Introduction

As I was headed to Malaysia for a trip for 10 days, I needed an option to commute within the country. While renting cabs with drivers was definitely an option, there was no privacy enough, and there was no way to make my own decisions on where I wished to go when. I was not so keen to rent a cab outside of KL city.

We had plans to visit multiple places such as Cameron, Penang, Langkawi so I needed a vehicle which I was willing to drive myself. It was the best option as it would give me the convenience without burning a hole in my pocket. The trip itself was turning out to be expensive and I wanted a good option for inside the country travel.

Things that I was looking for

As any first time car rental customer, I had some concerns, so I needed these

• Easy rental mechanism, including driver sign up and validation of
  license
• Preferably use local Karnataka (state license from india) – without the need for IDP
• App based car handling
• Easy fueling
• Easy breakdown service if needed anywhere within the country

Options available

Based on the market services available in Malaysia, two common providers of cars had their apps listed – GoCar and SoCar. The former had tie ups with Renault and had new cars such as Captur and Almera (Sunny) while the latter had tie ups with Perodua and Toyota to a large extent and had more exotic cars if required.

While GoCar did not cover fuel for their rental rate, SoCar did. However the story did not end there. In this review, since I rented SoCar, I will talk about only that service. Maybe the next time I would try out GoCar although I do not expect any major differences in terms of what you basically get for your money.

SoCar

There is something you need to know during your registration on both the apps. You need mainly three things.

1. Your passport copy

2. Your driving license copy

3. Your own selfie of you holding your driving license

Please bear in mind that item 3 should be taken in such a way that you stand far away with the license in your hand. If you take a photo too close to you, that would be rejected. I faced multiple rejections before I got it quite right. If you face a rejection its only because both you and you holding the license is not clearly visible. Correct it and you should be through.

Some things about the app

The app is well defined. You find the common options that you expect to see. You can choose source and destination options, timings and even use the map to find where you want the car from. There are also some options for home delivery of the car for some extra money which can be a boon at times.

The makers of the software have ensured finer options such as clock entry, drop downs, display of car choices are perfectly available on the screen making the app good enough to use to get the job done.

Car control

This is the best part of the app. You can control the car directly from the app. You can unlock or lock the car from the app itself.

Other than lock and unlock there are also buttons for horn, and hazard lights in case you need the support of these means to locate your car. There are also two icons for roadside assistance and support call if you would need those. Personally I would say that this is the most important screen as far as driving the car around is concerned. I undertook a trip spanning Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Penang, Kuala Perlis and back – which was almost 1500kms and never once did I feel anything in this screen did not work properly.

Profile section

The profile section of the app provides options to refer and earn, details on your reservations, payment options, promotions, notices from SoCar and help topics. It also provides an option for contacting support where you can “ASK” questions. You must be aware that the replies take typically a few hours to a few days so it is not that straightforward from the app. Better thing to do will be to call SoCar support if need be.

Promos

The last screen of the app provides promos as per the season and the occassion. These are either discounts or referral based bonuses as seen below. It is upto you whether or not you wish to use these and sometimes there are good deals in terms of discounts.

GoCar

The GoCar app is similar to the SoCar one, but GoCar has aligned with the Renault Nissan alliance in Malaysia so they have more Almera (Sunny) cars and Renault Captur besides the usual local brands and others like Toyota. These cars have rates that do not include fuel rates so its only the rental rate per day. But the car choices are good here as well.

The app is a bit basic compared to SoCar, and since I did not hail a car, I am not sure if the car can be remotely controlled from the app for lock/unlock etc. However I did notice that there were options to look for cars and call their support staff, besides options for making and viewing reservations, payment options, and promotions and deals.

In a later post I will talk about a few nuances of driving rental cars, but for this post I will leave you here with these details so you can take your pick of which car rental service you wish to rent while in Malaysia. Let me know your comments.

Some history

Ever since 2016 my wife and I decided that we want to do one international trip (though not necessarily one country) every year. We made it to Singapore in 2016, and Dubai in 2017. It was time to explore and take my family to Malaysia this time around in 2018.

The fact that I was working in Malaysia in 2002 and could not get time in the short one year that I stayed there to see many places only meant the urge to go there was pretty strong in order that I could get another chance to cover all the places I did not see this time around.

Also 15 years down the line with a lot of instrastructure and convenience improvements happening around the world, surely the trip would seemingly put me at more ease than earlier on. So it was time to decide how to plan the trip.

My logic for planning trips

I usually do my own booking and planning for everything for my trip. I look through places to visit, I look through multiple sources of reviews, I look through the best times to travel to maximise effeciency and minimize costs at the same time.

Based on these criteria I then use some of my favourite apps to look for flights or hotels and go on with the booking part. Let me share with you how I managed to do that for Malaysia. One of the questions I wanted to answer before I flew there was whether I just wanted to visit Kuala Lumpur (KL) or something more than that which everyone does in a packaged deal – such as Cameron (like our Ooty), or Penang/Langkawi types of ventures. This is when my friend suggested to me that I could not cover all places for just 10 days. I still wanted to be a bit ambitious.

Flights

For flights my preferred destination is Cleartrip portal/app. I am a man of simple UI designs and those kinds of apps that get job done rather than confusing people. Cleartrip has been my favourite for many years and also somewhat the cheapest even though only by a few hundreds of bucks. Still, search is simple, user interface is intuitive, they remember all my values I filled in for previous trips, so booking as such is a breeze. I would still prefer that these sites show the total amount upfront to avoid any confusions but Cleartrip adds the convenience fee only at the end. I believe so also MMT and other sites do the same thing.

The logic for flights is simple. If X is the cost of the flight, X will again be the cost of airport taxes, then about Rs.500 more than 2X would be the insurance cost per passenger, and about another Rs.300 would be the convenience fee. Since we are four of us in my family, I would always be scouting around for deals worth about 15000 Rs. all inclusive for a person. If I am able to get it lower, all the more merrier. Also you need to start at least 2 months prior to the date of travel. Especially so if your travel is on the week during the year end. This is exactly what I did. I booked my travel during September-October for a travel in December.

There are lots of factors which determine what price is shown to you, so be aware of them

• how many times did you access that app using your own phone?
• are you accessing the app over multiple networks or only at home?
• did you also access the portal on the same wifi network or not?
• did you try booking via portal or via app (the discounts are more on the app sometimes)
• did you access the app continuously with your login ID every day of the week for a week or so
• how desperate you are on those dates you want to travel, were you looking for same dates each time or different dates to find it cheaper
• are you trying to book all four people at once or only one person at a time

These are some of the things that determine pricing to a large extent. So it is upto you how to outsmart the app. Use different phones or PCs, use office PC / home PC combination, use different locatios, etc. Beyond all this the price won’t vary too much until you start reaching the deadline for booking itself. So you need to be careful of that.

Sometimes the pricing also varies based on location. It is always better to board the journey from a smaller civil airport than a place where the transit passenger density is too high such as metros. But you must also bear in mind that if you want to board at a smaller airport, then it also means if you are living in a metro you need to first go upto the smaller airport by car or train or bus or air, which will set you back by 5000 to 10000 Rs. more. It is important to understand the cost addition to make your decision.

I booked my trip from Trichy to KL just because the trip from Bangalore to KL was 90k and the one from Trichy to KL was 53k. But I also ended up spending about 10k more to go to Trichy and back which you need to understand. This is because you need fuel for driving upto there, some place to stay, food costs, etc. But this time it was still lesser by 30000 Rs. to do this journey. The 30k saved is better spent on the journey elsewhere while in Malaysia. However if you frequently get tired of driving, then this option should not be chosen.

Hotels

For hotels, I believe in booking hotels where Indian restaurants are nearby if possible. I am particular about food and hence this mode of booking. Also among the multiple options that I have tried with respect to hotel bookings (booking.com, trivago.com, tripadvisor.com, makemytrip.com, etc) – I was most comfortable with booking.com for the following reasons. Now before you read below, you may say after reading that some other portal provides you with same or similar options which I will not deny. For me it is about ease of booking that helps me go forward with the portal more than the cost of the hotel itself. The whole experience has to be seamless.

Booking.com provides me with photos of the hotel. The way it would be when I land there. Nothing more, nothing less. It provides the full inclusive prices except the taxes which also it prints an approximate of below the full price just so that I get an idea how much extra it would work out to. It also shows rooms that are going to house two semi-adult kids and two adults in comfort and in line with the policies of the hotel which would not throw a surprise on me when I reach there.

The good thing about booking.com is that it also provides me with passes to attractions which help me skip the line and go into the priority queue at different places. I tried this out at the KL tower, and it was pretty useful although the queue itself was not so much. If it were Petronas towers or for example the Burj Khalifa, then the real benefit of these passes would be well understood. I decided to visit four places on my travel, KL City, Cameron Highlands, Penang Island and Langkawi Island. Based on these choices, I booked the available hotels by either giving my credit card details and in some instances, paying a nominal fee to ensure my booking held good.

You need to be tactical about these bookings and must surely make the trip to ensure best price and avaiability. In the event that you feel you are not going to make the trip, be aware of the last possible date on which you would be able to cancel and always have a reminder around those dates to help you cancel. You will mostly be charged only when you land up at the hotel or a day or two earlier to that depending on the hotel policy. So no worries there.

Visa (Entri Malaysia)

Once you have your air travel and hotels secured, it is time to make the visa. For Malaysia, the visa is called Entri visa and you can choose tourist type and either single or multiple entry based on how your planning has been done. If you plan to say go to Singapore and enter Malaysia again on non transit mode, you will need the multiple entry visa, else a single entry visa would suffice. For the most part, it was a breeze to get the visa, sitting at home, filling in a few details online, paying the visa fee online and taking a print of the resulting visa grant form.

Visa and fees

• paying online is safe no issues with that
• indicate your travel date properly so that the visa would be granted for a month from there for tourist option
• choose the visa type properly (single or multiple entry visa)
• always ensure, double check, proof read and ask others to read all the fields you enter properly for correctness, a little time spent on this will save you lots of trouble at the immigration counter
• if any data is filled wrongly then you may face rejection when you enter malaysia and this can put you into lots of trouble, so take care of this.

The visa fee was about Rs.1500/- per head, so for a family of four 6000 in total. Be advised about this additional cost in addition to flight charges.

Luggage fee

You must also be aware that all flights do not offer the standard free 7kg cabin and 20kg check in luggage options free. In fact some flight costs do not even allow one cabin bag. In my case I opted for standard 7kg for each of us as cabin luggage, and additionally paid for 20kg x 2 suitcases for check in. It was a deliberate choice since I knew I will be carrying that much of weight already.

For all you know you will return with an additional 20kg over and above this, so bear these in mind. The charges were about 700-1000 extra per 20kg baggage, so depending on your plan you will need to pay accordingly at the time of flight booking.

Given you completed until this step, the only other things pending are to plan what you want to visit while in the country, and how you are going to travel there. I will cover more on this in my next post.

It is inspiring to believe a company like Tata have undergone a thorough transformation whose outcome is visible in a product such as the Nexon

Introduction

I finally had a chance to test drive the Tata Nexon top end diesel AMT mini SUV. Yes, the same one that has been making waves before and after its launch. If you know me well, I am a guy who would base reviews on everyday usability of the products that I test, and here it is no exception.
It is really inspiring to see how far Tata Motors have come in terms of being able to design a radically different type of product in their portfolio. Ever since sometime now they have set sights on good designs all the way from the Tiago to the Tigor and to the Hexa. The Nexon is the cream on the cake if I were to genuinely say so. So you do want to hear about what the car has to offer and I am going to take you right into that part of the review.
There have been many reviews written on this car and even videographed for the viewers by now. Yet they all lack in some part of the articulation in its truest sense.

Design elements

More than speaking about the exact nature of the design elements of the car, what I would like to point out here is more that the entire design is a refreshing change in the history of Tata cars. Every element of the design is chosen to make the car look unique within the portfolio. To say more about this I have to start somewhere among all the great bits. What made me fall in love with the car is its day time running lamps. For a car worth a little over 10L price bracket, the DRLs were in the league of cars more than double that price. For me I do not appreciate DRLs by merely looking at them standing in front of the car. What would more matter to me is if the car announces its presence in the rear view mirror of the car I am driving. In that sense, the Nexon makes all the right visual cues in a bold and deterministic manner.

Exterior

The grille in the front is crafted very well and is very different from the typical tata cars we are used to. All the way from the front, this vehicle is SUV-ish be in looks or the way the pieces are put together. That said, the bumper, the bonnet, wheel arches – everything looks macho. Being in Bengaluru, one would know that for the rainy season where there is no differentiation between what is a road and what isn’t the need of the hour would be a vehicle with sufficient ground clearance to wade clear of that water and tyres to support that kind of driving.
The 16″ alloys make and imposing statement about the car and are available in two varieties the meek 195/60 and the more meatier 215/60 which blows competition out of the water. The tyres are safe and secure and would eat up anything thrown at it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But how do we know unless we put that to test, right ? So let us come back to more of those later. The sloping roofline to the back, the stright lines on the doors just make the car look gorgeous. The projector headlamps add to the glory during the night. The unladen ground clearance of 209mm is more than enough to not kiss every part of the road a sedan would otherwise. The laden clearance would obviously be lower, and the suspension should appropriately take care of that even if the car is laden with adults and luggages to the max capacity in real life.

The ground clearance clearly puts it into SUV category and makes the car look all the more imposing. The plastic handles blend well with the overall scheme and does not make the car look out of place. Single tone and dual tone colours add more options and the colour choices themselves are smashing to say the least. I test drove the etna orange, but personal favourites on the roads are generally the moroccan blue, vermont red and even calgary white. I have never seen a silver so far, but sure have seen the glasgow grey which is also a looker. The red is my favourite though.

Interior

Step into the car and you would expect typical tata fare of the same old boring dashboard with addition of clock and the some dials. But let me tell you again just in case you did not read earlier – Tata has paid a lot of attention and has completely revamped the interior to an extent that you would not believe what you are seeing. The three tone interiors are soothing and are not contrasty like the Kraz edition. The AC vents are normal ones you see on any other car, and there is a harman floating console in the middle. The steering has been carried over from Tiago and Tigor, but for those who only know the indica, this steering is miles apart from the old Indica’s and by a very large margin. I will talk about this more when we cover the drive.

The seats were not leather, but were cushy by tata standards, and I did feel that the thigh support could have been slightly better. It is not unmanageable but I do feel that over longer distances there can be some discomfort for those with legs longer than rest of their body – like me (the unfortunate bunch). There is a dial with different modes (eco, city and sport) which you can change on the fly and it mainly affects the gear change timings which are crucial for the experience of the said modes. Obviously the eco mode is tuned for mileage and the sport mode for driveability and power.
For safety you do get two airbags, ABS and EBD and a super rigid body structure. Just to drive home the point I have heard of Nexon’s having overturned on accidents on highways and everyone just walked out the door like nothing happened. You can be rest assured that Tata is among some of the companies whose main focus is on safety and reliability of the tensile structure of the body if not necessarily the parts.
The car has a generous amount of bottle and knickknack holders on doors and on the center of the front seats. I like the fact they have sliding doors to open up to the concealed storage areas. It is almost Civic-ish if I should point out. And that’s a good thing. It is like getting 20L premiumness in 10L. The central floating console is from Harman and there are 8 speakers, with Android auto and Apple car play – thereby finishing the exact need for an average user who wants music options. For more seasoned audiophiles an ICE would add more options to the experience.
Some nitty gritties – the door mats were looking a bit flimsy and I am a big fan of 3D or 4D door mats which keep all the dirt within and can be easily cleaned and disposed of. But maybe its just my nitpicking for some thing which is not such a big concern on the Nexon. I did find the rear view mirror a tad bit too small and the rear visibility is actually an issue considering the sloping roofline. It is slightly more claustrophobic at the back as well. The space in the front is good with height adjust and recline options for seats. The rear seat can fit 3 kids and one adult or 3 adults rather comfortably – and I mean realistically so. It is not an Innova, but it is not an Alto either.

The boot is large and very reasonable for any weekend drive or airport luggage even, and it should not present any problem as far as Nexon is concerned. It is surely not a Duster in terms of boot space, but its not bad either! There is also push button start which is a welcome move.

Engines

Enough about the interiors, can we move to the engine now? The car comes with turbo charged petrols and diesels, one with 1.2, 3 cyl, turbocharged petrol with 110 bhp power and 170Nm torque – and the other 1.5 4 cyl, turbocharged diesel with 110 bhp power and an insane 260Nm torque at 1500 rpm. What this means in simple english is brutal power, extreme driveability due to torque levels whether you are talking about petrol or diesel variants.

Gearbox

Since I took a drive of the AMT, there are a few things to talk about this version. I was particularly interested to understand how Tata has worked on the AMT gear box, the AMT gear lever and the likes of design elements. The gear level was small and looked awesome. It surely looks and feels like a 20L car here as well. The slotting is perfect and without a fuss.
If I had to nitpick about this a bit I was NOT a big fan of pushing up for manual gear up (in manual mode). I am so used to pulling it down for gear up in my celerio and this kind of feels counter intuitive for me and would also be similarly annoying for many other people. The thing is this for a pull down you activate only your hand, for push up you have to lift your arm from the arm rest. Again not a big grouse. Just a small one 🙂

Driving characterisitics

I would like to jot a disclaimer here that I did not try eco mode since I did not have the time or opportunity on the road to check it, but my guess is that since it is going to be tuned for mileage, the power will be reduced and upshifts would be common. Having put that out of the way let us focus on the remaining two modes, the City mode and Sport mode.
When you hear about these modes, the first thing that comes to you mind is that Sport would obviously be more zippy and more enthusiastic to use and the city mode would not be. Well that is the case almost but we need to consider a lot of other parameters such as the traffic on that road, the speed with which you are driving, the throttle inputs, how many potholes on the road, whether it is a linear road or not, and so on. Every person’s test drive experience will be different so I am trying to give you a fair picture of how the car behaves on a general test drive.

City mode

First off city mode – there is no lag on acceleration from first gear. The gear shifts after sufficient amount of acceleration happens about where you expect it. No much head nod for the passengers if you are reasonably gentle with the throttle. Breeze to drive it and wade through the traffic, no major issues and the car stays put exactly the way you expect it to. The light steering is a boon in city traffic and is easy to maneuver the vehicle. I did find one problem though – the steering is slightly tilted to one side at its normal position and it feels a bit odd. But that maybe just a one off case with this test drive vehicle and may not manifest on other cars. Time will tell.
The car does not downshift as well too soon and holds up being a diesel with enormous amount of torque (260Nm). This is sweet and even if it was a manual it would have felt very good needless to say. The 110bhp of power coupled with 260Nm of torque at as low as 1500 rpm has put the Nexon in a really sweet spot as far as driveability goes. Default rpm for idling is between 700-900 and just putting your foot on the pedal makes this figure jump to almost 1200 rpm which is just pretty shy of the 1500 rpm necessary for the torque to show.

Sport mode

As usual enthusiasts who want sport mode for the adrenalin rush would think this mode will really make you feel like god. On the contrary it isn’t so. All it does is hold a gear for as long as you really push it hard and the engine sometimes sounds harsh until it goes to the next gear. Since this is the first iteration of the Nexon, future tuning could make this mode more enjoyable in the longer run. That said, there is enough grunt in any gear for the car to sail through in sport mode. After using the sport mode and not finding an opportunity inside the crowded road to revv up substantially I had to switch back to city mode which left me at ease. City mode I would say is the default sport mode within the city. The sport mode thus may make sense on the highway to hold to fourth and fifth gears at low and high speeds completing the overall drivability quotient to a decent level.

Tyres

A word about the tyres. For me tyres make a huge difference in the way a car handles almost as much as the chassis/frame. As I said before, the Nexon top end has 215/60 tyres which are really enough to handle Bangalore’s potholed road surfaces with utmost ease. Rains, water, mud, potholes, bumps – you throw anything at these tyres and they eat it with aplomb. You are safe rest assured with this kind of tyre profile. The occupants had very less notion of how many potholes I was passing over on an internal locality road.

Suspension

Just like the chassis, and tyres one another important aspect about any car’s drivability is the suspension setup. For a car like Nexon I did expect something like duster’s suspension, but unfortunately its not the case. Do not get me wrong, it is not bad, but its not the best either. It sure is not mediocre and does well in isolating road undulations to a large level and like I said before the occupants barely will feel anything at all. It is only if you push the car too much on undulated surfaces some bounce is felt.
The suspension is not a hit or miss, but Tata can work on this to make it more sturdier nevertheless. As such the car handles well on broken roads which is the worst nightmare for any passenger.

Variants

Click the brochure to know more about the variants of nexon and what you will get or not get in each version.

Niggles

Every car has niggles and they just cannot get away with them due to persisting quality issues. The Nexon being the first of its kind is surely a batch meant for testing on guinea pigs and only future versions will bring about quality on the faulty parts.
A few things I noticed which fall into minor niggles category

• Doors bit flimsy – European level thud not present
• Rear visibility is poor but that is by design – there is nothing much that can be done about this
• AMT could have had lever down for gear up – though counter intuitive for some people
• Door mats could be of 3D or 4D variety

Conclusion

The pricing of the nexon in Bangalore is pretty competitive to say the Ford Ecosport or the Honda WRV. You can check the pricing of each version below

The Tata Nexon is a genuine attempt by Tata Motors to bring a car that looks very upmarket to its customers at a value for money price range with substantial exterior and interior design elements and surprisingly low amount of visible niggles. This would mean that the engineering and design of the vehicle was well thought over and brilliantly executed. Pitting it right where the Brezza, Ford and Honda WRV is the Nexon sure has the necessary character and demeanor to march past its rivals with a class leading engine, good ground clearance and visibility, excellent space and a punchy drive. If you are looking for genuine value for money – this is the car to go for while at the same time keeping in mind that there is not much parts reliability information available yet. The safety of this car is well designed and is surely going to keep occupants protected in all situations on the road.
Good luck Tata Motors to set sales charts on fire and the numbers cannot be wrong!

Written with StackEdit.

It has been a horrid wait. Honestly Apple’s own maps has never launched in India yet. Even in other countries Apple maps never used to show things properly and they had made a fool of themselves royally. The company even fired two of its iOS executives Scott Forstall and John Browett when they refused to acknowledge the poor performance of Apple maps.

Well since those learnings Apple has been steadily trying to improve its maps division specifically for India. We do already know they are adding more and more data points day by day. They also said they are looking at about 5000 employees for their Hyderabad division since 2016.

During all this time, users of Apple iPhones readily and steadily switched back to Google Maps, and have been conveniently using it since sometime now. Of late there are lots of cars that sport either as inbuilt or custom build ICE or in car entertainment units which support Google Play and Apple Car Play like the Sony XAV which I have reviewed earlier on this blog.

With increasingly more and more people linking their iPhones to their car units, it was now important to have navigation on Apple Car Play. With neither Apple introducing their maps nor allowing Google maps app, this was simply not going anywhere in terms of a choice. Until now.

With the release of iOS 12 and Google immediately releasing their own update for Google Maps, all Car Play users can now rejoice to see their favorite navigation app on their car units. I will cover some details of the same in the sections below.

User Interface

I must say the first time I installed and started using the maps interface on Car Play I was pleasantly surprised at how well Google maps displays on the car unit. It is sort of smaller that I would have liked it and also has a bit of candy-ish looks as compared to say its counterpart of Google maps on Android Auto, but nevertheless it is well implemented.

A simple tap on the screen brings up “Add Destination”, or “Exit” or the alerts button depending on whether navigation is not yet started or already going on. The whole thing is so non intrusive. There are six options displayed under destinations

• Recent searches
• saved places
• your home and work
• it also shows petrol pumps nearby (smartly since you may need it)
• and you can use a search option if all else fails

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhgPJ4WuVVTvkVaN8

The search option brings up a keyboard with which you can type out few characters of your destination and the list of matching results is shown from where you can choose to start your navigation with one of them.

Rest of the navigation is as usual, it shows you the route from where you can begin to navigate at actual and it will zoom in to street level directions. At any point you can exit the navigation by touching the screen and choosing exit option. You can also move the map and bring it back to center point by choosing recenter option. There is also a settings button with which you can access settings such as avoiding tollways, etc while asking for navigation help.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CUv5F9CHgDogxFrMA

I have also tried a few other things with this app on Car play which I wish to share with you. If you unplug the phone the navigation still continues with the phone and if you plug the phone back in, the car play automatically takes you to map app assuming it was the last app open. If you choose to dial out someone or receive a phone call during navigation voice guidance will still remain but the map is out of the screen. You need to bring back maps app during a call if you wish to see the map again.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KvjJFVffBgT7HJkLA

The icon to access maps sits vertically on the left bar along with other icons such as music, and phone.

With this inclusion from Google, and allowance from Apple of the google maps app, Apple has finally plugged a missing piece which was necessary for using Apple car play properly – the Navigation aspect. Hopefully when Apple release their own version of maps, in the near future or so, users can get to experience the best of both worlds. Until then, its going to be Google Maps on Apple Car Play for me and I am not one bit disappointed at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has been a horrid wait. Honestly Apple’s own maps has never launched in India yet. Even in other countries Apple maps never used to show things properly and they had made a fool of themselves royally. The company even fired two of its iOS executives Scott Forstall and John Browett when they refused to acknowledge the poor performance of Apple maps.

Well since those learnings Apple has been steadily trying to improve its maps division specifically for India. We do already know they are adding more and more data points day by day. They also said they are looking at about 5000 employees for their Hyderabad division since 2016.

During all this time, users of Apple iPhones readily and steadily switched back to Google Maps, and have been conveniently using it since sometime now. Of late there are lots of cars that sport either as inbuilt or custom build ICE or in car entertainment units which support Google Play and Apple Car Play like the Sony XAV which I have reviewed earlier on this blog.

With increasingly more and more people linking their iPhones to their car units, it was now important to have navigation on Apple Car Play. With neither Apple introducing their maps nor allowing Google maps app, this was simply not going anywhere in terms of a choice. Until now.

With the release of iOS 12 and Google immediately releasing their own update for Google Maps, all Car Play users can now rejoice to see their favorite navigation app on their car units. I will cover some details of the same in the sections below.

User Interface

I must say the first time I installed and started using the maps interface on Car Play I was pleasantly surprised at how well Google maps displays on the car unit. It is sort of smaller that I would have liked it and also has a bit of candy-ish looks as compared to say its counterpart of Google maps on Android Auto, but nevertheless it is well implemented.

A simple tap on the screen brings up “Add Destination”, or “Exit” or the alerts button depending on whether navigation is not yet started or already going on. The whole thing is so non intrusive. There are six options displayed under destinations

• Recent searches
• saved places
• your home and work
• it also shows petrol pumps nearby (smartly since you may need it)
• and you can use a search option if all else fails

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhgPJ4WuVVTvkVaN8

The search option brings up a keyboard with which you can type out few characters of your destination and the list of matching results is shown from where you can choose to start your navigation with one of them.

Rest of the navigation is as usual, it shows you the route from where you can begin to navigate at actual and it will zoom in to street level directions. At any point you can exit the navigation by touching the screen and choosing exit option. You can also move the map and bring it back to center point by choosing recenter option. There is also a settings button with which you can access settings such as avoiding tollways, etc while asking for navigation help.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CUv5F9CHgDogxFrMA

I have also tried a few other things with this app on Car play which I wish to share with you. If you unplug the phone the navigation still continues with the phone and if you plug the phone back in, the car play automatically takes you to map app assuming it was the last app open. If you choose to dial out someone or receive a phone call during navigation voice guidance will still remain but the map is out of the screen. You need to bring back maps app during a call if you wish to see the map again.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KvjJFVffBgT7HJkLA

The icon to access maps sits vertically on the left bar along with other icons such as music, and phone.

With this inclusion from Google, and allowance from Apple of the google maps app, Apple has finally plugged a missing piece which was necessary for using Apple car play properly – the Navigation aspect. Hopefully when Apple release their own version of maps, in the near future or so, users can get to experience the best of both worlds. Until then, its going to be Google Maps on Apple Car Play for me and I am not one bit disappointed at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

In my quest for a good pair of earphones, you will have already noticed that I experienced with many of them here and here. During this journey I chanced across a suggestion from a friend on the Focal brand and the fact they were selling their earphones at a discount on Amazon.

Since the offer was too good to resist, I purchased these online.

Unboxing video

Here is a little unboxing I created for you to understand what the packaging of the earphone looks like.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/257Ei2DYDRf54sRn6

 

Strong points

The Focal Spark has these pros going for it

• Very easy to wear for long hours
• short cable means lesser tangling unlike the Samsung UFlex
• Good sound quality – bit of muddy bass, but largely good distributions of highs mids and lows
• Very good battery standby time – you charge it once and when you don’t use it the earphones does not lose battery power too soon – this is in stark contrast to the Uflex earphones from samsung which used to annoy me during the middle of that long walk
• Charging is quick and gives full charge that does not let you down anywhere
• You can pair two different phones to this earphone over bluetooth at same time (which could be a boon or a bane)

Weak points

The Focal Spark like any other earphones has few cons that I noticed during my usage which I will like to point out here

• The wire is a tad bit too short, it needs to be about 20% longer to fit better
• The earphone is best suited for music but not necessarily phone calls, I did have a feedback that the phone calls were not pretty clear. You can check that here.
• The earbuds are a bit tight so wearing them for longer hours means it will feel like your ears are blocked. This is exactly where the Airpods do better. They are there and not there at the same time.
• The bass was not exactly clear and was a bit muddy. Focal has still some way to go to beat Bullets V2 by OnePlus.
• The asking price of 7000/- is not exactly less, but right now you can bag a pair for close to 3000/- which makes it either a steal or well, unpopular as the case maybe!
• It comes with micro usb charging which is not so 2018, but this was not such a downer for me, would have still preferred usb-C which is quite the standard these days.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these are an excellent pair of wireless earbuds for music purposes if not exactly phone calls. The buds have excellent battery life, and are good to hear and use. They are comfortable over long hours of wear and you just need to find an eartip of the size that suits you better. Having said that, for the current price on offer, this is a steal, and you should go for it !

Introduction

I was in the market gathering interest in wireless earbuds of all shapes and sizes. Since my previous attempt at buying Leaf ear buds did not go so great as I thought it would, I had to scour the market again for something better. This is when I chanced upon Samsung UFlex with the BYOD pricing which was tempting for me to buy and use since I almost got it at 50-60% of the cost. What it proved to be for me is a detailed story!

As is the case wireless bluetooth earphones come in two different forms, one with the neckband and one without (the true wireless variety). The problem with the former was that there was always a band that was either too big or got caught in between collars, Id cards, or even worse seat belts of the car. The pros included great battery life, and good connectivity. The issue with the latter was the lack of wires meant losing the buds easily, mediocre battery life and constant connectivity drops every now and then with skips and jumps in music playback. The connectivity was first between the buds and then with the phone which made it even worse.

Contenders in the market

When you go to buy something there are always a few major players amongst the scores of other smaller ones, which are marketing their products more than the others and also manage to sell in large numbers thanks to their brand power. Here it was no different. The models I started considering was Jabra elite 65t, Apple Airpods, Bose SoundSport and Sony. The dark horses in all these were the One plus v2 bullets wireless which is perpetually out of stock (and again with the neckband), and the Focal Spark. There were a few more like Jaybird, Bragi and AKG which also were doing well. The Leaf and UFlex are brands I already owned and hence did not bother to look again.

Factors influencing my next purchase

Some of the things I was looking for after my two earphone purchases went awry were these

• – true wireless preferably (read as avoid large neckbands)
• – Good connectivity between buds
• – Easy pairing
• – Reasonably good battery life
• – good distribution of lows, mids and highs in the music
• – excellent call quality
• – bass thump was a bonus
• – very less or zero ear pain on long hours of usage
• – portability and compatibility
• – medium price if not too low based on bang for buck

Models I considered

I started considering Apple airpods, Bose Sound Sport, Sony, Samsung IconX, and Focal Spark and was not so interested in the other ones in the market. The thing with Jabra is I did not know where to go to try out a pair. Same with Focal spark, Bragi. For sony there was Croma or Sony world, for Bose there was the bose store and for Apple there was the inviting Apple store as usual.

A friend of mine bought the Focal spark on a very good discount of almost 60% off and that tempted me to get one too. While my product was on the way with a zippy order placed on Amazon, I managed to use his earphones to get a feel of how they would fit and sound. My reference point were the Bullets V2 wired earphones from OnePlus for the fit, feel and sound and I was pleasantly surprised at how close the Focal Spark was to those.

Focal Spark

The focal spark earphones come with a great fit and finish, the white ones were particularly good and I got them at a discount of almost 60% on Amazon – somehow the brand is not as well known here as much as elsewhere in other countries. Frankly Focal builds some very good earphones and they know their business well. The frequency separation was excellent and never once did my music sound very tinny or the bass muddy. In fact in my entire comparison the bonus of having thumping bonus were delivered only by two of the four earphones I considered. And Focal was on that list. After listening to my friend’s earphone, I knew I did not make a mistake with Focal.

Let us get one thing straight at this point of the article.

It is very difficult to find an earphone that satisfies all criteria and even so to say two of the most important – music and calls in one product.

Initially I did believe Focal achieved that, but due to their rather narrow neckband, one had to wear them like a necklace for people to be able to hear audio. I did a small test to find out that wearing it in front did improve audio quality but not wearing it around the neck. In fact in the latter case it was so bad people could not hear me.

When it comes to battery Focal provides something like 4-5 hours max on continuous use, and its definitely better than the Samsung UFlex. Charging was quick for me and the connectivity to the iPhone was stable without much fuss. The audio quality is astounding and you really feel your money’s worth when you buy this earphone. Especially when you know it sells for 100$ and you are getting it at 30 or 40$.

Leaf Ear

I already have reviewed the Leaf Earbuds in isolation on this blog earlier and some of my opinions may have been provided due to not having a chance to test other earphones which were available to me at this point. The best part about Leaf is its an Indian Startup who are into the business of making earphones.

The sound quality is decent but a bit muddy. They advertise the earphones are sport earphones with good amount of bass for the price. But in reality for the same price other lesser known manufacturers either give clearer bass or no bass at all. So its in the extremes so to say. The fact that the Leaf mixes up the sound signature specifically with muddy bass means it may not live up to the likes of Focal or Bullets or other better brands.

The price is real low no doubts on that with Leaf, but the fit strains the ear (more of a blocked feeling) after a while since the buds are not really soft compared to other brands. They can switch to better quality silicone for the same. The main button is so hard to press that you would perhaps push the earbud all the way upto your brain if you try that hard ( 🙂 just kidding – but its messy nonetheless). The other physical buttons are placed a bit uncomfortably and obviously the usage is as irritating as expected.

Bose Sound Sport

For Bose and Apple there was only one way to find out whether or not your investment is worth it. Wear it in a showroom use it and get to know. One thing I am sure of with Bose is whatever product they sell be it small or big, everything is on display in their showroom. So off I went to check out that nearby. After some basic enquiry the lady at the store did offer me the SoundSport black for testing it against my iPhone. It also comes in Citrous & Orange colours which are good to see.

I had a little trouble wearing it properly but in the end I guess it’s a bit of getting used to. The clip is so soft that the earphone stays securely in the ear. The first thing you notice when you wear it is the rather unruly size of the earbud. It’s huge. Its not the typical type of earbud that sits cozy in the ear. It’s pretty big.

Coming to sound quality when you a buy a Bose you cannot go wrong. The product is well rounded and provides rich sound with well separated lows, mids and highs, and bass. For the phone calls I did a test, I went to the noisy part of the mall, with my wife inside the shop and asked her how much of surrounding noise the earphones picked up. The microphone on the Bose is pretty sensitive and picks up quite some background noise – now do not get me wrong, its not disturbing, but you do know there is that noise around you. Its not isolating it completely and filtering out only the vocals of the person talking.

For the price though, Bose did not offer something great that other earphones at half the price could not offer. At nearly 20k INR this was surely the brand that you were paying for more than the product.

Samsung Gear Icon X

Samsung have recently introduced their Gear Icon X 2018 true wireless earphones. Since the Samsung store was near by home, I buzzed them and they said I could come and take a look at the product, although they did not have stock to sell – and this worked perfectly for me as I was not in the mood to plonk nearly 13k INR on a product I was not sure of especially after the UFlex fiasco. Of course comparing the two is like comparing Apples (pun intended) and lemons due to the price range and build type.

Anyway I went to the store and as promised was given the Icon X truly wireless buds to try out. These are not as bulky as the Bose, and they managed to fit snugly into the ear. After pairing with the iPhone I started playing some songs to test out the frequency separation – a favourite of mine being Despicable Me from Despicable Me 3. It clearly shows the separation of the bass from the vocals and other instruments.

The overall sound was a bit low, not really loud. There was no bass thump either and it was similar sounding to the lesser priced cousin UFlex. The point here is that its not unclear or muddy, its not loud and does not have thump. That said it does have some touch controls like single and double tap, swipe up and down for volume and so on. But I really got jolted when I tried touching the controls and the earphone went on to ask me to get ready for a workout in the midst of the music being played in a showroom. I went into a frenzy to get it to a stop. I had not configured any buttons as such on my iPhone so am not sure why this happened.

But clearly the implementation of the interpretation of hardware touch within Samsung software is really crazy, and the earphone is too sensitive in the way it interprets these touches.

All I wanted is an earphone that has good music and call quality but this one had so many other things in the mix like workout schedules and so on for which it started issuing many prompts in the middle of what I was trying to do. This is not something I appreciate much, and I feel you would also not like the way this is implemented much. I did not get a chance to test call quality, but I believe it will definitely be good enough in reasonably noisy environments. The UFlex is a testimony to that and I see no reason why the Icon X would not better it in some terms.

Apple Airpods

After my experience with Bose and for the fact that I own Apple iPhone 8 plus, the only natural choice for me was to go to the Apple store and test out the Airpods. The store did not have a sample piece!!! And they were not sure when they would get one. But the guy at the store did not want to lose a potential customer, so he offered his personal airpods to test out at my end.

With Apple one thing is a given – no matter what product they make, however less advanced it may be compared to Samsung or the likes, it will be 100% easy to use, and I can bet my whole life on it.

Airpods were no exception. Open the case and after the initial manual connection, the Airpods were always recognized by my phone. To be frank I am not a big fan of the shape of the Airpods. I have a wired version of lightning earphones and these earphones cause a lot of ear pain. Apple airpods are no exception though Apple may say it is made for a wide variety of ears – but that list did not include my own ears I guess.

For the wired version I even tried soft covers around the buds, but to no use. Ear still pains and you will need to live with it. Now having thrown that grouse out of my mind, let me come to the positives. Connectivity is a breeze both for the phone to realize the presence of the buds nearby and stay connected without losing the connection. Music does not have the bass that the Focal or the Bose or even the Bullets V2 wired have, but it is not flat, whatever is there is okay to contend with. Music remains clear and very audible at higher volumes effectively isolating the noise outside.

I was not so sure about how the call performance would be. But you need to use the buds to see it for yourself. Absolute clarity on both ends of the call and it never misses a beat. Absolutely stays connected at all times and lasts that way for hours. The airpods promise the most amount of hours and the best connection out of the battery and hardware, and Apple has not gone wrong here.

The intuitive controls are absolutely a delight to use. Add to it the fact that once you plug in the buds (or even a single one) the phone goes into BT mode for audio. Remove the buds and the phone will go back to normal mode. Double tap can be configured on both right and left earbud for Siri or music playback/pause and call answer. With Siri Apple claims you can do anything you want as such with the phone.

Remove the bud when music is playing and it stops like a charm, put it back and it plays. This is how hardware must be – designed around the user who uses it. Not the other way around. However funny the design of the Airpods are, they sit in the ear tight. And don’t fall out – ever – even if you run or exercise.

Instructing Siri to do stuff is so accurate that I could not believe that it worked the way it did.

For the buds being so far away from the mouth, the microphone is astounding. The flip side is the pain – the max you can do is about 30-40 minutes with it, you will have to remove it a bit after that to relax your ear. This is why it works best for reasonably long calls but that not that hours-together-call-with-your-date call.

Ratings in percentages based on my experience

Disclaimer: These are purely my personal opinions after using each of the mentioned products. Your mileages may vary appropriate to what you feel, but my scores are as below.

Final call – what did I buy?

Its the moment of truth. Can you guess what I bought and what I am likely to live with? Remember its a real world usage thing. And not being with the messy wires thing. And the good battery, music and calls thing.

Though I did initially think the UFlex would be with me for long, I had to let it go due to the horrid neck band which was weighing on my neck and interfering with my other stuff like the ID card, seat belt etc. When the batter goes weaker it sometimes also did drop a few bits of sounds here and there which was annoying even when the phone was nearby. I was so gung-ho about the IconX that I thought I would walk out of the shop wearing a pair of them but the kind of gimmickery it did with the gestures thing, I was a bit shaken. Its seriously sensitive and badly implemented for the price it commands.

The Leaf ear with its muddy bass leaves a lot to be desired. I also saw and heard that the Sony truly wireless needs charging within three hours so it was not in my list at all at least among top contenders. The Bose was out due to the price and the fact that I could answer calls only through the right bud for that price, which I find to be silly on the part of the company that made this. When you ride on brand value, give us the value for money. Having physical buttons on truly wireless earbuds is not the best idea.

The Focal Spark was the closest to the Bullets wired V2 which in my opinion is a fantastic feat even for a 100$ price. The fact I got it at 35-40$ is an icing on the cake for the bass thump, which was a bonus. The neck band could have been 10-20% longer which is something the company can fix in their next iteration and it is quite an annoyance to wear it like a necklace for people to be able to hear you properly. For music the Focal rocks, for calls it sucks. But it stays with me as a faithful companion for some more time.

The Apple Airpods won the competition at least for me. Excellent connectivity, almost zero effort discovery between phone and pods, astounding call quality in the noisiest of environments, and truly wireless nature won this one for me. Of course the stick out design and the ear pain it causes is something I cannot live with or even excuse in lieu of its good qualities, and I am seriously hoping the next version of the Airpods are much better in terms of design. But there is a small edge that the other qualities of this product outweighs its niggles. So I  have come to terms with them.

At the point of writing this article I have not tested the Jabra Elite 65t which has a lot going for it in terms of sound, battery life and so on. Also I could not test the Sony truly wireless earbuds but that is more of a choice due to hearing about the poor battery life. Each of the truly wireless earphones comes with its own charging case which extends the battery life to make it last the whole day by charging when not in use. The semi wireless earphones like Leaf, or Focal have micro usb charging and as such not a case.

If you liked this comparison, let me know what is your take and how you decided to purchase your favourite pair of earphones in the comments section below.

Till the next review – happy gadgeting !