REVIEW: Lumia 640 XL

The Lumia 640 XL is the elder sibling of the Lumia 640, and is Microsoft's latest phablet device that packs in decent specifications for a mid-range smartphone. The Lumia 1520 and the Lumia 1320 were the last two large screen Windows Phone devices, and while they were very popular, the 6-inch display was a little unwieldy for many.

Unless you don't prefer a large screen device, the 640 XL is for everybody really - the casual user looking for a great Windows experience with a nice camera or the business user looking for productivity on the move.

Design:

The Lumia 640 XL is a large 640, and carries almost the similar design. The 640 XL sports a 5.7-inch display, just a fraction smaller than the Lumia 1320/1520, but that seems to make all the difference. With the overall design, that size hits the sweet spot for a phablet and while you obviously can't get everything done with just one hand, it works pretty well for most tasks and doesn't look like a giant monolith slapped to your cheek while you're taking a call.

At the back, there's a camera hump that reminds me of the Lumia 1520. The battery is removable, and the back panel opens up for the microSIM card slots and the microSD card slot. Unlike the 640, the 640 XL sports a matte finish at the back. It's great, because a glossy device of this size would be quite slippery to hold. Despite the size, the 640 XL feels great in the hand and makes for a solid grip.

For a phone with pretty good camera credentials and a large size, I hate the lack of a physical camera shutter button. Otherwise, it's another solid Lumia with a great build quality for a mid-range device. There's nothing new, but there are no compromises either. And as I've said before, Nokia/Microsoft are known to make amazing devices with a great finish.

Hardware:

The internals of the Lumia 640 XL are identical to the Lumia 640, and while they are nothing remarkable on paper, the Windows Phone experience is smooth and everyday usage with navigating between apps, multi-tasking, and Web browsing is a breeze. Casual games of course run great, while graphic-intensive games like Asphalt 8 also don't stutter or lag. Granted the graphics are not like the Lumia 1520, but the nice, large display makes for a great experience.

Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.2 GHz quad-core processor with 1GB RAM, the device packs in 8GB internal storage - expandable up to 128 GB via a micro SD card.

Lumia 640 XL to the left vs Lumia 640 to the right.

Except for the internal storage and a higher megapixel front camera, the specs are almost identical to the Lumia 830 along with the 640.

The 5.7-inch HD display has the same resolution as the 5-inch 640 despite the larger size leading to quite a drop in the PPI count (259 PPI). A Lumia 640 next to the 640 XL definitely looks sharper, although the IPS LCD on 640 XL is not bad at all. The colors are bright and sharp, and the viewing angles are pretty good. There's Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection and Microsoft's sunlight readability enhancements. 
An important thing to note is that the Lumia 640 XL available in India is a 3G dual SIM device, and does not have the LTE capability unlike some other country variants.

The stellar battery life of the Lumia 640 XL is one of the underrated highlights of the phone. The 3000 mAh battery with the 720p 5.7-inch display allows for over a day of battery life easily, and casual users might just stretch it to two days - a rarity these days.

Software:

The Lumia 640 XL and the Lumia 640 are the only phones in the market right now that ship with the Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 out of the box.

It's not a major update after Denim, but the all-important Settings app gets a much needed visual makeover. As yet, the list of settings was an endless, random scroll, but these are now categorized in groups. Individual settings can now be navigated to using the categories, or searched for, or pinned to the Home screen.

One of the highlights of the Denim update, the Lumia 640 XL includes the Lumia Camera 5.0 app. It's a surprise inclusion since the app has been a part of only the more-expensive Lumia devices that feature the PureView camera goodness. The Lumia 640 XL doesn't have a PureView camera, but it benefits a lot from the Lumia Camera apps.

Needless to say, the Lumia 640 XL is Windows 10 ready, and will get an upgrade when Windows 10 is ready and available. 
It's worth highlighting that the Lumia 640 XL bundles a free one-year subscription to Office 365, allowing you to use the Office suite on your PC/Mac as well as your tablet, apart from this Windows Phone device of course.

Camera:

Apart from the obvious larger size, the Lumia 640 XL sports better camera than the Lumia 640, and the rear camera in fact is one of the stand out features of the 640 XL. It's no PureView, but the 13MP shooter sports a Zeiss lens unit. It makes for a terrific camera at its price point, and the Lumia Camera app offers a great level of manual control not found in most stock camera apps including features like Rich Capture and Lumia Moments.

The Lumia 640 XL captures great detail in the images, even in low light conditions. The photos are bright and vivid, and the color reproduction is pretty good too. It's a great all-round camera, but if you're using features like Rich Capture, taking a photo and the processing takes some annoying extra seconds. 

The 5MP front camera isn't something special but capable of taking decent selfies and 1080p videos - pretty good given the price point of the phone. The rear camera also does a decent job of shooting casual videos at 1080p at a continuous 30fps with auto-focus.

Verdict:

The Lumia 640 XL is not a high-end smartphone, but offers an incredible value for money. The solid Windows Phone experience with a pretty good rear camera makes for a solid package that I could recommend to anybody looking for a sub-Rs 20,000 smartphone. Available in cyan, orange, black, and white, the 640 XL is a pretty good middle of the pack offering at Rs 15,499. Granted it is pretty big, and if that's not your cup of tea, you should look at the Lumia 640 or maybe the older Lumia 730.

For those of you who are interested in the younger sibling. Lumia 640, you might want to take a look at my review here.

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Wearable Technology: Explained.

There a lot of upcoming interesting technologies and wearable technology is at the forefront of this revolution. You'd be forgiven for wondering what the fuss about wearable tech is, given the explosion of smartwatches, fitness trackers, sports watches and other connected devices in 2014. Put simply, wearables are the biggest new innovation in technology since the smartphone – and the possibilities are endless.

Over the last months wearable tech has gone mainstream, and the hottest devices on the planet are now ones you can place on your wrists, arms and faces.

So what is this wearable technology revolution? 

Lets find out:

While the clue’s in the name, it doesn't quite tell the whole story. Wearable technology is clearly gadgets you wear, but there are important distinctions. Wearable tech isn't a trendy pair of headphones, for example, or a digital watch.

The new age of wearables tap into the connected self; they're laden with smart sensors, and make use of a web connection, usually using Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to your smartphone. They use these sensors to connect to you as a person, and they help you to achieve goals such as staying fit, active, losing weight or being more organised.

Most wearables are wrist worn, but an increasing number can be clipped to the body and hung around the neck. Wearables are quickly blending with jewellery, and are worn in the same way. Watches, rings, pendents – you name it, there's a wearable that does it.

Different types of wearables:

There are a few different categories of wearables at the moment. Some products manage to get their feet in more than one camp and a few others define new categories all of their own. 

Smartwatches:

Smartwatches are wrist-worn devices that connect to your mobile phone to act as mini-windows onto your digital life. Telling the time is simply an after-thought of these wrist watches; they'll tell you about the notifications of calls, messages and usually email and social media as well. They basically relay the most significant of the data from your phone to your wrist for quick actions.

Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony have been at them for a while and the recent introduction of Apple Watch is expected to take the game a little further at least in this generation.
While some feel smartwatches to be attractive, very few actually find them useful. But the things can only get better.

Fitness Trackers:

Fitness trackers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and levels of sophistication too. Usually worn on the wrist or clipped to a belt, they're generally bands or watches of some sort which will keep a count of the number of steps you make each day. The newest bands are adding continuous heart rate monitoring, for even more accurate data on your calorific burn and exercise. 

This landscape, too, has been seeing a lot of competitors. The most popular ones being Fitbit, a lot of startups are participating to provide affordable fitness bands.

Sports watches:

For those active types who love running, cycling, swimming and more a dedicated sports watch should be at the top of your wearable wish list. These devices should have GPS (don't be suckered into one that isn't, it won't be accurate) and can provide another level of information about your chosen sport, and take your training to the next level.

These are basically Fitness Trackers in a Smart Watch shell that don't require a smartphone to work. These are  more of standalone kinds of devices than accessories.

Head-Mounted Displays:

If you want some kind of virtual information delivered right to your eyes, then a head-mounted display (HMD) is what you'll need. Some are designed to block out the rest of the world, like Oculus Rift, and present a computer-generated virtual reality to fool your brain into thinking it's somewhere else entirely. Others would rather just act as an overlay of information on top of what's already there like Google Glass or other so-called smartglasses. Another example of a head mounted displays is the Microsoft HoloLens about which you can read here.

Smart Clothing:

Smart clothing is a rather broad category which encompasses both garments with electronics in that make them look more interesting or fashionable, as well as clothing that essentially appears normal but houses additional functionality. It's predicted that over the next few years a lot of the features in fitness trackers will find their way to smart garments. You won't find a lot of options in this category right now as it will take a few years to develop to be sold at a retail level.

Smart jewellry :

Brands like Kovert Designs have brought the idea of smartwatches to items of jewellery finding ground somewhere between the two. Smart jewellery is mostly aimed at women right now, and the most common usage is to discreetly notify the user of texts, calls or emails when their phone is out of reach.

The big players in wearable tech:

So far, it's largely the smaller companies that are making the better name for themselves in the wearable tech space.

Jawbone, Fitbit, Misfit and Withings have had huge successes with fitness trackers for the masses. TomTom, Garmin, Polar and Suunto make some of the very best sports watches for running, swimming, cycling, hiking and even skiing and golf.

With smartwatches, it's more about your traditional multinational tech brands with Sony, Samsung, Motorola, LG  and now, Apple.

As for headgear, Oculus Rift is the big name in virtual reality although the Microsoft HoloLens is a very interesting idea in personal computing and not just virtual reality. Google Glass was a player in AR glasses but it remains to be seen if and what the second iteration of the project ends up looking like.

So, what's the problem?

Wearables are getting very good at measuring us. They can record your heart rate, body fat composition, perspiration, health, temperature and muscle activity all by just touching your skin as well as movement, distance and speed using GPS, accelerometers and gyroscopes.

However, a weakness is still interpreting the results. The key to that interpretation lies in hoards of expert medical, sports, photographic and all sorts of other professional opinion to come up with the right kind of software and algorithms to extract the salient trends and markers of what's going on when we run, swim, play golf, make food choices or take thousands of daily pictures without wanting to manually edit them all.

Once they know how to do that, then these wearables will become highly effective life coaches rather than just items of curiosity.

What do you think about wearables? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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REVIEW: Microsoft Lumia 640

Announced about 3 months ago at the MWC 2015, Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 XL are available in the Indian market and are two of the most anticipated Lumia devices out there. It's no secret that Microsoft does budget as well as flagship phones incredibly well; and the 640 does not disappoint. 

I recently got my hands on one and after using it for a while, here are my thoughts:

Design:

The design is very similar to that of the Lumia 630 and 635, a little larger and heavier yet slightly thinner, with the same matt-finish case in black, or glossy in blue, orange or white, that sits comfortably and securely in the hand. This case is removable, but wraps around to the front, resulting in a solid feel that won't creak or flex under pressure.  

It's simple and unassuming, a slab of plastic with a slightly curved rear and rounded edges. There's a gaping hole on the rear for the small speaker, and the rear camera and headphone jack protrude just enough to spoil the Lumia 640's smooth surface, but still it's a good- if basic-looking phone for the money. 

As before the screen is covered by tough Gorilla Glass 3, with cutouts top and bottom for the earpiece and microphone. It's a larger sheet of glass, though, since Microsoft has upgraded the Lumia's display not only in size but also resolution. Whereas the Lumia 630 and 635 feature a 4.5in 854x480 ClearBlack IPS panel, the 640 has a 5in HD (1280x720) screen, which results in an improved pixel density of 294ppi. (Bigger still is the 5.7in screen on the Lumia 640 XL, although the resolution is the same at 720p.) 

As such, browsing the web, watching videos and even playing the odd games is now a far more enjoyable experience on the Lumia 640.

The overall design of the device is good looking in this price segment and the build quality is exceptional. You'll find that the poly-carbonate back cover is solid and has a great feel in the hand and the device is a pleasure to use.

Hardware:

The Lumia features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad core processor clocked at 1.2 GHz, along with 1GB RAM and the graphics performance is aided by Adreno 305 GPU- which is what you'd find on other mid range phones as well; so no surprises here. The performance in day to day use, though, is exceptional. You won't find any lag in using apps and mid range games. The performance gets a little shabby when playing high end games such as Asphalt 8 or Halo, but that's a given seeing the specs. That said, it runs such games pretty well for a device of this caliber.

The battery performance of this device is something that its Android counterparts should take inspiration from. The battery performance is quite amazing. It features a 2500 mAh battery and the battery lasts about a day with ease during heavy use.  

A major drawback of this device, though, is the internal storage. Microsoft promises 8 GB of internal storage but in reality, like always, the user accessible memory is just a little over 4GB. There is a Micro SD card slot available which allows you to expand the storage up to 128 (which is not something you see on every smartphone) but it would have been nicer to have a GB extra available on-board.

The connectivity specs come as no surprise at this price. There's support for Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, DLNA and NFC. The GPS and GLONASS is assisted. The Indian version of the device also comes with Dual SIM support and 3G.

Camera:

The 640 packs in an 8 megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 0.9 megapixel front camera. The rear camera comes with f2.2 aperture and autofocus, as you'd expect, while the front facing camera has fixed focus but does come with options such as manual exposure and timer. 

The Lumia 640 is not the best cameraphone in the world, but it's significantly better than its Android rivals. It is a well known fact that in terms of cameras and optics, Microsoft does the best job with its Lumia devices at every price range, and the same is true even here.

There's an LED flash for low light photography, though the shots look a little grainy. The performance during the daylight is exceptional for such a device and captures details and colours very well. The 0.9 megapixel front cam takes pictures better than I expected it to, perhaps because of some algorithms Microsoft uses in the "Lumia Camera" app. Whatever may be the reason, it takes some great shots and comes with a wide-angle lens for better group selfies and Skype calls.

The overall camera performance is far better than other phones in this price range.

Software:

The Microsoft Lumia 640 runs Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim, although Windows 10 will be available later this summer (in fact, you can get Windows 10 on your phone now with the Windows Insider program). 

Windows Phone is heavily criticised for its lack of apps, but the situation is improving with thousands of legit apps being added to the store every day. Although Windows Phone does not have Google apps, you can still sync contacts, calendar and mail with native apps in Windows Phone to get a truly seamless experience between services. There are also third party apps available for YouTube that not only allow you to watch videos but also download them natively and store them on your device.

In other respects Windows Phone is every bit as good as iOS and Android, although it has a different look and feel with a colourful tiled interface in place of the familiar icon-led home screens. In place of Siri and Google Now there's the excellent Cortana and with Action Centre notifications are just as easy to manage.  

Here Drive+ and Here Maps are very good, offering free turn-by-turn driving instructions, offline maps and live traffic information, while MixRadio offers free audio from your favourite artists (without ads, although you can skip the track only six times in an hour). Add to that Kids' Corner, preinstalled social apps and a double-tap to wake feature, and Windows Phone isn't looking too shabby next to its rivals. 

Verdict:

Microsoft yet again proves how well it does smartphones and at the price of Rs.10000, the Lumia 640 is a steal! It is a perfect example of seamless hardware, software and services and along with Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim, an absolute pleasure to use.

And why wouldn't you go down the Windows Phone route? Windows Phone is bright, it's colourful, and it's something different to the icon-led home screens of iOS and Android, with tiles that update with information in real time. Once you've become familiar with its layout, it's really easy to use. It wont be an overstatement to say that the Moto G just met its match!

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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REVIEW: OnePlus One

After about almost a whole year since its been out, I got my hands on the much hyped OnePlus One.

There has been an interesting trend lately: Chinese manufacturers developing Android smartphones. Xiaomi and OnePlus are the at the forefront of this trend. Both these manufacturers promise phones with high-end specs at lowest prices possible and market them with tags such as "flagship killers"; which is a highly disappointing overstatement. Anyway, I just got to play with one of my friends' OnePlus One and here are some of my thoughts about it:

Aesthetics:

On design, OnePlus' official website reads that: "Unimpressed with the designs on the market, we weighed each hardware decision directly against the impact it would have on the look and feel of the final product." Big talk, but in the end, the company simply copied the Oppo Find 7a's design.
There's no denying that the OnePlus One is quite a looker. The sandstone finish feels good to hold. The chrome rim around the screen is a nice touch from the aesthetics point of view. As seen on most Samsung phones though, it's faux-metal.

Like most Android phones these days, the OnePlus One is not ideal for one-handed use. The lock button is on the right hand side. Bang opposite is the volume rocker. The buttons have insufficient travel. Because of this, you don't always get proper tactile feedback from buttons. 

The back-cover is not user replaceable. Speaking of covers, OnePlus had promised bamboo and silk white swappable "StyleSwap" for months. Later, the company with a "Never settle" tagline asked its fans to settle without these covers due to "technical difficulties" in manufacturing process. The biggest issue is that OnePlus only has about 25 service centres in India. In comparison, Samsung has more than 40 service centres in Mumbai area alone. 

Display:

The OnePlus One sports a 5.5" Full HD (1080p) screen. As you would expect from the pixel density of 400, the screen is impressively sharp. It is protected by the scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3. Although it's an IPS panel, the colours look somewhat dull. Even by LCD's standards the blacks are disappointing. The brightness slightly less when compared to other phones in this price tag. The screen is very reflective. Take it out on a sunny day, and you barely get to read the screen. Overall, the display quality is not what you would expect from an IPS display.

Specifications:

The OnePlus One packs-in some serious firepower; at least on paper. It features a quad-core Snapdragon 801 SoC (System on Chip) clocked at 2.5 GHz. To handle multitasking, you get 3 GB RAM. In the photography department, OnePlus has thrown-in a 13 megapixel camera with Dual LED Flash. The company is using Sony Exmor BSI sensor. For selfies, there's a 5 megapixel front-facing camera. Other features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, NFC, and 3100 mAh battery. The phone lacks a microSD card slot. But, it won't be missed since the phone packs-in 64 GB internal storage.

Given all these specifications, the processor performs well in playing medium intensity games, not as well in processor intensive tasks. Again, false promises.

Software:

The phone runs Android 4.4 Kitkat. As you would already know, it comes with Cyanogen 11 customisation that gives you total control of the device. The built-in theme support allows you to customise the handset with ease. You can change the boot animation and fonts without rooting the phone. Keep it in mind though that most themes are paid. Plus, there's a privacy guard to keep a check on the permissions acquired by third-party apps.

OnePlus' default theme is quite nice and user-friendly. Cyanogen's square app icons look good. The problem is that the third-party app icons have no such guidelines, so they look out of place. Plus, when you really think about it, all these customisibility options turn out to be rather useless when you really want to use your device. I mean, who would change the boot animation of their phone as much? In my opinion, day to day users who want to get their work done wouldn't really care about all these options.

The menu navigation and transition effects are mostly smooth. Surprisingly, the phone takes a couple of seconds to render images in gallery. I also found a slight lag when pressing the multitasking button to see all open apps and the home button also lags about 2 seconds when you press it. All those high-end specs won't help you here.

Multimedia:

The OnePlus One does not ship with earphones (WHAT!). The built-in video player is basic. It plays videos and that's that. It lacks subtitles support. However, it's not an issue since the Google Play Store comes to the rescue with the MXPlayer.

Camera:

The camera interface is straightforward. Right hand side keys, let you choose between the snapper and video recorder. Moreover, you can select from Auto, HDR, Beauty, and Action modes by swiping from top of the screen. Strangely, the camera viewfinder is sluggish. If you move the camera swiftly, all you see is ghosting for a second or two. 

The 13 megapixel camera backed by Sony's Exmor sensor performs well outdoors on a sunny day. However, the image quality goes downhill in not so bright conditions. In low-light, it produces trashy photographs. This is strange since the phone sports a BSI (Back Side Illuminated) sensor to enhance low-light performance.

The OnePlus One records 4K videos. However, even when viewed on 42-inch TVs, I couldn't find any quality difference between 4K and 1080p videos. It's worth noting that a 10 second 4K video takes up to 85 MB storage space, which is yet another reason why you should stick to Full HD instead. To keep up with the competition the OnePlus One also supports slow-motion. 

Cellular And Messaging:

The phone's network reception is very good. Voice quality through earpiece was good too. The contacts app is quite similar to what we get on the stock Android OS. Messaging is a standard Android affair. The default keyboard is the one you get on Nexus devices. However, my typing experience on the device wasn't satisfactory at all. The screen at times was either too sensitive or not sensitive at all. Same is the case with 3rd party keyboards. Nothing exciting in this area.

Battery:

Another disappointing factor about this device is the battery life; and it is a huge letdown. During processor intensive tasks, you'll notice battery level taking huge dips. During my usage, the battery lasted a little over 6 hours, where even other mid range smartphones perform well, let alone flagships. On paper, the device has a 3100 mAh batter, non-user replaceable. 

Verdict:

OnePlus started off with an aggressive marketing campaign lambasting big brands. the company promised to deliver a Flagship Killer", but in the end, it has delivered nothing more than a run-of-the-mill Android phone. After comparing it to the similarly priced phones, I think that the OnePlus One's screen and camera are mediocre at best. After sales service is another area of concern. So while it is affordable at Rs.22000 approx, you'll get much better mid-range smartphones at the same price including iPhone 5c and Lumia 830, both which perform  

Sorry hardcore Android enthusiasts, looks like that octa-core CPU and 3GB RAM are impressive only on paper. If you're really that desperate to buy an Android, I suggest buying a Motorola handset than a cheap Chinese smartphone.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Difference between Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors: Expained

Whenever we think of buying a computer, processor is one of the most important aspect that we consider. Depending on our daily needs out of it, we start looking for a computer with the right processor installed in it.But it may be difficult to choose the right one. When it comes to processors, the most heard names these days are Intel Core i3, i5 and i7. But which one is right for you?

Let's find out:

Architecture:

First, it's important to explain about architecture and codenames. Every year, Intel releases a newer, faster range of processors. We're currently starting to see Broadwell chips, a refresh of last year's Haswell. Before that we had Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge. Generally speaking a Core i3, i5 or i7 that has a newer architecture is faster than the older-architecture processor that it replaces. You can tell the architecture by the model number, Devil's Canyon and Haswell start with 4; Ivy Bridge with a 3; and Sandy Bridge with a 2.

The most important thing about different architectures is making sure that you have a motherboard that supports the type of processor you're interested in. Processors, regardless of whether they're a Core i3, i5 and i7, based on the same architecture are fundamentally the same inside. The differences in performance come from which features are enabled or disabled, the clock speed and how many cores each one has.

Cores:

A core can be thought of as in individual processor. A dual-core processor, therefore has two internal processors, a quad-core model has four. More cores are useful for multi-tasking; for example, you can run two applications at the same time, each one having access to its own dedicated processor.

More cores are also useful for multi-threaded applications, such as video editing. With these types of applications they can use multiple cores to improve performance. Single-threaded applications can only use a single core leaving any others idle. Core i3 processors have two cores, Core i5 CPUs have four and Core i7 models also have four.  Some Core i7 Extreme processors have six or eight cores. Generally speaking, we find that most applications can't take full advantage of six or eight cores, so the performance boost from extra cores isn't as great.

Hyper-Threading:

Hyper-Threading is Intel's technology for creating two logical cores in each physical core. In other words, to your operating system it appears as though your CPU has double the number of cores than it really does.

In terms of performance, Hyper-Threading speeds up multi-tasking and multi-threaded applications. It's not as fast or as efficient as extra 'real' cores, but it's an improvement over a single Core. Core i3 and i7 processors have this technology, Core i5 processors do not.

Clock Speed:

The faster the clock speed in MHz, the faster each core can run. This can create some variances in performance. For example, a Core i3-4370 Haswell processor runs at 3.8GHz. It would be faster running a single-threaded application, which can only use one core, than a Core i5-4590, which only has a clock speed of 3.2GHz. However, running a multi-threaded application, the Core i5 would most likely be quicker, as its four real cores are better than the Core i3's two cores and Hyper-Threading.

Turbo-Boost:

Turbo Boost is Intel's technology for automatically overclocking a processor, boosting its clock speed higher than the default setting. The CPU monitors its temperature and, when it's running cool enough, will apply the overclock. Core i5 and i7 CPUs have this technology, Core i3 models do not.

Graphics Chip:

All Intel processors have graphics chips in them. Pre-Haswell, the GPUs weren't particularly good for games, although they were fine for watching video. With Haswell, came the Intel HD Graphics 4600 line, which is fine for a bit of light gaming; some cheaper models have HD Graphics 4400 chips, which are fine for some older less-demanding games. Some of the more expensive chips have Intel Iris Pro chips in them. They're slightly faster in games, but can cope with 4K video, making them suitable for high-end video editing

In all cases, if you're serious about playing games, Intel chips don't cut it and won't give you high-resolution, high-detail gaming. So, if you're into hardcore gaming, it is advisable to look for a dedicated graphics card instead.

Availability of features:

 If you're not sure which features that processor you're interested in has, you can use the ark.intel.com website. Just use the search box to search for a model number and you'll find all of the features your processor has.

Verdict:

As a rough guide, a Core i3 chip is fine for day-to-day use. Go for a Core i5 if you do a lot of video or photo editing. A Core i7 chip is generally more expensive than it's worth, in our experience, but buy one if you do a lot of video editing, particularly 4K, or other processor-intensive tasks.

Also See: 

• How to buy the right Laptop.
• How to buy the right Desktop.

Leave your comments below.

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REVIEW: Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge

Its Samsung's time of the year again and this year, its not a joke.
Samsung has delivered just what the fans expected: A whole new take on their design language.

Samsung found itself in sort of a bind last year: Its flagship Galaxy S5 wasn't the blockbuster the company hoped it would be. That, coupled with the news that Samsung was going to focus on a smaller number of devices in 2015, signaled a pretty dramatic change for a brand that seemed like it was unstoppable. As if to silence the doubters, Samsung has not one, but two flagships on offer -- the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge -- and they're surrounded by questions. Can they restore Samsung to its former glory? Has the company figured out how to build a truly interesting smartphone again?

Lets find out:

Hardware:

The only difference between the hardware of the S6 and S6 Edge is the screen. The S6 Edge has a wrap-around screen and a few software 'features' to go with it, but we'll get to that in a bit. That aside, rest of the hardware specifications are identical- Same screen size (5.1 inch), same 16 megapixel cameras, same processor and so on.

The design of these devices is a MAJOR change from the last year's S5. Samsung 'took some inspiration' from its rivals and built a metal and glass casing for the S6. There's Gorilla Glass 4 on the front and the back and a nice metal frame to wrap it together. The front glass on the S6 is a bit curved towards the edges to make things easy when you're swiping stuff on your device and makes it feel natural. The button placements are sensible, with the volume rocker on the left and the power button on the right. A mono speaker, micro-USB port and headphone jack neatly placed at the bottom and finally, the SIM card slot and microphone at the top.

Looking at it dead on, though, the S6 is pretty plain. Your eyes will immediately get sucked into the 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED screen, but a 5-megapixel selfie camera sits above it while the Home button lies below, flanked by discrete Back and Recent Apps keys. High on the S6's back is a squarish plateau that houses the 16-megapixel camera, and to the right lies a tiny black divot where the LED flash and heart rate sensor live. Unlike the crater that marked the Galaxy S5's back, the assembly here is almost flush with the S6's rear. It's a small touch, but it makes taking heart rate and blood oxygen readings in S Health quite a bit easier.

The Galaxy S6 looks (and feels) an awful lot like an iPhone 6. From those rounded sides to the chrome-rimmed, fingerprint-sensing Home button to placement of the volume buttons on the left edge and the power button on the right, there's an odd air of familiarity surrounding the thing.

And that's the harsh reality- Samsung wants iPhone customers. It's no secret that none of its other rivals have as much market share to really worry them. It wants Apple's customers and it wants to stop existing customers migrate to Apple. So Samsung built a phone based on what Apple customers care about. Which, of course, is also the problem because the S6 doesn't care about the features of its predecessors. Thus, you want be seeing any expandable storage, removable batteries or water and dust resistance this year.
But the looks, overall, are very impressive, but not very confidence inspiring. Thanks to the metal sides, the phone is slippery and the glass on the front and back, though sturdy, feels very fragile.

Now, about the Edge. It's equal parts gorgeous and gimmicky, but if money is no object, the former definitely outweighs the latter.

The Edge's curved screen falls away from you at the sides instead of angling toward you from the top and bottom. The design does nothing to make the screen more immersive, but that doesn't matter; the screen's novelty and beauty still mean it's hard to tear your eyes off it. The S6 Edge feels substantially thinner than its basic cousin because of how its sides taper to a super-slim edge. But the thing is, the Edge will probably never nestle comfortably into your hands as a result. Then again, Edge's main job is to look good.

Other hardware features include an improved version of the fingerprint sensor; which now works when you simply place a finger on the home button, instead of swiping your finger over it (like it was in the S5).

Display and sound quality:

The S6 and the S6 Edge have absolutely gorgeous screens. They're both Quad HD panels (2,560 x 1,440, if you haven't memorized it yet) akin to the one you'll find in the Note 4, but they only measure at 5.1 inches diagonally. That means we're looking at two of the most pixel-dense screens on the market today. As far as your eyes will be able to tell, individual pixels don't even exist.

As is usually the case with Samsung's AMOLEDs, colors are incredibly vivid, while blacks are deep and sumptuous. A quick bit of screen nerdery for you: AMOLED panels typically skew a little more toward the blue end of the spectrum than LCDs do. 

It wont be an overstatement to say that the S6 and S6 Edge have the best displays in the market as of today.

Both devices share the same single speaker nestled into the bottom-right corners of their frames, and it's dramatically louder than the clunker we got in last year's Galaxy S5. 

Software:

The biggest turn-off about Samsung phones has been the software. The TouchWiz UI is known to bring along all the bloatware and take the Android design away by replacing it with its own design elements. That said,  Samsung has spent the past year or two slowly cranking down on the sheer amount of stuff it slops on top of stock Android. It really shows, too: The version of TouchWiz that ships on the S6 and the S6 Edge is about as restrained as I've seen on a Samsung phone yet. Turns out, chopping out extraneous menu options and visual cruft was high up on the company's list of priorities this year, so don't ever let anyone tell you that complaining ad nauseam can't get huge conglomerates to rethink their plans.

Anyway, all of Samsung's greatest hits are still here, and they're paired with a flatter, cleaner, Material Design-y look that jibes nicely with Android 5.0.2. Seriously, it's terriblyrefreshing if you're coming from a Galaxy S5. Swiping to the left once again reveals your Flipboard Briefing, a BlinkFeed-like stream of news stories culled from news sources around the web. It might not pull choice updates from your Twitter or Instagram accounts like on an HTC phone, but it does look a hell of a lot handsomer. The app launcher itself is a little less attractive, at least at first. By default, Samsung has arranged all of its apps (including Microsoft pack-ins like OneNote and OneDrive) and everything else you install gets tacked on the end of the list in the order you downloaded it. Thankfully, there's an "A-Z" button in the corner to whip things into more manageable shape. Oh, and you can resize the app grid on your home screen to accommodate up to 20 shortcuts, not including widgets.

You can choose from about 12 different themes if you're itching for something else. Right now Samsung's Theme Store leans heavily toward the cutesy side with themes that feature super-simple, hand-drawn icon sets and artwork; the only deviation from the norm is a tie-in theme for The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Nothing like the smell of brand synergy, right? Anyway, moving on. A quick tap on the Recent Apps button brings up the usual deck of app cards, but you'll notice a Multi Window icon on some of them -- tapping that'll resize the app to take up half the screen, leaving enough room to either see the app running beneath it or resize another one to fill the other half completely. Works like a charm when you need it , and it's so much less of a headache to activate now.

Oh, and while we're talking about apps, no, you cannot uninstall whatever you want by pressing, holding and tapping a delete icon. Trying it on an app you've downloaded works fine. Try it on a preloaded app (say, S Health) and you'll instead get a prompt to disable it; that is, you can shut it off, but you can't remove it from the phone. What about stuff you don't want to delete, but don't want anyone else seeing? Private mode is still around and ready to keep your media and files out of the wrong hands.

The Edge:

This is where you might expect the Edge to shine. Swiping in from the upper left or right part of the screen (you'll indicate during setup if you're a righty or lefty) causes an array of colored bubbles to drift into view. That's People Edge. You can assign up to five people their own specific color, so that when they contact you, the edge of the phone will spring to life with their assigned hue. It's a neat trick, for sure, but its value is limited. To start, why the limit on five people and colors? And if the edge that lights up happens to be pointing away from you, you might as well just flip the phone over and see who it is instead of turning it around to see what color is throbbing.

Meanwhile, rubbing the edge of the screen while it's off causes Samsung's so-called Information Stream to pop up, giving you access to the time, notifications and news updates without lighting up the whole panel. Truly, it's so much more convenient to tap the Home button to see all that than to stroke the edge of a screen; in fact, it's so much easier that to even bother just seems silly. It'd be another story if the news headline that showed up was somehow tied to your preferences as set in Flipboard Briefing, but nope -- it's just some random nothing from Yahoo News. Oh, and you can turn on a clock that'll live on the edge until the battery level drops below 15 percent. That's the only truly useful feature in the mix... except it only works for 12 hours at a time. What? The thing is, I appreciate that Samsung didn't try to bog the Edge down with nonsense, but in doing so, it proved it still doesn't know what to do with that extra space. That'd be a greater sin if the screen didn't look so damned cool, but none of this helps sell the Edge to anyone who's on the fence.

Camera:

The cameras in Samsung's high-end phones have always been at least above average, but that's not good enough anymore. Nailing the camera was just crucial this time around and, long story short, Samsung did a great job. But first, the broad strokes. The S6 and the Edge share the same 16-megapixel rear camera (made by Sony, no less), which doesn't sound incredibly impressive compared to some of the other sensors used in other phones. Still, the combination of the sensor plus optical image stabilization and an f/1.9 lens is highly effective. It's best used when you're photographing dim landscapes or subjects that can sit still. The fact that we've got a beautiful Quad-HD AMOLED screen to view them on is a huge plus too (though your screen color settings might mean the actual photo looks different on your phone than on a computer or television). Meanwhile, the wide-angle lens on the 5-megapixel front-facing camera makes for some seriously spacious selfies -- it captures way more of your surroundings than you might expect, so bring the phone in close for the best results. Just be sure to dial down Beauty Mode to keep your face from looking like you got plastered with foundation.

The huge letdown in the camera department comes when you test the low-light performance. The images have too much noise and it takes some work to get it to focus and autoexposure is not reliable. 

Otherwise, its a great point and shoot camera and there's no doubt about it, but if you're expecting it to perform in low light conditions as good, don't.

For the sake of speed, you can fire up the camera by swiping up on the home screen or by double-tapping the Home button at any time. Samsung says it only takes 0.7 second to jump into the camera proper. By default, the Samsung camera app is straightforward; the shutter button and mode selector live on one end, and a quick tap reveals controls for your flash, timer and HDR on the other. You can also jump into a Pro mode where you can fiddle with your exposure, ISO and metering settings, and it's easy enough to save those changes as a preset to be fired up later.

Pro mode aside, you've got your usual slew of kooky features to play with, but the new ones are worth pointing out. Kicking the camera into background defocus mode is a nifty little attraction that lets you selectively blur parts of your shots, sort of like a Lytro, but all in software. Thing is, you can often coax that sort of bokeh from the lens and camera without software trickery at all so long as you stick the phone close to your subject. There's a Virtual shot mode that captures a 3D video of an object if you can move around it smoothly enough too, and it's cool enough until you realize you can't share it and still maintain the flashy effect. The ability to record 4K video is back as well, and with the same five-minute limitation Samsung aficionados will already be familiar with. 

At the end of the day, I'd still give the photographic edge to the iPhones, but it's an awfully tight race and Android fans can buy an S6 or S6 Edge without fear of working at a disadvantage.

Performance and Battery:

With each passing year we demand more and more from our tiny pocket-computers, especially when they're hyped up the way flagships are. The S6 and the S6 Edge sport a homebrew octa-core Exynos 7420 chipset, which pairs a quartet of 2.1GHz processor cores with another quartet of 1.5GHz cores and 3GB of RAM. When it comes to regular, day-to-day performance, the differences are slight. That's to be expected, really; we're inching toward an age so profuse with processing power, so rife with RAM that flicking through home screens and firing up apps on flagship phones is nearly seamless. Both the S6 and the Edge are incredibly snappy, with virtually zero lag during normal use.

That the S6 and Edge would be super-snappy was sort of a given, but the bigger question is how long they'll last before they need a trip to the power outlet. Before we tackle that, it's worth noting that the two S6s aren't identical in this regard: The basic S6 has a 2,550mAh battery while the Edge has a slightly bigger 2,600mAh one. Oh, and don't forget that both batteries are sealed too; the age of swapping spare cells into your new Galaxy S is finally over, I'm afraid. Samsung says its new line of 14nm Exynos processors are designed to deliver more horsepower at greater efficiency, which leads to both versions of the phone sticking around for between 11 and 12 hours of continuous workday use.

Verdict: Both, the S6 and S6 Edge are promising new devices and a breath of fresh air in Samsung's design philosophy. But when it comes to choosing one of them, you need to think, if that Edge is really of any use to you or is it just a gimmick which you won't really be using daily. After all, you end up paying roughly Rs. 9000 extra just for that curved screen. The S6 is priced at Rs.49990 whereas S6 Edge is priced at Rs. 58990, all for that curved screen. If that is not your priority, you should be just as happy with the S6. Overall, it's nice to see a flagship phone from Samsung that does actually look and feel like one, and even though the battery life is inconsistent, the host of features and specifications should make up for it. So, for everyone who is a fan of Samsung's Android devices, you might want to check these out; for iPhone users, its not really necessary.

What do you think about these new devices? 

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