Sony gets the design plot, but Nokia doesn’t

They may belong to different price segments but they are both 5.0-megapixel phones with Xenon flashes, and claim to be choc-a-bloc with multimedia goodness. And neither can claim to be remotely slim. And yet one manages to look good while the other is a bit of an eyesore. Well, I am talking of the Sony Ericsson K850i and the Nokia N82. I reviewed the former, Nidhi has reviewed the latter and well, both of us feel that somewhere along the like, Nokia needs to work on its design. Sony Ericsson clearly doesn’t – the company managed to plonk a D-pad right in the middle of the K850i’s keypad and still managed to make it look good (they even gave it different shades).

On the other hand, Nokia’s N82 did try to take a leaf out of the Sony Ericsson book – it had a metallic looking keypad with sliver-thin keys – but still managed to muck things up. The phone looks bulky, and even the metallic finish falls flat thanks to some rather peculiarly placed keys. And of course, the K850i also manages to add an automatically activated camera lens cover as well as the facility to remove the battery, SIM card and expansion cards without having to remove the back panel. And talking of the back panel, Nokia muffed things up by giving the shiny front panel of the N82 a rather drab back.

All of which is a colossal pity because for all its faults, the Nokia N82 is a very powerful device, laced with the goodness of Symbian, GPS and a host of other features. But the only thing sleek about it is its ad campaign - yeah, we love the 'storytelling' line.

Beauty may be only skin deep, but it’s time Nokia realised that in the era of the iPhone and RAZR 2, cellphone users are not likely to shell out big bucks for plug ugly devices!

Maria, Maria: From Moto to Sony?

Sony Ericsson made the news recently when it signed on tennis star Maria Sharapova as its first “global brand ambassador.” Now, we are sure Sony thought long and hard before signing on the Russian, who for all her looks (and grunts), seems to switch brands at the drop of a hat (or should that be "cheques?")

For, just in case you have forgotten, it was La Sharapova who was peddling the limited edition pink Moto RAZR and the all-white Moto PEBL not too long ago. While her fans will no doubt be swayed by whichever product their heroine endorses, one just wonders what regular gadget lovers will think of this volte face from the lissome Russian. We are, of course, not impressed and feel that it just provides fodder to those who think blondes have nothing upstairs.

No, we don’t know if Sony Ericsson have plans to include the Sharapova grunt as a ringtone for their forthcoming phones.

New phones, anybody?

Towards the end of 2007, we would not have blamed you for thinking that it was raining new phones in India. Rarely a week went by without a major phone being released. If that sounds difficult, just take a look at the phones that came out in November and December of the recently passed year – the Nokia N82, the Nokia 6110, the LG Viewty, the Samsung G600, the Moto Q9h, the Sony Ericsson k850i, the Sony Ericsson T650i, the HTC Touch Dual and so many others.

Well, 2008 seems to be different. Call it the New Year hangover, or maybe the companies being too busy with the forthcoming 3GSM event in Barcelona, but this year has been remarkably quiet on the cellphone front – we are well into the third week of 2008 and so far have seen neither hide nor hair (or should that be screen or keypad) of a major new phone. In fact, there are not even the usual rumours about new phones in the market. No one is even talking about the iPhone!

Hey fellas, come out with some new stuff, will you? We are getting bored out here!

Cheating is a bad Idea!

Next time you get a call from your service operator about any new scheme, just don't believe them. There is every possibility that the scheme might not work and the customer care of your operator might deny having called you.

Day before yesterday, I got a call from Idea Cellular stating that my validity will expire in a day's time. And if I go in for an easy recharge of Rs 90, I will get four months validity in next 48 hours with some talktime. After a few minutes, my sister received a similar call and we got our number recharged.
Yesterday, we both got calls from the same number confirming that the validity will be transferred in 48 hours from the time of the recharge. But today, when I woke up in the morning, I was shocked. My cellphone was working but my sister's connection wasn't. When I called her number, I heard the message - " services to this number are temporarily on hold".
I spoke to customer care executives twice and both times their versions were different. The first person who answered my call informed me that there was no call made from Idea Cellular to my sister's number. When I called again after some time, the lady on the other side informed me that the validity will be transferred by the evening today.

It's almost 45 hours and still her cellphone is not working. It's not done. My sister is helpless at this moment because she is not able to access calls all because she believed what the Idea executive told her. If she had gone for a regular recharge, her phone would have been working today.

Q up for this Moto!

When one buys a high-end cellphone, one does expect to get some freebies with it. You know, the odd memory expansion card, some handy software and of course, the handsfree (Bluetooth if you are lucky, wired if you are not). Some companies even throw in some extras as a "limited period offer" or a "special offer."

But we were still staggered by what Motorola had thrown in with its Moto Q9h. Just take a look at this:

• 1GB memory expansion card (worth about Rs 1,200)
• Documents to Go software suite (worth about Rs 1,300)
• Opera Mobile cellphone Internet browser (worth about Rs 1,000)
• A portable charger that allows you to charge your phone when there are no outlets handy (worth Rs 3,500)
• An extra battery that can be added to the phone to almost double its battery life (worth about Rs 1,500)

(And yes, there is the standard handsfree as well.)

All of which adds up to something like Rs. 8,500 - give or take a few hundred. Which is more than a third of the price of the phone (Rs. 19,000). And it is a terrific phone too, although we do wish they had included Wi-Fi!

For some reason, Motorola has not mentioned all this in their ad for the device. We bet people would be queuing up for the Q if they had. Pun intended.

I can walk on water! Thanks, Navigator!

The Nokia 6110, nicknamed the Navigator, is supposed to be the ultimate device for working out routes and finding your way through a city, thanks to its superb GPS and mapping features. Well, it is also capable of a few miracles. For instance, it made me walk on water!

Well, to be more accurate, it had not mapped the old Delhi bridge across the Yamuna. So when I was crossing it, it actually showed me walking on water for a short time.

Who said cellphones cannot do magic!?

Upgrade phone firmware? No, thanks!

We just heard that Nokia has announced a firmware upgrade for the 8GB version of the N95. And it seems to be rather interesting – among the features it adds are support for flash lite and flash video as well as fixes that make the phone work a lot faster.

Well, two of my acquaintances have the N95 8GB version and have no plans of installing the upgrade!

Their rationale is simple – the process takes too long and is risky. They have to back up all the content on their phones, download the upgrade, wait for the new version to get installed and then transfer their data back to the phone – all of which means not being able to use the phone for upto an hour. What’s worse, all both said that they had ultimately ended up losing some data or features in the process – one of them lost 2-3 games that he had downloaded when he upgraded the firmware of his p1i, while another claimed that upgrading her Treo 600 firmware had seen her lose a number of browser bookmarks! The result: none of them had any intention of doing a firmware upgrade and in fact, even warned me against doing so. When I pointed out the benefits of the upgrade, one them snapped: “I don’t care if I have a slower phone with fewer features. I did not bust Rs 25k on a phone to lose data.”

Perhaps it is time cellphone manufacturers came up with a better method of installing upgrades. Any suggestions?

GSM copies CDMA

Until a month ago, the ball game of CDMA and GSM phones was different. Earlier GSM phones used to find their way to the retail shops almost 2 weeks before the official launch. But now slowly and steadily, GSM players are following the footprints of CDMA players.
Footprints of CDMA players? Yes, I think CDMA players have specialised in launching phones that are not even seen in the stores for at least a month, after the official launch. This was the case with Tata Indicom's Moto Q (which is still not available in the stores after 6 months of the launch, thought you can get it on a day's notice), Samsung Max( on Reliance Communication and Tata Indicom both), Reliance's BlackBerry 8830 World Edition and many such models. And now Nokia and LG are following the same trend.
In the month of December, both these players, launched their high profile GSM phones within a few days of each other. Nokia organised a navigation drive to unveil 6110 and LG roped in Deepika Padukone for its second 5.0-megapixel device Viewty. But even after two weeks of the launch the phones were nowhere in the market. Nokia's Navigator is still available at official stores now but Viewty is still not out.
The rationale for the existence of the device in the market before the launch was to study the consumers response. But now, it seems that companies just want to create hype.

MotoWrong!

We live under the conception that the information provided at the manufacturers' official stores is correct. But I was shocked when I saw that incorrect information was being forwarded to customers at a company owned exclusive store.

Yes, this is true. During my recent visit to Motorola’s Moto Store in Connaught Place, I saw three versions of Moto Q displayed on the shelf. All the three phones are different in terms of looks as well as features but were labeled as Moto Q. I was wondering how will a customer come to know which one runs on CDMA platform and which is the advanced version on GSM. But I noticed something worse than this. The best of these three is the Moto Q9h that runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 platform. But at the store, the information tag announced it to be a phone that runs on Windows Mobile 5.0.

Windows Mobile 6.0 is a very powerful operating system and a phone running on this platform would be amongst the best enterprise phones available in the market. I wonder why Motorola is giving wrong information to the customers?

Networks rock in hilly areas

Have you ever noticed that for last three-four months call drops have increased drastically? Be it Airtel, Vodafone, Idea or Tata Indicom, this problem is faced by all. The other day, I was in Connaught Place and all the Idea cellphones in the area were not reachable. A few days ago, my friend who has an Airtel connection called me five times and due to regular call drops, he gave up. It is shocking but this is the reality. Networks in cities are weird.
A few days back when I was planning my vacation, my only concern was - if this is the case in metros like Delhi, then what can you expect in small cities?
Recently, I went to Mussoorie and Dehradun. I was aware of the fact that my Idea connection will work in these areas, unlike Jammu and Vaishno Devi where they claim that networks are present but cellphones don't work, but still there was some doubt. But this time the promises made by operators were actually true. Not only Idea but Airtel and Tata Indicom, both CDMA and GSM networks were working without any issues. Mussoorie being a tourist destination and Dehradun being a big city might have something to do with it.
But my trip turned out to be an adventurous one and then came the actual test for the operators. I took new roads and travelled in the interior of Uttarakhand - Chamba, Tehri Garhwal District, Tehri Damn, Vikas Nagar - Dehradun District, etc. The roads we were following were dangerous as they were in hills with blind turns. And the most amazing part was that there was no vehicle around us for nearly 10 Kms. Travelling on such roads was fun but for a moment I was struck by the thought that what would happen if the car broke down or we ran out of fuel. There was no petrol pump, no workshop for our aid. But as soon as I looked at my cellphone, the network signal displayed was more than enough to raise my spirits. Bingo!
I actually realised that having networks in these areas is really important and one should congratulate operators for this. But still this cannot hide the problems faced by mobile phone users in metros.

The “out of stock, coming tomorrow” concept

We paid a visit to a few mobile stores in Connaught Place (the centre of Delhi) in the afternoon today. We were looking out for the Sony Ericsson W960i, which we had heard was in the market, even though the company had not uttered a peep about it. Both places told us that they did not currently have the phone but it would be “arriving tomorrow.” We asked about a few other models – some were available, while others were “out of stock,” but would be coming later in the evening of perhaps tomorrow.

What struck both of us was the fact that none of the dealers admitted that the phone was not released or was not in the market. I bet that if we had asked for a model that had not been released in India – say the Palm Centro – the answer would have been “We don’t have it right now, but it should be coming shortly. Maybe this very evening.” I asked a few of my friends and they admitted that most stores seem to follow this practice – it’s almost as if admitting that you do not have a phone is a crime. Whether this stems from ignorance or is a matter of store policy, we do not know. Our advice, however, is simple: if the salesperson says that a phone is out of stock and will come in later, don’t waste your time holding your breath for it. It might not have come to the country, leave alone the store.

Of course, not all stores are like this, but unfortunately, the “out of stock, will be coming tomorrow” phenomenon seems the rule rather than the exception in Indian mobile stores.

LG Viewty - "for men and women," says Deepika

All right, this one is a bit late in coming in, but that surely does not make it any less memorable. A week or so ago, Deepika Padukone had many of us giggling at the launch of LG's much-hyped (and rather nice) Viewty phone, when she said that the phone could be used by both men and women. Wow! We had never known of any phone that couldn't. Perhaps this is a new marketing angle from LG. Perhaps the next thing we will hear is that one can not only talk on the phone, but also hear the other person on it.

All of which proves one thing - you can bring a celeb to a launch, but you can seldom make him or her talk sense! Although the shutterbugs would rather ogle the likes of Ms Padukone, we would rather see a tech person who knows the product they are talking about. Mind you, celebs do give us more reason to laugh.