Category Archives: Mobiles

Nokia X7 Video Review

Posted on August 9, 2011 by prasanth

Nokia X7 has a amazing capacitive AMOLED screen. It also has a 8 mega pixel dual flash camera. It has a great battery life, and symbian on this device is quite well implemented. Costs around 20000 Rs in the indian market.

Youtube – Nokia X7 Review

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Nokia X7 mobile review

Posted on August 2, 2011 by prasanth

Just received the Nokia X7 few days back from Nokia. At first i was skeptical about this device, but as the days passed by i kind of liked this phone. I wish i could keep the phone as my main phone. It has amazing battery life. Can last almost two days with wifi turned on.

Hardware

The Nokia build quality was amazing as usual. It felt solid in hand and the curves make it comfortable to hold it your hand for extended use.

It comes with capacitive AMOLED screen which is just amazing. Video and photos look spectacular on this phone. It also has a 8 mega pixel dual flash camera. Which can also record high def video.

Memory card slot and dedicated camera button make it a compelling device for anyone.

Usage

This phone runs Symbian anna which is the latest version of Symbian. This goes a long way to make the device easy to use with touch unlike other previous versions. All the app that come standard with the device work rather well with touch interface.

The phone part of the device works quite well. Voice is clear and speaker phone is also quite loud. It comes with caller id pre installed which is really helpful.

If you long press the call button on the device voice control comes up which will allow you to call your contacts, open applications etc. It needs a data connection to work but as they inform when you use this feature for the first time it uses very little data.

Messaging and twitter are integrated into the phone with apps designed for the device. The email apps has automatic setup for all providers, including indian ones like rediffmail etc. Email app is similar to the messaging app and its quite simple to use.

You get free Ovi sync to sync your contacts, calendar, notes etc to the cloud for free.

Web browser has been improved a lot on this one. If you don’t like it, you can always install opera and use that as your main browser.

The app store is filled with all the apps you find in other apps stores. Games like Angry birds, Fruit ninja etc are available for this device and work amazingly well on it.

Videos and photos look crisp on this device. With loud speakers you can really enjoy your videos. By using the Ovi music store you can buy bollywood music, the only legitimate way to buy digital music in India at the moment.

Camera is also quite good with dual flash its even easier to take good pictures in bad light conditions. You can also record High def videos on this device with good quality.

By using a hdmi cable you can watch the videos on your HD TV. There is a free app to make this process easier, which will guide you step by step.

The home button on the device also acts as a task switcher and its implemented quite well. To quit apps and go to the main screen you can use this home button. Which simplifies using the device quite a bit.

You will love using the device with its gorgeous screen and nice widgets and apps.

Verdict

This is a very good Nokia phone, it has the trade mark Nokia build quality and stylings. And the interface is also much improved from previous versions.

I don’t mind using this as my regular phone, the battery life on this is just amazing.

Nokia X7 is priced around Rs. 20754

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Tatasky Universal remote is the way to go

Posted on July 23, 2011 by prasanth

Just a few days back tatasky updated their iPhone app which allows remote recording. Now with this update they have changed the whole app.

Now you can use the app with a 350 Rs accessary into a universal remote that controls all your devices. Tv, Dvd and Tata sky set top box etc.

This is a cool way to do it because they can keep updating the software when ever they want to change the features add devices etc.

They have also integrated Twitter and Facebook so that you can update your status with which program you are watching. You can talk to other users who are watching that same program via Twitter or Facebook through the app.

I have ordered the accessary, will review the device once i get it.

To get the device

Just SMS ‘APPLE’ to 56633 from your Registered Mobile No. (RMN), and the MP3 Mobile accessory will be couriered to your registered address. The amount will be deducted from your Tata Sky account.

More details about Tatasky Universal remote accessory can be found here 

This accessory works on all iOS devices except 1 generation iPhone. It will even work with iPad’s. They say android version of the app is coming.

I got a call from tatasky and they said it could take up to 30 days to deliver the device.

Its free for some customers i am guessing it is free for customers who have Tatasky HD+ and mega annual plan.

I will do a video review of the device once i get it. Check back

Posted in Mobiles, Television & Movies | 2 Comments

How to make windows mobile no 1 mobile OS

Posted on June 17, 2011 by prasanth

Microsoft has put in all the necessary features in windows mobile 7. But its still not the no.1 mobile operating system out there. So how can they make it into one.

Windows mobile has all the talking points of other systems good hardware, apps, notification, over the air updates. Even a program similar to iTunes to sync with PC.

So what’s stopping them from taking the No.1 spot

Apps

Not all the major apps are still on WM. No dropbox, evernote etc. Even big media companies has no apps on WM. No CNN, Nytimes, BBC etc. All these have official apps for other operating systems.

Solution

Microsoft recently paid Nokia 1 Billion dollars. So it’s not short on cash, with this money. It could encourage the big apps on other platforms to come to WM. If they are still not interested lend your developers and make apps for them. Make sure all the features of WM are supported on the apps like live tiles, notifications, upcoming multitasking etc.

You don’t have to do 10000 Application just 50 or 100 top applications that are being used heavily on other platforms.

This will make sure people who want to try WM don’t have any excuse.

Updates

Lack of updates and the 1 update that has been released so far was filled with problems and roll out issues.

Solution

Since windows has already set a basic benchmark for the hardware it can’t be that hard updating it. Rather than wait for 1 big update, push smaller updates until you catch up with others. Put 1 update a month with whatever features are finished.

This will keep it in the news, which in turn will encourage more customers to try it out.

 

iTunes

On windows they have Zune software and on mac there is a windows phone connector 7. The mac version of the software is basic.

Solution

You have enough programmers to push a full iTunes like software for WM. So try to get that out as soon as possible on both PC & mac. It should have support for applications & media syncing.

When apple can simultaneously push windows and mac iTunes software why can’t a big company like Microsoft.

 

Online Application Store

There is none at the moment and all the other mobile operating systems have one.

Solution

It can’t be that hard for Microsoft to implement this. Make it something similar to Android one. Where when users install app from the website they are pushed to the device.

All the things i mentioned can be easily done by a company as big as Microsoft. When Android & Apple are updating their operating system so quickly and so fast. Microsoft can’t take the 1 update a year route.

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Windows Mobile 7 will be a the mobile OS to beat

Posted on May 31, 2011 by prasanth

Microsoft recently announced the mango update for their Windows mobile 7 phone. They are adding some 500 new features to the OS. Unlike other OS, Windows mobile has all the basic features to make it a good mobile OS already built in. But with mango update they taking it one step further.

Here are the things Windows Mobile 7 will have with mango update that others don’t & will not for the foreseeable future.

Watch the blog post to understand the blog post better.

Widgets

Widgets that are easily to access and don’t need to be installed separately (unlike android). Once you install an app, when you pin the app to the start page. If it has widget it will show up automatically.

With the update they are giving more power to this widget system. Now each individual page can have a widget or item can have a widget. See the video below to understand it fully.

Contextual menus

They are implementing this into the api. What does this mean. Once you install twitter, facebook, yahoo mail, messengers etc. When ever you want to share something just look at the menu. And if the app has implemented this api you can use that app to share the link. This doesn’t stop with links only, it could be photos & videos etc. So you can share a link to twitter, facebook, you blog, messenger etc from any app.

For example you can take the picture from the default app and share it with twitter. You don’t have to go to that app specifically to do this. Shoot video and share it with any app you like vimeo or youtube etc.

Bing Search

You might say google has done a good implementation of search on android. But when you compare it with Bing on Mango update its not even close. They are adding Bing Vision which is similar to Google gooogles. But its built into the search app, its not a separate app like on android.

You point your camera at a book and you will be given the search results. When you want to buy you just click and you will be taken to amazon book store. Even google can’t do that level of integration. When you search for a movie. If you have IMDB app installed. You can directly jump to the app for the results. IMDB app will have the movie page opened with all the details. Its kind of Universal search that any application can take advantage of with api.

Another example is you could search for an mp3 and directly jump to Amazon mp3 store to purchase it. Right from bing, all other app have to do is implement this api and their stores could also be used by the customer.

These three features are not implemented yet by any of the other mobile OS makers like Apple, HP Or Google.

I didn’t write about IE9 because other carriers can update their browsers. But the above mentioned stuff is built into the OS. It will be hard for others to implement them without rewriting their OS.

Posted in Mobiles, Opinions | 2 Comments

These are the phone to buy now

Posted on May 24, 2011 by prasanth

If you are in the market for phone, pick one of these and you will not go wrong. I will break down each of them with their prices and features. All of them have at least 1 GHz processor, 5 mega pixel cameras with HD video recording and 4 inches screens (iPhone is the only one with a smaller screen). You also get three options of OS to choose from. By choosing any of these phone you will not only get the best that is out there. but you can also be future & feature proof for at least an year.

Samsung Galaxy S2

This is a dual core phone from Samsung which is really thin for all the features it offers. It comes with android 2.3. Also has a 8 Mp camera.

+ Its slimness and dual core processor and 4.3 inches screen. This phone also feature some special gestures that are specific to this phone.

- As far as i can tell none

Price : 35000 – 40000 Rs (It will be launched in India in few days time)

 

IPhone 4

This is the newest Apple phone. Runs latest IOS 4. Also has a 5 Mp camera.

+ Its huge app library, and some stunning hardware design

- Its already a year old new one is due in few months, so time not a good time to get a iPhone.

Price : 35000 – 40000 Rs (It will be launched in India in few days time)

 

LG Optimus 2X

This is a dual core phone from LG which cost 10000 Rs less than Samsung Galaxy S2. It comes with android 2.2 (upgradeable to 2.3). Also has a 8 Mp camera.

+ Its price, only difference between this and Samsung Galaxy S2 is the screen size. This phone has 4 inches screen and Samsung Galaxy S2 has 4.3 inches screen.

- Not any i can think of hardware wise, but will LG provide future updates when a new android version is released is to be seen.

Price : Rs 25,990 Buy it here Or Buy LG Optimus 2X P990 from Flipkart.com

 

Motorola Atrix

This is a dual core phone from Motorola which has a finger print scanner. It comes with android 2.2 (upgradeable to 2.3). Also has a 5 Mp camera.

+ Only dual core phone that has a finger print scanner. If you are security conscious this is the phone to buy. You can lock & unlock with your finger print.

- None

Price : 35000 – 45000 Rs (It will be launched in India in few days time)

 

HTC HD7

This is a 1 Ghz phone from HTC running the new Windows Mobile 7. It can be upgraded to Nodo. Also has a 5 Mp camera.

+ IPhones and Android phones are everywhere nowadays , so if you want something new get this. Its modern OS design will get you some curious looks.

- Battery seems to be a big problem with this phone, you might have to charge quite often.

This is my phone at the moment loving it very much

Price : 27000 Rs Buy HTC HD7 from Flipkart.com

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iPhone launch imminent, why you shouldn’t get one

Posted on May 21, 2011 by prasanth

Rumors of iPhone launch are all over the news. They are saying it will launch by this weekend.

But here is why you shouldn’t get this iPhone 4 now.

In a few days time Apple is having a dev conference, even though there are rumors that no iPhone will be announced at the event. It can’t be that far behind.

Some are saying that they will announce a new iPhone 5 in September. Its just few months away.

Looking at the things being launched by other mobile manufacture it will have a dual core chip.

This iPhone 4 that is being launched in India now is already a year old.

So don’t buy one as iPhone 5 is just around the corner.

Hopefully iPhone 5 will be launched in India as quickly as iPad 2 was launched.

If you don’t mind having a old phone in few month go ahead and buy one.

IPhone has the longest shelf life as new models are launched once a year.

But this is the wrong time to buy one.

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Aircel 3G plans disappoint, no unlimited plans

Posted on February 24, 2011 by prasanth

Aircle yesterday launched their 3G service in Chennai. Soon it will be expanding this to other states.

I was disappointed that they didn’t have a unlimited plan in the 3G plans. They have the cheapest 2G plan at 97 Rs per month. I was expecting them to announce a 3G unlimited plan for 250 or so. But they didn’t, may be in coming months they will announce as I don’t see anyone taking their current costly plans.

I might switch to BSNL, the only reason I still stayed with Aircel was for their data plan.

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Nokia N97 mini Review

Posted on October 25, 2010 by prasanth

Two weeks back i got my first review unit from Nokia. It was Nokia N97 mini, this is a touch screen phone with full qwerty keyboard. So i was really looking forward to using it.

Hardware

This is a solidly built device which is very small even with a full qwerty keyboard. It also has a touch screen and 5 mega pixel camera. It has all the regular features like bluetooth, wifi, gps and memory card slot etc. The qwerty keyboard is revealed when you push the screen to the side. It has a good clicking mechanism to it.

The keyboard is a quite good to type on, it also backlight which is nice to use during night times. The camera is a 5 mega pixel one with flash, which took good photos up close even in complete darkness. It has up to 8Gb of internal storage and a memory card slot. The speaker on the device is quite loud, which is nice to listen to music. All this in a very small package.

The device on the hardware side didn’t disappoint, it was solidly built and felt very solid while using it. More detailed spec here

Software

This is a touchscreen phone, so i was curious to see how well nokia implemented this. The touch screen on this device is pretty good, but when you compare with the device that are coming out now, it feels kind of slow. It runs symbian series 60 5th edition, which is not well known for its touch screen user interface. But they have made quite a bit of effort and made the icons and buttons big to click. Nokia N97 mini customized the home screen with some widgets. These widgets make the home screen more modern and quite usable. You can put shortcuts to apps, contacts and also display tit bits of  information using these widgets. It come with quite a few apps like calculator, voice recorder and a podcasting app etc, which is nice.

With Ovi store you can get more apps from nokia’s app store. The app store only shows the apps for your device so you can install all the apps that you see in the store. Unlike other phone app stores. It has quite a few apps on the online store, most of the them are free to use.Then there is Ovi music and Ovi maps which are good implementation, but need quite a bit of polish. The Ovi maps was quite slow to use compare with google maps. But these are free services. For Ovi music you can get coupon codes which will allow unlimited amount of music downloads. But my device didn’t work with music store as i didn’t have the coupon codes. Its a nice deal if you can get the unlimited download because it has all the latest indian music.The music and video player work quite well with the device. The music player is just the basic one you see on all nokia devices with a bit bigger buttons for touch screen use. It comes with Real player for video playback which supports quite a few formats. But couldn’t play podcast that i download using the in built podcast app.

The messaging and mailing apps. Its one single app for all your messaging features. You can get free acccess to yahoo mail, gmail, ovi mail etc. It has a setup wizard which will automatically sets up the mail settings which is nice. The email is text only there is no way to see html messages. With the qwerty keyboard this app is quite useful. And the best reason to buy this phone.Camera app is quite fast and with the 5 mega pixel takes quite good photos. Even the video taken by this phone looks very good. Viewing photos on the devices is also quite fast.The browser which i think is what most people will use the device for is painfully slow. Even opera on this device felt slow. I am not sure what the problem was. Even with wifi connection browsing websites was slow on the device.Phone features seem to be the last thing people care about these days. It’s quite good at that and has all the additional features you look for these days. The speaker on this device are quite good and loud.

Conclusion

If you want a touch screen phone with qwerty keyboard this is the only option among Nokia devices. Its priced around 20000 Rs on nokia’s webiste. You can get the device for 17000 Rs in market. Which is quite a good price for a qwerty keyboard touch screen phone. There are not many phones out there with these features.I wish they abandon symbian and go with meego or android. i can only imagine how good this hardware would have been with other mobile OS.

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Google’s sms channels in indian labs

Posted on October 13, 2010 by prasanth

Google is testing a cool idea where users can create sms channels in which they can send daily sms’s. This is a cool features for friends and small business.You login with your google user id and make your own sms channel. Once you make a channel you can make it invitation only or public. When you send a sms to that channel, it will be sent to all the people in that channel. You can also send sms’s online without any charges.You can also make a friends channel and make it invitation only and send it to your friends. Once they join if you send a sms it will be automatically sent to all your friends, who joined that group.Small business could use this feature to send special offer etc.Using this channel you can also join other sms channels that belong to your area or your interest like jokes, news, stock tips, quotes etc. And receive sms’s from them free of cost. Even cricket scores are available.Go here to try it out http://labs.google.co.in/smschannelsHere is a cool trick i made a channel with my number and when ever i want to send small amount of text or url etc to my phone, i just copy and paste to that channel. And i get a sms to my phone with that info.

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