Symphony P9 (2017) review

The detailed specifications, photos and introductory video of the Symphony P9 (P9). The list of the competitors most often compared to the Symphony P9 smartphone.

The Symphony P9 (P9) smartphone released in 2017. It is powered by Mediatek MT6753 chipset, 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage.

The Symphony P9 runs on Android OS v7.0 (Nougat) out of the box. It comes with a Li-Po 3000 mAh, non-removable battery. It features a 5.5 inches IPS display with 720 x 1280 px resolution. The IPS technology is one of the most leading LCD technologies in the world.

The 9 Worst-Designed Cities in the World

From sky-scraping metropoles to up-and-coming centers breaking the "large town" mold, cities come in all shapes and sizes. But with that diversity comes one simple truth: no city is perfect. They constantly evolve, much like living beings, but sometimes, their systems break down, too. Just ask anybody who's sat in a traffic jam or stood on an overloaded subway car.

To get to the bottom of what qualifies as "badly designed," we picked the brains of several urban planners to highlight the flaws of some of the world's biggest cities. In the end, that birthed a list of nine cities that, for various reasons, are gigantic messes in some way or another.

Jakarta

Indonesia
 When your country's capital is also declared your country's worst city, you know you've got a problem. Jakarta's dismal transportation infrastructure is compounded by its ever-increasing number of car owners, as more and more are forced to commute to and from the suburban sprawl surrounding this megacity. The result? Jakarta's citizens spend 400 hours a year in traffic, with the average trip clocking in at about two hours. If you think that sounds like the worst traffic in the world, well, that's because it actually is.

Where does the responsibility lie? Well, since the duty of maintaining and developing Jakarta's infrastructure falls on the local government, and development contracts are often renegotiated annually, long-term projects are pretty much an impossibility.

Dubai

United Arab Emirates
 Dubai's pretty much a byword for outrageous excess these days, possessing the world's tallest building, a fleet of police supercars, and one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. But as an example of great design? Well, Dubai's kind of a disjointed nightmare of skyscrapers and residential estates that lack any sense of cohesion. It's pretty much impossible to walk anywhere, since the entire layout is connected by massive roadways and arterials leading from one giant development to the next.

On top of all that, the city lacks shared public spaces, leading to an overall void of togetherness that cities often develop around parks and squares. Unless a ski resort inside a shopping mall or a Ferrari museum is your idea of a shared public space. In that case, well, you're probably too rich to care anymore.

Atlanta, GA

USA
 Jakarta's got world-class traffic problems, but if you're looking at just the US of A, it doesn't get much worse than Atlanta. The traffic here is legendarily awful, due in large part to the massive urban sprawl that resulted from A-Town's boom in the '80s and '90s; the fact that the Interstate 75/85 connector sits smack dab in the middle of downtown Atlanta just exacerbates the problem. These astronomical congestion problems could, of course, be alleviated by the presence of effective mass transit, except Atlanta's hamstrung by the woefully inadequate MARTA system: a plus-shaped subway line whose much-needed expansion is perennially blocked by special interests. Hooray for putting up metaphorical roadblocks to prevent literal roadblocks!

Naypyidaw

Myanmar
 Rangoon used to be the capital of Myanmar (or Burma, if you're nasty), until the country's government decided a change of scenery was in order in 2005, and officially declared an empty field 200mi to the North a great place for a new capital. Fast-forward a decade, and Naypyidaw has grown to roughly six times the size of New York City, complete with 20-lane highways and widespread Wi-Fi access. Sounds great, right? It is... until you realize it's in the middle of nowhere, and pretty much nobody lives here except government officials.

Yes, the reported population count sits at around 900,000, but that figure is widely considered fabricated, and the massive streets are empty during what should be the busiest times of day. If cities are meant to be lived in, Myanmar's new capital is a resounding failure thus far. Seriously, you can hear echoes half the time, it's so empty.

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São Paulo

Brazil
 Another victim of non-homogenous planning, São Paulo was developed piecemeal over the course of the 20th century, transitioning from a small, concentrated, urban environment into a sprawling, 3,000sqmi metropolis, with the rich living in the center and the poor pushed to the periphery. That's nothing new with city development, but to alleviate the congestion from resultant commuters, São Paulo replaced one of its most lively neighborhoods with the Minhocão: a two-mile, elevated, noisy eyesore of a highway that winds its way directly through the heart of the city, passing painfully close to many residents' living quarters.

The city's moneyed contingent, however, opted to avoid the congestion issue in the most affluent way possible -- commuting via helicopter. As a result, São Paulo actually has the world's largest fleet of helicopters per capita. Like Doc Brown, where they're going, they don't need roads.

Boston, MA

USA
 Beantown's home to the most beautiful neighborhood in America, but don't let looks alone fool you: it's also consistently ranked as one of the nation's most difficult cities to navigate, thanks in large part to the maze-like layout of its streets. Although the common explanation for Boston's willy-nilly street set-up is that the roads were originally built on top of wandering cow paths, the truth is that they simply weren't laid out according to an actual plan.

Additionally, street locations were determined largely by convenience and the avoidance of geographical features. These defining geographical features largely disappeared as the city's usable area expanded through landfilling, a fascinating process you should definitely watch unfold in GIF form right here.

And even though it improved Boston in many ways, the "Big Dig" project is enough to make Robert Moses turn in his grave. Estimated to have cost $22 billion (that's with a "B"), the titanic construction and redevelopment project took the greater part of 25 years to plan, delay, delay some more, and finally wrap up. When terms like "crushing debt" and "insolvency" get thrown around, you know a project's in bad shape. The Big Dig won't be paid off until 2038, either, according to the Boston Globe -- just in time for anyone who paid for it to not reap the benefits.

Flickr/Mercado Viagens

Brasilia

Brazil
 While São Paulo suffers from a lack of design, Brazil's capital city is often panned for being handicapped by too much design. The brainchild of renowned Brazilian architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa, Brasilia was created from one holistic plan back in the 1950s, with its airplane-inspired layout and modernist concrete architecture intended to make this capital city hold strong into future decades. Unfortunately, a visually appealing capital doesn't necessarily make a good city to live in, and Brasilia's earned a reputation as being sterile and artificial, enlivened only by the vibrance of the local population. You could say the same for an insane asylum.

Population, unfortunately, is another area where Brasilia falters. Originally designed to house only 500,000, the city has drawn nearly 3 million inhabitants over the years, forcing it to expand beyond the elegance of the original Niemeyer/Costa plan. So take that beautiful nucleus, patch on a few extremities, and you end up with a Frankenstein's monster of a city in one of the world's booming economies.

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Missoula, MT

USA
 On its surface, Missoula looks like just another Montana city, albeit its second-most populous one. That's until you notice its weird "Slant Streets" neighborhood, so named because it's the only section of town that doesn't follow a grid pattern, with streets running diagonally toward the Clark Fork River instead. This offbeat part of town actually dates back to the 1890s, when the area below the river was first being developed. Two lawyers wanted to break away and establish a new town imaginatively called South Missoula, and began laying out a street plan that ran parallel to Bitterroot Wagon Road; unfortunately, the town's moneyed interests said "no dice," and surrounded their street plan with a grid that completely threw everything out of whack. Thus, Slant Streets was born.

As if that weren't enough, Missoula also developed numerous needlessly complicated intersections, the most heinous of which is a five-lane intersection appropriately nicknamed "Malfunction Junction."

Dhaka

Bangladesh
 Proving once again that capital cities are a hotbed for planning disasters, Dhaka suffers from urban disfunction on just about every level. Transportation infrastructure is virtually nonexistent -- to the point where only 60 of the city's 650 major intersections have traffic lights, many of which may or may not actually work at any given time. Add to that the millions of rickshaws, cars, motorcycles, buses, and bicycles that have to share the roads every day, and it's a wonder anyone gets anywhere in less than a lifetime.

Thanks to this dreadful transportation situation, most of Dhaka's nearly 15 million inhabitants are unable to commute from outside the city, and many are forced to endure slum conditions within city limits just to be able to get to work. This, in turn, leads to poor sanitation and water treatment issues. Not shitting where you eat is a great theory -- but one Dhaka's planners seem to have not accounted for. If there's one city that symbolizes what total planning and design failure look like, it's Dhaka.

The 5 best new cars of 2017

5. Aston Martin DB11 



Any auto producer that can keep a vehicle idea as magnificent and behind the times as the front-engined, 12-barrel, 2+2, Great British, terrific visiting roadster fit as a fiddle in this upside down 21st century merits specific acclaim. However, one that can refresh it, as Aston Martin has with the DB11 – expanding on practically every critical quality that Astons have exchanged on for quite a long time, before including new ones and making the subsequent auto feel both fresh out of the box new and warmly commonplace – has accomplished more than make an auto. It has saved an animal varieties.

The truly glorious thing about the DB11 is that it exists by any means, obviously. Aston Martin's business has consumed through the fortunes of a lot of well off aficionados over its time of history and under new manager Andy Palmer despite everything it needs to demonstrate that it can reliably turn a benefit and pay back its loan bosses. However, the punt was taken in any case: a sharp admission of breath was made and the ability and mastery of an affectionate organization in the English Midlands was upheld.

The DB11 is the thing that has been created. Also, it's radiant, also an "appropriate" Aston Martin. It is rich and enticing in the way that its V12 sounds, but recently energetic in the earnestness of its pace. It is more supple-riding, agreeable and since quite a while ago legged than any DB auto ever, but additionally fit for setting a benchmark lap around MIRA's Dunlop circuit that is a nearer coordinate for that of a Porsche 911 Turbo S than a Bentley Continental GT3-R. Also, it is so much preferred designated and better prepared over the autos worked under Ford's responsibility for Martin that the correlation is stark, without a doubt. The DB11 is effortlessly the best single stride advances that its creator has yet taken.

In a modest bunch of ways, the auto demonstrates opportunity to get better, which is the reason it has quite recently made our best five as opposed to commanding it. However, you can make sure that Aston Martin will have sufficient energy to make those changes, what with the model life expectancy of a run of the mill DB auto being about twice that of a 911. Thus when Autocar does its '50 best autos of 2027', don't be shocked if this car blueblood is still in it.

4. Volkswagen Golf R 


What's left to say in regards to the R, a lasting apparatus in this rundown and a rehash all-round contender for realworld cash? This time around at any rate, extensively, the auto is new, Volkswagen having treated it to an indistinguishable gentle facelift from whatever remains of the Golf line-up. Honestly, however, while this procedure changes the model's appearance and infotainment and partially builds motor yield, it stays particularly as some time recently. Which is to state splendid on the sort of inconspicuous and interminably remunerating scale that most standard autos enlist on just erratically – if by any stretch of the imagination.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't blur in memory nor ever baffle on re-colleague. The Golf R, similar to the Porsche 911 or Range Rover or Mazda MX-5, is talked about regularly in our office since it gives the sort of benchmark we as a whole instinctually concede to. It is the sort of unending at-a-separate honeyed words that should damn the client to frustration when at long last come back to the sharp end. Be that as it may, rather, the same imperturbable grasp, muscular and substantive and spot on, ascends to meet you unfailingly. Normally, a sizeable component of this is the Golf's more extensive present for ergonomic accuracy – in spite of the fact that that scarcely represents the EA888 motor's brio or the unbiased resoluteness of the four-wheeldrive body or the startling consistence of the ride quality – all of which conspire in the impression of an auto in astounding summon of its dynamic resources.

Thus, its incorporation in the best five was never questioned for a minute. In the court of popular conclusion, the Golf R remains Exhibit A for the situation for both having your cake and eating it, and it would take just a somewhat weightier onus on esteem for cash for the auto to stand triumphantly at the highest point of this short rundown consistently.

3. Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio 


The most dumbfounding thing about the Giulia Quadrifoglio is that it comes about because of what could be known as a standing begin. Before the Giulia, Alfa Romeo hadn't constructed a back drive cantina for a considerable length of time. It hadn't dallied truly in V8 motors, either – and its current endeavors at energy far from the 4C were constrained to generally dreadful, worthless renditions of the Mito and Giulietta. Its underlying endeavor at matching the relentless BMW M3 and Mercedes-AMG C63 should by rights to have been a commendable disappointment at most, yet it isn't. It's as a long way from that as you could would like to get. It is overachievement. It undermines to be a legitimate Alfa: marvelous, imperfect and sincerely overwhelming.

That it figures out how to be any of these things is established in the Giulia's relentless advancement. Those rehashed comes back to the planning phase; the best down refusal to trade off on key components; the substantial obligation association of Ferrari engineers, each of them probably drenched in Maranello's bleedingedge way to deal with all things quick and feelsome. As unmistakably as a Porsche has gone through Weissach or a Renault through Dieppe or a Mercedes Affalterbach, so the Quadrifoglio feels a result of their info. The auto's controlling, as ethereal as blessed messenger wings, is nobly sharp. Its weightless energy is the counterpoint to the conscientiously serious German heave, and the Giulia's agile case has been prepared to react like a tuning fork, its course changes resounding with the same quick and liberated imperativeness.

On Exmoor, restricted to halfwaysane street speeds in awesome climate, the Quadrifoglio doesn't feel hampered by the plain strength of its back hub, either. In a solitary minute, it feels adjusted, guaranteed and energized at the same time. Obviously, in a similar minute, it likewise appears to be coldhearted to brake inputs, to a great degree parched, frustrating to the touch and hopefully estimated. Some of that is as natural as it is unwelcome, yet the Giulia's remarkable and sudden ability is definitely not.

2. McLaren 570S 


It doesn't typically pay to work with brave auto picture takers, however this was one of the uncommon events when it did. Snapper Luc Lacey had picked a squirm of landing area he loved the look of for our street test shoot on the fresh out of the plastic new McLaren 570S. It was some place none of us had been some time recently.

Ordinarily, it was a street cut into the side of a Welsh mountain and, on the morning we were there, it was being slammed by some horrendous conditions. I watched the mists and rain exploding and twirling the valley towards us and marveling when Halle Berry would show up in her X-Men get-up. I additionally recall considering: "This isn't precisely supercar climate." Well, it relies upon the supercar.

We investigated the streets close-by before breaking on with the photographs and found a tight, rutted, potholed, halfway unmarked B-street, bits of it mid-repair. It was the sort of street you may envision would be just as inconsistent with the happiness regarding an advanced mid-engined McLaren as the climate seemed to be.

However, no. What the 570S started doing that morning was exhibiting precisely how usable it could be. How spongy and excusing its suspension could be when left in Normal mode. How the auto's amazingly exact, consummately weighted, reliably paced and delightfully open controlling enabled it to deal with a tight mountain path with a dangerous surface (and a cliff just past the white paint) with the guaranteed feel of a truly awesome 1980s hot hatchback.

The auto appeared to have all the hold and body control it required – even with 562bhp to transmit onto wet landing area through Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires – but not a piece of excessive touchiness or apprehension. Stunning. What's more, I was in stunningness incompletely in light of the fact that, a day already, I'd done coordinated execution keeps running of the same 570S for our street test and saw it do things that autos at twofold its value level may battle to coordinate.

It's one thing to have the capacity to convey a mid-engined supercar with a carbonfibre tub at a cost that many would rich on an exceptionally particular games auto, yet very another to make it as comprehensively gifted and as certainty motivating a supercar as the 570S may be. I'd driven the P1 a few years prior; I've driven the 570GT and 720S since; regardless I think the 570S is most likely a more prominent blessing to the auto adoring world than any of them. It has a craving for everything that is splendid about the way McLaren makes autos, decreased and refined down to its most straightforward, moderate and engaging.

1. Porsche 911 GTS 
 

Despite appearances, the Porsche 911 GTS has not won this challenge to locate our most loved auto discounted. The GTS range can be thought of as a container of chocolates, loaded with various flavors, shapes and surfaces. A Targa here, a convertible there. A four-wheel-drive adaptation hiding in the corner by the PDK. You can fly the same number of in your mouth as you like yet no blend will be as mouth-wateringly heavenly as the least difficult and best: this challenge has been won by the base-spec GTS – the manual, raise wheel-drive car on this page, and that by itself.

For whatever length of time that the client has had a choice of 911s to pick between (which is the greater part a century now), less has quite often implied more. It is as though the minute you begin to tinker with the fundamental rightness of the first idea other than to include speed, some of that virtuoso is lost and the auto's allure is lessened.

The interest of this GTS is the same as that of past 911s to wear the identification, reawakened on another level of capacity. However, were it only an incredible driver's auto, it would have stood zero chance of fixing this rundown. As fans, we as a whole need an auto that will turn each awesome drive on a forsook nation street into an exceptional affair. In any case, in our souls, we likewise realize that those drives constitute under 1% of our time out and about; and if the auto's not taking a shot at the 99% of events when we'r