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Dhruv and Ila go goth for ‘Dhima’

Mumbai musician, lyricist and guitarist Dhruv Ghanekar and folk singer Ila Arun star in ‘Dhima’, a goth-inspired video for ‘Voyage’.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Mumbai musician Dhruv Ghanekar, after performing music across all genres and media, is now back with a new album, ‘Voyage’. The single Dhima in this album is composed and performed by Dhruv Ghanekar and noted folk artiste Ila Arun. Dhruv is confident that the innovative video will make audiences sit up and take notice.

“The video for Dhima can be described as a hybrid of gothic rock, North African rhythms, and new wave,” Dhruv explains. “The song is inspired by the desert of Rajasthan and North Africa. I have been listening to music from West and North Africa and found that there are so many intrinsic synergies in both the musical cultures. The marriage of these two sounds was screaming to be fused!” He adds that Ila Arun was a logical fit to sing the song as she is “the queen of folk music in India.” Karim Ziad, who hails from Algeria but is a Parisian, performs on the drums while Linley Marthe performs bass. “This sort of video has not been done in the country. Director Razy Ghai has given it a Steam Punk Gothic vibe and created a visually stunning interpretation that challenges the viewer both sonically and visually,” Dhruv explains.

He claims that the gothic grunge themed video features an eclectic blend of “the fantastic, the ghoulish, the bizarre and the forbidden”. The crew was excited about Ila doing the video – she excelled, decked out in a dark gothic attire with her signature husky voice bringing a distinct sound to the single. The sexy, extravagant video explores the dark side of human nature with visions of anarchy, monsters, love and death set in a Burlesque Goth setting. She says, “When I was asked to collaborate on an ethnic folk song on Dhruv Ghanekar’s international world music album with such a star-studded array of musicians from all over the world, I was thrilled and nervous. However, the experience of recording the song turned out to be fantastic and totally invigorating.”

Watch the promo of the video:

 

For the uninitiated, Dhruv Ghanekar is a composer, producer and highly respected guitar player based in Mumbai. He has performed and recorded with some of the biggest names in music in India and in the international arena. He has collaborated and performed with Vieux Farka Toure, Richard Bona, Trilok Gurtu, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Bernard Purdee, AR Rahman, Raul Midon, Bob Belden, Scott Kinsey, Etienne M’Bappe, Dominic Dipiazza, Louis Banks and Ranjit Barot, to name a few. He has also performed at many leading festivals around the world as a leader of his band ‘Dhruv’, and composed music for over 3,500 commercials, many of which have won awards in India and abroad.

Dhruv has also scored music for many chart-busting film hits and several television programmes, including the prestigious BBC 1 – UK, Star TV, PIX, SONY and many more.

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Eat

5 must-visit eateries to beat the heat

We pick five of Mumbai’s best juice and falooda centres that whip up awesome concoctions to cool you off this summer.
by Ravi Shet

The mercury is rising by the day and making us more tired, thirsty and craving for cool food. This summer, beat the heat by consuming fresh fruit juices, ice creams, faloodas, and kulfis.

In our endeavour to keep the citizens of this great city well hydrated and healthy this summer,we present a handy list of places to help beat the heat with their mind-blowing concoctions and versatile variations! Read on…

Watermelon Juice n Mango Milkshake, GunjalGunjal Juice Center, Dadar TT

Established in 1960, this place has been a haven for riders passing from Tilak Bridge towards Khodadad Circle, Dadar TT. The centre is open between 10.30 am and 11.00 pm. All juices are made as per order; they don’t stock any of their juices and they never use stale fruit. The ever-smiling manager Swapnil Karale says that their lemon juice (Rs 15), watermelon juice (Rs 40) and mango milkshake (Rs 100, in pic on left) are hot selling items in this season.

Must try – Watermelon juice and Mango milkshake.

Apple A Day, Khar West

Looking for healthy, fresh vegetable and fruit juices with no sugar or additives? This little place in Khar is worth a visit. Founded by the Sakpal brothers – Kiran and Sanket– in May 2013, this place is a boon to the people who believe that they should consume their juices in a fresh and natural form.Chopping and blending of vegetables and fruits are done only once you place the order. Their Carrot-Beet-Ginger-Mint (Rs 69), Carrot-Cucumber-Celery (Rs 69) and Wheatgrass Shot (Rs 69) are really worth trying. Kiran Sakpal, co-founder of this establishment says that even though they have a menu, they offer customised preparations as per customer’s requirements. For instance, if you don’t want ginger in your Carrot-Beet-Ginger-Mint juice, they will do it for you, as also whip up a juice with the ingredients of your choice.

Must try – Carrot-Beet-Ginger-Mint and Carrot-Cucumber-Celery juices to combat the heat.

Baba Falooda, Mahim

Look no further for cool and quick service than Baba Falooda (see their kulfi falooda in pic above). Irfanbhai, the son of owner Abdullah Bilakhia, says that they have been in the business for the past 34 years and believe that all the 20-odd items on the menu are quite popular among the people who throng to their place. Hence, they do not believe in adding 100 more recipes to the menu, focussing instead on delivering what the public loves. The Baba Special Falooda (Rs 100), the Dry Rabdi Kulfi Falooda (Rs 100) and Baba Double Special Falooda (Rs 130) are my personal favourites from this place.

Must try – Baba Special Falooda and Dry Rabdi Kulfi Falooda for sinful gluttony.

Prabhu Ice Cream, Mulund West

Situated diagonally opposite Mulund railway station, this place has been a hit among Mulund residents for years now. Established Kulfi Falooda Rabdi, Prabhu Ice Cream24 years ago, they have been serving people from 9.30 am to 1.00 am from the time of their inception. Sunil Karle, manager, says that their customers demand their kulfis and mango milkshake more during the summer season. I love their Kulfi Falooda Rabdi (Rs 60) served in a flat dish and their Mango Thick Shake (Rs 50) in the summer. Also, their Mango Sandwich Ice Cream (Rs 30) which consists of a slab of mango ice cream in between two wafer biscuits, is really good.

Must try – Mango Sandwich Ice Cream and Kulfi Falooda Rabdi.

Sukh Sagar Juice Centre, Girgaon Chowpatty

This place has been a wonderful source of refreshment for people staying near Girgaon Chowpatty for their fresh fruit juices and faloodas. In operation for the past 50 years, they have been catering to their customers with good quality and service. Their Mix Fruit Sundae (Rs 175), Special Dry Fruit Falooda (Rs 170) and Mango Milkshake (Rs 170) are the best picks for summer.They are really busy after 7 pm every day as they take orders for faloodas and milk shakes, so you might want to visit or place your order earlier.

Must try – Mango Milkshake and Special Dry Fruit Falooda.

(All pictures courtesy Ravi Shet)

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Tech

Review: Huawei’s Honor 6 Plus

Huawei’s flagship device, the Honor 6 Plus, has a battle on its hands cracking the Indian market at its price.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Huawei has been quite busy in the Indian market lately. The company launched two smartphones (we reviewed the Honor 4X a few days ago) and now the company’s flagship, the Honor 6 Plus, has arrived. Priced at a little under Rs 26,000, the phone clearly has an uphill battle against their rival’s offerings. So let’s try and see of the device is up to the task or not.

The looks. The new Honor 6 Plus (they really could have done with a better model name and not a known one) follows a glass and metal chassis design. What you will notice the first time you hold the device is its use of glass and metal frame (except for the bottom). The 5.5-inch full HD screen is accompanied by the front-facing camera, speaker grill and sensors at the top, and plain bezel at the bottom, as the phone had all on-screen navigation keys.

The left side panel has been left blank, making the right one look a bit busy with the Volume buttons, Power/Lock key, which are followed by nano SIM/ microSD card slot and micro SIM card slot. The keys don’t feel very tactile and firm, though. You can either use a nano SIM card or a microSD card, while using a micro SIM card in the other slot.

At the top, you have the Infrared port, 3.5mm headset jack and secondary mic, while the plastic bottom gets the microUSB port in the middle. Coming to the back, the subtle pattern looks nice. The dual-lens camera and the LED flash sit at the top right corner while the Honor logo is imprinted near the middle. The phone is quite big, but not too heavy for its size, its metal sides and glass back don’t feel slippery, but the metal sides get scuffed and dented even with minor falls and slips.

Screen. Speaking about the phone’s (1920 x 1080) LCD with Gorilla Glass on top, I don’t have too many complaints with the display, which looks quite sharp with decent viewing angles; it is quite bright and not bad for use outdoors in sunlight. Colour reproduction does seem a bit off, as the screen goes a warm yellow when viewing images.

Camera. One of the USPs of the phone, as per the company, is its dual sensor 8 MP camera. Using the dual sensor with the wide aperture mode on, you can change the focus area in an image as an after-effect. This ‘trick, previously seen on the HTC One (M8), Galaxy S5 among a few more, is becoming somewhat common in phone cameras these days. Here are a few sample images.

The camera on the back is pretty good, actually. It can take detailed and sharp photos in daylight conditions, and not too bad in low-light (if you don’t try zooming in). Colours come out quite bright, and the overall performance seems to be on par with best phone cameras (the Mi 4, LG G2) in this price range. The Wide Aperture mode for changing focus does work well if used in correct settings, and many users will like using it. The 8 MP front-facing camera is more than capable of taking good selfies and do video calls, so there’s not much to complain with what you use the front-facing camera for.

Battery. The phone is equipped with a 3,600 mAh abtetry unit, making it one of the largest among the smartphones available in the Indian market. The device lasted me a day, more often than not. With Email, Twitter, a bit of YouTube and music playback, I was able to get over 20 hours of usage a lot of times, and its battery was never really a big concern throughout my usage. Of course, with a lot of HD videos, games and camera usage, it is bound to go down.

Call and sound quality. The phone supports 3G, 4G LTE (no CDMA), WiFi and Bluetooth, all of which worked well for me except for the nano SIM card slot thata didn’t work on my review unit. Call quality and network reception hold fine on the device with no troubleshooting required.

Sound quality from the rear-facing loudspeaker is just about okay, though, getting the job done for games and videos, but I was expecting a better output from it considering how vocal Huawei has been about the phone’s multimedia performance. It might have helped if the speakers had dual speaker openings.

Software and performance. The Honor 6 Plus runs on Android 4.4.2 with Emotion UI 3.0 to go on top. Under the hood, there’s Huawei’s custom SoC HiSilicon Kirin 925 (1.3 GHz quad-core + 1.8 GHz quad-core, Mali-T624 GPU) along with 3 GB of RAM. The overall look and feel of the OS is very similar to that of the Honor 4X. I wish Huawei did a little bit of work to get their icon set and fonts look better or give more options than what they currently do under Themes. Since this is Huawei’s flagship device, it should be updated to Android 5.0, in my opinion, but there’s no official word when it’s going to be.

Messaging, dialer and Clock apps have been loaded with useful features (like blocking features in Messaging and Dialer) and gel well with the overall look and feel of Emotion UI. There’s one nifty little feature – where you can mark a particular WiFi access point to be a hotspot, so that the phone uses it just like your network operator data and not a full-fledged WiFi connection, meaning you save on data.

Performance-wise, the phone is just about okay. It handles most apps and tasks fairly well, but I wouldn’t count it as the smoothest smartphone in this price category, and rank its day-to-day performance below the Xiaomi Mi4 and OnePlus One. A few places like multi-app view, or three-four tabs in Chrome, show you where the OS stutters and doesn’t give a very smooth performance.

The Huawei Honor 6 Plus is pitched against the likes of the Nexus 5, Mi 4 and OnePlus One, so it surely has an uphill battle on hand, but from what I have seen and tried, the phone isn’t too behind its competitors. To buy an Honor 6 Plus, you have to register for Flipkart’s flash sale and then manage to order it when goes on sale. Huawei is offering decent promotional offers With Freecharge, Hungama, which makes a better deal. So, with a good screen, capable camera and satisfactory battery, the phone does have quite a few things going its way and it will be interesting to see how well it performs in the market against those three devices.

Categories
Tech

Review: Moto E (2nd Generation)

Motorola’s low-range phone is a good device, but buyers in this segment may opt for other models with enhanced features.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

It would not be wrong to say Motorola’s comeback has been a successful one, but the company has been doing really well to storm into at least the budget segment of the smartphone market. With the original Moto E and Moto G, it was clear that Motorola was here to make an impact, giving a good experience without costing a bomb. With the new Moto E, the objective seems to be the same, but expectations are now higher. Does the Moto E (2nd Generation) live up to those expectations or not? Let’s try to find out.

The looks. Motorola’s new Moto E (XT1506) isn’t too different from the original Moto E in terms of looks and feel. It follows the familiar Motorola curved back design, except the new Moto E doesn’t have a removable back cover; instead it has a unique rubberised band across the edges, covering the micro SIM card and microSD card slots. You can change this band with another band of your colour choice (called Motorola Bands).

The entire front panel is covered with Gorilla Glass 3 and the screen has anti-smudge coating that is quite effective. On the front, the big silver stereo loudspeaker and ear-speaker grill stand out, sitting next to the front-facing VFA camera and sensors; while there are no physical keys at the screen’s bottom. On the right side panel, you have volume rockers and Power/Lock key, which are tactile and firm to press.

At the top, there’s the 3.5mm headset jack, and the microUSB sits at the bottom. On the rear is the Motorola logo inside a little dimple, while the 5 MP rear camera (encircled in a chrome ring) is placed on the top-middle. The phone is compact, nicely built with no loose points.

Screen. The device features a 4.5-inch (540 x 960) IPS LCD, so it’s a little bigger than its predecessor but has the same resolution. The screen has good colours and viewing angles for a phone at this budget. It’s quite bright but just about okay outdoors. Where it lacks is sharp resolution for images and videos. It’s probably the biggest downside to the new Moto E, not bumping the screen resolution or improving outdoor visibility when there are better screens on phones priced similarly.

Camera. Here are few sample images from the phone’s 5MP rear camera (f/2.2).

The camera takes decent bright images outdoors, but struggles in low-light, whether it is to focus or capture details. It can capture still shots quite well, but don’t expect good performance for objects on the move. The camera app is similar to the previous Motorola Camera app, smooth in use, with basic options like HDR and Panorama to choose from. By default, it captures by a tap, but you can choose to focus by a tap and then capture an image by tapping again.

Audio and reception. Basics like call quality, dual SIM handling, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity are all in place. In-ear call audio is quite loud and clear, while network reception was never a problem throughout my usage. Audio quality from the front-facing stereo loudspeaker is actually pretty good, and one of the loudest outputs from a phone in this price category, so your audio needs for video and games have been taken care of well. The in-ear headsets, though, are just about okay, which is what you would expect from a budget smartphone.

Battery. As far as battery is concerned, the Moto E has a 2,390 mAh battery unit, and it lasted me about 18 hours on moderate usage. With two SIM cards in use, battery life decreased by two hours. The phone was kept at 30 per cent brightness with Email, Twitter, a few calls and music in use.

Software and performance. The phone runs on Android 5.0.2. Under the hood, there is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 (1.2 GHz quad-core processor, Adreno 302 GPU) coupled with 1 GB of RAM. In general, the new Moto E is reasonable. I wasn’t really blown away with how it fared in day to day usage. The original Moto E, running Android 4.4, was noticeably snappier. The new Moto E struggles slightly while running a few apps at once or while switching between a couple of heavy apps. It might be because of the new Android Lollipop and how it is more focused on animations and design, but I won’t call it the smoothest Android phone out there.

The new Android 5.0 OS is really refreshing and better-looking than Android has been. With flatter Menu icons, status icons, Settings, UI elements, there’s Material Design everywhere. The notification bar shows you notifications in one swipe and you have to either swipe with two fingers to swipe once again to access quick toggle buttons. You can now check and access notifications from the Lock screen, though Widgets are not supported on the Lock screen. Volume Settings have also been changed a bit, as you can now choose what type of alerts are allowed to notify you or not. There’s obviously the Google Now launcher in place with Google Now cards accessible by just swiping left to right on main Home screen.

The style of pop-up dialogue box, the dialogue box (appears near the bottom) have also changed and look much better now. There’s also multi-user support, so you can switch to Guest when you are giving your phone away to somebody and don’t want them to have access to your phone’s data.

Motorola Display is on this phone; as soon as you pick the phone, the Lock screen previews any notifications and you can access the relevant message right from there. There’s no need to unlock and light the whole screen up. Very neatly done, but if you already have the phone in your hand, you would have to unlock it and Moto Display doesn’t work then. The user gets a little under 5 GB of storage space, which is expandable up to 32 GB via a microSD card. Motorola hasn’t touched or changed stock Android much, as expected, but has done the usual and a few new touches to keep the experience good.

To sum up, the new Moto E (3G) is a decent buy at Rs 6,490, but it seems to lose out when compared to new phones in the Indian market, and even when you compare it to its predecessor. Still, it is a good phone for somebody buying their first Android smartphone and not wanting to shell out a lot. However, potential buyers in this price range are looking for much, so don’t be surprised if this phone is overlooked for a phone with a better overall package – even the Moto E’s 4G variant.

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Do

Get into a ‘curator se charcha’ at Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Photographer Pa Madhavan invites Mumbai to discuss his curated exhibition ‘The Whole World is My World, Humanity is My Fraternity’.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Byculla is currently hosting the wonderful photography exhibition, ‘The Whole World is My World, Humanity is My Fraternity’, which is a collection of works by 20 artists. This exhibition is the result of a worldwide ‘Call For Entries’ by FOCUS Photography for photographers to submit work on the festival’s theme. Photographers were invited to explore, investigate and visualise the ‘cultural crossover’ that has given rise to new forms of hybridisation and homogenisation of culture. Works of 20 selected photographers from around the world are on display, chosen by an international jury comprising of London-based photographer Suki Dhanda, Indian artist, writer, activist and curator Sunil Gupta, photographer Isaac Pereira and photographer and Founder of Ojo de Lata, Karlo Sosa.

Focus Festival 2015The exhibition is curated by Pa. Madhavan, Founder of the Wanted Series and Executive Director of the Goa Centre for Alternative Photography.

In an interesting twist, Madhavan invites Mumbaikars coming to the exhibition to sit down and have a chat with him about the photographs on display. He says, “You can find me sitting in the corner quietly reading a book on Mahatma Gandhi. You are most welcome to take a seat next to me. We exchange cards, introduce ourselves and ….let’s start the charcha.” He will talk to visitors about his kind of curation and photography, the philosophy behind the curation and his understanding of photography. “At the same time I would like to hear about their kind of photography and their understanding about the images in the exhibition. We may disagree, debate and confront each other,” he says.

He also invites visitors to walk around the gallery with him and talk about the images.

The exhibition is only only till Thursday, March 26, till 3 pm.

(Picture courtesy en.wikipedia.org)

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Tech

Review: Honor 4X by Huawei

Huawei brings two new Android smartphones in the Indian market. We review the mid-range Honor 4X and come away impressed.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Huawei has been trying to make a comeback into the Indian market for a few months now. The company launched the Honor 6 last year, and seemed to have got a decent response. It is selling quite well, but Huawei probably needs much more. Now, it has come up with two new Android smartphones under its Honor series, which is how it plans to brand itself in India – Honor 4X and Honor 6 Plus. Let’s take a look at the Honor 4X, that is priced at Rs 10,499.

The looks. Huawei’s Honor 4X is not a small phone to hold. With a 5.5-inch HD display, weighing 165 grams and thick bezels on the side, it isn’t a compact phone. The phone follows a white and black colour scheme on the back and front, respectively. The back cover extends to the sides, which sport the white volume rocker and grey Power/Lock key on the right, while the left side panel is left plain.

Removing the cover gives you access the two SIM card slots (micro SIM cards) and the sealed battery unit. Below the screen you see three touch White-marked keys – Back, Home, and Menu/ Options (going from left to right). Above the screen are the ear speaker grill, 8 MP camera and sensors tucked near to the LED notification. While the front has glass on it, the white plastic back has a nice diagonal pattern, plus, with the bold Honor branding in the middle and circled (slightly protruding) camera sensor with the LED flash, the rear side appears simple. The microUSB port sits at the bottom next to the loudspeaker and primary mic, while the top has the 3.5 mm headset jack and secondary mic. Most people will find this phone difficult to carry around.

Screen. The phone boasts a 5.5-inch (1280 x 720) IPS LCD. It is quite sharp, has decent colour depth, but where it lacks is when used under direct sunlight. Due to its reflective nature, the screen needs to be used at a high brightness level. Plus, it gets a lot of smudges and fingerprints in a matter of minutes, so keep a spare wipe cloth handy. But, on the other hand, it isn’t a bad screen at all for watching HD videos and is decent for viewing high quality images.

Camera. Check out these sample images. The 13 MP camera can take detailed shots. You can choose whether you want a 13 MP or a 10 MP image from the camera settings, along with a few other basic options. Contrast level is decent and colours come out nicely in these photos. But the camera gives grainy photos in low light, struggling to perform in dark conditions. This seems to be a common factor in mid-range phones. Having said that, when it comes to daylight performance, the Honor 4X’s camera is among the best in this price segment and most people should find it good enough.

Call quality and network. The phone handles call quality and network reception really well. WiFi, Bluetooth work fine, but USB OTG isn’t supported as of now. Audio quality from the loudspeaker at the bottom is also not bad. Users may need to put a hand over the speaker while watching a video or playing a game thanks to its placement, but the actual output is decent for these two uses. There’s no bundled headset with the phone.

Battery. The phone is equipped with a 3,000 mAh battery unit. More often than not, it required to be charged within a day. With brightness level set at 40 per cent, using one SIM card, Email, Twitter, a few minutes of videos and surfing the Web, the phone struggled to last a full day. It gave about 18 hours of juice, which you can expand using the extreme power-saving mode, giving you only basic functions in hand. I was expecting a bit more on the battery side of things.

Software and performance. The Honor 4X is powered by the Snapdragon 410 SoC (1.2 GHz quad-core processor, Adreno 306 GPU), with 2 GB of RAM. Running on Android 4.4.2, it comes loaded with Huawei’s Emotion UI on top. The user gets about 4 GB of storage space, which is expandable via a microSD card. The OS follows Home screen pattern with all the icons and widgets on spread across your Home screens with no separate app launcher. There are pre-loaded apps in folders, which are not allowed to be renamed. You can create and name your own folders, though.

Long-pressing on any Home screen gives you the option to change its wallpaper, swiping effect, put a widget and change icon layout (4×5 or 4×4).The notification bar and toggle buttons look black on white, completely different from any other Android OEM skin. All your notifications are placed on the left panel, and swiping right to left lands you to all the toggle buttons. All the icons, third-party and Huawei and Google apps, get redesigned into circular icons, as per the Emotion UI.

This was one of my gripes with the UI. A lot of apps’ icons seemed weird (as per your chosen theme for icons) and weren’t any good with this circular trend (default style). It would have been much better had icons remained untouched and allowed to remain as they originally are. For customisation, you can choose a particular theme (Lock screen and Home screen), and choose icons from another theme or font style from another, certainly a nice option to have for users looking to edit just about everything on their phone’s OS.

The Lock screen gives you a glance to your notifications. You can unlock it by swiping anywhere in the middle, swiping up from the bottom on the Lock screen brings up basic toggle switches (similar to iOS). There’s also a Suspend button that gives you functionality of Home button and Menu button (again similar to iOS’s Accessibility feature). The phone supports double tap to wake and it worked well. As far as the general performance is concerned, I found the phone to be fairly responsive and able to handle apps and tasks well. Swiping between Home screens and scrolling through Settings aren’t a problem. While I wouldn’t call it being a very smooth device (it stutters a bit when using multiple tabs with an app like Email opened), it isn’t a slouch and can handle most things without struggling.

Wrapping up our review, the Honor 4X has a good screen, decent battery life, capable camera and good performance from an otherwise okay OS. By now, there are already a lot of good phones available in this price range, from the likes of Motorola and Xiaomi, and this is why the Honor 4X may find it hard to prove its worth. It could enhance its position a bit by providing Android 5.0 and further updates quicker than they have in the past. There’s not much wrong with the phone, but how it performs in an already competitive price segment in a long run remains to be seen.

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