Raining free gifts, but what matters is I GOT IT late.

Title to this is bit of an exaggeration but i didnt find a way to put it across. So my apologies.

I got this from Nokia india marketing as a complementary one for my Nokia mobile purchase, wait there is a long story behind how i got it. On jan 5th ( the day i bought the device) the shop person was getting some details from me, my phone number, email blah blaah, then he called Nokia customer care or some dept to validate the details given by me and after few minutes i got a message on my mobile "Congratulations you have won a genunine Bluetooth headset, to claim you gift call to toll free number and there was also a voucher code", the shop person was very cunning that he said i can take either the Reebok watch or this gift, at that moment i was desperately in need of a watch so i opted for watch, this fellow to took this as a chance to grab a Bluettoth headset by calling that number and addressing himself as me and informed the customer care exec to deliver this one at his residence.

                                                         Some sensible guy/girl who attended this call noted shop person's address but entered my name and mobile number for that parcel and they shipped it via Bluedart on 13th jan, i got a call from Blue dart on 15th jan(friday) that i have got a courier i had no idea what it was and asked that person who called from where it has come??, he replied 'From Nokia' and the address was wrong i was clueless and confused why nokia would send me a courier which has a wrong address i already got their phone i thought it could be some marketing services. Also i didnt want to leave that beacuse it has got my name and Phone number in it correct. Saturday and sunday went past and on Monday 18th jan at 1.30 p.m a person from Blue dart called me and said your parcel is ready for delivery, i told that person to give it in one of my office sites since i was at other office site, the parcel was delivered and due to some bunch of irresponsible people who doesnt take care in other's items it was given to a wrong person who holds same name as mine also that parcel didnt contain any initial there was simply 'Krishnaswamy' (i dont know why they used 'y' instead of 'i' in the end i hate when my name is mispelled) with my Mobile number.

                                                    Next monday 25th jan i called blue dart, dont ask what were you doing till that time beacuse i was least interested about it also i didnt even imagine that it would be a bluetooth headset, i got the parcel number from that person who called me initially and asked status of this parcel number they said its delivered on 18th jan 01.45p.m and it was received and acknowledged, that was ridiculous how could a parcel a physical item which was delivered didnt reach me for 7 days, i started to probe on to this and found a soul in office has received and acted lackadaisically also was instrumental in sending that parcel to other person with the same name of mine. The person who recieved it (who got the same name of mine) was surprised and knowingly or unknowingly opened it, to my foolish mind i didnt think in the way that it could have gone to the other person having the same name finally i got it on 25th evening, Thanks to my H.O.D who helped a lot in unearthing this mystery.

That was the story.

Thanks for reading........

A Rip-off story

Before reading this post, let me tell you i am not a cynic but in the recent times the experiences i had with Airtel is appalling and i am made myself to rant here so someone who reads it can atleast share their torrid moments with Airtel.

                                                        I rely mainly on their GPRS service, they have some good packs for that purpose and it was going on well before i noticed one day that my balance is reducing at times, i dont know how far i have not noticed it, often i keep an eye on my balance and since the previous debits were of considerably less amount i couldn't tell exactly how much got debited.  I am using RC 94 pack( For tariffs look here )  which gives 75mb free every day from 12a.m to 8a.m for 30 days, Last night 23.01.2009 i started browsing at 12.02a.m, i was downloading songs from the Nokia music store, i got 100 songs free to download from the music store and totally my data usage crossed slightly beyond 75 mb(75.228mb approximately), i checked my balance after that which normally i wont do but to my surprise it was as clean as anything left with 25p what could that be of use. My balance before this was 77Rs **P.

                                                     I called their customer services the next moment thats the number i can call anyway with that balance, it was 3.05a.m in the morning and i swear everybody in the customer services would have got surprised by my call, i was never rude to them doing so would make them not to refund that amount, it became a supervisor call since its an issue which the person who took the call first cannot deal with for his level, i spoke to a supervisor who empathised me, they are good in doing that so was I in my days, he booked a complaint and told me that it would get refunded within 27th of this month,Hold on! till that i cant browse with that paltry credit and that fellow was dare enough to tell me to recharge for 10rs so that i can have some balance for browsing  i accepted it anyway and finally gave me a complaint number, Good Night (Oh! i should say Good morning).

                                                     At around 3p.m in the afternooon i called for the status of this complaint, gave them the number again the person transferred it to the supervisor after checking their damn systems for sometime the supervisor got back to me and said you have used airtelgprs.com as the access point which incur charges seperately, I thing he is out of his mind i was using the same access point to download for all other days before this one and nothing happended to my balance and he was repeating those words, I totally got exhausted talking to people who are not helpful. 77Rs is some amount as far as i am concerned and i cant leave it as such for a system which has worked the wrong way on that particular day. I am going to visit their center which is at Begumpet and demand proper explanation for this.

Ok my rant is over for the day. 

Thanks for reading.

Me.On the phonesshow

I like this phonesshow by steve litchfield and i sent my story "Device of choice" and it got featured in the 100th show, i am glad i was a part of it and many thanks to Steve litchfield for this opportunity.

Seek to 11.45th minute here.


Thanks.

Eclipse (TV) pics

Many of them would have seen all over television channels i just want to update it for sake of record.

My impressions on the new device

Ok my first post in 2010 is about my cell phone

There are numerous reviews on the internet about this device i am not a reviewer the below points are what i observed with the device, since i bought the device now (it was launched on 2009 jan) its very late, anyways those who are having any idea of buying in the future this would help a bit.

After using my 5800 for some three days first i made some comparison with my old device N73, this comparison is not confined to these two devices and it will address what the features you get going for a latest device

Let me start with the unboxing what i got  for 14K

Ofcourse the device itself with the battery also i got some free extras like Reebok watch, senneheiser headset the one given by Nokia was no use it didnt even fit into my ears

First comparison was the camera in a nice evening lighting conditions i took some close-up shots also point and shoot pictures of both the devices and the results

Close up shots taken with N73
                                                                                        

Close up shots taken with Nokia 5800
                                                           
   

You can definitely see some purple colouration on the leaves on left pic of N73 whereas the one taken with 5800 looks OK

With no change in camera settings "Automatic mode"

N73

5800

Even in this pic i find 5800 has captured well i have no reason why my N73 has performed bad

Next is the video comparison on both the devices undoubtedly 5800 wins here since it has got better video recording capability with 640*360 30fps DVD quality recording whereas the N73 records videos only at QVGA resolution with 15 fps

Note: 25 fps is what you see on the Television

Best part of 5800 is the Music player,  i dont know what an ipod or a walkman can offer but i vouch for the music quality of this device it gives you every beat of the song get a dedicated Music stereo headset ( i got senneheiser headset free) and you are in for true music experience it comes preloaded with 8gb micro SDHC card so you have ample room for your music collections. It comes with 8 preset equaliser setting those who are good at fiddling with it can even get better results in sound quality

One more little thing which could have been added to this Music player is the Visualisations which is found on my N73 its not a big deal anyway its a feature missing

Next comes the display it packs 640*360 pixels 3.2 inch 16:9 aspect ratio display which can show you items in 16 million colours and web browsing on that screen it a true pleasure so watching videos

Web browser in this device is webkit based HTML browser with Flash support  in laymen terms you can watch YouTube videos directly on the device and also other flash contents so no more broken images when you load pages with flash content  and the page rendering is good equalling what you see on desktops computers,  the sad part of it the browser is not reliable as it crashes often while loading heavy web pages. Opera mini is the only solution and workaround for this and it dont support flash but it does the job waiting for Nokia to fix this bug in a future firmware update

FOTA ( firmware over the air) its a feature where you can directly update you device's firmware over your GPRS/3G connection or Wi-fi. You can get the firmware version of your device by dialling *#0000# from the main screen. The best part of this feature is the download and update happens fast and its hassle free, another way of updating is through Nokia Software updater application installed on to the PC and with the device connected to the PC via its USB data cable  

Connectivity is plenty for a music centric device it really an extra and Nokia have thrown in every connectivity options available starting from Wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0 supporting A2DP where you can stream your music wirelessly with a compatible stereo bluetooth headset, 3.5G HSDPA. In india 3g is still a daydream and with BSNL the only provider supporting the service which is not that much appealing.

Memory and Storage Phone has inbuilt memory of 81mb and the supports memory cards upto 16 gb also its compatible with 32 gb cards but those capacity cards are not produced yet , it has 128mb of RAM and the free executable RAM for the end user hovers at around 40 to 50 Mb depending upon the applications running in the background, it never ran out of memory when i opened Web browser, twitter client, messaging i was able to multitask seamlessly

GPS receiver is another feature which comes with the device and its a good one too within few miutes i was able to get GPS fix and it showed me the exact location where i am with Nokia maps 2.0 preinstalled you can also download Google maps which works flawlessly

Messaging  it has a HTML e-mail client enter your username and password of your e-mail provider and it fetches the settings automatically and you are ready to access your e-mails it supports both POP3 and IMAP mailboxes, for your office e-mails you can download Mail for exchange (Mfe) application through the application update, If your office has Microsoft exchnage server then get the settings from the IT dept and your are good to access office mails too

Okay Lets talk about the bad part of it

Build quality utter plastic by seeing the device you wont agree that you have bought a 14k mobile device

Touchscreen sensitivity No means the touchscreen of this one is fluid its no way near when compared to that of the capacitive touchscreen devcies like Iphone, Samsung jet, HTC HD2 etc which supports multitouch (example: you can zoom in on the screen by pinching it ) and kinetic scrolling where the screen reacts to your single flick and never stops scrolling until you keep the finger on the screen again

Double select to open applications and menu items, when you touch any option it never launches instead it selects you have to tap again to open, unless you get used to it you will find it difficult. 

No quickoffice reader and Pdf reader for opening office files like word, excel and powerpoint you need to purchase quickoffice, whereas in Nseries devices you have it preinstalled which is a quickoffice viewer, only on Nokia E-series devices you can edit,create and open office files out of the box also, NO Zip application out of the box anyway i downloaded it later.

As i hinted before Web browser crashes when loading web pages

Selection of items is another time consumig process you have only Mark all and unmark all options so if you want to select few items or delete few you have to do it one by one, assume you have some 1000 songs and you want to delete some 20 in between your patience is tested, In keypad devices you have a "pencil key" holding that and selecting items from your D-pad the job can be done a lot easier and quickly.

Conclusion: I bought this device only for its smartphone capabilities and features like kinetic scrolling and multitouch etc. are more of eye candy stuff than selling points but i never say that i dont want it, if it comes in the next firmware update then its great. Though the touch screen experience is not that much great its only the best value for money mid-level touch screen smartphone one can get

Thanks for reading :-)