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.