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Internet

Online gaming between tablets vs mobile phones

According to Games Industry International it appears that 80% of tablet and mobile phone users use their devices for playing games. Other surveys more or less concur, with reported figures of between 65% and 80%. Around 20% of owners of both mobile phones and tablets say that they prefer to play online games on their tablets.

The obvious trade off between online gaming on phones and tablets is the quality and size of the display versus the convenience and ease of handling. The gaming experience is better on large tablets, but smartphones are easier to carry around. What is happening though is that tablets are getting smaller with the 7 inch tablet beginning to dominate the market, while phones are getting larger. Already there are phones available with 6 inch displays.

There are also other ways in which phones and tablets are merging. Some of the latest tablets have HSPA connectivity and they are effectively mobile phones. You wouldn’t want to hold them to your head to make a call, but with Bluetooth and speakerphone functionality there is no need to. Examples of these tablet phones include the Asus FonePad and the seven inch Galaxy Tab where playing online is made easy.

It also depends on the kinds of games you play on your mobile device. If you enjoy playing online casino games such as blackjack and roulette or even a little poker then you can get by with your mobile phone, be sure to check out the best iPhone casinos at iPhonecasino.ca!. After all, you are not playing these games for the immersive quality of their graphics, you are playing to hopefully win some money. If you are a serious gamer and enjoy playing massive multiplayer online games such as the World of WarCraft you are going to need something larger, preferably a good deal larger. You can play the game on your mobile if you are streaming from the cloud, but it is not really recommended.

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Android Mobile

Hands on review and Unboxing of Micromax Canvas 2

Android has paved the way for many companies to jump into the mobile and tablet manufacturing business. Among them few have carved a niche for themselves like Micromax. Recently Micromax has come up with many attractive phones and tablets.  But with introduction of Canvas series of phablet (Essentially Canvas can be termed as a combination of Phone and Tablet) it has ascended greater heights. Micromax Canvas 2 A110 also known as the Superfone is the cheapest Phablet currently available in the market with an impressive specs. I bought it couple of days ago and here is my hands on review of the same.

Unboxing

The Canvas 2 A110 package is very small and one will not believe that such a big phone is resting inside it. So it rightly said that “every beautiful gifts come in smaller packages”. As soon as you open the cover you will find the beautiful monster laying flat on it. You pull it out and hold it on your hand and you will have that macho feeling. The package also contains data cable cum power cord, power plug, the battery, 3.5mm earphone and instruction booklets. Here is the unboxing video:

Build and Design

When I saw A110 , just one word came out-wow!!. Initial look of the device is very impressive. It looks identical to Samsung Galaxy S III and size is almost the same as of Note II. The device is available in two colors, white and black. The build is much nicer and also heavier than the other micromax devices. The device features a 5 inch capacitive touch screen which gives a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels. The screen guard that came on the device was of very inferior quality and came out once I put the phone in picket and took it out. I had to change it the next morning with a new screen guard. There are three touch sensitive hardware keys at the bottom of the screen and used for Option, Home & Back. on the right hand side power and lock button is present, the left hand side has the volume keys, the top side contains one microUSB port and 3.5 mm audio jack. On the back side a 8 MP camera, a dual LED flash and on the front side 0.3 MP front camera is placed . The rear of the Micromax Canvas 2 has a textured finish giving it a very good grip. Though the rear panel is plastic it has a premium feel.

Rating: 4.0/5

Multimedia

Multimedia features are not upto the mark. Because of the bigger screen size watching video in this device is a bliss but if you are looking for super sharp pictures you will be little disappointed. The built-in video player does not support all the formats, so you must download MX player to enjoy all video formats. FM radio is another facility which stands as an alternate style of multimedia. Sound has to be little good but nice. If you want a better multimedia experience, just replace the earphone that came bundled with it with a better one. However if you like reading novels and reports on your smartphone, you will in ,love with this device. As reading on this device is very smooth because of the large screen size and does not generate any stress even after reading continiously for 30-40 minutes.

Rating: 3.5/5

Camera

This comes with a 8MP primary camera with dual flash light. But low-light or night photography is a disappointment. The low light photos are of lower quality as compared to that on a 5MP camera with only single flash light. But outdoor photography is just superb. This also has a 0.3 MP front facing camera primarily used for video calling. Video Recording quality of the primary camera is also not upto the mark. Overall the camera is a little disappointment. Look at the bottom of the post for few shots taken at different lighting condition.

Rating: 3.0/5

Battery 

I loved the battery supplied with Micromax Canvas 2 A110. It has a lithiumm ion battery of 2000 mAh that provides longer uptime for the device. I  noticed that with maximum brightness of the screen, the battery was draining pretty fast. So if you reduce gthe brightness to atleast 50%, you can get a good battery life.

Rating: 4.0/5

Hardware and OS

Canvas 2 is powered by a 1GHz dual core processor and running on Ice Cream Sandwich 4.04. It is having 2 SIM slots which is an advantage, as there are only a few smartphone with dual SIM capability. It comes with 2GB ROM and 2GB built-in storage which is expandable upto 32GB via microSD. Micromax could have done a better justice to this device by putting 1GB RAM instead of  512MB. That would have found lot more takers for the phone. However the 512MB RAM seems to be quite good while operating this device and there is no lag in game play or while using lot of applications. While checking the available RAM I saw a very peculiar thing. In Google Nexus S with same 512MB RAM I got different result, the screen shot from both are attached. It clearly indicates that the available RAM to OS in Micromax Canvas 2 is more as compared to Nexus S.

Rating: 4.5/5

Connectivity

Micromax Canvas 2 A110 Superfone offers loads of data connectivity features including the bluetooth 3.0 facility that ensures that the user can transfer and receive data from other device. The USB 2.0 port helps the user to connect the device with their computers or laptops and charge the device through it or even exchange data with it via USB cable. GPS is working fast , where you can create Wi-Fi network by the device.

Rating: 4/5

Applications

Micromax Canvas 2 A110 Superfone comes with many preloaded apps like the Facebook and Twitter applications along with HookUp, M! Zone, M! Store & M! Buddy. M! Store is a content delivery platform like Google Play store. So apart from Play store you have another options to download apps. The user can also download more games and apps from the play store.

Specification of Canvas 2

Canvas 2 as described above comes with an impressive specification.

OS: Android ICS 4.04
Chipset: MediaTek MT6577
CPU: Dual-core 1 GHz
GPU: PowerVR SGX531
Sensors: Accelerometer, proximity
SIM slot: Dual SIM slot
Camera: 8 MP Primary, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash
:0.3 MP secondary
Battery: Li-ion 2000mAh
Memory: 512MB RAM
2GB ROM
2GB built-in storage, exapndable upto 32GB
Display: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Resolution: 480 x 854 pixels

Final Verdict

Overall Rating: 4/5

This phone is available in India at an MRP of INR 10,299 (You might get better deal in some online stores too). So at the 10K range this phone is a real value for money. But if you will try to compare it with Galaxy SIII or Note II, yu will be disappointed.  In-fact both caters to the different segment of buyer and should not be compared. However if it is compared to any other smart phone at this price range, it will surely be a winner. Micromax A110 is fail to gain extra points. It has has a smaller screen with the latter featuring a 5.5 inch screen as compared to the former’s 5 inch. If you want a bigger screen phone or a phablet and you are on a tight budget just go for it and you will love every penny spent.

Gallery


Categories
Android Gadgets Tablet PC

Unboxing and Review of BSNL T-Pad IS703C Tablet

It seems the Tablet market in India is growing pretty rapidly and this growth is being supplemented by introduction of low cost tablets with open Source Android as the platform of choice. HCL, Micromax and Pantel technologies are leading the bandwagon to release the quite affordable low cost tablets in India. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has collaborated with Pantel technologies to release affordable tablet by the brand name T-Pad. Recently we got an opportunity to try our hands on BSNL T-Pad IS703C tablet and we got a mixed review of the tablet for our readers.

T-Pad IS703C was launched on 29-05-2012. With a price tag of INR 6999, we cannot say T-Pad IS703C as a low cost tablet when there are tablets available for INR 3000. But it will come in the mid or lower midrange tablet category. To offer users a low cost gadgets, company has definitely compromised in few features such as display, battery life, camera, body etc.

Body

At the very first look, it grabs an ascent look but when we look at the rear the blacky shiny plastic body may disappoint few users as the material used for the body is below standard. The form factor is also not quite impressive as compared to other high end tablets like Galaxy Tab or iPad. When I hold the T-Pad for 15-20 minutes, I started feeling pain in my hand. So this might play hindrance to be used for a longer period.

Buttons and Ports

The T-Pad IS703C does not have a physical button on the body, so everything needs to be controlled by touchscreen. As I have been a long time Google Nexus owner, I am pretty used to the physical button, so I found it little awkward at the beginning to work with this tablet.

This has got a lot of physical ports like card reader, HDMI for high definition video output, 3.5mm audio jack, DC adaptor port, USB port to connect a 3G USB dongle or a USB storage device. These ports ar all placed comfortable on one side of the tablet.

It has great support for USB thumb drives and it detected our 4GB Transcend pen drive in no time. We could read and write data to our pen drive without any issue.

Touch Screen/Camera/Speaker/Display

T-Pad IS703C comes with 2 point capacitive multitouch. The sensitivity of the touch screen is not so good when we look at the response time. There seems to be little lag when you touch and when the device senses it and specific command is performed. This might be issue with touch screen or may be due to processing.

It has got only a 0.3 Mega Pixel front facing camera to facilitate video chat.

The built-in speaker provides quite loud sound but the sound quality is not clear when it is output through the speaker. Where in the sound is quite good when heard through a good ear/head phone. We listened the same MP3 song through built-in speaker and ear phone and the difference was clearly noticeable.

Internet Connectivity

This tablet offers Internet connectivity through wi-fi and 3G. But as it does not have a SIM card slot, only 3G USB dongles can be used for 3G Internet access. But wait..it supports only a few 3G dongles. So if you are thinking that you can use any 3G USB dongles then you may be disappointed as we did when we tried to use our Micromax MMX352G. So Micromax 3G dongles are not supported. Below are a list of supported 3G dongles for T-Pad:

Huawei E171

Huawei E173

Huawei E169G

Idea GSM HUAWEI E1732

AIRTEL HUAWEI E1731 (E173Bu-1)

Reliance GSM ZTE MF190

TATA Photon+ EC156

Connectivity through Wi-Fi is pretty good and we could watch youtube videos without buffering at a very nominal Internet speed via wi-fi.

Accessories

T-pad IS703C comes with a wall charger, an earphone and a data cable with micro USB at one end and normal USB at the other end.

Specification of T-Pad IS703C

Processor: Cortex A8 1 GHz

Memory(RAM): 1GB DDR3

Internal Storage: 8GB

External Storage(Memory Card): T-Flash upto 32 GB

Camera: 0.3 Mega Pixel VGA

Operating System:  Android 4.03 ICS

Display: 7” Capacitive Multi touch with 800X480 pixel

HDMI: Supported with video output upto 1080P

G-sensor: G-sensor 3 planes

Conclusion

Some good things about T-Pad 703C are, it supports flash. Internet surfing is a good experience in this device and the speed is quite impressive. It has a good battery backup but takes a little time to charge fully (approx  4hrs). Let us tell about few negative things about this device, first of all absense of sim slot is a disadvantage as user will need to buy a supported dongle.It lacks presence of. It does not support have a GPS or AGPS chip so location will be a spoiler.

Though T-Pad 703C has got some impressive specifications like a 1GHz processor and 1GB RAM, it does not seem to work so fast. This can be a good buy for entry level users and students but for veterans this will be a disappointment. This being a BSNL co-branded tablet should come with some free goodies from BSNL like a supported 3G dongle. As Micromax dongles are advertised as BSNL device and that dongle not being supported in T-Pad will make people confused and disappoint. This device can be a good competitor to Akash as well as Micromax Fun book.