Lava XOLO X900: Intel's Smart phone

Intel had been one of the earliest players in the mobile chip sphere with its Xscale line of processors for PDAs. Having sold the division to Marvell in 2006 , the company had for all practical purposes ditched mobile computing.

Then came their effort with Moorestown , based on the Lincroft system-on-a-chip with an Atom processor core, Langwell input / output Platform Controller Hub(I/O PCH), and a Briertown Power Management IC. However due to the lack of proper power management , video encoding and decoding among others meant that the SoC was not feasible for deployment in a phone. What it did lead to is the Medfield processor. This is a true x86 processor chip which will shipping in a number of devices by the end of 2012. Read on for our review on the first phone running Intel’s Medfield processor.

Hardware

The Xolo X900 is absolutely identical to Intel’s Form Factor Reference Design (FFRD). The phone is fairly solid and we didn’t really find anything lacking in the fit and finish of the device. The design takes obvious cues from the iPhone , right from the chrome ring around the border to the general design direction among other things. A headphone jack and power / standby key can be found at the top of the phone.

The front of the phone houses a 4” WSVGA (1024×600) screen which corresponds to about 300ppi. The screen looks great and touch sensitivity is top notch as expected from a device in this category. A 1.3MP front facing is placed above the screen.

Below the screen are 4 capacitive touch buttons which are fairly responsive.

On the right side you can find a microSIM tray not too different from the iPhone. It requires the use of a similar tray ejector tool. Below the micro SIM tray is the dual stage camera key. Stereo speakers can be found on both sides at the bottom of the phone.

The back of the phone has a soft touch matte finish in contrast to the shiny gloss up front. An 8MP camera can be found up top along with an LED flash. A secondary microphone for noise suppression.

Overall the phone feels just about average in the hand. The plastic clad body is nothing worth writing home about and the soft touch finish at the back is a smudge magnet and isn’t particularly easy to clean either. The deceptively light body does not feel too reassuring.

Performance

The X900 runs on the Atom Z2460 32nm SoC which has a Saltwell core running at a max of 1.6Ghz with 512Kb of L2 cache. The graphics core is a PowerVR SGX 540 running at 400Mhz. All these combined make it a compelling platform capable of competing with modern smartphones running on the Tegra 3 and Qualcomm S4 platforms.

 In terms of web browsing , Javascript performance is class leading. This is particularly impressive as the Xolo X900 runs on Gingerbread while its competitors are already on Android 4.0 which further boosts performance.

Over all the XOLO X900 was one of the fastest phones we’ve ever tested falling just short of the HTC One X in benchmarks. This is no small feat considering that the Atom chipset powering the X900 is a single core chip competing with the quad-core Tegra 3 chipset. The XOLO X900 is capable of playing back full HD video content without breaking a sweat. 3D gaming performance is also top-notch without any frame drops as such.

Camera

The phone has 8MP auto focus camera at the back and 1.3MP front facing camera. The 8MP rear camera does a good job that also takes 10 shots in less than a minute at 15 fps in Burst mode.

You just need to swipe from left to right in the camera mode to get the setting menu. You can adjust the burst mode length to 1,3,5 and 10 and FPS settings accordingly.

There are different scene mode such as Auto, Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Night, Night Portrait, Fireworks and Text. and Focus modes such as Auto, Infinity, Macro and Touch (Touch to focus). We tried Auto and Fireworks mode and the image turned out well, which you can see in the sample shots below. The images in macro mode didn’t turnout pretty well.

You can adjust ISO settings manually ranging from 100 up to 800 and manually adjust lots more settings including shutter speed, Auto Exposure, Anti banding and lots more. The custom camera options you set doesn’t change when you exit the camera and use it again. You can reset the camera settings.

Here are some camera samples (Click to enlarge)

You can switch between either cameras from the icon below and can also switch to video recorder that supports Full HD 1080p video recording up to 30fps. The video quality is fine and the video is recorded only in .3GP format that takes up about 60MB for a 30 second video. You can also change the white balance, apply some color effects while shooting.

Here is the 1080p video sample

Benchmarks

Here are some benchmark results to show the performance of the Intel Medfield processor.

Quadrant and Smartbench 2012

Linpak single thread and multi-thread

Antutu and Vellamo

Conclusion

The XOLO X900 proves that Intel can have a compelling offering running on the Android platform. As their first device , the X900 does not break any records but offers a stable , almost pure Android experience on a platform which performs as well as any other out there. Due to the architecture change , there will be compatibility issues even though Intel has worked to minimize this. It is now available in the market for about Rs. 22,000.
Pros

• Above average build quality
• Good Camera with dedicated camera button
• Good performance
• First Intel powered Android phone

Cons

• Awkward screen resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels
• No ICS out of the box
• App compatibility concerns
• 16GB internal memory with no expandable storage

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Orange San Diego - Intel's first Smart Phone

As the the first Android smartphone to sport an Intel processor, the Orange San Diego is a big deal; surprisingly, though, Intel seems determined not to make a fuss. The first phone featuring its new "Medfield" mobile processor is a bland, budget handset; pick it up and it doesn't immediately inspire - it feels light and plasticky.

With the new Atom Z2460 inside, however – Intel's “Medfield” platform – the San Diego is more interesting than it looks. Seven years in the making, this new Atom processor is set to be the foundation of Intel's future mobile strategy.

It's a single core design, based on a 32nm process, and it runs at a nominal 1.6GHz. As with its netbook and desktop counterparts the processor is Hyper-Threaded allowing it to simulate two cores, and has a form of Turbo Boost (dubbed Intel Burst Performance Technology), which allows the processor to up its clock speed when needed.

In tests, the Atom Z2460 proved more than competitive with ARM-based Android smartphones. The browser-based SunSpider test returned a time of 1,436ms – significantly quicker than the iPhone 4S and on a par with the Samsung Galaxy S III. Browsing the web on the phone felt very snappy indeed.

In Quadrant, a result of 4,022 is up there with the very best again, and all this grunt doesn't come at the cost of battery life. The San Diego had 50% remaining on the battery gauge after our 24-hour smartphone test, which is on the low side of average.

The catch is that the Atom Z2460 is an x86 processor, and although the majority of Android apps are written in CPU-agnostic Java and will run without further intervention on the San Diego, a significant proportion are written using native ARM code. In those cases, the phone uses a binary translator to execute apps, but not all of these apps will run – an estimated 30% according to Intel.

That's the bad news; the good news is that all but one of the apps and games we tried ran without a hitch. Reckless Racing HD was playable with the odd glitch, Angry Birds Space played, and New Star Soccer played too. Only Shadowgun refused to play ball.

It isn't all about the processor, though; the display is good too. It has a 4in diagonal and a resolution of 600 x 1,024, giving a pixel density of 297ppi – not far behind the iPhone 4 and 4S' Retina display (326ppi). Although the colours aren't particularly vibrant it's a great screen in a £15 per month handset. Maximum brightness at 383cd/m² is perfectly acceptable, if not as searing as on many flagship phones these days.

The 8-megapixel rear camera isn't the best, tending to produce rather noisy, low contrast snaps indoors; but with a bit of luck and some good light, outdoor snaps are achievable. We don't like the ugly Orange front end, which here goes hand in hand with Android 2.3.7; the battery isn't removable; and there's no microSD slot to add to the San Diego's existing 16GB of storage either.

Other than that, though, the Orange San Diego is a phone we could quite easily live with on a day to day basis. It's cheap, it's compact, it has a decent screen and general performance and battery life is surprisingly good. The first smartphone with Intel inside has been long in the making, but it looks like it was worth the wait.

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Nokia 808 Pure View

"Nokia ships 41-megapixel camera phone in May, hints at more to come"

Nokia will start shipping the PureView 808 in May and has extended its deal with Carl Zeiss, which will result in further advancements in smartphone imaging in the comin g months and years, the company said Wednesday.

The Symbian-based PureView 808 was announced at Mobile World Congress, and will become available in Russia and India later this month. What sets the smartphone apart is its 41-megapixel sensor.

The PureView 808 was developed with Carl Zeiss, which Nokia will continue to work with on more PureView products. Together they will carry on developing PureView for future smartphones, Nokia said.

A natural next step would be to develop a PureView smartphone that uses Windows Phone. In March, Jo Harlow, executive vice president of Nokia Smart Devices, told a Finnish paper that a Windows phone with a similar camera is on the way, but didn't specify when it would arrive.

Video Sample is here:
  

The PureView camera is impressive, and porting it to Windows Phone makes a lot of sense, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, as it would help Nokia to differentiate its products from the competition.

However, Saadi doesn't expect a Lumia PureView smartphone to arrive this year, he said.

Due to Symbian's dwindling fortunes, the PureView 808 will not become more than a niche product, according to Saadi

Additional countries where the smartphone will go on sale will be announced in the near future, Nokia said.
 
SRC: http://www.computerworld.com

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Samsung Galaxy S3 First look

Galaxy S III, Samsung's flagship Android phone, has hit India. It was launched today at a glitzy ceremony in New Delhi. Since Galaxy S was launched in 2010 and set a new standard for Android phones, smartphone enthusiasts have come to expect each flagship Galaxy device to be a market leader in terms of hardware, performance, features and user experience. Galaxy S II nicely exceeded what was expected of it and became one of the best-selling Andr oid devices of all time. No wonder, there is a lot of buzz around Galaxy S III (SGS III).

We have the review unit of SGS III with us and over the next few days we will be putting it through its paces. In the meantime, we can share our first impression of the device.

First the basics. With a screen size of 4.8 inches, the phone feels big in hand. But that is somewhat of an industry standard nowadays. Other flagship devices like Galaxy Nexus or One X too are equally large if not more. But given the size, we will definitely ask you to check out the device before buying. This is particularly important if you have small hands. The phone is built of glossy plastic but it feels sturdy and quite classy, at least in white colour. The Super AMOLED screen has a resolution of 1280x720 pixels. It has punchy colours, something that is hallmark of AMOLED screens.

Samsung says the phone's design and user interface are inspired by shapes and sounds found in nature. As a user, you are going to find the evidence of this as soon as you power up the phone. The lock screen on the phone doesn't have any strip showing people how they should swipe the way it is on iPhone, or any circle that needs to dragged. Instead it asks users to swipe on the screen and when a user does that, the moment creates ripples, as if there is water under the screen, before it is unlocked. Then there are sounds. For example, when the phone is unlocked the sound is that of a drop falling into a pool of water.

Overall, the phone feels fast. It runs on Android 4.0.4, which is the latest version. In comparison, Galaxy S II that received Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4) updates day before yesterday uses Android 4.0.3 version.

Before we go back to exploring the device, we want to talk about a couple of pictures that we snapped with the phone's 8MP camera. All of these pictures were taken in good lighting. And all of them have excellent level of detail and very pleasing colours. Of course, we need to spend more time with the phone and its camera before we can conclusively say something.
That's all for now. 

Source: TOI

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Sony Xperia NXT Series

In the list of Xperia NXT Series Smartphones from Sony Mobile Communications there are four handsets –

• Sony Xperia S
• Sony Xperia U
• Sony Xperia P
• Sony Xperia Sola

All the Xperia NXT series smartphones are powered by dual-core processors running on Google Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and can be Upgraded to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, planned in Quarter 2 2012. These phones are very beautifully designed and are released in some places and for the rest it will be available by June.
All the phones except Xperia U have NFC support and can be used with the Xperia NFC SmartTags and more importantly are MasterCard PayPass certified smartphones.

XPERIA S

Features

• 4.3 inch 1280x720 HD Reality Display
• 12 mp rear camera with 1080p video capture, front camera 720p HD
• 32 GB storage
• 1 GB RAM
• 1.5 ghz Dual Core CPU
• 1.5 second from sleep mode to taking a picture.
• Anti Stain Coating
• NFC
• Playstation Certified
• MRP 29,990/- INR

XPERIA P

Features

• 4.0 inch qHD Sony WhiteMagic display with 1000 nits brightness
• 1 GB RAM
• 1 ghz Dual Core CPU
• 16 GB storage
• 8 mp rear camera with 1080p video capture
• NFC
• 85 hour music playback time
• Aluminum unibody chassis
• Anti Stain coating
• HDMI output
• Xperia SMART Dock for full PC experience*
• MRP 23,990/- INR

XPERIA U

Features

• 3.5 inch 854x480 Reality Display
• 5 mp rear camera with 720p video capture
• 8GB storage
• 512 mb RAM
• 1 ghz dual core CPU
• Changeable bottom caps and illumination effect
• 3D surround sound
• Anti Stain Coating
• Fast Capture
• Smart Headset Pro bundled
• MRP 16,990/- INR

XPERIA SOLA

Features 

• 3.7 inch 854x480 screen with Mobile Bravia Engine and Floating Touch
• 5 megapixel camera with 720p video capture
• 1 ghz U8500 ST-Ericsson Dual Core CPU
• 512MB RAM
• 8 GB Internal storage, microSD card support upto 32 GB
• NFC
• Hard coated shatterproof sheet on scratch-resistant glass
• DLNA
• Fast Capture
• 107 grams weight
• MRP 19990/- INR

Available - April end/Early May

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HTC One X

It is astounding how HTC makes brilliant looking phones, one after the other, as if the designing process is a well planned production line in itself! The latest flagship phone, the One X, walks down the same path.

Look & Feel
The HTC One X is a looker, and there is no doubting the effort that the Taiwanese manufacturers’ design team has put in for this phone. Judging by the design, the form factor and the quality of materials used, the One X feels quite premium. For a lot of people, a phone with some metal component to the build is an essential indicator to the solidity of the build quality. See and hold the One X once, and all those assumptions will be dispelled. Even though this falls squarely in the big-screen smartphone category, the One X isn't uncomfortable to use or unwieldy to hold.

To understand most elements of the design influence, you need to look at the phone placed vertically on a flat surface, from side on. The slimness literally shouts silently. What you will also notice is slight curve on the top and bottom. The only issue with this slimness is that the 8MP camera protrudes out at the back, and when placed flat, the phone rests on a part of the clicker.

While it is plastic throughout, we believe it is the unibody design that lends it the solidity. We first saw this a few years back on the HTC Legend, and while the design didn’t really catch on then, it never really went away. Off late, we have seen this with a lot of phones, with the Nokia Lumia 800 being a prime example. The review unit sent to us had the enamel white finish, which wasn’t glossy and thankfully so, for it isn't a fingerprint or scratch magnet. However, this colour does have the problem of getting dirty very quickly, and you’ll have to be quite careful about that.

The front of the One X looks very minimalistic, particularly when the display us turned off. Amidst the sea of black is a 4.7-inch display and three touch sensitive keys - return, home and what is essentially a task manager. The right spine has the volume rocker, and left one has the micro USB slot. There is no dedicated camera key, which is a bit of a surprise.

To sum it up, the One X is a well-sculpted phone, and clearly, the designers have put their heart and mind into it. It feels like a premium phone to hold and use, which is critical considering what you will eventually be shelling out for it. We would strongly recommend the grey one though, since the white will not be for the cleanliness freaks out there!

Features & Performance
A 1.5GHz quad core processor powers the HTC One X, and this is the first super phone to be launched in India. Not to forget, this is paired smartly with 1GB of RAM. Logically, it should be a scorcher in terms of performance. To test and compare, we ran a series of benchmarks. And for the sake of comparison, we pitted it against the Samsung Galaxy Note which is (or at least was) the fastest Android smartphone till the One X came along. First benchmark we did was Quadrant, and surprise surprise - the One X was slightly slower than the Note. Just to be sure, we restarted the One X and ran the benchmark again. Same result. Logged it while trying the hardest to remain unfazed, we moved to the next set of benchmarks. Not a surprise that the One X blitzed the charts!

In the real-world usage scenario, the One X feels like any dual core powered smartphone, for the most part. However, most apps load quicker, and games are definitely a smoother experience. But why we raised this question about real life performance is because of some statistics - despite having 1GB of RAM, the task manager clearly shows that the free RAM is never more than 250MB. The background processes, and lots of them for that matter, eat up a whole lot of RAM, which basically brings the One X down to the level of a Motorola Razr or a Galaxy Note, in terms of one aspect of the performance. This even we realized once we had a bunch of apps open in the background, and the UI became perceptibly sluggish. Having said that, you would absolutely love the snappiness while playing games or even loading apps.

When stressed, the rear panel does become a bit warm, particularly when gaming or watching videos, the area around the Beats Audio logo becomes a tad warm. Not uncomfortably so, but that will have an impact on the battery life, and you will feel it on your palm.

Specifications

Platform:                 Android 4.0.3; 

Processor:               Tegra 3 quad core 1.5GHz; 

RAM:                     1GB; 

Display:                  4.7-inch Super IPS LCD2 (1280 x 720 pixels); 

Storage:                  32GB, no memory expansion slot; 

Camera:                 8MP with 1920 x 1080p (1080p) videos; 

Battery:                 1800mAh 


Pros: 

• One word - powerful
• Very good display
• Slim chassis
• Built well, even though it is just plastic
• Looks fantastic

Cons:

• Battery life is disappointing
• A dash of metal would have given it a premium look
• HTC Sense crashes at times

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