Lenovo Phab Plus [year] Review

Lenovo Phab Plus 2026 Review

February 8, 2016 Richard Gomez 7

Yes, the new Lenovo Phab Plus is enormous and unweildy. No, it's not worth buying if you do not explicitly want a huge phone – or a tablet that can also make voice calls. Now that that's out of the way, we can look at it for what it really is rather than dismissing it as ridiculous: a hybrid device designed for people who spend a lot more time playing games and watching videos than talking on the phone.
Lenovo stresses the screen and audio quality of the Phab Plus, which is a way of saying it's an entertainment-focused device. There really isn't anything else like it on the market. With a metal body and a price tag close to Rs. 20,000, Lenovo is trying to create a premium niche in the voice-calling tablet market. Let's see if the company has tapped a whole new product category, or whether the Phab Plus is just a novelty that will soon be forgotten.
Look and feel
The very first thing to deal with when it comes to this phone is its size. With a 6.8-inch screen an..

Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet [year]

Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet 2026

March 28, 2019 Richard Gomez 0

Reports of Sony's impending exit from the smartphone business have been doing the rounds in the recent past, but that hasn't stopped the Japanese tech giant from announcing a successor to the its Xperia Z2 Tablet – the Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet. Once again Sony is targeting the entertainment junkies with its new tablet.
In typical Sony fashion, the Xperia Z4 Tablet is slimmer, weighs next to nothing, and is waterproof. With the Z4 Tablet, Sony leverages its tried and tested OmniBalance design aesthetics from its Xperia Z range of smartphones for the Xperia Z4 Tablet. We think this design approach works in the favour of the Z4 Tablet but it doesn't look too different from the previous generation tablet from Sony.
A soft stainless steel trim runs along the edges. Additionally, Sony uses a material called mineral glass on the rear; it has a textured pattern and feels a lot like soft plastic to touch. In fact, our very first takeaway after spending time with the tablet was that ..

Samsung Galaxy Tab S Series [year]

Samsung Galaxy Tab S Series 2026

January 10, 2019 Richard Gomez 0

Samsung's new Galaxy Tab S tablet looks different.
As soon as I turned on the screen, I noticed that the colors are stunning and vivid. Red looks redder, and greens are greener. The lawn and the trees in “Ghostbusters” look alive, as does a purple-tinted apparition.
The Tab S is also thinner than other leading tablets, at a quarter of an inch (6.6 millimeters). The model with the smaller screen is lighter, too.
Samsung Electronics Co. achieves all this by using a display technology previously limited to smartphones. It's called AMOLED, for active-matrix organic light-emitting diodes. Samsung released an AMOLED tablet in 2012, but it was expensive and didn't sell well. The new ones are priced more competitively – the same as iPads of comparable size.
The Galaxy Tab S 8.4 with an 8.4-inch screen, measured diagonally, costs $400, while the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 with a 10.5-inch screen costs $500.

AMOLED screens are more expensive than conventional LCD screens, but they produce..

Kobo Arc [year] review

Kobo Arc 2026 review

June 30, 2017 Richard Gomez 0

Canadian e-reader maker, Kobo, recently launched three of its e-readers (it calls them eReaders), and a 7-inch Android tablet, in the Indian market.
Tablets made by e-book reader companies are essentially multimedia capable devices made to please users who're looking to invest in e-books but don't want an e-ink display and want their device to do much more.
Kobo's Android tablet is called the Kobo Arc and competes with the likes of the Kindle Fire HD. As with the Kindle Fire tablet, Kobo's Arc tablet is deeply integrated with Kobo's 'eBooks'
ecosystem, which is also one of the USPs of the tablets. However, it also features the Google Play Store and Google's natives app, that are missing from Amazon's Kindle offering.
So, in a way it also competes with other 7-inch Android tablets like the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Tab 3. We try to find out if Kobo's been able to strike a balance between an e-reading device and a full-featured Android tablet,..

Asus MeMO Pad ME172V review

Asus MeMO Pad ME172V review

May 23, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

The tablet market in India seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. The Taiwanese tablet maker Asus is now trying to get a slice of this pie with the launch of the Asus MeMO Pad ME172V. This is the first sub Rs. 10,000 tablet that the company has launched. It is a 7-inch tablet that runs on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). It is powered by a 1GHz VIA WM8950 processor. The company is targeting to capture 15 per cent market share in the country banking on this tablet.
It is noteworthy, that Asus is known more for its popular Nexus 7 tablet that the company has launched in the global markets in conjunction with Google.
In the recent past, we have seen Indian brands such as Videocon, Lava and international brands like Acer and Swipe launch their Jelly Bean tablets too under the price bracket of Rs.10,000. So is Asus MeMO Pad ME172V a compelling challenger in this category? We find out in this review.
Build & Design
The Asus MeMO Pad ME172V is a 7-inch tablet that sports an elegant look. Though t..

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review [year]

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review 2026

August 4, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

The tablet-computer market is like guerrilla warfare. One huge army – Apple – dominates the land, while a ragtag group of insurgents keeps raiding and probing, hoping to find some opening it can exploit.
With Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10.1, the rebels have scored a small victory. It's a tablet that does something that the iPad doesn't do, and it does it well. This victory won't win the war, though.
Available in the U.S. starting Thursday, the $499 tablet comes with a pen, or more precisely, a stylus. It doesn't leave marks on paper, but the tablet's screen responds to it. I found it a pleasure to use: It's precise and responsive, and it glides easily across the screen.
There are styluses available for the iPad, but they're not very good. The iPad's screen can't sense sharp objects, so any stylus has to be fairly blunt. Many of them have rubber tips, which resist being dragged across the screen.
The Galaxy Note has an additional layer in..

Dying Husband Left Her the House and Car, but Forgot the Apple Password

Dying Husband Left Her the House and Car, but Forgot the Apple Password

February 22, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Home | Mobiles | Mobiles Features Dying Husband Left Her the House and Car, but Forgot the Apple Password Yanan Wang, The Washington Post , 21 January 2016 After Peggy Bush's husband, David, succumbed to lung cancer last August, she liked to play card games on their iPad to pass the time. The 72-year-old resident of Victoria, Canada, was on an app one day when it suddenly stopped working, and she was unable to reload the device without providing a password for their Apple ID account.
Bush's husband never told her the password, and she hadn't thought to ask. Unlike so many of the things David had left for Bush in his will – car ownership, the title of the house, basically everything he owned – this digital asset followed him to the grave.
According to reporting by the Canadian Broadcasting Channel, the journey to procure the password proved more difficult than any other process involved in David's passing.
“I thought it was ridiculous,” Bush told CBC. “I could get th..

Globalspace Technologies Solt Review

Globalspace Technologies Solt Review

February 10, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Globalspace, an Indian software and solutions firm, isn't a well-known name in the hardware market. The company has dabbled in the low-cost Android space before, and has now come up with a device that it claims is the first of its kind, a “3-in-1” tablet. Obviously a play on Intel's 2-in-1 marketing strategy, this device is claimed to work like a tablet, laptop or desktop, with the appropriate accessories connected.
The GlobalSpace Technologies Solt consists of three distinct units: the tablet itself, a wraparound keyboard case, and a desktop dock. We've seen a number of companies use the keyboard case approach to position tablets as cheap laptops, and the resulting products, including the Micromax Laptab LT666 (Review), Swipe Ultimate Tab 3G (Review), Notion Ink Cain (Review) and Croma 1177 (Review), have all offered much the same in terms of hardware, experience, and value for money. Globalspace is going beyond that, with a few extra tricks. We're eager to try thi..

Dell Venue 7 Review [year]

Dell Venue 7 Review 2026

March 2, 2019 Richard Gomez 0

We were fairly impressed with the Dell Venue 7 and Venue 8 which we reviewed almost exactly a year ago. Dell has only just decided to get serious about the Android tablet world, and despite some flaws, the first two Venue models were pretty good for their asking prices. In the time since then, Dell has launched an updated model in India. These were first shown off at Computex 2014, and are currently available in our market.
The big new thing this time is the inclusion of voice calling. A lot of people feel that if you're going to have a SIM card for cellular data, you might as well be able to make and receive voice calls. On the other hand, there's the staggering impracticality of holding a 7-inch tablet up to your face or plugging in a headset every single time the phone rings. Dell has left the choice up to the buyer, and so versions of the 2014 Venue 7 (and Venue 8) with and without voice and data are available. We have the voice-enabled 2014 Dell Venue 7 in for review tod..

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 [year]

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 2026

August 28, 2018 Richard Gomez 0

To appreciate Microsoft's latest tablet computer, you need to accept the notion that one device can do it all.
The Surface Pro 3 works as a tablet when you want to watch video or read e-books. It works as a laptop when you need to get serious work done. The Surface delivers on both, though it falls short of meeting Microsoft's claim to do so without compromising on either.
(Also see: Microsoft Unveils Surface Pro 3 With 12-Inch 2160×1440 Pixel Display)
The Pro 3 runs a full version of Microsoft's Windows 8 system, the same as you get on a traditional desktop or laptop computer. That means that, unlike other tablets, it can run just about any program designed for Windows: Microsoft Office, Photoshop and more.
The Surface has a touch screen like other tablets, but it also has an optional cover that opens to reveal a physical keyboard and touchpad. It has a USB port and one for external displays, both of which are rare on tablets.
It also matches laptops in price. Although ..