Top 5 smartphones between Rs 20,000-Rs 30,000

                This segment includes the best smartphones that you can blindly play for in the market today. It  is the arena of gladiators, old and new. Some even come with such high end specifications that they put handsets priced higher than Rs 40,000 to shame.

1 . LG NEXUS 5 (16/32 GB) 

It is currently the most talked about handset. It was launched only in October this year and comes in 16 GB and 32 GB versions, in black and white colours. The 16 GB version of Nexus 5 is available from Google Play store for Rs 28,999. Not many online retailers are offering it as of now so you will have to buy it from the Google Play store.

First of all, the Google Nexus 5 is a beautifully designed smartphone. It is just 8.59 mm thick that makes it one of the slimmest smartphones in the world today. Also despite having a 4.95 inch touchscreen and a huge 2300 mAh battery, it weighs just 130 grams.

But it is not just its body, the phone's specifications also make it one of the best smartphones in the world today. The Nexus 5 has a 4.95 inch touchscreen, that too with full high definition resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It comes armed with the latest Android 4.4 KitKat operating system. Moreover, the 2.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, Adreno 330 GPU, and 2 GB RAM make it a hulk handling a multitude of tasks with ease.

The LG made Google Nexus 5 has an 8 megapixel auto focus rear camera with optical image stabilisation. Recently, Google also issued Android 4.4.1 update to make the camera even better. There is a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera as well. Besides, the Nexus 5 has a 2300 mAh battery that is said to provide 17 hours of talktime and 300 hours on standby. It is armed with dual band , Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC as well.

However, the Nexus 5 has no expandable memory. So if you are buying the 16 GB version, you have to manage with limited storage.

2. NOKIA LUMIA 925

This is another giant in this price bracket and is the only phone in this list to come with Windows Phone 8 operating system. It comes with a 4.5 inch Amoled touchscreen with high definition (1280 x 720 pixel) resolution. The display has Corning Gorilla Glass 2 protection and is said to provide wide viewing angles. Moreover, the display is said to come with sunlight readability enhancements to make it easier to use outdoors.

The Nokia Lumia 925 has a powerful 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, which is assisted by 1 GB RAM. However, like Nexus 5, it has 16 GB internal storage only, without an expandable storage slot.

But the main attraction of Lumia 925, for which reason we have chosen it, is its camera capability. Its 8.7 megapixel auto focus rear camera with PureView technology and Carl Zeiss optics make it one of the best smartphone cameras available today. It also comes with a 1.2 megapixel front camera.

The 8.5 mm thick Nokia Lumia 925 has a 2000 mAh battery that claims to provide 12 hours of 3Gtalktime, which is one of the best in the industry as of now. Besides, this 3G smartphone has WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS with Glonass support, micro USB, and DLNA capability. Currently, it is available for around Rs 28,000.

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 3. SONY XPERIA Z

 It is the only water resistant handset here. But does that make it stand in the league. Well certainly it does. Sony Xperia Z comes with a 5 inch display with full HD resolution. It has a powerful 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core processor, Adreno 320 GPU, Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean operating system, and huge 2 GB RAM. Most importantly, it has 16 GB internal storage and 32 GB expandable storage slot.

Xperia Z is also considered one of the best camera phones available today due to its 13 megapixel rear camera with Exmor RS sensor that allows it to capture incredible images in low light. The rear camera has an image stabilisation feature with 16x zoom, and is said to capture full HD resolution videos. In the front too it has a decent 2 megapixel camera.

The Sony Xperia Z is incredibly thick at 7.9 mm, despite having a 2330 mAh battery that is said to provide 11 hours of 3G talktime. Besides, the Xperia Z has WiFi, a micro USB port, Bluetooth, DLNA, and GPS with Glonass support. Presently you can grab it for a price of around  RS 29000 or even less. Depending upon your location

4. HUAWEI ASCEND P6

Well if you are shocked with this one. Then your better think again. It is the thinnest smartphone of the world with 6.18 mm thickness. The phone is beautiful outside but is powerful from inside. It comes with a unibody construction with an artistic curvy bottom and metal work on its sides. Despite having a 4.7 inch display and huge 2000 mAh battery, it weighs just 120 grams.

But this beautiful smartphone has a beast inside- a 1.5 GHz quad core processor, Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system, and a huge 2 GB RAM. The Ascend P6 also has 8 GB ROM and a 32 GB expandable memory slot. This Huawei smartphone comes with an 8 megapixel rear auto focus camera and a 5 megapixel front camera.

Besides, the Huawei Ascend P6 has WiFi, Bluetooth, micro USB port, and a single SIM slot. Currently it is available in India for Rs 25,499.

                                                                   

 5.  HTC DESIRE 600

Available for around Rs 26,490, the HTC Desire 600 comes with a 4.5 inch Super LCD 2 display with qHD (540 x 960 pixel) resolution. It is powered by a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 quad core processor assisted by Android Jelly Bean operating system and 1 GB RAM. Storage wise, it is the best in this list with 8 GB ROM and a 64 GB micro SD card slot.

The HTC Desire 600 also has an 8 megapixel auto focus rear camera and a 1.6 megapixel front camera. The rear camera though is able to capture only HD videos and not full HD, which is common to all smartphones in this list. The Desire 600 is armed with an 1800 mAh battery, which is said to provide 11 hours of 3G talktime. Besides, the Desire 600 has WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and DLNA.

PS: well to be very honest if you really want to spend around 26K then do consider other options.

Galaxy Nexus CyanogenMod 11 Android 4.4 KitKat Stable Unofficial ROM Released

Nearly two years ago, Google launched the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Developed in col laboration with Samsung, it was the first smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Since then multiple Nexus smartphones have come and gone, and so have major Android OS updates. When Google unveiled Android 4.4 KitKat recently, Galaxy Nexus users expected that the company will support their device. Instead, Google announced that it would not release an official KitKat update for the Galaxy Nexus. Dejected owners then turned towards third-party developed ROMs, but there weren’t any stable ROMs available. If you have been waiting for one yourself, the wait if now over. A stable custom Galaxy Nexus Android 4.4 ROM has been released. Built from AOSP, the CyanogenMod 11 custom Android 4.4 KitKat ROM for Galaxy Nexus is stable and all features are working. However, the ROMs status is still in beta because its missing some common CyanogenMod features, which are different from core Android OS features. Apart from a screenshot taking glitch, everything seems to be working. It goes without saying that flashing custom ROMs comes with its fair share of risks, so before you download the Galaxy Nexus CyanogenMod 11 Android 4.4 custom ROM, be sure that you know what you’re doing. The ROM and install instructions are available at XDA forums.

Do I Really Need a 1080p Display on My Smartphone?

                                                                                         

I'm in the market for a new phone and I want to get something with a nice display, but do I really need something with 1080p? That seems like a lot for just a 5” screen, but everyone seems to be advertising it.

If 1080p in a phone sounds like a lot, that's because it is. When the first iPhone with a "retina display" came out, it packed a 3.5" screen with a resolution of 960x640, giving it 326 pixels per inch (or ppi). Notably, when Apple increased the physical size of the iPhone to 4", it also increased the resolution to 1136x640 which is still 326ppi. In most cases, 300ppi or so exceeds what the human eye is able to distinguish at a normal viewing distance .

A 1080p phone, on the other hand, has an insane amount of pixels in comparison. In a 5" phone, a display of 1920x1080 has a whopping density of 440ppi. If you go down to, say a 4.7" phone like the HTC One, you reach 468ppi. That's a resolution that's about 50% higher than what most human eyes can readily distinguish under normal usage. You can probably see pixels if you squint really close, but is there any real benefit to going up this high?

High Resolution Displays Use More Battery Power

It's impossible to add more pixels to a device without needing power to run them. Some types of panels like AMOLED only light up pixels as they're needed, which means you can conserve some power by using darker themes, but LCD displays will light them all up no matter what, which requires more juice. Not only to physically turn them on, but it also requires battery power to run the processor harder to account for the added complexity (which we'll come back to in a bit).P

Just how much extra power does it take? Well, when Apple released the 3rd generation iPad with "retina" (here defined as 264ppi), it came with a whopping 11,666 mAh battery, which was70% larger than the battery in the previous generation. However, it still only promised the same 10 hours of use. Why? Well, it would be oversimplifying to say it's solely because of the new display, but it's also correct to say that doubling the ppi over the previous tablet (132ppi for the iPad 2) would require a significant increase in power consumption.

You can somewhat see this reflected in Android phones as well. While Android phones vary wildly in battery size, the ones that last the longest are also typically the ones with the biggest batteries. LaptopMag rated the LG G2 as the Android phone with the best battery life around. It also carries a 3,000 mAh battery. Comparatively, the Moto X has a 720p display with 2,200 mAh battery. Both phones will run a full day (and the G2 can actually run longer than that), but larger batteries don't make phones more efficient. They're more akin to Hummers with large tanks than a fuel-efficient hybrid.

High Resolution Displays Use More Processing PowerP

While powering all those pixels will have a direct effect on battery life, they'll have to go through some processing power on the way. How much is difficult to gauge since there are so many factors that affect performance and efficiency in software. However, as one independent game developer explained to us, increasing the number of pixels in a display will always tax the GPU more:P

These higher res screens tax fragment shaders (which do the processing for each pixel) on the GPU more. That means you get worse battery life for the same GPU/battery because for all applications more pixels need to be processed. It also means that in anything that actually gets near the limits of the hardware you have (primarily games), you're going to hit those limits much more quickly. Especially because, in games, the fragment shaders are, the vast majority of the time, going to be the primary bottleneck.

In most cases, we accept this trade-off because things look nicer. However, since the human eye can't tell much of a difference between a 300+ppi display and a 400+ppi display, the extra processing power needed to run those pixels is mostly wasted. Ironically, having a higher resolution display can result in worse-looking graphics purely because the GPU is wasting time on rendering more raw pixels (that you probably can't see), instead of allowing developers to use those resources on adding more elements or details (like the advanced particle systems, lighting effects, and texture mapping you see in advanced AAA games).P

High Resolution Displays Are Good for CJK Characters (Maybe)P

There are, however, a few benefits to having a high resolution display—like CJK characters. If you haven't heard of CJK characters, then this benefit doesn’t apply to you. CJK stands for Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. Unlike the Latin-based alphabet that consists of a small collection of a couple dozen or so distinct symbols that create words based on combinations, CJK symbols can be distinct words on their own and potentially bear striking similarities to different words.P

The question of whether or not super high-resolution displays actually aid in reading CJK characters is, as with anything, highly subjective. However, text is one of the first things to become illegible at low-resolutions and CJK characters are considerably more complex than Latin ones.

Keep in mind that, while it's true in an overwhelming majority of cases that a ppi exceeding 300 is overkill, it depends heavily on how good your eyesight is and how far away you view your device. You probably don't normally look at your phone three inches away from your face, but if you do, 300ppi might not be enough

If you have a need to read text using CJK characters, your best bet is to just look at a phone with a 1080p display yourself, hold it the way you normally hold your phone, and see how it feels for you. However, if you stick with latin-based characters, it's equally likely that trying to distinguish between two screens will just result in your brain playing tricks on you.

Ultimately, your phone choice is up to you and none of them are particularly bad. However, the higher up the ppi in phones get, the more questionable the benefit is. Even if you feel a tangible benefit to a 1080p display in a 5" phone, it won't stop there. LG, for example, recently showed off a 5.5" display with a mind-boggling 538ppi. Arguments about viewing distances, special characters, and "retina" definitions aside, there's an upper limit for phone displays and we're straddling that line now. Chances are for most consumers, worrying about battery life and performance should be a much higher priority.

MediaTek vs. Qualcomm: Which Chipset you should have in your Smartphone, Tablet

With smartphones getting cheaper by the day, even the layman is talking the chipset language. About 2 years back, you’d be tagged a ‘tech guru’ if you spoke about chipset and RAM and ROM; however, with smartphones fast becoming popular and affordable, you hear every other guy speaking the tech lingo. People now want to know what their hard earned money is giving them; the times when the packaging mattered more than the substance is long gone.

Most of us carry out an extensive research before going for a device, be it a mobile phone, tablet PC, desktop or laptop. This is because of the recent ‘awareness revolution’ brought about with the launch of affordable smartphones.

What matters the most in a smartphone? In descending order, it probably is processor, RAM, GPU, and then the rest follow. In this post, let us talk about the first and the most important component on your phone – the Processor.

We usually here names like Exynos, Snapdragon, etc. Another name which has cropped up recently is MediaTek. MediaTek is a relatively new chipset manufacturer, and the Taiwanese company is the latest among the previously mentioned ones to join the international scene. The company’s Modus Operandi is significantly different from it’s counterparts; MediaTek believes in profit from volume rather than bigger from from lesser units.

 

This is what has made the company the ‘go-to’ chipset manufacturer for low cost devices; almost all of the low cost devices originating from China, be it for consumption in the home country or for other brands like Micromax, feature MediaTek processors.

On the other hand, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon is all about cutting edge technology delivered before anyone else gets there. However, Qualcomm chipsets, and therefore smartphones featuring Qualcomm chipsets, are usually much more pricier than their MediaTek counterparts. But, a few handset manufacturers are now offering older-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon processor powered phones to compete against this backlash from MediaTek. In this case, which device should you go for?

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Well, many factors such as architecture, working frequency, etc. need to be kept in mind before going for your device. Comparing the MT6589 from MediaTek and MSM8225Q from Qualcomm, for example:

Chipset	MediaTek MT6589	Qualcomm MSM8228Q
Manufacturing process	28nm	28nm
Architecture	Cortex A7	Cortex A5
Frequency	1.2 GHz per core	1 GHz per core
GPU	PowerVR SGX 544	Adreno 203
Video Playback	1080p	720p
Screen resolution	1920x1080p	1200x800p
Power Efficiency	High	Low
Camera	13MP max	8MP max
Cores	4	4

As you can see from the table above, the MT6589 comfortably beats the MSM8225Q. Why do we compare these two only, even though the two companies have many more chipsets on offer? Because, the MT6589 and the MSM8225Q fall in exactly the same price bracket, as far as the handsets featuring them are concerned.

Does this mean that MediaTek is the better chipset manufacture out of the two? No. This was simply a comparison between the MT6589 and the MSM8225Q, two of the most popular low cost chipsets in the market.

We believe that you should make your choice depending on your budget. For example, for anything below 15k INR, you need not look further; MediaTek is the way you need to go. On the other hand, if you are ready to shell out some serious money (upwards of 20k INR), you should look at options other than MediaTek. The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro is a great choice; the MT6589T is something which tries to compete against the S4 Pro, however, the S4 Pro is the clear winner.

We think we have made our thoughts pretty clear. To sum it up, we say it again – go for MediaTek based devices if you are looking for a smartphone costing under 15,000 INR. On the other hand, going for a Qualcomm powered smartphone when on a higher budget is a better idea.