REVIEWS

Thursday 22 May 2014

Moto E review

The Moto for Everyone

The moto for everyone ?


Companies  all over the world focus and put all their revenue and energy into their flagship forgetting the mass market.What the people in this mass market  usually get is underpowered and overpriced 'not so smart phones'. Most flagship launches are surrounded with a lot of hype and rumours. Rarely does a company hit the 'ultimate success' spot after the launch .The reasons for failure usually are lack of features,design  and many other factors. But the most prominient of all these aspects is pricing. Indian companies like Micromax,Karbonn were leaders in launching phones targetting this mass market. Motorola entered this territory late and launched the Moto G which was a phenomenal success. Now with the lauch of the Moto E, the company is set destroy the 'Feature Phone'.With a launch price of 6999INR, Moto E is a small phone with great features. Lets see if this small  phone can take on this challenge . 

Design,the one aspect that determines success of a phone even if has the power to move mountains has never been so important than in the current scenario.Well in that matter, Moto E is defenitely ahead. With the same DNA from its brothers (the Moto X and G ), comfort and solid  is what you feel when you hold the device in your hand for the first time.The front 4.3QHD 540 x 960 rez diplay even though very reflective ,is something never seen in this price bracket.The display offers very good colours and viewing angles, making it ideal for gaming or catching up on a movie while travelling. The panel is not so good under direct sunlight however as it tends to wash out and the grid of touch spots is clearly visible. You even get a water resistant coating for the entire body and Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3.You can swap out the back panel on your phone for other colours, should you choose to customise it. The cover is a bit of a pain to remove though. Underneath, you’ll find the two SIM slots and microSD card slot.


image courtesy of tech2


















Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 dual-core SoC onboard and the 1GB of RAM ,the device is very snappy. From the time it takes for app launches to the transition animations, everything feels very fluid .Though there is  a light noticelable lag when multitasking between heavy apps but the  overall flow and feel is just Snappy. Much of this fluidity is because of the improved  memory management in Kitkat.


Available free max free RAM
The Moto E features 4GB of onboard storage, out of which 2.21GB is usable.Unlike the MotoG, motorola decided to add memory card support and supports upto a 32 giggs card. Once you insert it, the phone prompts you if you wish to move all the videos and photos over to the SD card. You can manually move installed apps over as well The loudspeaker is surprisingly loud for a mono speaker and offers pretty good clarity too.

 And now lets talk about the camera that I feel is the only piece of the puzzle that  Motorola got wrong. On paper ,the phone has a rear 5MP shooter. With HDR one would expect much from the E. But things turn out to be on the negative side as the camera lacks autofocus .The pictures lack detail, and can be only used only for social networking and other stuff on the web. If you want a phone with average camera, STAY AWAY!.As long as you’re not too close to the subject, the pictures are passable and more than adequate for social media sharing.The photos look horrible on the view finder but after you have taken the shot, some agressive software processing gives mixed results. Sometimes the shots turn out to be good  and sometimes not so.Video recording  maxes out at 480p with similar performance.







Shot taken in bright day light


Notice the sever lack of details near the trees and blurred effect near the car
 The 1980mAh battery will easily give you a full day’s worth of usage. This is with a mix of calls, music, gaming and surfing the web over Wi-Fi. The standby time is pretty good.

Just like the G,the Moto E is poised for great success in the current market. Motorolar clearly has understood the mass market.And if not for one reason ,the phone would be a phenomenal success. With promised software updates, its clear that Motorola is working towards that and the Moto -E is the moto for everyone. Motorola clearly blurred the lines between a feature phone and a smart phone by pricing a smart phone for a feature phone's price.

Wednesday 14 May 2014

How to speed up Galaxy S duos

                 How to speed up Galaxy S duos without rooting



So you thought that just like many other S duos (most of the Samsung phone) users that there is no escaping the traditional 'LAG n HANG' problem of your  phone.Well, there is one way around the problem -'ROOTING'. But rooting is not for the faint hearted, so I will tell you how to speed up your S duos in some easy steps .These steps are very simple and will surely have a considerable performance improvement in your device. Speeding up S duos is all about freeing up  RAM memory.

Not using a task killer :

   The major culprit  behind the lag is Samsung's very own  'TouchWiz' skin .When you install a task killer to auto clear the RAM, the 'TouchWiz home' which is cached in the RAM is cleared, causing it to reload every time  when you use your device. This takes considerable time, and causes the lags. So the best option is to uninstall every task killer that you have installed.

Force stopping apps:

Most of the apps even when not active or used, are kept cached by the Android OS so that they are loaded faster when you need them. But some of the apps like facebook have background functions that draw some juice. So, unless you use the app very often, force stop them. This will not cause any problems.For stopping apps .
Go to settings>application manager> then force stop the app that you dont use very often (its not just often its 'very often').

 


















Disabling all the Bloatware:

Samsung has provided us with a rich set of bloatwares. From S-apps , ChatOn  and S etc to S everything . This not only eats up precious storage but also RAM memory. As rooting is required to remove these apps , the next option would be to force stop them. This also dosent help as theykeep auto starting. The most effective method is to 'disable'  the app.
Go the settings>Application manager >All tab ,select the  app. If the current app installed is the updated one and not the stock one, then you will be promted to 'uninstall updates'. Uninstall the updated and then disable the app.

 

If you are not an active user of  ChatOn services, it would be a great idea to diable to 'Samsung Push service' also.
















Clearing the Clipboard:  If you use the stock samsung keyboard and do a lot of  'copy paste' and take screenshots often, then you will end up filling the clipboard in the keyboard. To clear the clipboard ,go to messages ,open a new message then open the clipboard as show below. To remove items , hold on the item and then remove from clipboard.

 

 

 

Using apps:

Till now everything  I said was about killing and force stopping apps  but now lets use some apps to help us. Using  some managers like Mobile care, All in one tool box  etc will help you in clearing the cache, history, empty folders etc. And remember to force stop even this app after you have used it.

Uninstalling unwanted apps: 

We are so addicted to installing and trying out new apps but we often forget to unistall the ones that we dont use. Uninstalling unwanted apps is not something that has to mentioned as its understood .

Some more steps are

Deleting/Reducing the number of widgets and home screens

Performing a factory reset after you have created the necessary backup of all your data and then performing all the steps mentioned above.

 

These steps will defenitely help you in using your device with less frustration  and if you are not satisfied , then the next step is only rooting and going for custom ROMs.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to mention them in the comments section  of this blog .