Samsung Gear Fit Review

Samsung recently released its new Samsung Gear Fit, an upgrade from last year's Samsung Gear Smartwatch. The company hopes that it will appeal to not only new customers but also people who own fitness gears from other companies like Fit Bit, and persuade them into switching over their peroducts.

So here is our review on the Samsung Gear Fit.

The Design:

The Fit features Samsung's cutting edge "Youm" screen technology, which means that the screen is bent and curved, making it more comfortable to wear. The actual watch head is kind of thick and its back panel also features a heart rate monitor, like that on the Samsung Galaxy S5.
The screen is also quite thin resembling a Nike Fuel Band.

The rubber strap on board is compfortable, even while you are sweating and doesn't make your skin itch. The strap is also interchable in case you decide to try a new color.
There are contacts on the back panel, beside the heart rate monitor which latch on to the provided USB cable which lets you review your workout on your desktop or PC.

The Interface:

The interface is a bit quirky, the default screen orientation is horizontal, making it uncomfortable to view the actual screen of the Fit; however there is a setting that lets you orient the display vertically. But that means that your texts, Twitter feet etcetra are a lot more condensed.
The Samsung Health app featured on the the Fit is not that great either. The pedometer is not calibrated correctly, which means that you are awarded a lot more steps than you have achieved.

Also the heart monitor doesn't deliver the right results corresponding to your actual activity.
It also acts as a virtual coach, tracking your fitness, setting up challenges, and also awarding you while completing those challenges.
It also monitors your sleep.
But the Fit is not good at what it intends to do. You have to order it to track your steps or to monitor your workout, or even check on your sleep. You even have to tell it that you are about to sleep, and well that you have woken up

The Display:

The Fit's 1.84 inch curved display is vibrant, bright and good to look at, especially in broad daylight (where you should hopefully be exercising).

The Super AMOLED curved display serves its purpose, but thedimensions are not upto the mark, producing awkward and bad viewing angles.

Compatibility:

The Geat Fit only works which a select few Samsung phones. It requires the Gear manager, an app that is compatible with only a few phones.
It works hand in hand with the S Health app, which debuted last year on the S4, but it still feels like a an app out of Kick Starter.
The app is not as good as those offered by Jawbone or Fit Bit.

The Experience:

The Fit's awkward screen dimensions doesn't let you view full lenght texts, emails or even notifications.
It just lets you clear the notifications from your phone, giving you no ability to reply or even view the whole of the message.
There are just a hand full of standard one liner templates that let you reply to messages. The messages also require constant scrolling, which is a pain.

The battery lasts upto 2 or 3 days (if you're lucky) and charging it using the charging adapter is really a challenge in itself.
If you need to view the time you have to physically tap the side-button or raise the watch to a set angle or height. The responsiveness is just not there. It takes half a second for the Fit to realize that you have to view the time.

Pricing And Conclusion:

The Fit is priced at $199, which is a good price but makes you wonder if whether you really are getting what you are paying for.
Sure the screen is good and the strap is comfortable, but at the core it fails to complete the purpose for which it was made; tracking your day to day fitness.

So thats our review on the Samsung Gear Fit.

Stay tuned for the review on Cortana and the whole of the Windows Phone 8.1 platform.

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Sarthak J Shetty
Editor In Chief

Google And Facebook To Connect The World Through Drones

Google recently launched its "Project Loon". The idea behind it is to provide Internet for everyone by launching baloons through the stratosphere that carry modems on board.

Now Facebook as well as Google have deceide to bring nearly 2/3rds of the population that are offline, online.
Google purchased the company Titan Aerospace and Makani Wind Power for the very same purchase.

 

The drones by Titan Aerospace reportedly will have the ability to stay in flight for a continous 5 years at a stretch. The drones will be solar powered which means that they don't have to stop continuosly for recharging its turbines.

Facebook has also announced that it has plans to soon deploy solar powered drones so as to provide internet speeds of uptop 1GB/s. It too has purchased London based Ascenta Aerospace to develop these drones.

You can check out more about Titan Aerospace here.
You can check out more information about the project at The Verge here.


Stay tuned for more developments on the drone front.

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Sarthak J Shetty

Editor In Chief

SpaceX's Third Mission Takes Off For The ISS

Elon Musk's companies have been in the news for a long time, and his two companies Tesla Motors and SpaceX have been in the news several times.

Space X was in the news today also when its new rocket, The Falcon 9, took off for the International Space Station (ISS).

 

The Falcon 9 took off at 3:25 PM EDT, and is said to rendezvous with the ISS on Sunday, the 20th of April.

It will also be making an attempt to return to Earth and estabilish itself as the first re-usable rocket.

 

You can check out more information of the launch from The Verge here. 

 

SpaceX was a venture created by inventor, entrepreneur, visionary Elon Musk. He entered the American market with a vision to revolutionize travel, renewable energies and space travel.

 

He has stated the primary goal of SpaceX as to not only make space travel more frequent, but also affordable for the masses.

 

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Sarthak J Shetty

Editor In Chief

 

Samsung Galaxy S5: Carrying On The Proud Galaxy Tradition

The past few weeks have been absolutely amazing for all of us in the tech community. HTC released the One M8, Microsoft BUILD and also Samsung's very own Galaxy S5 and also the Gear Fit.

So here is our review on the Samsung Galaxy S5.

What's New:

The looks of the S5 is exceedingly like the hybrid of the S4 and the Note 3. The specs definitely place it in the high end phone department.
At a quick glance the phone has a bigger screen (which we will talk about) and also what seems to be much more distinct bezels.
The button orientation is also changed.

The S5 compares like a toy in comparision to the amazingly built HTC One M8.
Its is also made water ressistant (not water proof) and dust proof.
The back feels like the leather backing of the Samsung Galaxy S5, which kind of a dimple finish which I'm not that big of a fan, it also lacks the leatcher stiching of the Note 3.
The S5 also features a finger print scanner just like the iPhone 5S.

The Display:

The super AMOLED 5.1 inch screen has a resolution of 1920x1080, and looks absolutely gorgeous with perfect image and color replication. It has a pixel density of 432 ppi.

The Internals:

The Phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset, with a Quad Core Krait 400 CPU which is clocked in at 2.5 GHz.
The Adreno 330 GPU handles all the graphics and games thrown at it with ease.

A suprising move by Samsung is that they have decieded to include a heart rate monitor. Yes a heart rate monitor, so now you can place your finger on the back of the phone and you can get your heart rate via the Samsung Health app.
The 2 GB RAM handles all the multi tasking as expeccted by any Samsung flagship.

The Camera:

The camera is a slightly bumped up 16 mega-pixel camera, which takes amazing pictures standing on par with the Note 3.
The flash on the back shares its place with the already mentioned heart rate monitor.
Samsung claims that the phone has the fastest autofocus time at 0.6 seconds. The burst mode is also amazingly impressive with the capacity to take around 30-50 shots in 3 seconds.

The camera software is also loaded with a whole lot of perks and softwares updates previously seen on other Samsung phones, along with the ability to shoot 4K video and dual photo mode.

The Operating System And Interface:

Android 4.4.2 running on the S5 is skinned with TouchWIZ.
The TouchWIZ skin makes it laggy at times that it makes you doubt wheter a 5.1 inch super powered chipset is running it or not.

The Samsung Magazine UI is powered by Flipboard is poor in comparision to the BlinkFeed running on the HTC One M8.
Sansung Health app is  a full fledged apo that tells you everything from the number of steps you covered to what you must be eating to watch your calorie intake. It also works in close association with the heart rate monitor.

Battery, Pricing, Colors:

The 2800 mAh, removable-replaceable battery gets the phone through a complete day or maybe 2 with normal usage. And just in case you forget to charge your phone, there is crazy Ultra Battery saver mode that converts your phone to a pretty basic but survivable mode.

The S5 is available for $199 on contract on just about every network provider out there and around $650-$700 off contract for the unlocked version.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is available in Black, White and an ugly Blue backed, black bezeled variant.

Conclusion:

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is definitely a top of the line high end phone. But its not what I; or many of us expected from Samsung.

Sure there is microscopically bigger screen, a 16 mega-pixel screen, but there is nothing that makes us jump on it and buy it regardless the $700 price range. It lacks the WOW factor that the Note 3 or the HTC One M8 had.

So thats our review on the Samsung Galaxy S5.

Stay tuned for the reviews on the Samsung Galaxy Fit, Microsoft Phone 8.1 and much more.

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Sarthak J Shetty

Editor In Chief

HTC One M8: The Term Beast Redefined

HTC has been dormant for quite a while. After the success of the One M7 it has been quitely rolling out small products that have not caught the limelight as much as the M7.
Thats gone now for sure with the release of the M8.

HTC One M8: What's New:

First of all the appearence is excedingly like the M7 while you have a quick glance. But on a closer inspection you can see that the new brushed aluminium body is curved at the lateral corners, make it feel more present in your hand, but at the same time makes you feel that the phone will slip at any moment.

The Display:

The display is a Full HD 5.0 inch panel with a resolution of 1920x1080 with a pixel density of 441 ppi.

It may not be the best screen on paper, but its a sure treat for the eyes, with the right amount of image saturation and the best viewing angles that you can find right now in the market.

The Internals:

The CPU running this beast of a phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801. Its a Quad-Core Krait 400 Chipset clocked in at around 2.3GHz.

The Adreno 330 GPU is top of the line and ahandles all the graphics beautifully rendering colors with the right saturation.
The 2 GB RAM doesn't rival the Note 3 on paper but handles multi-tasking just as good.

The Camera:

The camera is the biggest upgrade the M8 has over the M7 .
There are two camera apertures placed one atop the other.
The main camera has a 4 Ultra-Pixel sensor, simillar to that on the M7. Its good but  HTC could've (Should've) improved on this bit as it would have made a huge update over the M7.

The 2nd camera acts as a depth determiner in order to provide better pictures depth wise and also provides an added functionallity simillar to that of a Lytro, which means that you can focus images after they have been captured.
The front camera features a 5 Mega-Pixel sensor, (which functions sometimes BETTER than the back facing shooter).

Storage:

The M8 has an internal storage capacity of 10 GB which can be expanded to upto 128 GB via micro-SD, which again was one of the much required update over last years M7.

Operating System And Software:

The One runs on Google's latest Android KitKat 4.4.2.. Skinning it is Android Sense 6, it appears somewhat bulky but less that last years versions of Sense 5.
HTC Zoe, Blinkfeed feature on it just the same.

The new M8 has been infused with several Motion detecting controls, all of which have been given the name HTC Motion Launch.
Now you can mute your phone,ringer with just a flip.
You can pick up a call just by lifting the phone. Also now the phone judges whether or not it is outside or in your pocket or bag and automatically adjusts the ringer volume.

Colors, Battery, Accessories And Pricing:

The phone is available in three colors, Gun Metal Grey, Glacial Silver and Stealth Black.
The M8 has also been announced with an awesome touch-sensitive Dot Case, stay tuned for its review too.

The 2600 mAh battery provides 20 hours of battery life on paper and 420 hours or so on standby.
The HTC One M8 is avaiable for around $700 dollars in the US.

So thats our review on the HTC One M8.

Stay tuned for the review on Windows Phone 8.1, Samsung Gear Fit and also on the Samsung Galaxy S5.

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Sarthak J Shetty
Editor In Chief

 

Welcome To The New Tech Tonic

Welcome to the new Tech Tonic.
Its completely revamped cosmetically and soon we will be posting at 5 articles a day.

Stay Tuned to Tech Tonic.

Sarthak J Shetty
Editor In Chief