Category Archives: Reviews

Samsung Galaxy S2 review

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Prasanth

Samsung Galaxy S2

The is the top of the line android phone that you can buy at the moment. This phone will also get the recently released ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich update).

Hardware

The first thing you will notice is the 4.3 inch screen which is huge compared to iphone 4S or other similar devices. The screen is Super AMOLED Plus screen, so its gorgeous.

The second thing is its weight less, it almost feels like a fake phone with nothing inside. Its only weighs 116 g. Go to your nearest mobile store lift a iphone 4 and then this phone and you will be amazed at how weightless this device feels.

The back cover of the phone is a paper thin piece of plastic. Which helps in keeping the weight down considerably. The battery occupies most of the back side, which means its a big battery that lasts all day.

It also has a 8 MP with autofocus and LED flash, it can record 1080 p video at 30 fps which means video will look stunning and smooth. Also has a secondary front facing 2 MP camera for video chatting and self portraits.

It has one home button like the iphone the other two buttons are touch sensitive buttons which light up when you touch them.

Usage

Samsung Galaxy S2

The phone is amazing to use with a big 4.3 inch screen. Using the web or watching videos etc is really fun to do because of the big screen. Video looks amazing on this device.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Even with hard to use android operating system, with Samsung’s modifications it is easy to use. Even though there is small learning curve once you know about all the feature you will love this phone.

Once you use 4.3 inch screen for a few days you can’t go back to smaller screen size. The touch screen works flawlessly.

The battery on the phone easily lasts a full day with internet usage and phone usage.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung have added some special touch gesture to make it much easier to use. You can swipe right on a contact to send sms or swipe left to call the person.

There are some other special gesture called motion gesture like the double finger zoom or the single finger panning etc. These can be found in the settings under motion. But you will not use them after trying them for few times. Those are not really practical to use.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung also provide some beautiful widgets with the TouchWiz UI v4.0 (which is the customization layer they add on top of android). It also has some nice settings to make it easier to use.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Verdict

How good is this phone, i have made this phone as my primary mobile device thats how good. If you are looking for the best phone on android at the moment, this is the best one out there. Even google’s own newly announced Galaxy nexus comes way behind this phone.

So if you can afford 29000 Rs and like using android this is the phone for you.

Click Here for the Samsung Galaxy S2 video Review 

Posted in Mobiles, Reviews | 4 Comments

Nokia X7 mobile review

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Prasanth

Just received the Nokia X7 few days back from Nokia. At first i was skeptical about this device, but as the days passed by i kind of liked this phone. I wish i could keep the phone as my main phone. It has amazing battery life. Can last almost two days with wifi turned on.

Hardware

The Nokia build quality was amazing as usual. It felt solid in hand and the curves make it comfortable to hold it your hand for extended use.

It comes with capacitive AMOLED screen which is just amazing. Video and photos look spectacular on this phone. It also has a 8 mega pixel dual flash camera. Which can also record high def video.

Memory card slot and dedicated camera button make it a compelling device for anyone.

Usage

This phone runs Symbian anna which is the latest version of Symbian. This goes a long way to make the device easy to use with touch unlike other previous versions. All the app that come standard with the device work rather well with touch interface.

The phone part of the device works quite well. Voice is clear and speaker phone is also quite loud. It comes with caller id pre installed which is really helpful.

If you long press the call button on the device voice control comes up which will allow you to call your contacts, open applications etc. It needs a data connection to work but as they inform when you use this feature for the first time it uses very little data.

Messaging and twitter are integrated into the phone with apps designed for the device. The email apps has automatic setup for all providers, including indian ones like rediffmail etc. Email app is similar to the messaging app and its quite simple to use.

You get free Ovi sync to sync your contacts, calendar, notes etc to the cloud for free.

Web browser has been improved a lot on this one. If you don’t like it, you can always install opera and use that as your main browser.

The app store is filled with all the apps you find in other apps stores. Games like Angry birds, Fruit ninja etc are available for this device and work amazingly well on it.

Videos and photos look crisp on this device. With loud speakers you can really enjoy your videos. By using the Ovi music store you can buy bollywood music, the only legitimate way to buy digital music in India at the moment.

Camera is also quite good with dual flash its even easier to take good pictures in bad light conditions. You can also record High def videos on this device with good quality.

By using a hdmi cable you can watch the videos on your HD TV. There is a free app to make this process easier, which will guide you step by step.

The home button on the device also acts as a task switcher and its implemented quite well. To quit apps and go to the main screen you can use this home button. Which simplifies using the device quite a bit.

You will love using the device with its gorgeous screen and nice widgets and apps.

Verdict

This is a very good Nokia phone, it has the trade mark Nokia build quality and stylings. And the interface is also much improved from previous versions.

I don’t mind using this as my regular phone, the battery life on this is just amazing.

Nokia X7 is priced around Rs. 20754

Posted in Gadgets, Mobiles, Reviews | Leave a comment

BSNL high speed 16 Mbps broadband internet review

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Prasanth

Bsnl has been offering high speed broadband internet for a few years now. I ordered my connection few weeks back.

Here is what you need to know before you get the connection.

There are 2 types of High speed connections one is 8 Mbps & 16 Mbps.

8 Mbps you get 60 GB limit  – 2799 Rs

16 Mbps you get 125 GB – 4999 Rs

You can find the charges and other details from BSNL broadband site here

With this connection you have to keep one thing in mind. You have to be within 1 Km range of your nearest BSNL exchange office to get this connection.

You need a land line connection before they can provide you this service.

You will also have to buy a new type of model called VDSL modem (Its not available for sale, so buy or rent the modem from BSNL)

It costs around 3000 Rs, its better to go for a rental one from BSNL. You will only have to pay 100 Rs per month for rental modem. That way you can get free replacement if your modem has any issues.

The procedure of using the connection is similar to getting the bsnl broadband connection. The technician from BSNL will do all the necessary stuff.

So how fast is the high speed BSNL connection.

It depends on what you are using. If you are browsing regular websites its almost instantaneous. You can watch youtube vidoes without waiting for them to load.

Don’t expect to download 1 GB per hour it more like 400 – 600 MB per hour.

The fastest speed i got on my 16 Mbps is around 9 Mbps. It took me 3 hours to download the recent 4 GB lion update.

Most of the services limit their speed so don’t expect same speed everywhere. But compare to anything thats available out there. This is the fastest and the cheapest way to connect to the internet.

Since the modem is a wifi router also, you can connect all your other devices to it. If 2-3 people use internet in the same house its becomes quite economical too.

If you don’t use that much of internet and videos you can get the 8 Mbps connection. i recommend you go for 16 Mbps if are a heavy user like me. You will get 125 GB bandwidth limit which is quite good, nearly 4.5 Gb per day.

You can use BSNL self care site to keep track of your bandwidth usage. Once you create an account it takes a day to get updated from then on you can check the site to see your bandwidth usage. Check the unbilled usage details know your current bandwidth.

Visit this link to see my BSNL speed test results

Tip : By changing the dns on your router to Google dns you can increase the speed.

Posted in Computers & Internet, Reviews | 90 Comments

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides movie review

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Prasanth

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides yesterday. It was a morning show @ 10:00 am and still the theater was full.

Before going to watch the movie i didn’t have big expectations for the movie because as with each sequel the story got more and more convoluted. If some story and good visual were there i would have been happy. And it didn’t disappoint even though the story is a bit convoluted, compared to the previous movies its good.

If you love Jack sparrow you will love this one, unlike the other movies where it felt like he was doing cameo among other characters. This time he is in 95% of the movie, i am finding it hard to think of a scene where is not present. So its Jack Sparrow all the way and Johnny Depp doesn’t disappoint, he is funny and at his manipulative best.

I will not spoil the movie by revealing all the story details. Its about finding the fountain of youth as revealed in the trailer. I had my doubt about Penélope Cruz and i didn’t like her in the movie. But Johnny Depp makes anyone look good. All in all a good fun summer entertainer, and in the end they leave a loop hole for the next movie.

This movie has made 400 million in just 4 days worldwide so expect a sequel for sure. Hoping Jack Sparrow forgot Captain Jack Sparrow continues to entertain us for long time to come.

A good summer movie and is a must watch.

Best lines of the movie for me was by Johnny Depp saying “Did everyone see that? Because I will *not* be doing it again.” & “You know that feeling you get when you’re standing in a high place… sudden urge to jump?… I don’t have it.”

Posted in Reviews, Television & Movies | 1 Comment

Nokia BH-905i Bluetooth Headphones review

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Prasanth

BH-905i are the new top end bluetooth stereo Noise canceling headphones from Nokia. The build quality on the product is really good. It feels like you have bought a good product. Everything about the product is top end.

Even the case in which it comes is really cool. Looks like a CD case. You can carry all the wire and the charger in that case which is a nice thing.

Now about the head phones, it has good leather that surrounds the head band and the ear muffs. So it feels very comfortable when wearing. It flex and flips at two places on each side of the headphones, so any one can wear it comfortably.

Switching the headphone is simple, just hold the power button until the light comes one. To make it discoverable and pair with other devices just keep holding and it will start blinking blue. Now you can pair it with any device.

Pairing it to ipod touch, or PC is as simple as just selecting the device no numbers to enter etc. Ones its paired it works flawlessly. You can use the buttons on the head phones to play, skip and replay the music.

Now the noise canceling part, it has a buttons which you can toggle to turn on and off the noise cancelling feature. I like this because you don’t have to keep it on all time. You can use this feature only when you want to.

Even without the noise cancelling these headphone pretty much block all the noise. With noise cancelling turned on its pretty amazing to listen to just music.

These head phone worked up to 10 feet pretty well, but past that there was some lag.

You can also use this device wired to any gadget, even without a charge. You get all the necessary cables and pins with the device.

Now comes the most important part the battery. It last 25 hours on music, yes that’s right 25 hours. That a lot of time, more importantly you are not worried about the battery at that point. It also only takes 2 hours recharge which again is amazing.

I bought the Jabra halo which gives pathetic 6 hours. So i never use it. Yesterday i used the Nokia BH-905i for 8 hours continuously while i was travelling from Chennai.

It never had any problems all the way. I couldn’t say that for the jabra halo.

If you are in the market for a high end noise canceling bluetooth stereo headphones Nokia BH-905i are the ones to get.

If they were a little cheaper i would have bought my own. At 17500 Rs it a costly product but with all these feature on offer, its a must buy if you have that kind of money.

You will not regret it. I have added this to my wish list already. If only i would have known about this device before i bought the Jabra Halo.

This demo unit was give by wow world, i have to return it in few days. I really want this one, i should start saving for it.

Posted in Gadgets, Reviews | 3 Comments

Nokia N97 mini Review

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Prasanth

Two weeks back i got my first review unit from Nokia. It was Nokia N97 mini, this is a touch screen phone with full qwerty keyboard. So i was really looking forward to using it.

Hardware

This is a solidly built device which is very small even with a full qwerty keyboard. It also has a touch screen and 5 mega pixel camera. It has all the regular features like bluetooth, wifi, gps and memory card slot etc. The qwerty keyboard is revealed when you push the screen to the side. It has a good clicking mechanism to it.

The keyboard is a quite good to type on, it also backlight which is nice to use during night times. The camera is a 5 mega pixel one with flash, which took good photos up close even in complete darkness. It has up to 8Gb of internal storage and a memory card slot. The speaker on the device is quite loud, which is nice to listen to music. All this in a very small package.

The device on the hardware side didn’t disappoint, it was solidly built and felt very solid while using it. More detailed spec here

Software

This is a touchscreen phone, so i was curious to see how well nokia implemented this. The touch screen on this device is pretty good, but when you compare with the device that are coming out now, it feels kind of slow. It runs symbian series 60 5th edition, which is not well known for its touch screen user interface. But they have made quite a bit of effort and made the icons and buttons big to click. Nokia N97 mini customized the home screen with some widgets. These widgets make the home screen more modern and quite usable. You can put shortcuts to apps, contacts and also display tit bits of  information using these widgets. It come with quite a few apps like calculator, voice recorder and a podcasting app etc, which is nice.

With Ovi store you can get more apps from nokia’s app store. The app store only shows the apps for your device so you can install all the apps that you see in the store. Unlike other phone app stores. It has quite a few apps on the online store, most of the them are free to use.Then there is Ovi music and Ovi maps which are good implementation, but need quite a bit of polish. The Ovi maps was quite slow to use compare with google maps. But these are free services. For Ovi music you can get coupon codes which will allow unlimited amount of music downloads. But my device didn’t work with music store as i didn’t have the coupon codes. Its a nice deal if you can get the unlimited download because it has all the latest indian music.The music and video player work quite well with the device. The music player is just the basic one you see on all nokia devices with a bit bigger buttons for touch screen use. It comes with Real player for video playback which supports quite a few formats. But couldn’t play podcast that i download using the in built podcast app.

The messaging and mailing apps. Its one single app for all your messaging features. You can get free acccess to yahoo mail, gmail, ovi mail etc. It has a setup wizard which will automatically sets up the mail settings which is nice. The email is text only there is no way to see html messages. With the qwerty keyboard this app is quite useful. And the best reason to buy this phone.Camera app is quite fast and with the 5 mega pixel takes quite good photos. Even the video taken by this phone looks very good. Viewing photos on the devices is also quite fast.The browser which i think is what most people will use the device for is painfully slow. Even opera on this device felt slow. I am not sure what the problem was. Even with wifi connection browsing websites was slow on the device.Phone features seem to be the last thing people care about these days. It’s quite good at that and has all the additional features you look for these days. The speaker on this device are quite good and loud.

Conclusion

If you want a touch screen phone with qwerty keyboard this is the only option among Nokia devices. Its priced around 20000 Rs on nokia’s webiste. You can get the device for 17000 Rs in market. Which is quite a good price for a qwerty keyboard touch screen phone. There are not many phones out there with these features.I wish they abandon symbian and go with meego or android. i can only imagine how good this hardware would have been with other mobile OS.

Posted in Mobiles, Product Testing, Reviews | Leave a comment

Tata sky+ Review after six months

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Prasanth

I am writing this after using Tatasky+ for six months.

tataskyplus1

I upgraded to Tatasky+ so i only paid 5000 Rs which was reasonable. They took my old tatasky settop box away.

tataskyplus2

The installation came as a surprise because i thought, and was told by the customer service that there is no installation. I thought i could just swap the settop box, but that’s not the case.

tataskyplus3

A red led glows when a recoding is happening.

tataskyplus6

This is the remote for Tatasky +

tataskyplus7

Only these buttons are the extra from the regular tatasky +. Just hit the R button to record anything.

The installation guy comes and installs new hardware near the dish and also put a second cable to the dish. He was only just able to put the second cable because of the tight space inside the wall.

So be aware that there is an installtion for this box and it can only be done by a qualified professional. He also calls in to activate the service one the installtion is finished. So don’t think you can do the installtion.

Now the good part, once you paid for the box and the annual package. You can start using the service.

Before i begin once you use the service you will never go back to normal tv ever again.

Here are the feature of the device

tataskyplus4

Record Tv (You can record two channels at the same time)

Pause Tv (You can pause any channel you are watching and rewind back upto 45 minutes or the moment your started watching the channel which ever is higher)

Record Tv

You can record up to 30 hours of programing. Which is more than a 10 full lenght movies. Once you set the hard disk management to automatic, it will automatically delete the old show and keep recording the new once you choose.

tataskyplus8

Only settings you can change for tatasky + plus are these shown above.

tataskyplus5

You can schedule recording up to two days in advance.

You can record two channels at the same time. And watch another recording while this is going on.

tataskyplus9

tataskyplus10

tataskyplus11

When you are playing a recording a blue led light circles around the round dial on the set-top box

You can even set series link which automatically records a show every week or every day. But this feature is not supported on all channels. Only few of them have this feature, but really useful when it works.

tataskyplus12

The info bar show the time remaining in the recording while playing back, when you press info button.

tataskyplus13

You can even fast forward the recorded shows to skip ad’s or the boring parts.

Pause Tv

You can pause any channel you are watching it automatially buffere up to 45 minutes or whenever you started watching the show. You can change this in the settings menu.

tataskyplus15

tataskyplus16

This indicates how far behind you are from the live Tv.

tataskyplus17

Once you get to know all the features and start using them, you will really love your tatasky+. Now i can’t imagine watching tv without a Tatasky+.

Here is a Trick to do a slow motion on tatasky+. Pause the recording and then click forward button to do slow motion, this is not in the manual.

tataskyplus14

Its priced around 9000 Rs if you are not a Tatasky subscriber. But well worth the price.

I really recommend you get one, it will change your life style enormously.

Posted in Gadgets, Reviews, Television & Movies | Leave a comment