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Tech

Review: OnePlus X

We test the newest OnePlus phone and come away only slightly impressed. It’s a good phone for its price, though.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

We have seen quite a lot of smartphones this year that are not priced upwards of Rs 20,000 and still perform pretty well on most tasks. With the likes of Motorola, ASUS, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and a few more heating the battle up, it isn’t a bad situation for buyers. While the mid-to-high range devices are improving, what they still usually lack is premium build quality, a great camera and every feature at a reasonable price. Does the OnePlus X, priced at Rs 16,999, change that?

The looks. The OnePlus X (E1003) follows a considerably different material and design language than anything OnePlus has sold recently. The device has curved glasses on the front and the back, and is a flat slab on both sides with chamfered edges. Weighing under 140 grams and not measuring too tall, the device is not comfortable to grip as the whole body is quite slippery (you get a plastic case in the box, but you might want to get a better one that looks and feels less cheap).

With the 5-inchAMOLED on front, sensors and front-facing camera above it, and three capacitive touch keys (none of which light up), the bottom has the microUSB port surrounded by the loudspeaker and primary mic. The left panel has a three-way alert switcher (same as the OnePlus 2); the right side has SIM cards tray (nano + nano or microSD card) tactile volume and Power/ Lock keys (near the middle); and the top has secondary mic and 3.5mm headset jack. The back, sports the OnePlus logo apart from the 13 MP camera and LED flash on the top left corner.

Screen. OnePlus X is equipped with a 5-inch full HD AMOLED, which most people would find comfortable for most of their tasks. The screen is sharp, usable under sunlight and has deep rich black levels expected of an AMOLED today. The phone has the black theme selected by default for better battery and the screen does justice to it. Full HD videos and images look fine on it, but you may have to wipe the glass every now and then.

Battery. The device features a 2,525 MAh battery unit. The phone almost never lasted a full day with average to high use. With lighter usage, you can expect it to last about a day. Using a single SIM card, brightness level at 30%, don’t expect a lot from this device in terms of battery life. The phone takes a couple of hours to get fully charged.

Camera. The phone boasts a 13 MP (f/2.0) camera on the back, and here are a few sample images.

As you can see, the camera isn’t that great; images sport quite some noise and while the camera app itself is smooth and quick to capture, the results are not good. You can get some good shots with the right lighting and a still subject but the camera disappoints otherwise.

Software and performance. The OnePlus X runs OxygenOS 2.1.3-x over Android 5.1.1. It sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 chipset, which was used by a lot Android OEMs for their flagship devices nearly two years back. There’s 3 GB of RAM and about 10.5 GB of storage available to the user. OnePlus’s OxygenOS is close to the look and feel of stock Android, with a few tweaks and features. There aren’t too many additions done since we last used it on the OnePlus 2. The company has stated that the phone will be updated to Android 6.0 in2016’s first quarter. Performance-wise, the OnePlus X is a satisfactory performer. Throughout my usage, I didn’t see too many app crashes or stuttering between Chrome’s tabs. While I wouldn’t say animations and general scrolling are as fluid as, say the Nexus 5X’s, it isn’t bad and definitely as good as phones in this price segment today.

It is quite clear who is this OnePlus X meant for. You can choose it if you want something that looks and feels really nice, has smooth performance and good screen. The OnePlus X sort of makes the mid-range phone segment in the Indian market better and more competitive.

(Pictures courtesy Manik Kakra)

Categories
Film

Review: Partu

This week’s release is defined by good performances and excellent camera work relating a moving true story about a lost young boy.
by Ravi Shet

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is a true story of a lost boy from Rajasthan who finds his moorings in a remote village in Ahmednagar.

A seven-year-old boy, Prithvi, arrives in Mumbai from Rajasthan with his uncle Prem Singh to enjoy the city for a few days. But on a crowded train station in Mumbai when the child is returning home, Prithvi gets separated from his uncle and ends up taking the wrong train. Soon, he reaches Ahmednagar, where he knows no one and doesn’t know Marathi, the local language.

Laxman (Kishor Kadam), a poor farmer along with his wife Sugandha (Smita Tambe) help Prithvi and take him to their home. Laxman struggles to find Prithvi’s family; however he fails and finally decides to raise Prithvi with his family and names him ‘Partu’. The child soon adapts to his new family and surroundings, and also learns how to speak Marathi and adjust to local rituals and routines.

 

17 years later, Partu (Saurabh Gokhale) is now 24 years old. Completely tied to his home with the love and affection from his adoptive father Laxman and his family, Partu has almost forgotten about his past. But Laxman still hopes that Partu will find his own parents one day. Meanwhile, Partu is married to Gayatri and settled in the same village with Laxman and his family. On a pilgrimage, Laxman manages to find out where Partu’s hometown is in Rajasthan.

Director Nitin Adsul does a commendable job in bringing a true story to the screen, and also uses the real Partu in the end credits of the film. The overall pace of the film is fine, but some scenes go on interminably. Sanjay Khanzode’s camera work is excellent – Rajasthan has been beautifully captured in this film. As far as the performances are concerned, the ever-reliable Kishore Kadam leaves his mark, and so does Smita Tambe. However, Saurabh Gokhale is miscast as Partu and is not at all impressive in the titular role.

(Picture courtesy marathimovieworld.com)

Categories
Film

Review: Creed

‘Creed’ is a spin-off from the beloved ‘Rocky’ series and will knock you out with excellent performances and well-shot action scenes.
by Ravi Shet

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

You will like this film if you’re a fan of the Rocky franchise. Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the illegitimate son of former heavyweight boxing champion Apollo Creed. The boy loses his mother at a young age, and he grapples with issues – abandonment, loneliness – which make him an angry youth. He lives in a Los Angeles-based youth facility, until Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow decides to raise him like her own son. Adonis’ life changes – he gets a job at a securities firm; however he wants to follow his dream of becoming a professional boxer. So he quits his job to become a boxer, but Mary is strongly opposed to the idea.

Adonis tries to get in Delphi Boxing Academy at Los Angeles; but is turned down. He moves to Philadelphia with the hope of meeting Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), his father’s old opponent and friend. Adonis meets Rocky at the latter’s restaurant and requests him for lessons. Rocky is reluctant to get back into boxing; but he agrees to train Adonis with the help of his old friends.

 

Adonis soon defeats a local fighter and people find out who his father is. This leads to him getting a call from the World Light Heavyweight Championship; he is informed that Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew) is due to be forced into retirement because of an impending prison term. Adonis is offered the role of Ricky’s final challenger on one condition – he must change his name from Adonis Johnson to Adonis Creed.

Director Ryan Coogler has ensured that Rocky’s persona never overshadows Adonis’. The story is structured well and the action scenes are quite thrilling. Especially impressive is the camerawork by Maryse Alberti. But the performances really lift this film from average to very good – Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan are top notch. If you’re a boxing and Stallone fan, this movie is worth your while.

(Picture courtesy screenrant.com)

Categories
Tech

Review: LG Nexus 5

We take a look at the new Nexus smartphone and like a few features. But some others require more work.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

LG’s Nexus 5 remains the most popular Nexus device till date. The phone got a lot of things right, and was not only liked by power users who are into Nexus’s products but also general users. Two years since the Nexus 5’s launch, the LG Nexus 5X is out. But does it fare well?

The looks. The Nexus 5X follows a familiar soft-touch look and feel of the Nexus 5. The soft-touch polycarbonate material and rounded edges and light weight make the phone comfortable to carry, but as soon as you press those Volume buttons and power/Lock key on the right, you realise this phone doesn’t ooze a premium feel. The phone has a flat back, plus, front-facing speaker (which also houses the primary mic) and notification LED below the screen.

The ear-speaker grille is surrounded by the 5 MP front-facing camera, sensors, which are visible if you look closely. On the back is the protruding 12.3 MP camera along with dual LED flash. The phone’s design reminds a lot about the Nexus 5, but it doesn’t feel better than other phones priced around Rs. 30,000, especially with Xiaomi, Motorola and ASUS designing phones well below the Nexus 5X’s price point.

Screen. The device boasts a 5.2-inch IPS LCD that’s covered by Gorilla Glass 3. The screen does a great job in daily use for videos, images, and text. It’s not the brightest LCD on a phone today, but it definitely has great colour reproduction, sharpness, and richer Black levels than earlier. It doesn’t have the highest resolution possible but it handles colours and sharpness for videos and images well.

Camera. Nexus phones aren’t really known for imaging. The 12.3 MP (f/2.0 an 1.55 microns) camera is apparently better at low-light shooting. Here are a few sample images.

LG Nexus 5The camera seems capable of giving detailed and sharp images. In low-light and good light conditions, the camera doesn’t disappoint. You can open the camera app from wherever you are even if the screen is locked, by double-tapping the Power/ lock button. The new camera app is much improved too. Other than some unusual focus issue in broad daylight, the camera app works well.

Battery. The Nexus 5X is equipped with a 2,700 mAh battery unit. The phone required to be charged well within 20 hours of heavy to moderate use. But what’s better is Android 6.0’s battery optimisation feature (Doze). Thanks to this new feature, expect your phone to give much improved standby time, when the phone is idle with the screen switched off.

Audio. The loudspeaker on the front does a pretty good job and usually doesn’t distort. It is quite loud and clear, while not as nice as the One M9+ and Note5 (better placed, though), it isn’t really bad either. In-ear headsets are just about okay, and I would suggest getting a decent pair for your new Nexus phone. Basics like call quality and network reception are top notch. Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity caused no problem.

Software and performance. Under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon 808 SoC (hexa-core -1.8 GHz dual-core + 1.4 GHz quad-core CPU and Adreno 418 GPU) along with 2 GB of RAM. Belonging to the Nexus group, the phone is expected to be smooth in various tasks, have stutter-free scrolling, and so on. Does it deliver on those points? Mostly yes. The phone does well when scrolling in apps, paying HD videos in the YouTube app, and switching between apps from the Recent Apps key (on-screen keys here) has been improved in Android Marshmallow. The phone hardly ever lagged, and almost always provided stutter-free experience in games (FF Legacy).

Where it slightly lagged was when switching to Chrome with a few tabs open or using an image-heavy app like Instagram or Imgur and having to load images again when scrolling.

I found WiFi performance and animations to be noticeably improved. It feels a bit more polished and less buggy to use. On the other hand, there’re also a few added features with this new version. One of those is Google Now on Tap. The swipe-up gesture to bring Google Now has been removed and you now have Google Now on Tap, which you can trigger by long-pressing the Home button inside any app.

Wrapping up, the Nexus 5X scores well on these fronts – Screen, general performance, camera, but lacks a little for battery life and aesthetics. While we have seen quite a few manufacturers bringing great value-for-money smartphones in budget, in my opinion, this year’s Nexus launches (the Nexus 5X and 6P) show the Nexus program is here to stay and its advantages – first in line for OS updates, no third-party bloatware, typical smooth performance – are well in place for now. If you’re looking to buy one, you should go for the 32 GB model (24 GB available space) that is priced around Rs. 31,000.

(Pictures courtesy Manik Kakra)

Categories
Film

Review: Katyar Kaljat Ghusli

Bring alive the festive season with a musical treat comprising stellar performances and a gripping story of a bygone era.
by Ravi Shet

Rating: 4 out of 5

Katyar Kaljat Ghusli first shot to fame in the 1970s as a musical play helmed by singing stalwarts Pt Jitendra Abhisheki and Pt Vasantrao Deshpande. The same story has now been adapted for the big screen by director-actor Subodh Bhave, who also stars in the film.

The plot is based in the pre-independence period in princely Vishrampur, and centres on the clash between two musical gharanas led by Pandit Bhanu Shankar Shastri (Shankar Mahadevan) and Khan Saheb (Sachin Pilgaonkar). Panditji, owing to his talent, is elevated to the Rajgayak (royal singer) status in the State. He is impressed by Khansaheb’s talent, though the latter belongs to a different musical gharana, and asks him to move to migrate to Vishrampur.

Khansaheb moves to Vishrampur and performs a jugalbandi with Panditji, where the king declares Panditji as the winner of the competition. A frustrated Khansaheb continues to challenge Panditji year after year; however after a decade Panditji leaves the stage without singing which eventually makes Khansaheb the winner and he gets the Rajgayak status.

 

Khansaheb moves to the palace where Banke Bihari (Pushkar Shrotri), the State’s royal poet, and other royal attendants present him with a dagger (katyar) and inform him that the king would pardon one murder by the dagger.

Meanwhile, Sadashiv (Subodh Bhave) arrives at the palace hoping to take singing lessons from Panditji, but on learning that Khansaheb is the new court singer, he asks for lessons from him instead. Khansaheb is furious when he realises that Sadashiv sings in Panditji’s style and refuses to teach him. Though upset, Sadashiv leaves and takes shelter in a place where he meets Uma, Panditji’s daughter, and starts learning the notes her father has left behind. Here, he meets  Zareena, Khansaheb’s daughter, who urges him to come work in the palace disguised as a servant so that he may learn singing when her father is practicing.

The story moves at a fast pace and several scenes have been stitched together beautifully to create an impact. The music by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy is impressively scored to recreate a bygone era, and the camerawork is top notch. Debutant director Subodh Bhave has tackled a difficult subject deftly and extracted good performances from the cast, notably from Shankar Mahadevan, Amruta Khanvilkar, Mrunmayee Deshpande and Pushkar Shrotri. But Sachin Pilgaonkar steals the show with his excellent portrayal of Khansaheb.

(Picture courtesy marathimovieworld.com)

Categories
Event

The ‘Jeevan Saathi Sammelan’ is back!

Widowed, divorced or singletons over 50 years of age can participate in a marriage and live-in matchmaking event in Mumbai.

by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Seniors looking for love and companionship, pay attention. This is your chance to take a shot at love and friendship in your sunset years. The renowned Silver Inning Foundation, one of the country’s foremost entities working for senior citizens, is hosting its 2nd ‘Jeevan Saathi Sammelan’, a matchmaking event for marriage and live-in relationships.

All you have to do is register for the event beforehand and show up at the venue in Mumbai on December 13, 2015. The event will be held at 10 am at Dadar Cultural Centre. To register, fill out the form online (http://theseniorcitizen.in/register-here/) and send it to Silver Inning Foundation (look for address and details below).

The event is aimed at helping widowed, divorced and single men and women over 50 years of age seek love and companionship in their senior years. “We must break away from the old tradition of frowning upon our elders seeking love, and seek a new tradition of encouraging them to seek friendship and love at their age. In their advanced years, it is important for them to have a partner to share their lives with,” explains Silver Inning Foundation’s Sailesh Mishra.

The last such Sammelan, also held in Mumbai two years ago, received a staggering response with over 350 people showing up to look for partners. This time, the Foundation hopes that more people will arrive. The Metrognome is the online partner for the event.

Call 9833344359 / 8879924359 (Monday to Saturday 11 am to 5 pm) for details, or email silverinnings@gmail.com. Send the completed registration form to Silver Innings, J/47-48, Shop no. 10, opp. Navgraha Bldg, Lane behind Allahabad Bank, Poonam Sagar Complex, Mira Road (East), Mumbai – 401107.

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