How has an increase in system complexity affected new programmers?

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Adam asked:

As a 'new' programmer (I first wrote a line of code in 2009), I've noticed it's relatively easy to create a program that exhibits quite complex elements today with things like .NET framework, for example. Creating a visual interface or sorting a list can be done with very few commands now.

Desi startups doling out generous, creative perks to employees

Silicon Valley, home to some of the most storied startups, has been traditionally doling out ever-more generous and creative perks to employees. Twitter recently bought 19th century log cabins to serve as dining areas at its San Francisco headquarter while Google's New York office brings in beauticians to shape eyebrows. Taking a cue from these uber-cool workplaces, desi startups are also upping fringe benefits. 

From offering the services of in-house taichi instructors and marathon trainers who take care of your fitness needs and gourmet chefs who satiate your food cravings, working at an Indian startup has never been this rewarding. And while one is kept well-fed, well-groomed and physically fit during work hours, there are late-night poker sessions and disco nights in office to ensure that folks can party as hard as they work. 

These fledgling ventures admit the perks are not as extravagant as they are fun, and a good way to hook talent in a competitive market starved for talent. Pranay Chulet, founder & CEO of digital classifieds player Quikr, says the Indian market is different and so are the perks. "People seem to prefer samosas over salmon, and cricket over football so that's what we focus on. We want to celebrate our quirks," he says. 

While Indian startups are still a long way from reaching the lavish scale of the Bay area ventures, the attempt here is to give employees a chance to de-stress during the long hours at work. 

So, a typical work day in the life of a 25-year- old at Housing.com, a map-based realty portal, might end with an impromptu pizza party or at the office turned-night club. "The idea is to transform the office into the hippest disc in Mumbai," says Advitiya Sharma, cofounder of the two-year-old startup. "For us it's not about the occasional perk but the way we work every day. We always have fun in whatever we do even as the bigger corporates give out airline miles and free hotel stays," he says. 

InMobi, the Bangalore-based mobile ad network, doesn't have card-readers to scrupulously measure entry/exit times. Employees bring children and pets to office and a cool $800 is given to everyone annually to "develop" themselves any way they like be it through guitar or music classes. All of this inside an office which sports children's nursery colours on its walls. To add to the casual look, there are plenty of bean bags and hammocks and no cabins and cubicles. 

While on-the-house meals and flexi timings are commonplace even at Indian startups, online restaurant discovery guide Zomato has hired in-house chefs who can rig up anything from Pan-Asian fare to Thai cuisine. Deepinder Goyal, founder & CEO of Zomato, says food is a big part of keeping people happy at work, so it is an expense they can live with. But even for well-funded ventures such as ecommerce major Snapdeal, the constraint while providing these perks is not to increase costs too much. 

Kunal Bahl, co-founder & CEO of Snapdeal, where some team members are entitled to the services of a chauffeur, says the perk is aimed at helping employees avoid the driving stress in Delhi. "We're a retail business and don't have the margins of Google and Facebook to justify things like gourmet chefs, and free iPhones and iPads as a joining bonus. Here the most basic desires and needs have to be addressed first," the 31-year-old says. 

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Noida-based One97 Communication, a mobile internet company, says he is also the resident DJ of his organization where every evening there is music on all floors of the office building. "People who come for job interviews and see this invariably go away impressed. We create a spa-like fragrance in the office with different natural, scented herbs and oils and have a 24-hour food counter," says Sharma. 

Helping employees keep fit has been on top of the list for many companies. Raja Shanmugam, co-founder, Happiest Minds, which describes itself as a next generation IT service provider, offers the services of tai chi and yoga instructors for all its employees. "We live by the name of our company," he says. Bangalore-based Capillary Technologies' co-founder Aneesh Reddy, says they have a runners' programme, and the idea is to help staffers run marathons.

15.7 mn project management roles to be created by 2022

India has been experiencing a huge demand for project management professionals in recent years. According to a study conducted by PMI, by 2022 15.7 million new project management roles will be created globally across seven project intensive industries such as – Manufacturing, Business Services, Finance & Insurance, Oil & Gas, Information Services, Construction, and Utilities.

With Indian businesses gaining a foothold in foreign markets, and the kind of projects that they are taking up with quick delivery time lines, and the pace at which technology changes – it’s absolutely critical that project managers come with vast subject matter knowledge and gain advanced expertise while diving into projects.

Experts believe that employees often possess some level of competency as far as project management is concerned – but what they are particularly interested in is to find talent with the right mix of planning, controlling and monitoring abilities.

According to Techgig.com, there is demand for project management professionals at different experience levels. Some of the jobs available for project management professionals are associate project manager (1-3 years), system analyst (2-5 years), project engineer (3-5 years), project quality manager (5-8 years), technology project manager (6-8 years), etc.

Salaries will also be competitive across industries for project management professionals, suggests expert.

During a recently organised Techgig.com webinar, Padmakumar Menon, program manager, Tata Elxsi, pointed out some of the elements which are crucial to be an effective project manager: effective project communication, ask for clear requirements, effective project staffing and allocation and good team management.

Common mistakes to avoid:

• Accepting poorly defined requirements as input
• Accepting changes without negotiating a new timeline
• Poor communication and accepting poorly communicated information
• Ineffective management of the team
• Poor planning and under estimation of work
• Absorbing delays attributable to suppliers/customers
• Ineffective escalations
• Accepting unrealistic expectations from stakeholders

Companies prefer hiring candidates via social media: Report

The social media has moved rapidly from being 'purely social' to a 'business tool' as more and more companies   are now using the platform to recruit the right people for specificjobs and this trend is expected to grow by about 50 per cent this year from 2013, according to experts. 

"In day-to-day busy schedules, people only get social media platform to know about what is happening in the industry and their social network and they also update about their own status and change of roles. This trends began almost in 2010, and is growing by 50 per cent every year," leading executive search firm GlobalHunt Managing Director Sunil Goel told PTI. 

Most of the updates, he opined, gives the recruiter an information link to reach to the right people for the specific job of for their client companies. "Mid and senior-level professionals do not want to project themselves as easily available resources but by putting up their resume in job portals or an agency makes them easily available resources, which affects their role and compensation negotiations," he added. Sectors like IT, ITES, banking and financial have been recruiting across levels using this platform, he said. 

However, even FMCG, manufacturing, power and energy, retail, automobile are also using the social media for mid to senior level hiring, he added. Career adviser firm Michael Page's India Regional Director Alf Harris said social media is obviously a much-talked about aspect of recruitment and it undoubtedly offers individuals an excellent opportunity to access opportunities and for companies to reach out to talent. 

"However, one must keep in mind that social media is part of the recruitment process. Once the recruitment process moves into the assessment cycle, there is limited impact from social media," he said. The advantage of social media is the ability to reach a significant number of people quickly and easily compared to traditional recruitment process, he said.

11 Android apps to make notifications more interesting

I love Android as much as the next non-Apple owning guy, but there are times when I get bored of using the same old operating system, and seeing the same boring old notifications. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of different ways to liven things up without having to root your phone, or in some cases, even spend a penny. Sure, Facebook’s chat-head style notifications set a trend for a bobble-headed approach, but that’s not the only way you can modify how you get informed about new events, and for older handsets that haven’t been gifted with features like lock screen widgets.

Hackers use heartbleed to attack 'major corporation'

SAN FRANCISCO: Within 24 hours of the Heartbleed bug's disclosure last week, an attacker used it to break into the network of a major corporation, security experts said Friday.

Using Heartbleed, the name for a flaw in security software that is used in a wide range of Web servers and Internet-connected devices, the attacker was able to break into an employee's encrypted virtual private network, or VPN, session.

From there, the hacker or hackers used the Heartbleed bug about 1,000 times, extracting information like passwords to gain broader access to the victim's network, researchers at Mandiant, an online security firm, said.

The targeted company noticed the attack only in its later stages. When the company analyzed what had happened, it realized that Heartbleed was used as the entry point, said Christopher Glyer, an investigator at Mandiant. 

The attack was one of the first confirmed cases of a hacker's using Heartbleed. Up till now, researchers say, they have seen widespread scanning of the Internet for vulnerable servers, and in some cases people have taken material from those servers using Heartbleed. But it has been nearly impossible, they say, to discern between the activities of security researchers and hackers, and there has been no evidence of actual harm. 

Investigators were still assessing whether damage had been done in this case, and because of nondisclosure agreements, the firm has not named the targeted company; Mandiant has said only that it is a "major corporation" with particularly sophisticated attack detection systems. 

"The main takeaway is that within 24 hours of Heartbleed's publication, we're seeing this taken advantage of," Glyer said. "And it's entirely likely lots of other companies are being affected and just don't know it yet."

On Tuesday, a 19-year-old man was arrested in Canada on charges that he had used Heartbleed to steal taxpayer data from the Canada Revenue Agency.

At the University of Michigan, computer scientists said the Heartbleed bug had been used 140 times to gain access to stashes of data that they had put on the Internet as a test. They could not say whether this was the work of attackers or other security researchers, but they did say that more than half the infiltrations originated in China. 

The University of Michigan researchers said this week that more than 1 million Web servers were still vulnerable. They are keeping an updated tally on the website of their project, called ZMap.

It was still unclear whether Heartbleed was exploited before its discovery by a Google researcher this month. 

For the past week, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center have been examining Internet traffic they recorded going in and out of their networks since the end of January, looking for exploitations of Heartbleed before its existence became public on April 7. 

Why Google isn't growing

Google CEO Larry Page can be forgiven for being in a bad mood this weekend. On his company's Q1 2014 earnings call, his people delivered what he thought would be good news: revenues of $15.4 billion, up 19%. Very, very few business can deliver 20% growth on billions in revenues. By any measure, Google is on fire as a company.

Yet investors hated it.

They sold the stock, and it declined 5% immediately after the call. In 24 hours the price had lost $9, from $544 per share to $536.

Google is growing, for sure. But, counterintuitively, it is not growing at the same time, as the following charts show.

From a macro perspective, Google is boxed in by two factors: The available population on the Internet and the population on the mobile portion of the Internet.

Google - according to numbers from Asymco, the quant-y tech analysts - may not be growing so much as it is merely floating in place on a rising tide of humanity.

Unfortunately for Google, that tide is about to go out.

Internet growth is slowing - and Google is the Internet Google handles about 80% of all search queries, and hundreds of millions of people use Gmail and YouTube, its most famous brands. Google is so dominant that its economics are, in many ways, a proxy for the Web as a whole. How grows the Internet, grows Google.

But growth of the Internet won't go on forever.

Already there are signs of an upcoming "inflection" in 2016, when the level of Internet penetration across the planet gets well past 50% of all humans - and the Internet itself enters a period of rapidly declining growth.

Here's Asymco's chart of Internet penetration by geographic area:





The chart shows the portion of the population that has yet to connect to the Web. It's in decline all over. Don't worry about the detail or the numbers, it's important to simply note that the Web's "house-on-fire" period will be behind us by about 2016.

We're already in that phase in the US and Western Europe - there just aren't that many more non-connected humans to bring online.

This will hurt Google because Google's revenues are highly correlated with the number of humans online.

Here's the Asymco data showing the correlation between Google revenues and the total Internet population:



Google doesn't operate in China. You can see that Google's revenues run in parallel to the number of humans on the Web.



Chart shows a measure of how closely correlated the growth in Google's revenues is to the growth of the internet population as a whole.

That parallel is very closely correlated, as this Asymco chart of the same data shows: That correlation has a real effect on Google's actual dollar numbers.

Asymco has also broken down Google's revenue by geography, next to the world Internet population, if you want more detail on that.

But broadly, the lines look similar because they are similar.

Shown another way, Google's monetization per user shows that all its growth is in the developed countries, where it is already fully penetrated.

If it is to grow meaningfully in the future (all things being equal) it must do the same in the poorer nations.

But that shows no sign of happening:



Asymco's blog states this succinctly:

The disparity is enormous. US/UK revenue is on average $86/user/yr (2012) and rising. The rest of the world only manages $12/user/yr. That Rest Of World includes many wealthy countries such as all of Europe and Japan. So the problem for Google is that it has an order of magnitude less income per user in the part of the Internet which remains unpenetrated and the trends show that they are not narrowing the gap.

One might also add that the developed world has been waiting for more than 200 years for the undeveloped world to "catch up" and become rich - but it never happens. So don't hold your breath for growth on those yellow bars.

The overall effect of this is that Google's net income per user is relatively stagnant:



Google gets about $1.20 per user in profit - see the blue section of the chart - and the rate doesn't change very much over time.

OK, you might say. So Internet population growth is slowing. Google is still killing it: You cannot ignore 20% growth per quarter.

That's true. But there is another way of looking at it - and Wall Street's reaction to the Q1 numbers may be an indication of that: For investors, "growth" isn't defined merely as an increase. It's defined as the growth over and above the background growth you'd get from the general market as a whole. Usually, those background rates are the risk-free interest rates at the bank or an index fund of the S&P 500 stocks.

But at tech companies, growth is often even more dramatic than that. And the Asymco data suggests that the background growth in Google's business is the Web population as a whole. So Google's challenge is that it must eke out greater growth than the Web itself, because if it does not then it will actually be moving backward - certainly in terms of market share.

What if mobile becomes a ghost town for Google? There is also the continued weakness in Google's ability to get higher prices on clicks. Cost-per-click is in decline, and the growth of total paid clicks is slowing. You can see Google's growth as a whole is slowing as a result:



Part of that is to do with the growth of mobile devices. More and more businesses - Amazon, LinkedIn, Apple, Facebook - have apps with their own internal search functions. And apps generally are invisible to Google's traditional Web search. But a majority of people's time in mobile is spent inside apps.

Some massive businesses like Facebook and Pandora (and Business Insider, although we're much smaller) have majority mobile audiences. Those are audiences that, increasingly, Google can't see.

That is a long-term structural growth problem for Google. The Web is growing, but not in a way that Google can meaningfully get search ad revenue from it. More than 90% of Google's revenue comes from search ads and related services.

"Google's growth is ultimately limited" Asymco concludes:

If the company does not alter its business model then the future potential of the business could be measured as a function of Internet (ex. China) population growth.

And there is a benchmark to watch for in terms of whether Google can figure this out. It's 2016, Asymco says:

... the inflection point will come in 2016. Essentially the argument is that Google's growth is ultimately limited by the population of users and that itself is a predictable number.

Honda's ASIMO Robot Is Now Surprisingly Human

Honda's remarkable humanoid robot, ASIMO, has come a long way since I first saw it stiffly walk across a stage more than a decade ago.

The latest edition can run briskly, climb stairs with ease, dance like Travolta, kick a ball and jump up in down in what can only be described as a robot tantrum.

IT professionals are dissatisfied with file transfer processes, concerned about security

Sixty-three percent of IT professionals are frustrated with current file transfer processes and 40% believe manual file transfer processes are inefficient, according to a survey conducted by business software company Ipswitch.

When asked to relate file transfer processes to activities generally seen as unpleasant, 61% of respondents said manual file transfer was as enjoyable sitting in traffic.

Twenty-two percent of respondents said current file transfer issues prevented them from providing customer assistance more quickly.

"Ipswitch sees the market moving more towards systems with secure, manageable, scalable file transfer, at its core, of course," said said Ken Allen, Product Marketing Director at Ipswitch, via email. "But manual file transfer is more than just file transfer. Around that core, we see the need for tightly integrated transfer automation that allows IT to manage the exchange of any volume of transfers, while efficiently processing files to prepare them for the next step in a business process."

Thirty-five percent cited lost productivity as a significant side effect of file transfer processes, and nearly 32% had concerns over the security and potential for data loss.

"The challenge in getting managed file technology right is balancing the needs of collaborative file sharing versus integrated file-based system-to-system integration," said Allen. "End users demand simple file sharing solutions that are quick to get started while IT demands compliance to corporate and regulatory security standards. It's easy to focus on one end of this while ignoring the other."

To gather data for this report, Ipswitch conducted a survey of more than 100 IT professionals.

• Find out what an Ipswitch survey revealed about IT professionals and their New Year's Resolutions.

Leaked images claim to reveal iOS 8 running on iPhone 5S

With Apple's annual developer conference quickly approaching, we have little doubt that somewhere in Cupertino there are devices already running iOS 8 - and a new report could very well offer our first glimpse at one of them.

PhoneArena today turned up a handful of images allegedly from Apple's forthcoming iOS 8, which will presumably be unleashed in just over six weeks during the iPhone maker's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.

One low-resolution image (shown below) appears to show iOS 8 running on a current iPhone 5S passed along by a generous reader using the screen name "Omar Sharif," which we're pretty sure is not the star of stage and screen who shares the same moniker.

The tipster followed up with a trio of screenshots - two from iPhone and one from iPad - which reveal a bevy of icons for new apps that have been widely rumored to be included with the mobile OS release this year.

Eight is great

Although the four images don't immediately stand out as obvious fakes, the inclusion of a so called "Watch Utility" app is likely to raise eyebrows, although others for Healthbook, Preview, TextEdit and Tips fall in line with recent rumors.

Also clearly on display is an icon for iTunes Radio, which Apple is reportedly toying with the possibility of turning into a standalone app, rather than part of the existing built-in Music app.

Assuming iOS 8 breaks cover at this year's WWDC which kicks off June 2, it's not surprising to see leaked screenshots making the rounds a month and a half early, even at the same time Apple is said to be readying an iOS 7.1.1 bug fix update.

Meanwhile, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users still lingering on iOS 6 have apparently found themselves in the midst of an extended FaceTime outage since yesterday, and the only resolution for now appears to be upgrading to iOS 7.1.

• Oh, and don't forget to follow the latest on iPhone 6 as well!

'75% Of New Recruits Lack Critical Project Management Skills'

India is projected to need almost 400,000 new project professionals in project-oriented industries every year till 2020, says Raj Kalady, Managing Director, Project Management Institute (PMI) India.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

What are the key features of project management?

The development of software for an improved business process, the construction of a building or bridge, the relief effort after a natural disaster, the expansion of sales into a new geographic market — all are projects. Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.

Project management knowledge draws on ten areas:

Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Procurement, Human resources, Communications, Risk management and Stakeholder Management Project management, thus, is the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently. It’s a strategic competency for organizations, enabling them to tie project results to business goals — and thus, better compete in their markets.

Do you find it difficult to hire leaders? Build them!

By Apeksha Kaushik, TimesJobs.com Bureau 

Leaders across the globe lack some skills and can improve on those. 

Leadership is a critical skill which encompasses various soft and hard skills. While some are born leaders, others can build the requisite skills to become an effective leader. 

Leadership Skills: An Indian Perspective 

Nearly 45 per cent of Indian organisations feel that most leaders lack relevant leadership skills, according to a TimesJobs.com study. These largely include soft skills such as communication, presentation and listening skills. In fact over 40 per cent organisations believe that these skills are found lacking in mid-level managers also, who are future leaders. 

Another study by TimesJobs.com indicates that close to 38 per cent organisations believe that participative or democratic style of leadership works best in the Indian context. They gave a thumbs down to the autocratic leadership approach. 

However, with changing work dynamics and increasing business complexities it is not advisable to stick to one style of leadership, believe industry experts. "Using multiple styles is the need of the hour. This is largely because of the complexity that one faces in terms of the industry we are in and the workforce we handle. It is best suited to create a combination of ownership, servant and strategic leadership model," articulated Hema Parikh, director-Human Resources, Ajuba Solutions India Pvt Ltd in a TimesJobs.com Hi Tea session. 

On The Other Side: The Global Perspective 

Highlighting the global leadership scenario, Andy Germak, executive director, School of Social Work, Rutgers University said that leaders across the globe lack some skills and can improve on those. "Soft skills, such as effective listening and communication, key messaging, professional presentation skills, supervision skills, public speaking, and so forth, are often the hardest skills to teach. In fact, most MBA and other leadership development programs do not focus on these soft skills. It is much easier to teach leaders how to analyse financial statements, than to teach effective listening and communication," he asserted. 

Building Skills: Guide to Effective Leadership 

Germak believes that the development of soft skills in combination with hard skills will produce the most effective global leaders. Further he shared a 5 step guide to building these skills: 

- Perform a self-assessment to understand where you need to develop your leadership. 

- If possible, ask both your supervisors and subordinates to assess your leadership skills. 

- Seek leadership and management development programs that will help you build the right skills. If you need to improve your budgeting abilities, for example, you may want to take a course in financial management at a business school. If instead you need to improve your presentation skills, you may want to take a course such as the Certificate Program in Training Skills. 

- After you have taken the appropriate courses, routinely assess your performance at work via the mechanisms outlined in No. 1 and No. 2 above. Perform skills assessments at three month intervals. These can be in addition to any official performance appraisal required by your organisation. 

- Take additional courses in the areas where you need improvement. Remember that learning is an ongoing process. You must constantly assess your skills and keep learning in order to remain effective in today's competitive workplace. 

Yahoo Wants to Be Apple's Default iOS Search Engine

Yahoo is working on two internal projects to optimize its mobile search and monetization in order to convince Apple to make Yahoo the default search engine on iOS reports Re/code. The WSJ reported last year that Apple and Yahoo had been in discussions of how to integrate Yahoo's services more prominently in iOS, beyond powering the Weather and Stocks apps. The report says Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is preparing detailed presentations to present to Apple executives showing what its new mobile search product could look like. There are a pair of internal projects, code-named 'Fast Break' and 'Curveball', that are part of Yahoo's redesign of its mobile search engine. That has not happened as yet officially — it’s just the big honking goal of the Yahoo effort, said sources. Still, several said Mayer has already buttonholed a few Apple executives on the topic, including its powerful SVP of design Jony Ive, who knows the former Google exec well. “This is the aim of the whole effort here, to grab the pole position in iOS search,” said one person working on the effort. “It will take more than pretty pictures though to convince Apple to give up Google, given its focus on consumer experience being top-notch. But Marissa wants it very badly.”Currently, Yahoo and Microsoft are in the midst of a 10-year search and advertising partnership, something Mayer is trying to get out of. At the same time, Microsoft's Bing provides the backend for Apple's Siri web search feature. Google is the default search engine in the Safari iOS browser, with Yahoo and Bing available as user-selectable options. Apple already replaced Google's Maps app with its own mapping application as default. According to the Re/code report, a new and expanded agreement between Apple and Yahoo is not imminent -- Apple has yet to be pitched on the new products. Instead, it's part of a longer term play to bring the two companies closer together.

Microsoft, most attractive employer in India: Report

Global software major Microsoft is the 'most attractive employer' in India, while IT, telecom and ITes are the most preferred sectors by the workforce, a survey by HR services firm Randstad said today. Microsoft emerged as the 'most attractive employer' in the survey for the fourth year in a row. 

Sony India is next most attractive employer. According to the surrey, Larsen & Toubro is the most attractive employer in the infrastructure industry, State Bank of India in the banking sector, Taj Group in the hospitality and Tata Power in the energy sector. 

The survey, which covered more than 8,000 potential and employed workforce in India, found that competitive salary and employee benefits and long-term job security were the most important factors when choosing an employer. Other criterion included financial health of the company, good work-life balance, pleasant working atmosphere and career progression opportunities. 

The survey said men preferred companies, which offered competitive salary and job security, while women looked at better work atmosphere, accessibility and flexible working conditions. The workforce aged above 35 years sought financially healthy companies for employment whereas those below 35 were attracted towards training and global career opportunities. 

Meanwhile, more than 70 per cent respondent found IT, communication, telecom and ITeS industry to be the most attractive sector to work. This was followed by FMCG and retail (69 per cent), and auto & auto-components sector (67 per cent). 

"The Indian economy is showing positive economic movement and shifting into a higher gear, which will have a significant bearing on the attraction and retention of talent across sectors," Randstad India MD & CEO Moorthy K Uppaluri said. 

"With employee attrition on the rise, employer branding has become crucial, now more than ever, and companies are viewing this as a competitive differentiators tool' to build great brands that will help them attract, manage and retain best talent," he added. 

Among the total respondents, 41 per cent desired a more relaxed work schedule as a motivation to serve longer in a company, while 40 per cent considered less working hours as a key motivator.

Google Camera App Brings HTC One M8 Camera Feature to All

Google Camera App Brings HTC One M8 Camera Feature to All is a post by Cory Gunther from Gotta Be Mobile.

Today smartphone owners have the choice to download and enjoy a brand new camera experience on their Android smartphones and tablets thanks to the all-new Google Camera app.

This morning Google released a standalone Google Camera application to the Google Play Store for all Android devices running Android 4.4 KitKat or above, and it has some awesome new features worth talking about. This completely improves the camera experience on Android, and for all KitKat devices rather than just those with Google’s Nexus 5 smartphone.

We’ve been hearing reports of a major overhaul to the Android camera being in the works, but no one expected it to be readily available today. One feature in particular is “Lens Blur” which is something many have been enjoying, or would like to enjoy from the new HTC One M8.

One of the weak points on Android for a long time has been the stock camera on Nexus devices. The user interface was generally quite bad, photos weren’t always the best, and what we saw on our screen wasn’t what actually appeared in the photo. There was more to the image than what was display.

The all new Google Camera app fixes all these problems, improved the user interface, and added some awesome new features worth talking about. Lately all the rage on smartphone cameras has been about this “blur” effect for that professional DSLR bokeh look where certain things are perfectly blurred out to focus a photo on what’s important. HTC has a new Duo Camera on the HTC One M8, and Samsung’s Galaxy S5 even has a “selective focus” option to try and deliver something similar.

These options allow the user to change or tweak the focus after a photo has been taken, and some of the results are quite impressive. Below is a photo of a fountain taken with the HTC One M8 using this new feature.

HTC One M8 uFocus Photo

However, Google’s just delivered an awesome camera for all Android 4.4 KitKat users, and also stole this feature from both of these phones, possibly in a manor that works better, and delivered it for everyone. It’s called Lens Blur and is one feature of many of the new camera. Google’s Camera app has photosphere (360 panoramas), regular landscape panorama photos, and now lens blur. This allows the user to select the point of focus, and even control how much blur effect is included.

Above is a look at the new slide-out menu in the Google Camera, and we have a neat new interface too. The settings button doesn’t give too many options, but it’s a start. The camera has been the basis of many complaints for the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 for months, and this app should be addressing most of those issues.

Thankfully Google has added plenty of options for changing the resolution size (even for panorama photos) and added a grid for those wanting more professional options. There’s likely more changes coming soon in the Android 4.4.3 KitKat update, but part of moving apps to the Play Store is so Google can improve key aspects of Android on the fly, rather than through major software updates only.

So how does this new Lens Blur feature work? Simply select the option from the slide-out menu, then once you take a photo the app actually instructs the user on how the feature works. There’s a nice built-in tutorial, but all it takes is a slight rotate upwards to help the camera capture depth of field. Google is actually snapping multiple photos here, but only one will be displayed on your device, and can easily be tweaked using the round shutter icon after your Lens Blur photo has finished processing. Below is the same photo with two very different points of focus.

AMD launches Accelerated Processing Units in India

US-based chipmaker AMD today launched new processors at price starting from Rs 2,299 in the country, a move that could help manufacturers lower prices of desktop PCs in India.

The new APUs (Accelerated Processing Unit), based on AMD's Kabini AM1 platform, promises two times quicker computing and graphics performance and 2.8 times faster gaming speeds compared to competition.

 

 "This is a mass market product. This is one of the cheapest processors in the market offering highest value. Users will get faster computing and graphics performance as well as faster gaming speeds," AMD Director of Marketing Gabe Gravning told PTI.

These processors consume lesser power than their predecessors and AMD is excited about the launch in India as this is an extremely important market, he added. The new processors also provide users access to quicker video streaming, steady videos and richer colours in pictures.

Talking about the Indian market, AMD India Director Component Business Chandrahas Panigrahi said the country still has low PC penetration rates.

"Its true that PC sales have been slowing down but the market is still under-penetrated. People still come back to desktops when it comes to content creation and we are bullish on the market here," he said. Panigrahi added that the company has seen good growth in business here on the back of strong growth in gaming devices, uptick in sales of form factors like notebooks and graphics business.

"There are factors which determine price of PCs like inflation and all, the OEM has the final call. But these new processors are aimed at the mass market. With this processor, a price like Rs 10,000 for a desktop PC is possible," Panigrahi said.

According to research firm IDC, the overall India PC shipments for 2013 stood at 11.5 million units, a year-on-year growth of 4.8 per cent over 2012. It, however, anticipates the market to decline in 2014.

AMD has seen strong growth in the government and education sector in the country. Along with these, the consumer segment, especially gaming enthusiasts, has also helped the firm grow its position in the country. India also plays an important role for AMD's research and development. Its APUs -- Kaveri and Kabini -- were developed by its India team.

Slump in automobile market claims 2 lakh jobs: SIAM

The longest period of slump in India's automobile market, with sales declining for a second straight year, has taken its toll with production cuts leading to the loss of about 2,00,000 jobs, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

"Last year was one of the most difficult periods for the auto industry," said Vikram Kirloskar, the president of SIAM, who is also the vice-chairman of Bangalorebased automaker, Toyota Kirloskar Motors. "I personally feel that across the entire value chain in the auto industry, right from raw materials to the dealerships there could be around 1.5-2 lakh job losses."

The Indian auto industry employs around 19 million direct and indirect workers. The industry is already falling behind its target on the job front as it was estimated to employ more than 25 million workers by 2016 under the 10-year Auto Mission Plan of the government. A consistent fall in demand and sales for the past two years is likely to create a huge employment gap.

Car sales in India fell for the second consecutive fiscal ended March 2014 with a 4.65% drop as the auto industry continued to struggle in a sluggish economy. Besides the decade's steepest decline in car sales, heavy trucks and buses continued its negative sales streak for the past 25 months.

The industry is not expecting an immediate turnaround, even with a cut in excise duty. According to industry sources, the biggest job losses would have occurred at the retail levels, mainly dealerships that sell all class of vehicles - from bikes to trucks. It also hit the component manufacturers hard.

Many auto companies have gone for downsizing. India's largest auto company by revenues, Tata Motors had undertaken an Early Separation Scheme last year to reduce manpower by as much as 5,000 workers across its plants at Jamshedpur, Pune and Lucknow.

More than 500 managers had left the Chennai-based Ashok Leyland as part of its voluntary retirement scheme in November 2013.

Due to declining sales for the past two years companies are enforcing regular production cuts and industry executives said that job losses in the sector are quite common.

Market leader Maruti Suzuki had closed its five plants for eight days in June last year to reduce its swelling inventory at factory and dealers while others players like Mahindra & Mahindra, General Motors, Skoda Auto also undertook plant shutdowns and retrenched their casual and temporary workers to align production with the slowing market conditions.

In a major setback to the passenger car segment Hoover India limited, which was a master franchise of Japanese carmaker Nissan, shut its office leaving hundreds of its employees jobless. Analysts tracking the sector said that the trucks and buses segment was the hardest hit.

"Auto industry is one of the key industries which contribute to growth in the employment of manufacturing sector. It is difficult to give the exact number of employment loss but it can be anywhere in the range of 1.25 to 1.5 lakh," said Abdul Majeed, Partner & Auto Expert with Price Waterhouse.

Automotive dealers, who are facing the brunt of the slowdown, have been shedding staff to keep their business viable. "The initial signs are not good. For the first time in the last fiscal the retail sales or deliveries to customers were weak and that impact our turnover and profit margins," a Maruti Suzuki dealer said.

Fix These 5 Email Marketing Missteps Right Now

The most important things are done at the last second:The email marketing train is a constant and fast-moving one. It is hard to get off at the high speed and seemingly even harder to slow it down and take in the view. Many email marketers find it very hard to change less-than-successful practices or gain momentum on new techniques and strategies. However, there is hope! Email marketers share many ailments, but the remedies may not be as painful as one would expect.

You would never choose your brand name, where your office or stores should be located, or who should run your company at the last minute, but we make most of the crucial and impactful decisions at the last moment of our campaigns. Sometimes email marketers literally think about the subject line right before pressing send, as an almost necessary evil.

Review: Nokia X

Introduction

Ever since Nokia decided to go all-in with Windows Phone, there has been a nagging feeling that it would have been better off using Android as its mobile operating system of choice.

A feeling that has got stronger as Android devices have so rapidly taken over the lion's share of smartphone sales.

At Mobile Web Congress in February 2014, Nokia finally fulfilled this dream by announcing the Nokia X range comprising the Nokia X (reviewed here), a higher specified X+ and the physically larger Nokia XL. Not just one Android phone, but a whole range.

There was more than a little irony in seeing Stephen Elop, once a Microsoft stalwart and the architect of Nokia's Windows Phone strategy announcing these new devices on stage. He went to great pains to point out that the Nokia X is a phone running AOSP, the Android Open Source Project.

This project underpins every Android phone in the world. As always in the Nokia story, it is not quite as simple as that. While the Nokia X runs Android, it does not run Google Android.

Briefly, Android as we know it is typically made of two parts; the underlying Android system and the Google apps. The underlying Android system is what the Nokia X runs along with all the usual well known Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S range and the HTC One M8.

Unlike those devices though, the Nokia X does not run Google apps. In order to run Google apps – Gmail, Maps, Calendar, Google Now etc – phones need to be certified. Nokia has not taken this step and it has done so on purpose.

The Nokia X software is based off of Android 4.1, a version released in July 2012. There is so far no information on updates but we can only hope Android 4.4 is planned as that version is designed to run on lower end hardware.

Nokia has designed the X to use the equivalent services from itself and from Microsoft, and Nokia has provided an API for everything that Google provides meaning that developers should be able to port apps quite easily.

This makes the Nokia X an Android phone by name, but one that would perhaps be unfamiliar to those already used to running Android on other mainstream devices. If you are thinking of switching to the Nokia X from another Android device, it is most important to note that the Play Store is not available.

It is possible to side-load any legally obtainable apps including other app stores such as the Amazon app store, but even that wont bring Google services to the Nokia X.

Who would have imagined a Microsoft product running Android? It does seem like an anomaly. I guess that sales figures will be a big factor in the decision making for them, but this is far more a Nokia phone than a Microsoft phone.

Moving on from this mixed outlook, what do you get on the Nokia X? The standout software included are Nokia HERE Maps, a fantastic alternative to Google apps, and Nokia MixRadio which is a great way to stream your favorite music on demand.

Instead of the Play Store you will find the Nokia Store, which is already starting to fill out with many top apps. Nokia include Facebook and Twitter apps along with BlackBerry Messenger as standard. Various simple games are loaded on the X as well. All these apps run on a heavily customised version of Android 4.1.

Powering the Nokia X is a dual-core Snapdragon S4 Play processor running at 1GHz with 512Mb of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, which can be supplemented by a microSD card. The X has a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) LCD display and a fixed focus 3MP camera on the back. There's no front facing shooter.

These are very modest specs indeed and that does end up informing the whole experience of using the Nokia X.

What makes up for that is the price, the range starts at just €89 (around £75, $120, AU$135). This is a phone targeted at emerging markets, at people who are buying their first smartphone and perhaps their first phone. Some buyers of the Nokia X will have never bought any sort of computing device before.

Nokia is bringing the X range to Europe, including the UK, but it has been clearly designed to replace the top end of Nokia's Asha range of phones. The Asha range is filled with very nicely designed but slow and simple feature phones, which have very limited capabilities.

The Nokia X is a decent step up from an Asha device and has the potential to do a lot more. Here in the UK, other reasonable smartphones are available for a similar price as the X but in its first market, India, this is not the case. Phones at a similar price point suffer from extremely bad design and build quality and very poor performance.

Despite the meager specifications and just a 1500mAh battery, the Nokia X provides a reasonable upgrade for users in these emerging markets who are upgrading from either feature phones or locally produced budget handsets which simply will not have Nokia's level of design and build.

When you pull the rear shell off the Nokia X model it is possible to see another indicator as to the target markets for this new range. The Nokia X is a dual SIM device.

In many other markets, the best value for cellular connectivity is achieved by separating your contracts for voice usage and data usage, which mandates two SIM cards. It's like running your calls through Vodafone and your data through T-Mobile.

On the X, the dual SIM setup supports dual standby that means both SIM cards can be active at the same time. Only slot one supports 3G connections, so that is where you will want to put your data SIM. Both slots are of the micro SIM variety. There is no 4G in sight here, but that is hardly a surprise.

The X range comes in a lovely range of colours with the basic X is available in black, white, cyan, yellow, bright red and the bright green, which is especially striking. The slightly higher spec X+ shares the same palette while the larger XL swaps the red for an even nicer orange colour.

Nokia has done what Nokia always seems to do at the budget end of its range. It has designed and built a phone that looks and feels more expensive than it is, something Nokia do not get enough plaudits for.

Design

If you buy a bright green Nokia X the colour is all you can see at first. It is incredibly bright. As soon as you start to handle the phone though, the other thing to note is how solid it feels and how well it is built.

Nokia has long been the master of plastic and it continues to use the material in a way that most other manufacturers can only dream of. The plastics on the X are reasonably hard but not at all scratchy, having an almost soft feel. The edges and angles are sharp but in a positive way, they never dig in.

All of the port cutouts including the speaker on the back of the Nokia X have soft edges, which adds to the quality feel.

It is a somewhat square device but sits very comfortably in the hand and all the controls are within easy reach. The size of the phone is well judged and it is easy to hit all four corners of the screen without stretching.

It is not the most svelte device on the market but then you should not expect it to be at its price. The thickness is not a hindrance though and the Nokia X never feels bulky.

There are gentle curves leading to the edges of the back of the Nokia X that seem to serve two purposes. Firstly they make the phone feel less bulky than it really is, and secondly these curves help the shape be more natural to hold.

Nokia has a history of designing phones extremely well and it has got the ergonomics absolutely spot on with the X.

If you have used Android devices before, one big change that is immediately noticeable in the design of the X is that there is only one button on the front.

Most Android devices either have three buttons – task switch, home and back – or use on-screen buttons.

The Nokia X has a completely reworked interface though and just like the Nokia Asha range, there is just one button and it is clearly a back button.

If you choose the Nokia X in one of its brighter colours, or even in white, it is a handsome enough looking phone that will be hard to lose.

Choose it in black though and it becomes somewhat anonymous and boring. I would recommend being bold and picking a nice, fun bright colour.

The back of the phone is especially striking as the subtle Nokia logo, camera and speaker cutout just let the colour zing.

Talking of the camera it may have very basic specifications, but at least there is no unsightly camera hump, allowing the back to be completely even and smooth.

You will also notice there is no flash. Beyond the issue of taking photos in dark environments, it does allow for a cleaner finish to the design.

The coloured part of the phone is just a shell in which the actual electronics sit, so I would expect you could swap the coloured shells if you would like. I quite fancy green for the day and perhaps a nice clean white for smarter occasions.

The main disappointment here is the screen, which is fairly low resolution and a very basic display. It is usable but it really needs to be able to go much brighter, especially for outdoor use. Touch responsiveness is fine, but it only supports two simultaneous touch points, which can be an issue for rapid typing.

Ultimately though this is a well designed phone that looks and feels great.

Key features

Android, but not as we know it.

The Nokia X software is based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but is heavily customised by Nokia and does not include Google services.

It instead replaces them with Microsoft services or in some cases, Nokia's own services. It is those services that Nokia want us to focus on.

Strangely though, none of these replacement services are pushed on the user. Setting the phone up from new gives you a brief tutorial of the very basics of the user interface and that is it.

Nokia said that the aim with the X range was to be able to get first time smartphone users onto the Microsoft platform through a Microsoft account, but never once are you prompted to create one and the only Microsoft product pre-installed on the Nokia X is Skype.

Even more strangely, Blackberry Messenger is also installed out of the box, so Skype doesn't even have messaging exclusivity.

It is just as easy to open the mail app and connect to your Google account as it is to any other email system.

With the Nokia X being based on Android the mail app is the standard one that comes with most Android devices, albeit heavily skinned and restyled.

Nokia has provided some of its flagship services on the X including HERE Maps which are fantastic and allow you to download maps for offline usage. It works well, is reasonably fast and the GPS is as accurate as you would expect.

MixRadio is another great service allowing you to stream music or download mixes for offline playback. It is free with some minor limitations and is a great addition at this price point. The fact the speaker is loud is nice though it is very basic in every other sense.

The Glance screen, which shows the time and notifications when the phone is locked in a low power state, makes an appearance on the X as does the ability to double tap to wake the screen. Both of these features are brought over from Nokia's Lumia range of devices and are very welcome here.

The real selling point of the Nokia X though is the quality of the hardware given its price. It has a usable camera on-board and is a well-crafted device available at a lower price point than most smartphones. As a cheap entry point to smartphone ownership, it is a good option.

Interface and performance

Nokia has its feature phone range, Asha, which has a particular user interface. It also has its flagship Lumia range that runs Windows Phone. The software on the Nokia X has clearly been designed to sit somewhere in-between the two.

Unfortunately it does so a little uncomfortably, and the problem is that the glue holding it together is Android.

However hard it has tried, Nokia simply cannot hide the fact that Android is running underneath its unique customisations.

Anyone familiar with Android will recognise the notifications pull down, the settings menu, the mail app and the messaging application used for text messages.

The Asha range is designed to be extremely simple to use above all else and Nokia has brought over its most important feature, the Fastlane, to the X.

You can access Fastlane by swiping to the left or right from the home screen and it will show a timeline of all recent activities including notifications. There is also a button to share directly to your preferred social network and you can pull down on the Fastlane to access the alarm clock settings.

This extremely simple way of showing information is very useful and does genuinely make the device easier to use.

The home screen comes straight out of the Windows Phone playbook with a slightly simplified take on Windows Phone live tiles which are application shortcuts that can also show useful information and notifications.

Just like on Windows Phone, the layout of these tiles can be customised and all apps you install have a shortcut created at the bottom of the home screen by default.

There is a limited set of widgets that can also be added to the home screen, but apps can install more widgets just like on normal Android. And so the home screen becomes a mix of widgets and app shortcuts, some of which can also show more information.

Having a mix of apps and widgets on the home screen is ok if a little confusing at times – there is no other way of accessing application shortcuts. The way that newly installed apps fall to the bottom of the vertically scrolling list can be confusing.

An Android based device will generally have more than one physical control button, but the Nokia X only has one, a back key. You can long press it to go home, but there is no equivalent to a menu or task-switching button on the Nokia X.

However, Nokia gives no indication that holding the back button will take you to the home screen and this initially confused me as I pressed back multiple times to exit applications, a long and boring task

Menus are shown at the bottom of the screen when they are needed in a little tray that you pull up to display, not unlike Windows Phone.

Notifications are handled quite differently to Android. They are shown in a coloured bar at the top of the screen and then disappear after about five seconds.

Tapping on a notification does nothing, which is also rather odd. Having received a new notification, you have to remember which app it came from, then head back to the home screen and find the relevant app.

The lock screen will show your most recent activity from Fastlane but there are options to hide potentially sensitive information. Swiping right or left takes you to the home screen or whatever app was last open.

Included on the Nokia X is a custom-built web browser that works reasonably well. In another move that seems to go against the idea of pushing Microsoft services, you can customise which search engine is used extremely easy. Another opportunity to push Microsoft services, in this case Bing, missed.

The keyboard included on the X is workable and comes with a decent enough correction engine. Luckily SwiftKey is available in the Nokia Store and comes highly recommended. It is also quite a bit faster.

Whilst the UI can be a bit confusing, it still remains simpler to get to grips with than vanilla Android as there are fewer concepts to learn. The real issue here is with performance and frankly it is poor.

Geekbench 3 is not available for the Nokia X. Indeed most benchmarking apps cannot be installed and so we are left with in browser tests.

SunSpider is one of the better examples of this, where the Nokia X takes 2634 milliseconds to complete the series of tests. Even the cheapest Nokia Windows Phone – the Lumia 520 – completes the test significantly faster in around 1470 milliseconds. When it comes to SunSpider, faster is always better.

This benchmark shortcoming is only the start of a disappointing story where performance is concerned. The Nokia X always feels slow, always feels at least two steps behind whatever you are trying to do and never inspires confidence that it will just get the job done when you are in a hurry.

It is fair to say that the Nokia X simply does not like to be hurried. Apps open slowly and interactions take some time. It can be a frustrating experience.

The worst culprits when it comes to performance are the Nokia home screen and the keyboard. If you install SwiftKey from the Nokia Store to replace the included keyboard, the typing becomes a far more pleasurable experience.

Installing a replacement home screen such as Apex, which is available as a free download from the software vendor's website, is just as refreshing an experience. Apex runs much more smoothly and also gives you back the familiar Android home screen feel.

Using the Nokia X for email, messaging and as a web browser is fine but also a little slow. The email app does work reasonably well though and the web browser is not at all cumbersome. The phone dialer is fairly quick to respond by the standards being set here.

I was left with a feeling that Nokia just cut the specs of the X a little too cheaply, but then again the price is very low. I still have to question whether this low cost is low enough to warrant this level of performance.

All Windows Phone devices, even the cheapest, perform significantly better than the Nokia X and even some similarly priced Android phones will be less frustrating overall. On the other hand, the best Asha phone will be as slow but do a lot less than the Nokia X is capable of.

Battery life and the essentials

Battery life

At just 1500mAh the battery inside the Nokia X is fairly small. It still packs more juice in than an equivalent Nokia Asha phone, and just a few percent more than Nokia's Lumia 520, the cheapest Windows Phone Nokia make.

Its overall battery performance was adequate and when the Nokia X is idling its battery drain is very low.

Once the screen is on and the phone has to do any work, its humble internals have to be ramped up to full power to achieve results, leading to pretty high drain.

Our standard NyanGareth battery test, which loops a video for 90 minutes at standard screen brightness, drained a fully charged battery down to 64%, which is a fairly poor result.

The test was run at full screen brightness that registered only 260 lux. We normally run the test at a higher screen brightness.

One oddity I found with this particular Nokia X was that the battery meter appeared to report inaccurately. When the phone said it had half the capacity remaining, it was more like a third, which puts a dampener on the previously mentioned result.

In day-to-day use, the Nokia X would get me through a day but then I was less inclined to actually use it than I would many other phones that offer a better experience.

One of the interesting features on the X is its dual SIM capability, but this will always have an impact on battery life. All my previous results and comments were based on using just one SIM in the phone in general.

I put a second SIM in the Nokia X for a few days to see how it would respond. Nokia has obviously put a lot of effort into optimising its antennae setup with the X as it performs fantastically under these circumstances with almost no additional drain.

There are no special power-saving modes on the X, so getting the most out of a full charge is entirely down to you. If you use the phone heavily, be prepared to regularly charge the Nokia X.

The essentials

With a dual SIM device, the first choice that needs making when you want to make calls and send text messages is which SIM to use. On the Nokia X, there is a special menu for choosing this or you can set the phone to ask you each time you make a call or send a text.

The selected SIM card is shown with its signal meter in blue while the other indicator remains white.

The dialer is extremely basic with no searching for contacts as you enter numbers on the keypad. You do have quick access to your contacts from the dialer though, so it is quite easy to use.

Call quality is good in all conditions. Quality can be a bit patchy, but in general there will be no complaints. Signal strength remained high at all times showing how much work Nokia have put into the antennae design of the X.

People on the other end of a call were happy with how well my voice came through and had no cause for complaint. There does not appear to be a secondary mic on the Nokia X, so noisy environments might be an issue, but I found it to work well all the time.

The speakerphone is very loud and clear enough to make a call. I did have to raise my voice a little for others to be able to hear me, but it was never a big problem.

Messaging works well and the app looks very similar to the standard Android messaging app. The keyboard however does get in the way somewhat. It has a reasonable prediction engine and correcting typos is easy enough, but the problem is its performance.

By default, the key press sounds are enabled on the keyboard and this highlights how slowly the Nokia X responds to touches. The little sound that accompanies typing is always a little behind what you are actually doing.

The keyboard supports input by swiping over letters rather than having to tap on each letter individually, but it struggles to distinguish between the two input methods. In general, installing SwiftKey for free from the Nokia Store is recommended. It is much faster and less frustrating to use.

For data, you get to choose which SIM card slot to use though only one slot supports 3G. The Data speeds aren't great on paper, but the Nokia X has such good signal strength that in reality it works very well, pulling information in as quickly as it is able to process that data.

There are a few games pre-installed on the Nokia X including Fruit Ninja and Bejeweled 2. These are not taxing and run really well.

The touch screen is not the most responsive unit I have used, but it is good enough for this level of gaming. Anything more taxing is a real issue for the Nokia X and its basic hardware.

The Nokia Store is where you will primarily get your apps from and it has a better stock of titles than I expected. Although it is still lacking overall I am sure it will fill up quite quickly, as Nokia has provided migration tools for existing Play Store apps and say that around 70% of apps run without modification.

Apps are organised into categories and there is a search facility, although I found that highly temperamental, often returning incorrect results.

No account is necessary to download free apps, you can just browse and install at will which makes a nice change from being forced to open new accounts as many platforms insist.

Camera and media

Camera

As with any phone at this price point the Nokia X has a very basic camera, which is understable. It is 3MP fixed focus camera with no special modes and it doesn't have a HDR mode. But it is not completely unworthy.

The interface is very simple with a capture button, a zoom slider white balance and exposure controls. There is no touch to focus control, as it is a fixed focus camera. You also cannot lock the auto exposure to a particular point in the frame either.

Switching to video recording or the panorama shot mode is very simple with just a touch of the camera icon in the bottom corner.

Panoramas are captured automatically; you just start the recording and move the phone through 360 degrees. It will tell you on screen if you are moving too quickly. The end results are fairly poor though.

The maximum video resolution is just 854 x 480 but the Nokia X actually does a pretty good job. As it cannot adjust focus, video is very stable and it puts more expensive handsets to shame. If only the capturing resolution was a bit higher.

Videos can be saved in various formats as well which is a nice touch and MPEG4 is included, making sharing easy.

When taking pictures, you can set the ISO manually, tweak the saturation, contrast and sharpness. Images are captured at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 which is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Generally image quality is low, but it will be ok for sharing to a social network.

There is no front facing camera and there is no flash on the back, so all we have is the basic rear shooter.

Click here for the full res image.

Click here for the full res image.

Click here for the full res image.

Click here for the full res image.

Media

With its support for microSD cards plenty of music and videos can be easily stored on the Nokia X. Playing them back involves using some very basic but functional built in apps.

The music player organises your music by artist, album or song and has a nice now playing screen, which shows album art too.

The artwork and basic controls are also shown on the lock screen, which looks great though you lose the large clock to make room for this information.

There is a simple five band equaliser and a bass boost and 3D effect slider to adjust how things sound.

The problem is that sound output through headphones is of average quality at best and using the equaliser and other effects leads to distortion more than anything. I found using these effects to be a big battery drain as well and just not worth the trouble.

The Nokia X has no video player as such, but browsing to a video file using the pre-installed Astro file manager app will open a video player with scrubbing controls and not much else. Video playback works absolutely fine with the standard set of Android formats supported.

There are no options for purchasing media of any type installed on the Nokia X, but Nokia MixRadio is provided which allows for free streaming of music. You can only skip six tracks per hour though.

There doesn't appear to be an option to purchase MixRadio+, which gives unlimited track skipping, and unlimited offline mixes, but at least there is some option on there. The MixRadio music selection is very wide and the app works very well indeed.

With a small and relatively low-resolution screen combined with a poor internal specifications, gaming is not the Nokia X's forte. Simple games like Angry Birds play well enough but anything heavier causes frame rates to drop.

The competition

With Nokia pitching the X at the budget end of the market, there are plenty of alternatives, but which are the best?

Nokia Asha 503

Nokia have another budget offering in the Asha 503. The 503 can be found for very competitive prices on Pay As You Go with O2 selling it for just £39.99, and other offers are available if you shop around.

For your money, you are getting the pinnacle of the Asha line-up but this is not a fully featured smartphone. The Asha range devices are defined as feature phones. Despite that, it has a higher resolution camera than the X, includes a flash and has good battery life.

The Asha 503 has a unique and interesting design with a clear plastic shell around the coloured phone, it looks great and come in a wide range of colours.

On the downside, it is a little slow and has a very small screen at just 3 inches with a low resolution that makes it hard to use at times. The interface is not very advanced and the range of apps less interesting than the potential for the X.

If you are buying on Pay As You Go (PAYG) and your budget is extremely tight, the 503 is a decent offering, but the X is a much better prospect over time and is a full smart phone platform.

• Nokia Asha 503 review

Nokia Lumia 520

Completing the triumvirate of Nokia platforms, the Lumia 520 is a viable offering at the budget end of the market,

In every mentionable way, the Lumia 520 beats the X. It has a much better screen and the processor in the 520 is significantly faster. The software it runs also makes much better use of the available power.

The 520 has a far more powerful camera and at 5MP, it packs in much more detail in your shots. It supports HD video recording as well.

There is more internal storage on the Lumia 520 too and with the same support for microSD cards, you are not missing out in any way.

The Lumia 520 runs Windows Phone, which is a lovely and very powerful smartphone platform, but lacks in the app department compared to Android. Of course, the Nokia X doesn't run Android, but it has the potential to run all those Android apps.

Price is the biggest issue, but still it comes in at under £100 SIM free, plus it's possible to find the 520 even cheaper on PAYG.

• Nokia Lumia 520 review

Motorola Moto G

Undoubtedly the most exciting Android phone in the price range is the Moto G.

Motorola managed to pack in a HD screen, a fast processor, a big battery and decent build quality into a device starting at just £99 on PAYG. It runs the latest version of Android and has some good Motorola build software enhancements.

The camera on the Moto G is reasonable and certainly a match for the Lumia 520.

The Moto G runs full Google Android with access to the hundreds of thousands of apps on the Google Play store and the full range of Google's movies and music offerings.

Compared to the Nokia X the Moto G is a far more accomplished offering. But it is more expensive and does not have expandable storage, so at the cheapest end of the range you have to make do with just 8GB of storage, which is very limited.

• Motorola Moto G review

Verdict

What Nokia has brought to the table here is a phone that has fantastic design, great build quality and materials that belie its budget price. There are phones costing five times as much that feel half as good.

The launch pricing of the X in its first markets is €89 and official UK pricing is unknown. But most phones will not sell at their recommended retail price for long. If the Nokia X can be bought for anywhere close to £50 on Pay As You Go, then it will be a good bargain and can be recommended.

Nokia makes a much better smartphone in the guise of the Lumia 520, if your budget can stretch that far, so while the Nokia X has a place in the market its pricing is crucial.

We liked

The Nokia X looks like a much more expensive phone, especially in one of the brighter colour choices.

Fastlane is a useful and intuitive addition to the software that helps you find your way around, especially if this is your first smartphone. Dual SIM and very strong reception leads to a good basic phone experience.

Glance Screen puts the time and some notification information on your screen without it being fully powered on, a premium feature on a budget smartphone.

We disliked

The screen does not go bright enough and with only two touch points, it can be tricky to see and use.

The standard home screen is slow and clunky to manipulate. Alternative home screen launchers offer a much better experience and Nokia should have done better.

Battery life can be very weak when using the phone, it drains alarmingly quickly when browsing and using apps in general. The keyboard on the Nokia X is slow and hard to type on.

Final verdict

To put it simply, the Nokia X is very far from the best smartphone out there. It runs on an outdated version of Android with a slow and clunky, albeit quite attractive Nokia made interface on top. The camera is extremely basic and its battery endurance leaves a little to be desired.

The future remains very uncertain for the Nokia X and it is yet to be seen as to whether Microsoft will continue the venture when its buyout of Nokia is complete. Even if it does, will the X ever get updated to a newer version of Android as its base? That would definitely help smooth out some of the performance issues.

Even with these doubts, at the right price, the Nokia X is a decent smartphone and can be recommended. I can't help but feel that had Nokia put Google Android instead of its own flavour on the X then it would be an even better phone.