Jolla smartphone with Sailfish OS!

The "Jolla smartphone", if you've never heard of it, a company formed by a group of former Nokia employees that refused to let go of MeeGo after the Finnish mobile manufacturer abandoned it, has announced the launch of the first smartphone based on the new Sailfish operating system, called Jolla. It will be launched on November 27 by Jolla in partnership with Finnish telecom operator DNA.

Jolla's website notes that the Jolla smartphone is priced at Euros 399. The company plans to handover 450 pre-booked Jolla phones on November 27 and the rest would be available at DNA Kauppa outlets in early December, the statement said.

Inside is a 1.4GHz dual-core processor made by Qualcomm and 1GB of RAM. There's 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot underneath the rear cover for adding more. A 2100mAh battery is removable, includes a 4.5-inch (540x960 pixels) display, the Jolla smartphone will sport an 8-megapixel autofocus rear camera alongside an LED flash, while there is a 2-megapixel front-facing camera as well. It also features changeable smart covers.

The Sailfish OS

Sailfish is closest in likeness to BlackBerry 10 OS. It's got no navigation buttons to speak of and is therefore gesture based.

Everything is about swiping, so apart from swiping up and down between the three aforementioned sections, there are three main things you can do. Swiping from the left or right edge of the screen will take you from an open app back to the homescreen, swiping from the top of the screen closes the app and swiping from the bottom displays your notifications.

The homescreen displays apps in a very similar way to BlackBerry 10, as you open more apps they get smaller to fit on the screen. However, if you have more than nine open, you can only see your most recent. The app tray at the bottom of the homescreen can be customised to your favourite apps.

From this initial hands-on we came away with the impression that Sailfish OS has a great deal of potential. It has a huge leg up from the core work already done by Intel and Nokia and its UI is genuinely innovative while taking a mixture of the best aspects from other platforms. On the hardware side whether the ‘Other half’ functionality of covers can be a genuine differentiator is less clear cut, but we can see it being popular in younger age groups. 

That said where the real battle lies for Sailfish is not in convincing people it is a viable platform, but that it is preferable to the existing heavyweights. Our feeling is Jolla will have to reduce its handset price to achieve that, provide tight Android app integration from the outset and pick its markets carefully.

Aside from this the other battle is with three more newcomers: the Samsung/Intel funded Tizen, Firefox OS and Ubuntu. The first two will also have phones out in 2013 with the latter expecting to debut in early 2014. 

Fantastic screen, Incredible power and Good battery life : LG G2 is one of the best smartphone of 2013

Credit : Ubergizmo

It may have taken several years, but LG has finally released its first premium smartphone, the G2. And the flagship device ticks all the required boxes for a high-end smartphone.

It has a 5,2-inch full-HD display and packs in a 2,6GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, a massive 3 000mAh battery and a 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation. It also features 2GB of RAM, 16GB on-board memory (not expandable), 4G/LTE support, Bluetooth 4.0, near-field communication and a built-in infrared blaster that lets you control any compatible infrared remote-controlled device.

Competing with the likes of the HTC One, Sony Xperia Z1 and Samsung Galaxy S4, the G2 has stiff competition, but how does it really compare?

One of the G2’s unique selling points is that it has no physical buttons on its edges. Instead, at the back, where your index finger usually rests — whether you are left- or right-handed — you will find the power button and the volume up and down keys. LG placed all the buttons at the back after researching human behaviour for 18 months and decided that this spot was most comfortable for users.

The G2 is no slouch when it comes to power - it's packing the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset that resides in the Samsung Galaxy Note III. This chipset features a quad-core 2.26GHz CPU which delivers blistering performance and is backed by 2GB of RAM. 

LG opted for a 5,2-inch screen, which makes it the only smartphone with a screen that size. It’s managed to cram a large screen into a phone size that is physically quite similar to the Samsung Galaxy S4, although it weighs 13g more than the S4’s 130g. It has a full 1 920×1 080 HD IPS screen and 16:9 aspect ratio that allows you to view it from any angle.

It almost goes without saying, but the G2 is insanely powerful. It doesn't stumble or stutter during intense tasks, and is even capable of running two apps side-by-side using LG's QSlide functionality.

On the connectivity front the G2 comes with 4G LTE, which means you can benefit from increased network speed, assuming your mobile contract supports it, of course. There's also Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi and NFC – the latter of which can be used to make contactless data transfers. 

Storage consists of either 16GB or 32GB, depending on which model you pick up. Taking into account the aforementioned lack of a MicroSD card slot, you may wish to plump for the higher capacity version if you're keen on downloading loads of apps and games.

Credit : Ubergizmo

The G2 is one of the most well-rounded devices I have come across after a long time. Based on almost three weeks of using the G2 as my primary smartphone and almost a fortnight with the Galaxy Note 3 before that, there is not even an iota of doubt in my mind that high-end Android smartphones have finally reached the point where the iPhone starts looking massively behind the curve.

The G2 marries a handy form factor with stupendous performance at a very attractive price point. The 32GB variant is available for approximately Rs 37,999 at a time when competing products are priced significantly higher. The LG G2 will easily be on the top of my recommendation list when anyone asks me about buying a high-end Android smartphone.

LG reveals its curved display smartphone

Credit : Cnet

LG's much-rumored G Flex will feature a 6-inch 720p curved display, according to specifications released Sunday by the company.

The phone, which uses flexible OLED screen technology to allow for a dramatic curve on the horizontal axis, is between 7.9 and 8.7mm thick at various points and weighs 177g. Inside there's a 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel camera, and a 3,500 mAh battery.

A "dual window" mode allows the screen to be divided to accommodate multitasking and a "swing lock screen" changes the appearance of the handset's wallpaper in relation to how the device is being held and presents different unlock touch effects based on the position of the user's finger.

Comparing one of the handset's features to superhero Wolverine's ability to regenerate tissue cells to heal his wounds, LG said its smartphone will also have a "self-healing" scratch-resistant film applied to its back cover that the company promises will remove light scratches "within minutes."

The G Flex is coming to all three major carriers in LG's home nation next month, there aren't any details of an international release.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition

Last year’s Galaxy Note 10.1 promised to finally bring all the stylus power of Samsung’s Note smartphones to a big-screen tablet, but its upsides were utterly defeated by the device’s crippling performance issues. Samsung is back with a new and improved 10.1 that aims to win with its screen and new S Pen features.

Samsung has greatly improved upon many of the original's shortcomings; it even added more storage space! Unfortunately, though, Samsung also boosted the base price by $50 as a result. Sporting a 10.1-inch display, measured diagonally, the Note tablet goes on sale in the U.S. on Thursday at a starting price of $550.

Samsung also added a touch of elegance to the back of the device by swapping out the standard glossy plastic back,here, we have a soft, textured "leather-like" material that's meant to resemble a leather book cover.

The Note 10.1 sports a beautiful WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600) TFT LCD panel, which is precisely the resolution bump we wanted to see in last year's unit, and under the hood there is an octa-core Samsung chip clocked at 1.9GHz, and an impressive 3GB of RAM. The Note 10.1 2014 features an 8-megapixel main and a 2-megapixel front cameras. It will arrive in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models.

The first of the multitasking features, called Multi-Window, has been available in Samsung devices for about a year, but it works with many more apps now. You can run two apps side by side, such as Facebook on one side and YouTube video on the other.You can change how much of the screen each one takes, a capability coming with Windows 8.1, but you can't choose to have a window take up just the top left corner, the way you can on PCs. In addition, Multi-Window isn't a universal feature. You currently have about 18 apps to choose from, including Facebook and a variety of Google and Samsung apps.

Credit : The Verge

At the center of the S Pen experience, on both the 10.1 and the Note 3, is a new widget called Air Command that gathers together a bunch of tools designed specifically for the stylus. The Air Command widget automatically appears when you remove the pen from its holster, or it can be invoked at any time by holding the pen near the screen and clicking its one button. The semi-circular popup provides quick access to five S Pen tools: Action Memo, Scrap Booker, Screen Writer, S Finder, and Pen Window.

Removing the stylus from its slot will start the Air Command feature, which allows users to quickly access features such as Action Memo, Scrapbook and S Finder.

For a pen-enabled tablet, it's not geared toward pen users, with its high price and sluggish performance, the $549.99 Note 10.1 feels old and clunky; it’s certainly not worth the price when the iPad costs $499 and the Nexus 10 $399.

BlackBerry Introduces the New BlackBerry Z30 Smartphone with 5” Display and BlackBerry 10.2 OS

Candian smartphone maker BlackBerry unveiled its premium flagship Z30 phone in India, pricing it at Rs 39,990, as it took on competition from iPhone and Samsung to save its dwindling market share. The company is also offering 12-month EMI options for purchasing its latest device.

The BlackBerry Z30 which features a 5-inch display with 720 x 1280 pixels resolution runs on Blackberry 10 OS version 10.2. It is powered by 1.7 gigahertz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and has a 2880 mAh capacity removable battery.

It sports 8 megapixel rear camera and 2 MP front camera and comes with a 2880 mAh capacity removable battery. It has 2 GB of RAM and an internal memory of 16 GB that can be expanded to 64 GB with microSD card.

"BlackBerry Z30 is the ultimate smartphone for the urban youth and consumers who are looking for a bigger screen size, long-lasting battery and a best in class productivity experience, offers a unique and engaging user experience with features like the powerful BlackBerry Hub, its exceptional touchscreen keyboard and industry leading browser," BlackBerry India Managing Director Sunil Lalwani said.

Analysts feel that this festival season the Z30 will face strong competition from other flagship smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 & Galaxy S4, Apple iPhone 5s, 5c, LG G2 and Sony Xperia Z1.

Sony Xperia Z1 review

After several years of missteps, Sony is on a comeback trail in the mobile phone market. The company is aggressively going after smartphone buyers. The idea is that Sony should make use of its expertise in design, imaging and display technologies to create smartphones that other companies, which do not have camera or display manufacturing experience, cannot match.

Xperia Z - launched in India in March this year - was the first phone following this approach. Now we have Xperia Z1 in the market. It is an update to the original Z. Is Xperia Z1 the flagship Android phone from Sony.

Sony Xperia Z1 is one of the first smartphones to be announced with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. Running a quad-core CPU at 2.2 GHz, with 2GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. The Xperia Z1 is a fast phone, and there is no slow-down or stuttering in applications. That power does come at an energy cost so while the inclusion of a 3050 mAh battery might seem an attractive choice for the power user.

With 4G LTE connectivity, and a 1080p resolution screen, that shouldn’t be a surprise. The Xperia Z1 hardware can take up a lot of power, so it’s a smart decision to get as much battery capacity into the chassis as possible. Unlike Samsung’s Galaxy S4, the battery in the Z1 is a sealed unit, but most of the thinking will be down to the waterproof design.

The Z1 is waterproof and dustproof, to IP55 and IP58 standards.Xperia Z1 looks similar to the Z at the first glance. But look closer and some subtle differences are apparent.

The big change is the material used to make Z1. Unlike the original Z, which used glass and plastic, this phone uses aluminum and glass. The front and back of the device are covered in scratch-resistant glass, which feels sturdier than what was used in the original Z. The frame of the phone is carved out of the single block of aluminum.

20.7 megapixels in a camera

The camera is the big highlight of Z1. Z1 can shoot images in up to 20.7 mega pixels. These images are clicked and processed using a 1/2.3-inch image sensor, which in terms of size is similar to the sensor inside an average point and shoot camera! Z1 is also the first phone to utilize Sony G Lens and Bionz image processing, which are found in the company's point-and-shoot cameras. This G Lens has an aperture of F2.0, which is great for a smartphone. There is even a physical shutter release button. This button can also be used to open camera app without unlocking the device.

Sony Xperia Z1 price in India - Rs.39,989.

Facebook launches Internet.org Initiative To Connect The Unconnected World

To make the worldwide web available to two-thirds of the planet still not connected to the Internet Facebook announced the launch of Internet.org -- a global partnership with six other technology giants, namely Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung.

According to Facebook, only 2.7 billion people — just over a third of the world’s population — around the world currently have access to the Internet. And, the goal of Internet.org is to connect the remaining five billion people and provide the same opportunities enjoyed by those in the connected third of the world.

On the launch of Internet.org, Zuckerberg said, "For nine years, we've been on a mission to connect the world. We now connect more than 1 billion people, but to connect the next 5 billion we must solve a much bigger problem: the vast majority of people don't have access to the internet.”



"There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it," he added.

According to Facebook, the partners will focus on developing technologies that make mobile connectivity more affordable and decrease the cost of delivering data to people worldwide. This would also include collaborations to develop lower-cost, higher-quality smartphones. They will also work on ways to use less data by improving the efficiency of the apps built and how they can help businesses drive internet access to get people online.

The Internet.org website is currently live and provides an overview of its mission and goals.

Recently Internet search giant Google announced its ‘Project Loon’, a balloon-mounted Internet access service that is expected to help provide Internet access to rural and remote areas.

Few months earlier Cisco released the infographic below: “What Will The World Look Like When We Connect The Unconnected, Internet Of Everything“.

Credit : Cisco

Samsung fined $340,000 for faking online comments!

Credit : Cnet

After being caught paying for false praise and negative comments about competitors, Samsung has been fined just over $340,000. The issue first arose internationally in April, when Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) announced it was opening an investigation into the allegations. That investigation found the allegations were true: the FTC says Samsung used a "large number of hired writers and designated employees" to post in Taiwanese forums. The commission does add that the company did this through a third-party marketing company, just as Samsung originally claimed. Two local marketing firms were fined a combined total of over $100,000 for their part in the marketing ploy.

When news first broke of Samsung's behavior, HTC was presented as the victim of a campaign of defamation from the Korean company's army of commenters, but the FTC's report into the matter doesn't mention the Taiwanese company by name. Instead, it only notes that the company paid people to "highlight the shortcomings of competing products." The commission did dig up a lot more nefarious activity related to Samsung's commenters, though. The list of infractions includes the "disinfection of negative news about Samsung products," "palindromic Samsung product marketing," and the positive evaluation of Samsung products.

Hugh Jackman named as the face of Micromax!!

New Delhi-based smartphone player Micromax has gone offshore to rope in its brand ambassador. Hollywood superstar Hugh Jackman has been chosen over a Bollywood star as the brand ambassador.

Micromax is next to Samsung in terms of handset sales in India as per second quarter mobile phone shipment figures of 2013 released by market research and analyst firm IDC. Micromax is the first Indian mobile operator to have roped in a Hollywood star as its brand ambassador.

"I am extremely thrilled and honoured to be part of the Micromax family. I am a huge lover of India as it is one of the most exciting countries in the world and we also share our love for cricket," Jackman said in a statement.

"The new Canvas phone from Micromax is a leap in innovation with great sense of fun and amazing features that helps me balance my work with all the different roles that I play in my everyday life," added the 45-year-old.

Shubhodip Pal, Chief Marketing Officer, Micromax said in a press release announcing the association, “We are very excited to welcome Hugh Jackman in the Micromax family as he truly embodies the aspirational, reinventing and fearless persona of the brand Micromax. As we look to expand our footprint across the globe in various international markets, the association with the Hugh Jackman is an ideal partnership for us to connect with audiences as he is the leading name in the entertainment industry in the world.”

What Micromax is attempting to do by signing on Hugh Jackman is to gloss over their Indian roots. It is most unlikely that Micromax will highlight the fact that the brand is Indian. The communication will focus, in all likelihood, on Jackman, an Australian star, plugging the phone effusively. Jackman’s signing will also benefit the brand in India, as his images would make the brand less Indian and more International and move (to some extent) the clearly Indian brand closer to the American, European and Korean competition, further away from the Chinese.

If this works for Micromax, there are many Indian brands with global ambitions that could take a cue from this strategy.

Samsung Galaxy Gear: Samsung’s first strike in the wearable tech wars!

Credit : www.droid-life.com

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear is a smartwatch, a wrist-worn touch-screen watch that can do almost everything you can do with your phone; it can pick up notifications, control music playback, and keep time with a rich variety of watch faces, tracks your exercise and even installs your favorite apps, but Samsung takes it a few steps further by integrating a 1.9-megapixel camera, a speaker, and two microphones — allowing you to shoot short 720p movies and even conduct phone calls with the Galaxy Gear. It also packs a bunch of remote features for your smartphone, like pushing notifications to your wrist from various apps and allowing you to start, stop and skip music tracks from your watch. Now you won't have to be forever fetching your phone from purse or pocket. It sits on your wrist and happily controls everything.

Unveiled at IFA 2013, this android powered smartwatch is just the first step that can lead to a new generation of smartwatches and wearable gadgets. The product was officially launched on 25 September worldwide with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3; customers in US and Japan have to wait till October.

The Galaxy Gear is not a phone in its own right — it relies on a Bluetooth connection to your Samsung Galaxy device in order to do most of its connected work.

This isn't about high-spec or high-def or high-anything else; so let's see what this device is actually providing on your wrist, powered by an 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM, the touch interface is sleekly responsive, and the 1.63-inch, 320x320-pixel super AMOLED screen enormously bright and clear.

The Interface

I was inspired by the simplicity with function: it's incredibly easy to control, yet does enough useful things to have this gadget fan convinced I need it. You control the watch by swiping left and right through a selection of screens. You can change the order they appear, but out of the box when you start scrolling to the right you go from the home screen to notifications, then voice memos, then S Voice commands, then your photo gallery, the music player, a pedometer, settings, and an apps shortcut. Scroll to the left and you see your contacts followed by a phone call log. The screens scroll continually, so when you get all the way to the end you come back round to the home screen and continue on out the other side.

The camera

On the side of the strap is a small 1.9-megapixel camera, bulging slightly from the strap. Samsung calls it a memographer, emphasizing the capture of moments with low-resolution snaps and bite-size videos rather than glorious crystal-clear pictures. The camera options are pretty basic: choose from auto or macro focus, and a couple of different sizes. Photos can be 1,392x1, 392 or 1,280x960 pixels. Videos last 10 seconds, with sound, and can be 720p, 640x640, 640x480, or 480x480 pixels. On the plus side, the camera built into the Galaxy Gear produces surprisingly decent pictures and there are 4GB of onboard storage to stash them on if you're away from your smartphone.

Credit : Cnet

Applications

The Gear also comes with an optimized Samsung Apps experience. Evernote, Path, Life360, Tripit and Glympse Maps are notable inclusions to the Galaxy Gear at launch. In total, Samsung has spent the last few months optimizing 70 different apps for launch day, with more still to come.

Finally, the Watch

Galaxy Gear has a metal face and flexible rubberized and adjustable wrist band. It comes in six colors: black, gray, orange, lime green, and beige all with a silver face and buckle; and a sixth version with a beige strap and champagne-toned gold metal accouterments.

Credit : Android Central

Also important will be the Galaxy Gear's battery life. It does use the Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy standard to communicate, but at 315mAh its battery is decidedly small. Samsung promises "about a day" of endurance from the Gear.

If you ever feel you're a slave to your phone, the Gear will cut down on the palaver of pulling out your mobile every 5 minutes. Whether buying another gadget is the answer to reducing your dependence on an earlier gadget is a philosophical question for another time, but the Galaxy Gear has the potential to cut down on the amount your mobile shouts for your attention.

Sure, you don't need it need it, but it's also a lot of fun. That's the thing about the Galaxy Gear — if you think of it as a toy and a fun accessory, it can definitely be enjoyed; however priced at Rs. 22,990 Samsung just isn't pricing it like such a device.

Is this the fall of Blackberry?

The end of a Smartphone giant! A shock to some, and a predictable outcome for others, it was obvious that the path blackberry has chosen will either take their ship of glory struggling in the sea of smartphones and the storm of iOS and Android to the shore or it will finally sink. And right during this storm, the co-CEOs of RIM decided to step down and leave the company in a limbo.

Blackberry needed that magic again that could take them away from their economic breakdown; we waited and waited for that time, but it never came. And now it seems that Blackberry has finally given up on the smartphone race and admitted its defeat.

But what truly brought about this eventual decay that forced BlackBerry to forfeit and sell off to Fairfax Financial Holding for $4.7 billion?

My personal opinion says that Blackberry is itself responsible for it; various small aspects and fatal miscalculations like poor pricing proved to be one of the many factors that eventually lead to their downfall. Let's have a look!

Operating System: Strike one!

Blackberry had to take care of three things and most important of them was their OS, the central nervous system of a smartphone. Blackberry always underestimated the power of Android and iOS, they were satisfied with their OS and never showed any interest in upgrading it, until the market exploded with iOS and Android which finally made them realized the biggest mistake they’ve ever made. Even Nokia’s with its ever-faithful Symbian OS started running out of options and finally adopted windows as their life-saver. Blackberry also panicked and introduced the BB 10 to the masses in the year 2011. Unfortunately, they were a little too late for the party as Android and iOS had the cake, and ate it too.

Hardware: Strike two!

Blackberry never had much power under the hood to keep up with the competition like Apple and Samsung, while they were fighting with each other to stay first in the race by adding more power in their devices Blackberry was thinking slow and steady wins the race; but this was not the case with Apple and Samsung and they were launching device after another to show how much of 'technology' they could give on your palm. BlackBerry finally launched a noteworthy smartphone in the form of BlackBerry Z10. It placed BlackBerry right in the competition; it was smart in all the right sense and complimented the all new operating system; it also gave BlackBerry a new direction, when they finally gave up their typical QWERTY keypad design for a full-touch interface. We thought BlackBerry had finally arrived. We were horribly wrong, again.

Pricing: Strike three...and you are out!

Desperate times require desperate measures, but Blackberry never took it seriously. BlackBerry was always known to flaunt a hefty price tag for their handsets. For the outdated hardware and software that came bundled, the prices were outrageous; BlackBerry stuck to their pricing, and did the same for their “would’ve been lifesaver”, the BlackBerry Z10. A phone that had all the potential to take things forward for BlackBerry, the Z10 was priced absurdly high at of Rs.42,000/-!! Taking the hardware and price into consideration, a customer could easily get the all-powerful Samsung Galaxy S4 or the iPhone in the same price that was equipped with more firepower and housed Android or iOS as an OS.

The share of BlackBerry Limited in the Indian smartphone market dropped to 2% during the April-June period of 2013 down from 7% a year ago, according to IDC. Even the launch of new models by BlackBerry Limited with a new OS could not prevent the decline in its market share and rather than rectifying their mistakes, BlackBerry launched two more smartphones, the Q5 and the Q10. Both handsets based on its signature QWERTY layout, the phones were meant to be BlackBerry's second grace, and yet again, the poor pricing led it another wave of failure sweeping them off.

The final nail in the coffin: BBM!

Once people used to buy Blackberry just to use BBM, it was once ACE Card for the Blackberry. It was a rage internationally with teenagers purchasing BlackBerry for the sole reason of using the instant messaging service. BBM finally found its worthy opponents in the form of instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat etc. that are hosted for free on numerous operating systems but BBM is still not free in Blackberry devices.  As far as Android and iOS are concerned they should have launched BBM few years ago and cemented their feet in the market, and yet they failed at doing so.

There were many other reasons for their failure as well like the mediocre Apps market as compare to Android and iOS, arguably the worst camera among smartphones and not so good customer services made sure that their glory was short-lived.

There could have been various saving graces for BlackBerry; the right upgrade at the right time, lower pricing, introduction of BBM for Android and iPhone among various other things. BlackBerry failed, and so did its legacy for being one of the top contenders in the smartphone market.

Smartphones: Smartly making us dumb?

Today, if you tell a child that there was a time when there were no phones, he would think of you as an idiot.  There was a time when there were round shaped dials on phones in our houses and we literally used to fight over the issue that who is going to pick up the phone next time it rings. Journey from Telephone to phone and now smartphone has been a long one though, and in this post - computer generation children are born having an expert like knowledge of e-gadgets. It is true that Smartphones have become not only part of our daily lives but also an extension of our selves.

Now a days the term phone is used with a prefix “smart”, smartphones - phones that are smart enough to do anything that you wish for. With smartphones you are always connected to the world, thanks to Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter is just a few touches away; don’t worry even if you are lost in the middle of a desert, just switch on your smartphone’s GPS and there you go, you will get turn by turn directions to your home. It doesn’t matter if you are aware of current rate of Dollar in INR, who is the current PM of Australia, stock price of Apple Inc., how far is the moon from earth – Google is there to help you; your one stop search for everything.  You are out on holidays and your “Incompetent Boss” called and asked you to make a presentation and send him in couple of hours and unfortunately you didn’t bring your Laptop with you (which moron carries a laptop during holidays!), In this case your smartphone is your life saver in which you can prepare and entire presentation using apps like MS Office, iWork etc. Gone are the days when you used to carry Digicams and SLRs separately with you to take pictures, but with smartphones you can easily take SLR like pictures and don’t have to be a pro to know the exposure settings, lenses required…you just have to make click at the right time and instantly share it in social networking sites. You can check emails even while struck in traffic.

A few days back Apple launched its flagship device – iPhone 5S, which has a fingerprint scanner and desktop class 64 bit architecture in its new A7 processor. The first thing came into my mind was - “dude is it a phone or a Laptop”. Buts it’s true that smartphones are giving some tough time to Laptops.

But is it a boon or bane? Smartphone are used so frequently that they have made us so helplessly dependent that we will be lost if one fine morning we wake up to find our Smartphone got vanished. There was once a time when people used to meet in clubs, parks or in pubs or in gatherings for social interaction and sharing of thoughts and ideas with friends and families. Now they do everything with just a single touch. People are happy to interact in a social space (online) that seems more relish, more actual. People who are unable to reveal their thoughts in real world find it very easy to communicate with people in a virtual world, and gradually they are constructing their virtual counterpart which is entirely opposite from each other. In most of the cases the virtual dominates the real; and smartphone having all-in-one features is acting as a catalyst helping in our continued existence in virtual world. Therefore, a world without Smartphone will push us towards an existential crisis.

Being a guy from this generation I can easily say that we can’t imagine a single day without our smartphones.

We are in an age where knowing about weather forecast or getting updated world news do not depend on arrival of newspapers or telecasting of news shows.  We wake up with checking the day’s schedule on the touch screen of our Smartphone and start working accordingly. Imagining a world without Smartphone is more horrifying than a ghostly nightmare. So, what should we call ourselves? May be Siri could answer!!