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 :-)

Going to be a long hop

                                    As the title brief, finally its time to change my mobile device but what is that hop?? i am talking about. Yes, the OS which the phone runs, my current device Nokia N73 Music edition runs on S60 3rd edition intial release and my new phone which is going to be Nokia 5800 XM runs on S60 5th edition. For better understanding please read this 

                                 Between the S60 3rd intial release and S60 5th edition there were S60 3rd edition Feature pack1(Nokia N82,E71,E63 etc..), S60 3rd edition Feature pack2 (Nokia N96, N79, N78,N86, E72 etc), i found N73 music edition was good for my purpose and didnt update to any of those devices and now i found it to be so outdated and boring also Nokia have stopped support for this device and releasing firmware updates 

Why Nokia 5800XM ??

Being a Nokia fanboy i was disappointed when other mobile phone makers like Samsung, LG etc releasing touchscreen phones well ahead of Nokia. Finally they broke the shackles out and released 5800XM full touchscreen device and the first to run S60 5th edition symbian OSv9.4 there were lot of problems with both hardware and software of this device which made it unstable and well known earpiece problem volume too low, worst case not working is the most annoying one, and since the OS version was new there were less third party apps for the device. Now the story is entirely different and every problem is addressed and there are plethora of apps available many are freeware, you can get some here

                          Till date this device is the only value for money phone packing all the features one would expect in a smartphone, the intial firmware of the device was very buggy and the recently released v31 seems to be stable overall the phone is zippy also Nokia have drastically reduced the price of this device. This phone was a bit of disappointment for those who bought it when it was launched and many of them were expecting Nokia to release a firmware update to make it stable and now it is stable and running great i am not going to waste any more time getting this one 

Secondary device :

                        It doesnt imply that i am going to dump my N73ME and get this one, i am going to use it as my secondary device it is still rock solid with no problems and the camera in it is one of the best 3.2MP ever fitted on a mobile device

I will post my 5800XM experience after playing around with it for sometime so watch out for this space

Thank you

Full specifications of Nokia 5800XM , 5800XM
                 
                      

Misunderstanding the Word "Speed breaker"

Look at this pic its a speed breaker opposite to my office building and each and every time when i see someone mostly two wheelers passby this one their face turns red and they curse it like anything and the brain behind this speed breaker has understood the word "speed breaker" very severely and has laid this one with such efforts.Users of this road are avoiding it completely for the sake they should cross this disturbance. Yes speed breakers are essential and needed but that should not make one not use that particular road this is a prime example of it

Its not a Speed breaker its a Speed stopper.

What do you call this... fate???

              One Friday when I woke up it was 2pm in the afternoon don’t blame me for sleeeeping that long that’s because I slept after night shift at work adding to my frustration there was no power in our area and there was less amount of rice too, so took my bike and went out to buy rice so at least I can manage with curd rice to fill my starving stomach to my surprise rice shops nearby my house were closed due to lunch time only disadvantage in my area is you don’t have hotels, mess or any kaiyendhi bhavans.
                    Guess what my next idea was let us have Pizza for lunch today (en nenapula theeya vaikka). Nearest pizza shop from my place is about 3 to 4kms that wasn’t a great deal for me since I was ready go there considering my starvation at that moment, found the pizza shop it was Dominos' Pizza saw the list and found they are having veg pizzas from Rs39 onwards, in the billing counter i just told the lady give me a small size pizza pointing this Rs39 one of the chart, I don’t know what she understood and billed me for a 107Rs pizza again considering my starvation I gave the money and got it and something made me to take it home and eat.
                    
                           I was heading back home and met with an accident with another two wheeler (don’t panic its a mild one)and my right leg got bruised and it led to a severe damage to my bike left handle bar got dislocated, mud guard broke and controls on the left side including indicators, horn didn’t function OMG look at the chain of events here, what next at around 4.15 pm I entered my house with this pizza but hats off to dominos' pizza packing it was rock solid inside and that didn’t even move an inch from its place, thinking it will satisfy my stomach I had a bite, I was totally disappointed it was so horrible to eat and I felt why did I decide to get this one I have eaten pizzas sometime back in bakery shops for Rs30 and it kicks dirt on this one from a familiar pizza shop.

Bottom-line: A lunch which could have got over by 25rs had I found a rice shop ended spending more than 650Rs , Yes doctor consultation, medicine, bike repair and this crap pizza cost. I show less interest towards fate, Raghukalam, Yemagandam but incidents like these really make me wonder, do these virtual things make changes in our day today activities, I admit the fact that it was a horrible decision from me, there could be two reasons for this when I would have opted against my instincts saying nothing will happen secondly I have no other go to doubt these virtual things

So with what can I conclude????

1. Never ever in your lifetime have pizza that too for lunch.
2. Don’t sleep long even after night shifts.
3. Drive slowly.
4. Don’t believe these virtual things.

Thanks for reading comments welcome

Mobile phone Operating frequncies

Bought a mobile phone in the United states will it work in India ??, same way if u buy a mobile phone outside your native country and want to know if that works in other countries too then this article will be of little help

First what u have to look before buying a mobile phone in other countries and also want to use them wherever you go is  their Operating frequncies

Operating frequncies differ from country to country, example if you take U.S for instance their operating frequencies are entirely different from other part of the world its like "U.S and Rest of the World", there are two things involved here one is operating frequency of GSM and WDCDMA(for 3G)

Note: For detailed information look here GSM and WCDMA  also look UMTS

Want to know what is the Network band for your country Look here

Now consider this case where your device is a Quad band GSM and triband WCDMA one which works on 850/900/1800/1900 GSM networks and 900/1900/2100 WCDMA networks and you have bought this device in India and want to use it in the U.S

For a mobile device to work in india it should support GSM 900 and WCDMA (for 3G) 2100 frequency bands atleast, on the other hand the same device to work in the U.S under GSM and WCDMA(for 3G) it should support GSM850 or GSM1900 and WCDMA 850 or 1900 frequency bands, now select a device which works on all these frequencies and you are good to go, its worth looking into the company website before buying the device, its not going to take any hard time to check whether it supports all frequencies that are out there considering you want to the device to function wherever you go  

Some devices may not work on all 3G netwroks it depeds on the service provider you choose but a device of above specification works on all GSM networks

comments welcome.........