Author: The Metrognome

Categories
Tech

Review: Oppo Find 7

Oppo’s newest phone, Find 7, has some great features and may entice users of other smartphone brands to switch over.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Oppo has been quite a name in the smartphone category when it comes to emerging players. The Find 7 does manage to turn heads and is probably the right marketing tool to get Oppo some brand recognition? But does the device justify its price? And what does it do different than its competitors?

Oppo launched the Find 7 (X9076) and 7a together, and the two are almost twins if you don’t consider a couple of hardware differences. The Find 7, with its 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 IPS LCD, is a big and quite heavy (173 grams) phone, but not an uncomfortable device to hold. Thanks to the textured plastic material, and the slightly curved back, most people would find gripping the phone not much of a hassle in their daily use.

One thing I’d like highlight is Oppo’s retail packaging – it is really well done. The hard plastic box, with very neatly-assigned spaces for the phone and accessories, such that you can conveniently put back things into their place in the box, is something that you won’t find in a lot of phone retail boxes.

The looks

Dominated by the 5.5-inch Quad HD screen with Gorilla Glass 3 on top, the front also sports three capacitive touch buttons for Menu, Home, and Back. The buttons feel a little small in size than what they could have been considering the phone’s dimensions, plus, they are noticeably dim. The vibration feedback from the buttons, on the other hand, is just as as it should be. T

The top hosts the 3.5mm headset jack; while the microUSB port and primary mic sit at the bottom. Above the screen is the 5 MP front-facing camera alongside sensors and speaker grill. It’s below the screen that things get different – there’s a skyline notification LED, a unique feature in the Find 7. The skyline notification LED, just as the name suggests, glows up in a curved shape whenever a notification arrives, and it looks refreshing and unique when put next to a lot of other smartphones.

The Power/Lock key is placed on the left; and the Volume keys are placed at a similar height on the right (slightly above the middle) and a tiny SIM card-extracting pinhole. The keys, paired with dual chrome lines along the edges, need to be pressed a bit firmly and raised just enough to give a nice feedback when pressed. On the back, you get the 13 MP camera, speaker grill towards the botton and the Oppo logo below the camera and LED flash. Though angular and a bit wide, the phone gives a premium feel and seems solid to hold. It would be fair to say Oppo has done a good job on the finish and design front.

Display

The phone’s 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 IPS LCD is obviously one of its USPs. The display is the first Quad HD phone screen to be launched in India (LG’s G3 is the second one), and marks the smartphone penetration into screen resolutions beyond full 1080p. The first time you use the phone, it’s a bit hard to tell it apart from a 1080p screen, but when you start reading fine text or view very high resolution images or even videos, that’s where, I think, the difference pops up.

The screen on the Find 7, with whatever toll it takes on a few other aspects of the device, is crisp to look at, read text, and view images. It has good viewing angles and even the contrast doesn’t disappoint while you flip through images or webpages on the phone. Though not a very bright panel, which fails to impress when used under direct sunlight, the 5.5-inch IPS LCD, the first one with these many pixels, does quite do justice to the hype it created.

Audio

The phone has a loudspeaker at the back. The speakers are very loud and clear. They hardly distort and are good enough for gaming and video. Though not as good as the One’s BoomSound speakers quality-wise, they are just as loud as and certainly better than most other phones. In-ear sound, too, is impressive and the bundled headsets are actually not bad (but still get your own pair of headsets). The music player and phone settings give you a lot of audio setting options and do a good job to make your audio experience worthwhile.

Camera

Let’s move to another major part of the phone – its 13 MP f/2.0 rear camera (Sony EXMOR CMOS Sensor). Oppo has deployed something called ‘Super Zoom’, which basically allows you to snap 50 MP images from the 13 MP sensor. Don’t get your hopes up. The phone takes about a dozen photos to stitch a single 50 MP image. The trick isn’t very neat, and is far from being as efficient as what Nokia does with their high megapixel sensors. Having said that, the camera, with its 13 MP and other usual ray of settings, is capable of taking really good shots. Here are a few sample images.

As you can see, the phone can take a lot of really bright and sharp images. You won’t be disappointed with the camera’s responsiveness, contrast handling or processing. Coming to the native camera app, you will find a plethora of setting options to choose from, but without manking the UI cluttered or very hard to work on. For instance, you can make GIFs, audio photos, HDR and even take RAW (.DNG) samples with it. For those who care about the front-facing 5 MP camera, there’s good news. You can take proper shots with editing options right in the camera app and you won’t be disappointed with the result.

Call quality

As far as call quality goes, the phone doesn’t disappoint when it comes to voice. There were no network reception issues throughout my usage and the phone held well whether for WiFi, Bluetooth or locking in with its GPS.

Battery

The phone houses a 3,000 mAh battery unit, which is user-accessible. The battery life on the phone, on an average, came out to be about 23 hours  with brightness at about 30%, but notch it up a bit to 45% and the battery life comes well below 20 hours, which just shows the toll that the screen takes on the phone’s battery.

Oppo has equipped the Find 7 with their VOOC battery technology, which allows you to charge the phone from 0 to about 75% in half an hour. The bulky charger and the relevant tech in place do their job excellently, meaning you don’t have to worry about waiting to get the phone charged to a decent level before you unplug it.

Software

The Find 7 runs on Android 4.3 with Oppo’s own ColorOS 1.2.4i on top. The whole look and feel of the OS is identical to that of N1. The launcher, customisation, etc. work almost like what you see on most other Android flagships and there isn’t much difference to talk about from what we already did for the N1, but it is high time the phone gets updated to Android 4.4.

Other features

About the navigation keys, long-pressing the options key brings up the recent apps list, while doing the same on the Home key brings up Google Now, by default. You can double tap to wake the screen, though it doesn’t work to lock. The whole look is not something to complain about. Icons, themes, default wallpapers are all taken care of.

Three default Home screens with a different pane for music and camera is a good thought for some. For those interested, Oppo allows you to flash ColorOS ROMs through the factory-installed recovery without having to void your device’s warranty.

Something worth mentioning is that most of the OS components and probably all the Android apps are not yet made for the resolution we have on the Find 7. Powered by the Snapdragon 801 chipset MSM8974 (2.5 GHz Krait 400 quad-core CPU, and Adreno 330 GPU), along with 3 GB of RAM, the overall performance on the Find 7 is about satisfactory. Keep in mind the high resolution screen in place and what all tasks it would take to keep the screen running.

You may notice a bit of a stutter while scrolling through settings or even when switching between apps or changing clips while watching from Gallery. But on the other tasks, for music, Web, Camera, the phone feels quite smooth. While it is far from being judged the smoothest Android phone out there, it is surely not a slouch and good enough to get your work done.

Oppo has done a really impressive job with the Find 7. Great screen and design, fantastic camera and audio quality, and decent battery life and intelligent battery technology; this new flagship handset is right there to take on the more popular flagships and can lure more people into buying their first Oppo device.

Categories
Deal with it

Parents, step up to save your child from abuse

What are you doing to save your child from being molested, abused? Start by being responsible for your child’s safety.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

Of late, newspapers are becoming a seriously scary read, especially for parents, as every other day there is news of molestation and sexual abuse, or rape of children. What is more appalling is that it is happening in schools, the so-called temples of learning. Schools are places where we send our children to learn and love life. Parents trust schools and send their beloved children there believing that the care and trust promised by schools would actually be provided.

Until now, many news items spoke primarily of horrendous men who committing such heinous crimes on innocent children, but there was a recent news item about a female school worker who sexually abused a small girl. I was shocked. So far, we have been shouting hoarse at schools to employ female attendants to deal with children, but now, I have to wonder: with whom are our kids safe?

The tiniest of bruises on our children makes our eyes well with tears. A smile on their faces brightens our day, and we strive to make their world a happy place. Every parents puts his or her best food forward for their child. But even as we try to shield them from the evils of the world, we have to step back and ask ourselves: For how long can we protect our children? One day our little one will grow up and be on his own. So far, we’ve taught our children to trust their elders in schools. Now even that myth has been rudely shattered. So what do we tell our children now?

I really wouldn’t mind home schooling my child, but who will monitor the tutor? There have been recent incidents of home tutors mercilessly beating up children as well.Stop child abuse

It is time for parents to take matters in their own hands. Firstly, however, parents must realise that abuse happens with little boys, too. Our concern towards the girl child as a potential victim somewhere dilutes our attention towards the male child. Some people think that abuse doesn’t happen with boys, and if it does, it is not such a serious matter. Well, hello – a child is a child, boy or girl. Some parents are also guilty of not reporting abuse that their little boys face.

As the days go by, we must strengthen our resolve to save our children from sexual abuse of any nature, verbal or physical. It is not merely enough for parents and teachers to say that they have educated their children about good touch and bad touch. I’ve got some ideas that might help:

  • Parents should make permanent groups which work towards such causes. When going to PTA meetings, wear badges that say this:
SO WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THE SAFETY OF OUR CHILDREN

 

If every single parent walks into school with such badges, schools will be pressurised to take extra care for our children’s safety.

  • Insist on written guidelines regarding safety from schools.
  • If some parents are well versed with training, join hands with schools to regularly conduct training sessions for teachers as well as school bus conductors, drivers, mausis and all staff on the school campus.
  • Conduct safety weeks in schools. Ensure that the school calendar does not make safety concerns just an annual feature.
  • Voice out your own experiences.
  • Those parents who send their children to school in private vans with no attendants, must try out the school buses provided by schools as a safety measure. However, try and closely monitor the behaviour of the attendants as well.
  • Be attentive to any behavioural changes in your child and trust what he or she says.
  • Teach your child to stand up without fear and report and untoward incident. Children should also be encouraged to report incidents of abuse they may have seen in school or other places.

Make a start. Take your child’s safety very seriously. Your child will thank you for your concern.

Dr Pooja Birwatkar is currently pursuing post doctoral research and working in the area of science education. She has been associated with the field of education in the past as a teacher educator, and her area of interest is research in education. 

(Pictures courtesy www.nation.lk, newshopper.sulekha.com)

Categories
Event

Mumbai gets country’s largest photo gallery

The Kanakia Zillion Gallery, home to over 10,000 photographs on Mumbai, opened at BKC Annexe last week. A must-visit space.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

India’s most exciting city now has a new feather in its cap – Mumbai is now home to the country’s largest photo gallery of Mumbai photographs.

The Kanakia Zillion Gallery opened at the BKC Annexe last week, and houses a staggering 10,000 photographs on Mumbai. The images, contributed by both professional and amateur photographers, were selected from over 36,000 entries. More than 50,000 Mumbaikars were engaged through social media and other platforms to connect with this initiative.

Capturing the spiritual ‘Eight Fold Path’, the initiative salutes the spirit of Mumbai and entries were invited from the photographers to depict eight categories, namely, Architecture, Business, Celebrations, Diversity, Entertainment, Food, Games and Humanity of Mumbai.

At the launch of the space last week, the Kanakia Art Foundation also organised a unique fashion show as a tribute to the city’s dabbawallahs, the Traffic Police of Mumbai, the fisherwomen and the gas supply boys of the city. Sunil Prabhu, Mayor of Mumbai, was present as one of the dignitaries at the event.

HimanshuKanakia, Managing Director of Kanakia Group, said, “This is a rare collection of beautiful efforts of amateur and professional photographers from various walks of the life. We are just overwhelmed to receive about 36,000 photographs and the task of judges was not only mammoth but also difficult while choosing the winners. We congratulate all participants and invite all Mumbaikars to have a glimpse of this unique gallery.”

Categories
Listen

Attend: Vocal recital at the NCPA

Hindustani classical vocal exponent Arati Anklikar Tikekar will present ‘Shyam Rang’ to celebrate Lord Krishna and Janmashtami, on August 8.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

On the occasion of Janmashtami, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) will present ‘Shyam Rang’. The programme is a Hindustani vocal recital that will celebrate the legend of Krishna, the dark one, through music.

In this concert, renowned vocalist Arati Ankalikar Tikekar will present a bouquet of compositions in various genres of classical, semi-classical and light music related to the theme of Krishna. She is currently recognised as one of the top vocalists of the younger generation. Being a disciple of famous singers such as Pandit Vasantrao Kulkarni, Kishori Amonkar and Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar, among others, her singing style is a rare combination of great qualities from various gharanas. She has received training in Agra as well as Gwalior-Atrauli gharanas.

The recital will take place at the NCPA on August 8, 2014 at 6.30 pm. Tickets are priced at Rs 250 and Rs 300. 

(Picture courtesy www.last.fm)

Categories
Trends

Is Mumbai the TB capital of the world?

Curable diseases like TB, malaria, dengue, diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid continue to kill several Mumbaikars. So who’s got the solution?
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It’s the season for illnesses, most of them waterborne. While Mumbai laments the lack of good roads and a bigger lack of cleanliness every monsoon, here’s a report that quantifies the grim state of affairs in the richest city in India, when it comes to prevention and treatment of curable diseases.

As per a white paper released by Praja Foundation, 7,650 Mumbaikars died in the year 2013-2014 due to diseases like tuberculosis, diarrhoea, cholera, malaria, dengue and typhoid. Additionally, tuberculosis alone has claimed 46,606 lives during the last six years in Mumbai.

This high number accounts for 8.55 per cent of all Mumbaikars’ deaths during these six years.

The report says, “Over the last six years, 7,768 people have died from TB every year on an average. TB, if detected early and if the prescribed treatment is taken, is curable. Such a high mortality rate clearly shows that a lot needs to be done and on a war footing if we want to create a healthy Mumbai, else Mumbai may well become the TB capital of the world.”

The report further states that only 34 per cent Mumbaikars use Government and civic hospitals and dispensaries for treatment of the above diseases, while the remaining 66 per cent use private hospitals and charitable trust-run clinics. On an average, Mumbai households spent about 7.9 per cent of their total income on hospital or medical costs in 2014.

Read the entire report on www.praja.org under the section ‘White Papers’.

(Picture courtesy www.hindujagroup.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Deal with it

Parenting in big, bad Mumbai

It is tough to devote quality time to our children, but only parents should shape their children’s lives, not technology and media.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

The other day my six-year-old boy was humming a song. While I was straining to catch the lyrics, he suddenly stopped and asked, “Mom, what is ‘wohka’?” To my blank look, he explained by humming a line, ‘Char bottle wohka, kaam mera roz ka’.

I was shocked and fumbled for an answer. I quickly went into a mental overdrive: how did he hear this song, we never play music channels on TV or in the car, he is not exposed to any TV content except restricted cartoon and news channels. So how had he heard this song? And when?

Lectures in child psychology sprang to my aid and I remembered what I had been taught: always tell a child the truth. So I told my son, ‘wohka’ was actually a drink for adults. He seemed satisfied with the answer, but I continued to be agitated, shooting a volley of questions about where he had heard the song. He finally said he had heard someone singing it and caught it.

Then I sat back and wondered: how long can I confine my child to spaces I have earmarked for him? I can physically control the TV set, expose him to less silly cartoons, but for how long? Most parents complain that their kids watch too much TV or are always on the mobile phone. Then they admit that they are unable to make much time for their children, thus resulting in the latter getting the run of the house.

Everybody’s right, parents and children, too. A place like Mumbai eats up valuable time for most parents commuting to and from work. On reaching home, there is no time to restSpend time with your children and play with their children. So we try to compensate by taking our children out to malls over the weekends, and feel that we are helping them create special childhood memories by giving them money to play in game zones.

What stops us from going to gardens and playing cricket or another sport with our children? Or just going to a beach and having a good game of Frisbee with them? Sure, Mumbai is very crowded and there’s no place to do anything. But the city is not short of nature and public parks – not using these spaces to bond with your child is criminal, and a cop-out.

Technology has invaded our lives and we can’t always stop our children from being exposed to its ills. What we can do is modify our own behaviour – and we can start by setting good examples of ourselves in front of our children. Don’t play on our phone or be hooked to social networking sites when you are home. Just think: a year ago, when you didn’t have as many apps on your phone, was your life not good enough? Do you really need all the new apps that are available?

A child who sees a parent devote more time to his phone than to the people inside the house is not going to obey when that parent tells them not to play mobile phone games. If you are going to shake your body to meaningless item songs with titillating lyrics, or worse, take your children along to watch an A-rated film, you lose the right to tell your child that these songs and films are bad for them. Children model themselves on their parents – it is a cliché, but you must practice what you preach or suffer the consequences.

After all, it is easier to reorganise our own lives and help our children make better choices, than to deal with disgruntled teens and young adults who would later blame you for not investing in their overall development, and leaving them to figure out their own way of living. It is not a question of whether I want my child to know that words like ‘vodka’ exist, but I want him to learn about these things in a scientific manner, rather than being exposed to them crudely. There is still time to undo the damage – rise up to the challenge, gear up for it, and don’t complain.

Besides, who said parenting was easy?

Read another take on the same issue here.

Dr Pooja Birwatkar is currently pursuing post doctoral research and working in the area of science education. She has been associated with the field of education in the past as a teacher educator, and her area of interest is research in education. 

(Pictures courtesy www.parentingnation.in, www.wikihow.com)

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