Metro: Last Light Review

When Metro 2033 was first launched three years ago, it was praised by almost everyone thanks to its setting and atmosphere. However, the game did have the nasty habit of bringing even the most powerful rigs of its time (and even some beasts right now) to its knees. The game did manage to do well enough to get a sequel—Metro: Last Light. Developer 4A Games went through a lot during the development of the game. Even the original publisher of the game, THQ, died before the game was published. However, Deep Silver picked it up and here we are now.

Metro: Last Light picks up a year after the events of the first game—Metro 2033. The first game had two possible endings, one of them being the more “understanding” and non-lethal one. 4A Games decided that the other ending is the canonical one, and thus, story wise, protagonist Artyom decided to rain down missiles on the Dark Ones. Since then, the Rangers have occupied the D6 military facility and Artyom has become an official member of the group. The plot is kicked off when the Rangers discover that a Dark One survived the missile strike and Artyom is sent in to put it out of its misery.

What does a kid do when he finds an almost-destroyed train in a creepy underground system? EXPLORE!

The plot takes a heavy turn away from humanity's attempts at survival and instead goes in to explore the politics and interactions between the three main factions of the game—the Rangers, the Red Line and the Nazi Reich. The game's plot has its fair share of twists and turns and ends up having a better story as a result of it. It's always more interesting to look at how humans interact with each other in a time of crisis rather than seeing them kill monsters.

That isn't to say that there aren't any monsters to kill, though. In Artyom's travels through the metro system as well as the surface of Moscow, you'll face a wide variety of enemies to gun down, both monsters as well as humans. The AI seems to be much better this time around too. Monsters feel the most boring to fight however, especially when compared to the advanced AI on the humans who can make intelligent decisions such as flanking and retreating.

Not creepy at all, kid

Speaking of combat, the gunplay has been improved tenfold this time around. Gone are the clunky controls of Metro 2033. With Last Light, we have a game where the gunplay can go toe-to-toe with some of the best modern AAA titles have to offer. Guns feel more fun to shoot now and enemies aren't as bullet spongy as they were before. 

Going around guns blazing isn't the only way to take enemies on. A lot of areas in the game give you the option to sneak around and try to take enemies out one by one without anyone else knowing. You're given a few tools to sneak around—an indicator on your wrist watch that shows you if you're visible, the ability to use noise suppressors on your weapons and silent weapons like throwing knives. However, the stealth ends up feeling very clunky sometimes, but it's useful to have the stealth mechanics around, in case you find yourself short on ammo or health.

Gunplay is a serious step up from Metro 2033

While we're on the topic of guns, one of the best things about Metro 2033 makes a glorious comeback in Last Light—the bullet-based economy. Basically, the ammunition in the game is divided into two: high-quality pre-war military grade ammunition and the low-quality ones that everyone uses. Since the former is rare, it is used as a form of currency in the game's world. This doesn't mean that you can't use the military-grade ammo in a fight. It raises the interesting question of whether it's better to use a little of your high-quality ammo to quickly take down a monster or to save it and later spend it on a lot more of the lower-quality ammo. It also adds to the tension sometimes since, taking influences from survival horror as it does, you'll often be strapped for supplies.

The game manages to keep the tension high in a rather interesting way. During gunfights, you have two ways of gaining your health back. There are med kits, and then there is time. Like almost every FPS these days, Last Light has a regenerative health mechanic, but it's been pulled off differently. Whenever you're low on health, coming back to manageable levels of health takes some time, so you can't exactly depend on the regenerating health to keep you alive in a gun fight. This is where the med kits come in. You can use the med kits to quickly heal yourself up to full health. While the lack of a regenerating-health system would've been welcome, this feels like a pleasant compromise.

The outside feels as oppressive as the underground feels claustrophobic

Much like its predecessor, Last Light has amazing atmosphere. This is of course helped because of 4A Games' in-house graphics engine. The engine looks gorgeous on a PC with almost everything maxed out. The lighting engine is just beautiful and creates a great sense of tension when you're sneaking around a Nazi Reich camp, or a sense of fear when you're depending on your flashlight to keep the monsters away, but you're also running out of batteries. 

This is further helped by the amazing sound design. Shooting a gun in an empty corridor sounds how you would expect it to sound. Monsters' shrieks are enough to startle you. The music, when it's there, does a good job in giving any scene the right mood. The only problem I have with the sound is that the voice acting sometimes comes off as a bit hammy.

The new graphics engine is amazing

The gameplay mechanics themselves also tie in well with the game's atmosphere. Staying underground while fending off spiders feels tense since have to keep an eye on your flashlight's batteries. If you don't put away your gun and use your handcrank generator to power up the flashlight again, the spiders will quickly overwhelm you, and then proceed to kick your ass. When you go out to the surface, you have to keep a breathing mask on. The filtration system on the breathing mask only lasts for a short time, and you have to quickly finish the outdoor sequences and run back underground if you don't want to die. Even the gasmask's visor gives us a nice minor gameplay mechanic in the form of having to wipe it clean after rains or enemies' blood splatters.

All this praise doesn't mean that the game is flawless. The PC port has some problems in a couple of  levels, especially if you enable PhysX. My modest rig running on a GTX 660 Ti faced framerate issues in some levels, but this was fixed by simply disabling PhysX.

The linear mission structure at the start of the game also hurts it a lot. Though the game is trying to explain all of its mechanics to you before you throws you to the proverbial (and sometimes literal) hounds, the problem is that the first couple of hours of the game end up feeling more like something out of a Call of Duty game rather than Metro.

Minor background events like this help flesh out the world

Perhaps one of my biggest gripes about the game is the way it treated its pre-order DLC. The studio essentially cut out the Ranger Mode difficulty from the game, which fans of the first game would recognise as THE way to play a Metro game, just so that they could sell it as a pre-order bonus, and then later sell it to those who didn't pre-order the game.

The Ranger Mode DLC was a bad call, 4A

Despite these few niggles, however, the game is great. If you have even a passive interest in post-apocalyptic fiction and want a different take on it, you should definitely check Metro: Last Light out. Other reasons to check the game out include liking FPSes in general, liking atmospheric games, liking well-writen stories, and liking unique mechanics—namely the bullet-based economy.

Despite all of the problems that 4A games faced, and despite the stupid Ranger Mode DLC, Metro: Last Light is definitely one of the finest games to have come out this year. The game tries a wide variety of things, and pulls them off spectacularly. The DLC and a couple of technical issues aside, Last Light is well worth its Rs 999 asking price on the PC.

The Last of Us Review

You should stop reading this review and play The Last of Us. That is all you need to know. Wait, you're still here? Really now? Oh, okay. Fine. Since you're not budging, we'll tell you exactly why you should be playing the latest from the creators of the spectacular Uncharted series.

The Last of Us is what happens when a rather exceptional studio tackles what seems to be the stereotypes du jour of the video game world, that is, zombies, post-apocalyptic scenarios, gruff, grey protagonists and survival horror. And Naughty Dog does so with aplomb. The Last of Us stands out, not so much for its premise and setting but for the way it's been executed. It's rather stunning, to say the least.

The feeling of post-apocalyptic desperation is spot on

Without spoiling much, the world is in the throes of a disaster and most of the populace has been transformed into zombies. The people are now shambling, mutated wrecks with the need to feed on unsuspecting victims. Amidst this chaos, the few uninfected find themselves in quarantine zones under a military regime or as bandits inhabiting seemingly deserted towns to loot unsuspecting survivors. The Last of Us has you traversing across the United States as Joel, a hardened smuggler, in order to deliver a young girl called Ellie to a group of freedom fighters.

You'll come across deserted ghost towns, fellow survivors, the odd out-of-place situation or two and tons of the Infected (what the zombies are called) to avoid or kill. While most modern day titles like to harp on any seemingly minute element of choice, The Last of Us goes about such things with relative ease, throwing you into a situation where every moment might be your last.

Early on, you're told that you can either use stealth to avoid enemies, be they monsters or human, or just end them in brutal combat. The former requires tremendous patience and a seemingly infinite number of save file reloads, while the latter depends purely on your hand to eye coordination and inventory management skills. Go pure stealth, and you end up not having to worry about supplies, since ammo and health are relatively hard to come by. Decide to go all guns blazing, and you'll soon end up spending a lot of time trying to find supplies to keep you going. There are some moments where you're forced into fire fights, but they're few and far between.

Ellie and Joel make a great duo

Nonetheless, if you choose the violent route (as most of you will), you'll be rewarded with controls that have a bit of heft to them and require you to cleverly time your punches, line up your shots and avoid getting hit. You see, unlike most games that have you playing a spry superhero-esque protagonist who reeks of agility, speed and finesse, you're in the role of a fifty-something man who doesn't hold back his punches, but is vulnerable all the same. It doesn't take more than few hits before you see the "Game Over" screen, which makes planning before a fight even more important. To do so, you can craft an array of makeshift bombs, melee weapons and health items aside from the usual range of guns.

You'll find yourself crafting a lot simply because weapons and ammo are hard to come by. You'll soon realise that it's easier to land a punch or twenty on unsuspecting foes than it is to shoot them. It helps that the controls and animations for melee combat make it quite addictive. Combat is well paced and does a good job of making you feel vulnerable; even when you come across some really high-powered weaponry, you never feel completely in control, as the game throws just enough foes at you to up the ante. It's a fine approach that makes you feel that every battle might just be your last.

What's more, you just can't switch weapons or craft items on the fly. You can equip weapons and items from your backpack before a battle, but you'd be wise to take a moment or two to check your inventory. Throw in a new mode called "Listen mode" that helps you preempt a fire fight by giving you a heads-up about the enemies ahead (think of Assassin Creed's Eagle vision), and each section becomes a welcome pattern of scoping out the lay of the land, preparing the right items and weapons, and gunning and running accordingly.

Go stealth if you don't want this to happen to you

If that's not your style, you can stealth your way across. Bottles and bricks are in ample supply in post-apocalyptic USA, and you can just throw them in the direction of unsuspecting bandits or the Infected to create a diversion while you sneak away. It works perfectly, and coupled with the game's fantastic sound engineering, you can get along just fine without having to resort to Listen mode, which tends to break immersion. If you fancy some challenge, you can switch off Listen mode completely, which is a welcome addition in a generation where spoon-feeding your audience comes easily to certain developers.

At no point do you feel like situations play out as escort missions. Much like the superlative BioShock Infinite, which had Elizabeth capable of handling herself, Ellie is adept at hiding, throwing a punch or two and knifing attackers if need be. In fact, you'll consider her as an essential companion in your journey rather than some character who you've been saddled with for the ride.

A game by Naughty Dog, fantastic production values are to be expected and The Last of Us does not disappoint. America basks in the after-effects of a disastrous epidemic and it looks stark, bleak and reassuringly photorealistic. From every inch of decaying rubble to the lush foliage amidst urban ruins, there's very little that this game gets wrong on the graphical front. You'll be hard pressed to spot imperfections. Believe us, we tried, and the closest we got were spotting a few jagged edges in need of anti-aliasing and the rare drop in frame rate during intense moments.

What's a post-apocalyptic game without corpses?

Minor flaws aside, everything from character models (even those who aren't the main characters) to weapons has been painstakingly detailed. In a year that's seen Crysis 3, Metro: Last Light and Tomb Raider, it's quite amusing that a game exclusive to more than seven-year-old hardware is a frontrunner for the best-looking game to hit this console generation.

Apart from the graphics and gameplay, there are a few departments where The Last of Us falters, albeit slightly. First up, the loading times are insane. Sure, the only time you're greeted by a loading screen is when you start the game, but it still takes quite a while. You can actually brew yourself a steaming hot cup of tea and toast before you begin. Secondly, the narrative, while brilliantly implemented, tends to be a little predictable. The first half throws every zombie survival horror trope at you, while the second half possesses a small section of gameplay that seems rather out of place. It's pieced in at the last moment to make it a slightly longer game, we think. However, these do very little to keep you from wanting to power through the game in a few sessions. Yes, before you know it, The Last of Us has its hooks in you, egging you on to see what depraved turn it takes next.

The graphics are stunning

Clocking in at around 15 hours, The Last of Us is an enjoyable romp that does not outstay its welcome. This fine blend of stealth, action and horror is a fitting way to see out a generation that's given us a number of gems. This game is definitely one of the gems and will be fondly remembered for years to come.

Nokia Asha 501 goes up for pre-order for Rs 5,199

Remember the Nokia Asha 501? The phone was announced with much fanfare in India and brings a new Asha UI experience to feature phones that gives a smartphone-like experience. The Asha 501 has now officially gone up for pre-order for Rs 5,199 on thecompany’s e-store. 

Available in five colours, the Asha 501 isn’t the most powerful device, even for its price. The Asha 501 sports a 3-inch LCD display with QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels). The phone will be available in single and dual-SIM variants but will support only 2G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and microUSB 2.0. The phone has a 3.2-megapixel camera at the back, but no flash.

Nokia's multi-hued Asha 501

There’s also a microSD card slot with support for cards up to 32GB in size. Nokia is including a free 4GB microSD card with the phone. The battery on the phone is a 1200mAh one, which has a quoted talk time of 17 hours and a standby time of a whopping 48 days

Nokia has borrowed usability elements from the MeeGo OS for the new UI. The Asha 501 sports a new interface that has a two-panel homescreen: one of the panels houses all notifications and recently-used items, which Nokia calls "Fastlane view"; the other panel gives you access to your apps. Fastlane also has shortcuts for posting to Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn etc. as well as shortcuts for the music player and message previews. It seems Nokia has taken a cue from Android’s lockscreen widgets, as you get a music player for the lockscreen too.

Mid-range Samsung Galaxy Core on pre-order for Rs 15,350

Samsung’s mid-range smartphone Galaxy Core has been spotted on pre-order at a couple of online retailers. It has also made an appearance on the company’s official e-store, where it's said to be shipping from July 1 for Rs 15,350. Available for the same price onFlipkart, and Rs 15,199 on Infibeam, the Galaxy Core is certainly one of the more affordable phones in the Samsung portfolio. 

Just like most of Samsung’s recent launches, the Galaxy Core comes with Jelly Bean, but with version 4.1. With a 4.3-inch WVGA display, the Galaxy Core doesn’t have the best screen in the market. It’s powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and 1GB of RAM, and is only 8.95 mm thick. One of the key features of the Galaxy Core is the dual-SIM dual standby feature, which allows users to receive a call on the second SIM even when the first SIM is busy.

Galaxy Core now on pre-order

In terms of connectivity, the Galaxy Core enjoys Wi-Fi support up to the n band and has HSPA cellular connectivity. This one comes with 8GB of storage with support for up to 32GB microSD cards. We have worries about the low 1800 mAh battery in the Galaxy Core, but the phone is fittingly low-specced for that battery unit. There’s a 5-megapixel camera on the back along with a 0.3-megapixel front-facing shooter. Neither is capable of 1080p videos, but there’s an LED flash for shooting not-so-bad low-light shots.

To our eyes and ears, the Galaxy Core sounds like a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S2, which also has the same display size and resolution as well as a dual-core CPU. Well, at least, the design has changed from the rectangular shaped body to a curvier shape, that’s in line with the more recent Samsung smartphones. This one is available in blue and white.

Celkon Signature HD A119Q Review

Media Tek MTK 6589 chipsets are seen on almost every budget Android smartphone available these days. Having characteristics such as a quad-core processor and the PowerVR GPU, budget smartphone manufacturers are implementing this chipset on almost all their current flagship models. Since most recent budget smartphones sold in India are featuring the same hardware, the only significant differences we get to see are display size and resolutions, RAM capacity, storage capacity and build/aesthetic variants. We saw the same chipset in a few other handsets we reviewed earlier and same is the case with the Celkon A119Q. So what does the A119Q have uncommon? We find out.

5-inch HD display, quad core 1.2GHz CPU, PowerVR SGX544 GPU

Design and build
The Celkon A119Q handset is encased in a completely glossy white shell and is a dirt magnet. There is also a black variant, which we feel is a bit more appealing. The handset is built very firmly with no creaky corners or any other such problematic areas to notice. The front features the large display with the three backlit touch buttons – Back, Home and Menu – at the bottom. The top sports the earpiece, front camera and the light/proximity sensor window. The rear panel sports the main camera with an LED flash residing next to it. Towards the bottom is a speaker grille and the brand name imprinted. The sides and bottom of the handset have a shiny bulging plastic trim, giving the phone a slightly premium feel. The volume rocker and the power/standby buttons take their places on the right and top of the smartphone respectively. Lastly, the top also features the earphone jack and the micro USB slot.

9.3 mm thick; volume rocker on the right

Slip out the plastic rear panel and you will find the two GSM SIM card slots and a hot-swappable micro SD card slot. At the bottom side is a large speaker underneath the shiny metal mesh. We did notice a minor but disappointment flaw on the manufacturing side. The power button, which is featured on the top of the handset, is placed externally on a small PCB with the cable running into the frame. Since the PCB and the cable is easily seen outwards, it looks pretty bad and could be prone to damage, dust and humidity. Apart from this, we did not find any issues with the build. But we would also like to mention that the handset is a tad heavier and weighs out at 177 grams. The phone measures 148 x 74.5 x 9.3 mm. The handset aesthetics does resemble the Samsung Galaxy series, except for the large bottom part, which features the buttons and the shiny trim around the frame. Overall, the A119Q does look good owing to the nice design implemented.

Power/standby, micro USB and headphone jack on the top

Features
The Celkon Signature HD A119Q is built using the Media Tek MTK 6589 featuring a quad-core ARMv7 processor running at 1.2GHz and a PowerVR SGX544MP GPU. The system is supplied with a good 1GB of RAM, but the internal storage remains at 4GB, just as most budget handsets. Out of this internal 4GB, 2.65GB is available for user data while the rest is taken up by the operating system, apps and app data. You can expand the storage up to 32GB using a micro SD card. 

The display is a large 5-incher sporting a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels with a ppi of 294. There are no details of the display featuring an IPS panel or a regular TFT panel, but the display does look close to an IPS type owing to the good viewing angles. The rear shooter is a 12.6MP camera supported with an LED flash. Sadly, despite having a quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, the camera records videos at only 720p resolution. We did try digging deep into the camera settings for finding out if this is the limit or the default settings are kept to 720p itself, but in vain. The camera sports other features such as GPS tagging, EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization), time lapse, burst (40 shots), face detection, anti flicker, colour effects, and a few other photo and video effects. The front camera is a 3.1MP for video chat.

AnTuTu system information for the A119Q

Connectivity options are Wi-Fi b/g/n, 3G, EDGE, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro USB PC interface and A-GPS. The operating system installed is Google Android Jelly Bean version 4.2.1. The launcher is stock with three built-in themes. These themes just have a slight change in colours, icons and such, and the setting is named as "Style" instead of "Themes". The operating system has a few bundled applications pre-installed in the firmware. These include a few entertainment apps, games, productivity apps and a security app. To end up the entire features section, the A119Q is powered by a 2100 mAh Li-ion battery, which should last you through the working day with basic to casual usage. Bundled along with the handset is a charger, in-ear earphones, a micro USB data cable, a free screen protector and a matte-finish all-white flip case. 

Performance and user interface
The Android Jelly Bean operating system installed on the A119Q seems stable. We did not notice any lags, jitters, slowdowns or major glitches. Thanks to the 1GB of RAM, the operating system runs smooth on the hardware provided to it. We found a problem in a few areas and would like to highlight the same. Firstly, the device has a loud bootup music, which is unpleasant and there is no way to disable or shun it to lower volumes. Rooting the device could be the only help for it. Secondly, the Wi-Fi toggle in the toggle switch area of the notification bar had an issue too. Usually, it should toggle the wireless network on/off when tapped once. In this case, you need to tap and hold the toggle switch for the status to activate. The other toggles worked without any issues. The second area of concern was the display. Towards the edges of the screen, one can see the LED backlight illuminating the edges a little too bright. A bright line is seen and is disturbing when browsing or watching a movie. Thirdly, the home, menu and back switches are backlit with very bright white LEDs and they don’t turn off on their own. This brightness of the switches could also be annoying after a while. There are no settings to turn them down or switch them off after a few seconds.

Stock UI with a few themes thrown in

To test the core strength of the chipset, we did run our usual benchmarking tests on it. Though the chipset is similar to most budget phones in the same category, the performance does vary owing to the different features such as the system RAM, display size and type, and tweaks and bloatware installed in the operating system. As per our tests, AnTuTu scored 13186, Quadrant scored 3950 and Linpack gave us a frame rate of 44.5 fps. Linpack gave scores of 36.51 MFLOPS and 126.81 MFLOPS in the single-thread and multi-thread tests respectively. Acting on the scores, we compared the A119Q to the rest of the gang and found the performance pretty much close to the Gionee E3, Spice Mi500, Xolo Q700 and the Micromax Canvas HD, which fall in the similar category (there may be more handsets too). This performance can vary from time to time as the handsets are all dependant on the amount of free RAM, apps installed, running apps and the ambient temperature. Our tests are performed after a factory reset with stock firmware and pre-installed apps.

Display and media
As mentioned in the features section, the display sports a 5-inch screen with a 720 x 1280 pixel HD resolution. There are no details on the manual or the manufacturer’s website whether the display panel is a regular TFT, TN, VN or an IPS type. We checked out the viewing angle and it seemed pretty good from all sides, but there is a minor and noticeable colour depreciation when viewed from all different angles. Since the viewing angle is good enough, we could state it is an IPS panel, but it is not up to the mark. Therefore, it could be a lower variant of an IPS type, but we are not confirming this at the moment. 

On the media front, the Celkon A119Q can handle formats such as MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, WB-AMR, MIDI, Ogg and PCM in audio and MP4, 3GP, WMA, H.264 and MPEG-4 in video straight out of the box. Certain formats and file types will definitely not be welcomed on the stock Android video player and you would have to incorporate a third-party media player for it.

Backlit buttons are continuously lit and overbright

We tried a few HD and full HD test videos and found the A119Q running flawlessly. The full HD videos ran smoothly with no issues whatsoever. The video quality is crisp and clear, with a good balance of brightness and contrast. Colours are brilliant too, but we did notice the blacks being displayed a bit greyish, but not all that bad. The minor issue of the display viewing angle cannot be noticed at all when you have a motion video on the screen, and it seems as though it was not there in the first place. The viewing angle problem can only be witnessed on a photo or a still/paused video where you can find minor colour changes at different angles. Overall, the video entertainment experience is great. 

The speaker on the A119Q is very loud, clear and good enough for a small crowd. The audio quality is also pretty decent. The bundled in-ear earphones sport a bad build quality and equally bad audio performance. The audio quality is below average with almost no reproduction of bass and with very high mids and highs. The earphones are only good enough for voice calls; you would need to exchange it with a good set for enjoying music and movies.

The camera user interface and a few features highlighted

Camera
The rear camera is 12.6MP, although the manufacturer has stated it containing a 12MP sensor. The camera has a stock interface from Jelly Bean and is pretty enriched with the necessary shooting modes. We took some pictures from the camera both outdoors and indoors to analyse the quality of the pictures it can capture. Surprisingly, the camera performs better than most other smartphone cameras in the category. Outdoor shots are clear and sharp with a good balance of colour and brightness. Even after zooming into the image, there were very little noticeable grains or noise. The overall image is pretty good and usable. Indoor shots are similar, except that the image loses out due to less light—a good flash would have helped. Macro shots are good too, provided there is a good amount of lighting on the subject. No major complaints here.

Outdoor photos are good

However, we did witness a small but important flaw in the camera. The focus, which should be in the centre by default, was on the upper half instead. Even forcing the focus to be in the centre did not help. You will see in the sample shot that the focused part is blurred out while the upper area is in better focus. Hopefully, the manufacturer will consider an update patch in the OS or camera driver to overcome this issue.

Indoor photos are good, but can be better if there is more light

Battery life
Fuelled by a 2100 mAh Li-ion battery, the A119Q should last you expectedly for around 6 to 8 hours. However, to check it out, we did our round of tests. We analysed the battery run time using a few tests that simulate web browsing, movies and gaming for a period of two hours each and looped it all over again till the battery gave up. Sadly, the smartphone lasted a total of 5 hours and 10 minutes till the charger needed to be plugged back in. Overall, a battery life of around 5 hours is a bit too little for a smartphone which is supposed to be used during the crucial part of the day. Had the manufacturer bundled an additional battery, the product could have been worth the price.

Macro shot, wherein the focus was supposed to be in the centre

Another sample macro shot with the focus on the top instead of the centre

Verdict and price in India
Priced at Rs 12,499, this phone seems to decently priced when compared with the others in the category. We also have the Xolo Q700, which sports almost similar features and is priced below the Rs 10,000 bracket. On the other hand, WickedLeak’s Wammy Passion Z is also available with a full HD IPS display for around Rs 2,000 more. Going by the price, performance and feature set it offers, the Celkon A119Q is a good buy. But what goes against it are a few areas of concern such as the bulky size, slightly excess weight, camera issue and a few others we mentioned earlier.

Huawei Ascend Mate

Huawei launched its 6.1-inch Ascend Mate in India with a price tag of Rs 24,900. As of now, the Ascend Mate is the most expensive smartphone that the company has in the country. Be that as it may, the competition that the smartphone will face in that price category from international competitors like Samsung and LG is considerable. What will set the Ascend Mate apart is the kind of specifications that it brings to the table. And it looks like Huawei has put just the right mix in the bag with this smartphone. Let’s take a closer look at the specifications.  

OS – Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
The Ascend Mate comes to the market with an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, which shouldn’t clog up the RAM performance while ensuring a lag-free software experience. The phone will also feature Huawei’s home-grown Emotion User Interface, which suggests applications intuitively and has intelligence guidance for entry-level users who are getting used to the interface.The interface seems to lack an app drawer though.

The company has included most of the stock Android apps while tweaking them here and there. The lockscreen seems pretty cool, though, as it functions like a circle with shortcuts functioning around the four points of the compass. Users can simply unlock the phone by swiping southwards, while the camera can be accessed by swiping north, messaging by swiping to the east and the call log can be accessed by swiping to the west. Users can opt for the standard Android lockscreen options if they want to. The other features the UI comes with includes an inter-changeable upper area of the phone, which normally displays the date and time but switches to reflect music player controls when users are in the music player mode.  

The Ascend Mate comes with a 6.1-inch screen and runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Cellular Connectivity – 3G and 2G
The phone features GSM for 2G network as well as Intel’s HSPA+ chip, which should definitely deliver high-speed 3G internet. Users can also use GPRS/EDGE if the need arises. 

Display – 6.1-inch 720p display 
The Huawei Ascend Mate comes with a 6.1-inch LCD display that supports 1280 x 720 pixel resolution. This works out to about 241 ppi, which is a good deal when you look at the price tag of the smartphone. The phone protects the display with Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The display sports IPS, which should ensure that the colours come out well balanced while still providing a good performance.  

Form Factor– A big phablet
The Huawei Ascend Mate measures 163.5 x 85.7 x 9.9 mm, which makes it big, even for a phablet. The dimensions show the smartphone to be a bit thick around the waist. Overall, the Ascend Mate looks a bit boxy, which may make it a bit uncomfortable to handle. The matte finish on the back is a bonus, though. The bezel footprint of the smartphone has also been reduced, with the display covering most of the phone.

Technically, the phone can be used with one hand. However, with a 6.1-inch display, and weight of around 200 g, the Ascend Mate may take users some time to get used to. An interesting thing to note here is the fact that all the Android controls are onscreen only, which can be accessed with an auto-hiding navigation bar. The Mate will be available in stores and online retailers in Crystal Black and Pure White colours.

Wi-Fi – Everything that you might need
The Ascend Mate comes with all the connectivity options users might require by supporting dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n of Wi-Fi. Adding to that, it comes with support for DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi hotspot, which lets users use their phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot – a common feature in most Android phones now. 

SoC – 1.5GHz Huawei K3V2 (Quad-core)
The Ascend Mate features a Huawei K3V2 chipset with a 1.5GHz quad-core Hi-Silicon CPU. The K3V2 processor is based on the ARM Cortex-A9 MP Core and comes with four 64-bit A9 cores. In addition to that, the K3V2 chipset also packs 16 GPU cores, which gives better performance than the Galaxy Nexus or the Transformer Prime when you look at the benchmark scores. The K3V2 processor has also been featured in other Huawei offerings like the Ascend D1 quad as well as Honor 2 Android phones, which have got fairly good reviews in the market for over-all performance. The smartphone supplements the processor with 2GB of RAM, which should give lag-less performance. 

Cameras – 8MP sensor with LED flash and 1 megapixel front-facing camera  
The Ascend Mate features an 8 megapixel camera on the back, which is similar to the cameras that the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 or the Note 2 sport. The camera can shoot images of up to 3264 x 2448 pixels and comes with an autofocus feature supplemented with an LED flash. The camera will also provide Geo-tagging, face detection and HDR. The video aspect of the smartphone also seems fair, as it can shoot up to1080p@30FPS. The smartphone will also come with a 1 megapixel front camera, which can shoot up to 720p@30FPS. The low specification of the front camera could be chalked up to cost-cutting efforts in the over-all production of the phone.

The Ascend Mate comes with an 8MP rear camera and a 1MP front camera

GPS – A-GPS sensor 
The Ascend Mate supports A-GPS. GLONASS seems to be missing from the specifications, though. 

Sensors and miscellaneous 
The sensors being featured include the usual suspects – accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass sensors. The smartphone also comes with Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, LE and EDR for interfacing with other devices. Among the miscellaneous features, the phone features a microUSB v2.0 port as well as USB On-The-Go. 

Battery – Li-Ion 4050 mAh  
With a big screen and a high-end processor, it was necessary for Huawei to give the Ascend Mate a battery which would provide enough power to last through the day. The company has obliged by bringing the smartphone with a Li-Ion 4050 mAh battery. This is definitely one of the largest batteries seen in a smartphone so far. A drawback here is the fact that the battery is non-removable. 

The bottom line 
There is no doubt that the Ascend Mate is a force to be reckoned with. With the massive screen, reasonably powered CPU and a powerful battery, the phone should definitely find takers in the market. The price of the phone is pretty good for the features you can get. The phone will come in direct competition with the Samsung Mega 6.3, the Note 2 and the soon to be launched LG Optimus G PRO. The Ascend Mate does a bit better than the Mega 6.3, which features a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon 400 processor.

The phone doesn’t quite keep up though when you compare it to the Note 2 or Optimus G PRO, which sport a 1.6 Exynos GHz quad-core processor and a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 respectively. Another point that may work against the Ascend Mate is the Android 4.1 OS, which can’t quite compare to the Jelly Bean 4.2 being offered by phones in the market. Another factor that might make it lose out on users is the sheer size and weight of the phone. However, Huawei may have got that part of the market covered with the Ascend P6, which was launched in London yesterday, and might see an entry soon into Indian markets.

Datawind UbiSlate 7C+ Review

Datawind, the manufacturer who has been awarded the Aakash tablet project in India, has launched the same tablet (the Aakash 3) for the consumer market. Dubbed as Ubislate 7C+, the tablet is the exact same as the Aakash 3 tablet which is subsidised by the Indian government for students. The 7C+ is an exact replica as that of the older sibling, the 7Ri, except that this one features a capacitive display and a SIM card option for calling capabilities. Let's have a look at what the 7C+ is all about.

Single core 1GHz processor overclocked to 1.2GHz, with 512MB RAM and 4GB storage

Design and build
The Ubislate 7C+ looks like any regular 7-inch android tablet. The entire shell is black in colour and with a very rugged and firm build. The front panel features absolutely no buttons apart from the earpiece and the front-facing camera. The rear panel sports a rubberised texture, which helps in gripping the tablet when in use. It sports a single speaker grille and a reset button. The rear panel withholds large brand names and stickers, which looks very cluttered and spois the overall aesthetics. The entire right side is features the necessary interfaces and buttons. This includes a microUSB PC interface, a charging jack, the volume rocker, the earphone jack and an opening for the microphone. Also included here are the microSD card and GSM SIM slots housed underneath a rubber flap. The tablet has a decent look from the front, but loses out on the rear panel. The 7C+ measures 190 x 150 x 13 mm and weighs about 350 grams.

7-inch capacitive display with a resolution of 800 x 480

Features 
The Ubislate 7C+ is built using a Cortex A8 processor running at 1GHz supported by a MALI-400 GPU. The processor seems to be overclocked by 200MHz (AnTuTu reported a 1.2GHz processor) by Datawind. The reason could be to have the performance bumped up by a small sum. The tablet has been provided with 512MB of RAM and an internal storage of 4GB, which can be expanded up to 32GB via the microSD card slot. The total storage of 4GB is shared by the system and user data, and only 1.4 GB is available to the user. The display featured here is a 7-incher multi-touch capacitive panel with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. The 7C+ is a single SIM GSM tablet that features calling connectivity and internet via GPRS and EDGE. Other connectivity options are Wi-Fi and a microUSB PC interface. There is no camera on the rear panel and the one on the front is a simple VGA camera for video chats. Lastly, thetablet is fuelled by a 3200 mAh batteryl. The tablet runs on the Android ICS operating system.

GSM SIM card slot on the right for calling and basic Internet (GPRS)

Performance and user interface
The tablet has a completely stock Android ICS launcher and we did find the user interface a bit sluggish. This could be owing to the low 512MB of RAM and the operating system cluttered with a few too many apps. The touch panel is a little over sensitive; one needs to be a bit careful while swiping through the app drawer. The sensitive touchscreen tends to click on the app before you swipe it, tending to open the application. This is also caused due to the sluggish interface.

Ugly rear panel with large branding and stickers.

In order to analyse the hardware, we ran the usual benchmarks and here are the scores. AnTuTu resulted in 3770, Quadrant in 2372 and NenaMark gave us a score of 32.5 fps. Lastly, Linpack scored 14.82 MFLOPS and 14.31 MFLOPS in the single-thread and multi-thread tests respectively. The performance of the tablet is similar to the Ubislate 7Ri, which sports the exact similar hardware with a resistive display. The tablet also performs at par with most budget tablets that feature a single core processor.

Stock user interface from the ICS operating system

 Display and media

The 7-inch display panel featuring 800 x 480 pixels is below average. The viewing angles are bad—viewing from the top makes the colours inverted and when you view from the bottom, the colours are completely washed out. In order to enjoy the best display performance, it is suggested to hold the tablet at a perfect 90-degrees when in landscape mode.

Stock tablet launcher

We ran a few HD and full HD videos to gauge the entertainment aspect of the tablet and found that the 7C+ can play full HD 1080p videos with very little effort. The video is smooth, but you can notice a very little framing in fast motion scenes. The display quality is not up to the mark, though. Colours are not vibrant enough and look washed out or pale. This can be blamed on the low resolution and bad viewing angle of the display panel. Also, the brightness level could have been higher. However, for casual entertainment, the display quality is just good enough. The onboard speaker, although clear, is a tad too low. You would need to stress a bit in order to understand dialogues or the vocals. A suitable headphone is recommended. The bundled earphones have a below-average build. The audio quality is also not up to the mark, making the headphones just good enough for voice calls. We suggest you invest for a decent pair of headphones when purchasing this device.

A few too many apps for productivity, games and knowledge

Battery life
The 3200 mAh battery powering the 7-incher Ubislate 7C+ seems just about sufficient for its main purpose as a student tablet. The battery lasted just around 3 hours and 45 minutes in our tests. Since a casual user would not push the tablet to this extreme of continuous use, we do expect the battery to last you a lot longer. The actual battery life would completely depend on the usage.   

Dialer screen, Internal hardware specs reported by AnTuTu

Verdict and price in India
The Datawind Ubislate 7C+ retails at a cost of Rs 4,999 for the general consumer, while the Aakash 3 version would be a lot cheaper and subsidised for students from the government’s coffer. We think this price is too steep for the general consumer as you can avail most dual-core tablets for a similar cost, except for the calling capability. For the subsidised price (almost half the actual cost), the tablet is decent owing to the calling capability. Adding another 50 percent of the cost, you can get a tablet with a bigger display or the ones with a quad-core processor and a better display quality. The average build quality, poor display and audio quality, sluggish interface and a few shortcomings in other areas make the tablet a little too expencive for the retail price.