Nokia Lumia London Launch Event Live Blog

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FoneArena is live from London and reporting from Nokia’s press conference titled “See What’s Next”.We are here in London at Victoria House – the venue for Nokia’s May 14 Lumia Launch event where Nokia is expected to launch the much anticipated Lumia 925 which has been in the news a lot lately.  Follow our live blog for second by second updates live from London and for post event coverage later. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia London Launch Event Live Blog”

Nokia Asha 501 Overview and First Impressions

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Nokia Asha 501, the company’s latest attempt at out-innovating the low end smartphone market, was launched today in New Delhi and we got some fair play time with the device. Based on the new Nokia Asha platform, the device was previously demoed by Nokia’s Peter Skillman, who led the whole effort of bringing the intuitive N9 UI to the low end. After a healthy hands on time with the device, we can’t withhold ourselves from telling you about this device. But before that, here is a complete overview of the device –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MgZbZObE7s

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Nokia Asha 501 Hands On

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Nokia’s has added some more colour to its Asha family with the new Asha 501 Phone.The new Asha phone is slotted for a price of about Rs.5600 excluding taxes. Nokia has introduced a new design and form factor with the Asha 501 – A full touch screen with no buttons at the bottom except for one back button that sits pretty, right at the bottom. We got a chance speak to Peter Skillman, VP, Mobile Phones User Experience, Design, about the Asha 501 at the launch event. You can check out the video below and also read the full transcript of the interview here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVKLL8P6Vfo

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HTC One Review

Once considered a leader amongst smartphone manufacturers, HTC has fallen from grace due to increasing competition and in some ways failure to keep up. With ever declining sales, the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer is in a dire scenario that calls for desperate measures.

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The One is it’s offering to the world and is meant to show that the company can still create a compelling product. CEO Peter Chou is confident enough to proclaim that he will resign if the handset doesn’t do well in the market. A beautiful product for sure but does it have what it takes to face the twin attack from the Sony Xperia Z and the Korean juggernaut, Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S4 smartphone ? Read on to find out! Continue reading “HTC One Review”

Nokia Lumia 520 Review

For users looking at smartphones in the budget segment, clunky and underpowered Android phones have been the only option till now. Sure, Nokia had a few Windows Phone 7 devices too but the OS was half baked and it was pretty hard to recommend them to users.

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While Nokia has primarily pushed its Asha range or the older Lumia 510 in the budget segment, the launch of the Lumia 520 at Mobile World Congress means that they now have a solid smartphone contender in the category. Great hardware and an OS that is finally worthy of being called a smartphone OS means that the Nokia Lumia 520 is a solid contender in the budget segment. Does it stand a chance against the barrage of cheap Chinese rebranded smartphones ? Read on to find out. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 520 Review”

Nokia Lumia 620 Review

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Since the Windows Phone 8 reboot, Nokia has so far launched five devices, with the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820 launching way back in September 2012, then the Nokia Lumia 620 at LeWeb, and the Nokia Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 at the Mobile World Congress. The portfolio of devices cover almost all the price points of the market, and the Lumia 620 is in that special mid range segment. Same time last year, Nokia had the Lumia 610 as the predecessor to the 620, but the hardware was so lacking(with 256MB of RAM) and Windows Phone 7 was not really up to the mark in terms of market expectations. Fast forward to this year, Windows Phone 8 brings a lot of features and ticks check boxes of most requested features including Bluetooth file transfer, mass storage, support for micro SD cards, NFC tap to send etc and the hardware too has gained some decent specs, with respect to the Lumia 620. With all these specs and features backing it, will the Lumia 620 suffice a budget minded smartphone buyer in India? Read on to find out.

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Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos vs Micromax A116 Canvas HD in depth comparison

Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos vs Micromax Canvas HD

The Indian smartphone market has recently been seeing an influx of a lot of devices which are big on the screen and specs, while at the same time small on the budget, catering to the exact demand of the market since the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy Note. The phablet, as the term goes, means a device is bigger than a phone but smaller than the tablet, fitting right in the middle. This is purely a notion marketed by Samsung with the Galaxy Note, and it has caught up like wildfire among the various entrants in the Indian Smartphone market.

And two of the devices that are a by product of this phablet movement are the Micromax A116 Canvas HD and Samsung’s own Galaxy Grand Duos. We are going for an in depth comparison between these two to see which ones comes out as the better buy, objectively. Here is the in-depth comparison video first –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8lzZdaDlh8

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HTC One Unboxing

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If there is a fading brand in the world of smart phones, especially in the Android space, it would be HTC. We have been hearing a lot about how HTC has supposedly been falling in the past couple of years. Their HTC One X and series of devices were considered an initiative for a turn around in 2012, and the same mantra is now being applied for the HTC One, their newest 2013 flagship device that launched just before the Mobile World Congress. This flagship from HTC is one of their most interesting efforts. You can see the fruits in every department including design, build, hardware, and definitely the camera. We have had some hands on experience of the One at the Mobile World Congress, but we now have it in our labs. And as a precursor, we start with the ritualistic unboxing of the device.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05AIqAl3mPc

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Hands On

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Samsung launched their flagship Android phone the Galaxy S4 in New York City on March 14,2013 amidst a lot of hype and excitement very similar to what the iPhone has always received.The Galaxy S4 is a beast in terms of specs packing a 5inch SuperAMOLED 1080p display, 8-core processor, 13MP Camera, LTE, Android 4.2.2. Can the Galaxy S4 live up to its expectations? Watch our hands on video of the S4 we are bringing you from the launch event, below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U9KIRpkei4

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Samsung Galaxy S4 – the features that matter, explained

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It has happened, and how! Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S4 launched today in full glory, with a feature packed spec sheet. Sporting all the flagship hardware features you can imagine, plus a ton of Samsung specific features added to improve the experience, it is rather easy to miss out on the most important ones. We can understand that because we felt exactly the same, too much to swallow at once. So we are going to try to explain and lay out the most important Galaxy S4 features that matter, explained with whatever information we know as of now. Read on past the break.

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The Big MWC 2013 wrap up

The Mobile World Congress 2013 has been one hell of a ride! Our team was there at the event in full force and we got to cover a lot of stuff, churning out more than 70 posts and 38 videos right from the show floor. Pretty crazy, right? We really do hope it will be more than this on our next MWC adventure, but as of now, this is it, so lets get to the big wrap up then! Check out our video of the same –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEb248MDCOQ

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Micromax A116 Canvas HD Review


Hands down the most awaited handset in a while, the Micromax A116 Canvas HD is finally available. Hitting all the checkpoints in a modern Android handset, the Canvas HD is an extremely enticing handset. We’ve been playing with it over the past few days to get a good feel of the smartphone. Worth the hype ? Read on to find out! Continue reading “Micromax A116 Canvas HD Review”

Micromax A116 Canvas HD Unboxing

A few weeks ago Micromax, the popular Indian smartphone manufacturer, showed off its next Android flagship. Catering to the budget minded audience, the Micromax A116 Canvas HD packs a punch in terms of specifications at an extremely wallet friendly price point of Rs. 13,990.

The handset pairs a quad core processor with a 5inch 720p screen and runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bran. We’ve got a handset over at our office and decided to put up an unboxing as a teaser while we put it through its paces.  Continue reading “Micromax A116 Canvas HD Unboxing”

Exclusive: Xolo A1000 with 5-inch display, dual-core processor, Android 4.1 coming soon

Xolo has its plans set to make 2013 a big year for the company. Within a span of a month, Xolo has another big product set to hit the market. A 5-inch phone that fits the hand and the budget, comfortably. Xolo A1000 has a width of just 70mm, that makes working on the phone with a single hand , much easier. It is just 8.8 mm thick. We spotted the prototype strutting around in the capital city. Warm your eyes with some snapshots of this dual-core (not Intel) and 2100 mAh battery powered phone. Continue reading “Exclusive: Xolo A1000 with 5-inch display, dual-core processor, Android 4.1 coming soon”

BlackBerry Z10 – first BB10 phone announced with 4.2inch display

It is finally here – The BlackBerry Z10 in both Black and White, the first BlackBerry 10 phone from Research in Motion which is dropping the RIM branding. The phone packs a nice 4.2 inch display with 356 pixels per inch. In terms of internals , it is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and packs 2GB of RAM. It is powered by the BlackBerry 10 OS.

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