Top five puzzle games to challenge your brain

Mindless running, jumping and gunning games are dime a dozen not only on the mobile platform but on the home console as well. But the games that really keep some of us hooked to our smartphone screens are the ones that challenge our intellect, make us scratch our heads and scream, “that's what I should have done” in a public place.'

There are a plethora of puzzle games available on the Google Play store and the Apple App Store. We listed five games of those games here; games that really grabbed our attention, and made us scratch our heads.

1.      Amazing Alex

From the creators of Angry Birds comes another brain racking puzzle game – Amazing Alex. The game drops you in a series of physics-based puzzles which involves you maneuvering everyday objects such as wooden planks, pipes, scissors and more to navigate objects from one point of the screen to the next.

The best part of the game is that there is no defined objective. At one point you are dropping books and at the next you are dropping tennis balls in a basket. The game is very intuitive and some of the puzzles apart from being challenging, are addictive and fun as well.

Android users can download the game for free from the Google Play store.

iOS users can download the game for $0.99 for the iPhone here and $2.99 for the iPad here.

2.      Cut the Rope

If joining planks and pipes isn’t your thing then maybe you’d like to cut ropes. Literally! The objective of the game is simple: Cut the Rope, catch a star, and feed Om Nom (yes, that's the name of the cute and cuddly creature) candy.

The game places a variety of tools at your disposal such as suction cups, bubbles, rockets, projectile rope-darts, robotic hands and more to act as obstacles and to help you get candy to the creature.

This is one of the most addictive games we have played and we have never seen cuter expressions from a creature who is eagerly awaiting candy.

Android users can download Cut the Rope for Rs. 54 here.

Android users can download Cut the Rope: Experiments for Rs 54 here.

Android users can download Cut the Rope HD for Rs. 108 here.

Android users can download Cut the Rope: Experiments HD for Rs. 108 here.

iOS users can download Cut the Rope for $0.99 here.

iOS users can download Cut the Rope: Experiments for $0.99 here.

iOS users can download Cut the Rope HD for $1.99 here.

iOS users can download Cut the Rope: Experiments HD for $1.99 here.

3.      Angry Birds

No puzzle games list can be complete without the Angry Birds Series. There is no particular version of the game we recommend for you here. We say, give them all a try. The franchise has quite a few iteration, namely Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Rio. The objective of the games is simple. Fling the birds at the sheltered pigs to take them out. Each of the birds has their own unique and special skills from dropping eggs, to exploding to freezing birds.

Angry Birds Space takes the level design to a whole new level by introducing gravity elements to the gameplay.

If you want to have sleepless nights and rack your brain on achieving a high score, then Angry Birds is the game for you.

Android users can download Angry Birds for free here.

Android users can download Angry Birds Seasons for free here.

Android users can download Angry Birds Rio for free here.

Android users can download Angry Birds Space for free here.

Android users can download Angry Birds Space HD for Rs.166 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds for $0.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds HD for $2.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds Seasons for $0.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds Seasons HD for $2.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds Rio for $0.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds Rio for $2.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds Space for $0.99 here.

iOS users can download Angry Birds Space HD for $2.99 here.

4.      Where’s My Water

With more than 200 levels, ‘Where’s My Water?’ is a challenging physics-based puzzler game where to be successful, players need to be clever and keep an eye out foralgae, toxic ooze, triggers, and traps. The game is divided into stories.

SWAMPY’S STORY: Swampy the Alligator lives in the sewers under the city. He is a little different from the other alligators — he’s curious, friendly, and loves taking a nice long shower after a hard day at work. The other alligators have damaged his plumbing and disrupted the water flow. Help Swampy by guiding water to his shower! In Swampy’s Story, play 10 themed chapters over 200 levels. Collect Swampy’s ducks and shower items to unlock new puzzles and bonus levels. "

CRANKY’S STORY Cranky is the toughest alligator around and he has worked up an appetite from sabotaging Swampy’s water supply. He eats anything, especially all the rotting and disgusting junk found in the dumps and sewers. Cranky will not eat vegetables however, and now his food is covered with vegetable-like algae. Use the dirty purple water to clean off Cranky’s plate so he can eat! Cranky is tough and so are his puzzles! Try five levels for free and test your skills with more than 80 levels for an additional in-app purchase.

Android users can download the game for Rs. 55 here.

iOS users can download the game for $0.99 here.

5.      World of Goo

The objective of the game is to create large structures using balls of goo. The main objective of the game is to get a requisite number of goo balls to a pipe at the end of the level. Player can use the goo balls to create structures such as bridges, towers, and more to overcome gravity and hazards such as chasms, hills, spikes and windmills. A challenging aspect of the game is that players must exploit combinations of a variety of goo balls in order to complete each level.

Android users can download World of Goo for Rs. 277 here.

iOS users can download World of Goo for $2.99 here.

iOS users can download World of Goo HD for $4.99 here.

Outlook.com passwords: Does length really matter?

On Thursday, Sophos identified a red flag regarding Outlook, Microsoft's new Web-based email service. Apparently Outlook limits passwords to 16 digits, while Yahoo permits up to 32 and Gmail appears to allow up to 200.

It's a shame to see the new Outlook.com miss an opportunity to encourage the use of longer passwords. Anything which encourages users to choose hard-to-crack, hard-to-guess, unique passwords is good in my book," wrote Sophos analyst Graham Cluley.

Of course, he also noted that longer passwords aren't necessarily better from length alone—you still have to strengthen your password with a mix in symbols and letters.

Another question Cluley raised is whether or not Microsoft salts and hashes passwords to make them virtually impossible to crack. If you're rolling your eyes, let's not forget how, a couple months ago, it was revealed through the LinkedIn breach that the company had stored passwords with weak SHA-1 hashing and no salt.

"Most Passwords Are Stolen, Not Cracked"

But although longer passwords are helpful, another security expert noted that most password dumps occur because passwords are stolen rather than cracked by brute-force attacks.

Companies falling under this camp within the past 12 months include Dropbox, Yahoo,LinkedIn, and Sony. According to reports, the initial database breach occurred due to negligent employee behavior (like using an admin password for everything).

"Whether or not a password is 16 or 200 characters long isn't the right focus since passwords are mainly stolen, not brute-forced," said Nicolas Caproni, a cybersecurity expert in France (@

Rather than numbers, Caproni said online services should check for password strength with a mix of numbers, symbols, capital- and lower-case letters. They also need to encrypt users' passwords on their servers otherwise "strength and length are useless."

Caproni told me that in LinkedIn's case, only 0.08 percent of exposed passwords had 16 characters and 0 percent had more. Earlier this month, meanwhile, Qualys researcher Francois Pesche plotted the 400,000 leaked Yahoo passwords on a heat map, and found somesurprising patterns that might rattle your false belief that your 32-character password is really safe.

Yesterday, while reporting the Dropbox breach, my colleague Fahmida Rashid made a bold suggestion for how companies can prevent employees from reusing passwords.

Karbonn officially launches Jelly Bean-based Smart Tab 1 at Rs. 6,990

Karbonn Mobiles has officially announced the launch of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean-based Smart Tab 1 tablet PC. Priced at Rs. 6,990, the new Karbon Smart Tab 1 comes with MIPS-Based JZ4770 SoC from Ingenic as its running core. The tablet is powered by a 1.2GHz processor. Karbonn has also announced rolling out Jelly Bean update for the customers of the Android 4.0.3 ICS-based Smart Tab 1. Booking for the Jelly Bean-based Smart Tab 1 has already begun.

The Karbonn Smart Tab 1 features 17.8cm capacitive 5-point touch screen, 2MP camera, Full HD video playback up to 1080p, HDMI support, 3D gravity sensor, Wi-Fi and 3G support through USB dongle, Pre-embedded applications - Karbonn Smart Browser & Karbonn Smart Games and local apps such as Times of India & Economic Times app and Facebook. The device comes with a 3,700 mAh battery.

Karbonn has also explained features of the Ingenic JZ4770 SoC loaded in the Smart Tab 1:

• JZ4770 SoC is powered by a MIPS32 compatible XBurst CPU designed by Ingenic
• Adopts an ultra-low-power pipelining architecture which consumes less than 90mW in 1GHz (with L1 cache) with the entire SoC consuming ~250mW with the CPU and video engine operating under full load
• The JZ4770 SoC integrates an optimized 1080p video processing engine, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics processing unit from Vivante Corp
• Also integrates numerous on-chip analog and application blocks such as audio codecs and GPS

“This new tablet demonstrates continued adoption of our cost-effective JZ4770 SoC in mobile devices. The JZ4770 SoC leverages the simplicity and elegance of the MIPS architecture, and features extremely low power consumption, 1.2GHz performance, and a high level of functional integration. Millions of tablets are already shipping around the globe based on our design, and we anticipate increasing success as more and more companies recognize the differentiation our solution can enable,” says Qiang Liu, Chairman and CEO of Ingenic Semiconductor.

There are already a range of budget tablets in the market right now. Karbonn, however, has grabbed an edge over the rivals by becoming the first Indian brand to announce a tablet which features Jelly Bean out of the box, apart from an update for existing customers of the Smart Tab 1, which currently ships with ICS. As for now, there are quite a few ICS-based tablets such asFunbook, Funbook Pro and Penta T-Pad WS802C in India. For more, check out our list of Top 10 Budget Tablets.

Micromax officially launches Funbook Pro at Rs. 9,999

Micromax has officially announced the launch of its Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich-based Funbook Pro tablet PC in India. Sporting a larger 10.1-inch display, the Funbook Pro is said to be an improved version of the original Funbook tablet, which was launched earlier this year. The Funbook Pro has been priced at Rs. 9,999.

The Micromax Funbook Pro recently went up for grabs via online shopping website Snapdeal. Touted as the 'edutainment device', the Funbook Pro is powered by a Cortex A8 1.2GHz processor. It has 1GB of RAM, and a 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen with 1024 x 600 pixels resolution.

Other specs of the Funbook Pro include a VGA front facing camera, 8GB built-in storage and microSD card slot that supports storage up to 32GB. For connectivity, the device supports 3G via USB, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, and USB 2.0. It also has a HDMI port. The device comes with a massive 5,600 mAh battery.

The Funbook Pro comes pre-loaded with various apps such as Zip, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Text Editor, YouTube and more.

Micromax is also offering a Tata Docomo Photon+ data card along with Funbook Pro tablet. It's notable that activation and delivery of Tata Docomo Photon+ postpaid connection will be available via Tata Teleservices stores/call centre at a fee of Rs. 500 for processing and handling, which is to be borne by the customer. Also, the Photon+ data card is available in circles only where Tata Docomo Photon Plus Services are available. To know more about the offer, click here.

Announcing the launch of the Funbook Pro, CEO Micromax Informatics Ltd. Deepak Mehrotra says, “Today’s youth are tech savvy, but at the same time restless; they want to buy and experience new innovations that make their life easier but in a matter of a few clicks. Inspired by the huge response for 7" Funbook on Snapdeal, we are glad to continue this relationship with them for the new 10" Funbook Pro to provide a simpler way to the restless young heads for owning the device.”

Micromax, which has launched a slew of budget Android smartphones in India, heated up the budget tablet space with the Funbook's launch earlier this year. Priced at Rs. 6,499, the Funbook is amongst the first few devices to come with Android v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich straight out of the box. The device has a powerful 1.2GHz processor and supported 1080p MP4 playback. To know more about the device, read our detailed review.

The budget tablet market is definitely pretty crowded in India, with more new manufacturers such as Zen Mobile and Karbonn joining the bandwagon. Undoubtedly, the Funbook Pro is set to square off against some serious competition. However, the device's larger screen and other improved features may be enough to help the device claim its stake for itself in the country's burgeoning budget tablet market.

What do you think of the new Micromax Funbook Pro? Let us know in the comments section below.

Zync Z999 Plus vs. iberry Auxus AX03G: 2nd Gen Budget ICS Tablet Showdown

We have seen the first generation of budget tablets hit store shelves running ICS and even though they were good, they lacked certain features such as Bluetooth and inbuilt 3G connectivity.

Now we have started seeing the second-generationbudget ICS tablets hit store shelves. These tablets not only boast of better looks but have updated the hardware under the hood as well.

iberry and Zync seem to be leading the second generation budget tablet and on paper the specifications of the devices look very good. We are, of course, referring to the iberry Auxus AX03G and the Zync Z999 Plus.

The biggest addition to these devices in terms of specifications is that they now support a SIM card along with 3G, have Bluetooth and an updated processor and GPU. But how do they stack up against each other? Well, here a quick look at the specifications of these two devices.

Model	iberry Auxus AX03G	Zync Z999
CPU	1.0 GHz ARM Cortex A8	1.5 GHz ARM Cortex A8
GPU	Mali-400, OpenGL 2.0	Mali 400, OpenGL 2.0
OS	Android 4.0 Ice-Cream Sandwich	Android 4.0 Ice-Cream Sandwich
Memory	1GB RAM	512MB
Internal Storage	8GB flash storage	8GB flash storage
Expandable Storage	MicroSD up to 32GB	MicroSD up to 32GB
Display Size	7-inch	7-inch
Display Resolution	800x480 pixel	800x480 pixel
3G	Inbuilt SIM slot, GSM (2G/3G) 900/1800/2100MHz with Phone Function	Inbuilt SIM slot, GSM (2G/3G) 900/1800/2100MHz with Phone Function
Bluetooth	Yes	Yes
Rear Camera	2MP	2MP
Front Camera	0.3MP	0.3MP
Battery	4,000 mAh	4,200 mAh
Price	Rs. 9,990	Rs. 11,990

From the above table, it is evident that the specifications of both the iberry Auxus AX03G and Zync Z999 Plus are very close to each other. The only places where there is significant difference is the memory (1GB versus 512MB respectively), battery (4,000 mAh versus 4,200 mAh), and the processor (1GHz versus 1.5GHz).

The iberry Auxus AX03G is also cheaper than the Zync Z999 Plus by Rs. 2,000. Both the devices run on Android 4.0 ICS and there is no information on whether these devices will be upgraded to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

For now, on paper, the iberry Auxus AX03G looks like the better device – more value for money, with roughly equal performance. However, till date we’ve only had the chance to review the Zync Z999 Plus (check it out here), and we found it to be quite a capable performer! We will have to reserve our final judgment however, until after we review the iberry Auxus AX03G.

Android 4.0 ICS grows to 16 percent share, Jelly Bean at 0.8 percent

Google has released its latest Android distribution figures, detailing the approximate number of active devices running a given version of the Android OS.

The pie chart and table is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Google Play store within a 14-day period ending on 1st August 2012.

From the chart, it is easy to infer that Android 2.3 Gingerbread is the most popular of the Android operating systems available in the market today.

Android 4.0 ICS, launched back in October 2011, is now active on almost 16% of devices available in the market, a growth of about 50% when compared to the past data that was released.

Google’s latest OS, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, launched in the end of June 2012, is active on mere 0.8% devices. Probably because third party manufacturers haven’t started rolling out the update to current ICS enabled devices. Currently, the only devices to run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean are the Google Nexus 7 tablet and Google’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus, which has started receiving the Android 4.1 update globally. Officially, the Galaxy Nexus is not available in India. The recently announced Karbonn Smart Tab 1 tablet will also feature Jelly Bean, but no release date has been announced.

In the past, Asus, HTC and Samsung have confirmed that some of their devices will receive the Jelly Bean update in the near future.

A fun fact about the Google OS is that it is named alphabetically after popular deserts. The names and versions of Google’s Android OS are as follows.

1.5-Cupcake
1.6-Donut
2.1-Eclair
2.2-Froyo
2.3-Gingerbread
3.1-Honeycomb
4.0-Ice Cream Sandwich
4.1-Jelly Bean

Source: Android Developer

New Assassin's Creed III trailer shows off the AnvilNext Engine

Ubisoft has launched a new trailer for its forthcoming game, Assassin’s Creed III. The trailer gives a detailed explanation about the game engine called AnvilNext.

The video describes the features of the AnvilNext engine and what are the factors that make the game look so awesome. The engine is responsible for generating the vivid landscapes in which dynamic weather is represented to a better AI for the onscreen characters.

According to Ubisoft, up to 2000 non-player characters can be encountered on the screen thanks to the new engine. Connor, the lead protagonist in the game, is deemed as the most complex and technically advanced assassin to date in the Assassin’s Creed universe. The animations of the character allow him to traverse the environment with a lot of fluidity that are possible due to the 1000+ new animations that have been implemented for the protagonist alone.

Ubisoft claims that Conner is the most detailed third person action character created till date. The combat too in the game has been improved upon. For starters, the game lets you wield dual weapons as well as pick up weapons scattered throughout the environment.

Assassin's Creed III will hit store shelves on October 30th 2012.

If you are one who is oblivious or new to the franchise, you can take a look at a detailed gameplay demo of the game here.

Assassins Creed III is the fifth game in the Assassin's Creed franchise. The series has chronologically been released in the following order – Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

You can enjoy the demo of the AnvilNext engine below.

Sony Vaio E-series notebook (SVE14A15FNB)

After the extremely blingy Vaio S-series, the new E-series does look a million times more subtle and appealing to a wider demographic of users. And on the spec sheet too, this one does look to pack quite a punch, something that is probably going to get a bit more attention thanks to the sweet price tag!

Build & Design
The moment this laptop emerges from the box, your attention is going to get torn between multiple visual elements. The first is the black finish that gets a thin red border almost around all sides of the laptop. The second one is the lid is slightly smaller than the base area, which is a standout design.

The red frame around the laptop

The matte black finish does have a slightly shiny element to it, but doesn’t catch dust and scratches, since it isn’t exactly a glossy finish. On the lid is the small Sony logo and a bigger VAIO logo in the middle. Framing the lid is a red stripe. Open it, and the same matte finish carries on around the keyboard and on the bezel, albeit in silver colour. This finish does spill over for a bit to where the keypad begins. You can see quite a dash of red here, around the individual keys. Even the touchpad is ringed with the red goodness!  

The laptop exudes class, in a sporty and aggressive way

Very good keyboard, helped with good ergonomics

Generous amount of real estate has been afforded to both the touchpad as well as the palmrest on both sides. The keyboard does feel well spaced out, and the quick access keys seem to have come back into fashion.

Port placement is spread around the side spines – 4 USB ports (all 3.0 variety), HDMI out, Ethernet as well as the optical drive. No experimentation with placing the ports on the back. The cooling vent seems to be quite generous, and actually it is needed, since the machine inevitably heats up when taxed.

The optical drive and the USB ports on this side

Overall, the Sony Vaio E-series has excellent build quality and this one definitely feels more expensive than it actually is. The differential dimensions of the lid and the rest of the laptop also add a funky touch to the overall visual element.

Features & Specifications
On paper, the Vaio E-series does look quite powerful. This is powered by the Intel Core i5–2450M (2.5GHz) processor, with the Turbo Mode taking it to 3.1GHz. There is 4GB of RAM to help this along. Just to make it clear, this isn’t from the latest Ivy Bridge series of processors, but the previous gen Sandy Bridge one.

The graphics bit is handled by the Intel HD 3000 graphics and the AMD Radeon 7670M (1GB) graphics. The resultant performance is decidedly mid-range, something that we will explain in the performance section.

Sony has sent this laptop along with a 640GB hard drive, and while we cant really criticize that, it would have been ideal to have a 750GB drive, something the Toshiba Satellite L850 offers. Incidentally, the review unit shared with us didn’t have an OS restore partition, and the Sony website also does not specify if the laptop will be shipped with restore media or not.

The 14-inch display on the Vaio E-series is among the best we have seen in the last couple of months, across all laptops that we have tested. Partly helped by the 1600x900 pixel resolution, which is more than the standard 1366x768 pixels that are common in laptops in this price bracket. Also, while this technically isn’t completely non-reflective, it does put forward a better foot than some of the rivals. The display is natively quite bright, but lesser than the displays on the Dell Inspiron 14R Special Edition and the Acer Aspire V3 (read our review).

The lid has different dimensions than the rest of the laptop

The keyboard is very well spaced out indeed, something that better ergonomics and placement techniques have ensured that even 14-inch laptops don’t sacrifice on typing comfort. This one is very good to type documents on, and with adequate spacing between the keys very conducive to typing quickly. The key travel isn’t perfect though, but that is something that you’ll probably get used to over time. Also, just an observation – the keys have a hollow thud while typing, and miss out on the chunky response.

The red goodness continues on the keyboard as well, in generous quantities!

No shortage in terms of connectivity options. There are four USB ports on the machine, and all the USB 3.0 variety. Safe to say this has been made with the future in mind! There is the HDMI out as well, and the optical drive.

Two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI out and the generous cooling vent are the critical bits

The machine comes with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) preloaded, and actually loaded on top of that with a bunch of Sony utilities and third party trial-wares. And we kid you not when we say that uninstalling them completely, running a registry cleaner and removing all other unnecessary apps from the startup made this machine 50% quicker in real time usage scenarios that it was out of the box. We wonder every single time we test a laptop as to why manufacturers want to slow down the performance of their own systems in such a shabby way!

Performance
The power package is quite neat, and there is no doubt that this one will offer better performance than what a laptop in this price bracket usually does. Considering this one is still on the Sandy Bridge platform, we will not be comparing it against any Ivy Bridge laptops.

To start off, we ran the PC Mark Vantage benchmark, and we got a score of 7039. Compare this to the score that the Acer Aspire V3 got – 7469, with exactly the same processor and RAM.

The next benchmark is the PCMark 07, and here the Vaio showed its hand a bit with a score of 2219 as against the 2055 for the Aspire V3. Essentially, that we have here are two laptops priced around Rs 10000 apart, but with very similar system performance. At the end of the day, you may argue that the benchmarks aren’t the end of the world, and this is where the real world usage experience kicks in. Between the two, we could hardly find a winner when used under a typical daily usage scenario!

With the AMD Radeon 7670M (1GB) graphics on board, a lot was expected from the Vaio in terms of what the gamers are sort of looking for. The 3DMark 06 score of 8523 and the 3DMark 11 score of 1881 (Entry), 1190 (Performance) and 375 (Extreme) is consistently more than what the Nvidia GT630M can offer. However, the Vaio scores surprisingly less in the Unigene Heaven benchmark, with a score of just 16 FPS. We verified this multiple times, and even double checked if the graphics driver updates that we had downloaded were actually the latest! We can only say that this one will appeal to the casual gamer, bit despite the spec sheet, will disappoint anyone who wants a bit more gaming from the laptop.

Where the Vaio E-series redeems itself is in the Battery Life test. This one lasted 2 hours and 34 minutes from full charge to complete discharge in the test – in High Performance mode. Essentially, under a lighter daily usage pattern, you are looking at anywhere between 3.5 hours to 4 hours backup from the stock battery pack. This is very good, and for a laptop this powerful, it is actually creditable this is coming so close to what the ultrabooks claim to offer with battery life.

During this review, you may have noticed that we may have compared the Vaio E-series with the Acer Aspire V3 at multiple points. The idea was to compare how two similar hardware packages tend to differ in terms of the final performance in different machines. However, there is a price difference of Rs 10000 between the two, and why someone considering the Sony Vaio E-series may not consider the Aspire V3, and vice versa, simply because both are aimed at different demographics – different display sizes and vastly different battery performance.

Bottomline
For a box price of Rs 55,990, the Vaio E-series offers good performance and looks very well while doing it. However, the real cherry on the cake is the excellent battery life that it offers, something we honestly did not expect. This is the machine to have if your usage scenario will require good performance, very good battery life and can handle a bit of gaming.  

Check out our video review of the Sony Vaio SVE14A15FNB below: 

Con

Asus Transformer Prime

Summary

This is by far the best Android tablet money can buy. It has almost everything going for it - excellent performance, premium finish, brilliant display, excellent battery life and a full fledged keyboard that converts this into a netbook (ummm, actually it's faster than a netbook!) in a jiffy. The only complaint - it has a ridiculous price tag.

Are we being revisited by the netbooks? Is this a smaller ultrabook? Is this the future of the laptop? Well, actually, it is neither of those things! This is a tablet, in the most conventional form factor, with the additional full-fledged keyboard dock. Hooked up together, it does look very much like a netbook if you aren’t looking closely at the details.

Build & Design
To say that the Transformer Prime evolved from the original Transformer would not be factually correct. At least when it comes to the design bit. The chocolate brown plastic finish, with an imprint, has been replaced by the amethyst grey aluminum. Also available is the champagne gold option, in case you like that one better. Quite similar to what the lid on the Asus Zenbook ultrabook looked like, this one also has a circular pattern, what Asus call the metallic spun design.

This is a tablet that is littered with ports and connectivity options on all sides. Holding it in landscape mode with the Asus logo the correct side up, you will have the power key on the left edge of the top spine. The right spine has the 3.5mm headphone jack. The left spine is probably the business side – volume rocker, mini-HDMI out and a microSD slot. The bottom spine has the connector that can be used to plug in the charger, or to dock it with the keyboard.

There are no hardware or touch sensitive keys around the display, leaving you to clean up the glossy black quite regularly. Speaking of which, we think this bezel is a tad too thick, and a thinner one would have made this 10.1-inch tablet a bit more comfortable to hold. Nevertheless, at just 8.3mm thickness, it is 1.1mm thinner than the new iPad and 0.5mm thinner than the iPad 2.

Add the keyboard dock into the mix, and things become rather interesting. To place the Transformer Prime on the dock, you have to match the tiny arrow on the tablet bezel with the arrow on the dock. Hear the click and that is when you can be sure this thing is securely docked. The dock cradle is of a slightly different colour than the rest of the package – the keyboard also has the same grey finish as the tablet, albeit without the circular pattern.

On the right spine of the Asus Transformer Prime keyboard are the SD card slot and a full-fledged USB port for hooking up accessories like an external mouse, for example. On the left side is the charging port, which will charge the battery on the dock as well as the tablet. The dock cradle has a circular design, and when you push the display back, the keyboard does lift up from the back. The only drawback of this design is that the entire combo isn’t very stable, and is rather top heavy, with a huge risk of this falling backwards from your lap, or behind the desk, if you aren’t careful.

Features & Specifications
This is the first Android tablet powered by a quad-core processor, specifically the Nvidia Tegra 3. While this has 4 cores, there is a 5th core that is lovingly called “phantom core”. The idea is to divide the intensive tasks across the four cores, while less resource hungry tasks like web browsing or reading an ebook are assigned to the fifth core to handle on its own. This is done so as to not provide what will essentially be an overkill of power, to apps and tasks that don’t need it. In turn, the battery life gets a huge boost. The 12-core GeForce GPU handles graphics. The benchmark tests put this in a special league, as far as Android tablets of the previous generation were concerned.

To manage the power even further, Asus has shipped the power modes seen in Windows notebooks on to the tablet. The Performance mode unleashes the full processing power from the quad-core processor, while the Balanced and Power Saver modes cap the power accordingly. There is a visible difference in the performance, and running the benchmarks in all modes gave a vastly different final score.

Surely the goodness doesn’t end with just the processing power. The 10.1-inch Super IPS+ display is possibly the best we have seen on an Android tablet so far. The resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels is more than adequate, but what really gives it a boost is the Super IPS+ mode that bumps up the backlight for outdoor usage.

The reflective nature of the display still does make it difficult to read text while standing in sunlight, but icons and the keyboard are easier to make out, for example. We really like the crisp nature of the display, which is very helpful when you are reading text on a web page or a PDF garbed as an Ebook. Excellent colour reproduction as well, with adequately dark black levels to make watching videos a lot of fun. What does not work is the hydro-oleophobic coating that is supposed to keep the display free from fingerprints. Twenty minutes of usage out of the box, and the shiny new tablet was sitting there with a sense of sheepishness at the sheer number of visible fingerprints on the display!

Despite its negatives, this is possibly the best display this side of an Apple iPad, for almost all tasks possible – videos, text reading, web browsing and for flipping through your photo albums! However, the single speaker with the grille drilled into the aluminum does hide away quite well and does okay with the clarity aspect, but doesn’t have the expected volume punch.

With the keyboard as a part of the package, the Transformer Prime’s usability improves leaps and bounds over the rivals. The keyboard is very similar to the ones we saw on netbooks when they were going strong, and that makes this tablet a bit of an all-rounder. Place the Prime on to the dock, and you can type out mails, documents and use it like a laptop, albeit with a slightly different OS! Sufficiently modified keys, with dedicated keys for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, brightness, camera access, media playback, settings, exit and volume. The alphabet and directional keys are just like on a traditional keyboard.

The Transformer Prime’s keyboard is extremely well laid out, and will be conducive to those splash and dash type of writing sessions we all face due to any work submission deadlines! But only once you get used to it, because shifting from a conventional laptop keyboard, the significantly less travel offered by this one will take some getting used to. Due to space limitations, the touchpad isn’t as comfortable as a traditional laptop, but more than does the job in this case. I personally did not like the palmrest, because most of the time, the palm was actually touching the table surface! Everything said and done, this dock is unmatched for the functionality it offers – it also features a battery that can power the tablet for a good 6 hours extra.

The review unit that was sent to us came with Android 4.0.3 preloaded, with a lot of preloaded Asus utilities. Yes, you get stuff like Face Unlock, a visual task manager and of course better handling of the battery consumption. Not that we don’t mind getting paid apps for free, but preloading and in this case coding the apps into the ROM does hurt the performance.

Absolutely no shortage of space here! There is 64GB memory on board, with a microSD slot on the tablet itself. Dock it to the keyboard, and you get an SD slot and a USB port as well.

Performance
Before we get to the good bits, let us talk about something that sort of surprised us with the Transformer Prime. With a very powerful processor pushing it, we had expected the tablet’s startup time to be quite quick. However, this one clocked at 34.1 seconds, while its predecessor, the Transformer actually was ready for action in 21 seconds! The likes of the iPad 2, the Galaxy Tab 750, the Sony Tablet S and even the Acer Iconia Tab A501 are quicker to boot up. This neatly takes us back to our previous point of the tablet coming with apps and software burnt into the Android ROM – they cannot be disabled or uninstalled either. Our new laptops have been messed up enough. Please leave the tablets alone!

Once you get down to the benchmark tests, the Transformer Prime blitzes the competition. No surprise there, considering this is the latest Tegra 3 platform. The Quadrant score of 4096 is more than double of the score we got from the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750. Similarly, across all benchmarks, we have the Prime well ahead of the best of the previous generation tablets. Critically, in the gaming bit, only the Apple iPad 2 has better graphics scores. In real life usage as well, the power on offer is clearly visible. Apps open a lot quicker and the entire UI is much slicker even with multiple applications simultaneously. Partly thanks to the smoother UI experience offered by Ice Cream Sandwich over the predecessor, but even in the heavily clocked down battery saver mode, we did not see any slowdown akin to most previous gen tablets when under load. Games run smoother when compared directly to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750. Load times for games isn’t lesser on the Transformer Prime, but that isn’t much of a surprise considering only very few apps can actually utilize the four cores available. The Prime has been around for a while now, but even till date, most games and apps have not been optimized for a quad core processor!

Don’t think you will be using the camera of the tablet too much, but the Prime does do very well when you need it to. Some tablets miss out on it, but the LED flash ensures that the Prime has a wider operating window. Will do quite well for photos and videos in good lighting conditions, but the low light shots will inevitably get a lot of noise.

The real cherry on the cake of brilliance is the battery life. The tablet itself offers about 7 hours on its own battery, and if you hook it up to the dock, then another 6 hours of battery power will be available. For charging, you can plug in the charger into the dock, and it’ll simultaneously charge the tablet and the dock’s battery.

Bottom Line
There is absolutely no doubt that the Transformer Prime is possibly the best Android tablet you can buy at the moment. It has the functionality, the blazing performance, an excellent overall package and to top it off, a brilliant battery life. We will only be nitpicking if we find anything to criticize about the tablet. Except the price, that is quite ridiculous, we feel. At Rs 49999, this one is also by far the most expensive Android tablet. The performance and the overall package does justify all that to a certain extent, but the moment you come into this price territory, the consumer inevitably thinks – “why not pick up the iPad, and be done with it?”. An answer to that question is rather difficult to give, trust us.