Nokia Asha 308 review

May5

I recently purchased a Nokia Asha just to experience the supposedly improved s40 operating system by Nokia. The new version of the operating system is supposed to be more smoother and richer compared to the previously boring user interface. So does it really meet the stated improvement as far as the user is concerned? Read on to find out.

Even after Microsoft aligned with Nokia to manufacture Windows 7, 7.5 and 8 phones, and Nokia open sourced symbian, their series 40 and 60 operating systems are still doing well in low cost markets. The team at Nokia has revamped these operating systems to a great extent to make better use of available larger memory and processing speeds.

The first thing you notice about the new Nokia Asha series is how the icons are more beautiful against a stark black background which makes the colours not only rich to the eye but also the fonts more clear to read at any point in time.

A notfication bar is almost an absolute must for those who do not wish to dwell into a million settings menus to get what they need. Given that the higher end smartphones have set that bar, Nokia has managed to implement a slick looking pull down blue notification bar for its Asha range of touch phones. Not only is the blue color soothing to the eye, it provides just the necessary information that is needed for us to glance quickly at the status on the phone. The slide down and push up is well implemented and its smooth and nice to use.

Another thing that I liked in this new operating system version is the concept of overlay user interfaces. For example if you wish to have chosen a profile to use for meetings, or outdoors, or slient modes, earlier one had to go into settings -> profiles, and choose one of them. A long press # key also put the phone into silent mode. However, in the Asha series, Nokia has managed to overlay the most important and always used 4 settings or profiles as a simple touchable option over and above the standard icons. This not only provides an easy way of setting the profiles but also goes along with the overall notion of a simplified user interface in the phone.

The settings menu is slick and scrollable and you can reach multiple levels quite easily with a few touches. The way Nokia has chosen the colors for the apps only emphasizes how good they are getting applications to look extremely unique to themselves and at the same time, pleasing to the eye without creating any form of strain. Take the calculator for instance, its neat white background with black keys, and light gray background with black fonts for the keyed in numbers helps the user focus more on using the calculator than getting distracted with wrong colors that hurts the eyes. I always have hated the work of people who used ridiculous colors on their apps or websites as they tend to expose their lack of concentration on how the readers or users of these can feel about their work. In this department its full marks to Nokia which has managed to refresh its really aged and super old s40 OS !

Next on would be the focus on really how usable any input mechanism on such a small phone would be. Compared to the ruling smartphones out there in the market today even in the budget range, the Nokia Asha is still much smaller on the screen which makes it a challenge for Nokia to make the input mechanisms more accurate. Whether its the calculator or the onscreen keyboard for messaging or chat, or whether its scrolling through menus by touching through, I can confidently say after what i have experienced – that the Asha series of Nokia phones finally nails what was missing in the S40 OS since a long time. A super easy keyboard, which is very accurate and highly usable even in spite of tight space between characters makes this phone all the more a joy to use in terms of its elegance!

Continuing with this new tradition, Nokia has left no stone unturned to ensure that all its apps merge with the overall scheme of things to make a highly saleable operating system. The Radio app, the clock, alarm and timer apps use the right type of fonts at the right places to emphasize on what the user should concentrate on. The only other way it should have been is that Nokia must have concentrated on these improvments long back which would have perhaps showed the world what they are strong at. Even now is not a bad time though, and its only more joy to see a new and rich operating system.

Finally much as in the other higher end phones, Nokia Asha comes with three slidable pages or sets of panels where one can put a much wanted app, or shortcuts to frequently used apps.

Coming to other matters, the Nokia Asha 308 has the following specs:

(source : flipkart)

At a cost of Rs.5000+,

This phone has: Bluetooth, navigation, EDGE, GPRS, USB, expandable memory, conferencing support, and dual sim

This phone DOES NOT have: 3G, personal hotspot, WiFi, rear camera.

To summarize on other aspects that we know where Nokia has its strong points:

This phone has good call quality
This phone has good battery life
Detachable batter slot and memory slot, supporting upto 32GB
Over the air upgrades
Good touch response
Socially connected apps are available
All formats of audio/video mostly supported
All mail mechanisms are supported

Some sore points of the phone would be:

Unlock button is on the right bottom which hurts the thumb
Overall the phone is quite slippery
Phone is tad bit heavy
Sometimes the user interface could be a bit laggy
Opening and closing apps can take time depending on the app
atleast Wi-Fi must have been included in order to help faster downloads and at the home or at the office use.

So should you buy this phone?

If you need dual sim, dont need 3G or WiFi and can manage with Edge and only need to see mails or chat, then this phone is for you.

If you need strong navigation support, mail attachments, downloading games, music over Wifi or 3G, good video call support and many more apps, then this phone is NOT for you.

Tags: 308, 32gb, 3g, accelerometer, alarm, asha, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, browser, calculator, call, camera, capacitive, conference, cpu, dual, edge, email, gprs, gsm, hdmi, icons, karnataka, keyboard, lcd, lock, memory, microsd, multitouch, nokia, notifications, onscreen, phone, power, processor, review, rom, s40, sim, timer, touchscreen, usb, wap

Hakrappa KJP-gey vote haakro, hakroppo ….

Mar13

(source wikipedia)

On one fine evening in 2008, a certain reasonably old man with white hair and moustache was crying on the TV screen, when a little girl who phoned in told him that Karnataka has finally elected a leader who will work towards its development and who will rid the state of its corrupt practices. He assertively declared that he will wage a war against corruption and uphold the victory that the state had provided to his party.

Five years down the line, the same gentleman was still crying on the TV screen, accusing his bosses and detractors of robbing his role and respect for all the hard work he did while wearing a khaki trouser and learning to stand in the hot sun to build up the party he so fondly cared for. After he took over the party to power way back, his growing deeds of giving away large amount of money to temples of his choice, giving away prime lands in Bangalore city to his sons, and his supposed illegal involvement of being a beneficiary in the mining scan and iron ore scam earned him nothing but a boot out of the party.

After so many misdeeds and his political incompetence within the BJP on how to handle his peer pressure from Sadananda Gowda, Eshwarappa, Ananth Kumar and others, the man knew two things. One that his only way to escape this mess is to get out of the party before people decimated him. And two, that BJP had no chance in the upcoming ULB and assembly elections. The second turned out to be the trump card hiding close to his chest which he used to bail himself out to form the KJP.

The ULB election results are a direct pointer to what awaits the state in 2013 assembly elections and it has already given the BJP both a smack on the head and a slap on the face pretty deftly. The huge swing in votes towards the Congress means only one thing: People dont know who else to vote for – whether for KJP which is yet to test its waters with the same candidate who screwed the state, or for the JDS which is yet to be clear on how it intends to be a good state level player with credibility and track record.

Due to the obvious reasons, Congress wins by default, but the real acid test now is the expected bickering in the congress between Kharge, Siddu, DKS, and a few other stalwarts who will form a team similar to that in BJP and might either be advisories or ruin the show. While at a national level congress is stressing on youth participation and young blood and all that, we are yet to see a visionary congress leader after SM Krishna during whose time Bangalore’s transformation was unbelieveable.

Given we have a gazillion flyovers, and toll roads now, given we also have the metro, given we have billion people from all the states settled down here, given the increased crime rate, given the absolute lack of governance, given the beating Kannada as a language has got, given an already overgrown city without similar growth in infrastructure, given crazy land prices all over, and in general given the mammoth metamorphisis of Bangalore into a lazy-concrete-traffic-jammed-mall-cultured-rude-screwed garden city, what exactly would be the congress manifesto to bring back some sanity to Bangalore?

What is there to vote for? What hope as a city do we have left that things would be any better anymore? – The answer is NOTHING. The last time I could vote for congress, jds and bjp. This time i can also vote for another one – the KJP. I am surely wanting to hear yeddy cry again in joy on TV for some reason that never matters. Its the iconism that matters doesnt it ?

Tags: bangalore, bengaluru, blog, karnataka, kjp, congress, ulb, election, results, jds, votes, party, assembly, elections

iPhone 4S vs Google Nexus 4 comparison review

Feb17

I bring to you a review comparison of the iPhone 4S 32GB vs the Google Nexus 4 16GB.

Cheque Truncation System rollout by Jan 2013 for faster cheque processing and better safety of transactions

Dec7

In order to streamline cheque clearance and processing, RBI has stipulated that banks must now make use of Cheque Truncation System or CTS from the new year. This has also been necessiated to ensure better security and scanning for safer transactions.

cts-Masthead

The main difference between CTS and non-CTS cheque books would be the words CTS-2010 mentioned vertically on the top left part of the cheque and a grey patch below the account number space on the cheque towards the left bottom. An illustration of such a cheque from Citibank and ING Vysya Bank are as shown below.

cts-citi

These cheques are already into circulation and some of you might already be having the same if you have ordered a cheque book recently. However for those who do not have this yet, your old cheque books and leaves would be considered void and unusable after this month end. To avoid your cheques being dishonored, you can get a CTS compliant cheque book from your bank as soon as you can to start making use of the new system that is rolling out from the next year.

Tags: 2012, bangalore, banks, bengaluru, blog, cheque, cheque truncation system, citibank, CTS, faster, gray, ing vysya bank, invalid cheques, karnataka, new year, next year, patch, processing, rbi, safety, speed

The iPhone 5 launches tomorrow in Bengaluru !

Nov2

Apple is finally launching the iPhone 5 tomorrow in India. A mail from the imagine store specifies that they would launch the iPhone 5 tomorrow. What is already a well known fact is that the iPhone 5 replaces the earlier iPhone 4S with the pricing remaining intact at about 44,500 for the 16GB version, 52,500 for the 32GB and a whopping 59,000+ for the 64GB version.

At the price of the 64GB version Indians could do a lot of better things like paying 6 months of rent for a house, or buying a bike, or even buying an iMac. For the more culinary oriented guys, this money can buy you 300 costa cafe mochas, or about 600 MacD burgers.

While the iPhone 5 definitely has a lot going for its design and functionalities with the iOS6, it still does not justify the price being double of what other smartphones that provide same or similar features. S3, or the HTC 1x for instance.

Where Apple shines as compared to the others is in honoring its device warranty with mostly a replacement for devices like the iPhone or the iPad or with a definitive repair for the iMac. But these goodies too come with a cost of roughly 10%-20% of the product price in terms of a yearly Apple care cost. While this is still justified for the iMac or the Macbook Pro, it most certainly looks to be an overkill for a device such as an iPad or a phone.

With the leading phones by HTC, Samsung and Google at roughly half the cost, Apple’s iPhone 5 pricing seems to bring down the sheen in a highly competitive market. Add to that propreitary accessories, plus inaccessibility to the file system and not much real functionality available and the recipe isn’t even worth what you are paying for. Add to that a sloppy maps and siri functionality for India, and you would be having a dead on arrival product as compared to other phones which are live and fresh at the moment.

Google and Samsung are right on top of the game giving Apple a tough time in terms of pricing. While Apple still would make most of its revenues in America, Europe, and UK alone, there is a fierce couter attack on the Asian side from the Korean giants Samsung and LG. LG’s upcoming nexus 4 will be butter smooth, has had a great review on major websites, plus at half the cost and much better google integration is more than ready to trounce the iPhone hands down.

The latest release of Google’s voice search for Apple devices only goes to prove how important Indian english as an accent is for India specific devices. The accuracy of Google’s software is simply mindblowing and more realistic than the dreamy Siri software which is more based on retrospecting on the questions asked to it. Needless to say the gaffe on the siri and maps precision has led to Apple asking its executives handling these to depart which has also led to its share price erosion to some extent and also brings to the forefront the possible bitter politics that can rear its ugly head sooner or later.

There is also no conclusion on whether the carriers would be launching nano-sims across the country once the device is rolled out. Most likely they will but they remain until this day tightlipped about this possibility even many of us already know too much about the iPhone. The iOS6 itself is losing some of its sheen after the jelly bean 4.2 update as the iOS6 has no great additions than what used to already be there.

So given the upsides and downsides of the iPhone 5 launch, would you go ahead and buy one of these? I would love to hear from you on this! Go ahead pour your comments!

Altomail review

Oct24

AOL launched a web based mail client called Alto recently. Currently to login to alto you can use your existing GMail(google), iCloud(apple), AOL(america on line) or yahoo mail ids. Further to sign-in you need an invitation from Alto, which you need to request on their webpage (www.altomail.com). The speciality of altomail seems to be its so called simplicity in organizing and displaying information to users once it retrieves the same from any of the above mail services. Their concept revovles around stacks of mails which are formed from different topics such as shopping deals, or starred(important) emails, or any other topic as chosen by the user.

So you can stack up everything from your best friend or say all promotional emails from a bank for example. You could keep adding all sorts of rules to fill up the stack like for example all mails from india.com or all mails only from support@india.com, etc. You can delete and entire stack as well. Also, you have the option of choosing to create the stack by those mails being skipped out of the inbox itself. As you can see the video explains all this in a simple fashion. There are also delete and forward and reply options per email which are easy to use, but if I were you, I prefer outlook.com’s simplicity to the gmail’s power over the Altomail look and feel. The point about altomail is that the concept wears off on you after some prolonged use and you begin to wish you saw the emails the good old way where you could choose whatever you dont want and just do something with them such as archive them or delete them as usual.

Moreover at the moment you can use only the four specified email services with perhaps more to come. However the user interface has no options to change the font and the default font is kind of bold and to some extent non space saving and kiddish after a while. The metro UI of microsoft anyday scores over such things hands down. So whether or not Alto is for you is something that you need to use it and decide, but for now, the concept is to try and simplify your inbox which many providers have tried in the past and its nothing new. Alto equals these providers if not surpasses them. Go and check it out by requesting an invite for yourself!

Apple to likely introduce the 7-inch iPAD mini to compete against current bestsellers

Oct17

In the crowded tablet marketplace, we already have thousands of android tablets like Samsung, Google Nexus 7, Amazon Kindle HD, Barnes and Noble Nook, Acer Iconia, Asus Padphone, Blackberry which was a failure as such, and a host of Indian ones like Beetel, Micromax, and few others.

app

(image courtesy: Engadget)

While Steve Jobs always believed that a greater than 9 tablet was the most perfect form suitable for daily use, the myriad 7 tablets already in the marketplace seems to defy that logic and in fact being more suitable to be carried around and used more effectively. Now with Steve gone, Tim Cook and co, seems to be thinking otherwise to increase their tablet market share by entering into the categories of 7-inchers with the iPad mini which is to be announced shortly.

It would be interesting to wait and watch how well Apple does in this segment of overcrowded 7-inchers. With microsoft entering the tablet with its surface offering, its only time that will tell whether the fragmentation is an exact 33% of the big three: Google, MS and Apple, or whether Apple would still dominate this category as well going forward.

Well whatever it is, this proves more and more that only the big and powerful market leaders can actually get some sales going in anything they make be it hardware or software, though some others keep trying in a bid to win over them either in form or in function.

Via: Engadget

Tags: bangalore, bengaluru, blog, apple, ipad, mini, india, launch, date, a6, processor, 7-inch, tablet, android, surface, microsoft, google

Indian Railways launches RailRadar web app for tracking trains realtime

Oct11

rairadar

As part of its technological advances, the Indian Railways have launched a web application at http://railradar.trainenquiry.com/.

This application uses google maps and tracks trains realtime with blue on time codes and red running late codes on the maps. It now gets very easy for finding whether a train is running late or note and where it is exactly !!

There is no mobile app for the same yet, but it could introduced soon for android, windows and apple iphones if railways can put their mind to it.

Tags: railways, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, railradar, app, web, rail radar, trains, timings, tickets, irctc, routes, desitnations, stations, late, early, timings, maps

Apple will launch the iPhone 5 today at 10:30 PM india time !!

Sep12

The apple store is also down to reflect the same opinion !!

wellbeback

Tags: india, apple, iphone, 5, airtel, aircel

Android goodie comparisons

Jul24

Most people have only couple of interesting questions in mind when it comes to android OS.

Is Samsung better or the Google Nexus better in terms of usage? Is SVoice better or Google Now better in terms of answers? Is ICS slower than Jelly Bean, if so how slow?

What if pictures and videos could do the talking? Wont it be great? Take a look at this video which was shot at 300 frames per second and slowed down to half of that or quarter of that to give you an exact idea how good this looks!

Okay that was great wasnt it? Now how about the comparison of questions to both these services and who answers more accurately and fast enough?

Take a look for yourself !

If you liked this give your comments across in the comments section. The next thing pending is a proper review of indian english accent and questions to the device based on that! Stay tuned for that article!

Tags: 3g, 4.0, 4.1, accent, android, answers, apps. activities, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, data, dictation, edge, english, galaxy, google, google now, google voice search, hspa, htc, ice cream sandwich, indian, jelly bean, karnataka, language, nexus, one x, packets, questions, s voice, s3, samsung, server, sIII, speech, translate, web

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