I bought HTC hero today. So far it has impressed me with its Android operating system and the HTC hardware itself.
I used iPhone for the last two years, so I know what a good phone and os can do. It takes a special phone to impress after that kind of experience, so far HTC hero is doing that.
More detailed review at a later date.
The phone I bought was locked, or at least that’s what the person at the store said. It even shows Airtel logo when it boots up, but once I put my aircel sim it started working right away. No unlocking necessary.
Posted on 23 September '09 by Prasanth, under Mobiles. No Comments.
Nokia recently has developed some very good thing to go with their mobile phones. Like Ovi service which allow you to store files, music and photos online. And their music and app stores etc.
So switching to their phones seems like a good idea now. But i am really hesitant of using symbian. But with their new Nokia n900 it will run linux and is built top to bottom for touch usage. Unlike other nokia phones which come with clunky ui for touch interface.
The user interface looks really cool and customizable.
Online videos of the phone look impressive.
It will be priced really high like the Nokia N97 31000 Rs. But if it offers what its promising it might be a better purchase than the Nokia n97.
Nokia has already started taking pre orders in other countries.
Will be interesting to see how it will be priced and received in India.
Go here to know more about Nokia n900.
Posted on 8 September '09 by Prasanth, under Mobiles. No Comments.
I had to help a friend in converting his 700 contacts from a nokia phone to his samsung phone.
It can be done easily if you have a computer and some patience.
First download PC suites for both the mobile phones which can be found on the manufactures website and install them.
First connect the new phone to which you want to transfer the contacts to. See what formats does it allow the contact to be imported into.
Then connect your old phone and using the pc suite of that phone provider export the contacts.
Which usual will be in .csv format. Make a copy of that file and back it up some where safe.
Then import them into the new phone PC suite. This is where you get in to trouble you will have to do the import few times until you get the contact exactly the way you want.
Because both manufactures use different phone operating system and have different contact fields. It will take few trial and errors before you can get all the fields right. Once you get what you want sync it back to the new phone.
If you have the latest phone with gprs you can also transfer contacts by syncing them to an online provider like, Yahoo or Oggsync etc.
If you are doing a contact sync between two nokia phones you can also use a free service from nokia called Ovi.
Posted on 6 September '09 by Prasanth, under Mobiles. No Comments.
Posted on 2 August '09 by Prasanth, under Gadgets, Mobiles. No Comments.
Aircel recently came to our city Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. They have some unbelievable offers.
Here are some of the reasons i shifted to Aircel from Airtel.
1. No roaming charges in south India for states like Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu
2. Triple the recharge amount. For example if i recharge for 300 Rs i will get 900 Rs, talk time of 300 Rs for std calls and 600 Rs for local calls. The calling charges are as per other carriers 1 rupee per minutes. This could be an introductory offer but still nice.
This is the big one for me
3. 98 Rs for unlimited internet for 30 days or one month.
This is the cheapest rate any carrier is offering for unlimited for one month. Airtel were offering for some time but they have stopped unlimited offerings all together.
So i have changed my Sim to Aircel and its working perfectly with my iphone.
Here are some the things you should know about using it on iphone.
Gprs Settings for Aircel on Iphone
You have to put in the gprs settings for the internet to work. To do that on iphone go to settings-general-network-cellular data network and there type APN as “aircelgprs”. Leave the user name and passwords as blank.
And it will start working, if it doesn’t restart your phone and try again.
Other numbers of Aircel
To check balance type *125#
To get more detailed call report dial 123
To get to the call center dial 121
So far loving the service, the gprs speeds are on par with other providers. I was going to get Bsnl 3G Sim but they are charging nearly 3000 Rs for unlimited usage. So for now i will stick with Aircel.
Posted on 28 July '09 by Prasanth, under Gadgets, Mobiles. No Comments.
Posted on 27 July '09 by Prasanth, under Gadgets, Mobiles. No Comments.
I have seen one after the other take the iphone challenger label and fall by the way side. Its really sad to see how bad they are.
I have used most of them and i will explain how each one falls by the way side.
Nokia came up with Nokia music express which looked cool and everything but it has the same windows mobile problem. The interface was not designed for touch input. The have put a pretty layer on top of symbian and it doesn’t work that well.
The scrolling is not smooth and the rotation doesn’t work well. Even the new interface looks like it was made for stylus use and not a finger use. Its so bad that it comes with a stylus to use.
The next one is Samsung 3G
Less i say is better about this phone.
Some time a feature can be the problem of the phone. The sidebar which gets activated by just a click anywhere on the screen its a bad idea. The touch interface is either too sensitive at times and some times not sensitive enough.
There is no way to disable the sidebar so every time you move from one scree to another you end up put more widgets on to the desktop. You will end up more time cleaning the screen of widgets than actually using them.
Most of the widgets are pretty use less they are shortcuts for web sites.
Now the phones interface, scrolling some times works and some times doesn’t. The have a photo zoom feature similar to iphone. But it takes 10 times more time to get the photo to zoom on the samsung star 3G. They also have a wonky way to zoom. You have to keep a finger pressed on the screen and move it upwards to zoom. Which is really ugly to use and it takes ages to recognize the finger and start zooming.
These are the two i used, there are plenty more that are giving touch interface a bad name. So why are all these companies still imitating iphone.
Stop trying to imitate and start doing something new.
Things have to reinvented from bottom up and not the other way around.
Palm tried something similar but they never were known for their media capabilities. So don’t expect a music and video phone like the iphone from them no matter how good they get.
Same goes for Android, its a phone for geeks not casual users.
So what is the future of iphone challengers, only good one i can think of is Microsoft windows mobile. Their next version of the windows mobile will be really different and mainly touch oriented.
After looking at windows 7 i am really hoping it will give iphone something to fight against.
So the best thing for other phone companies to realize is forget touch apple, has that in their pockets already.
Aim for the next big thing and start innovating.
This is how the app icon looks and this is the loading screen of the app. This is how the app ui looks. They could have given a sample book or put a manual on how to use the app. So that user would get an idea of how the books look and how to read etc.
You can flip pages like you flip photos, a little bit of animation would have made it even cooler. This is not a e paper device, iphone has a beautiful screen some animation would have really helped.
Once you click get books it will show you how you can get books into the app. You can do it from a computer or a mac. But i wanted to see how easy it was to do it from the iphone browser.
Once you click safari the app exits and loads the amazon site in the browser. I was surprised to see the full amazon site loads rather than the iphone version of the site. Which would have been easier to use.
Once you sign in it takes four pages to get the book on to the kindle app. All the books have the first chapter as samples so i tried one of them. Its not the most easiest process ,they could have made it more easier and provided this in the app itself. That way they could have made it much simpler to get the books. They already have designed their site for iphone, their own amazon app uses it. That could have made this very simple, may be they will do it in future versions.
Once you click on the sample or the book it will show you a confirmation saying that your book will be available from your kindle or iphone now.
Then close the browser and launch the kindle app and you book should appear their in the list of books. Samples download very quickly, i have not tried full book, but i am guessing they too download pretty quickly.
The task bar below automatically hides and gives you full screen to read the book.
All in all i like this app very much they could make it more useful if they put in the ability to put your own documents into the app. That way people will use it for many more things which could help them sell more books. Its free so go ahead and give it a try.
Posted on 4 March '09 by Prasanth, under Mobiles, Review. No Comments.
A nice implementation of 3d interface for a mobile device by tracking you eye. This could be a very good use of the front camera, which you can find on most mobile these days. When you are not using it to video conference it could be doing eye tracking to make the interface look like its 3d.
Something similar is being done on the iphone by a free game called labyrinth. They are using the accelerometer to know when you are tilting the phone and adjust the image in the game to look like its 3d. Looks really good hope many more such implementations are developed.
You have to try the game to really see the 3d table effect. Hope the above pictures give you an idea.
Posted on 2 March '09 by Prasanth, under Gadgets, Mobiles. No Comments.
They have started the 3G service and will have it available for consumers from April 20. Here are something you need to know about the service.
They claim they can provide speeds up to 2mbps, but if you can get anything more than 512 kbps would be great.
You will need to get a new Sim, at the moment or during the launch they don’t have number portability. So you will need to get a new number too. They are planning to sell data cards and usb modems in near future.
They have a detailed list of prices for the service. But the thing you will need is unlimited data plan which they are asking 3000 Rs per month for just data plan. Which is quite a bit costly, that will go down as the competitors launch their 3G services too.
I am willing to pay up to 2000 Rs for unlimited data at 512 kbps lets see who can provide this.
Oh by the way you will also need to buy a new phone that is capable of doing 3G.
My attitude at the moment is to wait and see.
Read more here about the 3G launch, Go here for package prices, Here for more details.
Posted on 25 February '09 by Prasanth, under Mobiles, News & politics. No Comments.
I am an iphone user and i am loving it.
