Samsung has officially announced Galaxy Music Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone on Tuesday. The smartphone will also be released in a dual-SIM version with the name Galaxy Music Duos.

Samsung Galaxy Music comes with a 3-inch display, 3MP rear camera with fixed focus, Android 4.0, FM Radio and a dedicated music key.

According to Samsung, the smartphone also comes with dual frontal stereo speakers and advanced audio features such as Sound Alive & SRS.

The smartphone was first spotted in the official list of Samsung smartphones set to receive Jelly Bean update, and was later leaked with full set of specifications.

There is no word about the launch date or pricing of the smartphone.

This is the first smartphone from the company targeted at music lovers looking for an entry-level smartphone. Company has however launched several Galaxy Player devices, which also run on Android, but do not feature cellular connectivity.

Key specs

• 3.0-inch QVGA(240x320) display
• 3 Megapixel Fixed-focus rear camera w/ no Flash
• Music Player with SoundAlive
• 3.5mm Ear Jack, Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• GPS/ Glonass
• Built in FM Antenna
• Frontal Stereo Loudspeaker w/ SRS Surround Audio Effect
• Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct
• 4GB User memory + 512MB(RAM), microSD (up to 32 GB)
• Dimension: 110.1 x 59.0 x 12.25mm, 106.9g
• Battery Standard battery, Li-ion 1,300mAh

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Over the last few years, the dynamics of mobile phone manufacturing arena have changed significantly; companies that were once at the top are nowhere to be seen and others have risen to the helm. LG belongs firmly to the first category, as a company that is struggling to keep pace with current conditions in the smartphone market. Meanwhile it's once close competitor and Korean counterpart Samsung has taken the top spot.

LG seems to have been trying a lot of tactics but is yet to get to come up with a successful high-end Android device. It announced the first dual-core smartphone last year and similarly the first quad-core phone this year (although Optimus 4X HD was last to reach the market). At first glance, LG seems to have finally stuck gold with 4X HD, but will this phone finally help the company change its fortunes, we will find out in this review.

Hardware/ Design

The other two quad-core smartphones that we have seen this year had very distinct looks. While HTC's One X had this beautiful polycarbonate clad body, Samsung's Galaxy S III was more plasticky and conservative. LG has gone for the elegant look, it might not look as good as One X, but it is certainly very likeable. It's angular, slab-like thin design is decent for a flagship model, but may be not ideal. It is still very plasticy.

The phone is huge, mainly because of the 4.7-inch display on-board, but is still comfortable to hold unless you have very small hands. It is all black (white version also available) apart from the two silver strips running on the edge of the smartphone.

The volume rocker has been intelligently hidden on the left side such that you won't even notice it the first time. The power button is located at the top along with 3.5mm headset jack, and Micro-USB port is present at the bottom of the smartphone.

The build quality is solid and the smartphone feels nice in hand thanks to the rubberised and textured back. The front of the device is covered with single piece of Gorilla Glass to help with you with scratches and occasional falls.

Overall, LG has made one great piece of hardware; it might not go down in the history books but the hardware is unlikely to dissapoint anyone either.

Display

720p displays have become the standard these days and anything less would not do justice to the 4.7-inch screen on LG Optimus 4X HD. The device sports an IPS panel, which provides great colour reproduction and viewing angles.

Despite being good in its own right, the display still falls short of the superb HTC One X display, but only because the One X has set a very high standard. Optimus 4X HD still is a great display and one of the best that you will find outside One X.

Camera

Similar to other flagship smartphones, LG has also included 8-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front camera in Optimus 4X HD. The image output from the rear sensor is pretty nice and the resulting images are quite good. However one issue that plagues the Optimus 4X HD camera software is its nature to lose manual focus after every 2-3 seconds. So if you tap to focus on an object in your frame, the phone will initially focus on that but switches to auto-focus after two-three seconds. This is, of course, pretty irritating and had us rushing to click photographs before the dreaded auto-focus kicked in! We couldn't find any preference to disable this behaviour.

Overall, the camera software is quite simple, yet decent, but does not offer extra features like the funky Instagram kinds of effects present in One X. However the options to tweak ISO, White Balance, and Scene mode are present.

The camera supports full-HD recording and also allows you to add funny face/ background effects during live recording.

Software/ User interface

One of the biggest positives for Optimus 4X HD is the revamped Optimus UI on the smartphone. It is far better than the previous versions.

The Korea manufacturer has finally got it (almost) right. The same skin is present on all other Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones from LG, so even if you don't go for 4X HD and opt for cheaper ones like L5 and L7, you will still get this nice UI.

Starting from the unlocking your phone, to making a call or browsing the web, the user interface is pretty decent and most of all, fast. Well, the fluidity can also be attributed to the beast quad-core processor on-board, but still it is some nice work from the folks at LG.

Apart from the cosmetic changes by LG, the interface seems pretty stock, unlike HTC's Sense interface.

The new LG lockscreen is also worthy of mention. Unlike the stock ICS way of swiping the lock sign to unlock, on Optimus 4X, you put your finger anywhere on the screen and a circular translucent window to your home-screen opens up. When you swipe away that circle, your phone is unlocked. Lock-screen also hosts four app icons at the bottom, swiping any of them from the lock-screen, takes you directly to that app, which is pretty useful when you are in a hurry to make a call or send an SMS.

LG also allows make several customisations to home-screen. Some of them are ability to apply one of the four themes, or changing the home screen effect.

One software enhancement that we particularly liked on Optimus 4X HD was the inbuilt comprehensive backup mechanism that allows you to backup or restore apps, bookmarks, calendar, call log, contacts, home-screen or system settings to the device memory or SD card.

In terms of the pre-loaded apps, LG has included SmartWorld (extra app store), SmartShare (DLNA app), RemoteCall Service (remote servicing tool), Quickmemo (note app) and MediaHome (a dashboard for all multimedia content on your phone).

Similar to Sony's SmartTags, LG is also bundling a NFC sticker, which allows you to change system settings to a predefined set by simply tapping your device to that sticker.

Performance/ Battery Life

Be it HTC One X or LG Optimus 4X, there are no doubts about performance of Tegra 3. This quad-core processor is a performance beast and that has been proved again and again. Everything is just snappy on Optimus 4X HD.

Thanks to the stockish interface, the 1GB RAM on-board is not bogged down, which means that despite opening multiple apps, the phone remains butter smooth (not Jelly Bean's Project Butter kind, but the best you can get on ICS).

It is the best performance we have seen so far of any LG Android device and amongst the best across Android devices from any manufacturer. The Korean company has certainly stepped up its game big time and the Optimus 4X HD marks its entry into the big league of power-phone makers.

On the gaming front as well, as expected, the phone did not show any sign of strain during Shadowgun or Dead Trigger sessions.

That brings us to the tricky part. If you bundle a quad-core processor and 720p display, it is likely that your battery will not last very long. The 2100 mAh battery in Optimus 4X HD will just about get you a day's worth of juice with normal usage.

With multi-core processors and HD displays in our smartphones, we really need some breakthrough innovation in the battery technology to take us to the next level.

Verdict

The last few high-end smartphones from LG haven't really clicked with consumers and LG is the only one to blame. However, the company seems to have finally got it right with Optimus 4X HD. Right from the presence of Tegra 3 to great software and elegant design, LG Optimus 4X HD ticks all the right boxes.

Overall, the Korean manufacturer has released a great Android smartphone, maybe not at the same level as the One X and the Galaxy S III, but certainly a worthy contender nonetheless.

For more images of LG Optimus 4X HD check out our gallery.

Price: Rs. 34,490

Pros

• Great performance
• Elegant design

Cons

• Focus issue in camera
• Battery life

Ratings (Out of 5)

Design: 4

Display: 3.5

Performance: 4.5

Software: 4

Battery Life: 3.5

Value for Money: 4

Camera: 4

Overall: 4

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Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has signaled a new direction for the world's largest software company, pointing to hardware and online services as its future, taking a page from long-time rival Apple Inc.

Ballmer's comments in his annual letter to shareholders published on Tuesday suggested that Microsoft may eventually make its own phones to build on its forthcoming own-brand Surface tablet PC and market-leading Xbox gaming console.

"There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox and the recently announced Microsoft Surface," wrote Ballmer.

The new approach mimics Apple In, whose massively successful iPhone and iPad demonstrated tight integration of high-quality software and hardware and made Windows devices feel clunky in comparison.

Ballmer, who took over as CEO from co-founder Bill Gates in 2000, said the company would continue to work with its traditional hardware partners, such as Dell Inc, Samsung and HTC, but he made it clear that Microsoft's role in the so-called 'ecosystem' was changing.

"It impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses," he wrote.

Microsoft already makes money from providing services online, such as access to servers to enable 'cloud computing', or Web versions of its Office applications, but Ballmer's new emphasis suggests an acceleration away from its traditional business model of selling installed software.

"This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves as a devices and services company," he added.

Bonus clipped

Alongside the shareholders' letter, Microsoft's annual proxy filing, which deals with the shareholders' meeting and other governance issues, showed that Ballmer, 56, got a lower bonus than he did last year, partly for flat sales of Windows and his failure to ensure that the company provided a choice of browser to some European customers.

He earned a bonus of $620,000 for Microsoft's 2012 fiscal year, which ended in June, down 9 percent from the year before, according to documents filed on Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

His salary, which is low by U.S. standards for chief executives, remained essentially flat at $685,000.

It is the third year in a row that Ballmer has not earned his maximum bonus, set at twice his salary.

Microsoft's recent financial year was scarred by a $6.2 billion write-down for a failed acquisition and lower profit from its flagship Windows system as computer sales stood still.

In the company's filing, Microsoft's compensation committee said it took into account a 3 percent decline in Windows sales over the year, as well as "the Windows division failure to provide a browser choice screen on certain Windows PCs in Europe as required by its 2009 commitment with the European Commission."

Microsoft's failure to provide a browser choice in Europe was an embarrassing setback for the company, which has been embroiled in disputes with European regulators for more than a decade and paid more than $1 billion in fines for including its own Internet Explorer browser on Windows. It now faces further fines from a new investigation.

Separately, Microsoft said that independent lead director Reed Hastings, the CEO of online video rental company Netflix, would not seek reelection at the shareholder meeting in November. A new lead director will be chosen at the meeting, Microsoft said. Hastings, 51, said he wanted to focus on Netflix and his education work.

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Nokia is looking to make a comeback in the smartphone market by pinning its hopes on Windows devices. Initially revealed at the Mobile World Congress this year, the Lumia 610 hit Indian shores in July.  The Nokia Lumia 610 is the most affordable Windows device from the Finnish handset maker. But the question is can this inexpensive Windows Phone device offer the same fluid experience as the others in its family? We take a look.

Hardware/ Design

The device sports decent looks that you wouldn't be embarrassed carrying around. We reviewed a magenta-coloured 610, packed in a big blue box with minimalist contents. The more traditional users can opt for White or Black. Cyan is another available colour. Box contents include a charger to be used with the provided Micro-USB cable, a pair of headphones and printed manuals.

On first impressions, the Lumia 610 looks and feels just like the 710 with similar dimensions and weighing about 133 grams.

The device has tinted chrome edges gives a metallic illusion but is plasticky. It does have a sturdy build and fits comfortably in the hands. The design is such that the front and back sort of lock into each other, hinting at a chin below the screen.

The power button is located on the right along with the volume rocker and a dedicated shutter button. Most of us are more used to the power/wake button positioned on the top. It does get a bit uncomfortable when it is placed on the side. 

Moving on, the top houses the headphones jack and the Micro-USB port. The back features a 5MP camera with LED Flash situated on the top while the loudspeaker grill is at the bottom. The left side of the device and the base are clean with no buttons or ports.

The back panel's matte-finish is easily prone to attract greasy stains and the screen is a fingerprint magnet too. The panel slides off easily to reveal the battery, under which is the micro-SIM card slot.

The front sports the trio of capacitive Windows Phone keys for Back, Home and Search that are spaced out well for single hand use and to avoid accidental button presses. 

Overall, the phone has a solid build and offers a trouble-free one hand user experience 

The Lumia 610 is powered by an 800MHz processor hosting 256MB RAM. It comes with 8GB internal storage with no option for external expansion. The best you can do is make use of the 7GB free storage offered by SkyDrive.

Display

The Lumia 800 has a ClearBlack AMOLED panel, while the 710 sports a ClearBlack TFT. But the cheaper Lumia 610 has neither.

The device has a 3.7-inch LCD screen with a WVGA resolution translating into a pixel density of 252ppi (480x800 pixels). Text is clearly visible and the graphics look decent and smooth too. 

But the phone has major issues under the sun, with the screen looking pretty dull. At maximum brightness levels, colours seem washed out, though readability improves, but not much. Since the screen is highly reflective, you'll find yourself using your palm to cover the screen. 

Camera

The Lumia 610 is equipped with a 5MP camera with LED flash. The dedicated camera button is placed on the right. A gentle half-press will bring out auto-focus while long pressing the button will activate the camera even when the phone is locked. You can manually focus by just tapping an area on the screen.

Colours of images appear washed out and those taken under low light are noisy. Though videos are smooth with the auto-focus working well here, they only produce VGA quality. The 710, on the other hand, is capable of sharp 1280x720 videos. 

Using zoom on the device decreases the detailing in the images. Shots appear really blurry. It's advisable not to use the zoom. There's an 'auto-fix' feature that comes quite handy to brighten shots taken in the dark or under low light.

Basic camera settings are accessible once the app is launched including Scene mode, White Balance, Flash, ISO settings and more. There is no front camera on the device.

Software/ Interface

The Lumia 610 runs on Windows Phone 7.5. Initially called Refresh, Windows Phone 7.5 got updated to Tango at this year's Mobile World Congress. The idea of the update was to power Windows Phone devices with lower hardware specs. 

Waking up the phone reveals the lock screen, which is entirely covered with the wallpaper of your choice, also displaying the date and the time. In case you've set reminders or calendar events, those appear too along with email notifications and missed calls. The signal strength and the battery indicator are displayed on top.

Swiping up brings the rather crowded home screen with various applications in gigantic tiles laid out vertically. The device features the live-tile Metro user interface with two customizable home screens. You can change the order of the tiles as per your liking. A swipe to the left launches a second screen with the phone's stock applications. Any of these can be pinned to the start screen by long pressing a particular app and choosing the 'pin to start' option.

The settings screen and search page are clones in terms of the design. There's a search bar at the bottom of the screen, making it easier to browse new pages. A list of options, including tabs, recent pages and favourites are accessible by tapping a button on the bottom-right. This screen also enables you to add a page to your favourites, pin it to your home screen or share it on social networks. Bookmarks are shown as a text list, while tabs are displayed as an image of each open page.

The Marketplace tile shows available updates while the Photos tile displays a slideshow of your pictures. You can view all installed apps under Applications, which are alphabetically sorted. A search button integrated within allows you to find apps more easily.  

Switching between apps is easy. Just hold down the Back key and scroll horizontally to jump into any one of them. However, the list keeps refreshing as the older apps disappear and are replaced by the more recently used apps. Killing these apps is not possible.

The Messaging application on the Lumia 610 has some interesting options to give you a satisfying experience. Social network integration allows for easy swapping between messages, Facebook chat or any other chat clients on your phone. All these messages appear as one single thread. 

 

Windows Phone 7.5 also has a voice assistant that can be used for dictation; get replies to be read out to you or to begin searches. 

Apps such as Office and SkyDrive together are a powerhouse of productivity. Office helps you to create, view and edit documents stored on your device as well as those in the cloud. With SkyDrive, documents between your phone and PC sync automatically.

Viewing and editing documents in Office is absolutely free and integrated into the OS. Word and Excel docs come with viewing and editing support but PowerPoint files are for viewing only.  SharePoint collaboration for Word and Excel files allows you to attach those files to emails, though you need to do that from the Office hub and not the e-mail editor.

Microsoft's note-taking application OneNote, is very easy to use and lets you add photos and voice memos which can then be sent via email. You can also sync OneNotes with your SkyDrive or Windows Live account to access them from anywhere. 

Other pre-installed apps include Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive and both functioned pretty well. While the former is an alternative to Bing Maps (also available on the phone), Nokia Drive makes navigation as simple as it can get. The voice-guided app lets you zoom in and out depending on your preference to see more details of the road ahead.

Whenever you approach a turn, it is indicated at the top of the screen in big, easy to read white lettering with a viewable icon noting the turn. The bottom of the screen shows the time remaining and current speed, which appears to the left side of the screen in portrait mode. Nokia Drive also lets you view downloaded maps in offline mode.

It is worth pointing out that the Nokia Lumia 610, like other phones running Windows Phone 7.5, will not get the Windows Phone 8 upgrade, so they stand to miss out on a lot of great features. Instead, they will get the Windows Phone 7.8 upgrade, so if you care about being on the latest version of the OS (as you should), you're not going to get that here.  

Performance/ Battery life

For being dubbed as the cheapest Windows Phone device, the Lumia 610 delivers a decent performance. It is slow at times, but nevertheless runs smoothly. 

Call quality on the phone is good with clear reception with even just one or two bars of signal strength. Connectivity wise, the phone performs well over both 3G and Wi-Fi networks.

The QWERTY keyboard is quite responsive but accidental button presses can't be avoided since it feels squeezed in both portrait and landscape modes. The 1300mAh battery on the device squeezes enough juice to last for almost 2 days. 

Storage comes across as a notable flaw in the device. With just 8GB of on-board storage and no support for external expansion, intensive apps with specific memory needs like Angry Birds and Skype won't install. Microsoft is looking to address the issue and states that most apps should deliver a satisfying experience on 256MB RAM devices.

A feature highly missed is the ability to take screenshots.  But Microsoft has promised that this feature will be included in its latest Windows 8 version.

Verdict

The Lumia 610 comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. The biggest attraction for the device has to be its price. For an entry level Windows phone, the device can be a hit for prospective buyers. Apart from offering a great battery life, the device gives you almost a holistic Windows Phone experience packed in a sturdy build.

That said, the phone pinches you when it comes to storage and compatibility issues while finding apps that don't run. So app hungry users will be disappointed. The camera is a let down too and serves handy only for emergency purposes. A slight sluggishness is felt when launching apps. Though the handset makes its share of sacrifices, it does deliver a worthwhile user experience. 

As we pointed out earlier, there is no upgrade path to Windows Phone 8 for current Windows Phone devices like the Lumia 610, so you may want to wait until Windows Phone 8 devices hit the market (we strongly recommend that).

Nokia Lumia 610 in pictures

Price: Rs. 12,999

Pros

Value for money

Battery life

Cons

No microSD card slot

Poor camera

Ratings (Out of 5)

Design: 3

Display: 3

Performance: 3

Software: 3

Battery Life: 3.5

Value for Money: 3.5

Camera: 3

Overall: 3 

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As I played around with the iPhone 5 on Wednesday, I wondered what the late Steve Jobs would have thought about the latest twist on Apple's best-selling device.

It didn't take long to conclude Jobs would have been delighted with the iPhone 5's blend of beauty, utility and versatility.

Add in the more advanced technology and new features that went into this iPhone, and it's clear Apple has come up with another product that will compel hordes of people to line up outside its stores before its Sept. 21 release in the U.S., Japan, Britain, Germany, France and four other countries. The mad dash to buy the iPhone 5 will be repeated again on Sept. 28 when it goes on sale in 22 other countries. All the models of the iPhone 5 will sell for the same prices as its predecessor, starting at $199 with a two-year data and calling plan.

An important caveat about these impressions: I was only allotted about 15 minutes with the iPhone 5 at Wednesday's launch event, not enough time to discover if it might have some technological bugs. I am sure in the coming days other reviewers will have the opportunity to give the phone a more thorough vetting.

For many people, the iPhone is going to be a case of love at first touch. It's incredibly light and seems to be easier to hold. That means it might not be dropped as frequently as previous iPhones, reducing the chances of the glass on the display screen getting damaged.

One woman who also was testing out an iPhone 5 couldn't stop raving about how ideal the new design was for people with smaller hands. "All the other iPhones were made with men in mind because they could easily slip from your grasp if you didn't have big hands," she said. "Now we finally have an iPhone for women."

The new iPhone also is easy on the eyes, thanks to a larger screen and its "Retina Display," the high-definition technology that Apple introduced in previous models. Video and photos look even more lush on the iPhone 5's bigger and better screen.

At 4 inches diagonally, the iPhone 5's screen is a half-inch larger than previous generations and Apple make sure to take advantage of it. On the more prosaic side of things, the extra space means you can now see five rows of apps on the home screen instead of the previous limit of four rows. Open the calendar and you can see five days of events on the screen in horizontal mode, instead of just three.

The larger screen really comes to life, though, with what is perhaps its coolest feature - a tool called "Panorama" that automatically stitches together a series of pictures into a majestic vista. Panorama can be turned on simply by going into the iPhone 5's camera mode and then selecting it on an option menu. Once it's activated, an arrow guides you as you slowly pan the camera around whatever scenery you desire (if you move too fast, Panorama tells you to slow down and also advises you if you are moving the camera too high or low). Once you are done, you can look at the panoramic shot within seconds and zoom into whichever areas of the picture look most interesting.

Not surprisingly, watching video on the larger screen is also more pleasurable, although I still think the iPad and other tablet computers are a much better way to watch movies and TV shows on the go.

The device is also speedier because of a more powerful processing chip and upgraded wireless technology that accelerates Web surfing.

Apple also has equipped the iPhone 5 with a superior sound system, courtesy of the new headphones that the company says it spent three years developing. The headphones, called "EarPods," are a vast improvement on the ear buds that Apple has been giving away with its devices for more than a decade. The new headphones actually stay in your ears and make it seem as if the sound is playing inside your head. The EarPods come free with the iPhone 5, and they sounded as good as $100 headphones sold by a variety of other companies.

The new phone's operating system, iOS 6, also introduces another fun toy that makes it easy to share photos with your friends and family. Just select a picture, or even a series of photos, then email them to whomever you want. Assuming the recipients also has an Apple device running on iOS 6, they will get a notification that will send the designated photos to their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The recipients don't necessarily have to own an iPhone 5 because the new iOS can be downloaded for free beginning Sept. 19 on a wide range of older Apple devices, including the three previous versions of the iPhone and the last two versions of the iPad.

The new operating system also stands out for what's missing.

The pre-installed YouTube app that had been part of the iPhone since it came out in 2007 is gone (you can now download a new application made by YouTube owner Google Inc. in Apple's iTunes store). Even more noticeable is the absence of Google Maps. Apple has cast aside one of Google's most popular services for its own mapping system and, from what I saw, it looks like it's going to keep users happy. It offers three-dimensional renderings of many major cities, aerial views, and, best of all, turn-by-turn directions narrated by the iPhone's virtual assistant, Siri. Assuming the directions are accurate, I doubt Google Maps is going to be missed.

The new iOS also offers a feature called "Passbook," where digital coupons, airline tickets and gift cards can be conveniently stored in one location. This, too, is going to be popular. Yet, Passbook would be an even handier tool if the iPhone 5 boasted a near-field communication chip to enable wireless payments at the checkout stands equipped for the still-nascent technology. Some phones running Google's Android software are able to process payments because they have the NFC chip.

Siri is also supposed to be smarter and even more helpful in the iPhone 5, although I didn't get a chance to challenge her in Apple's noisy testing room.

Too bad because I would have liked to ask Siri what Steve Jobs might have thought of the iPhone 5. But, I am pretty sure I know the answer.

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A growing number of Americans are using mobile phones to keep up with or play a role in politics, but some say they are getting unwanted political messages, a study showed Tuesday.

The Pew Internet & American Life study showed some voters are using smartphones as real-time fact-checkers or to post political messages to social networks.

The report found 88 percent of registered voters own a cell phone of some kind as of September, and 27 percent of the phone owners used the devices to keep up with campaign news or political issues in general.

Nearly one in five have sent text messages related to the campaign to friends, family members, or others and five percent have signed up to receive text messages directly from a candidate or other group.

But five percent said that they have received unwanted election-related text messages that they did not sign up to receive.

Forty-eight percent of the voters surveyed said they have a smartphone, and within the group, 45 percent have used the device to read comments on a social networking site about a candidate or the campaign, and 35 percent have checked the truth of campaign statements, the study found.

Among smartphone-owning voters, 18 percent have used the device to post comments on social networks about a candidate or the campaign, the survey showed.

Mobile apps are playing a relatively minor role in the campaign, according to the Pew report. It found 45 percent of cell-owning registered voters use apps, but just eight percent of them use apps from a candidate, political party, or interest group.

The survey conducted September 20-23 interviewed a sample of 1,005 adults including 872 cell phone owners, 731 of whom are registered voters.

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The Kindle Fire HD 7" tablet is Amazon's follow-up to the successful $199 Kindle Fire (now reduced to $159 and rechristened the Kindle Fire SD). The HD Fire improves just the things we wished for as first gen Fire users, but it's not the power monster that the also $199 Nexus 7 is. That's fine with us because the tablets aim for two very different kinds of users. The Kindle Fire HD is for those who want a tablet primarily for easy content consumption; and that means Amazon's ever-popular content plus services like Netflix, HBO Go and Hulu Plus. In fact, you can even side-load the Android Nook app if you like! The Kindle Fire HD runs Android OS 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, though you'd barely guess from looking at Amazon's highly customized user interface with the big carousel of content and tidy bookshelves. That UI is largely unchanged from the first Fire. No geeks, there's no way to make this look like standard Android without hacking the tablet or side-loading alternate Android launcher apps. It has a very sharp IPS 1280 x 800 Gorilla Glass display that's very noticeably better than the 1024 x 600 Kindle Fire SD display. Movies look so much better! Text in books is extremely sharp and clear. Graphically rich magazines in page view mode actually have readable tiny text. The Fire HD has a new dual core TI OMAP 4460 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz, and the tablet feels more responsive, though that may in part be due to better software tuning. On Quadrant, it scored 2174, which was par for the course among last year's Android tablets, but falls way behind the mid to upper 4000's we see in Tegra 3 tablets and Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 used in 2012 Android smartphones. Still, that's a bit faster than the original Fire and it's more than adequate to power the apps and services on the Fire HD. High quality movies render fine without stalling (the dual band WiFi with MIMO certainly helps too), web pages render much more quickly and games run smoothly. The UI lags less than on the first generation Fire. Design and Ergonomics, Video and Audio In terms of looks, Amazon isn't going to turn out a design contest winner for $199. That said, this is a very nice looking tablet, though it still manages to look chunkier than it is (at 0.4", it's the same thickness as the Nexus 7 but appears thicker). The tapered sides look modern and attractive and we like the racing grille that traverses the soft touch back and showcases the excellent stereo speakers with Dolby audio. The bezel is wide and that makes the 13.9 ounce Kindle Fire HD look less modern and aggressive, but ergonomically it gets the job done by giving you a place to grip the unit when reading. The Fire HD has a micro HDMI port, Bluetooth 4.0 and a front video chat camera: all important additions as well as features the first Fire lacked. The micro HDMI output good quality audio and video in our tests with a Sony AV receiver, and we were able to watch Amazon Prime videos on the big screen using the tablet. The Fire HD has a micro USB port so you can charge the tablet and transfer content to the tablet (books, music, videos and personal files). You can also use Amazon's unlimited cloud storage service to transfer content to the tablet and stream anything you've bought from Amazon, obviating the need for more internal storage or an SD card (the HD Fire models lack SD card slots). Amazon includes a USB cable in the box but no charger. You can charge over USB, use your smartphone's charger or buy Amazon's pricy $20 Kindle Fire HD charger. While we understand that manufacturers omitted E-Ink reader chargers to bring the price down (E-Ink readers require charging only once a month on average and require fairly low amps to charge quickly), it's a little disappointing that Amazon left it out for this much more power hungry LCD based device. The front camera delivers surprisingly sharp and bright video when using the included Skype for video chat. It's one of the better mobile video chat cameras on the market, and the only thing that reduces quality is if you walk around while chatting (the camera has a hard time keeping up with quick background changes and sends out blocky video). The mic picked up our voice and sent clear audio to our chat partner. Incoming audio was likewise clear and reasonably loud. You can also use a wired or Bluetooth headset for chats. Amazon Kindle Fire HD Video Review

Audio We rarely devote a section to a tablet's speakers, but the Kindle Fire HD has remarkably good stereo speakers with Dolby audio. Not only are they a vast improvement over the meek original Fire speakers, they're full and rich sounding. While the first Fire wasn't loud enough to overcome the whirring of my exercise bike in an otherwise quiet room, the Fire HD manages just fine. That's important for a device that's designed to present both music and video. In fact, music is actually enjoyable through the speakers rather than sounding like the muted, hissy mess that we hear from most 7" tablets including the Nexus 7. For even better sound, plug in a decent set of stereo headphones or speakers. You can even use Bluetooth stereo speakers with the Fire HD. Performance and Horsepower The dual core TI OMAP 4460 CPU runs at 1.2GHz. That's the same CPU used in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and it was the launch platform for Ice Cream Sandwich at the end of 2011. The Fire HD has PowerVR SGX 540 graphics for decent though not cutting edge 3D performance. It handily outperforms the Nvidia Tegra 2's GPU, but can't touch the 12 core GeForce GPU in the Tegra 3. The Fire HD has a much more workable 1 gig of DDR2 RAM vs. the 512 megs on the first Fire. The tablet is available with either 16 or 32 gigs of flash storage (a high quality Samsung eMMC according to the iFixit teardown). Despite Jeff Bezos' hype, the Kindle Fire HD isn't going to set new speed records for Android tablets. Far from it. But it is more than fast enough to get the job done, from HD video playback to gaming. Web browsing speeds are as good as on devices with much faster CPUs, and games on the Amazon App Store played perfectly. This isn't a tablet for cutting edge geeks who crave the fastest silicon in production. It's here to get a job done, and it does that job just fine. Benchmarks   Quadrant GLBenchmark 2.1Egypt Offscreen AnTuTu Sunspider JavaScript Test Kindle Fire HD 2174 33 fps 6749 1787 (Silk), 1605 (Chrome) Kindle Fire SD (first gen) 1963 N/A 4665 2145 (Silk) Nexus 7 3638 64 fps 10,456 1720 Toshiba Excite 7.7 3996 61 fps 9559 2002 Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 3545 49 fps 7050 2003 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 2705 28 fps 4841 2288 Software Really, little has changed from the last gen Kindle Fire, but we'll note the new features here. The Fire HD now has access to X-Ray for movies, so you can get info about the movie and actors when watching an X-Ray compatible Amazon video. You can read a book while listening to it read aloud via text to speech and now with Audible companion books too. There's Whispersync to keep your place in books, movies and audiobooks. In fact, Whispersync can save your place in compatible games too via the new GameCircle that also handles social gaming. We're thrilled that the Fire HD has calendar and contacts applications that can sync to Google, and the email client (pretty much the standard Android email client) can pick up POP3/IMAP/Exchange/Yahoo/Gmail/AOL and other popular email sources. And for something controversial: the Fire HD models are ad sponsored. That means you'll see an ad when you wake up the device. If you swipe the double-ended unlock bar left to right, you'll get more info about that ad (a special offer, a trailer for an upcoming movie or TV show, even a free $5 to spend on the Amazon MP3 store). If you swipe right to left (grab the lock symbol and swipe), you'll go back to whatever screen you left off on. Amazon will make your Fire HD ad-free if you pay them $15. Yes, you can side-load apps that you've downloaded to your smartphone or tablet and transfer them to the Kindle Fire HD, but it takes some know-how (and rooting) of your other device to extract apps from it to transfer to the Kindle. You can also search the web for the apps you're interested in, and you may find them available for download from places other than the Google Play Store. Peruse the Amazon App Store from your computer's web browser: if you find key apps missing, the Fire might not be for you. The Kindle Fire HD is rootable, though the bootloader is securely locked. Root access opens up possibilities for installing the Google Play Store and enabling login in other side-loaded Google apps. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD vs. the Google Nexus 7 This decision might be easier than you think. These two tablets are designed with very different users in mind. It used to be that geeks on a tight budget who wanted a good quality general purpose 7" tablet had to buy and root a Nook Tablet or Kindle Fire. Thanks to the Nexus 7, that's no longer necessary. Being a Google pure experience device, the Nexus 7 not only has full access to the wide range of Google apps and services like Gmail, Maps and the Google Play Store, but it's easy to root and load custom ROMs. If that makes you grin madly, then the Nexus 7 is for you. If you could care less about Google's app store and don't know root from ROMs, but you do want to read eBooks, stream video in high quality and listen to music, then the Kindle Fire HD is for you. Both are roughly the same size and weight (the Nexus 7 is 1.9 ounces lighter), but each tablet has hardware strongpoints. For the Kindle Fire HD these include excellent stereo speakers with Dolby audio, an HDMI port and strong dual band WiFi. For the Nexus 7 it's the GPS (the Kindle Fire HD, like the non-3G/4G iPad can only use WiFi triangulation for location services, though there is a GPS chip that's not currently enabled in software) and a much faster CPU. For $199 you get 8 gigs of storage on the Nexus 7 ($249 for 16 gigs), while the Kindle Fire HD has 16 gigs for $199 and 32 gigs for $249. Both have access to MS Office compatible suites, should you wish to get work done. Both have PIM apps and an email client. The Fire HD doesn't have a dedicated Gmail cliient though, you have to use the email client to pick up Gmail. Amazon's customer support is stellar; it's the best in the business (OK, Apple's is also top notch). Google's support is very weak and Asus' is passable. Most importantly: if you want a fast, general purpose tablet with access to the Play Store and Google's other services and markets, get the Google Nexus 7 by Asus. If you want a turnkey device to consume books, magazines, movies from Amazon, Netflix and Hulu and music, get the Kindle Fire HD. Battery Life The Kindle Fire HD has a 4400 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's sealed inside. As mentioned, it doesn't come with a charger so you'll either use your smartphone charger or buy Amazon's $20 charger. The company claims 11 hours of use with mixed tasks that include web browsing, reading books, watching video and listening to music. In our tests, that's proved accurate and the Fire HD outlasts the admittedly robust Nexus 7 (to be fair, the Nexus 7 has a much faster CPU with twice the cores so it needs more power). Conclusion It's hard to not like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. It excels at its purpose as an affordable one-stop device for reading Amazon books and magazines, streaming video, playing music and providing you with a safe (albeit somewhat limited) app store. It's brain-dead easy to use, Amazon provides excellent support and their various stores have more than enough content to keep you entertained for the next 20 years. The IPS display is very sharp and has excellent viewing angles, the speakers are awesome for a 7" tablet and battery life is very good. It's everything that a purpose-built entertainment tablet should be. Just remember, it's not designed to be a general purpose Android tablet. Price: $199 for 16 gig model and $249 for 32 gig model Website: www.amazon.com

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Amazon has Kindle models for everyone: touch screen Kindles, keyboarded Kindles, LCD tablet Kindles and now the Kindle Paperwhite with a side-lit E-Ink display. The Paperwhite competes with the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight and it uses a somewhat similar technology to provide lighting to a display that's useless when you're trying to read in dim light or the dark. The Paperwhite is a 6" eBook reader that supports Amazon's AZW and MOBI formats as well as PDFs. It weighs less than 8 ounces and is very thin. The design is a minimalist soft-touch black slate that looks modern and feels good in hand, though the small bezel might not be comfy for those with large hands (it works fine with my fairly large, long-fingered hands). There are no hardware page turn buttons, and in fact the only control is the power button on the bottom edge. Typical of Kindles, there's no expansion card slot, and that means you'll have to make do with the 2 gigs of internal storage and Amazon's cloud storage services (you can download a book, magazine or newspaper from the cloud, delete it from the Kindle when done, and re-download it should you wish to read it again). E-Ink readers are returning to their single-purpose roots and there's no music player or Audible book support here. In fact, there's no speaker and no headphone jack (the Kindle Keyboard and the outgoing Kindle Touch had audio but not the non-touch Kindle 4 that now sells for $69). The "experimental" web browser and social sharing of what you're reading are the only non-reading functions. Like all recent Kindles, the Paperwhite comes with a dictionary and you can also look up words and passages in a book using the Wikipedia or Amazon's X-Ray service and you can translate words and passages with Bing. The Kindle Paperwhite starts at $119 (with ads) for the WiFi model. The WiFi+3G model is $179. If you don't want to see ads as your screensaver, you'll have to pay Amazon an additional $20 to turn them off. Display and Frontlight The name Paperwhite is fitting, because this is the whitest display we've seen yet on an E-Ink reader. That doesn't mean it's pure white; even printed book pages aren't perfectly white. But when lit it's much less gray looking than E-Ink readers without sidelights and it lacks the Nook GlowLight's sickly florescent blue-purple tinge. By default, the sidelights (also called frontlights) are turned on, and happily they don't destroy the Kindle Paperwhite's superb battery life (Amazon claims up to 2 months on a charge, and so far we'd estimate a month if you read an hour per day with the light turned on). In weak to moderate ambient lighting, the page appears uniformly lit even though the lights emanate from the bottom edge and a nano-imprinted light guide (diffuser) spreads the light across the virtual page. The lighting is more even than the Nook GlowLight, whose LEDs are at the top edge. In a very dimly lit to dark room, you can see the LEDs as a small strip of uneven lighting at the bottom edge of the Kindle's display (watch our video to see this). In a perfect world, this wouldn't happen, but technology is rarely perfect. Is it very distracting? Not to our staff or me. In fact, it's much less distracting than the Nook's uneven lighting or a booklight's uneven lighting and glare. The Kindle Paperwhite uses a capacitive touch screen that's rarely used on E-Ink eReaders (they use IR touch sensors) but is common on smartphones and tablets. It's responsive and quick, though honestly we've never had issues with the rest of the crowd that uses IR sensors. The capacitive touch layer doesn't degrade display contrast or clarity, nor does it make the text look "far away" under layers of glass. The panel's texture is ever so slightly rough and I love this because it feels more like a book's pages and it has more tactile feel than slick glass. Happily, the display has excellent contrast, even when the light is on. Yes, it has better contrast than the competing Nook with GlowLight that suffers a contrast loss compared to the Nook Touch And Kindle Touch. This is a sharper E-Ink display with 1024 x 768 resolution and a higher pixel density than the army of 6" 800 x 600 E-Ink readers on the market. That allows Amazon to offer some nice new serif fonts like Baskerville and Palatino without fear of fonts looking jaggy. Text looks better than on any other 6" E-Ink display currently on the market, with smoother and sharper fonts. The page refreshes every sixth turn by default, and the partial page refresh leaves more ghosting than the Nook Glowlight and Kindle Touch. This is more noticeable if you select something other than default Caecilia slab (semi-bold) font. You can set the page to refresh with every page turn if you don't mind the flash to black as the page turns or the small drop in battery life. I'd love to see Amazon improve the partial page refresh with a firmware update. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Video Review

The user interface is also improved, and we finally have a book cover view instead of the archaic list view (though list view is still available if you prefer it). The UI feels as modern as the Nook and Kobo Touch, and we thoroughly enjoyed using the Kindle Paperwhite. It also feels noticeably faster than the Kindle Touch, despite the greater demands of the more graphical UI. I'd still give the Nook Touch and GlowLight models the edge for intuitiveness, but the Paperwhite is pretty good. As with the Kindle Touch, all navigation is done on-screen (there's no home button or hardware page turn buttons). Tap on the large center to right side area to turn the page ahead, tap in the left margin to go back a page. Tap near the top to bring up all controls and settings. Pretty simple to master. The usual staples are here like X-Ray for books, highlights, notes, bookmark syncing across devices, social sharing and cloud syncing of content (including your personal content, not just Amazon books). The Paperwhite has 2 gigs of storage with 1.25 gigs available, so you may find that cloud storage handy if you run out of room (remember, there's no SD card slot). The Kindle has a landscape option, which is useful for PDFs whose text may be too small to comfortably read in portrait mode. There's no zooming for PDFs, but you can enlarge the font (which may disrupt the page layout). You can pan around the PDF by dragging on-screen with a finger, but it's a slow process and I'd choose an LCD-based device over a 6" E-Ink eReader for all but novels in PDF format. Bookstore and Shopping As always with Kindle products, you can either buy books using your computer's web browser and have them sent automatically to the Kindle or you can shop directly on the Kindle using WiFi or 3G. The store presentation is similar to other recent E-Ink Kindles, with a mix of book covers and text links. It's easy to search and buy content using the Kindle (the same is true of competing eReaders from Sony and B&N). Amazon still stands out for their absolutely immense selection of books and sometimes lower prices vs. B&N, though these two large US booksellers often have the same pricing, while the Sony Reader Store is a bit more expensive. Amazon allows book lending (if the publisher allows) with your Kindle-owning friends and Amazon Prime customers have access to a decent free lending library run by Amazon (you can check out one book at a time and hold onto it for as long as you like). The Kindle Paperwhite supports Amazon's AZW and Mobi formats plus PDF. Those of you who wish to shop at other ePUB bookstores are out of luck unless you're willing to use Calibre to strip DRM and convert books to a Kindle-friendly format (it's not hard, but breaking DRM is against US law). Public libraries now offer Mobi and ePUB formats, but not all libraries have gotten up to speed on Mobi offerings yet. Google's large selection of free public domain works is in ePub format, but you can covert those using Calibre (there's no DRM on public domain works so there's no worry over legal issues). Conclusion Several reviewers have said that the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is the best E-Ink reader on the market and I agree, with a few caveats. Not everyone wants the same things: some of you may prefer ePub for its greater openness (you can buy books from more sources), others of you may want a card slot or audio capabilities. If you're happy with Amazon's huge selection of well-priced books or you use Calibre to convert ePub eBooks to Mobi format for use on the Kindle, then this is the best eReader on the market. I personally find that 1.25 gigs of storage is more than adequate to carry a vast library of books with me, so I don't miss the card slot. I prefer the thin and modern Paperwhite design to the bulky Nook Touch and Nook GlowLight design. But those of you with large hands and a hankering for hardware page turn buttons will disagree. The display and frontlighting are the best on the market, and that's arguably the most important feature on a single purpose digital book reader. Battery life is likewise excellent, and those of you who've been using an LCD based tablet or smartphone will find the month or more of battery life liberating. Price: $119 for WiFi version, $179 for WiFi + 3G version  Website: www.amazon.com

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Off late, HTC has been quite aggressive in getting its One and Desire line-up in India. The latest smartphone to join the league is HTC Desire VC. This is the first dual-SIM smartphone from HTC that runs on Android 4.0 and supports both GSM and CDMA functionality. In terms of specs, this device is very similar to the HTC One V but whether or not it performs at par or better than the One V is something we shall find out in our review.

Hardware/ Looks

The HTC Desire VC is a good-looking smartphone. At 9.5mm, it is pretty slim and sleek and lighter too weighing just 119 grams. The outer body seems to be made of plastic, however it does not look cheap and feels rather sturdy. There is a rubberised texture on the back panel, which allows for a comfortable grip.

Most of the front screen is taken by the 4-inch touch screen, which is large enough to read emails, browse the net and even watch videos. The bottom houses three capacitive standard Android buttons for Back, Home and Recent. The left panel houses the Micro-USB/charging port while the right has the volume rocker keys.

The back panel features a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and the speaker along with the Beats Audio branding. The top of the device has the standard 3.5mm headphones jack and the power/wake button while the bottom has the microphone.

Considering that it is a high-end dual-SIM smartphone, we were expecting its SIMs to support hot swap but that is not the case here.

HTC Desire VC packs in 1 GHz Cortex-A5 processor and 512 MB of RAM and there is a 1650 mAh Li-Ion battery on board.

Display

The 4-inch capacitive touch screen has a 480x800 pixels resolution translating into pixel density of 233 ppi. Though this is slightly less than 252ppi of the HTC One V, but the images and text look good on this smartphone. Viewing angles are also good and so is visibility under the sun. The screen of HTC Desire VC is reflective.

On the downside, the glass used is not Gorilla glass so one needs to be a bit careful with it so as not to accidentally scratch it.

Camera

The HTC Desire VC packs in a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash. In terms of functionality, the camera of features touch-to-autofocus and a handful of scene modes and settings to make photography easy and fun. These options are available for still photography as well as for video recording.

The camera on this smartphone is fast, even while focusing. However, the quality of the images is at most decent in adequate lighting conditions and quite dull while shooting pictures indoors. There is no front camera on this smartphone for video calling.

Video recording also doesn't perform exceptionally and the maximum resolution that one can get is 800X480. The quality of videos too was sub-par. There is no dedicated camera button on this smartphone.

Software/ Interface

HTC Desire VC runs on Ice Cream Sandwich and has a layer of HTC's own Sense 4.0 UI. As HTC comes with Android 4.0.3, on-board it offers features such as Task Switcher or the Resizable Widgets, which come in pretty handy.

HTC Sense 4.0 is a nice addition and helps in enhancing the performance of this smartphone. This new version looks akin to HTC Sense 3.6 but the newer version is lighter. Another addition in HTC Sense 4.0 is that it lets you resize widgets.

There are five customisable home screens to show app shortcuts and widgets. Users can even view personalised shortcuts on the HTC Lock-screen.

The keyboard on this smartphone is responsive and quite comfortable to use in both portrait and landscape modes. There was enough room to type accurately even while using the keyboard on portrait mode and the accuracy too is decent.

In terms of pre-loaded apps, HTC Desire VC packs in 7digital, car, friend Stream, flashlight, HTC Hub, Polaris Office, SoundHound, Teeter, TuneIn Radio and Wi-Fi Hotspot.

7digital is a Music app, which acts both as a player and MP3 music store where one can listen and buy music. The HTC Car app launches automatically whenever you connect the smartphone to HTC Car Kit and acts like an in-dash unit.

Teeter is an interesting puzzle game in which the objective is to get the ball from the start of a maze to the target hole. To make it more challenging, there are a few holes in the path that must be avoided.

Performance/ Battery Life

The HTC Desire VC runs on a single core 1GHz cortex A5 Qualcomm processor, with only 512MB of RAM, which is a bit underwhelming as most of the other smartphones at this price point such as Sony Xperia U, Motorola Atrix 2 and Sony Xperia P are offering a dual-core processor.

When it came to actual usage, we find that in the normal day usage, browsing the Internet through this smartphone is a pleasurable experience and the size of the screen really helps in that. The pages loaded quite quickly and scrolling was convenient. However, there can be a few jerks while trying to multitask on the smartphone.

HTC Desire VC offers ample storage. There is 4GB of internal memory, which can be extended up to 32 GB through a microSD card. Also, the company has tied up with Dropbox and is offering 25 GB of cloud space for two years.

Being a dual-SIM smartphone, users can run 3G on the GSM SIM while the CDMA one can support EVDO (Evolution Data Optimised).

To help users manage between the two SIMs, HTC has a dual-SIM Manager settings option that can help users personalise their calling experience. The call quality on both the CDMA and GSM is decent.

Integrated with Beats Audio, users will expect enhanced sound quality from the HTC Desire VC. The audio output with the bundled headphones is decent but not so great on the loudspeakers.

What's more disappointing was the video playback on the smartphone. The stock video player could not even playback an MP4 file. Given the screen and the resolution, there was so much more that HTC could have done with respect to the video playback capabilities.

Considering that HTC Desire VC is a dual-SIM, dual-active smartphone the 1650 mAh battery has a stiff job on its hands. The battery just about manages to scrape through a full day with a single charge, which is decent by any standard.

Playing games on this smartphone is a pleasurable experience. There were no lags in playing common games such as Temple Run Brave and Teeter.

Verdict

The HTC Desire VC is an interesting dual-SIM smartphone as there aren't too many smartphones that offer a combination of CDMA and GSM. The dual-SIM market has so far been dominated by offerings from the so-called "lesser" manufacturers, so it is good to see a premium dual-SIM offering.

The things that go in favour of this smartphone are its good looks and that it sports a display. On the performance front despite having a single-core processor, this smartphone manages to do an ok job. The Android 4.0.3 along with Sense 4.0 is a great combination.

However, the camera on-board is average and there is no front camera on board. Even the video playback leaves a lot to be desired.

Considering that they aren't too many interesting CDMA + GSM smartphone, HTC Desire VC can be an interesting choice but we do feel that given the specs and the performance, this smartphone from HTC's stable is slightly overpriced smartphone.

HTC Desire VC in pictures
Price: Rs. 21,999
Pros

• Appealing design and comfortable to hold
• Good display

Cons

• Camera performance

Ratings (Out of 5)

• Design: 4
• Display: 3.5
• Performance: 3.5
• Software: 4
• Battery Life: 3.5
• Value for Money: 2.5
• Camera: 2.5
• Overall: 3.5

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