iBerry BT07i Tablet Review

Last year, we saw a sudden spike in the number of affordable tablets that were entering the Indian market. While Aakash set the affordable tablet stage on fire with its price tag, performance issues didn't ensure a smooth sail to it, and to most of these tablets starting at 2.5K and ranging slightly over 10K. In the low segment tablet race, the newest entrant is iBerry, the brand may be unheard of and the name has probably taken cues from Apple’s ‘i’devices and BlackBerry, but the iBerry tablet we’ve got under our hood for a review comes across as promising. Yes, it falls under the sub-10K price range, and you wont be spending more than Rs.7,990 on this average 7-incher dubbed, iBerry BT07i.

Affordable sub-8K model

Design and Build quality
The iBerry is a 7-inch tablet, which could remind you of the Reliance 3G Tab, at a glance. To begin with, it’s a good looking tablet with greyish edges and a matte grey with a purplish tint on the rear side. The front shows a WVGA 800 x 480 and fortunately, a capacitive touchscreen. The touchscreen responded efficiently to our touch gestures. But, the screen, itself isn't too great. Below the screen, on the bezel, one will find touch buttons, like Menu, Home and Back. All ports are lined up on the right edge - microSD card, miroUSB port, HDMI, 3.5mm jack and mic and charging port. The volume controls and the main power button run along the upper edge. There is a front facing VGA camera embedded on the right corner below the screen, but the company chose not to include a primary camera. It's portable at 376 grams and measures 190mm x 120mm x 8mm.

The rear side

The iBerry tablet bundles up a USB cable and a connector, charger, user manual, earphones and a carrying case. Coming straight to the point, the case is almost useless and a misfit, covering the essential buttons and the tablet doesn’t stay secure in the case.
Features
User Interface
This iBerry tablet is fuelled by an ARM Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, which is a good inclusion for a sub-10K tablet and it runs on Android Gingerbread 2.3.4. However, we are unsure whether this tablet will get an ICS update. iBerry hasn't changed a lot on the interface front, the company has added to shortcuts to Apps, Gallery and the Berry. The company has kept it simple and straightforward. Access recent activities by long pressing the home button and view all homepages by long pressing the Apps icon on the screen. The UI wasn't sluggish and navigation was fine and smooth, but we did face some problems with the accelerometer, as the screen didn't auto rotate, while changing from horizontal to vertical and vice versa, and wouldn't work without restarting the tablet.

Smooth interface

We carried on the AnTuTu test, the device scored pretty well at 2986, which is higher than some of the recent tablets like MSI WindPad Enjoy 10 and Milagrow Tabtop that have been priced a little over 16,000 and 13,000, respectively. For the Linpack test, the iBerry tablet scored 16.088 MFLOPs on single thread and 14.98 MFLOPS on multi thread.Media
The iBerry tablet supports MKV, AVI, RM, RMVB, MP4, MOV, VOB, DAT, FLV, Xvid, DivX, MPEG4, RV, WMV, AVS, H.264, H.263, VP8 and 3GP video files and managed to 1080p videos, effortlessly. The built-in speakers, along with the varied file formats support render the device apt for watching videos and movies. We only wished for a better screen quality. The video player interface is as simple as it could get with forward/rewind, play/pause, lock button to avoid accidental touches, while watching video or movie and options to play around with the screen like watch the video at 100 percent, 150 percent and even stretch the image being displayed. The music interface follows suit, it also gives you the option to instantly set the song as a ringtone or alarm tone with a single touch. We played a few MP3 files and the devices could emit decent tunes as well. The bundled earphones don’t seem comfortable and in spite of its ability of changeable eartips, the company didn’t pack eartips of other sizes.

Offers 1080p support

Connectivity
The device has a mini USB OTG and HDMI out, but for some reason it doesn’t come with a SIM slot. There is support for external 3G modem but not built-in, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g.  All your data can be stored using the built-in 4G memory capacity, which can be further expanded up to 32GB using the microSD card slot. However, you will miss Bluetooth connectivity. Connecting to Wi-Fi and web browsing was a breeze. We tried the iBerry browser it worked fine for us. Pages were quick to load and zooming in and out was fine, but sometimes accompanied by a slight stutter.

Corsair 16GB and 32GB Flash Voyager 3.0 launched in India

Inspan recently launched the new Flash Corsair Voyager in India.  Available in 16GB and 32GB storage capacities, this flash drive adopts the USB 3.0 interface. Needless to say, the Corsair Flash Voyager 3.0 USB drive ensures faster data transfers, compared to USB 2.0.  It allows transferring data in a fraction of time. For those users who haven’t upgraded their PC with the USB 3.0 ports, can use the drive as its backward compatible. The drive also promises to offer convenient, reliable portable file management.

Rugged and reliable

This Voyager flash drive comes with finger-friendly ergonomics of the Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0. The connector is housed in Corsair's proprietary all-rubber housing, which is extremely durable, ensuring worry-free transfer. The flash drive is water-resistant and shockproof, too. This Voyager flash drive can take the usual knocks, bumps and drops, while on the go. The Voyager CMFVY3S -16GB has a maximum sequential read speed of 75 MB/s and write speed of 18 MB/s, while the CMFVY3S-32GB features 80 MB/s and 40 MB/s sequential read and write speeds, respectively.

"An aspiration for a fast, compatible and large space USB drive has come to an end, we introduce Corsair Flash Voyager 3.0. Shock resistant, water proof and comes with 5 years of warranty, this drive is a complete package filled with features." said Sudhir S, Managing Director at Inspan Infotech. "Resellers are sure to benefit with this launch, it would be very easy for them to sell this product in the upcoming holiday season.”

The Voyager USB 3.0 flash drive is compatible with Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with no driver or software installation requirement. The USB standard-A connector works with USB 3.0 as well as USB 2.0 ports. Backed by a 5 year warranty and available ex-stock, the Corsair Flash Voyager 3.0 GB and 32Gb flash drives can be picked at Rs1,599 and Rs.2199, respectively.

U.S. Justice Dept may sue Apple, publishers on e-book pricing

The U.S. Justice Department has warned Apple and five of the biggest U.S. publishers that it plans to sue them, accusing them of colluding to raise the prices of electronic books, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. Several parties have held talks to settle the potential anti-trust case, the paper cited the people as saying. It added that a successful settlement could lead to cheaper e-books for consumers.

To be sued? 

However, not all publishers are in settlement discussions, the Journal said. The five publishers identified in the Journal report are Simon & Schuster Inc, a unit of CBS Corp , Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA), Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH and HarperCollins Publishers Inc, a unit of News Corp . News Corp also owns the Wall Street Journal.

Representatives for the five publishers, Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment to the Journal. Reuters could not reach any of the parties for comment outside of regular U.S. business hours.
The publishers have denied acting jointly to raise prices, according to the Journal. They have told investigators that the shift to an "agency pricing model" enhanced competition in the industry by allowing more electronic booksellers to thrive.

Under the "agency model", publishers would set the price of the book and Apple would take a 30 percent cut. Apple also specified that publishers could not let rival retailers sell the same book at a lower price.
Amazon Inc , the early pioneer in e-books, had sold many new best sellers at $9.99 to encourage consumers to buy its Kindle electronic readers. But the company's pricing strategy had ruffled the feathers of many publishers.

Apple slashes iPad 2 prices; 16GB Wi-Fi version selling for Rs. 24,500

The new iPad has arrived and it has been creating quite a ripple in the worldwide tech arena with its Retina display, quad core graphics and other features. However, what has been also gaining a lot of momentum in the past few days is the price cut that Apple has put on all the versions of its current hot selling tablet, the iPad 2. With the impending launch of the new one, we can confirm that there has been close to a 3-5k price drop in all the current versions of the iPad 2. The 16GB Wi-Fi model is now selling for a price tag of Rs.24,500 from the earlier Rs.29,500, whereas the 16GB Wi-Fi +3G is selling now at a price of Rs.32,900 from Rs.36,900. The 32GB Wi-Fi + 3G has got a 3k cut and is selling now for Rs. 38,900 whilst the 32GB Wi-Fi only gets a 4k price cut and is currently on sale for Rs.30,500. The 64GB versions have got a similar price cut as well and the complete list can be viewed in a tabular form below.

Current prices

The base model, the 16GB Wi-Fi one only seems like quite a good option, if you look at it, because now, at the current pricing, the iPad 2 is cheaper than the Sony Tablet S, the Galaxy Tab 750, the Galaxy Tab 730, the Asus TF101 Transformer and a lot of other tablets. Obviously the specs are going to vary from model to model, but we’re just comparing Android and iOS, out here. Also, with so many announcements at the MWC, there are chances that the current price of all the other tablets will drop pretty soon. 

Would you buy one now?

So, there’s a question between taking a dip due to this price drop, or waiting for the new iPad. Alternatively, there could be a chance of getting it for a couple of grands cheaper from third party sellers. Which option would you choose, go for the iPad 2, or wait for the new iPad to hit Indian shores? Let us know in the comments section below.

Motorola Backflip Android

All Android phones available in the market look the same. Most of them are touch-driven devices with a few also sporting a slide-out keypad. But here comes an innovative and interesting phone from Motorola's stable— the BackFlip .

Living up to its name, the Backflip has the touch display on the top and the QWERTY keypad at the bottom. This is what differentiates it from the regular flips in which the main display and key­board are hidden inside. Right opposite the display is the 'Backtrack'. Replicating the work of a trackpad or a joystick, it is designed to be used with the index finger that is rendered use­less when one is using the QWERTY keypad. Using the 'Backtrack', one can navigate up, down, left and right. Interestingly, it can even be used for opening an application with a double tap. However, we found that accessing the 'Backtrack' along with the physical keypad wasn't as easy as we imagined.The 'search' key that is usually found below the display has been moved to the left corner of the QWERTY keypad that can be accessed only when the flip lid is open. When held like a bar, the keypad automatically gets locked, making it easy to use.

The innovation in design helped this flip device score full marks in the looks as well as innovation and utility depart­ments. It was the ancient version of the Android operating system (v1.5) that disappointed. Still, it managed to handle emails, updates on so­cial networking sites, web search and downloading third party application with ease.