Why Malaysia Airlines jet might have disappeared

AFP photo

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records in aviation history. (File photo)

New York:  The most dangerous parts of a flight are takeoff and landing. Rarely do incidents happen when a plane is cruising seven miles above the earth.

So the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jet well into its flight on Saturday morning over the South China Sea has led aviation experts to assume that whatever happened was quick and left the pilots no time to place a distress call.

It could take investigators months, if not years, to determine what happened to the Boeing 777 flying from Malaysia's largest city of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"At this early stage, we're focusing on the facts that we don't know," said Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer with Boeing who worked on its 777 jumbo jets and is now director of the Airsafe.com Foundation.

If there was a minor mechanical failure - or even something more serious like the shutdown of both of the plane's engines - the pilots likely would have had time to radio for help. The lack of a call "suggests something very sudden and very violent happened," said William Waldock, who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.

It initially appears that there was either an abrupt breakup of the plane or something that led it into a quick, steep dive. Some experts even suggested an act of terrorism or a pilot purposely crashing the jet.

"Either you had a catastrophic event that tore the airplane apart, or you had a criminal act," said Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consultancy Leeham Co. "It was so quick and they didn't radio."

No matter how unlikely a scenario, it's too early to rule out any possibilities, experts warn. The best clues will come with the recovery of the flight data and voice recorders and an examination of the wreckage.

Airplane crashes typically occur during takeoff and the climb away from an airport, or while coming in for a landing, as in last year's fatal crash of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco. Just 9 percent of fatal accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude, according to a statistical summary of commercial jet airplane accidents done by Boeing.

Capt. John M. Cox, who spent 25 years flying for US Airways and is now CEO of Safety Operating Systems, said that whatever happened to the Malaysia Airlines jet, it occurred quickly. The problem had to be big enough, he said, to stop the plane's transponder from broadcasting its location, although the transponder can be purposely shut off from the cockpit.

One of the first indicators of what happened will be the size of the debris field. If it is large and spread out over tens of miles, then the plane likely broke apart at a high elevation. That could signal a bomb or a massive airframe failure. If it is a smaller field, the plane probably fell from 35,000 feet intact, breaking up upon contact with the water.

"We know the airplane is down. Beyond that, we don't know a whole lot," Cox said.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records in aviation history. It first carried passengers in June 1995 and went 18 years without a fatal accident. That streak came to an end with the July 2013 Asiana crash. Three of the 307 people aboard that flight died. Saturday's Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 passengers and crew would only be the second fatal incident for the aircraft type.

"It's one of the most reliable airplanes ever built," said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Some of the possible causes for the plane disappearing include:

• Structural failure: A catastrophic structural failure of the airframe or its Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines. Most aircraft are made of aluminium which is susceptible to corrosion over time, especially in areas of high humidity. But given the plane's long history and impressive safety record, experts suggest this is unlikely.
  
  More of a threat to the plane's integrity is the constant pressurization and depressurization of the cabin for takeoff and landing. In April 2011, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Phoenix after the plane's fuselage ruptured, causing a 5-foot tear. The plane, with 118 people on board, landed safely. But such a rupture is less likely in this case. Airlines fly the 777 on longer distances, with many fewer takeoffs and landings, putting less stress on the airframe.
  
  It's not like this was Southwest Airlines doing 10 flights a day," Hamilton said. "There's nothing to suggest there would be any fatigue issues."
  
• Bad weather: Planes are designed to fly through most severe storms. However, in June 2009, an Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed during a bad storm over the Atlantic Ocean. Ice built up on the Airbus A330's airspeed indicators, giving false readings. That, and bad decisions by the pilots, led the plane into a stall causing it to plummet into the sea. All 228 passengers and crew aboard died. The pilots never radioed for help.
  
  In the case of Saturday's Malaysia Airlines flight, all indications show that there were clear skies.
  
• Pilot disorientation: Curtis said that the pilots could have taken the plane off autopilot and somehow went off course and didn't realize it until it was too late. The plane could have flown for another five or six hours from its point of last contact, putting it up to 3,000 miles away. This is unlikely given that the plane probably would have been picked up by radar somewhere. But it's too early to eliminate it as a possibility.
  
• Failure of both engine: In January 2008, a British Airways 777 crashed about 1,000 feet short of the runway at London's Heathrow Airport. As the plane was coming in to land, the engines lost thrust because of ice buildup in the fuel system. There were no fatalities.
  
  Loss of both engines is possible in this case, but Hamilton said the plane could glide for up to 20 minutes, giving pilots plenty of time to make an emergency call. When a US Airways A320 lost both of its engines in January 2009 after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York it was at a much lower elevation. But Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger still had plenty of communications with air traffic controllers before ending the six-minute flight in the Hudson River. 
  
• A bomb: Several planes have been brought down including Pan Am Flight 103 between London and New York in December 1988. There was also an Air India flight in June 1985 between Montreal and London and a plane in September 1989 flown by French airline Union des Transports Ariens which blew up over the Sahara.
  
• Hijacking: A traditional hijacking seems unlikely given that a plane's captors typically land at an airport and have some type of demand. But a 9/11-like hijacking is possible, with terrorists forcing the plane into the ocean.
  
• Pilot suicide: There were two large jet crashes in the late 1990s - a SilkAir flight and an EgyptAir flight- that are believed to have been caused by pilots deliberately crashing the planes. Government crash investigators never formally declared the crashes suicides but both are widely acknowledged by crash experts to have been caused by deliberate pilot actions.
  
  
• Military action: Accidental shoot-down by some country's military. In July 1988, the United States Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes accidently shot down an Iran Air flight, killing all 290 passengers and crew. In September 1983, a Korean Air Lines flight was shot down by a Russian fighter jet.

HTC Desire 610, Desire 816 pricing revealed in Europe pre-order listings

The HTC Desire 610 and Desire 816 mid-range smartphones are now up for pre-order in Europe, via an online retailer, giving us an indication of the handsets' official pricing.

Both the new Desire handsets are listed at Amazon Germany with pricing - HTC Desire 610 is listed at EUR 299 (Rs. 25,300 approximately), while the HTC Desire 816 is listed at EUR 379 (Rs. 32,000 approximately). However, there is no word on the availability of both the smartphones at the online store.

HTC announced two mid-range Desire smartphones, the Desire 610 and Desire 816 at the sidelines of MWC 2014. However, the Taiwanese giant did not reveal any details about the pricing of both the Desire handsets.

At the launch, HTC revealed that the Desire 816 will ship with the latest HTC software and would be available by spring, while the Desire 610 was announced to be available across Europe starting May.

The HTC Desire 610 runs Android 4.4 KitKat, and features a 4.7-inch qHD (540 x 960 pixels) display with a pixel density of 234ppi. Under the hood, the Desire 610 packs a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor paired with 1GB of RAM. It comes with 8GB of built-in storage, with no word on the storage expansion limit. The HTC Desire 610 sports an 8-megapixel f/2.4 rear camera, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing shooter, which can also capture 720p videos.

Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC (optional), and 4G LTE connectivity is supported by the HTC Desire 610 smartphone, which comes with HTC's proprietary BoomSound functionality and stereo speakers, alongside a 2040mAh battery.

The HTC Desire 816, on the other hand, comes with a 5.5-inch HD (720x1280 pixel) display and is powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, alongside 1.5GB of RAM. It includes 8GB of inbuilt storage with support for microSD cards up to 128GB, which may just be the highest expandable memory capacity handled by a smartphone.

There's no word on the Android version on the HTC Desire 816, though HTC did confirm the presence of a brand new HTC Sense 5.5 UI on top. It sports a 13-megapixel f/2.2 rear and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

HTC at MWC 2014 also confirmed that it would be launching the successor to the HTC One on 25 March 2014, which it has also teased on multiple occasions since.

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 review

Samsung was one of the first companies to really run with the idea of big-screen phones. Others had tried before and failed, but Samsung managed to turn its original Galaxy Note into a massive success. Big screens have since percolated down to the more budget-oriented phones, but these usually have lower resolutions and weaker processors, negating many of the advantages phones that size. Samsung's own Galaxy Grand was meant to appeal to people who wanted a big screen just for the sake of having a big screen, without paying flagship-level prices.

The original Galaxy Note had a 5.3-inch 800x1280-pixel screen, which was pretty cutting-edge in 2011. Today, you can get full-HD 1080x1920-pixel screens in phones that cost a quarter of whatSamsung's late-2011 flagship did at the time of its launch. The company's latest budget big-screen offering, the 5.25-inch Galaxy Grand 2, actually matches the original Note in terms of screen size and resolution. It's only 0.05 inches smaller, and runs at the 16:9 resolution of 720x1280 which is just as tall but a little bit narrower.

In fact, the Galaxy Grand 2 is the perfect example of how far technology has progressed in the past few years. You're getting specifications that match or exceed a flagship that's just a few years old at roughly half its price.

But that fact alone doesn't make the Galaxy Grand 2 a winner. The competitive landscape is full of oversized phones from budget as well as premium multinational brands in the same price range. Some of them offer full-HD screens while others offer octa-core processors. Our detailed analysis of the Galaxy Grand 2's features, specifications and performance will determine whether or not it's good enough to beat them.

Look and Feel
At first glance, the Galaxy Grand 2 is rather striking. Its front face is totally consistent with the rest of Samsung's lineup; a look that hasn't changed much in years. Compared to its predecessor, the Grand 2 is a little more squared off, but is otherwise pretty much the same. There's a shiny chrome-finished ring around its edges, with a similarly shiny earpiece and Samsung and Duos logos above the screen. There's even a matching ring around the home button, just for good measure. The glass front panel is slightly sunken, which makes the metallic elements seem to rise through and around it. Beneath the glass is a white plastic layer with a very subtle honeycomb pattern for texture. It's the sort of thing you only notice if you look at the phone very closely.

Flanking the slightly raised Home button are the usual Back and Menu buttons, but these are of the capacitive touch variety. Their icons light up when you're using the phone, but are otherwise completely hidden. You can tap them whether or not they're lit up, and at least they're in their standard positions.

Around the back, we can see the faux-leather texture that has become a signature Samsung flourish, complete with fake stitching around the edges. This design was first seen in the Galaxy Note 3 and has recently popped up again on the Galaxy S4 and S4 Mini black editions. Apple might have moved away from mimicking real-world textures and materials, but Samsung seems to be jumping on this trend whole-heartedly. It does give the phone a good grip, but we personally don't like it at all, and feel it makes the phone look a lot cheaper from the back than it does from the front.

Some of these things feel like contradictions in the Galaxy Grand 2's design. The front and back look nothing alike, and the subtle textures and buttons are offset by the garish silver logos. Samsung clearly doesn't believe that people who buy devices in this price range might appreciate understated elegance, and it seems as though this phone is trying a bit too hard to stand out from the crowd.

You'll find the standard power and volume buttons on the right and left edges of the phone, but no dedicated camera button. There's a headset jack on the top and a Micro-USB port for charging on the bottom.

The plastic back peels off quite easily, allowing you to access the battery and card slots. The battery is removable and fairly compact, and you'll need to take it out before you can get to the SIM card slots. The microSD slot is positioned oddly on top of the primary SIM slot and it takes a little fiddling to get the card seated correctly. Both SIM card slots are designed for Micro-SIMs but a Nano-SIM can slide into the second one without any trouble and will stay securely enough for everyday use. Whether this is a deliberate design touch or not, we wish more phones would allow it.

The Galaxy Grand 2 isn't so bulky or heavy that it can't be used in one hand, but typing, for example, is far more comfortable with two hands.

Features and specifications

The Galaxy Grand 2 doesn't have "Duos" attached to its name like the company's dual-SIM offerings tend to, but it does support two GSM SIM cards in dual-standby rather than dual-active mode.

The device is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 system-on-a-chip (SoC) running at 1.2 GHz. This is a mid-range quad-core offering, but it should at least be more powerful than similar processors from Mediatek and Broadcom that are more commonly found in phones at this price point.

There's 1.5GB of RAM, which should be more than enough for smooth multitasking. Samsung has been a little stingy with only 8GB of internal storage space, though you can add up to 64GB more using a microSD card. Both SIM cards use the GSM standard and 3G speeds of up to 21Mbps are supported. Dual-band Wi-Fi n and Bluetooth 4.0 LE are standard, as are the acceleration, magnetic, proximity, rotation and orientation sensors.

The screen is an ordinary LCD, not the more expensive AMOLED type found on Samsung's higher-end products. 720x1280 is a marked improvement over the original Galaxy Grand's 480x800, and we had no problem with the crispness of text and icons on screen. However, we've been spoilt by the full-HD screens on some of today's competing budget phones, and Samsung's large, colourful and widely spaced home screens and main menu only make it more obvious that this isn't a full-HD panel we're dealing with.

Software
Thankfully, the Galaxy Grand 2 runs Android 4.3 rather than the older versions that seem to be predominant on new phones even today. The bigger story though is Samsung's TouchWiz UI, which is so extensive that there's almost no visual similarity to stock Android anywhere.

It starts right from the lock screen. Notifications of unread calls and messages are front and centre, and all status bar icons are visible. You'll see a burst of light and an animated lens flare towards the bottom, indicating which way you should swipe to unlock. As you swipe, the flare follows your finger. It's a nice touch, though somewhat unnecessary.

Of course, Samsung has customised the home screens as well. The lower quarter with shortcuts stays constant, while the rest of the space is used by five scrollable panels. The main panel has a large weather widget, Google search box, and a row of shortcuts. Three of the other screens are dominated by one large widget each: Flipboard, Story Album and Samsung Hub. The fifth and final panel is blank, and this is where shortcuts to apps you install will start appearing automatically. You can drag a finger along the indicator below to quickly flip between panels.

Swiping upwards from the bottom brings up My Magazine, a grid of news articles from various sources around the Web, laid out in large photo-heavy tiles. We must say this looks a lot like HTC's Buzzfeed feature. You can adjust the categories of articles that appear, though it doesn't seem like you can tweak the specific websites that articles are sourced from. You can also add your own social feeds and include photos and videos that are stored on your phone. You can also decide whether your text messages and emails appear as tiles mixed in with articles and social updates.

My Magazine seems a bit redundant since Flipboard is already available on one of the home screens. We've been hearing talk of a redesigned TouchWiz home screen for a long time now, and maybe this is a taste of what's to come. For now though, it's something that we'd in all likelihood forget about completely.

As any Samsung user will know, there are more customised touches to be discovered at every turn. The notification shade has a row of toggle buttons for things like Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and Power Saving, along with a brightness slider right there, and playback controls if music is playing. The task manager view (brought up by long-pressing the Home button) lets you kill all apps with one tap, launch Google Now, and check out detailed resource usage statistics.

The default keyboard makes good use of screen real estate by adding a row for numbers. It would have been nice to be able to use the Shift key to add symbols quickly, but that isn't possible. There's a smart autocorrect feature that learns your habits, and a Swype clone for gesture-based typing.

Even the main menu is totally Samsung's creation. App icons have of course been tweaked, and apps and widgets are clearly separated into their own distinct categories. A pinch gesture shows you all available pages as thumbnails, and you can drag to scroll quickly here too. Animation is simple, and we can't find any reason to fault Samsung for changing things around.

The Galaxy Grand series might not support the S-Pen stylus that gives its Galaxy Note series more utility, but there is one feature that's common to all of Samsung's bigger phones: Multi Window lets you split the screen and run two apps simultaneously. It doesn't work with all apps and it is a bit fiddly, but it can be extremely convenient. You can't simply grab any full-screen app and make it run in a smaller space. You can save combinations of apps and launch them simultaneously. When the feature is enabled, a long-press on the Back button shows or hides the tray that lets you select apps for each slot.

S-voice is Samsung's answer to Siri, and it's accessed by double-tapping the Home button). From there, you can either tap the button on screen or say "Hi Galaxy" to make it start listening for voice commands. There's a pretty extensive list of things you can do, which includes making calls, sending text messages, settings alarms and reminders, having the news read out, adding calendar events, posting to Twitter, launching apps, searching the Web and controlling phone settings such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

You can ask S-Voice a simple question, and it will Google the entire phrase if it can't decide how to process it as a command. This takes a little time, but accuracy is quite good. Even the voice Samsung uses to read responses is not too artificial. S-Voice requires a data connection, and will simply refuse to accept input if both Wi-Fi and cellular data are unavailable, even for simple commands such as toggling phone controls.

The Settings app also has plenty of Samsung tweaks. The whole thing is sorted into four categories: Connections, Device, Controls, and General. Blocking Mode only allows calls and messages from known people, so you aren't disturbed by spam but can still receive important notifications. Easy Mode is a simplified interface suitable for technophobes and first-time users. There's also a SIM card manager that lets you set default actions, and Voice controls that let you handle calls, trigger the camera, and control basic phone functions with your voice. Hands-free mode is suitable for drivers who don't want their attention to leave the road, and One-handed operation contains a number of options that make it easier to use apps, handle calls and type with a single hand.

Samsung hasn't been shy about promoting its own apps either. The company might have recently agreed to cooperate more with Google when it comes to a unified Android ecosystem, but the Galaxy Grand 2 has a boatload of Samsung's own apps on display, while Google's bundled ones are consigned to a folder right on the bottom of the main menu.

The Galaxy Grand 2's house-branded Music and Video apps aren't bad, but they duplicate some of the functionality of the originals, which might confuse some people. We ran into odd issues such as our MP4 files' audio codecs not being recognised (though they work perfectly fine in other apps). Our larger HD videos also didn't play, though FLAC audio did just fine.

Samsung also has its own app store, called Samsung Apps, which seems to have many well-known names, but also plenty of ripoffs and spam. Alongside that, there's Samsung Hub, which offers videos, books, games and learning material. You can "install" each of these, which then live as their own sections within the Hub and within the respective Samsung apps.

We took a look through them and found quite a few major titles including recent Bollywood releases. Disney's Brave, for example, was available to buy for Rs. 510 or rent for Rs. 75 in standard definition, while HD (720p) versions of the same titles cost Rs. 680 and 100 to buy or rent respectively. 2012's Barfi costs as little as Rs. 25 and 50 to stream in SD and HD, but purchasing it will cost Rs. 610 in either resolution. The more recent Iron Man 3 was only available for purchase, at Rs. 610 or Rs. 680 for SD and HD respectively. There's also a "free zone" with a handful of completely unknown (and completely unappealing) titles.

You're looking at download sizes of 1.2GB for the lower quality and 2.5GB for the higher quality. Trailers are available to stream, and you can stream videos to a network-connected Samsung TV or any DLNA media receiver at home via Wi-Fi.

The Learning Hub offers a variety of books and videos, both free and paid. The material includes everything from TED talks to recipe books, nursery rhymes and foreign language tutorials. Some of the categories are quite bare, but plenty of Indian languages are represented. You might be able to find something of value here, but it's mostly quite messy and some of the titles look rather crudely produced.

Camera
Of course, Samsung couldn't leave the camera interface untouched. There's a large Mode button right next to the shutter release and video capture buttons, which brings up a carousel of options such as Continuous Shot, Beauty Face, Best Face, Rich Tone (HDR), Panorama, Sports and Night. Beauty Face is automatically activated when you switch to the front camera, though we didn't find it made much of a difference. The rest of the modes all have their uses. Swiping up from the bottom brings up a row of filters that let you add effects to photos. Finally, another flyout of options on top lets you control the flash, timer, storage location, voice commands and social sharing options.

We were very pleased with the camera's performance in daylight. The 8-megapixel images we were able to take were richly detailed. Compression noise was visible when zooming in, but not otherwise, even on a big computer monitor. HDR mode produces similarly impressive results. Even the front camera took some impressive shots.

Video is captured at 720p, and is equally impressive. Our test clips came out clean and smooth, with adequate detail even at a distance. However, results for both still and video were only just about passable in low light. That's not too much of a surprise, and we're still happy with the camera's performance overall.

(Click to see full size)

Performance and battery life
We were pleased with the Galaxy Grand 2's performance in our benchmark tests. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 is a mid-range workhorse and we're glad to see it put to use here. There's a good balance of CPU and GPU performance, and we were able to achieve 11 frames per second in our GFXbench gaming simulation as well as scores of 5486 and 2798 in 3DMark's Ice Storm and Ice Storm Extreme scenarios respectively. CPU-bound tests were also strong, beating competition based on Mediatek processors which are priced at the same level or a bit lower. We recorded scores of 2662 in Browsermark, 8427 in Quadrant, and 17,030 in AnTuTu. SunSpider completed its run in 1063 milliseconds, which is impressive.

Audio and video playback was also satisfactory. The phone's built-in loudspeaker is loud enough, but very tinny. Its placement on the back also makes music sound awful if your phone is lying on a table. The bundled headset is much better, but you'd still prefer your own earphones for any serious listening. Viewing angles are good, with visibility reducing only at extreme angles. We were surprised at how poorly 1080p videos played: there was stuttering and artefacting in all our test samples. 720p on the other hand played without a hitch (in a third-party app). We also found that the Galaxy Grand 2 got quite hot in our hands while trying to play HD video.

The battery lasted 342 minutes in our SD video loop test. This is just about average, and we would really have liked to see more from Samsung in this department.

Verdict
It's no surprise that competition in the Rs. 17,000 to 22,000 range is hot right now. Features that were once exclusive to phones twice that price are tempting users, and multinational brands now find themselves competing with increasingly well-made phones from local manufacturers.

Still, most phones in this price range tend to advertise a single trick such as a full-HD screen or new processor, while neglecting to mention that these things aren't very useful in isolation. In contrast, Samsung has delivered a well-rounded product that seems to strike a very sensible balance between price, features and performance. Large screens on phones at this price point are no longer crippled by low resolutions, and "quad-core processors" actually have enough meat on their bones to deliver superior performance.

It isn't difficult to give this phone a strong recommendation. Sure, it doesn't stand out in any particular way, but it's got that balance going in its favour. Owners of the previous Galaxy Grand shouldn't feel any pressure to upgrade, but anyone who wants a new big-screened phone today should give the Grand 2 a serious consideration.

Interestingly, Samsung's own Galaxy S4 mini is only slightly more expensive and has similar features in a smaller overall package. If that feels more comfortable in your hand, it's the logical step up.

Wickedleak Wammy Passion X review

Wickedleak is one of India's smaller success stories when it comes to our homegrown Android device industry. Like all others, its devices are imported from China, but Wickedleak seems to be widely known and liked by buyers. The company doesn't use slick marketing or advertising like some of its competition, but has built up a name (and a very quirky one, at that) because its products have consistently been good performers and are priced quite reasonably too.

Following the Wammy Passion Z and Z+, the new Wammy Passion X has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. It's based on an octa-core processor and has a full-HD screen, but the headline feature is its water-repellent "super-hydrophobic" coating, which the company claims makes the phone largely impervious to all kinds of liquids.

We spent quite a bit of time with two Wammy Passion X units, and managed to get quite a few interesting bits of information out of the company along the way. Read on for the full story.

Look and feel
The first phone we received was, frankly, one of the ugliest we've ever seen. It was made of shockingly cheap plastic, with a crude screen-printed Wickedleak logo on the rear. We noticed numerous fabrication issues, such as bumps and fibres in the plastic moulding, clumps and streaks of adhesive all around the screen edge, and a battery that looked like it had been hastily wrapped in discarded paper. The lid was flimsy, and the clasps around the edges were difficult to press shut. Even the buttons felt cheap, and the volume down button made a very loud 'click' sound when pressed.

What's more, the entire phone had a sticky feel to it, which we weren't sure was attributable only to the much-hyped hydrophobic coating. The device didn't just feel icky to hold, but also picked up fluff from our pockets and any surface we happened to put it down on.

When we expressed dissatisfaction to Wickedleak, we were informed that the device sent to us was a "review unit" that didn't represent the devices actually on sale. After explaining to them that the point of a review is to inform readers of exactly what they can expect of a device, the company offered to send us a retail unit.

We were expecting the replacement to be a more polished version of what we had already experienced, but as it turns out, the only difference was that the new device had a thinner "AquaProtect" coating. A company representative explained that review units had been given thicker coatings because they had expected them to be subjected to harsher treatment. For the record, we repeated our performance tests on the second unit in order to provide our readers with an accurate idea of what to expect if they buy this product. Performance was the same across both devices.

The second phone had a less sticky feel, but the low quality of the plastic and moulding process was even more apparent on this one. The coating had clearly been applied by hand, since uneven brushstrokes were clearly visible, somewhat like lacquer. The panel was less glossy, but there was no other difference: the edges were still rough, adhesive was still smeared around the screen, and the buttons were still awkward.

Specifications and software
The Wammy Passion X uses a 1.7GHz octa-core processor, making it only the second such product we've reviewed, after the Intex Aqua Octa. Both devices use the same Mediatek MT6592 CPU, which is capable of running all eight cores simultaneously, rather than an arrangement of four more powerful cores and four less powerful ones that hand off tasks to each other based on workload and battery condition.

There's 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage, which is not bad at all for phones in this price range. Bluetooth 2.1 is supported, not the current common Bluetooth 4.0 standard. Apart from that, the specifications are unsurprising.

The 5-inch full-HD screen is not especially bright, but it is nice and crisp. With an octa-core processor and sufficiently large battery under the hood, we aren't concerned that it will suck too much power or slow things down.

Incidentally, this is one of the few phones which doesn't come with a headset in the box. You get a charger, USB cable, printed instruction sheet and adhesive screen protector, but that's it.

The Wammy Passion X runs Android 4.2.2 with a lightly customised UI. The icons are all different, and the notification and quick settings panels are skinned. Apart from that, Wickedleak includes a large number of Chinese apps that are evidently preloaded by the OEM and then just left there. We encountered a Chinese-language app store, Baidu Maps, and two others that we couldn't decipher the names or purposes of.

All Wickedleak devices ship rooted and unlocked. There's another app called Superuser which is in both English and Chinese, which offers options related to phone security and maintenance. Not all sections are dual-language, so we could only makes sense of 'System optimisation', 'Clean up systemic application' (sic) and 'Root'.

Two little apps called Desktop Wallpapers and Themes respectively do pretty much what their names suggest. One lets you choose from a small collection of wallpaper images, and the other lets you switch between four themes, which include wallpaper, icon sets, fonts and colours. Luckly, one of the themes is 'System', which is basically stock Android.

Another quirk is that when plugged into a computer's USB port, the phone offers a number of options in addition to the usual media transfer protocol and camera modes. A USB mass storage mode is thrown in for Windows XP users, and a Charge Only mode disables all data functions. There's also a USB CD-ROM mode, which mounts the phone as a read-only CD-ROM drive on any PC. The phone's menu says the virtual CD will contain "some useful software", but when we tried it all we found was a 36-page PDF technical manual detailing the physical and electrical characteristics of the USB protocol.

The hydrophobic coating
Specifications aside, the most unique feature of the Wammy Passion X is its "super-hydrophobic" AquaProtect coating. We're told by Wickedleak representatives that this is a more effective coating than the ordinary hydrophobic treatment applied to some other phones, and that it covers not only the outside surface but also the insides and the electronic components themselves. The company says each Passion X device can withstand up to 30 minutes of immersion in any liquid including tea, coffee and fizzy drinks.

Wickedleak seems so confident about this coating that it doesn't feel it necessary to provide watertight flaps over the USB and headset ports. The plastic rear flap definitely isn't watertight, so hopefully the "molecular-level" bonding of the AquaProtect coating will protect the slots, ports and other exposed components. The warranty in fact covers one liquid damage incident per device, which is defined as exposure to liquids for up to 30 minutes. There's a simple sensor inside, somewhat like a litmus paper, which will let a service technician determine how much time a device was exposed to liquid for.

Our Passion X's box had a printed instruction sheet that strongly discourages users from treating their device as totally waterproof because of the AquaProtect coating, and outlines its capabilities and limitations. It clarifies that the coating covers the insides of the headset and USB ports, but doesn't affect electrical contact or audio quality in any way. It makes it clear that the phone should not be taken swimming or intentionally subjected to liquid damage. In case of exposure, users are instructed to power down their phone, take the battery out, wipe all accessible surfaces, and leave it standing upright for 48 hours without using it. Wickedleak representatives told us that for short-term exposure, it was enough to leave the phone turned off overnight with the battery out.

Although Wickedleak calls the feature AquaProtect (with a trademark symbol), our research found no company claiming to produce such a thing. Wickedleak says it has bought the technology from an Indian firm with ties to an IIT, and that it has big plans to commercialise it in the very near future. It took the company a while to perfect a formulation that would not adversely affect the phone's screen (though a one-glass LCD panel, in which the touch sensor is bonded to the LCD itself, was required) or camera lens. Variations of the coating can be used on cars, ceramic tiles, and even paint.

While most Indian companies import their phones fully built from China, this model has to be assembled locally, since the coating is applied here. Wickedleak is understandably not inclined to let others get their hands on the coating material. Thus, even though Wickedleak phones are not exclusive (which means other brands source identical hardware from Chinese OEMs), no other incarnation of this phone will have the same coating.

Despite those claims, we found that the description of its features is almost an exact copy of material published by Liquipel, a California-based company that was in the news last year for demonstrating a super-hydrophobic treatment that could be applied to a number of commercially available phones and other gadgets.

We saw a demo of the Passion X with water simply rolling off it, and briefly tried to recreate the scenario. We did notice the hydrophobic effect: water droplets simply remained on the surface, both with and without the rear cover on. It was easy enough to wipe water away with a cloth, even after leaving the phone in a cup of water for a few minutes. However, the phone suddenly turned itself off at this point.

We left it to dry overnight as described, only to find that it didn't want to come on at all the next morning. The screen showed an illustration of the battery with 1% remaining, after which it refused to charge. We then left it for another few hours, after which it came on, with the battery showing 44% full. However, the phone's charge level kept jumping around, even when it was just plugged in and doing nothing. It's possible that the battery itself, which isn't coated, could have been affected. We therefore ran our battery test only on the second unit, which had not yet been subjected to water exposure.

Performance and Camera
Despite our problems with the phone's looks, we have to acknowledge that it did fairly well in our tests. We found the Wammy Passion X's performance to be at par with that of the Intex Aqua Octa. AnTuTu gave us a score of 26,290, and Quadrant notched up 134,375 points overall. Even though the eight Mediatek ARM cores can provide a fair bit of processing grunt, the integrated Mali GPU is clearly not a powerhouse. Graphics scores were not very impressive, with only 9.3fps in GFXbench and 4624 points in 3DMark's Ice Storm Extreme test run.

In ordinary usage, we found the phone to be consistently snappy and responsive. Android feels great, and even loading a large number of tabs in the browser didn't cause a slowdown. Games that aren't too graphically intensive will be quite enjoyable.

The Wammy Passion X's screen is sharp when seen head-on, but tends to look discoloured at angles greater than 30 degrees. We also noticed that the unit got pretty warm while we were playing games and watching videos.

(Click to see full size)

The battery lasted for only 4 hours and 21 minutes in our video loop test, which was a bit too little for our liking. Call quality was decent, although people on the other end of the line reported differences in volume depending on how we held the phone.

The rear camera is rated at 13 megapixels. We were happy enough with the photos and videos it took in daylight. Detail was surprisingly well captured, and there was only very light noise. However we weren't that thrilled with the colour reproduction. Photos seemed just a bit dull, and had a warm cast to them. Photos taken in low light were also pretty decent, and although the amount of noise was significantly higher, objects were clearly discernible.

Verdict
Wickedleak's super-hydrophobic coating is definitely a unique feature and the company is correct in that it will set it apart in the market. However, that doesn't mean that this phone is waterproof or that you can feel free to dunk it in water for fun every now and then. It should be okay after getting wet in the rain or having a drink spill on it, but that's the extent of how useful the coating is.

The phone is otherwise pretty capable for its price. You'll get a powerful processor and decent specifications, along with a crisp, high-res screen. The Wammy Passion X's biggest problem is that it just doesn't look or feel good enough. If you don't care about the plastic texture and general construction quality (or if you can find a nice-looking case that covers pretty much every surface), this is a decent enough phone to buy.

Wickedleak Wammy Passion X in pictures

Moto G review

Budget smartphones might not attract as much attention as their high-end counterparts, but there is no denying that these devices are in massive demand, especially in markets like India. Motorola's Moto G is an attempt to grab buyers' attention by offering a number of features at an extremely reasonable price.

After a brief sabbatical, Motorola has returned to the Indian market with its Moto G smartphone, which is an affordable device for cost-conscious consumers worldwide. This phone was designed as part of Google's plan to focus on creating a distinctive lineup of devices for different markets. Now, withLenovo recently acquiring Google's stake in Motorola Mobility, we don't know whether or not the company will stick with the same strategy.

Motorola underscored its plan to focus on emerging markets by unveiling the Moto G at a huge event in Sao Paulo, Brazil in November last year. The budget-friendly smartphone was supposed to have reached Indian shores by January 2014, and it's here after only a short delay. As promised, it comes at a decent price.

We got our hands on the black version of the Moto G (single-SIM). Does this low price come at the cost of performance?

Look and feelThe first thing that struck us about the Motorola Moto G was its novel packaging. When it came to our doorstep, we didn't realise that the sleek box hid a mobile phone inside. Amazingly everything from the device to the charger fits within this slim box.

The Moto G is a candybar phone. It doesn't have any contours - the design is very basic yet modern. When we first looked at the Moto G, we mistook it for the company's flagship Moto X.

The G looks like a replica of the Moto X (except for its size), which is not really a bad thing considering the premium look of its elder sibling. However, the Moto G is different in a few ways. It's definitely thicker, measuring 129.9x65.9x11.6mm compared to 129.3x65.3x10.4mm for the X. At 143 grams, the Moto G is also heavier than the Moto X (130 grams). However, we assume that for an average buyer in this price segment, thickness and weight of a smartphone are not the biggest concerns. The Moto G features curved edges that offer a good grip.

The Moto G's front panel is dominated by a 4.5-inch screen, which is only marginally smaller than 4.7-inch display found on the Moto X. The front panel features a black strip of glass around the screen that visually differentiates the plastic front and rear panels. Notably, the Moto G does not have any logo or branding on the front.

There's a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera which to the left of the chrome earpiece. There are no soft-touch capacitive buttons on the front panel, a design touch that is commonly seen on the Nexus range of devices. It's worth pointing out that Google's Nexus 7 (2013) tablet's front panel also bears a lot of similarities to the Moto G. The new Nexus 7 features a glass strip around the screen, identical to the Moto G.

It seems Google wanted to align the industrial design of its hardware products. The Nexus line and Motorola's two recent phones do have a family resemblance that sets them apart from Samsung's and HTC's phones.

Motorola has also used a nano-coating on the Moto G that acts as light water repellent. This does not make the Moto water resistant, but it can protect the smartphone from light splashes of water, which is still an interesting touch for a smartphone at this price point.

The curved rear panel is made of a soft-touch polycarbonate, and is comfortable to hold. Yes, it sometimes gets badly smudged by fingerprints, but this is nothing that cannot be cleaned. The panel is removable even though the battery isn't. Motorola has announced that there will be accessories including rear shells and flip covers (both in seven colour options) and Grip Shells (in five colour options). This means that customers will have a choice of colours, something we generally see on Nokia's Lumia range.

The power and volume rocker buttons are placed on the right side of the Moto G, while the 3.5mm audio jack is on the top and the Micro-USB port is on the bottom panel. The placement of the physical buttons is fine and we had no problem reaching them even when we were not looking at the device. The Moto G's back houses a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash with a speaker grille to its left. The Motorola logo is embossed just below the LED flash and is identical to the one found on the Moto X. Peel off the back panel and you can get to the SIM slot, which accepts a Micro-SIM. The unit we received was a single-SIM device, though Motorola has introduced a dual-SIM Moto G variant in India.

The Motorola Moto G has an overall solid build, though it does feel bit plasticky. Yes, it follows a tried and tested design rather than a radically new one, but it certainly has its own identity and there's no mistaking it for any other phone from any other company.

ScreenOne of the biggest highlights of the Moto G is its 4.5-inch 720x1280-pixel IPS LCD, which works out to a density of 329 pixels per inch. Notably, the Moto G's screen is a bit sharper than Apple's iPhone 5s, which offers 326ppi.

Motorola has also used Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the Moto G to protect it from scratches. It's worth pointing out that Gorilla Glass is usually found on premium devices priced at Rs. 30,000 and above.

The IPS LCD screen doesn't have the fullest colour reproduction like the HTC One and LG G2 or the deepest blacks like Samsung's high-end Galaxy smartphones (Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note 3) with AMOLED screens do, but it is bright and colours are consistently vibrant. Thankfully the viewing angles are never a problem. The screen is not very reflective and visibility in bright sunlight was also acceptable. Further, the Moto G's 4.5-inch screen is fine for video playback and gaming.

Text on the Moto G is always crisp and clear.

There is no denying that many brands have launched smartphones with full-HD screens of late, but after using the Moto G for some time we felt that 329ppi is more than enough for a screen of this size. Motorola has definitely upped the ante for phones in this price bracket.

Camera
The Moto G sports a 5-megapixel rear camera accompanied by an LED flash, and also has a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. At this price point, we didn't expect a higher megapixel count. The camera delivers decent but uninspiring shots in good lighting conditions.

We tested the Moto G's rear camera both outdoors and indoors in a variety of lighting conditions and found that images taken outdoors during daylight came out well, though they were a little over-saturated and we could detect a little bit of noise at the edges. You can notice that detail is lacking if you zoom in to a photo taken with a Moto G. Other than that, we found the quality of images taken in sufficient light to be satisfactory. However, the same could not be said for indoor and low-light shots. Photos taken in artificial light (without using the LED flash) are not very impressive, as background noise does tend to creep in.

The Moto G's rear camera can be set to take 5-megapixel shots in the 4:3 aspect ratio, while 16:9 shots will come out at 3.8 megapixels.

The Moto G's camera app is not stock and adds a bit of flavour the otherwise vanilla OS. Motorola's camera app has a circular control bar that pops out from the left of the screen when tapped. Additional features include 4X digital zoom, slow motion video, burst mode, auto HDR mode, Panorama and tap to focus. The Moto G's burst mode allows users to take up to 99 shots at once; users just need to long-press the camera soft key on the screen to start shooting. Notably, there are no ISO and exposure control settings on the Moto G.

The 1.3-megapixel front facing camera can be used for selfies and video chats. We found that videos and images captured indoors or even outdoors with this camera were a bit grainy.

We would have liked a physical button for the camera as one has to rely on the soft key on the screen to click images.

Software/ Interface
When the Moto G reached our office, the device was running Android 4.3 out of the box. However, we soon encountered an alert that said "Please update your Moto G to Android's latest version (4.4.2)."Motorola had rolled out the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update for the Moto G ahead of schedule in December last year.

The Moto G with Android 4.4.2 KitKat is most updated smartphone in its price segment and offers a stock Android experience.

The Nexus 5 was the platform lead for Android 4.4 (KitKat) and the Moto G bears a lot of similarities to it in terms of software. Android 4.4 has a number of visual changes compared to Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), including a new launcher that makes the interface even more minimalistic. The Moto G also has flatter design elements, more muted colours in the status icons, more transparency, and smoother transition animations.

We noticed a smooth flyaway animation on the Moto G, similar to the one seen on the Nexus 5, while moving between the app launcher and homescreen. The Moto G's app launcher features app icons and widgets; now due to the icons being larger, you'll see a grid of 4x5 instead of a 5x5.

The Moto G offers five customizable homescreens, and lots of widgets and apps classified into preloaded and downloadable categories. Notably, you cannot go beyond five homescreens, unlike with the Nexus 5.

Shortcuts for the dialler, Chrome browser, main menu, Messages and camera app remain visible when you swipe between homescreens. Notifications in the tray can be expanded with a two-finger pull gesture, and there are buttons for clearing all notifications and showing the quick settings shortcuts. These include toggles for Brightness, Settings, Wi-Fi, Network, Battery, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, and Location settings. Unlike the Nexus 5, the Moto G does not have a quick Alarm clock shortcut.

Long-pressing on the Moto G's homescreen brings up options to change the wallpaper. A choice of still, live and custom wallpapers are now available under a single menu.

Another feature that gives the Moto G a clear advantage in the affordable smartphone segment is the voice guided search feature. This was also first seen on the Nexus 5. A user can initiate a voice search on the Moto G when it's unlocked by simply saying, 'OK Google.' However, it is only available when the language is set to US English.

The Moto G also includes a revamped Phone app that now automatically prioritises contacts based on who you talk to most often. The app includes a search bar, space for the most frequently called contacts and favourites, and shortcuts to the contact list, dialling pad, call history and settings.

The Moto G also features a new Photos app that allows viewing and editing of locally stored and Google+ images. The new Photos app features deeper integration with Google+ and can be used to tag photos.

The Email app on the Moto G has also been revamped, and it now displays pictures of contacts for emails. Navigation has been made identical to the Gmail app and you can swipe messages to delete them.

The Moto G also includes Google Drive, Keep, Play Games, Play Movies, Play Movies, Play Books, Play Newsstand and Quickoffice for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can print documents through the Google Cloud Print plugin, or apps made by printer manufacturers.

Motorola preloads two other major apps on the Moto G. Motorola Migrate can help move the contents of an old Android phone to your new Moto G. Motorola Assist allows users to silence the device while you're sleeping or driving. We tried it out, and noted that the app automatically sent a text message to callers in the time we told it we were busy.

Performance/ Battery LifeThe Moto G is powered by 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with Adreno 305 graphics and 1GB of RAM onboard. The Moto G comes in two storage capacities: 8GB and 16GB, and does not support expandable storage. We received an 8GB unit, of which only 5.5GB was user-accessible.

Even though the Moto G falls in the budget smartphone segment, the limited storage on the device is definitely a limiting factor. Google is offering 50GB of free Google Drive storage for two years for every Moto G buyer, which is additional to the standard 15GB available to every Google account user. However, cloud storage is no substitute for physical storage, especially since budget users won't have very expensive data plans.

The Moto G definitely ups the ante in terms of innards. Brands such as Micromax and Xolo, which have come to dominate the sub-Rs. 15,000 segment, usually use MediaTek chipsets.

The overall experience of navigating through the Moto G's interface was extremely impressive, thanks to all the power under its hood, and the fact that the UI is devoid of unnecessary bells and whistles such as transition effects. We did not experience any lag at all while launching apps, playing light games, scrolling through web pages and switching between apps on the Moto G.

With its quad-core processor running under the hood, the Moto G manages to chug along just fine. We multi-tasked all day, which included chatting via WhatsApp and Hangouts, browsing the Web and playing games like Temple Run 2 and Plants vs. Zombies 2 without any trouble. In day to day activities the Moto G worked smoothly and we were never left wanting for more power - that is until we tried a few heavy games like Shadow Gun and Dead Trigger.

The clarity of the Moto G's loudspeaker is good, but isn't too loud and breaks at its highest volume. Motorola does not supply any headphones in the Moto G box, which is a surprising omission.

The Moto G's 4.5-inch IPS LCD HD screen is good for movies and videos. We were impressed with the colour reproduction and viewing angles on the Moto G.

Call quality on the Moto G was impressive and the device was able to latch on to cellular networks even in weak signal areas, which came in handy at times. Our tests were performed on a single-SIM model, although Motorola will be selling the dual-SIM version here.

The Moto G scored well in our benchmark tests. We recorded a score of 11,874 in AnTuTu, which was right behind the Nexus 4 and Samsung Galaxy S III. Quadrant gave us a score of 8,569 which is ahead of HTC's flagship smartphone from two years ago, the One X. On the graphics front, the Moto G remarkably reached 11 frames per second in the GFXbench test, and 5629 in the 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme run-through.

The Moto G packs a 2070mAh battery which is non-removable and can deliver a mixed usage time of up to 24 hours, according to Motorola. We were able to get about a day (22 hours) of normal usage on the Moto G, which consisted of Web browsing and watching videos on YouTube, a few calls lasting for about an hour, with Wi-Fi switched on, the display set to auto brightness, and the usual notifications for the messages, emails, Facebook, Hike and WhatsApp enabled.

With heavy usage, which included calls lasting for about two hours, 3G turned on all the time, casual photography and watching a movie for around two hours, an hour of casual gaming (Temple Run 2 and Dead Trigger), and notifications enabled, the device lasted for about 12-13 hours, which was not bad.

In our video loop rundown test, the Moto G was able to able to deliver 8 hours and 30 minutes of battery life.

Verdict
What makes the Moto G special is the fact that it is one of a very small number of devices running the latest version of Android, and one of the only ones priced this low to be doing so.

The Moto G scores heavily in terms of style and substance, and our only major quibbles are the non-expandable storage and below-par camera performance. The 4.5-inch HD screen is wide, and yet the phone is small enough to hold in one hand and type easily with a thumb. Most of all, praise be, the Moto G is also extremely affordable.

This phone is definitely aimed at price-conscious Indian smartphone buyers, and its array of colourful back shells will attract the style-conscious as well. Yes, it isn't perfect, but it isn't meant to compete against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One or LG G2. At its price, we're willing to overlook its faults.

The Moto G is available in two variants: 8GB for Rs. 12,499 and 16GB for Rs. 13,999. At this price point, no other phones offer an experience that is as good, so in that sense the Moto G is a game changer. If you have your eyes set on the Moto G, we recommend you spend the extra bucks and get the 16GB version, given the limited user accessible storage available in the 8GB version. Our only other complaint with the Moto G is the average camera, but the only phone that offers a better camera in the same price bracket is the Nokia Lumia 720, so the newest Motorola smartphone is a winner overall.