Evolve or perish. That’s the message traditional watch brands are getting with the slow rise of smart wearables, and the JUXT is a perfect example of how a brand like Titan is res-ponding. Instead of going the whole nine yards and packing in a power-hungry screen, Titan has worked with HP to take a traditional wristwatch and kit it with a small display on the watch dial. Titan sure can make a good wristwatch, but can it make one with smarts? I wear one for a week to find out.

As a watch, the JUXT is an elegant timepiece — I was wearing the stainless steel base variant with a leather wrist band, though there are options in rose gold and titanium as well. It works both with casual and formal wear, but isn’t quite the head-turner in the way an Apple watch is. It’s a bit too large for smaller wrists, and the extra bulk can get uncomfortable over extended use  — no, it isn’t for the ladies by any yardstick.

The tiny OLED display connects to your phone via an iOS/Android app and notifies you for incoming calls, messages, emails and social media, apart from showing your step count and world time in five cities of your choosing. Unlike other smartwatches, you cannot respond to the notifications, say via a quick message, though you can reject an incoming call. It aligns perfectly with the overall ideology of the JUXT, but, as a smartwatch, it feels a gene-ration behind.

The flip side is five-day battery life, which is manna from heaven for folks who don’t want one more device to charge every day. The pedometer isn’t the most accurate, but isn’t off by enough to be a bother. Overall, the JUXT is a mature first attempt aimed squarely at folks who want to dip their toes into smart waters without letting go of what a watch should look like — but there’s room for lots of improvement.
♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 15,995
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-TitanJUXT

Packing a punch

Xiaomi’s Redmi series have been the brand’s crowd-puller, packing in a bevy of features and a modicum of design at a super attractive price point. Even so, the Redmi Note 3 is a big leap forward for the Redmi range, with a vastly improved processor in a brand new design. For the price, you get a metal-clad body that feels far more premium than the competition (and some pricier Xiaomis themselves). And you get a carefully considered sense of design rare in its price class.

In fact, it’s surprisingly handy for a phone with a 5.5in display, but what I found to be truly spectacular was the fact that Xiaomi managed to pack in a massive 4,050mAh battery in a phone this petite. And my word, does this battery last! With heavy levels of use across Twitter, Whatsapp, email and gaming, the Note 3 managed to go well into the 1.5-day territory, a figure that can easily stretch to two days if you’re not as punishing on the device as I am. It’s the first pocketable device in a long time that you can take out on really long days and not have to worry about carrying a power bank. Truly one for the road warriors, this.

Look past the stupendous battery life and the phone continues to impress on a number of counts — it’s the first device to launch with Snapdragon 650, and the new chip from Qualcomm impresses on its first outing with comparable performance to last year’s flagship devices without any of the dreaded heating issues.

MIUI 7 hums along happily on the 3GB memory as do games and everyday tasks, and it’s good to note that the phone hasn’t made any discernible performance compromises to achieve that battery life. There’s a responsive fingerprint sensor around the rear, which not only unlocks the device and lets you take selfies, but also enables handy stuff like hidden folders, child modes with specific apps and the ability to lock apps so that only you can access specific apps even if the phone is with a snoopy friend. The display is good, if a tad oversaturated.

The only downer, if any, is the 16MP camera on the Note 3 — it focuses fast and colours were accurate, but images lack in details and are particularly noisy in low light conditions. Bit of a bummer really since the Note 3 is a phenomenal device on pretty much every other count, more so if you consider the price.
♦ Rating: 8/10
♦ Price: Rs 9,999 (2GB/16GB), Rs 11,999 (3GB/32GB)
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-RedmiNote3

Handbag power

Ladies, if poor iPhone battery life is your nemesis, you could do well to consider the Everpurse. Place the bag on top of the special mat to charge the batteries overnight and you’re ready to go out sans heavy power banks and wires. The iPhone slides in into the Everpurse’s charging SmartPocket which is lined with smart tech that perfectly guides your phone to an Apple lightning connector. An invisible yet stylish solution, isn’t it?
♦ Price: Starts at $198
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-Everpurse

technocool@kanwar.net; follow me on twitter @2shar