Xiaomi to Raise Curtains Off its Next Flagship Killer on 15th January

 After a very successful year, where Xiaomi managed to became the most valued startup, the company is now about to bring out its next flagship product. The company has sent out invites for the launch event set for 15th of January. According to the office MIUI thread, the launch will take place at 2.00 PM Beijing time. The page doesn’t specifically state what new device they’re launching, but the general agreement is that this launch is for the Mi5.

 The post asks the users on the thread to vote on what phone they expect Xiaomi is launching with the option given as Mi4s, Mi5 and others. With 70% in favour, Mi5 leads the polls.

 This upcoming premium launch by Xiaomi is expected to sport a 5.7 inches QHD display. It will get is processing might from the 64-bit Snapdragon 810 SoC which will be supported by Adreno 430 graphics engine and 3 GB RAM. It will offer 16 GB internal memory and feature a fingerprint sensor. It is also expected to flaunt a 20.7 MP camera with Sony Exmor RS sensor.

 There are also speculations that Xiaomi might unveil the new Mi Pad 2. It is expected to feature a 7.9-inch display with 2048X1536 resolution. It will come with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal storage. This does look like a quality update to the Mi Pad line and the resolution of the display might attract a good number of consumers.

 If Xiaomi prices it as competitively as it usually does, then it sure would have a winner on its hands. With the specs being offered in this edition of Mi smartphone, Xiaomi is directly challenging the authority of the flagship devices. Having knocked off Samsung from the top spot in China, Xiaomi has seriously taken a bullish approach to the market. Let’s hope it lasts long and encourages other manufacturers to duplicate Xiaomi’s business model and give consumers more functionality at affordable costs.

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Specs : Lenovo A6000 vs. Redmi Note 4G vs. Yu Yureka

SPECS	LENOVO A6000	XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 4G	YU YUREKA
Display	5 inch HD IPS	5.5 inch IPS LCD	5.5 inch HD
Processor	1.2 GHz 64-bit Snapdragon 410 processor	1.6 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400	1.5 GHz  octa-core Snapdragon 615
RAM	1 GB	2 GB RAM	2GB
Storage	8 GB	8 GB	16 GB
Expandable Upto	32 GB	64 GB	32 GB
Main Camera	8 MP	13 MP	13 MP
Front Camera	2 MP	5 MP	5 MP
Battery	2300 mAh	3100 mAh	2500mAh
Operating System	Android 4.4	Android 4.2	Cyanogen OS 11
Price	Below Rs. 10,000	Rs.9,999	Rs.8999

 At CES 2015, Lenovo introduced the A6000 capable of taking on the likes of Xiaomi Redmi Note and the newly launched Yu Yureka. The phone has some good specs for the sub Rs.10,000 segment. But how does it rate against its competition?

 Overall it’s easy to come to the conclusion that Yureka’s spec sheet coupled with CyanogenMod and its attractive price give it an edge over the competition. Lenovo’s A6000 seems to lag a bit behind, but a competitive price tag might give it a chance to establish itself in the market. We just have to wait for the arrival of the A6000 to check out the final spec sheet and pricing for a final conclusion!

Yu Yureka Review: Yes, Yu Can!

 Seldom has a phone arrived in the Indian market with so much controversy.  When Micromax announced its exclusive tie-up with Cyanogen (a company known for making a highly customized version of Android) and the launch of a new brand, YU, to represent it, the market had been buzzing in anticipation about what the devices under the new brand would be like. Then towards the end of the year, the Yureka was unveiled, complete with CyanogenMod, decent specs, and a surprisingly low price of Rs 8,999 (about USD 150). It goes on sale, exclusively online on Amazon India, from January 13. The big question of course, is: is it worth investing in?

Looks smart enough

  It is definitely not a head turner but is not an eyesore by any means either. We certainly cannot see people turning their noses up at it. It is slim enough at 8.8 mm and at around 150 grammes, relatively lightweight too. The front is jet black barring a small sphere for the home button, which gets flanked by the back and theme setting buttons when you power on the display. Design is largely minimalistic – volume rocker on the left, power/display button on the right, 3.5 mm audio jack on top, and micro USB port on the base. The back has the camera with a flash on the top and a speaker grille on the lower part.

We said it in our first impressions and we repeat the point – we really think Micromax missed out on a chance to cash in on the YU branding on the back of the device. The light blue YU logo on the greyish (moonstone grey is the official name) back does not really grab attention. In sum, the Yureka is not an ambassador of smartphone style by any means, but it is certainly a decent looking device. Yes, we have heard that it is in fact a rebranded version of another Chinese device, but honestly, we do not see how it retracts from its appearance.

Packs in the hardware

  Terms of hardware, the Yureka is very well stocked for a device at its price point. That 5.5-inch display is a 1280 x 720p affair, giving it a reasonable pixel density of 267 ppi and has an oleophobic coating as well as Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to stave off smudges and scratches. Powering it is a 64-bit octa core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor clocked at 1.5 Ghz, with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB storage, which is expandable using a memory card. There are twin cameras on the phone – a 5.0-megapixel front facing camera and a 13.0-megapixel one which has Sony’s IMX 135 CMOS sensor. The phone also supports dual SIM connectivity (both slots support micro SIM cards), and ticks off all the connectivity options that you would need: 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

 Making sure all this keeps working for a while is a 2500 mAh battery, which does seem a bit on the lower side, given the display size, but probably accounts for the relative slimness of the device. There have been a few complaints that the phone lacks a magnetometer compass (something we are confirming from YU at the time of writing) which could have aided it in navigation, but at this price point, we would not call it a deal breaker – the device handled navigation and geo-tagging well enough for us even without it. All in all, the hardware on the Yureka is very good for its price and a close match to that seen on the much more expensive HTC Desire 820. The closest thing to it in terms of spec-price ratio is perhaps the recently released Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G, which costs Rs 1,000 more, packs in a display of a similar size and resolution, and has a similar dual camera set up. And while that worthy is powered by a quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, it compensates with a larger battery (3100 mAh). But even then, the Yureka scores in being a dual SIM device (the Redmi Note 4G is a single SIM one) and in having 16 GB storage as opposed to the 8GB onboard storage on the Note 4G (the Note 4G can support upto 64 GB of expandable memory though, as against 32 GB on the Yureka). Any way you look at it, the Yureka is offering some very decent hardware bang for not too many bucks.

The soft side: Cyanogen flavored Android

  Which brings us to that aspect of the phone that has been causing all the legal uproar – the software. The Yureka runs on Cyanogen OS version 11.0-XNPH520, which is a newer version as compared to the one seen on the OnePlus One (OPO) released in India (11.0-XNPH44S – and at the time of writing, OnePlus had already released a version of its non-Cyanogen OS for the Indian OPO devices), and is based on Android 4.4.4. There are a few new themes (the most notable being a YU theme) and the phone comes bundled with a browser called YUniverse which is a version of opera for Android, but that apart, there do not seem to be too many changes. A look at the settings however shows up some differences – the most glaring being the seeming absence of support for gestures (whether this is due to hardware limitations or a software feature, we do not know). Yes, you can double tap to wake up the device and double tap near the status bar to lock it and also slide your finger across the status bar to tweak brightness, but you cannot draw a circle to activate the camera or make a V to toggle the torch feature. There are still plenty of customization and personalization options to play around with, ranging from theme packs and icons to multiple profile settings. I do not think Cyanogen fans will miss too much here, although we do suspect the OPO loyalists to speak up in favour of their heavier specced (and we must point out, more than twice as expensive) device. And as this is the ‘official’ Cyanogen phone in India at the time of writing, updates are likely to keep coming at regular intervals. YU founder Rahul Sharma had remarked that the phone, would in a sense of speaking, be in a state of constant beta as the software would keep getting updated for at least a period of two years. That is going to be SO much music to geek ears, we think.

Yureka, Yu are a smooth operator

 But all the hardware and software of the world is of little use if the device on which it is plonked does not perform well. And in that department, the Yureka gives an excellent account of itself. For the stat counters, we can mention that it ran up an Antutu Benchmark score of 31,900, which is above that of the HTC One M7, the Redmi Note and the Asus ZenFone 5, and not too far behind that of the LG G3. Speaking from a general consumer’s perspective, the phone ran smoothly without a single crash, the touch experience was smooth, and before anyone asks, no, we did not have any heating problems with the device at all – it did heat up very slightly during extended photography sessions and while playing HD games like the Asphalt and FIFA series, but at no time did we feel uncomfortable holding it or feel tempted to boil eggs on it. Cyanogen ran smoothly on it – in fact, so hitch-free was our experience that we think it actually was the best we have seen in terms of pure smoothness on a sub-Rs 10,000 phone, bettering what we have seen on the Redmi Note 3G and the Asus ZenFone 5. Multiple tasks ran without any problems and the display while not being the brightest or most spectacular that we have seen was good enough for videos and browsing the Web and for extended ebook reading sessions.The camera has generally been an area of concern in most devices from the Micromax stable (the Canvas Knight was a notable exception), but our experience with the twin cameras on the Yureka was a relative pleasant one . No, they are definitely not going to give sleepless nights to the point and shoot crowd, but they work very smoothly and in terms of detail and color reproduction, they are up there with the best in their category and better than some above it. No, the Yureka experience is not perfect – the sound over the loudspeaker was not the greatest in terms of quality (although it is good on the bundled headphones), and the 2500 mAh battery is going to struggle to see you through a day of heavy use. In our battery tests which involved around 100 photo clicks, an hour of calls, an hour of playing CSR racing, couple of hours of browsing & social media, the battery lasted for around 21 hours with close to 4 hours of screen on time. All said and done, our experience with the Yureka was a very good one when you consider its price point.

Conclusion

So at the end of it all, let us return to the question  asked at the very beginning of the review: is the Yureka worth investing in? Well, I would be the last people to insist that it is perfect. The display could have been brighter and we certainly expected better sound from the loudspeaker. The geek brigade will also complain that the device’s camera is underwhelming, that its flash is not the greatest and there are even noises being made about the absence of a magnetometer in the compass, and will keep pointing out that it does not deliver the kind of experience that the ‘other’ Cyanogen Phone, the OnePlus One (OPO), does.

However, the very fact that the Yureka has evoked comparisons with the OnePlus One, a device that costs more than twice as much as it does, shows that a coup of sorts has been pulled off. For, let’s be blunt about this: we cannot see many mainstream users having too many complaints with the performance of the Yureka. It performs all routine tasks (e-mail, browsing, social networking) smoothly, is good enough (though not exceptional) in the multimedia department, ran pretty much every app we threw at it with a degree of comfort, all this in a package that looks smart enough and is supremely affordable.

And that last point is the one that resonated the most with us. We know that there will be those who will carp long and hard about Micromax’s after sales service and its being a ‘cheap’ brand but from what we have seen, the Yureka delivers a very good performance for geeks and mainstream consumers alike on a tight budget, and takes its place alongside the likes of the Redmi Note 3G/4G and the Asus ZenFone 5 as among the best ‘affordable’ (sub-Rs 10,000) smartphones we have seen.

So should you consider investing in it?

Well, if money is tight (as it so often is) and if you want a good smartphone experience, or if you are interested in Cyanogen and have neither the bucks nor the invites for a OnePlus One, our answer can be summed up in three words:

Yes. Yu Can.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 with full HD display, Snapdragon 615 could launch on Jan 15

Evidently, January 2015 is likely to be a very busy period for Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi. While the company is scheduled to launch the Redmi 1S successor on January 4, a new report suggests that the next iteration of the Redmi Note phablet could be launched on January 15.

The alleged Xiaomi Redmi Note 2, just like its predecessor is expected to be an affordable one at that. However, the device will reportedly be high on features, as is now quite a known thing about Xiaomi.

That said, going by its tipped specifications, the alleged Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is expected to be a power house of a device.

The alleged device is expected to feature a 5.5-inch LCD display with a 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution. It is expected to be powered by a 64-bit Snapdragon 615 or MediaTek MT6752 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. The two processor variants could mean separate 3G and 4G versions of the device like the original.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 will reportedly come with 16GB of internal storage and is likely to run Android 4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box with the company's MIUI 6 UI on top.

It is expected to sport a 13MP primary camera and a 5MP secondary camera. It is further touted to deck in a 3100mAh battery.  

With the little information we have, the said device is likely to carry a price tag of $160, while some rumours also suggest that it could be priced as low as $145. 

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Revisiting 2014: Top Technology Failures of Last Year

 The world of technology saw many ups and down last year. It was predominantly a good year for the tech industry, but there were some visible failures as well. While the sales of smartphones reached new altitudes, the biggest name of mobile telephony, Nokia departed from the mobile phone business. Several high-level security breaches questioned the safety of online storage. As 2014 comes to a close, we decided to list the gleaming failures of the tech industry.

1. SONY PICTURES:
 Never before has a movie been called an ‘act of war’, and you wouldn’t have guessed that it would be a Seth Rogen movie. The film led to one of the biggest ever cyber-attacks on a major movie studio. Sony Pictures was brought down and humiliated by a group called the Guardians of Peace or #GOP. They claimed to have stolen more than 100 Terabytes of data from the studio. The hackers soon began unveiling details from the Sony data, that was embarrassing not just to the studio, but also to some big names from the entertainment industry including Angelina Jolie, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Adam Sandler. The hack is also the reason of heavy diplomatic tussle between the USA and North Korea.

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2. ICLOUD HACK:

 Another major cyber breach took place at Apple’s trusted iCloud storage. Thousands of private and intimate photos of celebrities were leaked online. This caused quite a furor around the world and put Apple in an awkward spot. Apple later confirmed that the hackers responsible for the leak had obtained the images using a “very targeted attack” on account information, such as passwords, rather than any specific security vulnerability in the iCloud service itself.

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3. UBER:

 The app based cab service had to face one PR disaster after another. There were multiple complaints of its driver harassing the passengers or sexually assaulting them. A highly publicized rape case in India led the company to temporarily cease its operations in many parts of the country. There were also revelations that Uber was spying on journalists who were being critical of the company. Uber also tried to take down its competition by ordering about 6000 rides and then canceling them. Even the drivers reported that they were exploited by the company. Guess for its new year resolution, Uber’s only resolution should be: Don’t be evil.

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4. MALAYSIAN AIRLINES MH 370:

 On 8th March 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared – vanished, leaving behind many questions and limited answers. No one would have thought that in the age of satellites and modern communication equipments, a plane can just disappear from the radar screens. The disappearance also led to several conspiracy theories. The last signal from the aircraft was broadcasted when it was over South China sea. There was a massive multinational effort to locate the lost plane, but it yielded no results. The search was the largest and most expensive in aviation history. There was also added bad news for Malaysian Airlines whose other plane, MH 17 was shot down pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine using surface to air missiles.

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5. APPLE IPHONE 6 PLUS:

 After months of speculations and ever present hysteria around it, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were launched with much fanfare albeit with a faulty livestream. The bigger variant, the iPhone 6 Plus soon became the butt of all jokes following reports of its bendability. Users found that the new device was easy to bend, and it quickly started trending on social media with the tag “#Bendgate”. There is an easy fix for the issue, and that is to use the phone with a protective case.

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6. AMAZON FIRE PHONE:

 Amazon really hyped its phone. There was a lot of buzz before the launch of the device, but it failed to capture commercial appeal. The device had some features like 3D display that could have been its defining element but turned out to be gimmicky. That coupled with below average battery performance, and low app availability led to low sales and forced the company to slash prices rapidly. Some reviewers even called it more of a prototype than a real device. Amazon has now begun working on the Amazon Fire Phone 2, which is expected to come out in 2016.

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7. BLACKBERRY:

 The company that was identified as one of the pioneers of the smartphone market has rapidly lost market share ever since the advent of the iPhone and Android ecosystems. Seeing that it was not going to carve out a place for itself in the brutal touch screen device market, the company decided to go back to its roots. The first device in this new attempt by the company was the Passport. Though the company tried to bring innovations into the device like a keyboard that also acts as a touchpad and a square display, it hasn’t managed to entice a lot of folks. This ultra wide device cannot be used with one hand and takes its own sweet time to focus while taking photos. The second device from the company called the Classic, might help bring back the experience that BlackBerry users were used to and get the company out of these times of peril.

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8. SONY:

 The year 2014 wasn’t really kind to this consumer electronics giant. The company lost a massive amount of money, in terms of billions. Its smartphone market share constantly kept falling along with its other electronics. The end of the year brought it a massive torment when its Hollywood studio got hacked by the North Korean hackers. The only saving grace for the company was its PlayStation business which saw an upward trajectory this year. All these misfortunes caused the company to introspect and set a goal of returning back to profitability.

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9. MICROSOFT KINECT 2.0:

 Seems like consumers are not ready for motion capture or spending extra for a hands-free gaming experience. Microsoft bet big money on the Kinect 2.0 and brought it in the market with improved functionalities. Microsoft was selling Kinect with the Xbox One. Sales were slow, and so Microsoft decided to unbundle the Kinect and sold Xbox One without it and cut $100 off the price. The result: Microsoft’s console easily beat Sony’s PlayStation in holiday sales. Though it is not the end of the Kinect as of yet. As the motion-based games and technology gets better, more folks will get comfortable to give the boot to the good old controllers and get on the Kinect bandwagon. It’s just a matter of time.

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