Xiaomi MI 3 Review

                                        XIAOMI MI 3 REVIEW

There are many Chinese Manufacturing companies producing mobiles who want their products to create a footprint in this long expanding mobile market. Xiaomi MI 3 is one such device which makes a bold statement.

1. Brand Talk-
       This phone is manufactured by Xiaomi, a Chinese mobile manufacturer also know as 'The Apple of China'. They make a lot of devices ranging from tablets to mobiles. This phone is the successor to the Xiaomi MI 2 released last year.

2. Avatars in the market-
       The avatars available is in the size of the storage and colour. There is a 16 GB and 64 GB models.In the colour section there is metallic gray and black. The model under review is the metallic grey 16 GB version.

3.Out of the box-

The box is a plain vanilla flavoured type. Sweet and simple i must say.

The Box - Front

The Box-Back

On opening the box you find the phone seated in the box.

The Phone in the box

Inside there are the charger, some documentation and SIM ejection tool.

The Charger

Documentation

                                   

SIM Ejection Tool

4. Design, Build Quality-
      The phone is well built.It is made of polycarbonate at the back and Corning Gorilla Glass on the front. It has dimensions of 144 x 73.6 x 8.1 mm and weighs 145g. It feels good in the hands. It looks like a rectangular bar with sides curved. 

The Front Side

On the front we have the front facing camera at the top right and beside that the proximity sensor. There is a MI logo on the top left.

The Back Side

On the back we have a rear camera at the top left and the led flash next to it. There is a MI logo at the bottom.The back is made of polycarbonate.

Left Side

On the left there is nothing worth noting.

Right Side

On the right there is the power/sleep-wake button and the volume rocker.

Top Side

At the top there is the 3.5mm headphones jack and the sim tray.

Bottom

At the bottom there is the micro USB slot for charging and data transfer and the speakers.

     Overall this is a simple and well built phone that isn't flashy at all.

5) Features-

a) Screen-
      It has a 5" 1080p (1920x1080) Display. It is an IPS type display which has good viewing angles.It can display upto 16M colours and has a pixel density of 441 ppi.It is a capacitive touch screen with multi touch upto 10 fingers. At 100% brightness the display shows blacks at 0.61 cd/m2 and whites at 557 cd/m2 giving it an overall contrast ratio of 907.The screen looks wonderful with good contrast and colours.Coming to the touch experience, it was very snappy and responsive.

Wonderful screen

The sunlight legibility is moderate. It's not that you can see each and every detail under sunlight but can manage.

b) Performance-

        This phone has killer specifications to the tune of flagship models of other brands. At the core it has a Quad core 2.3 Ghz Krait 400 processor running on a Qualcomm MSM8274AB Snapdragon 801 chipset. For the graphics it has the Adreno 330 graphics chipset. It has 2 GB of RAM. The specs are even better than the flasgship models of other brands like the Sony Xperia Z1, LG G2. With these specs the phone can run any game or applications with ease. The touch experience was snappy thanks to the specifications of the phone.Now coming to some benchmark performances, the phone scored a dissapointing 1840 (Galaxy Note 3 scored 2940) in GeekBench 3 but recovered with a good performance in ANTUTU 4 with a score of 34984(it beat the Galxy Note 3 this time) just below the LG G2. The phone topped the list in BenchMark OSII with a score of 1290. It scored 2400 in BenchMark OSII (Single-Core) and 9100 in BenchMark OSII(Multi Core). In the gaming benchmarks the phone scored an impressive 28 in GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen) just below the leader OppoFind 7. It topped the GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen) Benchmark with a score of 12. Now coming to the Browser Mark 2.1 it scored a dissapointing 710 (Oppo Find 7 scored 1450). Overall this phone has the specs which can shear through anything that is thrown at it and will never be dissapointing. 

c) Connectivity-

       The phone supports a wide area of connectivity options. The Xiaomi MI 3 lacks LTE connectivity. It is based on the quad-band GSM connectivity and quad-band 3G connectivity with HSPA support.

Remaining connectivity features include dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac and Wi-Fi Direct. There is also support for Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS, plus an FM radio. It has NFC connectivity, too, with support for Android Beam for sending files to other Android devices.There is a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and data connections. Media transfer mode is supported for accessing the phone's built-in memory and microSD card over a USB connection.

  

d) Software-

The phone comes with Android Jelly Bean 4.3 out of the box. It is upgradable to Kitkat 4.4.

Pre-loaded Google Apps

The phone comes preloaded with a host of Google Apps ranging from Gmail to Hangouts.It's kind of a good sign Xiaomi included this to give you a feel of Androidness of this phone.

Home Screen

The phone is based on the MI UI. It is beautiful, given that you can customize each and every visual feature of the phone.

Tools

 The phone also comes with a dedicated tools folder which gives you important day to day apps like calculator,compass, recorder etc.

 

e) Battery - 
       The phone comes with a 3050 mAh non user replaceable battery. With usual 3g browsing and playing games the phone gives about a day and a half of charge.

f) Photo, Video and Camera-
       For the photos the phone comes with a basic photo app, that is nothing extraordinary but it gets the job done.It has a dedicated music player that is good at best. It looks more like the Walkman App in the Xperia phones.

The Music App

Now coming to the camera. The rear camera is a 13 MP shooter with dual LED flash. The photos taken with the phone is superb. It has great colour reproduction and good detail. You can take panaromic photos.It also has burst shoot. The video ability of the phone is that it can take videos to the tune of 1080p at 30 fps.The video quality is also good.There is also a 2MP front facing camera.The camera app is descent with basic and useful controls available within it. 

Camera App

g) Warranty-

           The phone comes with one year domestic warranty. They have their main service centers in Delhi and Bangalore and other 30 service centers all over the country.

h) Availability and Pricing-

        This phone is exclusively available on Flipkart. It is priced Rs.14000/- in India. To buy the product you have to register in flipkart and if luck favours you can buy it on the sale day. There are talks that the phone gets sold out in seconds.It is also available on ebay by many sellers for a premium i.e it is priced around Rs.18,000 - Rs.20,000.

i) Conclusion-

   Xiaomi MI 3 is a hell of a gem you can get at this price. For just Rs.14000 you get the specs of an above 35k phone. It has a good build quality, great display, good camera and a great Software UI. There are little or no drawbacks of this phone. So Xiaomi MI 3, I totally recommend this phone.

http://dl.flipkart.com/dl/offers?affid=nishanthd

Sony Xperia Z1 Review

SONY XPERIA Z1 REVIEW

   After the split of Sony Ericsson, Sony has entered the market with some bold stereotypic phones. All the phones released by them have some similarities in the design.  Sony Xperia Z1 is one such phone, being Sony's flagship model at present.

1. Brand Talk-

   This handset is manufactured by Sony, the Japanese electronics giant. This particular phone is the successor to the Xperia Z launched by Sony last year and currently holds flagship baton for Sony in the mobile market.

2. Avatars in the Market-

 There are three colours available in the market for this model which is black, white and purple. The model reviewed in this review is the black model.

3. Out of the box-

   The box looks small and simple from the outside.

 On opening the box you find the phone.

Upon lifting the separation on which the phone is kept we can see the headphones, charger pin, USB data cable, eartips and documentation.

The earphones are of good quality with good bass response.

 The USB data cable could have been a slight longer as I felt it was a bit short, but on the other side it may not cause any problems.

 

 

 

4. Design and Build Quality-

   This phone has a wonderful design and a good build quality. It is one of the strongest  features of this phone. The body is made of two pieces of high tempered glass bound by an aluminium frame. The phone looks like a stylishly clad glass bar. It looks premium all the way. It has a dimension of 144 x 74 x 8.5 mm and weighs 170g. It looks big for a 5 inch phone. But the premium feel cancels that effect. It feels very comfortable to hold in the hands. It has a 5 inch screen which is protected by shatter proof and scratch resistant glass.

 There is a front cam above the screen to the right side. Sony logo is seen sporting on the centre top. There is also a led light at the extreme top centre, which blinks when receiving a call, message or when charging the phone. 

 

 

At the back it has a Sony Logo in the centre. The 20 MP Camera on the top left and the LED light below it. There is also an NFC logo for identifying the NFC Region of the phone.

 

At the right hand side we have the micro sim slot at the top with metallic covers due to its waterproof capability. At the bottom there is a power off/on switch which has a good feel to it. Below that is the volume rocker and down below it is the camera shutter button ("thank you Sony").

At the bottom of the phone we have the speaker.

 

 To the left hand side of the phone there is a microSD slot at the top, below there is a micro USB slot.

 

 

 Both these slots are covered by a metallic flap for the waterproofing. Below these two slots there are pogo pins for dock connection. To the top there is a 3.5mm headphones jack. Overall the design and placement of buttons according to me is excellent. All the materials used make the handset look premium all the way, and considering its price tag Sony has done a wonderful job.

5. Features-

    Sony's flagship model, 5'' screen, 20 MP Camera, Good build is all that you know upto now, but let's see what the phone has got in store .

a) Screen-

   The Z1 has a 5" Full HD 1080p (1980x1080) pixel resolution Triluminous Display TFT Screen with a pixel density of 441 ppi which makes the screen look ultra-sharp. It is capable of displaying 16 Million colours. At 100% brightness it displays blacks with 0.38cd/m2 luminosity and whites of 580 cd/m2 luminosity giving it an overall compression ratio of 1513.

 

 

 

 

The X-Reality Display technology incorporated along with the screen improves viewing angles, contrast, displays saturated colours impressively. Also the reflectiveness on the screen is less and the display legibility under sunlight is good giving it a score of 2.9. It’s a multitouch display capable of registering 10 simultaneous touches. Overall the screen does justice considering the phone being the flagship model.

b) Performance-

    This phone is packed with all the latest guns and missiles. Let's see the amount of muscles it has got under its hood.  At the core it has a Quad core 2.2 Ghz Krait 400 Processor on the latest Qualcomm MSM8974 Snapdragon 800 chipset. It is powered by an Adreno 330 graphics processor. This phone has specs which is state of the art and second only to the LG G2 which has a 2.26 Ghz processor. So playing the latest games would not be an issue at all. It has 2 GB of Ram. 16 GB of Internal Memory and can support upto 64 GB of microSD card. Coming to its performance, this phone is an ultimate performer beating the LG G2, Galaxy S4 and HTC One hands down. When we ran synthetic benchmarks , the phone excelled in all of them. In Benchmark Pi (lower score the better) it scored a 112 which is just above the LG G2 which scored 108 which topped the test. In Linpack it scored 1010 which is just below the test topper LG G2 which scored 1030. IN Geekbench 3 this phone topped the test with a score of 2655. It also topped the test in AnTuTu 4 with a score of 30845. Also topping in Quadrant with a score of 20390. It also topped in GL Benchmark 2.5, GL Benchmark 2.7 and Epic Citadel with scores of 62, 25 and 55 respectively. It once again topped in SunSpider (lower score the better) with a score of 850. It scored 2401 in Browser Mark 2 and 2904 in Vellamo. Sony Xperia Z1 is one of the fastest smartphone you can have presently in the market. The Snapdragon 800 chipset really shows its performance leaving the ones with Snapdragon 600's behind.

c) Connectivity-

    This phone comes with a bunch of connectivity options. In the Cellular Area it supports all versions in GSM 2G, all versions in HSDPA 3G, and 4G LTE. It accepts only micro SIM. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot.  It supports Bluetooth 4.0. It supports NFC and micro USB 2.0. In the GPS Section it supports A-GPS and GLONASS. It also supports FM Radio. It also supports TV out function through the micro USB port. For the sensors it supports accelerometer, gryroscope, proximity and compass. This phone has all the connectivity options you can crave for and it does not miss out on any.

d) Software-

      This phone comes with Android Jellybean 4.2.2 installed.

 

 

 

 

You can update it to Jellybean 4.3 as of now and it will soon be getting Kitkat 4.4. For internet browsing it comes with Google Chrome, which is very impressive. It also comes bundled with the Office Suite 7 Pro, which gives you a word processor, an spreadsheet software and a presentation software.

 

e) Battery-

   This phone comes with a 3000 mAh battery. It has a great standby battery usage. Rest is descent, we get about a day's charge with web surfing and video playback. The battery is non user replaceable.  

f) Pictures, Audio, Video and Camera-

   This is also one of the strong features of this phone. The gallery has a good UI and has useful features packed into it. We can now increase the size of the thumbnails by a simple swipe gesture, it is very responsive. These all come under the pictures tab.

There is another tab called 'My Album', here you have all your online albums along with the ones stored on local network. Also there are maps and globes which show you the geo tag location of the photos. For the Audio there is the iconic Walkman player which is an updated one. It has a great UI with more options for sound enhancement.

    The updated Walkman music player, which is present on all 2013-Xperia smartphones is also on board. It offers the same cool interface as before, but this time it has more options for sound enhancement. The Walkman Player is divided into Playing and My music modes. In the My music section, you can update your album art and music information like album, year released. SensMe is also included, meaning you can filter your songs by mood - upbeat, energetic, mellow, dance, etc. You can also create playlists.  The Walkman player settings has been improved.  There's the familiar ClearAudio+ option, which determines the best audio quality settings depending on the song you're listening to. The audio output of the phone is excellent with good clarity but low loudness. The headphone output also is excellent. Coming to the video, I must say this is the best video player UI I have seen on any phone ("what the") You have beautiful preview pane at the top which shows you a glimpse of what is in the video when you select any one of them.

 

 It's connected to Gracenote, which helps you find additional information about the movies and TVs you have on the phone. It will even download posters for them and for movies; it will download metadata like genre, synopsis, director and cast. The phone showed no signs of slowdown when playing 720p and 1080p videos and could play them with ease. Also MP4, DivX, H.264, and MOV can be played without any problems but AVI, XviD and MKV formats refuse to play due to no preinstalled codecs. Finally coming to the camera, it has a 20.7MP front camera with a sensor size of 1/2.3" with Exmor RS Back Illuminated Sensor. It has a Sony G lens with a focal length of 27mm and an aperture of F/2.0. It has Sony BIONZ Processor for the image processing. Sony has packed all what they could in this phone.

 

 

The view on the viewfinder looks very fluid and smooth because of the high refresh rate of the sensor. The still image quality is superb with good colour accuracy and white balance, but the noise level s show some problems. In low light the images have a lot of noise and the noise compensation feature when kicked in removes a lot of detail from the image. For video capturing it can capture videos with a resolution of 1080p at 60fps. The video quality was fine without any issues.

 

g) Weatherproofing Ability- 

    This phone is IP58 certified, which means it is dustproof and waterproof. It can withstand water depth of 1metre for about 30 mins. The construction of the phone is such that its waterproofing abilities are not hampered in any way. It has a great protection on its ports which is incredible in my opinion.

h) Warranty-

   This phone comes with one year domestic warranty. This is as usual as other phones. International warranty would be better.

6. Conclusion-

   Finally all said, this one is a neat phone from Sony. With Splendid premium looks, good performance and a great build. This phone was released to improvise on the feature lack of the Sony Xperia Z and must say it has been successful in doing so. This phone is also reasonably priced for a flagship model of a good brand. With good overall features, I would certainly recommend this phone.

Laptop Buying Guide

Laptops are essential gadgets for most of us. They are personal, portable and convenient. But a bunch of laptops in the market confuses consumer as to which is their laptop of choice. This article will give you just what you wanted. So let's see what you need to know before buying a laptop.

  I will be taking each laptop component (ex- screen, processor, memory etc) at once and explain what to look in the respective component.

1. Screen Size-
      This is the most important factor that will decide how your laptop will look like, how big, heavy or how costly it is going to be. Mainstream laptops usually come in 11.6, 13.3, 14, 15.6 and 17 inch screen.
In the above sizes 11.6 and 13.3 inch screens are categorized as ultra portables, because of their small size and lighter weight. 14 inch is considered as power cum portable size, as it is capable of packing powerful spec components and also is relatively lighter. 15.6 and 17 inch are considered convenience desktop alternatives due to their powerful spec, not that easy portability (heavy). The first thumb rule is that the lower your screen size is the more low powered your laptop will be, because with more power comes more heat, and heat management in smaller laptops is difficult. Hence they are packed with slower components. The second thumb rule is given the same configuration the lower the screen size the more pricey your laptop is, as good build quality, aesthetics have to be considered for managing heat more effectively. So if you want a good gaming laptop 15.6 or 17 inch will be drastically more cheaper than a 13.3 or 14 inch laptop. If you want to do basic computing function like word, spread sheets, presentations or watching movie but want to have a laptop which is so light that you can slide it in your bag and not feeling the weight, go for a 11.6 or 13.3 inch laptop. You certainly wont get many gaming options because the laptops which have graphics card in this category (that too only 13 inchers) are very few. If you want portability and want to have a powerful laptop which easily plays any games and can do high intense tasks like video editing go for a suitably spec'd 14 inch laptop. If you do not like a Desktop PC at home and feel it is bulky but would want the performance comparable to it, you can settle for a 15.6 or 17 inch laptop. These are heavy, which means it is not good for easy porting, but can be a desktop replacement by giving you the convenience of keeping it on your lap and using it.

2. Display -
    This is the most neglected factor in today's laptops. The quality of your laptops display decides how well your experience is with it. But consumers hardly know about this and concentrate on good specs when making their laptop purchase. The true quality of the display depends on its ability to display accurate black and white colour i.e its accuracy of colour reproduction. The resolution of the screen decides how crisp the screen looks, how legible the fonts on the screen are and does not majorly affect the quality of the display.There are many types of displays like IPS, LED and many more. Opt for a screen with a contrast ratio of atleast 500:1. There are other two factors namely the brightness value of blacks and whites measured in cd/m2. Opt for a screen with low black brightness value and a high white brightness value.

3. Build Quality-
     This is also an important factor in laptops. The way your laptop is built decides how you will feel and how long it will be with you. There are mainly two types of materials used one being polycarbonate plastic and other being aluminium. The former being the favourite of budget laptops and the latter used for premium and priced laptops. Plastic built laptops make it cheap, fragile and light, but give us a cheap feel. On the other hand aluminium built laptops look beautiful and feels premium and also are very tough, but are costly, hot ("you quickly feel the heat on your lap") and are a bit heavy. One way to find about the quality of build is by pressing the laptop at various areas and searching for any squeaks, if you find squeaks then the quality of build is bad.

4. Processor-
     Processor decides how fast your computing operations will be. That is say you are editing a video, a better processor would do the job without any lag than a weaker processor. Do you need a fast processor? The answer is yes if you are a gamer, a video editor, a multitask freak and no if you mostly use for watching video and working on spread sheets.

5. RAM-
    RAM (Random Access Memory) is the bridge between the processor and the hard disk. So more the RAM more the processor can multitask. If you are buying a laptop running a 32 bit operating system 3 GB of RAM would more than be sufficient, but if your laptop is running a 64 bit operating system more than 3 GB RAM would make things better.

6. Hard  Drive-
   Hard Drive in laptops vary from 500 GB to 2 GB. There are also types in it like SSD, SATA Drives. SSD being more silent and expensive and SATA being more noisy and cheap. Basically anything about 500GB could be fine because you could buy an external hard drive to keep your movable files.

7. Graphics Card-
   This is an important feature for gamers. There are lot of laptops with dedicated graphics card. Nowadays laptops boast they have 1GB, 2GB of dedicated memory and people feel that the more the memory the better will be the card, but in actual this is not the truth. A Graphics cards performance does not depend totally on the memory but mainly depends on the processor of the graphics card. Normally you will find laptops sporting graphics cards like ATI Radeon 5550, 5650, 6470,7100 etc. or Nvidia GT430, 530,380,290,610,720 etc. Look for graphics cards with a higher second value in the model for ex you will think Nvidia GT 710 is better than Nvidia GT680, but in reality Nvidia GT680 is far better. Normally graphics card manufacturers release graphics cards in series, like 7000 series, 8000 series for ATI and GT400 series, GT500 series for Nvidia. So the first number denotes the series of the graphics card (manufacturers normally release new series if there is a update in the DirectX version for ex ATI 7000 series supports upto DirectX 9 and ATI 8000 series will be released to support DirectX 10). The second value will be that of the relative speed of the processor, for ex NVidia GT710 has a processor of 800MHz and Nvidia GT720 will have a processor of 900 MHz and so on. So whenever you are buying a laptop for gaming compare the processor speed to decide which is more better and not the size of the RAM.



8. Connectivity-
    Look for laptops with the latest WiFi versions like a/b/g/n. It should also support the latest Bluetooth version for wireless peripheral connectivity. Also it should support USB 3.0. Three to four USB ports are better as it will give you more flexibility in connecting more devices simultaneously. Laptops come with different types of ports of different applications. For sound the laptops will normally have audio-in (microphone), audio-out (headphone) a multichannel S/PDIF port would be a bonus as you can connect your laptop to a multichannel amplifier. For video look for HDMI port as it is very useful in the present. A RJ-45 LAN port is also a must in your laptop, so definitely look for it. Also look for a multi card reader as you need to read a lot of cards.