MOTOROLA DEFY - FEATURES

Android 2.1, 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen 5MP camera with LED flash, Wi-Fi, GPS, FM 800Mhz processor, 512MB RAM, 118 grams PROs Rugged yet beautiful, fast operation CONs Runs Android 2.1, average camera quality,Price:18,990

MENTION THE WORD ’RUGGED’ AND the first thing that comes to most people's minds is something that is incredibly tough but not very pretty. So when we heard of the Motorola Defy, a ‘durable Android phone’, we expected to see something that matched Arnold Schwarzenegger in strength, bulk and appearance.

To say that we were surprised is an understatement. The Motorola Defy looks more than presentable. At 13.4 mm, it is not pencil thin, but neither is it bulky — in fact, it is less wide and shorter than the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Mozart, even though it packs in a 3.7-inch display. The front has a Gorilla Glass scratch-proof screen and four soft touch keys (menu, home, back, search) below it. It is only when you turn the device over and inspect its sides that the ‘tough’ element comes to the fore with the tightly covered mini-USB port, the metallic screws that hold the two sides of the phone together as well as the airtight backcover lock. All in all, it is very comfortable to hold and at around 117 grams, not too heavy either.

It packs in some very good specs too. At 800 MHz, it has the fastest processor on a Motorola phone in India, and its display has the same resolution as the famous Milestone — 480 x 854. It has 512 MB RAM, a 5.0-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash and comes with a 2GB memory card. The one sour note is that in spite of these impressive innards, it runs Android 2.1 rather than 2.2. Motorola has attempted to redeem things to an extent by providing a software to create a 3G hotspot. However, those accustomed to Android 2.2's zippy interface and the option to save applications to expansion cards will be disappointed.

That apart, there is little to fault in the Defy. It works very briskly and features Android's typical icon and widget driven interface with excellent web browsing and social networking connectivity, with Motorola adding some resizable widgets for calendars, contacts and messaging for good measure. The battery was a pleasant surprise, lasting comfortably for a day, even with push mail and Facebook updates turned on. We were not too impressed with the camera which threw up relatively dull images, but the presence of Kodak Perfect Touch allowed us to improve pictures with just a touch. And of course, there is the famous toughness — our favourite trick over the past few days has been to walk over to a friend, and casually drop the Defy into their glass of water with an ‘oops!’, wait for them to stop shrieking, fish it out and start using it calmly.

Beauty, brains, brawn — this is one phone that has it all. And at Rs 18,990 we think it is a terrific deal not just for those who are not known to be gentle with their devices, but for anyone looking for a smartphone with very good build quality.


Q1>I have Sony DSC-H10 digital camera. It does not zoom while recording a video. What is the solution? Can I buy an additional zoom lens?
Unfortunately, certain digital cameras do not offer optical zoom while shooting video. This is intentionally done, because of several reasons:

1 - The microphone in the camera may be very close to the lens.
2 - The zoom motor in the lens may be very loud (and therefore, highly audible).
3 - Sound created by the zoom motor while recording will most likely overpower the ambient sound or your subjects voice in a video. There are some teleconverter lenses that can attach to the front of the camera — and these will change the overall focal length — but you still cannot zoom while recording a video.

Q2>I would like to print 20 or 25 photographs on a single sheet using a standard printer. In Windows 7, there is an option to print multiple photographs — but it only has options for 4, 9 or 35 photographs on a page. They all have to be the same size too. How can I get the freedom to arrange and resize photographs while printing?

With Windows 7 — you are restricted to those 4, 9 or 35 pre-set options. The best way to print multiple photos on a single A4 page would be to use an image editing program (or page layout software) like Adobe Photoshop, Pagemaker, InDesign or Quark Express — then you can set the number of images, resize them all individually and then print. If you want a free program that can handle the same, you can get the Pos Multiple Image Printing Wizard from www.photopos.com. This will get the job done faster, but it does not give complete freedom with layout. Even the reverse is possible; you can print a large poster by splitting up a photograph into various smaller parts, each of which can be printed on a single A4 sheet. This can be done with the help of a free software called Posteriza (www.posteriza.com). The program can automatically split up an image into a size of your choosing. Then you just print and assemble the various sheets to get your poster.