The progressive Arts

MRP : RS. 43490 Features: Processor: Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon dual core  1.5GHz RAM: 2GB  Display: 4.2 inches Resolution: 768 x 1280 pixels, Storage: 16GB, microSD card slot  Battery: 1800mAh  Platform: BlackBerry 10.

The Galaxy Note 8.0 looks like an 8-inch version of the Samsung Galaxy S III, and Note II. In terms of the specifications under the hood, the Note 8’s display has 1280x800 pixel resolution. A quad-core 1.6GHz Cortex-A9 processor on the Exynos 4412 chipset, with a Mali-400MP GPU, and 2GB of RAM.  It comes with 16GB and 32GB built-in storage, which is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card. It has a 5MP rear-facing camera and a 1.2MP front-facing camera. It has a 4,600 mAh batterym stereo speakers. The tablet will run on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean skinned with Samsung TouchWiz.

PRICE : $169.99  HP Slate 7, and as the name suggests, it will have a 7-inch display, with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels. The tablet will come preloaded with Android 4.1, in line with HP’s recent cozying up to Google, which included the Chromebook. It will be powered by a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor clocking at 1.6GHz, but the amount of RAM has not been mentioned. This is HP’s third stab at the tablet market, with a critically acclaimed enterprise-based Windows 7 tablet long back, and then the doomed flirtation and adoption of webOS.

LG Electronics will be showcasing its own interpretation of a tablet-notebook hybrid device at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Called the Tab-Book, the device boasts of LTE connectivity. The device also has a slide out keyboard. Unlike the Sony VAIO Duo 11, the LG Tab-Book doesn’t have a pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard. If you need to interact with display, your going to have to touch it.

Sony had revealed its Xperia Tablet Z in January this year. Believed to be an advanced version of the Xperia Tablet S, the Tablet Z runs Android 4.1 (upgradable to v4.2) Jelly Bean and is powered by 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. It has 2GB of RAM. Sony claims the Tablet Z is the slimmest tablet in the world with just 6.9 mm thickness. It's notable Apple's iPad mini has 7.2mm thickness.

Dark Horse Books and Nintendo team up to bring you The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, containing an unparalleled collection of historical information on The Legend of Zelda franchise. This handsome hardcover contains never-before-seen concept art, the full history of Hyrule, the official chronology of the games, and much more! Starting with an insightful introduction by the legendary producer and video-game designer of Donkey Kong, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, this book is crammed full of information about the storied history of Link's adventures from the creators themselves! As a bonus, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia includes an exclusive comic by the foremost creator of The Legend of Zelda manga — Akira Himekawa! Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres, Comics + Graphic Novels, Games  Age: Adult Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Pages: 272  Release Date: January 29, 2013   Date Published: January 29, 2013 

The Micromax Canvas HD, famous for being the first budget quad-core smartphone in the Indian market, is a pretty well-built phablet. It has a distinctly glossy plastic body that manages not to look too cheap, with a slightly pearlescent finish, unlike the more matte finish on the Canvas 2 A110. The Canvas HD is quite slim as well, measuring in at 10.7mm in thickness. Though heavier, larger and thicker, it’s comparable in form factor (and other ways) with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Both also bear 1280x720 pixel displays, though the Canvas HD has an IPS LCS display, and the Nexus a SAMOLED PenTile display.

The Intel Atom Z2420 'Lexington'-based Lava Xolo X500 has made its way to our lab and after having spent some time with it, and running the gamut of benchmarks, here are our first impressions. Qualcomm and Nvidia have made their presence felt with their Snapdragon and Tegra processors respectively in the smartphone market. Intel is one who has been late to enter the smartphone market. Better late than never, the first mobile in India to launch with an Intel processor was the Lava Xolo X900.

MRP : RS, 84290 Features & Specifications We usually look at the hardware and the specs of a device first, in this section. For the Yoga 13, we will make a departure from the usual and talk about the Yoga positions first! The IdeaPad Yoga 13’s specifications are fairly standard for ultrabooks, and pretty much in-line with what the closest rival, the Dell XPS 12 offers. There is the Ivy Bridge Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 4GB of RAM and the 128GB SSD.

Rs. 41,990 Dell has launched the Inspiron 15z ultrabook in India, starting at Rs. 41,990 plus taxes. It is also available in a touchscreen version. According to Dell, the Inspiron 15z ultrabook is “extremely stylish and feather light”, and has been designed for users who desire “ultra-responsive connectivity, performance and entertainment, no matter where they are.”

After releasing a host of Xperia smartphones in 2012, Sony wants to continue the trend this year as well. In a recent turn of events, Sony’s next mid-range Android based Xperia smartphone, the Xperia SP (C530X live) codenamed HuaShan, surfaced online. These pictures show the Xperia SP alongside the Xperia V suggesting that the SP will have a bigger display compared to that of the Xperia V.

MRP : RS. 27599 The Nokia Lumia 820 is a very competent phone, and there is no doubting its consistency in terms of performance. The unfortunate thing for the Lumia 820 is the fact that the Lumia 920 gathers all the attention, and this remains as a footnote. For these specs, Nokia should essentially have pegged this in line for competition with the HTC Windows Phone 8S. Instead, with a MOP of roughly Rs. 27,500, the Lumia 820 is overpriced.

The Samsung Galaxy Young and Fame had  recently popped up in the benchmarks  that hinted at the six unannounced smartphones from the Korean manufacturer. The Samsung Galaxy Young runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1GHz processor. It has 768MB of RAM. Other key specifications of the device include 3.27-inch HVGA TFT display, 3MP rear camera, 4GB internal storage space and a microSD card slot that supports storage up to 64GB. The device will be available in various colours – white, wine red, deep blue and metallic silver. Read the full specifications of the Galaxy Young.

Lenovo has introduced an update of its IdeaPad laptops with the launch of the Y500 and the Z500. Both laptops are powered by third generation Intel Core processors (Ivy Bridge) and are compatible with Windows 8. According to a press release, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 boasts of the UltraBay feature - an interchangeable bay that users can utilize to slot in an extra graphics card, hard drive or an additional fan for cooling. The Y500 also features a carbon fibre patterned cover, 15.6-inch LED backlit widescreen HD displays, and a dual-layer backlit AccuType keyboard with a one-piece touchpad.

MRP : RS. 12490 Features and Specifications The iBallAndi 4.5h has some interesting specifications specially for phones in this price bracket. Here are some: a dual-core 1 GHz Cortex A9 processor, dual-SIM support, 4.5-inch display with an impressive resolution of 960x540 pixels (greater than that seen on the Andi 5c - 800x480 for a 5-inch phone), IPS panel, 8 MP rear camera and 1 GB of RAM. The 4.5h comes with 4 GB of internal storage of which 2.5 GB is usable but you can add a microSD card of upto 32 GB capacity.

Rs. 65,000 Through the last year and a bit more, we have seen the laptop display resolution become fairly standardized at 1366 x 768 pixels, for most laptops, irrespective of the size of the screen. When this upgrade was made from 1280 x 720 pixels and 1024 x 768 pixels, it seemed like a big deal. But quite frankly, we have soldiered on with this for a bit too long.

MRP : RS. 12990 Features & Specifications From the word go, the Spice Stellar Pad Mi-1010 runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and that is very good. You have all the features of Android including Google Now at your disposal making this device fun to use. There is a very minimalistic skin on the device similar to the ones we have seen on other Spice devices such as the Stellar Horizon and the Craze. The skin really isn’t any hindrance but if you’d like, you can download a free launcher from the Play store. There is no SIM card support on the tablet.

MRP : RS. 64990 Features & Specifications The real attraction as far as the spec sheet of the Sony Vaio T-13 (SVT13126CNS) is the 128GB SSD, which gives it a serious advantage over the likes of the HP Envy 4-1002tx and the Samsung Series 5, all of which have a hard drive for primary storage and a mSATA drive for caching. Nothing beats the sheer performance boost of a dedicated SSD, and is worth the upgrade, if you can sacrifice the extra space the HDD would have offered. The HP Spectre XT also offered the same amount of storage.

MRP : RS. 30500 Display What will make your jaw drop to the ground is the new Retina Display. Once you switch on the display, there is no going back to whatever tablet you used before this. It’s the same experience users had when they decided to switch from the iPhone 3GS or any other smartphone to the iPhone 4.

MRP : RS. 23500 Features Android 3.1 has come with a completely redesigned UI. The home screens now offer the usual info – battery level, wireless connectivity, cellular network info etc. now shows up on the bottom right edge of the display. Tapping on these opens up a more detailed status pop-up, and you can head to the settings menu from here. On the top right corner is where you open up the usual apps list from. The bottom left corner has the return, home and tasks options. We had slotted a Vodafone SIM-card in the Xoom, and any messages that were received on that number showed up as a pop-up on the home screen. This is pretty neat, because the device doesn’t allow voice calls. These SMS’ weren’t stored anywhere, the pop-ups didn’t disappear unless you clicked on OK. The new task manager stacks up thumbnails according to when you last opened the app.The Xoom that we received for review was the 32GB (Wi-Fi + 3G) version.

MRP : RS. 30000 Features:  The Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 Android tablet has a 10.1-inch IPS touchscreen display that’s scratch-resistant. The screen has an LED-backlit panel with a capacitive multitouch surface that packs in 1280x800 pixel resolution — greater screen area than the iPad 2, and better quality display than Motorola Xoom and Acer Iconia A501. In terms of core components, the Asus Eee Pad Transfomer TF101 comes equipped with a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a ULP GeForce GPU on a Tegra 2 chipset. The Transformer further features 1GB of RAM and 16 GB of onboard storage.

   MRP : RS. 24500 Specifications:  Display: 9.7-inches, 1024 x 768 pixels; SoC: Apple A5 dual core 1 GHz; Storage: 64 GB; weight: 613 grams. After creating a product that spawned an entire generation of mediocre clones, the second coming was always on the cards. In fact, some are already talking about an iPad 3.0!

MRP : RS. 93550 CPU: Intel Core i5 480M; RAM: 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz; Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 5850; HDD: 640 GB, 7200 rpm; OS: Windows 7 Pro; display: 17-inches; Weight: 3.41 kgs. Features One of the most talked about features of the model we're looking at is the presence of 3D support. The display on the Envy supports up to 120 Hertz and that was enough to give us a hint,

There are expensive Android smartphones, and then there is this. The  HTC Butterfly  is definitely the most powerful smartphone (or phablet, if you swing that way) in its category, by far. At the time of this video review, we were running some benchmark tests and it is blowing the “most-powerful-Android-phones-till-now” out of the water. That is all we will say about the performance of the Butterfly, with the comparative scores with the closest rivals waiting to be revealed in the detailed review to follow!

Olympus has just pulled the wraps off the Olympus Stylus XZ-10, their latest enthusiast compact camera to be sold alongside their current Stylus XZ-2 compact. The two cameras share much in common, but the XZ-10 isn’t merely a carbon copy.  For starters, the XZ-10 is designed primarily as a camera with a stylish statement. It is incredibly slim, and   Olympus   claims the XZ-10 is 40 percent smaller than the XZ-2 in terms of volume.

After the record sales of the Samsung Galaxy S III, it seems Samsung is still trying to raise the bar. An internal raffle document from a mobile retailer in New Zealand states that all the winners of their raffle draw will win the Samsung Galaxy S IV smartphone as a prize. This raffle is primed for sales representatives as an incentive and its end date being April 9 suggests that the Samsung Galaxy S IV may be launching at the same time too.