22 June,2014 09:57 AM IST | | Harpreet Kaur Sapra
If you are looking for a reason to rejoice as the skies open up, look no further than these new devices
Rains have a way of cleaning up everything - plants look fresh and people always look like they have just stepped out of the shower, looking refreshed.
But what's more, this season, there is a downpour of gadgets as well. Here is a list of items that got recently
introduced in the market.
Mumbai monsoon special: Reign in the rains
Samsung Galaxy Tab S:
With Galaxy Tab S, Samsung has introduced AMOLED screens with a super-sharp 2,560 x 1,600 resolution to tablets. AMOLED had found its way to smartphones a while ago, but this is the first time these tablets are getting such
beautiful screens.
The Galaxxy TAB S is available in 8.4" and 10.5" Screen Sizes, and thanks to the AMOLED, with a simple tap, you can make the screen more or less colour saturated giving you a much better video experience.
The tablet features an 8 Core [octa-core] Exynos 5420 Processor, 3GB of RAM, a 2.1 megapixel front-facing camera, and an 8MP rear camera with LED flash so that your video calls and selfies are sharper.
The dimpled effect from the Samsung Galaxy S5 finds it's way to the rear of the tablet, and it also features a new metal trim.
If you are comparing the 8.4" version to the iPad Mini, it is only 6.6-mm thick and is lighter than the
iPad Mini.
It also features a finger print sensor that can store up to eight profiles.
Seagate Backup Plus Fast
Over the years, our digital assets have grown and with 4K Movies now available, you may love to watch them on your laptop while travelling. You may also like to stream them at home, which means your hard disk needs to be portable, fast and light in weight.
The Seagate Backup Plus Fast (MSRP: R25,000) is an answer to all that. It is a combination of two hard disks running on RAID 0 - yes, I know that's a whole lot of technology jargon, but this allows the hard disk to give you superfast 4K videos.
Since it includes two hard disks, you get four terrabytes of storage when you are copying data to the hard disk or reading data from it. That means, you can carry your entire digital library with you. The hard disk uses power from your USB 3.0 Port, so there is no additional power adapter to carry. However, you do need to have a USB 3.0 port for all that high speed access.
The Seagate Back Up Plus also comes with an amazing piece of software from Seagate that automatically backs up your PC and keeps files updated.
If you download their App from the App Store on iOS or the Google Play store on Android, you can backup all those pictures, videos and even contacts wirelessly from your smartphone to the hard disk.
It comes in a sleek metal-finished casing that gives it a sturdy feeling, but I would not go about dropping this. The Drive comes with a three year warranty and also integrates with cloud storage providers such as Dropbox.
Micromax Canvas Windows Smartphones
If you wanted a Windows phone, your choices were just about limited to a Nokia Lumia phone. With Microsoft's recent announcement about making its operating system free for small-sized screens, Micromax has given birth to two new babies in the budget windows phone market - Canvas Win W092 at Rs 6,500 and Canvas Win W121 at Rs 9,500 prespectively. The W092 features a 4" WVGA IPS display, a 5-megapixel rear and a VGA front camera that will just about work for those selfies or a Skype call, while its bigger brother, the W121, has a 5" HD IPS display, an eight megapixel rear and a two megapixel front camera. The W121 also comes with a leather finished back panel, giving it a slightly upmarket feel. Both phones run on Windows 8.1 and are powered by the same processor, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200, and have a gigabyte RAM each.
They have dual SIM capability and come with a built in storage of eight gigabytes.
Both the models are responsive and are great entry level phone options, but will only be available to you sometime in July.
Asus Zenfone:
Asus has announced three different devices - the Zenfone 4, 5 and 6, with a 4", 5" and a 6" screen size, the Zenfone 4 and 5 (both run on Intel processors) - which will be launched on July 9 in India, though we don't have a pricing from Asus as yet. The phones use a complex software based algorithm that helps them take pictures in the dark. As an experiment, we put a butterfly in a box and allowed the phone to take a picture with no ambient light.
The image came out well, although you do have to leave the phone very still. It's in the camera department that Asus truly shines. What is also interesting is the phone's separate back covers.
The Zenfone 4 runs on a 1.2 GHz processor with 8 GB storage, and 1 GB RAM, with a much lower screen resolution of 480x800 but the Zenfone 5 runs on a fast 2 GHz Processor, though it also has 1 GB RAM, but has a much higher screen resolution of 1280x720 pixels.
