mail is concerned and GetJar for apps, neither of which are as well-made or all-encompassing as Google’s own Gmail and Play store. Also, surprisingly, the 720p HD playback on the screens was quite pleasant, a little slow while seeking, but all in all a solid experience.

Carry pouch for the tablet

Touch sensitivity was altogether a different ball-game. The resistive screen on the 7+ was one of the more sensitive resistive panels we’ve seen, and reminded us more of the Nokia N900 than a cheap Chinese iPhone clone, which is always a good thing. But, it was still aeons away from a capacitive panel, and that’s where the 7C came in. But, alas, the touch sensitivity was limited by the hardware at play here and though we didn’t think that the 800 MHz processor would be a bottleneck, it is our suspicion that it’s the limited amount of RAM that is responsible for the lag. Again, considering the price, it was still quite acceptable.

An optional case that doubles as a keyboard

There was a recurring theme with our first hands-on of the fabled Ubislates, there seemed to be many compromises, but the price absolutely blew them away. At  र2,999 for the 7+ and र3,999 for the 7C, our complaints with the devices failed to gain ground. For the price, they offer a good value-for-money proposition and it would be interesting to see how well they do in the Indian market and whether they are able to bring out a digital revolution. Consumers that have pre-booked the Ubislate 7+ should start receiving them shortly and retail availability would only start once all pre-bookings have been fulfilled. Delivery of the Ubislate 7C on the other hand will start near the end of May.

Images And Content Source Tech2

Google Drive - A Short Discription

After eons of speculations, rumours and what not, Google Drive has finally arrived! Direct competition to other cloud storage solutions like Dropbox,
After eons of speculations, rumours and what not, Google Drive has finally arrived! Direct competition to other cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Skydrive and Box.net, with Google Drive, the company is aiming to, like with all its other products and services, grab top spot in this emerging and rapidly developing cloud space. It was launched
yesterday and we did manage to grab a copy of Google Drive before it started showing the ‘Your Google Drive is not ready yet’ notification for most users. So, here are our initial impressions on what’s new with Google Drive. 

Web interface pretty much unchanged

As far as the web interface is concerned, Google Drive has straightaway replaced Google Docs, but besides the name, there’s not much that has been changed as of now. The web version of Google Drive also consists of a link where you can download the Google Drive application for your Mac or Windows PC so you can sync all your data across multiple devices and platforms. This also means that you don’t need to carry a separate installer or setup file and simply log in to your account to get the installer.

Upgrade options

In the web interface, upon clicking upload, you’re greeted with your currently used and available storage, which is capped to 5GB for all free users at present. An option to buy more storage is available as well. 25GB is available at a price of $2.49 (approx Rs. 131) per month while 100GB is available at a price of $4.99 (approx Rs. 262) per month. Up to 16 TB of storage can be bought currently at $799 (approx Rs. 41,983) per month.

Sharing options

Sharing is just like it was on the older Google Docs and you can choose who is the owner, who can edit and who can view your document. With Google Drive, uploading is not restricted to plain documents anymore. Naturally, the editing though can be done only with documents.

Google Drive for Windows

Next up is the application that resides on your Mac or Windows PC. Basically, this is just a folder where you can dump all your data and it will instantly sync with all your data in the cloud. It’s as simple as drag and drop and your data is accessible on each and every device of yours that has Google Drive enabled. Just like on the web version, a few options for sharing data have been included in the desktop version as well.

Google Drive for tablets

The app for Android is pretty much unchanged as well, besides the naming bit. However, now that you can download and upload other files and not just documents, you can sync your favourite music and videos as well. The main problem with that is that you can’t stream or play it from the cloud itself, the file needs to be downloaded on to your device, which is definitely a drawback. Another important thing to note is that other Cloud storage solutions like Dropbox and Box.net have a security passcode feature that the user has to enter, which Google Drive at present doesn't have. So, whoever gets access to your phone, can easily access all your data on the cloud, which is definitely not somethin we'd want. The mobile website for Google Drive isn’t particularly impressive. We tried the mobile site on our BlackBerry and it was definitely not a pleasant experience. If they do manage to get a simpler and easier to use mobile site, Drive will definitely get an edge over its competitors.

In comparison to its competitors

To be honest, the interface on all the versions could still become easier and simpler to use, but the productivity is definitely there. For those with Gmail accounts, Google Drive is definitely a pretty nifty option considering it’s now part of your ecosystem. But, as we mentioned earlier, there are already so many cloud based storage options available. Google needs to push Google Drive out on multiple platforms including WP7, BlackBerry, Symbian and Bada to gauge a wider audience and acceptability. To wrap it up, Google Drive is a good start and for consumers, it’s another 5GB data you can store for free.

Tech2

Reliance 3G Tab - Review

The tablet wars are approaching at a frenzied pace as the latest entrants viz. Beetel’s Rs. 9,999 tablet and Reliance’s 3G Tab price at Rs. 12,990 are sure to make a killing, if they perform well enough. Keeping that in mind, we naturally wanted to see just how good a Rs. 13,000 tablet would be and what it would offer. The Reliance 3G Tab made it to our labs and we got to work. Here’s a closer look.

Form Factor Although it’s not unlike any old tablet including the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the simplistic and no frills look of the 3G Tab made me feel quite comfortable. It’s equipped with a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen, which makes for pretty accurate control and it sports a 480 x 800 pixel resolution, which keeps colours and images reasonably sharp. ZTE are the OEM for this device, which is quite a backing considering the fact that these guys work with companies like Dell. On one side is a 3.5mm handsfree socket and a micro USB port for charging and PC interfacing is on the other. A power/Sleep button is placed on another side just above the volume rocker. The 3G Tab's Linkpack score showed an MFLOPS read out of 7.0 which is not as high as most high-end smartphones but almost at level with some of the lower end devices.

Quite like the Galaxy Tab but way cheaper

The 3G Tab comes with 8GB of internal space and supports up to 32GB via micro SD cards. Reliance even throws in a 4GB card with the device. A minor issue is that this may be the only tablet that requires you to remove the battery to access the memory card. Bad move. Other than that, the 3G Tab is quite well designed, and weighs in at 389g, which is just a few grams heavier than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab P1000, but it won’t really bother you.

Slim and easy to manage

Features and Performance
Interface
With an 800MHz processor backing it up, the 3G Tab runs Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread. It doesn’t however, manage to do it seamlessly. There’s a touch of lag that’s quite evident when it comes to transitions between screens, changing orientation and opening apps. Things ran just a little smoother after we installed Go-Launcher making it the default UI, but it still wasn’t as slick as we expected. Nevertheless, the 3G Tab ran quite well and managed to do almost everything well enough considering the price. Reliance has neither offered any major customization to the UI nor any substantial amount of free apps preloaded. Notifications for the number of emails, messages or missed calls shows up on the lockes screen, but can’t be accessed individually.

Not a very customised UI

Media
Reliance has equipped their 3G with Dolby Mobile Audio Enhancement technology to boost its audio capabilities and it does so with panache. The music player’s settings, under the Dolby Mobile section include seven presets and two customizable options with an eight band graphic EQ three preset Environment settings, as well as three more of adding Natural Bass enhancement. It might not be as intense as a Cowon’s, but you will never ever have to peak the volume on this device, even if you’re in a crowded train, unless of course, you like pushing your eardrums till the limit. At three quarter of the volume, the music is crystal clear with just a tiny bit of a hiss in the background. Although the bundled handsfree kit is quite comfortable and provides decent audio, I highly recommend a better set of earphones and believe me that investment will pay off in spades.

Superb music quality with Dolby Mobile thrown in for effect

Video playback support is not as high-end as some other devices out there. For example, the list of formats that are compatible with this device include MP4, H.263/H.264 and 3GP, of course. You can, of course, easily get a player off of the Android market to play any and all other formats. The 3G Tab is not however capable of playing full HD or even 720p videos. The maximum resolution that works best with the 3G Tab is 800 x 480. The Dolby Mobile settings also help boost the audio quality for videos, as well.

An FM radio is also on board and although it didn’t really provide the very best signal reception while commuting through the city, it was pretty good when stationary. A sound recorder and Google’s Voice search is also available.
Connectivity
The Reliance 3G Tab comes ready to handle any and all Reliance connections, since it’s a tie up. We tried inserting other SIM cards into the device and it doesn’t really compute. You’ll get an error message asking you to enter a SIM unlock code. You’ll need to subscribe to a Reliance connection to get this tab working to your benefit. Speaking not of the plans themselves, but of the services rendered, after a few days of testing the device out, we were not overly impressed with the speed of the connection. With a large screen like this, and Adobe Flash support, surfing the web was bliss. Pinch zooming does come in handy and response time to links is easy even for stubby fingers. The 3G Tab offers WiFi, 3G and EDGE support for net connectivity as well as Hot Spot creation and tethering. Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support and of course USB 2.0 for PC connectivity are also supported. Although 3G connectivity is restricted to Reliance, we were able to very easily use the handset without a SIM card over WiFi.

Web browsing is an easy task

All of Google’s goodies are loaded up of course – YouTube, Google Maps to work with the onboard GPS module and supported by GPS, Latitude, Gtalk and the Android Market Place for apps. Reliance also has their RWorld option available for VAS and more. Social networking options include a preloaded Facebook, Twitter and Orkut (that just refuses to shut down) apps. Of course, they’re easily available via the Marketplace.


Misc. Features
A few extras like a file manager, Documents to Go and a Task Manager are thrown in. Basics like the calendar that can sync to your Google account for keeping track of appointments, anniversaries etc., alarm clock, strop watch and a few more are all accounted for.

Space for quite a few apps

Camera
A 3 megapixel fixed focus (official website states 2MP) camera with basic features is strapped onto the rear of the device with a video calling VGA camera located in front above the display. Features include Sharpness adjustment, Saturation, ISO levels up to 800, colour effects, location tagging and White Balance. Video records at a maximum of VGA quality and it’s not too bad all things considered. Image quality is not the sharpest and in low light conditions it’s quite grainy when viewed at native resolution. On the device itself it’s ok and of course for Facebook and other social networking sites, it’s quite passable.

Average 3MP camera

Battery
Equipped with a 3400mAh Lithium-Ion battery the 3G Tab manages functionality extremely well. It fared quite well in our video test where we ran videos non-stop with 3G active and without 3G for 4 hours and 4 hours and 55 minutes respectively. In our tech2 loop tests it ran a full round with 2 hours music, 2 hours video, 2 hours of internet usage via 3G and 1.5 hours of talk time. In the second round, we ran it for 1 hour with audio and also managed to squeeze 40 minutes of video out of it. In total, it ran for about 9 hours non-stop with relatively heavy usage. In real time, we were able to use the tablet for about a day and a half with 3G switched off running on 2G, but got just about a full day’s use on 3G and Wi-Fi.

The Bottom Line
With a price tag of just Rs. 12,999, the one possible thing we could say is lacking in the Reliance 3G Tab is the lack of substantial internal memory. Nevertheless, the 3G Tab should do quite well for itself considering it offers tremendous amount of functionality albeit just a little slowly for our taste, but we didn’t expect too much considering the price bracket. For those who need the features only a tablet can provide like large screen internet and email browsing on a 3G connection, the 3G Tab is a great choice if you're willing to go with Reliance's 3G plans of course. If you're not into the whole 3G bit, it's perfectly usable without a SIM card. Its only competition is going to be Beetel’s tablet, so stay tuned for a showdown once we’re done reviewing that.


Source Tech2.in

Nokia Asha 202 touch and type Launched

Moving towards its strategy of connecting the next billion to the Internet, Nokia India has announced the launch of its latest addition to the Nokia Asha series - the Nokia Asha 202. A dual SIM-touch and type phone, the Nokia Asha 202 is designed for cost effective web browsing, social networking, gaming and entertainment. The Nokia Asha 202 is packed with a range of features and services, such as the EA games pack and Nimbuzz chat client.


The Nokia Asha 202 aims to offer faster, richer and a more cost-efficient web experience through the Nokia Browser. To enable the consumers to experience ‘faster Internet’ without having to worry about data charges, Nokia has tied up with five lead operators – Aircel, Airtel, Reliance, Tata Docomo and Vodafone – across the country to offer 100 MB of data (each) per month for six months absolutely free. The Nokia Asha 202 will be the first Series 40 device to offer exclusive EA games in India. As a 60-day promotion at Nokia Store, the consumers can enjoy 40 EA game pack worth 4,000 absolutely free. The offer, includes popular and classic titles, like Tetris, Need for Speed, The Run and Bejeweled.

The Asha 202

Mr. Viral Oza, Director Marketing, Nokia India said, “The introduction of Asha 202 takes us another step closer to connecting the next billion people to the internet. We are constantly innovating and finding newer ways to feed the ever increasing appetite for digital consumption for young consumers. Towards this, Nokia Asha 202 is the first mobile phone to come bundled with data offers from five leading operators of the country. Nokia Asha 202 is the new face of smarter feature phones that comes packed with compelling, innovative services and entertainment options.”

Nokia’s Asha 202’s combination of a traditional keypad with a 2.4-inch touchscreen is ideal for those who seek easy ways to connect to the world of Internet and social networks to catch updates and multi-tasks, all on the go. The Nokia Asha 202 features dual SIM with Easy Swap technology and a dedicated SIM manager to personalize the phone and save up to five SIM cards with unique information. The device comes with a 2 megapixel camera, music player, FM radio, Nokia Browser, and Bluetooth connectivity, and has expandable memory of up to 32GB.

The Nokia Asha 202 comes in four colours to match your mood and personality – black and gold, silver white, dark grey and dark red and is priced at 4,149 in India.
About 100 USD Approx..

Source  Tech2 

Windows 8 'release preview' for early June Said By Microsoft

Microsoft's top Windows executive today said that the company will ship an almost-complete version of Windows 8 the first week of June.

Stephen Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live division, announced the timing Tuesday at a developers event in Tokyo,

according to aTwitter message by the company.

Although Microsoft has traditionally dubbed such milestones "release candidate," or RC, to describe nearly-finished software, the Windows 8 build will be labeled "Release Preview," a nod to the naming of the earlier editions, Developer Preview and Consumer Preview.

Microsoft shipped Windows 8 Consumer Preview on Feb. 29.

The early June timeframe is in sync with earlier speculation, including claims made last month by a Dutch blog, and with a mock schedule laid out by Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

In March, Cherry said that Microsoft would deliver a release candidate three months after the Consumer Preview, with a "release to manufacturing," or RTM, edition three months after the RC.

According to Cherry's calendar, Microsoft had to deliver Windows 8 RC by the end of May and RTM by the end of August. RTM is the more important of the two yardsticks, as it notes the point at which code is offered to device manufacturers for prepping new PCs, to third-party developers for final testing of application compatibility and to peripheral vendors priming hardware designed for the OS.

Microsoft will need to accelerate Windows 8's timetable to make the late October launch date most experts believe is in the cards. But the early June debut of the Release Preview means Windows 8 remains about four weeks behind the pace of Windows 7.

In 2009, Windows 7 reached RC in early May and made RTM in late July before launching Oct. 22.

To make the crucial holiday sales season, Microsoft would have to offer Windows 8 no later than the end of October. Missing the mark would put Windows 8 at risk of repeating the problem-plagued Windows Vista, which got off to a bad start when it fell behind schedule and didn't ship until January 2007.

Vista is now generally regarded as one of Microsoft's rare operating system failures.

Microsoft has not disclosed an on-sale date for Windows 8 or discussed pricing, but last week it did unveil the three versions it will offer, including two for retail and pre-loading on new PCs, and one limited to enterprises that subscribe to Software Assurance.

Windows 8 Release Preview will be available to the public for downloading free of charge, Microsoft has previously promised.

Windows 7's RC went public on May 5, 2009, the first Tuesday of that month. If Microsoft uses the same day of the week for Windows 8, it would ship the Release Preview on Tuesday, June 5.

ComputerWorld