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Tech

Oppo launches N1 Mini

Launched recently in India at Rs 26,990, this phone is a smaller version of the company’s previous flagship, the N1.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Oppo recently launched its new Android 4.3 smartphone in India – N1 mini. As the name suggests, this is a smaller avatar of the company’s previous flagship, the N1.

The phone boasts a 5-inch 1280 x 720 LCD touchscreen, and supports various gestures that we have seen on other Oppo phones. Under the hood, there is Snapdragon 400 (1.6 GHz quad-core processor) SoC and 2 GB of RAM. Running Oppo’s ColorOS 1.4, the phone has a 13 MP f/2.0 (Sony Stacked CMOS sensor) rotating camera (with an LED flash) similar to the one we saw on the N1. The phone comes with 16 GB of on-board storage but there is no expansion slot. The N1 mini packs a 2,140 mAh battery unit, and supports the O-Click accessory.

Connectivity-wise, there is Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi b/g/n, NFC, DLNA, microUSB (with USB OTG) and GPS. The phone comes in white, light blue, and mint colours, and has been priced at Rs 26,990. Looking at the price tag, it does seem a steep price to pay for what is being offered, especially after considering what the likes of Xiaomi, and Motorola before that, have been up to for the Indian market.

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Tech

Review: Oppo Find 7

Oppo’s newest phone, Find 7, has some great features and may entice users of other smartphone brands to switch over.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Oppo has been quite a name in the smartphone category when it comes to emerging players. The Find 7 does manage to turn heads and is probably the right marketing tool to get Oppo some brand recognition? But does the device justify its price? And what does it do different than its competitors?

Oppo launched the Find 7 (X9076) and 7a together, and the two are almost twins if you don’t consider a couple of hardware differences. The Find 7, with its 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 IPS LCD, is a big and quite heavy (173 grams) phone, but not an uncomfortable device to hold. Thanks to the textured plastic material, and the slightly curved back, most people would find gripping the phone not much of a hassle in their daily use.

One thing I’d like highlight is Oppo’s retail packaging – it is really well done. The hard plastic box, with very neatly-assigned spaces for the phone and accessories, such that you can conveniently put back things into their place in the box, is something that you won’t find in a lot of phone retail boxes.

The looks

Dominated by the 5.5-inch Quad HD screen with Gorilla Glass 3 on top, the front also sports three capacitive touch buttons for Menu, Home, and Back. The buttons feel a little small in size than what they could have been considering the phone’s dimensions, plus, they are noticeably dim. The vibration feedback from the buttons, on the other hand, is just as as it should be. T

The top hosts the 3.5mm headset jack; while the microUSB port and primary mic sit at the bottom. Above the screen is the 5 MP front-facing camera alongside sensors and speaker grill. It’s below the screen that things get different – there’s a skyline notification LED, a unique feature in the Find 7. The skyline notification LED, just as the name suggests, glows up in a curved shape whenever a notification arrives, and it looks refreshing and unique when put next to a lot of other smartphones.

The Power/Lock key is placed on the left; and the Volume keys are placed at a similar height on the right (slightly above the middle) and a tiny SIM card-extracting pinhole. The keys, paired with dual chrome lines along the edges, need to be pressed a bit firmly and raised just enough to give a nice feedback when pressed. On the back, you get the 13 MP camera, speaker grill towards the botton and the Oppo logo below the camera and LED flash. Though angular and a bit wide, the phone gives a premium feel and seems solid to hold. It would be fair to say Oppo has done a good job on the finish and design front.

Display

The phone’s 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 IPS LCD is obviously one of its USPs. The display is the first Quad HD phone screen to be launched in India (LG’s G3 is the second one), and marks the smartphone penetration into screen resolutions beyond full 1080p. The first time you use the phone, it’s a bit hard to tell it apart from a 1080p screen, but when you start reading fine text or view very high resolution images or even videos, that’s where, I think, the difference pops up.

The screen on the Find 7, with whatever toll it takes on a few other aspects of the device, is crisp to look at, read text, and view images. It has good viewing angles and even the contrast doesn’t disappoint while you flip through images or webpages on the phone. Though not a very bright panel, which fails to impress when used under direct sunlight, the 5.5-inch IPS LCD, the first one with these many pixels, does quite do justice to the hype it created.

Audio

The phone has a loudspeaker at the back. The speakers are very loud and clear. They hardly distort and are good enough for gaming and video. Though not as good as the One’s BoomSound speakers quality-wise, they are just as loud as and certainly better than most other phones. In-ear sound, too, is impressive and the bundled headsets are actually not bad (but still get your own pair of headsets). The music player and phone settings give you a lot of audio setting options and do a good job to make your audio experience worthwhile.

Camera

Let’s move to another major part of the phone – its 13 MP f/2.0 rear camera (Sony EXMOR CMOS Sensor). Oppo has deployed something called ‘Super Zoom’, which basically allows you to snap 50 MP images from the 13 MP sensor. Don’t get your hopes up. The phone takes about a dozen photos to stitch a single 50 MP image. The trick isn’t very neat, and is far from being as efficient as what Nokia does with their high megapixel sensors. Having said that, the camera, with its 13 MP and other usual ray of settings, is capable of taking really good shots. Here are a few sample images.

As you can see, the phone can take a lot of really bright and sharp images. You won’t be disappointed with the camera’s responsiveness, contrast handling or processing. Coming to the native camera app, you will find a plethora of setting options to choose from, but without manking the UI cluttered or very hard to work on. For instance, you can make GIFs, audio photos, HDR and even take RAW (.DNG) samples with it. For those who care about the front-facing 5 MP camera, there’s good news. You can take proper shots with editing options right in the camera app and you won’t be disappointed with the result.

Call quality

As far as call quality goes, the phone doesn’t disappoint when it comes to voice. There were no network reception issues throughout my usage and the phone held well whether for WiFi, Bluetooth or locking in with its GPS.

Battery

The phone houses a 3,000 mAh battery unit, which is user-accessible. The battery life on the phone, on an average, came out to be about 23 hours  with brightness at about 30%, but notch it up a bit to 45% and the battery life comes well below 20 hours, which just shows the toll that the screen takes on the phone’s battery.

Oppo has equipped the Find 7 with their VOOC battery technology, which allows you to charge the phone from 0 to about 75% in half an hour. The bulky charger and the relevant tech in place do their job excellently, meaning you don’t have to worry about waiting to get the phone charged to a decent level before you unplug it.

Software

The Find 7 runs on Android 4.3 with Oppo’s own ColorOS 1.2.4i on top. The whole look and feel of the OS is identical to that of N1. The launcher, customisation, etc. work almost like what you see on most other Android flagships and there isn’t much difference to talk about from what we already did for the N1, but it is high time the phone gets updated to Android 4.4.

Other features

About the navigation keys, long-pressing the options key brings up the recent apps list, while doing the same on the Home key brings up Google Now, by default. You can double tap to wake the screen, though it doesn’t work to lock. The whole look is not something to complain about. Icons, themes, default wallpapers are all taken care of.

Three default Home screens with a different pane for music and camera is a good thought for some. For those interested, Oppo allows you to flash ColorOS ROMs through the factory-installed recovery without having to void your device’s warranty.

Something worth mentioning is that most of the OS components and probably all the Android apps are not yet made for the resolution we have on the Find 7. Powered by the Snapdragon 801 chipset MSM8974 (2.5 GHz Krait 400 quad-core CPU, and Adreno 330 GPU), along with 3 GB of RAM, the overall performance on the Find 7 is about satisfactory. Keep in mind the high resolution screen in place and what all tasks it would take to keep the screen running.

You may notice a bit of a stutter while scrolling through settings or even when switching between apps or changing clips while watching from Gallery. But on the other tasks, for music, Web, Camera, the phone feels quite smooth. While it is far from being judged the smoothest Android phone out there, it is surely not a slouch and good enough to get your work done.

Oppo has done a really impressive job with the Find 7. Great screen and design, fantastic camera and audio quality, and decent battery life and intelligent battery technology; this new flagship handset is right there to take on the more popular flagships and can lure more people into buying their first Oppo device.

Categories
Event

Mumbai gets country’s largest photo gallery

The Kanakia Zillion Gallery, home to over 10,000 photographs on Mumbai, opened at BKC Annexe last week. A must-visit space.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

India’s most exciting city now has a new feather in its cap – Mumbai is now home to the country’s largest photo gallery of Mumbai photographs.

The Kanakia Zillion Gallery opened at the BKC Annexe last week, and houses a staggering 10,000 photographs on Mumbai. The images, contributed by both professional and amateur photographers, were selected from over 36,000 entries. More than 50,000 Mumbaikars were engaged through social media and other platforms to connect with this initiative.

Capturing the spiritual ‘Eight Fold Path’, the initiative salutes the spirit of Mumbai and entries were invited from the photographers to depict eight categories, namely, Architecture, Business, Celebrations, Diversity, Entertainment, Food, Games and Humanity of Mumbai.

At the launch of the space last week, the Kanakia Art Foundation also organised a unique fashion show as a tribute to the city’s dabbawallahs, the Traffic Police of Mumbai, the fisherwomen and the gas supply boys of the city. Sunil Prabhu, Mayor of Mumbai, was present as one of the dignitaries at the event.

HimanshuKanakia, Managing Director of Kanakia Group, said, “This is a rare collection of beautiful efforts of amateur and professional photographers from various walks of the life. We are just overwhelmed to receive about 36,000 photographs and the task of judges was not only mammoth but also difficult while choosing the winners. We congratulate all participants and invite all Mumbaikars to have a glimpse of this unique gallery.”

Categories
Listen

Attend: Vocal recital at the NCPA

Hindustani classical vocal exponent Arati Anklikar Tikekar will present ‘Shyam Rang’ to celebrate Lord Krishna and Janmashtami, on August 8.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

On the occasion of Janmashtami, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) will present ‘Shyam Rang’. The programme is a Hindustani vocal recital that will celebrate the legend of Krishna, the dark one, through music.

In this concert, renowned vocalist Arati Ankalikar Tikekar will present a bouquet of compositions in various genres of classical, semi-classical and light music related to the theme of Krishna. She is currently recognised as one of the top vocalists of the younger generation. Being a disciple of famous singers such as Pandit Vasantrao Kulkarni, Kishori Amonkar and Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar, among others, her singing style is a rare combination of great qualities from various gharanas. She has received training in Agra as well as Gwalior-Atrauli gharanas.

The recital will take place at the NCPA on August 8, 2014 at 6.30 pm. Tickets are priced at Rs 250 and Rs 300. 

(Picture courtesy www.last.fm)

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Watch

Watch: ‘Siddharth’

Today, the powerful feature film ‘Siddharth’ will be screened at the Theosophy Hall; the film is directed by Richie Mehta.

For a sensitive, well-made film on the travails of parents looking for lost or abducted children and the menace of child trafficking, you have to watch Siddharth this evening at the Theosophy Hall.

The film is named after its protagonist,12-year-old Siddharth, who is sent away for work by his father, Mahendra. Mahendra is a chainwallah, who fixes broken zippers on the streets and is relieved as he hopes Siddharth will help in allevating his financial burdens at home. But when Siddharth fails to return home, Mahendra learns he may have been taken by child-traffickers. With little resources and no connections, he travels across India in pursuit, with the hope that whatever force arbitrarily took his child away will return him unharmed.

The film takes a powerful look at the brutal exploitation of children on the streets, the most vulnerable people and the wide net cast by child-traffickers. Poignant and bitter-sweet, the film is a must watch.

Siddharth is presented by the Root Reel in association with Dharamshala International Film Festival.

Entry for the screening is free, however seating is limited and hence on a First Come First Serve basis.

Head to the Theosophy Hall, Alliance Française de Bombay, on Wednesday, July 30, at 6.30 pm.

(Picture courtesy www.anokhimedia.com)

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Read

Gratitude at the grassroots

Researcher Sadashiv Tetvilkar’s newest book on ‘veergals’ (aka hero stones) talks about memorial stones as unique sources of local history.
by Shubha Khandekar

‘Rural Maharashtra is strewn with hundreds of Veergals (Hero Stones) at the boundary of the village or else, in the courtyard of a Shiva temple located on the periphery of the village. A group of four beautiful Hero Stones (fifth one is in the custody of ASI) at Eksar in Borivali shows in vivid detail a ferocious naval battle, which has been correlated to the text Chaturvarga Chintamani composed by Hemadri Pandit. He describes a decisive naval battle fought between Yadava King Mahadeva and Shilahara ruler Someshvara in which the latter was routed and killed in 1265. The details of infantry, cavalry, elephant force and battle ships shown herein enables us to understand the military strategy deployed in this battle. Someshvara was cremated at Eksar and the five Hero Stones were erected to commemorate his valour.’

Indefatigable hard core hands-on researcher Sadashiv Tetvilkar, who already has seven books to his credit, has now published Maharashtratil Veergal (Hero Stones of Maharashtra), which highlights the enormous potential of these memorial stones as unique, unconventional sources of local history, in combination with the rich and varied oral traditions of the region. Together with the more conventional methods of decoding historical evidence, such as texts, the book is a significant addition to the armoury of historians and archaeologists working on the early mediaeval past of Maharashtra.

These Hero Stones, often found together with Sati Stones erected to honour wives who committed sati after the husband’s death at the battlefield, are unequivocally the memorials erected to commemorate heroes who valiantly fought and died on the battlefield while defending and protecting the lives and properties of the communities they belonged to, from wild predators or human invaders. It is a humble and affectionate tribute paid by the commoners to their brave hero, so as to inspire future generations to follow in his footsteps.

What makes this effort significant is that this study fills up a huge gap in reconstructing local history, long felt but left unaddressed due to neglect and apathy. Part of the challenge lies in the fact that there is rarely, if ever, any inscription on the Hero Stones, and they are lying open to the skies, which makes it difficult to establish their context in time and space.

The book is embellished with colour and B&W photographs of outstanding samples of Hero Stones. Although the author insists that the Veergals included in his book are only a compilation of the possible sources, it has nevertheless opened floodgates of an exciting archaeological and ethnographic adventure that will unfold unseen aspects of early medieval history of Maharashtra.

Tetvilkar points out that Hero Stones are not unique to Maharashtra: they are found in great numbers in Karnataka, Goa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Kashmir, Andhra, Himachal, Bengal and Gujarat, which highlights the cultural unity of India at the very grassroots. Hero Stones are rectangular slabs of hard stone, usually with three vertical panels decorated with low relief sculpture which is a continuous narrative of valour, sacrifice and magnanimity, through a battle scene, death and ascent into heaven. The sun and moon at the top indicates that the fame of the hero would remain undiminished forever.

Tetvilkar holds the view that some of these local heroes were eventually elevated to the status of gods and came to be worshipped by villagers, which explains the large number of local deities venerated in rural Maharashtra. The attributes of these heroes/gods and the myths and legends associated with them give us important insights into the lives, values and aspirations of the communities they belonged to. They also give us significant clues into the process of Aryanisation of the hinterland and the commingling of varied cultural traits and tradition. By enhancing the credibility of myths and folklore, they constitute a textbook of history from below.

Although Veergals have been known in India from the 2nd to the 18th centuries, a deep study has surprisingly been largely absent. Tetvilkar points out the contribution made to this field by famous anthropologist Gunther Sontheimer and strive to complete the job he left unfinished. The book is an outcome of the relentless energy with which he roamed over jungles and mountains, undeterred by heat or cold or rains, speaking to elders in the villages, gathering and classifying data and correlating this data with the published works of scholars.

Tetvilkar gives several examples of eye-witness accounts of the British who saw women voluntarily committing Sati after the death of their husbands at the battlefield, and the courage and quiet dignity with which these women embraced a painful death, which has been immortalised on the Sati Stones. Women have also been shown on horseback, or worshipping a Shivalinga along with their husbands after reaching heaven. A few Sati Stones also show the woman being coerced into following the Sati custom, and Tetvilkar analyses how Sati is Bengal was different from what it was in Maharashtra, and why Bengal was at the forefront of resistance to the custom.

At Degaon in Raigad district is a Hero Stone showing a ten headed enemy, but Ram, Seeta, Lakshman and Hanuman are absent. Blood from the severed fingers of the enemy is shown dripping over a Shivalinga placed below. Tetvilkar dates this Veergal to Shivaji’s times on account of the similarities with the known event in Shivaji’s life.

(Pictures courtesy Shubha Khandekar)

 

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