I’ve used same software Benchmark Pi and Benchmark that I used to do previous benchmarks.

Looking at cpu and memory benchmark, there is no significant improvement but filesystem benchmark shows much improvement. Graphics performance is improved with smooth navigation and improved responsiveness. As this rom is currently in beta we can expect more improvement in future builds. Android 2.3 gingerbread has better implementation of power management than Android 2.2, that means better battery life and after 3 hours from disconnecting it from charger my HTC Desire is still on 99% battery.

If you want to install this Android 2.3 Gingerbread rom on your HTC Desire you can follow instructions on this xda forums thread.

Nokia X3-02 is a mid-range smart phone. Price: ~$150

Apple & HTC have capital values a lot more than Nokia now. Nokia has tried and failed to touch the high-end market with touch screens like N97, N900, N8 & operating systems like Maemo, Symbian ^3 etc. They have come back to senses and thought to do what Nokia does best: A lower / middle budget market kingdom. LG & Samsung have been trying to do so for a while but they can’t beat Nokia in this range.

We are where we were 2, 3 and 4 years ago. Looking for the best Nokia cell phone under $200. Back in 2007, it was Nokia 6120 Classic, in 2008 it was Nokia 5320 Xpress Music & then came Nokia 5800. But its 2011 and Nokia has realized there are people who want touch screen usability without loosing the typing. This is where Nokia Touch & Type series comes based on the outdated S40 but revamped thoroughly for a touch interface.

Keep reading if you’re considering to buy one of these two ‘Touch & Type’ models: Nokia X3-02 and Nokia C3-01.

Both of these models have exactly same specifications except an extra LED Flash that C3-01 has alongside a steel body, both of which make it around $20 more expensive than its colorful sibling the X3-02 which has a steel back. I decided to buy a X Series model as it was thinner, colorful and a little less expensive. Moreover, I got a 4Gb Kingston SD Card and a decent A4Tech ear phone in the price of C Series model alone.

Here are detailed specifications and features of Nokia X3-02:

• Neat and well built, slim and lightweight, metal on the body
• 2.4" 256K-color resistive TFT QVGA touchscreen
• S40 6th edition UI
• 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera
• VGA video recording at 15fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Stereo FM radio with RDS, Visual radio
• Bluetooth v2.1 (with A2DP)
• Standard microUSB port (charging enabled)
• USB On-The-Go
• microSD card slot (32 GB supported, 2GB included)
• 3.5mm audio jack

First Hands On

It is really thin and light weight, at just 9.6mm but feels very comfortable at hand. The screen at 2.4” is a bit smaller for a touch screen phone but it does the job well. Although it has a 256K color profile, resolution and display quality is impressive. It has a TFT resistive touch screen, which means you’ll have to use very little force to press the screen as opposed to conduction in capacitive screen phones. Screen feedback is awesome, it vibrates right under your fingertip instead of vibrating at just one position.

Usability

I really missed the D-Pad in keys but the screen offers controls for editing text and navigation where necessary. Main Menu has easy to use Icons. Settings and applications sub-menus are bit irritating as they have only list view with big font size which cannot be changed.

Design & Form

X3-02 is a well built handset, no need to worry if it falls down accidently. Signal Strength and Battery Time are pretty good. It has a talk time of more than 5 hours over a 2G network when fully charged. Both SD card and SIM card slots are behind the steel battery cover. Top side has power adapter/ USB Cable connector and 3.5mm Audio Jack, bottom of the set has a loudspeaker, right side has a volume controller and an ‘unlock’ button. There are little press-to-open buttons on both sides to release the battery cover.

Camera

Camera quality is average as it doesn’t have a auto-focus and there is no LED Flash light in this model. Gallery view is very much improved and is better than older S60 models. The Zoom can be controlled by on screen magnifier icons which may seem irritating at first, again missing D-Pad but if Nokia had included a D-Pad, I would be using that instead of using the touch functionality. Smart decision by Nokia.

Messaging & Typing

It is a power messenger, it has ‘Conversations’ system instead of an inbox where messages from same contacts are shown as a conversation. Typing is a comfort and you can Type without looking at the screen as you’ve always did with Nokia phones BUT there is a little hurdle that you’ll need to cross. Keypad has a 4×3 button layout instead of a conventional 3×4 layout, that means the Asterisk, Hash & 0 key are the last column of keypad, it might take some time to get used to it but keys are really soft and well built. It handles all types of messages, SMS, MMS, Voice messages etc.

Music Player

Sound quality is nice but not the best, volume is a little low but it can be improved by using the built in equalizer options and a decent headset. It has a 3.5mm audio jack so you can connect it to almost any headphone you have. Music player doesn’t have a very impressive layout but its easy to use. Keypad has a dedicated music button which opens a popup to pause, play next or previous song. The included handset in box is a piece of crap.

Video Player & Connectivity

X3-02 has limited support for DivX videos but it can play up to 700mb DivX files. Another really impressive function is USB OTG (USB-on-the-go) function, which means you can connect your cell phone to any normal USB to explore its contents and even copy/move data around. It loves Nokia Ovi Suite so you won’t have any problems hooking it with your laptop. You can connect it using Bluetooth or Data Cable.

Internet Browsing & Games

Internet browsing is a charm as it supports Wi-Fi and 3G networks otherwise you can use EDGE/ GPRS. Screen is smaller for real time web use but is pretty fine for social networking and checking emails. Nokia has built in communication center with Facebook / Twitter applications pre-installed. There are few games, I tried to play Guitar Hero 2 but sucked at it. Other applications included a to-do list, stop watch, converter, notes and calculator with few other apps. You can connect to Ovi store to download many useful applications and games.

Conclusion

Overall it’s a decent phone or you can say best choice in this price range if you want a cell phone which is going to have a good market value unlike Huwei or Samsung touch screen cell phones. Plus, it has a layout and operating system we are used to with touch functionality and wifi.

Now some Eye Candy.

Here are some official Images from Nokia.

This is Nokia C3-01, Same Specs but different design & an extra LED Light.

Thank you for reading.

Like it and share it with your friends.

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-AFI

Today, Opera released their popular mobile browser for Android. If you’ve already used Opera Mini for Android you not notice any changes in interface but under the hood Opera Mobile is full featured web browser. Opera mini first sends request to opera servers which then renders and convert webpage in to OBML (opera binary markup language) that OBML is then returned and rendered on Opera Mini’s screen.  Unlike Opera Mini, Opera Mobile renders web page locally which enables it to handle dynamic content using JavaScript/Ajax. If you have slow internet connection you can enable Opera Turbo which returns compressed images to reduce page load times.

Benchmark & Review

As Opera mobile comes with great rendering capabilities, I did a quick benchmark to compare it with stock Android web browser. I started with Acid Test Opera Mobile scored 100 / 100 while stock browser scored 93/100.

To test its HTML5 capabilities i used HTML5 Test, Opera mobile scores 72/ 300 which is very low as compared to default web browser’s 176/300 score.

To test JavaScript performance I used SunSpider Benchmark, Stock web browser completed benchmark in 5944.5ms while Opera mobile completed it in 14009.6ms which is 2.3 times slower than stock browser.

JavaScript performance is slow because Opera Mobile for android lacks JIT support, once its implemented you will see significant speed improvement.

Final Thoughts

Overall experience was ok but not that great. It crashed after few seconds when I ran it for the first time. It takes 20.03 MB space on phone storage and when moved to SD card it still takes 13.6 MB on phone storage. Pinch to zoom also seems to be buggy some times it doesn’t work when screen is in landscape mode.  For now I’ll stick with default web browser and wait for its improved version.

Download 

Opera Mobile is available for free from Android Market! scan the QR code or go to m.opera.com 

[image via Opera]

I did a benchmark using HD TACH and HD Tune Pro to compare it with previous model of Caviar Green 1Tb hard drive that I have WD10EADS. This performs a little faster than old model because of the new 64MB Cache.

Read more for detailed benchmark and review.

1- File benchmark using 512Mb file length.

Average read and write time goes above 80Mbps.

2- Data Read Benchmark

This is slower than an average Seagate Barracuda drive that you’ll buy.

3- HD Speed Benchmark with 8Mb /32Mb file size

This test displays faster read speeds than HD Tune tests. Here its again with a 32Mb file size benchmark.

Conclusion:

If we compare all of these test results with old model of 1Tb WD Caviar Green HD WD10EADS – This is a faster drive but definitely not the fastest available. If you’re on budget and want a drive for storage instead of performance i-e Windows installation / Gaming and a lot of using, this is going to do the job pretty well. My 2/3 years old Western Digital drive is working perfect.

Now, once again data storage is coming cheaper and cheaper, I bought this 1Tb HD for just PKR 5800. The last was was I guess somewhere around 7200 PKR or so.

Just for fun, I took a benchmark of my 8Gb Blue Kingston USB Drive to compare it with Faizan’s Yellow 8Gb drive and the results show mine is a lot faster than his

There we go, 19Mb/s as compared to his 13.8Mb/s but TOO SLOW as compared to my old Corsair 8Gb USB Drive that I lost. That gave me constant 35Mb/s.

That’s all folks.

Just got my hands on Kingston DT 101 8GB and did a quick benchmark to compare it with corsair  flash voyager 4GB I bought few months back. HD Tach calculated 13.8MB/s Average Read Speed. Average read speed of corsair mini was 18.2 MB/s but who cares if you are getting 2x memory size in less price.  It took 63.6 seconds to copy a 698MB file so write speed is around 11 MB/s. Both read and write speeds are better than 10MB/s and 5MB/s that kingston has specified on their website.  It costs 1200 Rs and per GB cost is 150RS isn’t it cheap?