Android lollipop is now seeding to Moto G (1st Generation) in India

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 Android 5.0 Lollipop is Google's biggest mobile update in years.

There's something magical about the idea that, in the space of a few minutes, your smartphone or tablet can look dramatically different and do some cool new things, to boot. That's why operating system updates can be oddly exciting, and Android's latest upgrade, version 5.0 or Lollipop is the firmware equivalent of opening presents on your birthday. The upcoming release, which is now available for selected Motorola devices heading to dozens of mobile devices in the coming months, brings a fresh design and no shortage of new features.

If you've been using Android over the past few months, you may have noticed that several Google apps have been updated with a fresh design and they all look the same. This is no coincidence: Google's putting its three-year-old "Hollow" design language out to move toward a look known as "Material Design." This new aesthetic is featured distinctly in Android 5.0 Lollipop.

This consistency between apps and OS is a good thing, especially since Material Design is cleaner and more colorful than Hollow. Google says this kind of cohesiveness appeals visual harmony, and yu have to agree, whether you're using Google apps and services or a third-party option, a universal design language can ease your frustration of not knowing where functions really are. Since most apps look similar to each other and the rest of Lollipop, it should be less difficult for people to understand what to look for and how to find what they need.

Image Credit : Google Images

And now, the new Android build arrives on Moto G devices in India, and a tad over two weeks after the initial soak test. The software version of the Android 5.0 update is 220.21.16.en.03. Android 5.0 Lollipop brings a host of improvements to the budget friendly smartphone, headed by fresh material design for the UI, as well as brand new ART runtime. The latter will almost certainly make last year’s Moto G feel a lot snappier. 

Moto 360 smartwatch appears at Google I/O

Image Credit: Google Images

Samsung´s galaxy gear series has already been manhandled for a while now and now its time to do the same with the latest device running google´s operating system Android Wear, the Motorola Moto 360. Android Wear is the OS launched by Google to with wearable devices like the Motorola Moto 360, the LG G watch and Samsung´s Gear Live. This the first smartwatch to have a circular design which in itself is drool worthy. I may sound a bit rude here but Samsung´s Gear smart watches look ugly when you compare them with this beautiful smartwatch. The first round round-faced Android Wear is just great looking. The Moto 360 looks just like a regular watch.

Image Credit: Google Images

It is a bit on the thick side but is lightweight and comfortable to wear. It will be available in a soft genuine leather straps and also in metal bands. The Moto 360 strikes a stunning pose on your wrist and, particularly in stainless steel garb. The fit and finish of the device is top notch. 

The chamfered edges of both the glass covering the screen and that metal housing give it a luxurious look and feel, and the thick, split leather strap is premium, too. A bit of design flair has the added benefit of showing off the circular display to the fullest -- looking closely reveals that pixels are packed from edge to edge, no cutting corners or bezels.

The Moto 360 has almost the same UI as we usually see in Google Now. Swiping around the UI (up/down to change cards, right/left to dive deeper into them) is super fast and smooth.

Image Credit: Google Images

By default, the screen is off, but when you raise your wrist in the standard check-the-time gesture, the screen lights up. Hopefully that will result in some battery-saving. The screen looked very nice and was easy to read. We're assuming that it too was an AMOLED screen because the blacks were super-deep, and that would make sense for power-savings.

One can make the UI look like a real watch, with multiple dial options to choose from, It seems the watch may be monitor fitness amongst other features like, weather updates, GPS navigation, reminders, reading a Hangout message, watching the caller ID or even accepting or declining calls from the watch itself. From the hardware it looks like this smartwatch will only support wireless charging as there is not input source to plug in a wire into the watch. It only has one hardware button to its right.

Image Credit: Google Images

For now, that's really all we can tell you about the Moto 360 -- that it's a beautiful and sizable smartwatch. Motorola currently had the 360 running a demo mode of Android Wear, so one could not get a feel for how the watch actually will work. That said, Motorola's on its way to proving that sometimes, it's not hip to be a square.

GIF Credit: Google

Hopefully the price—the biggest open question— will be as appealing as the looks. Meanwhile, you may have a look at this video.

Disclaimer: This Video belongs to Motorola Mobility and is embedded here just for informative purpose.

Is apple going the right way with IOS7 and further

Back in 1982, personal computers had monochromatic green screens. If you wanted to design a user interface, you had two tools available: Green letters and blank spaces.

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Steve Jobs had a deep and rich vision in 1981 for how user interfaces could work. If nontechnical users were going to do highly complex tasks on a computer with no training, he felt that Apple would need to make the technology disappear and the operations be utterly intuitive to nontechnical people. 

Here are some examples and difference between ios6 & ios7:-

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

The iPhone was the highest realization of Steve's vision. Unlike PC applications, iPhone apps were not merely software programs; they transformed the phone into familiar physical objects. The notepad looked like a real notepad; the calendar was like holding a calendar; the clock looked like a clock and the library looked like a real wooden shelf with books. This is called Skeuomorphism. Skeuomorphism makes it easier for those familiar with the original device to use the digital emulation and that it is visually appealing. 

Steve Jobs once said this:-

“people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

― Steve Jobs

In iOS 7, all of that is gone. Apps are now controlled with cryptic little florescent symbols that are interspersed across the screen. Everything looks the same. No more notepad; no more dials for making selections. It's all just dull software; black letters on white. Even the blue tint that helped you see if the keyboard shift key was pressed has been eliminated.



Apple has brought back the era of the hideously ugly, monochromatic 1982 UI. And it's worse than an IBM PC. Instead of a soft green color palette, iOS uses garish, florescent colors against harsh white backgrounds.

Image Credit - Google Images

This is the a good example of difference between skeuomorphic and flat interface.

Image Credit - Google Images

This is so wrong.

DOCUMENTS V.S. CONTROLS

The worst thing about iOS 7 is that the distinction between documents and controls is gone.

The iPhone always had a feeling like a well-engineered European sports car, with simple, purposeful buttons and dials to control the device. These controls were clearly and substantively distinct from user documents and workspaces. Now it's all blurred together, so you can't tell any more which things are controls and which aren't.
It reminds me of the days when you had to read a manual to learn how to use a piece of application software.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

The designers of iOS 7 forgot that consumers buy Apple products because they want simple, elegant devices to make their lives easier. But it appears to me as if the goal of iOS 7's designers was to look cool and hip, no matter the impact on users.

The new icons are garish, distracting, and less intuitive than the old ones. The new graphical flourishes--like making the lock screen photo go blurry.

I think this is far and away the worst thing Apple has ever done. Not only did the company throw away 30 years of progress, they have pulled all the major app makers down with them.

Apple has made a giant mess with iOS 7. It's hard to imagine the Apple design people owning up to what they did any time soon.

It pains me to say it, but I think Apple has given its loyal customers good reason to start looking at Android and other options.

Image Credit - Google Images

Moto G Versus Moto X

 

Image Courtesy - Google Images

The Moto X has finally come to India and the Moto G is already available so you might be trying to decide which to buy. Well that's where GUIthing comes in because we've compared the two Android smartphones in various categories to highlight how they differ.

Price

Motorola smashed it in terms of value for money with the Moto G, offering users a mid-range smartphone for a budget price. There's little to argue about with a price of just INR 12,499/- to buy it outright.

Things are a little different when it comes to the Moto X. It's Motorola's current flagship smartphone so it's bound to cost more than the Moto G and as such has a INR 23,999/- price tag.

This means you can buy nearly 2 Moto Gs for the price of one Moto X. So it is worth the extra money?

Both of Motorola's phones look very similar. Even though the screen sizes are a little different, the devices themselves are about the same size. In fact, the Moto G with is smaller screen is a little bigger than the Moto X. It's also understandably thicker and heavier than its more expensive brother.

Each is well made but feels quite plasticky so there's little in it. With no Moto Maker in India just yet, the Moto X doesn't have a big advantage over the Moto G here.

Moto G vs Moto X: Screen

Screen size is a great way to choose between two smartphones – you'll want to pick a size that's comfortable for you personally. There's only a small difference between the Moto G and Moto X here. The former is rocking a 4.5in display while the latter give you a little extra at 4.7in.

They both use a 720p resolution so it's in fact the Moto G which has a better pixel density but there's not much in it so it's better to go on the size.

The Moto X uses AMOLED technology. Colours are more vibrant and punchy but some users may prefer the more natural look of the Moto G's display.

Image Courtesy - Google Images

Moto G vs Moto X: Processor

Despite its bargain basement price, the Moto G has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM. Meanwhile, the Moto X has a dual-core Snapdragon Pro chip clocked a bit higher at 1.7GHz. It's got 2GB of RAM.

This might seem a little confusing but the bottom line is that both offer decent performance so you needn't worry. The Moto X has a software optimised chip with a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor. Just bear in mind that the Moto G is punching way above its weight here.

Moto G vs Moto X: Storage

With no expandable storage available on the Moto G or Moto X, storage is another area to consider closely. The Moto G is available in 8- or 16GB models while the Moto X has double these capacities. However, it appears that the 32GB Moto X missed its flight to India.

Moto G vs Moto X: Cameras

The Moto G has a mid-range 5Mp main camera which takes surprisingly good photos. It's even got an HDR shooting mode. Although the 10Mp camera on the Moto X isn't quite as good as we'd hoped, it still offers more details and video in 1080p compare to 720p. It's front camera is also better at 2Mp against 1.3Mp.

Image Courtesy - Google Images

Moto G vs Moto X: Software

If you can't find a Moto G or Moto X which ships with Android 4.4 Kitkat, you'll be able to upgrade to the latest software once you're up and running – an advantage of being a Google-owned (Now Lenovo) company.

Although both phones run pretty vanilla versions of Android, there are differences which you should be aware of.  On top of things like Moto Assist, the Moto X has unique features like Active display and Quick Capture. It's also got voice recognition which can learn your voice so there are a few reasons to opt for the Moto X over the Moto G here.

Moto G vs Moto X: Battery life

It's worth noting that neither the Moto X nor Moto G has a removable battery. Each phone offers typical smartphone battery performance of one day with an average usage. Only light users will get more than a day.

Tech Specs - moto x

OS: Android 4.4 KitKat
CPU: 1.7 GHz dual-core Krait Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon Pro
GPU: Adreno 320
Nano-SIM
65.3x129.3x10.4mm, 130g
Display: 4.7in AMOLED 720x1280, 312 ppi
Internal storage: 16GB, 2 years 50GB of Google Drive free
Memory: 2GB RAM
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.0 LE
NFC
Main Camera: 10Mp, autofocus, LED flash
Camera Features 1.4µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, panorama, HDR
Front Camera: 2Mp
Battery: 2200mAh

Verdict

The Moto G punches so far above its price tag that the large difference in price between it and the Moto X and the small difference in hardware and software mean the Moto X isn't worth the extra money. 

Google Nexus 5 - Review

Google's new platform showcase device which has been manufactured by LG. It's also the first time that Google has launched its flagship device in the Indian market just weeks after its international launch. The pricing of the phone and the promise of priority software updates makes it an irresistible proposition. So, how does it perform in real world conditions? We put it to test and find out in our review.

Build/ Design

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The Nexus 5 sports a very understated look and there's nothing really striking in the phone's design that will shout for your attention. The phone is made of plastic and doesn't feel very premium.

However, when you place the phone in your hand, you'll feel that it's very pleasant to hold thanks to the soft touch matte finish. Also, despite its large 4.95-inch screen, we didn't face any issues operating it with one hand. This is also due to the phone being quite lightweight at 130 grams.

The Nexus 5's edges are less curved and its corners less rounded compared to other phones, including the Nexus 4. The phone is available in Black and White color variants.

The 4.95-inch full-HD display dominates the front of the Nexus 5, and there are no hardware buttons. A round LED notification light is placed below the display, while the sensor array and the front camera sits above it.

The right edge of the Nexus 5 features the Power/ Screen lock and the Micro-SIM card tray, and the left edge features the volume rocker key. All the keys are made of ceramic and offer decent tactile feedback.

The 3.5-mm headset jack sits at the top edge of the Nexus 5, while the Micro-USB port and speaker grill sits at the bottom edge.

As we mentioned, the back of the Nexus 5 sports a matte soft touch finish giving it a good grip. It is a bit susceptible to smudges, though. The rear features an 8-megapixel ring shaped camera lens and the LED flash, apart from LG and Nexus branding.

Display

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 comes with an IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and pixel density of 445 ppi. The display comes with Corning's Gorilla Glass 3 protection making it resistant to scratches. 

In our use, we found the Nexus 5's screen to be very bright, with text and images looking crisp and sharp. Colours looked vivid and not over saturated like they look on AMOLED display though blacks don't look very deep.

The screen delivers great viewing angles, though it was a little reflective. Sunlight legibility was good though the screen brightness levels could be better.

Overall, the Nexus 5's display is one of the best in its class.

Software/ User Interface

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 is the first smartphone to ship with Android 4.4 KitKat, the latest release of the operating system. As with all Nexus devices, the phone includes the stock build of the operating system, without any additional UI skinning.

Android 4.4 KitKat on the Nexus 5 features a number of visual changes including a new launcher, making the interface even more minimalistic. It sports flatter design elements, muted colours in status icons, transparency, and smoother transition animations.

The first change that you'll notice is the transparent status and navigation key bars at the top and bottom, making the Nexus 5's screen look bigger and brighter. The Android 4.4 KitKat lock screen also features a small camera button, which helps in opening the camera app via the lock screen widget directly from the lock screen.

With Android 4.4 KitKat, you can now have as many home screens as you want by simply dragging an icon or placing a widget on a new one. After enabling Google Now, Google's smart assistant that fetches information and offers updates based on your data and usage behaviour, you'll see that the left most home screen would be Google Now pane with information cards and a search bar. The screen can also be invoked by swiping up the screen from the Home button. The Google search bar with the voice search icon is present on all home screens and cannot be removed.

Interestingly, you can also initiate voice search from the Nexus 5 when it's in the unlocked state by simply saying, 'Ok Google.' The option is only available when you choose US English as the default language option in the Google Now app's settings, though. With this change, Google search is integrated deeply with the phone.

The status bar icons and and UI elements in the notifications tray have been stripped off the blue colour in Android 4.4 KitKat, and now sport a muted white-grey shade.

The launcher has been revamped with icons looking bigger than their Jelly Bean avatars and dots are used to indicate the pagination in the home screen and app launcher, similar to iOS.

When you launch the KitKat app launcher or go back to the home screen, you'll notice a smooth fly away animation.

The app launcher now only features app icons and gets rid of widgets. Due to the larger icons, you'll see a 4x5 grid instead of a 5x5 grid.

Long pressing on the home screen brings up the menu to change the Wallpapers, Widgets and Google Now settings. The choice of default still wallpapers, live wallpaper and custom wallpapers are now available under a single menu.

The KitKat notifications tray features notifications that can be expanded by using two finger pull. It also features buttons for clearing all notifications and for displaying toggles for Brightness, Settings, Wi-Fi, Network, Battery, Aeroplane Mode, Bluetooth, Location settings and Alarm clock.

Android 4.4 KitKat also includes an immerse mode that hides the status and navigation bars offering a full screen experience in apps. Apps like Google Play Books already support this mode and developers can choose to enable it for their apps. The OS also allows developers to display semi-transparent navigation and status bars. We've not seen any apps that take advantage of this feature, however.

Android 4.4 also includes a revamped Phone app that now automatically prioritizes your contacts based on the people you talk to the most. When you first launch the app, you'll see a screen that displays a search bar, a place where most frequently called contacts and favorites are displayed and shortcuts to launch all contacts, the dialling pad, call history and settings.

You can also search for nearby places and businesses, contacts, or people in their Google Apps domain directly from the search bar. 

If you receive a call from a phone number that is not saved in your contacts, the Android 4.4 KitKat-based Nexus 5 will look for matches from businesses with a local listing on Google Maps. 

We felt that the new Phone app could be a little overwhelming for some as it's not very intuitive when it comes to describing what the shortcut keys do. However, the search feature packs in an online phone directory in the app. It will even fetch numbers for users who've registered their phone numbers with Google.  The number identification feature also works for incoming calls eliminating the need for apps like Trucaller.

Google has also combined its chat service and the Messaging (SMS) app into one app, Hangouts. The app lets you chat with your friends who use the Hangouts (erstwhile Google Talk) service and send messages to contacts. For people who don't actively use Google's instant messaging service or Google+, there's no value add that the unified app offers. It could also confuse these users if they've got unkempt Google+ profiles as it lists Google contacts on top when you want to compose a new message.

The Nexus 5 also includes the new Photos app that allows you to view and edit local and Google+ images. The new Photos app features deeper integration with Google+ and can be used to enable tagging in photos. The old Gallery app is still included in the app, though.

The Email app has also received an overhaul with KitKat, and the app displays the pictures of contacts for emails. Navigation has been made similar to the Gmail app and it also offers the swipe to delete gesture.

Google also includes its other apps including Drive, Keep, Play Games, Play Movies, Play Movies, Play Books, Play Newsstand and Quick office for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The new OS also supports printing through Google Cloud Print plugin or apps made by printer manufacturers.

Overall, KitKat on the Nexus 5 is an improvement when it comes to the overall experience of using the phone, though there's till some scope for improvement, especially in apps like Hangouts. The status icons are also inferior at offering feedback compared to the ones seen in previous versions of the OS.

Camera

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 sports an 8-megapixel rear camera with Optical Image Stabilization, and a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera. The phone features the stock Android 4.4 Camera app with 4 default shooting modes - Still, Video, Panorama and Photo sphere (360-degree).

In the Still mode the app features settings for turning on HDR+, tinkering with Exposure, turning the LED flash on or off, switching between the front and back lenses and revealing more settings that include Geotagging toggle, Countdown timer, changing the picture size, White balance and the scene mode (Night, Action, Sunset, and Party). 

Similarly, in the Video mode, you can change video quality settings (1080p, 720p or 480p), Time lapse, Exposure settings and Flash. We have to say that we're no fans of the nested arc shaped settings toggles and find the app a bit unintuitive. 

Putting the camera of the Nexus 5 to test, we observed that images taken outdoors during daylight came out a tad brighter. 

However, there are a number of issues with the phone's camera that we encountered in our use. We observed that auto-focus is not consistent, and focusing manually takes time resulting in images being different from what we desired. We also observed that there was a slight lag between the time we fired the shutter and when the phone captured the image. 

Comparing images with the ones taken with an iPhone 5 in the same settings revealed that the white balance on the Nexus 5 camera (in the default mode) is skewed towards the warmer end of the spectrum. Low-light shots were also not up to the mark and had noise.

The camera does a good job for shooting videos and supports 1080p video capture.

The 1.3-megapixel front shooter does a decent job for video calling and taking self clicks. It supports 720p video capture.

Overall, the Nexus 5's camera is underwhelming at best. We hope Google pushes out a software update to fix the focus issues and shutter lag.

Performance/ Battery Life

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 comes with top of the line hardware (at this point in time), as it is powered by a quad-core 2.26GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM, and an Adreno 330 chip for processing graphics. Our review unit had 32GB of built-in storage (a 16GB variant is also available), out of which 26.7GB is available to the user. The phone doesn't offer a microSD card slot for expandable storage. 

The overall experience of navigation through the Nexus 5's interface was extremely impressive, thanks to all the power under the phone's hood and the UI being devoid of unnecessary bells and whistles such as transition effects. 

We did not experience any lag at all while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps on the Nexus 5. 

The gaming experience on the Nexus 5 was pretty good with games like Temple Run 2, Subway Surfers, Shadow Gun: Dead Zone and Asphalt 7 running without encountering any issues.

We were able to run a number of video formats except for full-HD MOV and AVI through the native video player on the Nexus 5. We also experienced some issues with audio while playing an MKV format video. This was easily fixed by downloading a third-party video player. The phone then plays full-HD videos without any issues. 

Notably, the Nexus 5 doesn't include FM radio functionality.

Call quality was good on the Nexus 5, and we were able to receive cellular signals even in low signal areas. 

The Nexus 5 comes with a 2300mAh battery, it lasts just about a day with medium usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, two e-mail accounts with push notifications, playing some music, clicking a few pictures, Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats. 

It's worth pointing out that we had mostly used 3G data with intermittent use of Wi-Fi and had put the phone's screen brightness at the highest level. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern. 

The Nexus 5 also includes NFC capabilities, and we were able to transfer and receive files through Android Beam, which combines Bluetooth and NFC for sharing data. The phone also allows you to transfer files to other devices through Wi-Fi without being on the same Wi-Fi network. 

Image Credit - Google Images

Our Verdict
The Nexus 5 is one of the best Android smartphones that you can buy for under Rs. 30,000. Powered by a Snapdragon 800 processor, and 2GB RAM, the phone ticks all the right boxes in terms of hardware specifications. Since it's a Google experience device, you're always assured of regular software updates (at least for the 18 months promised period).

Priced at : Rs. 28,999 (India - Google Play Store)