October 2015 – Vasanth Velumani

The entry-level segment has always been tough to crack in India and MSIL has been the leader since time immemorial – starting with the SS80, popularly known as the Maruti 800 all over India. It was so popular that up until early 2000s, these were probably among the only cars plying around the country. MSIL did capitalize on this successful product with constant upgrades throughout though.

The major upgrade came in the form of an all new design, the Alto which proved to be a worthy successor to an already successful product. Alto soon became the #1 selling car in the country, which is quite surprising if you ask me – the car was bare-bones minimal yet was racking up close to 20k a month, anyway – the only other closest competitor, the Hyundai Eon which I found to be a much better car to drive.

Maybe, there wasn’t real competition up until now.

New kid on the block:

Renault KWID is not here to kid!

*SUV like 180mm ground clearance (segment first)

*Butchy looks (segment first)

*Touchscreen (segment first)

AFAIK, it’s a rather toned-down version of the popular Renault Duster which was an instant hit with the crowd – right product, right time kind. MSIL must be facing the heat now!

Could Kwid be another Duster for Renault?

Only time will tell!

1 Oct 2015

This one is long due.

After a month long wait scrounging for invites, I finally got hold of the One Plus Two, which means my good ol’ Moto G that served me for more than 18 months is just lying there craving for attention. Thankfully, I work in the mobile space and I’d be using the phone for testing from here on but that isn’t the reason I am writing this note.

Moto G was and always will be one of the nicest budget android smartphones ever made!

With a near-perfect 4.5 inch 720p display that is good to use with a single hand, a minimalistic design, and a solid build, this was clearly a popular choice back in 2014 and I couldn’t help overlooking these facts either with the budget constraints I had then and the thought that a second Motorola wouldn’t be that bad (my first phone was a Motorola L7e).

I must say that the 1.2 GHz Quad Core took quite a bit of abuse and still never gave up once, if only it had 2 gigs of RAM, it would have been a whole different experience altogether and the G would still have served as my primary phone, possibly for another year.

Nevertheless, Moto G is one heck of a phone and was always a great VFM. It came with some clean pre-installed apps like the Gallery and I do miss that on the OP2.

Thank you, Motorola.

P.S.

Looking to buy an Android Smartphone?

RAM, Internal Memory is a priority with all that bloat on Android.

I mean, nobody likes to use a phone that is slow 😉