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Tech

Review: Coolpad’s Dazen X7

The new Chinese smartphone is a good buy at its price, but needs to sort out a few software niggles.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

We recently reviewed the Coolpad Dazen 1, which is the company’s sub Rs 7k smartphone, just a few days back and now we take a look at Coolpad’s flagship device, the Dazen X7. The Dazen X7, priced a little under Rs 18,000, comes as a direct competitor to the popular Xiaomi Mi4 and Lenovo Vibe X2. This price segment is already full of a lot of good options, so how good is the Dazen X7?

The looks. The Dazen X7 has a glass back and front and metallic sides. The front has a noticeable metal-clad earspeaker grille above the 5.2-inch AMOLED, sensors and an 8 Mp front-facing camera. At the bottom, you have the microUSB port with loudspeaker on the one side and primary mic on the other. The top houses the 3.5mm headset jack and secondary mic. The right side consists of two SIM card slots (nano or microSD card and micro SIM card slot as well the Power/Lock key towards the top; while the left side has the volume rockers, both keys are just a little sharp for my liking, but have decent tactile feedback.

The back has a 13 MP camera with a protruding broad metal cover that might get a bit scratched a bit with usage; then there’s the Coolpad logo near the bottom. The phone is light to hold but it is a bit slippery and sides and glass back mean it may not be very comfortable to hold.

Display. The Coolpad Dazen X7 features a 5.2-inch full HD (1920 x 1200) AMOLED. There are not many companies who use AMOLED and especially not at this price range. The display is pretty nice, actually. While it doesn’t have vibrant colours like a high-end Samsung device would, colours are still quite sharp and bright. It is noticeably less mellow than an LCD, has good viewing angles, full HD videos appear well on it and it does a decent job under sunlight.

Camera. The company has been quite vocal about the camera experience and how well they have tweaked its software for better shots. Here are a few sample images.

As you can see, the phone can take pretty detailed photos. While I wasn’t too impressed with how laggy the camera app can be at times, it does have a lot of options including a Pro mode, which gives you options to choose from various ISO, exposure settings to select from. In daylight, the app performed okay, but when shooting in low-light, it really struggled to keep up. It may struggle with exposure and take a really long time capture shots. To say the camera is among the best would be wrong, but it isn’t bad; it just needs some software tweaking to make it fly in low-light conditions.

Dazen X7Sound. Audio quality fared well. The bottom-facing speaker does a decent job for videos and games, but thanks to its placement, you may shut them with your hand while holding the phone in landscape. You don’t get earphones bundled with the phone.

Battery. Powered by a non-removable 2,700 mAh battery unit, the phone’s battery life seemed just on par with most phones. The company claims they have done some hardware-software optimisation to give 33 per cent extra juice from the phone. It lasted me around 18 hours when used moderately, but went below 14 hours when used heavily. Putting a high-quality all black wallpaper helps a bit considering this is an AMOLED.

Software and performance. The device runs on Android 4.4.2 with CoolUI 6 on top. It’s equipped with a MediaTek 6595 SoC (1.7 GHz octa-core processor, PowerVR Series6 GPU) as well as 2 GB of RAM.

The phone handles most tasks quite well. Going in and out of apps doesn’t lag, videos play without stuttering and scrolling is good. Having said that, at times Settings and the pre-loaded Cool Store (still don’t know why have they bundled it) struggle to provide smooth performance, but it is not so frequent. The phone does heat considerable once you play games for about 20 minutes, or simply put it on charge and the phone’s back heats up in matter of few minutes.

The whole OS is pretty much identical to what we have on the Dazen 1, except for the multi-window feature. If enabled, you get a small arrow on your Homescreen. In pressing, it gives you a list of apps that you can open – two at times – and you can edit this list. I found every app I installed could be put into multi-window. It can be a handy feature for some for sure, but I didn’t find much utility for it. Having said that, it does work fairly well and there wasn’t any performance issues with multi-window switched on under Settings.

You get about 10 GB of available storage space. There are four onscreen keys – Back, Home, Recent apps key, and one key to make the navigation bar disappear. In order to make the navigation bar reappear, you have to swipe up from the bottom of the screen. The phone still runs on dated Android KitKat and the company has said its Lollipop upgrade should be out soon. This is one obvious shortcoming of the phone as of now, had it been updated to Android 5.1 (or even 5.0), it would have given this newcomer a significant lead over quite a few players.

All in all, the Dazen X7 seems like a capable smartphone. It has a great screen, average battery life, good camera and fine design. While the software side could certainly be improved, the hardware department if the phone is decent enough at about Rs 18,000.

(Pictures courtesy Manik Kakra)

Categories
Film

Review: Jurassic World

A complete edge of the seat thriller, this film will keep you engaged till the end if you suspend disbelief.
by Ravi Shet

Almost 14 years after the release of Jurassic Park 3, director Colin Trevorrow carries the legacy of our beloved dino series on his shoulders in the fourth installment of the Jurassic Park film franchise.

The films starts with a baby dinosaur trying to come out of an egg. Jurassic World is now a fully functional dinosaur theme park owned by Masrani (Irrfan Khan) and managed by Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). As a business person, Masrani feels that innovation is required to attract more visitors to his park; hence, along with Dr. Henry Wu (Wong) they furtively play with the genes of the dinosaurs to create a new genetically-modified mega dinosaur – the terrifying Indominus Rex. The Rex is monitored by creepy military consultant Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio).

Gray and Zach Mitchell are brothers who have come to visit their aunt Claire and also the theme park under the supervision of Claire’s assistant Zara. Meanwhile, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), works at Jurassic World as a Velociraptor expert and trainer. He has trained four Velociraptors – Blue, Charlie, Delta and Echo. When his ex-girlfriend Claire asks him to train the Indominus Rex, he does so reluctantly.

 

Owen and Claire discover that Indominus Rex has escaped from the enclosure, while Gray and Zach leave Zara and start exploring on their own. By this time, the audience has guessed the graph of the story – Indominus Rex creates chaos around the park while Owen and Claire try to rescue the boys.

The pace of the movie is well maintained and keeps the audiences engaged. The special effects and background score of the film are stunning. Rexy, the female dinosaur from the first Jurassic Park is seen in the end moments of the film, where she fights Indominus Rex. The film’s last scene shows Rexy climbing on top of a helipad and inspecting the havoc caused by Indominus Rex – this ending shows the possibility of the next installment from this franchise.

Rating: 3 out of 5

(Picture courtesy www.jurassicworld.org)

Categories
Film

Review: Sugar, Salt Ani Prem

A story of love, kindness, sacrifice and friendship, this Marathi film boasts of some stellar performances and a well-balanced plot.
by Ravi Shet

Producer and director Sonali Bangera brings a star studded ensemble in this film which tells the story of three women who are looking for their respective paths and the relationship they share.

The film starts with Aditi (Sonali Kulkarni) adding a sugar cube to a cup of tea, Ananya (Shilpa Tulaskar) picking up a packet of salt from the supermarket and Soumya (Kranti Redkar) picking up a greeting card from the Archies store – they are in the same mall and leave one by one in three different directions.

Aditi lives with her husband – Rahul (Sameer Dharmadhikari) and adopted son Om, who is autistic. Rahul is a wealthy financial expert, while Aditi was a high-achieving working woman with a lot of accolades and trophies marking her professional life. However, she chooses to stop working so that she can take care of her son – this creates a rift between her and Rahul. He tries hard to send their son to a boarding school for autistic children, so that he can get back his wife’s attentions.

 

Meanwhile, Ravindra (Prasad Oak), owner of Robo Tech lives with his wife Soumya and is busy building his dream – a robotic chair that can help the needy. The film also introduces his ex-colleague Pradhan (Yatin Karyekar), who wants to hijack Ravindra’s dream project for commercial purposes.

Ananya stays with her daughter and husband – Ajay (Ajinkya Deo), a well-established businessman in awe of status and money. He hardly has the time for relationships; this becomes a point of friction between him and his wife, who is always willing to help a person in need.

Ajay and Ravindra are friends; however when a financier pulls out of Ravindra’s project after Pradhan manipulates the deal, even Ajay offers no help. Ravindra gets killed in a car accident and his project gets stuck. This results in a meeting of the three women – Aditi, Soumya and Ananya – who are also struggling in their respective lives. The story then develops their relationship and how their friendship gels with sugar, salt and love (prem).

I loved how the film portrays the many dilemmas and the small happinesses of today’s women – a lot of women will relate to this. The plot is well-balanced and the performances – especially by Sonali Kulkarni, Shilpa Tulaskar and Yatin Karyekar – are top notch. Musician Siddharth Mahadevan has scored all the songs, and also appears in one of them. Overall, this one’s worth a watch.

Rating: 3 out of 5

(Picture courtesy marathistars.com)

Categories
Eat

5 must-visit chai places in Mumbai

The rains have arrived in Mumbai, and it’s time to have hot, piping chai. We give you 5 excellent options.
by Ravi Shet

Today, you probably woke up to sheets of rain and gloomy grey skies – the perfect setting for a hot cup of chai! There’s nothing more soothing to the palate than a lovingly made cup of tea flavoured with ginger and elaichi or just lightly brewed.

If you’re looking for a good chai place this season, let us help you out – in no particular order, we bring you a mix of five old and new places serving authentic Indian and international teas.

  1. Cafe Colony Stores and Restaurant, Dadar East

Irani Chai n Bun Maska, Cafe ColonyWooden furniture, glass jars filled with mawa cakes, khari and loaves of fresh brun pao…this Irani cafe is located near the corner of Hindu Colony and close to Tilak Bridge. Agha Nazariyan, owner of the place had bought this cafe in the 1960s; however the cafe has been in existence from 1933. Agha is very well supported by his children, the trio of brother and sisters – elder sister Bibi Sadhat, followed by Mirza and younger sister Bibi Fotehmeh. Mirza says, “We are open all days from 6 am to 10.30 pm to serve authentic and quality Irani food. My sisters man the counter and running the show makes me proud.”

Bibi Fotehmeh says that the milk comes from Parsi Diary Farm and Amul butter is used for bun maska. “Our food is not so expensive, which helps us cater to all sections of people,” she adds. Their Bun Maska (Rs 20) generously loaded with butter and dipped in Irani Tea (Rs 15) is an awesome combination. Also try their Kheema Pao (Rs 70).

  1. Madina Hotel, Mahim West

Founded in 1975, this eatery with yellow benches and tables opens at 5.30 am and downs its shutters by 11:30 pm. It is located opposite Paradise Cinema. Their Appam (Rs 8) clubbed with well spiced and flavoured Vegetable Stew (Rs 25) is great, along with Special Tea (Rs 20) made from tea powder, sugar and milk without any added water. You will not leave the place without having two of their Special Teas. Krishnan, who has been running the eatery for the past 33 years, says, “Regular customers or new ones, everyone loves our Special Tea. Plus, I am serving good quality food at a reasonable price.”

  1. Tapri Tea Lounge, Sion

This place situated at TV Chidambaram Marg is a short walk from Sion Railway station. Co-founded by Priyanka Bhutra-Milak and Mayur Milak in September Truck Driver's Chai_Tapri Tea Lounge2013, this place has been serving different varieties of tea to its customers from 10 am to 11 pm on all days. Mayur says, “Despite being known as a tea nation, we hardly find dedicated tea cafes in the city. Hence we came up with this place to serve tea lovers a wide range of authentic tea.” He adds that all their preparations are made from mineral water and Tetra Pak milk to enhance quality. I loved their Kulhad Masala Chai (Rs 64), served in authentic kulhads, as also their Truck Driver’s Chai (Rs 64), a strong ginger-clove tea. Also try their Kashmiri Kahwa (Rs 85) are really worth trying, as also their air fried French fries (Rs 76). The place has a good collection of imported teas such as Ceylon Tea and Blooming Tea. In addition to this, they have a free Wi-Fi service along with Archie’s comics, Uno cards and other indoor games at each table which help you dawdle at your table while sipping your chai.

  1. Tea & Tea, Juhu

This little place in Juhu near the ISKCON Temple is the brainchild of the husband-wife duo –Gaurang Vora and Viya Vora. Viya says, “We both were in the Masala Tea, Tea & Teahospitality industry and saw that over the years, only dedicated coffee outlets were mushrooming. There were very few tea cafes, so we started Tea & Tea in May 2014.” The place is open on all days from 10.30 am to 10 pm. “People in this city should have access to Indian and international teas, and they must also know the benefits of consuming tea,” Viya adds.

Do try their hot selling items Mom’s Special Tea (Rs 70) which has home-made tea masala prepared by Gaurang’s mother, and Cleopatra’s Champagne – Cammomile (Rs 150), sourced from Egypt, which relaxes you with every sip. If you are health conscious, try their Detox Tea (Rs 110) which comprises green tea, ginger, lemon grass and burdock. If you prefer your tea cold, try their Passion Fruit Iced Tea (Rs 120). Parle-G biscuits are served with Indian teas while butter cookies are served with other teas. Play Uno or read books available here in between sips.

  1. Tea Villa, Vile Parle East

Micky Panjwani and Roopanshi Bhatt, both event management professionals, founded this place in August 2014. It opens at 10 am every day and is a short walk from Vile Parle railway station. Micky says, “When we used to work, we never found good tea places where you could relax while you have your chai. So we started this place, where you could come with family and friends.” Roopanshi adds, “We started out serving Indian teas as well as premium ones such as Berry Blush Tea, Moon White Tea and side dishes; however customers demanded milkshakes, pastas, waffles and so on.” Their Mint Tea (Rs 120, in main picture above) and Kashmiri Saffron Kahwa (Rs 220) are really worth trying owing to their fresh ingredients. Also savour Bun Maska (Rs 70), Punjabi Samosa (Rs 75) and Peri Peri French Fries (Rs 120) if you’re hungry as well. They offer free Wi-Fi too.

(Pictures courtesy Ravi Shet)

Categories
Tech

Review: Dazen 1

The Chinese phone has a satisfactory performance but it will face stiff competition from the other phones in its category.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Coolpad is one of the latest entrants into the Indian smartphone market. The Chinese firm came out with a couple of phones a few weeks ago – Dazen X7 and Dazen 1. Today, we check what the Dazen 1 have to take on the already competitive budget smartphone category with the likes of the RedMi 2, YuPhoria, and Lenovo A6000 Plus.

The looks. We have the phone’s white colour, it also comes in complete black. The front looks pretty similar to any touch slab phone you pick today with the sensors and ear-speaker grill above the screen, and three capacitive touch keys — Option/ Menu, circular Home and Back — below it. The Volume rocker is placed on the left, and the Power/ lock key is on the right side at the same height as the volume rocker. On the top, there is just the 3.5mm headset jack, and the bottom gets the microUSB port and primary mic. The back has the Coolpad and Dazen logos, apart from the camera and, secondary mic and loudspeaker.

The device’s matte, smooth finish from the back to sides gives you a comfortable grip. You can remove the back cover to reveal the removable 2,500 mAh battery unit, two SIM card slots (both micro SIM cards), and microSD card slot.

Display. The phone sports a 5-inch HD LCD, which has become a standard display for phones in this price range. It is good to see more and more users aware about a phone’s screen aulity, including resolution, and not just blindly going by its sheer size. The Dazen 1’s (1280 x 720) IPS LCD comes as one of the best in the price segment. It can handle 720p videos well and colours and sharpness are not lost when viewing high quality images. While it struggles a bit when used under direct sunlight, overall impressions, including text, are good.

Camera. The phone is equipped with an 8 MP rear camera. Here are a few sample images.

The camera on this phone can take detailed shots and is capable of sharp pictures in daylight.It tends to over-expose at times, but daylight performance and general experience is good. Its low-light photos are subpar – noisy and not worth looking at.

The camera app also includes a Pro mode, which gives you more control over your picture settings like ISO, exposure and White Balance.

Sound quality. There are no earphones inside the box. The audio quality from the loudspeaker on the back seemed just okay to me. You will have to regularly cup your hand on the phone’s back in order to get slightly better audio for videos or games. It is one of the low points of the phone’s hardware.

Battery. On the other hand, battery life of the device scored better. The company claims its software enhancements stretch the device’s battery life 50 per cent. While I didn’t really find it to stretch this long, the phone quite often lasted me over 20 hours with normal to heavy usage. Its idle standby time for overnight saw battery going down by about 5 per cent, which was good to see. As soon you start watching videos or playing games, the battery takes a beating, but I didn’t see less of a drain than usual.

Basics like network connectivity, call quality and WiFi, Bluetooth were never a problem while using the phone.

Software and performance. The phone runs on the dated Android 4.4.4 OS with Coolpad’s CoolUI. Under the hood, there is a Snapdragon 410 SoC (1.2 GHz quad-core processor, Adreno 306 GPU) as well as 2 GB of RAM. You get about 3 GB of storage space, so you should insert a microSD card as soon as you start using one of these.

With scrolling, closing and opening between a couple of apps or documents, the phone fared well. Having said that, don’t expect it to handle tasks like watching an HD video on YouTube video and going into Chrome with multiple tabs, smoothly. I was quite satisfied with its scrolling in Settings, Chrome with a couple of tabs, but found it stuttering every now and then when trying a couple of heavy apps back and forth.

Talking about CoolUI, it follows a bit of colour shades between MiUI and iOS. All your apps and shortcuts appear on Homescreens. The notification bar and toggle buttons have a translucent background, showing you shades of what’s running in the background. Long-pressing the Options’ Menu key brings up toggle buttons (haven’t sent them here before) and your list of recent apps in that can be scrolled horizontally or cleared all at once along with clearing memory.

The OS’s biggest letdown on the looks was how it changed native apps’ icons like Play Store, Twitter into its own weirdly-shaped icon. For instance, the Play Store icon is still the old one and seems odd to look at, at least to me. The lockscreen gives you direct shortcuts to dialler, camera and messaging. With a shortcut named Rock Wallpaper, you can change your Homescreen wallpaper with a single tap. Themes are supported, but there are not many available in the store right now. There’s also a Private mode in which apps and content that you don’t want anybody else can access, say Gallery or WhatsApp, would be hidden, which might come in handy when giving your phone to somebody else.  CoolUI is decent otherwise, but it’s high-time they upgrade the phone to Android Lollipop.

All in all, if the phone gets updated to Lollipop soon, I wouldn’t mind recommending it to somebody looking for a budget smartphone provided the company is working hard on its after-sale service centre and support.With a good screen, satisfactory battery life, software that can get better at performance and certainly requires some update work, the Dazen1 has an uphill battle in this price range where the likes of Motorola, Yu (Micromax), Karbonn, and Lenovo are getting a lot of attention from consumers today.

(Pictures courtesy Manik Kakra)

Categories
Film

Review: The Age of Adaline

Ponderous and quite boring, this film fails to sustain audience interest for very long– a pity, considering its intriguing plot.
by Ravi Shet

Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively), a gorgeous woman aged 29 years is born in 1908, and has a serious car accident that gives her the gift – or the bane – of immortality. She discovers that she has stopped ageing since the day of the accident, which means that she will be 29 years old forever.

With her miraculous power in tow, Adaline tries every trick she can think of to hide her immortality. She changes her name, her appearance and even her home town in every decade of her life.

In the present time, Adaline is now Jenny working in a San Francisco museum, and she is also a mother to a wrinkled old daughter, Flemming Prescot (Ellen Burstyn). At this point, the film becomes predictable: after refusing to fall in love again for eight decades, she decides to stop running and falls in love with the wealthy Ellis (Michiel Huisman). From here on, the film follows a Bollywood-esque predictable graph and becomes a bit of a snooze fest.

 

Directed by Lee Toland Kriege, the pace of the story is excruciatingly slow; a good reason to walk out midway and come back with snacks and soft drinks at your leisure. I was also disappointed with the film’s climax, which one sees coming much in advance..

Considering the intriguing plot, the film could have done something simply stunning with its story to keep audiences engaged. Instead, there are long periods of nothing happening, and sloppy stringing together of scenes. There are a few emotional moments in this movie which make an attempt to elicit a smile or a wistful sigh, but these are very rare. The pretty costumes and visually appealing cinematography also cannot bail out this underdeveloped story.

Acting-wise, Blake holds her own and is quite good, as is Harrison Ford, who plays Ellis’s father and Adaline’s former flame. Ford does full justice to his short role and is a good reason to watch this film.

Rating: 2 out of 5

(Picture courtesy www.hoyts.com.au)

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