Category: Reviews

Reviews on smartphones, gadgets and other useful applications. The reviews and summarised by splitting the features into pros and cons.

Asus Zenfone Max 2016 Review- Good overall performer
Asus has launched upgraded version of its previous model Zenfone Max. The new Zenfone Max 2016 has retained all the good features of its predecessor and comes with additional new features at the same price. Here is Asus Zenfone 2016 model review with pros and cons.

One of the key attraction of Zenfone Max is its massive 5000 mAh battery. It delivers what it was expected to. It has great standby time. With my regular usage which consist of playing few games, usage of WiFi and mobile data,dual sim and few calls it easily lasted for more than 2 days. It also functions as power bank. You can use Zenfone Max as powerbank to charge other devices using the OTG cable provided in the box. Only concern in this section is charging duration. Out of thebox, device do not come with fast charger. Hence it takes close to 5 hours to charge the battery fully.

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New Asus Zenfone Max Frequently asked question and useful tips and tricks

The new Asus Zenfone Max 2016 comes with 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC with 32GB of internal storage and support for microSD card. You can choose between 2GB RAM or 3GB RAM variant. My review unit has 2GB of RAM. In my usage I have not faced any lag on my day to day activities. I was able to play games such as Asphalt 8, Dead trigger etc without any issue. With extended gaming, device became little warm. The max temperature it touched is around 39 degrees.

The new Asus Zenfone Max 2016 variant, house 5.5 inch 720 IPS HD screen. The viewing angles, colours accuracy, sunlight legibility are decent. It would have been great if it had a full HD panel and bezels are little narrow. The signal reception and call quality are excellant. When it comes to noise cancellation, it did perform as expected.

New Asus Zenfone Max 2016 sports 13MP rear primary camera with laser auto focus, dual flash and PDAF. In good lit conditions, it took good images. The low light performance is decent for the price segment. The wide angle 5MP front facing camera does take good selfies.

New Asus Zenfone Max Review summary: The Zenfone Max is a worthy upgrade over its predecessor. With new more powerful SoC, great battery life, Decent camera and bigger storage capacity, it fulfills most of the requirements of a smartphone buyers for the price of Rs.9999. However, there are few cons of Zenfone Max as well. This includes, longer charging time, large bezel size and lack of fingerprint scanner.

Advantages and Disadvantages of new Asus Zenfone Max

Pros of Zenfone Max 2016
- Excellent battery life.
- Ability to use the device as power bank to charge other devices.
- Good performance.
- Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.
- Decent camera performance.
- Good price to performance ratio.
Cons of Zenfone Max 2016
- Screen resolution could have been better.
- Longer charging hours.
- No fingerprint scanner.
May 30, 2016
Oppo F1 Plus Pros and Cons Review
Oppo F1 Plus is a dual sim Android camera centric smartphone. It is also billed as “Selfie Expert”. The key features of the device are 5.5 inch screen, 16MP front facing camera, Fingerprint scanner and 4GB RAM.

Oppo F1 Plus is powered by 2.0GHz 64 bit MediaTek MT6755 (Helio P10) SoC with 4GB of RAM and Mali-T860MP2 GPU. It comes with 64GB of internal storage. As it has hybrid sim slot, you can use either 2 nano sim cards or 1 nano sim card with microSD card(Upto 128GB). The device runs on ColorOS 3.0 which is built on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop. The day to day performance was decent. There was no lag or shutter observed during out testing.

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Oppo F1 Plus Tips and Tricks with FAQ

Oppo F1 Plus sports 5.5 inch 16 million colour AMOLED display screen with Full HD resolution and pixel density of 401ppi. It also comes with Gorilla Glass 4 screen with round edges. The colors are bright and well saturated. The text and images looks sharp and crisp. The sunlight legibility also decent.

Oppo F1 Plus houses 13MP f/2.2 unit with PDAF and LED flash in the back and 16MP fixed-focus f/2.0 unit in the front. There is no OIS support. The camera performance on well lit condition came out really good. In low light, the noise creeps in. The 16MP selfie camera does take nice selfies.

Connectivity features of Oppo F1 Plus includes 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth V4.0, microUSB v2.0 port and an A-GPS unit. The device has 2850mAh battery with VOOC Flash Charge technology. VOOC charges smartphone in just around 40 minutes. Good thing is inspite of fast charging, the unit remains cool. The battery life is good. It last easily more than a day.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Oppo F1 Plus

Pros of Oppo F1 Plus
- Good Build quality.
- Vibrant Display screen with good sunlight legibility.
- Good battery life.
- Decent camera performance.
- Fast charging.
Cons of Oppo F1 Plus
- No Wi-Fi ac.
- Hybrid sim slot
- Average low light camera performance.
- No FM and NFC.
April 18, 2016
Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 Pros and Cons Review
Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 is the latest smartphone which is launched in India recently. It has premium build and upgraded specifications compared to its predecessor. Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 price in India is Rs.32,500.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 which is launched in India is a true dual sim smartphone. In this device you can use 2 sim cards along with microSD card. Which is a welcome upgrade from its predeccessor as it was having a hybrid sim card slot.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 sports 5.5 inch Super AMOLED screen with resolution of 1920×1080 pixels and 401 ppi pixel density. The device comes with different colour modes such as Adaptive display, AMOLED cinema, AMOLED photo vivid etc. Galaxy A7 display delivers vibrant colours, great viewing angles and excellent sunlight legibility. Another feature of display is its thin borders which gives it an edge to edge look.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 has 13MP primary camera with optical image stabilisation and LED flash. Camera performance on outdoor and in an artifical lighting conditions came out well. However, in low light conditions, it takes couple of seconds to focus. The video recording on the device is also very good. However, it record videos at max resolution of full HD and it cannot record 4K videos. The 5MP front facing camera does decent job but considering the price, it could have been better.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 is powered by 64 bit 1.6GHz Octa Core Exynos 7580 Soc with 3GB of RAM and Mali T20 GPU. This is the same SoC used in Galaxy J7. In regular day to day performance, it does perform decently. However, high end gaming experience is just average. The connectivity features of the device are 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.1 and GPS. The fingerprint scanner on the device is mediocre.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 comes with non-removable 3,300mAh battery. The battery lasts comfortably for more than a day with moderate usage such as couple of hours of phone calls, some casual gaming and internet browsing.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Samsung Galaxy A7 2016

Pros of Galaxy A7 2016
- Premium design and build quality.
- Excellant battery life.
- Vibrant Display screen.
- Good primary camera performance.
Cons of Galaxy A7 2016
- No physical LED notification light.
- No Gyroscope sensor: Gyroscope sensor is required to use the device with VR headset and watch 360 degree videos.
- Mediocre SoC.
- Average Fingerprint scanner accuracy.
- Average GPS navigation performance.
Samsung Galaxy A7 2016 Specification
- 64 bit 1.6GHz Octa Core Exynos 7580 Soc with 3GB of RAM.
- 16GB of internal storage and support for microSD card.
- 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.1 and GPS.
- Fingerprint scanner.
- 13MP primary camera with optical image stabilisation.
- 5MP front facing camera.
- non-removable 3,300mAh battery.
March 29, 2016
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Cons And Pros Review
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is the latest entrant to the budget Android smartphone. Fingerprint scanner, premium design and build quality and powerful internals at affordable price is the key advantages of this new Redmi Note 3. It is available in 2 variants. One is 2GB of RAM with 16GB of internal storage and another one is 3GB RAM with 32GB of internal storage. Here is the quick review along Redmi Note 3 Cons and pros.

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Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 has good all metal design which provides good premium feel to the device. It has 5.5 inch IPS full HD display with narrow bezels. The screen is crisp and vibrant. It offers good color reproduction and features Xiaomi’s Sunlight Display hardware.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is powered by 64 bit Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 650 SoC. It is a hexacore SOC which has 2 Cortex-A72 cores running at 1.8GHz and four Coretx-A53s which runs at 1.4GHz. It has new Adreno 510 for better graphic rendering. The performance on the device is good. In our regular usage, we have not faced any lagging issue. As far as gaming is concerned, it was able to play most of the high end games like Modern Combat 5, Asphalt 8 etc. However, there is minor lag observed while playing Nova 3 game.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 comes with 16-megapixel sensor and a wide f/2.0 aperture. The landscape and macro shots on outdoor conditions came out really well. It captures good details and color accuracy too was good. However, in low light conditions, camera struggles a bit. Video quality on rear is good. But as it lacks stabilization features, captured videos came out shaky. The front facing camera performance in good lighting condition is good.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 has non-removable 4050mAh battery. It provides good battery life. With mobile data enabled all the time, it manages to deliver more than a day of usage. It comes with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge(version 1.0) feature. The connectivity features of the device are Category 7 LTE for Band 3, 5, 40 and 41 along with VoLTE support, dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooh 4.1, USB OTG, FM radio, Miracast, GLONASS, and BeiDou. It also has IR Blaster. Redmi Note 3 comes with hybrid dual sim slot.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Xiaomi Redmi Note 3

Here are summary of review with Redmi Note 3 cons and pros.

Pros of Redmi Note 3
- Good design and build quality.
- Good performance.
- Camera performance in outdoor condition is excellant.
- Good battery life.
- Decent display screen.
Cons of Redmi Note 3
- No Android 6.0 out of the box.
- No NFC.
- No optical/ Software stabilization which results in blurry images if there is slight shake while capturing images.
- Hybrid slim slot: You cannot use microSD card and 2nd sim simultaneously. Also expandable storage is limited to 32GB.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 FAQ, Tips And Trick

Here are the some of the frequently asked questions about redmi Note 3.

1.What type of sim card it supports?

Redmi Note 3 is dual sim Android smartphone. First sim card slot is for micro SIM. The second one is hybrid sim slot. That means, you can either use nano sim card or microSD card.

2. Does it has Corning Gorilla Glass protection?

Xiaomi has not mentioned anything about screen protection.

3. Does it support CDMA sim card in India?

I have not tested. However, one of my friend on facebook said that, it support CDMA. Below is the screenshot he shared.

4. Does Redmi Note 3 support google launcher?

Yes. It does support

5. Does it has notification LED?

No.

6. Is this device support fast charging?

The device comes with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge(version 1.0). However, it is bit dated technology now. The charging time is around 2 to 2 and half hours.

7. How to take screenshot on Redmi Note 3?

The easiest way to take screenshot is through quick setting menu-> Screenshot icon. Another way is through volume down and power button.

8. Does it has FM radio?

Yes. It has FM radio.

9. Does Redmi Note 3 supports USB OTG?

Yes. It has built in file explorer. Hence out of the box it support USB OTG.
March 22, 2016
Gionee S6 Cons And Pros Review
Gionee recently launched S6 smartphone in India with a price tag of Rs.19,999. Key features of the device are 5.5 inch HD AMOLED screen, full metal unibody design and support for VoLTE.

Gionee S6 has aesthetically pleasing design with the unibody aluminium build. With rounde edge it feels comfortable to hold. The gold variant of the smartphone looks more attractive. Talking about the downside, it very much matches the design and build quality as that of much cheaper phones such as LeEco Le 1s.

Gionee S6 sports 5.5 inch 720 HD AMOLED display with pixel density of around 267 ppi. It has good screen to body ratio of 73.6%. The screen has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The screen is sharp and vibrant. The viewing angles are also great. Colours look little oversaturated and unfortunately, there is no option to tweak the colours for more natural look. For the price of around 20k, only 720p resolution for 5.5 inch display is a disappointment.

Gionee S6 is powered by 1.3GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 Mediatek MT6753 processor coupled with 3GB of RAM. It has 32GB of internal storage along with support for microSD card upto 128GB. It is a dual sim smartphone. It supports Dual-SIM 4G with VoLTE. However, if you want to use microSD card, then you cannot use 2nd sim as it has hybrid slim slot. Gionee S6 runs on Amigo 3.1 skin on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop. The performance of the device is good. Multi tasking and transition effects are lag free as there’s around 1.5GB of free RAM available all the time. However, at times for launching the apps, it took some time. Gaming performance is decent. It managed to play most of the games without any issues. The device gets bit warm during extending gaming or video playback. The call quality was excellant and signal reception was decent. Addition of VoLTE is a welcome move which makes the device more future proof.

Connectivitry features of Gionee S6 are 4G LTE on Band40 as well as VoLTE, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, USB OTG, FM radio and Wi-Fi Direct. The device houses non user removable 3150mAh battery. In regular days of usage, it lasted for more than a complete day. The device comes with 10W charger which manages to charge the battery pretty quickly. In 30 minutes it was able to charge 30 percent from zero.

Gionee S6 house 13MP primary camera with LED flash and 5MP front facing camera. The primary camera captures images with good details in daylight. Landscapes and macro are sharp and well detailed. The camera auto focus works nicely. It was able to focus the object quickly. The low light performance on the camera is disappointing considering the price segment it belongs to. The front facing camera able to take decent selfies.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Gionee S6

Pros of Gionee S6
- Full metal unibody design.
- VoLTE support.
- Good battery life.
- Decent performance.
- Good camera performance in well lit conditions.
Cons of Gionee S6
- Low resolution screen for 5.5 inch display.
- No fingerprint scanner or NFC.
- Average camera performance in low light condition.
- Colors looks bit oversaturated.
- Bit overpriced.
February 28, 2016