Take a Tech-check

From portable speakers to an application that lets you track your smart phone addiction levels, City Express gives you a round up of all things techy

JBL Go launches in India

The JBL GO wireless portable Bluetooth speaker is now available in India, exclusively on Snapdeal. Though the speaker carries an MRP of `2,999, it is now available for an introductory discounted price of `1,999.

The palm sized (82.50 x 29.95 x 67.91 mm) JBL GO sports a square, box-like design. It comes integrated with buttons for power, Bluetooth, volume and call answering along with a mic. It also features an inbuilt mic apart from echo and noise-cancellation technology.

The device is backed by a 600 mAh battery that promises up to five hours of audio playback. Snapdeal is currently selling the black variant, there is no word on whether the other colour options - black, red, orange, pink, grey, blue, yellow and teal - will be made available in India. If you buy the device via Snapdeal’s mobile app, you can also take home two months of Hungama Pro subscription free.

Another mid-range phone launched by Samsung

Samsung has launched the Galaxy A7, its premium mid-range offering in India, at `30,499. Unveiled last month, the Samsung Galaxy A7 flaunts a large,5.5-inch full-HD (1,080 x 1,920 p) Super-AMOLED display and features a metal frame. Measuring just 6.3 mm in thickness, the A7 is also Samsung’s slimmest offering to date. Powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octacore processor and 2 GB RAM, the smartphone comes with 16 GB internal storage, expandable up to 64 GB via microSD card. The phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI skin on top. It’s powered by a 2600 mAh battery. The rear camera comes with 13 MP resolution with LED flash and a 5 MP front camera.

In terms of connectivity, the dual-sim smartphone supports 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, NFC and GPS. The launch comes a month after Samsung announced the metal-bodied Galaxy A3 and A5 midrange smartphones, to India.

An app to track your smart-phone addiction levels

Terrified of the amount of time you’ve been spending on your smartphone lately? Afraid you can’t live without checking your Facebook account 10 times a day? Does your life shut down when you don’t have your smartphone on you? Here’s an all new app that will let you track exactly how much time you spend on each app on your smart phone and lets you control it as well. Dubbed Instant - Quantified Self, this app is a life-logging tool that helps you automatically track stuff like the daily usage of your device/app.

The app also allows you to set daily limits, and has a notification feature that reminds you when you’re close to hitting that limit. There have been apps like Checky that allowed you to see how many times you’ve unlocked your phone, but Instant is trying to be the one-stop destination for tracking a host of device metrics. The app also comes with a fitness tracking feature, which integrates with Google Fit to track your daily activity time that includes walking and travelling. Instant - Quantified Self is now available to download for Android phones and tablets on the Google  Play Store, and it comes free of cost.

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The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com