Smartbuy issue dated December 8, 2010

Smartbuy Business Line

G A D G E T S |

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

A U T O |

L U X U R Y

www.blsmartbuy.com

Tablet special Our iPad gets 3 test companions

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Luxury road travel Maruti hybrids

Team Smartbuy Editorial Anushya Mamtora anushya@thehindu.co.in

Ketaki Bhojnagarwala ketaki@thehindu.co.in

Mahananda Bohidar mahananda@thehindu.co.in

S. Muralidhar muraliswami@thehindu.co.in

Design Bryan Gaughan aqua@thehindu.co.in

Balakrishnan designkbala@thehindu.co.in

Advertising Contact R. Diwakar ramdiwakar@thehindu.co.in

Web Advertising Contact N. Amarnath amarnath@thehindu.co.in

www.blsmartbuy.com Become a fan of our Facebook page: BL Smartbuy Follow us on Twitter

Cover photo: S.S. Kumar

Photo courtesy: T3 India

Pop the pill, lappy!

There is no better example of the unbelievably fast-paced world of technology than the developments of the last nine months. In almost as much time as Lindsay Lohan spent in rehab, the world of mobile computing has gone from ‘laptop’ to ‘handheld’.

The claims and questions that flew thick and fast about whether there is a future for the tablet have died down. It is now an undisputed fact that tablets will be the fastest growing segment of the mobile computing market in the years to come.

We got our hands on to three of the most promising tablets of today that will attempt to challenge the might of the segment benchmark – Apple iPad. These detailed reviews will answer your every question about the tablets. The trio includes an All-Indian attempt too.

Dell Streak: Blurring the lines Mahananda Bohidar t is said that Apple conceived the iPad first, before it put the tablet on hold and went ahead instead with the development of the iPhone. Of course, the iPad came back and Apple launched it at the most opportune time. Dell’s position as a PC maker trying its hand at a tablet was similar before it chose to tread a different path with the Streak.

This device definitely looks like an oversized handset; but dimensions apart, has Dell stretched its imagination far enough for the Streak to deliver as a tablet? Let’s find out.

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Form factor At 220 grams, the Streak is comparatively easy to carry around. Corning Inc.’s Gorilla Glass display does a lot of good for the Streak’s display. Despite it being glossy and the clichéd fingerprint-magnet , it scored points for being truly resistant to scratches and dust.

Needless to say, videos on the Streak played quite impressively, with little pixilation or lags. But although the company states that .wmv files are supported by the media player (apart from H.263/H.264, .3GP, MPEG4), most video files that we had transferred wouldn’t play. An Android app RockPlayer thankfully came to the rescue and decoded most files that the Streak’s native player refused to open. This did look like it was an OS related problem.The stereo speakers on the little device also turned out to be good enough for a medium-sized room with a couple of people chatting away.

The 5-megger on the Streak surprised us with its brilliant, sharp results. Nestled in the back panel, the camera offers a bouquet of customisations.

Interface When we first received the handset, it was running the old Android 1.6 OS but the firmware upgrade to Froyo landed just in time for us to up the Streak experience.

Let’s start with the revamped interface. The old OS presented us with five customisable home screens whereas the Froyo update threw up the swanky Dell Stage UI. Of the seven home screens offered, five screens are preconfigured as E-mail, Contacts, Home (which shows a matrix of recent apps), Social (Facebook and Twitter activity) and Music. This did away with the need to manually create shortcuts on the home screens of apps and widgets that we used frequently.

On the older OS, a simple touch brings down the notification list from which you can conveniently tweak connectivity settings – Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G and GPRS – but this option isn’t offered after the update.

With the upgrade to Froyo came a bundle of default apps that were missing in the 1.6 version – including a personal finance app ‘Assistant Free’, a GPS, voice-based app ‘CoPilot Live’, ‘TuneIn Radio’ and ‘Zinio Reader’.

The touch interface on the Streak was smooth. One touch was good enough to have any application launched.

The upgraded version installed the SWYPE technology for messaging and this really upped the usability quotient for the Dell Streak.

Froyo has brought to the Dell Streak two much-anticipated features – the ability to tether and turn the device into a Wi-fi hotspot. One click enables the Portable Wi-Fi hotspot option and readies the Streak to share its internet connection with another handset, PC or laptop. We tried this out with another smartphone and it connected instantly and gave us speeds that a regular GPRS connection would have.Other significant upgrades include the ability to record videos in HD (720p) and support for Flash 10.1 which loaded some websites beautifully. The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor too does the Streak a lot of good.

Froyo makes the multi-touch user interface on the Streak applicable to a greater number of apps than was previously the case. Pinch-to-zoom, which you could earlier only use in the web browser is now also applicable to

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Google maps which enhances the GPS experience.

The sensors on the Streak were also pretty perky – the accelerometer was smooth as we scrolled up and down our exhaustive list of apps downloaded from Android Market; the ambient light sensor dimmed promptly when we were in a well-lit room and brightened up when we stepped out in sunlight and the proximity sensors disabled all functions when we held it up to talk.It was almost full working day before we had to charge the Streak again.

Call quality And this brings us to the core issue with the Streak. For what is supposed to be treading slippery ground between a tablet and a smartphone, the Streak doesn’t exactly do a great job of the latter. Because of its size, apart from attracting a couple of highly amused stares when you want to make a call and put the tablet phone to the ear, there were a couple of other serious issues that the Streak seemed to have. Voices relayed during calls were inevitably ‘feeble’ on both sides, even after having pumped up the in-call volume. This issue didn’t occur when we switched to the speaker.

Our verdict With what the cynics might look upon as a severe identity crisis, Dell has dared to break established conventions and tried to offer the user the best it can of both worlds with this pocket-sized tablet. Some might have reservations about how well it fares at juggling both roles but if you don’t have qualms about flaunting a ‘cusp’ device that lives up to the promise of being a feature-packed, intuitive and fun-to-have gadget, the Dell Streak would be a good choice.

Love – Intuitive UI, prompt touch response Hate – Wavering call quality, media support Rs 34,990

Photo: R. Ravindran

OlivePad: Shaken or stirred?

Photo: S.S. Kumar

Mahananda Bohidar ig personal tech brands like Dell, Samsung and BlackBerry have managed to work up a lot of excitement around the unveiling of their tablets while the indigenous OlivePad slipped in quietly to Croma and electronic stores around the country. India’s first 3G-enabled, Android-powered tablet is pitted against the bigger movers and shakers in the still-nascent tablet genre. Will this be a chronicle of the underdogs’ triumph?

The OlivePad looks quite stripped down leaving most of its screen real estate open for play. The display is a glass one with the bezel being a thin metallic strip running along four sides and is one that lends the tablet a slightly ‘industrial’ look without much frill or finesse.

Of the four physical touch buttons on the bezel, the ‘Return’ was the one that we tend to use the most. There’s one for ‘Settings’, ‘Search’ and ‘Home’ – a long press of the last one throws up a small bar of all applications currently running in the background.

We started reading ‘The Invisible Man’ by H.G. Wells on the OlivePad on Aldiko, the default e-book reader although we had downloaded Amazon’s Kindle app as well. With a slight press on the right, the pages of the sci-fi novel flipped and despite the glossy screen, reading the e-book on the OlivePad turned out to be a satisfactorily immersive experience.

A slight tap on either side of the screen would take you to the previous or next page of the book and a smooth scroll on the left would reduce or increase the brightness while reading. No hitches here!

But, overall, the touch interface on the OlivePad was nothing to write home about. Despite having 7-inches of screen space to play around with, the touch sensitivity more often than not failed to register with a single tap.

Also, a couple of times it so happened that you tap an icon

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but you aren’t really sure if it registered because the app/function we selected would open only after we’ve waited for more than a couple of seconds.

While messaging, you have the option of typing on the full QWERTY keyboard, the ABC layout and the CooTek layout with two alphabets (in the QWERTY sequence) on a single button.

Swiping to either side lets you switch from one mode to another, but this turned out to be quite inconvenient especially when we speeded up the typing. Whenever we used both hands to type on the OlivePad, it would misinterpret the gestures and ‘accidentally’ swipe and change the input method. Thankfully, we could turn off this feature in the settings.

Multimedia The OlivePad that we tested came without an internal storage option. Without an SD Card, there wasn’t enough space on the OlivePad to save pictures. With the SD card inserted, the pictures captured on the OlivePad weren’t exceptionally great and could pass off as photos taken from any other run-of-the-mill phone camera.

We downloaded the ‘FxCamera’ app with which we could play around and capture a couple of interesting snaps like one with the Fisheye effect or in a Polaroid frame. This was a fun way to jazz up the pictures.

We loaded some of our favourite tracks and a couple of videos to playback on the OlivePad. The music played back fine when we had the earphones on (not bundled) but when we switched to stereo speakers on the OlivePad, even with the volume pumped up to max, the music failed to fill the room. There’s no in-built FM Tuner on the tablet and we loaded a couple of .avi files but they did not play with the in-built video player.

We couldn’t test its 3G capabilities but tried regular web

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navigation with the native browser. The pages loaded before you started getting impatient and the pinch-tozoom worked quite well. It also had no issues whatsoever in detecting and connecting with wireless networks and Bluetooth devices in the vicinity.

Negatives When we had a couple of apps open at the same time, say for example, we had music playing in the background and the browser open and we started playing a game while these were open, the results weren’t great. The OlivePad seemed to be having difficulty juggling multiple tasks simultaneously. There was a visible lag in graphics and performance while trying to multitask.

Also, when we started using the OlivePad it took what seemed like ages, to replenish its charge. It was only after an overnight USB plug-in that we stopped seeing red on the battery icon on our home screen. Once charged it gave us almost 10 hours of juice.

Our verdict The OlivePad runs on Android 2.2, Froyo; has a 7-inch capacitive screen and an ARM11 600 MHz processor and all the other knick-knacks that one would more or less find in any new tablet entering the market. Despite this, when it comes to the user experience of the tablet, the sum of its parts fail to be greater than the whole. In simpler words, whereas OlivePad has all the tech specs in place, there are issues that keep it from making the user experience a smooth, seamless one.

Love – Decent screen and multi-touch features Hate – Inaccurate touch response, bad with multi-tasking Rs 25,990

Galaxy Tab: Does size matter? more Android’s problem than the Tab’s, so we can’t really blame Samsung on this one.

Facebook and Twitter integration was also easy. Since the Tab lets you insert a SIM card, you can sync all your contacts with Facebook, Twitter and Gtalk.

Videos played beautifully on the Tab’s screen, which is the perfect size for on-thego entertainment. While we were able to stream YouTube videos quite easily, the same can’t be said for sites where Flash player needed usage. Although the Tab supports Flash, on many websites we were greeted with a blank screen and many videos just refused to play.

The Tab was decent for gaming - we tried Android versions of Angry Birds and Paper Toss. The Galaxy Tab’s three-axis gyro sensor, which we also tried on the new iPod Touch, gives you a lot of control for games like racing or Labyrinth.

The 3-meg camera takes average shots, and comes with LED flash. There is also a front facing 1.3-meg webcam for self shots or video chat.

We weren’t able to try the video calling feature on Skype or ‘fring’ though.

Ketaki Bhojnagarwala he Galaxy S was a true iPhone competitor, going almost head to head with what Apple had to offer. Samsung has called its first tablet attempt the Galaxy Tab, after its smartphone namesake. We wanted to find out whether the Tab could cater to the tablet buyer, and if it is more than just a big smartphone.

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First look With a screen size of 7-inches, the Tab is visibly smaller than the iPad. We liked the dual colours - the shiny, white plastic surface for the back, and glossy black for the front. At the bottom of the fascia you’ll see four touch sensitive buttons - the usual Android ones for Menu, Home, Return and Search. These do provide a slight haptic feedback when pressed, which should be comfortable if you’re used to an Android-based smartphone.

The Tab comes with 16GB of internal storage, and unlike the iPad, it is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card slot.

Unfortunately, Samsung has not provided for a micro-USB port, which they had more than enough room for. Instead you get a proprietary Samsung charging jack.

There’s a slot for a SIM card, so you can use your 3G SIM for browsing, and even as a phone, although it’s highly impractical.

Speakers are located at the bottom, and sound quality was decent. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and a built-in mic, so you can make video calls.

Performance The Tab runs an ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor, with 512MB of RAM. The Tab ran smoothly even with a couple of apps running in the background, although a bit of slowing down was evident.

We loved the four-way accelerometer in the Tab, which supports viewing from practically any angle.

Although battery life is estimated at seven hours, we had some problems with it. A few times, the Tab prompted us to connect the charger after we turned it on, even though we left it at full charge.

Again, this could be an Android problem.

On average though, the Tab should last you a day with maximum usage. Charging through USB is a really slow process though, so we’d advise using the wall-socket.

User interface We were disappointed that the screen wasn’t Super AMOLED, but considering that it’s expensive, we could do without an extra addition to the price tag. At 1024x600 resolution, it’s on par with most of the other tablets out there. Touch sensitivity was commendable too, and the screen supports multi-touch including Pinch to Zoom and Swipe, ideal for web browsing or viewing photos.

The Tab is powered by Android 2.2 or Froyo. The home screen has three touch buttons at the bottom, for one touch access to the Browser, Applications and Email. You can add up to nine home screens, although we don’t think you’ll need that many. The Tab has a handy ‘Active Applications’ widget which will tell you what apps are running, and eating up your battery power.

The Apps screen looks more colourful than professional. Unfortunately, unlike some smartphones which run on Froyo, the Tab doesn’t let you group your apps into folders, which can be a pain if you’re loaded with apps (like we are).

The Tab supports SWYPE, which we loved using on the

Our verdict Photo: S.S. Kumar

Galaxy S, and we have to say, it is even better on a bigger keyboard.

Media The Tab supports Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11n, and we were able to transfer data and set up a wireless account without much hassle.

Setting up a Gmail account was pretty simple, and the Tab provides support for practically any email carrier.

Gtalk was also easy to set up, however once we synced an account on the Tab, it was impossible to remove it/add another account without doing a factory reset. This is

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The Tab is an ideal media hub, however a major deterrent for most tablet users out there might be the price, which is a hefty Rs 38,000 (box price) – making it close to the tag that the iPad might be offered at.

Until Android is optimised for tablets, the iPad still continues to rule the roost. The Tab is a good first attempt

by Samsung though, and we look forward to the Android 2.3 upgrade.

Love: Good touch interface, SWYPE input Hate: Screen gets smudged easily, no USB Rs 38,000

Original Sin T

he highly anticipated Adam is India’s answer to the iPad, developed by Bangalore-based firm Notion Ink. At 10.1-inches, it’s the same size as the iPad, but with a lot more interesting features thrown in. The Adam is offered with a Pixel Qi dual-mode display – letting you choose from a backlit LCD for vibrant colours, or a transreflective display for readability in sunlight. The screen also claims to be scratch and fingerprint resistant – a problem we’ve faced with a lot of other tablets out there.

It is powered by a NVidia dual Core Tegra 250 processor, which is ideal for multitasking as well as accelerated graphics use, so you can enjoy gaming without worrying about the tablet slowing down. For increased connectivity, the Adam ships with two USB 2.0 ports, a mini-USB port and an HDMI port. The USB can be used to connect your external hard drive or even used to charge your other USB-enabled devices. This is a feature we’re yet to see on a lot of other tablets out there. A cool feature of the Adam is the 185-degree, 3-megger swivelling camera, which can be used to take shots from a variety of angles and even function as a webcam for videochats. It also comes with Flash support, so you can play videos online. An unusual addition is a trackpad at the rear, for an alternative form of navigation. While it is largely believed that the Adam will ship with an Android OS, company sources have revealed that it can run any OS.

‘Play’time at work R

IM’s Playbook will be the tablet of choice for the BlackBerry loving, corporate honcho. A 7-inch LCD display with 1024x600 resolution is perfect for watching videos or editing photos, and at just 400g, its one of the lightest tablets out there, for its size. The Playbook will run with a 1GHz dual-core processor, and ship with 1GB RAM, so multi-tasking shouldn’t be a problem. Like the Adam, the Playbook is Flash 10.1 enabled, and also has built-in support for HTML 5, making it Adobe and Java friendly. To utilise the full potential of the tablet, it is best paired with your BlackBerry smartphone. You can connect the two via Bluetooth, to use BlackBerry’s Push technology, email, calendar, BBM, tasks, documents, etc. The Playbook runs on BlackBerry’s own Tablet OS, which is user-friendly and supports multi-tasking.

A 3-meg front facing cam and 5-meg rear camera give you good picture quality, and allow for high-quality video conferencing. For increased connectivity, there’s a Micro USB and HDMI port too.

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AUTO focus

Photos: S. Muralidhar

Driving Maruti’s Hy-breeds S.Muralidhar n hindsight, Hybrids seem like such a no-brainer.

Look at it, why wouldn’t you want those efficiencies, which are currently being frittered away, captured back for giving you more bang for the buck.

There is good reason why current day hybrids are an Asian innovation, though they are sold in greater numbers in the more mature markets of the West than anywhere else.

That is due for change soon, even in India, primarily because of two reasons. One, hybrids are becoming more affordable and two, the price of petrol is set to cross a critical point, which is the ultimate driver of technology adoption for the value-conscious Indian.

The market for hybrids and electric vehicles here just got a big boost late last month, when the Government announced an incentive scheme for electric vehicles.

The Rs 95 crore incentive package announced by the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) will enable electric vehicle manufacturers to reduce prices by upto 20 per cent, within a Rs 1 lakh ceiling. The MNRE package will be applicable to all types of Battery Operated Vehicles (BOVs), Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs), Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) and Electric / Exercise-Bike Generator Inverter (E2BI) used for transportation.

The price of electric and hybrid technology has been a deterrent for buyers. Governments world over incentivise the purchase of such vehicles to meet their own environmental responsibilities and to promote the adoption of

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the technology. This new MNRE scheme will attempt to offer sops to buyers of these vehicles till the end of fiscal 2011-2012 and will be applicable to electric and hybrid vehicles that have at least 30 per cent indigenous content, which basically means local assembly is a must.

The most impact from the adoption of electric vehicle technology will be felt when its affordability trickles down to mass market cars – when hatchbacks and entry-level sedans can be offered with the tech.

Ind-genuity Think mass market hybrids and the company that comes first to mind as being capable of producing one is Maruti Suzuki. Just a week before the announcement of the electrics and hybrids scheme, I got a chance to drive two of Maruti’s experimental electric and hybrid cars.

I head to the test track at Maruti’s plant in Gurgaon, near Delhi to drive the SX4 Hybrid and the EECO electric concepts. These are working prototypes and members of Maruti’s senior management and engineering team kept stressing that there are no plans, as of now, to launch them commercially. But, these plans can take a quick turn, especially in the light of the Government’s announcement.

SX4 Hybrid I drove the SX4 hybrid first. Maruti engineers have taken the regular SX4, replaced the stock engine with the 1.2litre K-Series engine and integrated a full, parallel hybrid

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system into the car. So, in terms of performance, the SX4 Hybrid features a 1.2-litre petrol engine and a 50 kW electric motor that independently draws power from a 2.35 kWh Lithium-ion battery pack.

This is not a plug-in hybrid, but my guess is that it can easily be converted into one. The hybrid system in the SX4 concept is capable of behaving like a parallel hybrid (technically like the Honda Civic Hybrid) and also like a series hybrid (technically like the Toyota Prius). So, the SX4 Hybrid is capable of being powered solely by its batterypowered electric motor or it can be powered by both electric motor and petrol engine.

Featuring start-stop and regenerative braking, the SX4’s special transmission that combines both the motive power sources is a five-speed automated manual transmission. It also features a twin-clutch system that features one clutch between the engine and the electric motor, and one between the electric motor and transmission. The battery stack is located in the boot at the rear and it has a separate cooling system with its own independent electric compressor.

I crank the engine of the SX4 Hybrid and the K12 comes to power humming under the bonnet. The sedan starts off with the gasoline engine, but if you only nudge gently on the throttle, then the engine shuts off and the electric motor takes over to power the car (was nice to know that emissions were zero, though there was a petrol engine in the bonnet). As I accelerate slowly, the LCD display on the

dashboard of the SX4 Hybrid graphically shows the current power source being used. After the speedo needle crosses the 40-45 kmph mark, the petrol engine seamlessly comes to life and takes over, accelerating the SX4 Hybrid further.

Taking the foot off the pedal leads to the engine power being re-routed to power the battery and the same regenerative braking principles work when I progressively apply the brakes. A few laps later, I start off the block by flooring the throttle and both the electric motor and the petrol engine work together to help accelerate quickly.

Though the technology (including the algorithms and mapping for the hybrid system) in the SX4 Hybrid is still in concept stage, the seamlessness with which it switched from series to parallel engagement under various driving conditions was pretty impressive. The system also combines feedback from various sensors in the car including a throttle position sensor.

To protect the battery, the system automatically switches to petrol engine alone mode when the battery charge touches the 40 per cent mark. The automated manual transmission allowed me to drive in both full auto mode or in +/- manual mode.

The SX4 Hybrid is said to be capable of delivering 25 per cent higher fuel efficiency compared to the regular SX4. The hybrid powertrain combined output is a 125 bhp compared to the stock SX4’s 103 bhp. The hybrid is capable of a top speed of 160 kmph and acceleration has improved 20 per cent. There hasn’t been the need to make any changes to the suspension set up, since the Hybrid’s incremental weight is only about 200 kgs.

EECO Charge The other vehicle that I drove at the track was the EECO Charge – a pure-electric vehicle built on the same MPV platform as the stock EECO. This is a plug-in electric vehicle that is powered by a 50 kW motor that is powered by a larger 24 kWh Lithium-ion battery. Because the

EECO Charge is a pure-electric vehicle, it features the larger battery stack at the bottom of the vehicle, just below the floor and between the two axles.

I just slot the key into the fob and turn it into cranking position and the EECO Charge is already on standby.

Depressing the throttle leads to a mild hum as the electric motor draws charge from the battery pack to power the EECO forward. This is a simple linear discharge electric vehicle that has a driving range of about 100 kms. It attains a top speed of about 100 kmph. Because of the absence of the petrol engine under the floor near the driver’s side, and because the additional weight of the battery nearly offsets it, the EECO Charge’s gross vehicle weight is almost the same as the stock EECO at 1,540 kgs.

The dash-mounted LCD screen of the EECO Charge displays real time ‘state of charge’ and ‘distance to empty’ figures for the convenience of the driver. The vehicle can be plugged into a standard household power source for charging the battery pack overnight.

The SX4 Hybrid and the EECO Charge were originally developed by Maruti Suzuki’s R&D team as part of the Government initiated National Hybrid Propulsion Programme (NHPP) and MNRE projects. Showcased at the Auto Expo and later at the Delhi Commonwealth Games, these two electric and hybrid vehicles look promising and can potentially bring the technology to the masses.

Let us hope Maruti will launch them within the next year or two.

From top (clockwise) SX4 hybrids engine bay Li-ion battery pack in the boot of the SX4 hybrid. Note the orane colourcoded fire resistant piping for its high-voltage wiring LCD display shows real-time info such as current state of charge of the battery, mode in which vehicle is operating, gear engaged and electrical and mechanical powerflow Interior of the EECO Charge with similar LCD display Unique gear-shift stick for engaging the five-speed automated manual transmission in the SX4 hybrid

AUTO news

Honda BRIO premieres in Thailand

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onda premiered a prototype of its new compact car, the BRIO, at the ongoing 27th Thailand International Motor Expo 2010. Based on the concept showcased at the Delhi Auto Expo earlier this year, the Brio has been specifically developed for the Asian markets and is scheduled to be introduced in India and Thailand in 2011. The BRIO prototype is being developed as a commuter vehicle which is easy-to-use in urban

areas and features a compact body (length 3,610mm x width 1,680mm x height 1,475 mm), with ample cabin space through highly efficient packaging and is set to be equipped with Honda’s advanced technologies. Honda plans to develop unique versions of the mass production model for India and Thailand, according to the country’s customer needs.

While the Indian model will focus on the need for a

small car with specifications targeted at achieving a good balance between vehicle performance and price, the Thai model will boast a fuel economy of more than 100kms/ 5 litres to qualify as an eco-car by the government and will be priced at approximately 400,000 Baht onwards. The company also hopes to leverage the experience of its motorcycle business and improve local sourcing of parts and materials.

Toyota’s Etios Sedan launched

Jaguar’s new Diesel XF is here

Toyota launched its much-awaited Etios Sedan last week. The car features a newly developed 1.5-litre, 16V DOHC engine coupled with a fivespeed manual transmission that produces high output for best-in-class driving performance. The Etios promises a superior mileage of 17.6 kmpl, which is ARAI tested. Specifically developed for Indian customers, the Etios Sedan will be available in four variants J, G, V and VX, and is priced between Rs 4.96 lakh and Rs 6.87 lakh, ex showroom, Delhi.

After the launch of its 5-1itre naturally aspirated petrol XF and supercharged XFR, Jaguar has brought its new Diesel XF to India. The stylish luxury sports car comes with a 3-litre AJ-V6 Diesel S engine and six-speed ZF 6HP28 automatic transmission. The car is equipped with technologies like JaguarDrive Selector, Drive Control, Sequential Shift and Dynamic Stability Control with Trac DSC mode. The interiors are done in soft grain leather seats with features like Phosphor Blue halo illumination and interior mood lighting, seven-inch full colour touch-screen display and Jaguar Smart Key System with Keyless Entry and Start. The Diesel XF is available in the Premium Luxury derivative and is priced at Rs 48.37 lakh, ex-showroom Delhi.

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LUXURY travel

Travel First Class…by road Anushya Mamtora or every economy seat there is an exclusive business class. For every general compartment there is a first class, or even a Palace on Wheels. For every compact cabin there is a sea view premium suite in a cruise.

Every mode of transport offers an upgrade option for those who want to up their travel experience, make it more luxurious and as memorable as possible. It’s unfortunate then that the humble bus hasn’t been able to elevate its status to cater to the discerning traveller. Yes, there are buses which offer comfy seats and sleeping coaches are popular for overnight travel. But the fun lasts till your stomach grumbles at your choice of ‘bhindi do pyaaza’ and ‘tandoori roti’ at the roadside ‘dhaba’, till you realise that your back aches like it has broken by the time you have reached the destination, and till you visit the smelly and downright dirty highway loo in sheer desperation.

And if you have to head straight to office

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after alighting from the bus, God save you.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with long bus rides, and when an invite to review a bus service landed in my inbox, my stomach churned in protest. However, flipping through the pictures of the ultra suave and super comfy bus put up in the online brochure of Luxuria – Travel Redefined, seemed to indicate that there is still some hope for frequent bus travellers. The first luxury bus for the roadies. At last!

With features that are one of a kind, I knew I couldn’t have taken a better ride from Chennai to Bangalore, and back, in a span of less than 24 hours.

Swank bus, swankier features Blue Hill Logistics’ Luxuria bus is striking at the very first glance, thanks to its olive green colour. The multi-axle Volvos are stylishly designed by India’s ace designer Dilip Chhabria. Stepping in only reaffirms its luxe status.

Awaiting you is a classy 21-seater with high-grade leather reclining seat with electronically operated calf support, individual screens for on-board entertainment with a choice of movies, music and

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satellite television and even an in-built toilet.

A boon to travellers, the Luxuria bus accommodates a functional ‘aircraft like’ toilet which includes a closet and a wash basin. The bus also boasts of a refrigerator and microwave if you want to chill or heat some homepacked food. That is, if you don’t want to snack on some yummy short-eats the bus operators have lined up for you.

I boarded the bus at eight in the morning from a hotel in Chennai, after downing a hot cuppa coffee and nibbling on some cookies that was offered complimentary for Luxuria travellers.

The princely treatment package included a salute by a white uniformed driver and a personalised greeting by a steward. The moment I sank into the plush seats and ‘fastened the seatbelt’ a cold towel was handed over for a refreshing start. Soon I was offered hot beverages and a choice of snacks.

I devoured the plum cake as I switched on the screen for some entertainment. ‘Signal not found’. Okay, I thought to myself, teething trouble. Not finding a good Bollywood flick on the movie list and discovering a problem with my earphones, I decided to take a nap, and didn’t regret it one bit. With ample legroom, I stretched out with the press of a button and reclined with the help of another and woke up when we reached the Luxuria Lounge in Bengaluru, five hours later.

Thoughtful touches What is Luxuria Lounge, you might ask? Well, the first of the company’s interesting touches to its luxury service, you don’t get down at some bustling bus stop. Instead, you are welcomed at its lounge in Bengaluru where you can wait or organise your pick up, freshen up at the rest room and even sip on some tea or coffee.

The company plans to open up more such lounges in the cities they operate.

Making it seem like airline first class travel, Luxuria has some fascinating features thrown in for added comfort.

From the pre ‘take-off’ announcement to an in house magazine, pillow and blankets to LED aisle lighting, aircraft-style overhead cabin luggage bins and individual light adjustments also at the press of a button, the service is nothing like you will get in a regular tour bus. There is also a signal to inform the driver if a passenger is in the toilet so that he can drive with more caution.

The company has a Luxuria cab service for its guests, if they are the only ones travelling from one drop-off point in

the city to another, with specially designed seats and entertainment.

Blessing for corporate travellers Chennai-Bengaluru being a busy route for corporate travellers who mostly head for just a day’s work, Luxuria has hit the nail bang on with making the bus Wi-Fi enabled, providing plug points and even a laptop tray, giving passengers ample scope to work on their laptops unhindered.

Even its lounge in Bengaluru is Wi-Fi enabled and has a computer with internet connection.

Luxuria takes the corporate nexus a step ahead by arranging pick up and drop points at IT hubs of Chennai and Bengaluru, Sholinganallur and Whitefield, respectively.

Pankaj Rampal, COO of Blue Hills Logistics however plans to take this facility to a whole new level, by revamping some features, sprucing up the lounge and also by looking beyond the corporate traveller by extending the service to cities like Hyderabad, Mysore, Tirupati and

others.

With a few more Luxuria buses plying on the road by the year-end and 30 more next year, the group hopes to target corporate as well as individual travellers.

Priced at Rs 1,800 per ticket (Chennai-Bengaluru), it aims at those who are looking at a reasonable and hassle free alternative to flying (what with early check-ins, serpentine security check queues and increasing airport-city travel time) and a more luxurious and comfortable option to trains and regular buses.

My return journey that same night was blissful. The earphones worked fine and I slept like a baby only to reach Chennai, fresh as a daisy.

Being hardly a month old in this brand new venture, Luxuria has done well in capturing the attention as well as the hearts of premium travellers in the Chennai-Bengaluru route.

How well it will replicate the same for other long distance routes, is something we have to wait to see.

But Luxuria sure feels like hitting the road in style.

TASTER’S choice

It’s manna from Israel, at last John Mariani decade ago I’d never have written this sentence: “On a recent trip to Israel I was very enthusiastic to order Israeli wines with my meals.”

The biblical claim, made in Psalms 104:15, was that wine was a gift of God “to gladden the heart of man.” Still, two millennia went by before truly good wine came out of Israel. When the 4th edition of The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopaedia appeared in 2005, Israeli wines got only one skimpy paragraph.

In September, I dined on ‘Jacob & Esau’s biblical red lentil stew’ and a wild mallow herb called hubeiza ‘eaten during the ‘48 siege on Jerusalem’ as part of the kosher menu for King David’s Feast at one of Jerusalem’s finest restaurants, the Eucalyptus. I drank a delicious 2009 Merlot from the Samson Hills made by the Efrat Winery, which started making wines in a Jerusalem alleyway in 1870 and is now a leading company making more than 100 wines and grape juices.

At the modern non-kosher restaurant Segev in Tel Aviv’s business district, I ate grilled duck breast with sunflower seeds and ground sesame and tried a wonderful Yarden 2007 Katzrin Chardonnay that I’d swear was right out of Napa Valley. It’s actually from the volcanic soil of the Golan Heights.

Viticulture has a rocky history in Israel - the vineyards were ripped out when the Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 636 A.D., restored by the Crusaders in the 12th century and abandoned during the Diaspora. Upon the Jews’ return in the 19th century, Baron Edmond de Rothschild of France replanted vineyards with European varietals and founded Carmel Winery.

A

U.S. Exports Israel has more than 120 wineries, both kosher and nonkosher, producing Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Grenache and other varietals. Most are made by cooperatives, with 50 per cent by Carmel.

Other big players are Barkan Wine Cellars and Golan Heights Winery. The U.S. is the biggest export market.

Kosher wines must meet stringent requirements - vines must be at least four years old, vineyards within biblical lands must be left fallow every seven years and only vines may be planted in vineyard land. The grapes may only be handled by certified “Sabbath-observant Jews”, non-Jews may not even touch bottled kosher wines unless they are flash pasteurised (a process called yayin mevushal).

Few kosher wines taste like the cloyingly sweet Manischewitz that some American Jews still serve on holidays. The wines I tasted were clean, well made, and dry.

Many can compete with the better wines coming out of Lebanon, Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal.

Distinctive Reds In my tastings back home I concentrated on red wines, which seem to have more distinctive character. Some of the Cabernet Sauvignons had an assembly-line style, with no suggestion of terroir beyond being heavy and dense.

Recanati of Upper Galilee makes an intensely inky Special Reserve 2006 ($45). I preferred its regular 2009 Cab ($16), with 14.5 per cent alcohol and none of the burn of similar California examples.

I enjoyed the 2007 Reserve from Bazelet HaGolan ($40), unfiltered and aged for 20 months, which seemed to ameliorate its 14.9 per cent alcohol level, making this a creamy Cab.

The more modest 13.8 per cent of a 2007 Barkan Altitude Series “+720” ($33) brought out its lush fruit, and its medium body goes well with lamb chops. A pricey 2006 Cab and Petit Verdot blend by Yatir ($56), a Judean Hills vintner, had a peppery component that would enhance Middle Eastern-style mezes.

The Domaine du Castel Grand Vin 2007 Haute Judee ($76) was a Bordeaux-style blend with a rubbery nose and little pleasure about it.

Tishbi’s Terroir Tishbi is also among Israel’s star boutique wineries, dating to 1882, run since 1984 by Jonathan Tishbi. Its wines show attention to terroir, blending and aging. I was impressed by the 2006 Estate Merlot, with 5 per cent Cabernet Franc ($17).

I would hardly identify Tishbi’s 2006 Estate Pinot Noir ($20) as a Pinot Noir in a blind tasting, for that fickle grape has many expressions. It’s pleasant and well fruited, easy to drink with any kind of meat.

Of all the varietals I tasted, Syrah/Shiraz has the brightest future in Israel, especially a 2009 Domaine Netofa ($21) from Lower Galilee, a well-wrought Rhone-style red with some Mourvedre in it. If you like your wines plummy, the 2005 Yarden Syrah ($25) with 14.5 per cent alcohol is a dead ringer for some of the bolder Australian Shirazes.

Focus and breeding will come with time. The proverb of Ecclesiastes 9:7 seems truer than ever during the holidays: “Eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.”

(The author writes on wine for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Photo: Bloomberg

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December 8, 2010