Hell yeah! That’s what we said when we finally saw what was inside that black box that Nokia teased us with this morning. Having paid a tribute to the company last week we couldn’t have been happier with the launch of a new digital device with the name Nokia branded on it.

The Nokia N1 is the first device from the company in its new era. The 7.9 inch device immediately reminds you of the iPad mini. With a thickness of 6.9 mm, the device is as thin as a tablet can get. It will also be the first device to come with the new reversible c-type USB.

First device to come with the new reversible USB

The N1 also comes strong on the spec sheet. The device is powered by 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3580 processor along with 2GB of RAM. It has 32GB of storage. It gets its juice from 5300 mAh battery. All these will lead to some amazing performance on the 2048 x 1536 resolution display on the device.

On the camera front, the Nokia N1 flaunts an 8-megapixel camera at the rear, and a 5-megapixel version at the front. The overall design of the device is unapologetically iPad-ish. Looks like Nokia isn’t taking a lot of chances with its first attempt back in consumer electronic business and is taking it safe.

The Z-launcher on the N1 has some unique features.

A feature of the N1 that is unique to it is the Z-launcher that is based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. The Z-launcher lets you write text on the screen, and it can then perform tasks or search the device or the internet. It gives you a list of apps and contacts that change based on where you are and what you’re doing. The launcher is available on Google Play store starting today.

The branding on the device could have been better in terms of placement and design.

From the looks of it, the only thing that we found disappointing was branding on the device. A more prominent engraved or embossed logo would have been more appreciable. The bit that is really appreciable is the fact that this is the first device to hold the c-type USB. It was high time we got over the constant twisting of USB’s to find the ideal moment under the stars when it fits in the port. Who better than Nokia to lead an innovation. The device will be priced at $249 and will be first launched in China by early 2015.

Google’s new Android platform Lollipop 5.0 has already got rave reviews. The OS has begun rolling out to select Nexus and Motorola handsets and tablets. You must be preparing yourself for your Android Lollipop update, or you’re just getting the grip of the OS on your new tablet or smartphone. Let us tell you, the new update makes you feel like you own a new device altogether.

We are listing top 5 features of Android 5.0 Lollipop that will change the way you use your smartphone.

1. PROJECT VOLTA

Android smartphones have a bad reputation for short battery life. The amount of juice sucked by the apps and screen has forced Android phone makers to fit larger batteries than iPhone and other rivals to get through the day, but all that may change, thanks to ‘Project Volta’. At its core, Volta represents a concerted effort by Google to address one of the biggest problems affecting smartphones today: battery life. Project Volta is Google’s new initiative for improving battery life. It’s weaved deep into the Lollipop coding. It reorganises background app activity into batches to save unnecessary battery drain. It also automatically detects when you are in an area of weak or no signal to stop the continual network data requests, which is a major source through which your phone’s battery churns out.

2. INTERACTIVE NOTIFICATION

With the new Material Design, notifications do look different. But, the change is not just a cosmetic accessing your updates and interacting with alerts from emails, your social feeds have become more intuitive. It also brings notifications to the lock screen and lets you use them right there, so you can perform tasks without even unlocking your phone. And if you don’t want some of them to bother you every second, you can just put them to your ‘redacted’ list of private notifications. Alerts not only offer quick actions and quick access to settings, but they are incredibly dynamic. They can be expanded or contracted to see more or less information, individually muted for a specific period (e.g. stop Facebook Messages, but not SMS) and prioritised according to your privacy requests.

3. SUPER EASY MULTI-TASKING

With the new update, multi-tasking feature in Android has gone some fundamental changes. Mostly, the new changes catch up with the trends set by iOS. However, this time around, Google has actually stepped ahead of Apple. Now, instead of just switching between apps, your phone can now switch between operations within the same app. This means you can now switch between two different documents you were working on and also between different browser tabs in Chrome. This basically changes the fundamentals how you use your Android device.

4. PIN APPS

If your phone is borrowed several times a day by friends and family, then this feature will be your favourite one. Pin Apps mode is a simple and very useful addition to Android Lollipop that lets you add an extra layer of security to your phone when somebody borrows it. When enabled, you can lock down your device so that the person using it only has access to one app. Undoubtedly, a convenient feature for those who often offer a device to a child to play games or  a friend to check his or her e-mails. Once the app is pinned, the user can navigate anywhere within the app, but he or she can’t leave it. So if you pin Chrome, the user will be able to browse the Internet, but that’s it. Exiting a pinned app requires you to touch and hold the back and overview buttons at the same time. After a couple of seconds, your device will switch to the overview screen.

5. FASTER APP RESPONSE – ART

Earlier, Android used the Dalvik engine to run third-party and core Google applications. Now, the company has switched to ART with Android Lollipop. ART provides larger install footprint and can, as Google says, operate in an ‘always ready’ mode. So when you select it, the application will spring into life faster than it would with the old engine. According to the company, ART is 4x faster than Dalvik and will improve the performance of any Android handset it runs on.

HTC’s marketing its new phone all wrong. The newly launched Desire Eye — available exclusively on AT&T in the US — is being positioned as the ultimate selfie phone. In reality, the pictures you’ll get from it are just okay. But everything else about the Desire Eye is pretty fantastic. In HTC’s lineup, the Desire Eye sits beneath the flagship One M8. But in many ways, it’s a better buy for plenty of people.

As with any HTC phone, the first thing you'll notice is design. Critically, HTC hasn't tried to recreate the One M8 here, as it did with the uninspired One E8. The unit I've been using is white with a maroon red band running around the frame. It looks great, and everyone who held it immediately had nice things to say about the design. No, it's not metal, but in many ways the soft touch finish makes the Desire Eye easier to hold — and lessens the odds that you'll be dropping it onto pavement. Up front, the white bezels are matte, which creates a nice contrast against the glossy screen. HTC's signature BoomSound speakers are here, though audio isn't quite as powerful as what the M8 puts out. They're almost impossible to spot thanks to some pretty clever engineering work.

A huge plus that comes with the Desire Eye’s design is that it’s waterproof. IPX7 water resistant, to be specific. The phone can take a swim in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes and come out totally unscathed. We never recommend taking those claims to the extreme, but you can use the Desire Eye in an unexpected downpour without any worry whatsoever. That’s a great feeling, and it’s one that iPhone users still haven’t experienced. Samsung has also steered away from waterproofing with its most recent devices like the Note 4. But if you’re buying HTC’s "mid-range" phone, you’re getting a phone that can withstand the elements better than the One M8.

A 'MID-RANGE' PHONE THAT SACRIFICES LITTLE

Looking deeper, the Desire Eye packs all of the M8’s power — a quad-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM, and a gorgeous 5.2-inch 1080p screen — into that plastic shell. The display is particularly impressive, with wide viewing angles and vivid colors. The Desire Eye ships with 16GB of flash storage, but you're not handcuffed to that; there's a microSD slot that takes cards up to 128GB in size. Opening it can be an exercise in frustration though, since it's tightly sealed due to the waterproofing. Same goes for getting into the SIM tray. We can't yet speak to battery life, but you should expect it to fall somewhere in the vicinity of the One M8. (The Desire Eye has a 2,400mAh battery versus the One M8's 2,600mAh capacity.)

As for software, there are really no surprises to be found. The Desire Eye runs Sense 6.0 overtop Android 4.4.4. And here again is where it leaps out ahead of HTC’s last plastic phone. Unlike the One E8, the Desire Eye makes no sacrifices in terms of performance and speed. This thing absolutely screams. It handled just about everything I threw its way without a stutter or noticeable pause. AT&T has loaded the Desire Eye with tons of bloat. Thankfully almost all of those apps can be disabled so they won't clutter up your app drawer. HTC signatures like BlinkFeed and Zoe are also here, with the latter now broken out as a standalone app.

So that leads us to the cameras. HTC has crammed nearly identical 13-megapixel cameras into the front and rear sides of its Desire Eye. They're very similar to what shipped inside the One E8, and both move away from HTC's UltraPixels approach. There's also no Duo Camera here for sensing depth, so don't expect to refocus shots after the fact. No big loss. That's a gimmick we're fine living without. It's impossible to miss the front-facing camera. Really, it's so big that it sometimes proved distracting and pulled my eyes away from the screen.

Unfortunately, size has no bearing on quality, and these cameras just aren't worth much praise. They'll do fine in strong daylight — just like most smartphones these days. That's bare minimum. But in more unfriendly environments, the results are often muddled and lack fine detail.

I didn't get a ton of time to test out the Desire Eye, so I got caught taking most of these shots on a rainy day. That obviously didn't do the camera any favors, but my iPhone 6 Plus still took better shots in every instance. And that's a shame, since HTC's manual controls are probably the best I've seen on Android; the options for tuning your shot are endless. The camera is also lighting fast when capturing images. So there's no shutter lag and the software's there, but none of it matters when HTC's hardware rarely delivers anything more than average results. And no, your selfies won't look discernibly better with all those extra megapixels.

So don't buy the HTC Desire Eye for its cameras. They're fairly run of the mill. But there are plenty of other things to like about this phone. It's got a great, waterproof design. I've got zero complaints about the crisp, vivid 1080p display. HTC's Sense software is fast, light, and rarely gets in the way. And above all else, this is a "mid-range" phone with specs that make it plenty capable for almost all needs. For an on-contract price of $149.99 ($550 unsubsidized), that's not terrible.

Your selfies will still look fine once they're uploaded to Facebook anyway.

Scroll down to see photos taken with the HTC Desire Eye's front and rear cameras.

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MORE FROM THE VERGE

Chinese mobile manufacturer, Gionee has introduced the successor to its M2 smartphone, Marathon M3 which comes a 5000mAh battery. Interestingly, even though there is no official information about the pricing and availability, it was yesterday available on an e-commerce site at Rs. 13,999.

Of Course, the major highlight of the device is the massive 5000mAh battery which lends it 2G talk time of 51 hours and 32 hours of the same on 3G networks. The Marathon M3 predecessor, M2 was launch back in february which came with 42oo mAh battery.

On the hardware side, the devices sports a 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 processor coupled with an ARM Mali 450MP GPU and 1GB of RAM. It is a dual-SIM smartphone that runs Android 4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box and features a 5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS One Glass Solution (OGS) display.

It comes with 8GB of inbuilt storage, which is further expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB). It sports an 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, while there is a secondary 2-megapixel front-facing camera also onboard. On the connectivity side, the Marathon M3 includes 3G, Wi-Fi, WLAN Direct, Micro-USB, GPRS/ EDGE, GPS/ A-GPS, FM radio and Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP. It includes a proximity sensor, accelerometer, and compass (magnetometer).

According to the company’s official website, the device will come in two colour variant – Black and White. The handset was available on eBay.in yesterday, however, the listing is ended, now.

Motorola Droid Turbo could be announced on Tuesday with Verizon's dedicated Droid Does website sporting a countdown with a tagline that says, "Droid launch set. All will be revealed." The timer is counting down to 12 noon IST on Tuesday with text "Droid launch date set. All will be revealed. Sign up for activation notification." on the page.

Further, a new leak tips the yet-to-be-announced Droid Turbo smartphone will go on sale starting Thursday. Additionally, a bunch of leaked images purportedly showing the retail packaging of the Droid Turbo has surfaced online alongside expected pricing of the handset.

According to Moto Firmware, the unannounced Motorola Droid Turbo handset is in stock with retail stores and will go on sale starting Thursday. @MotoFirmwaretweeted "The Droid Turbo will launch on October 30th per our source. Also retail stores already have them in stock. Thank you for the catch."

Motorola Droid Turbo smartphone is said to be priced at $599 (Rs. 36,650 approximately) for the unlocked model or $199 with a 2-year contract, as per Droid Life.

The tipster named Moto Firmware also posted a bunch of leaked images that showed the Droid Turbo will include Motorola's Turbo charger in the box. The leaked images also show that the handset will come with 4G LTE support and will sport dual-LED flash, as rumoured previously.

Rumoured specifications of the Motorola Droid Turbo handset include a 5.2-inch QHD (1440x2560 pixels) resolution display, a Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB inbuilt storage, 21-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash, 3900mAh battery, and Qi wireless charging compatibility with support for Motorola's Turbo Charger.

The Motorola Droid Turbo is also said to sport a body that can resist everyday spills and survive up to 20 minutes in a downpour. Other features like Moto Actions, Moto Display and Moto Connect are also tipped to be included in the new Droid smartphone. Besides 4G LTE, the Droid Turbo was previously also tipped to feature Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi and GPS connectivity options.

New Delhi: Microsoft Devices today launched entry level dual-sim mobile phone 'Nokia 130', having built-in music player with up to 46 hours continuous playback on a single charge, for Rs 1,649 in India.

"The Nokia 130 is a perfect device for consumers who are looking for their first mobile phone, or for those looking for a rock-solid backup phone to use alongside their smartphone," Nokia India Sales Marketing Director Raghuvesh Sarup said in a statement. Nokia India Sales is subsidiary of Microsoft Mobile Oy.

The mobile phone has 1.8 inch colour display, promises standby time of up to 36 days. Nokia 130 claims to support 13 hours talk time on 2G network or 46 hours music playback and 16 hours video playback on one time full battery charge. The phone has the ability to store up to 6,000 songs on a 32 GB memory card. It also comes with Bluetooth-enabled application and USB connectivity for sharing files.

"The Nokia 130 will be available from today in India at a best buy price of Rs 1,649," the statement added. 

Given that Motorola is building Google’s just-announced Nexus 6, it’s probably also a given that Motorola knows their way around the latest version of Android, Lollipop.

It makes sense, then, that they’re pretty much the first out of the gate to announce which of their phones are getting the update treatment.

Though they’re mum on timing, Moto has just promised Lollipop updates for around half a dozen devices:

• Moto X (both the 2013 and 2014 models)
• Moto G (both the 2013 and 2014 models, and the LTE version)
• Moto E (their super budget-conscious phone)
• Verizon’s Droid Ultra, Droid Maxx, and Droid Mini

Motorola is promising to announce more phones after they’ve worked with their “various partners” — which, in other words, means they’ve still got to figure out which carriers are willing to support which phones for a bit longer, and which will work with them on the update distribution process.

No mention yet of what’ll come running on the Droid Turbo when it eventually ships — but given that the phone is kinda-sorta still unofficial (in that just about everything around it has already leaked, but nothing has been announced), we’ll forgive ‘em for now.