[ Sajith M ]

Motorola seemed to have lost the Razr sharp touch of creating magic with phones. Over the last few years Razr and Ming were perhaps the only decent phones that came out of the Moto stable and just we had given up all hopes, Motorola has unveiled the Evoke.

Some pictures:

Looks like a brilliant product. Hope this helps the company come out of the mess that it finds itself in.

Posted under: Technology , Gadgets
Tagged with: Evoke, Motorola

Finally Apple unveiled its phone – iPhone at MacWorld Expo. Here is the official info.

Pictures shamelessly copied from apple site:

Pictures from MacWorld 2007 (thanks to kottke.org)

That’s it for now. Waiting for the thing to hit the stores (in India)

Update 1: This won’t be my next phone because:
– No 3G
– No syncing using WiFi
– Can’t install new software on this (this is a majr disappointment)

Posted under: Technology , Gadgets
Tagged with: Apple, iPhone, MacWorld, MacWorld Expo, Phone

I decided to get myself a New Year gift and picked up a new Moto Ming (Motorola A1200). The listed Maximum retail price is Rs. 18370, while I picked it up for Rs 16,500 (INR). So here is my first attempt at a phone review.

In the Box
The box includes the phone, three styluses, travel charger, USB data cable, 512MB Transflash (T-Flash, micro-SD) card with a mini-SD adapter, stereo headset and the manual.

Design and Construction
If you have used A780 (as I have), you should not have any trouble getting used to the A1200. The unit feels solid, well built but not too heavy or bulky (A780 qualifies as a bit bulky). I liked the black matte look, kind of looks cool and has a feel similar to the PEBL. The front cover is hard translucent plastic, but allows clear screen display (better than expected). On the negative side, the flip is a bit tough to open (or am not yet used to it). Also the memory slot is under the battery, which means changing memory cards is a pain.

Display
Bright and clear LCD display with a resolution of 240×320. Good enough for most purposes. The text is clear and sharp, perfectly readable even when you set the text size to small.

Input
Handwriting input is pretty nice, but pretty much similar to A780. It still gets confused between l (small L) and i (small I), but then maybe it’s just my handwriting… The on-screen keyboard is quite usable; you can type with the stylus but don’t try typing with your fingers. Support for HID profile is missing, so don’t think of hooking up a keyboard to your phone.

Memory
8MB internal memory is a sad joke. Free 512MB micro-SD compensates for it though.

Built in Programs
Frankly, I don’t care as you can always download the ones you like, or write your own. Anyways, the supplied programs are fine – acceptable sort of thing.

Camera
Takes decent pictures if the lighting is good. Has a macro mode so take very close, close-ups. Here are some pictures taken with the camera to give you a hang of the quality.

A phone is for making calls
Good audio quality. Signal reception is pretty good too.

Conclusion
A nice phone for a decent price tag. If you are looking for a new phone, you should consider A1200 :-)

Posted under: Technology , Gadgets
Tagged with: Moto Ming, Motorola A1200, Phone, review

DailyTech reports

The new NVIDIA graphics architecture will be fully compatible with Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX 10 API with support for shader model 4.0, and represents the company’s 8th generation GPU in the GeForce family.

NVIDIA has code-named G80 based products as the GeForce 8800 series. While the 7900 and 7800 series launched with GT and GTX suffixes, G80 will do away with the GT suffix. Instead, NVIDIA has revived the GTS suffix for its second fastest graphics product—a suffix that hasn’t been used since the GeForce 2 days.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTX will be the flagship product. The core clock will be factory clocked at 575 MHz. All GeForce 8800GTX cards will be equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 memory, to be clocked at 900 MHz. The GeForce 8800GTX will also have a 384-bit memory interface and deliver 86GB/second of memory bandwidth. GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards are equipped with 128 unified shaders clocked at 1350 MHz. The theoretical texture fill-rate is around 38.4 billion pixels per second.

Slotted right below the GeForce 8800GTX is the slightly cut-down GeForce 8800GTS. These graphics cards will have a G80 GPU clocked at a slower 500 MHz. The memory configuration for GeForce 8800GTS cards slightly differ from the GeForce 8800GTX. GeForce 8800GTS cards will be equipped with 640MB of GDDR3 graphics memory clocked at 900 MHz. The memory interface is reduced to 320-bit and overall memory bandwidth is 64GB/second. There will be fewer unified shaders with GeForce 8800GTS graphics cards. 96 unified shaders clocked at 1200 MHz are available on GeForce 8800GTS graphics cards.

Additionally GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS products are HDCP compliant with support for dual dual-link DVI, VIVO and HDTV outputs. All cards will have dual-slot coolers too. Expect GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS products to launch the second week of November 2006.

From another DailyTech report

The marketing material included with the card claims NVIDIA requires at least a 450W power supply for a single GeForce 8800GTX, and 400W for the 8800GTS. GeForce 8800 cards in SLI mode will likely carry a power supply “recommendation” of 800W.

While I am glad to see DirectX 10 compliant graphics card, the power requirement leaves me a bit disappointed.

Posted under: Technology , Gadgets
Tagged with: DirectX 10, GeForce 8800GTS, GeForce 8800GTX, NVIDIA

Zalman is not a company that is known for its audio products, and as such I was not sure what to expect when I ordered the Zalman ZM-RS6F (also known as Zalman Theatre 6) headphone on Indiatimes shopping. But after having put it to use for almost 6 hours now, I am a happy user…

I had ordered mine on Indiatimes shopping for Rs 2850 (INR), but you can probably get it cheaper from a real (and not online) store. But even at Rs 2850, I think its worth it.

Comes in a package that is very different from what I have seen for any headphone. A neat hemisphere with a transparent dome holding the headphone inside, it sure looks cool…

The package comes with a really long (3 meters long) cable and that is more than sufficient for most people. Owing to the 5.1 surround sound capabilities, it has 3 headphone plugs.

The earpieces are large leather-ish pads wrapped over foam-rubber. They nicely cover your ears when you put them on and insulate you from external noise pretty well.

The ear pieces have a strange but interesting shape, but thats due to functional reasons I believe. Each of them has 3 speakers inside for front, surround and rear.

On a side note, even though the package claims to be 5.1 equivalent (what exactly does the equivalent mean, I don’t know), it actually a 5.0 system with the sub-woofer missing – if you play something only on the sub-woofer channel and keep others mute, you won’t hear a thing. However, the absence of a sub-woofer does not prevent it from reproducing most low frequency sounds in a satisfactory manner.

The padding is good, and keeps you pretty comfortable. Had it on for more than 3 hours and it was very comfortable, could have possibly had it on for another 2-3 hours.

The sound quality was great for movies, you actually get the feeling of actually being immersed in the scene. Really commendable performance. Unfortunately if you decide that you want to listen to some stereo music after the movie, you are in for disappointment – the performance in this field is barely acceptable.

Good design, long cord, comfortable ear pieces and excellent surround sound are the positive factors in favor of this headphone, while I think the stereo audio leaves a lot to be desired (at this price point) and an inline volume control would have been nice. Overall a good quality headphone, well worth the money.

Posted under: Technology , Gadgets
Tagged with: audio, headphone, surround sound, Zalman, Zalman Theatre 6, Zalman ZM-RS6F