What I love about my Nokia (Symbian S60v3) – Ex Windows Mobile user

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 29, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

It’s been about 5 weeks since I moved from the HTC Tytn to the Nokia E90. This was a huge change for me as it meant I was coming back to Symbian S60 after 4 Windows Mobile devices (SP5, Prophet, Wizard and Tytn) and the last Symbian OS device I used was the side-talkin-taco-lovin N-Gage. So far my experience has been a fairly good one. There are a lot of things I absolutely love about my E90 and a few I don’t. In this post I’ll focus on some of the former.

1. Snappiness

I’m not even sure if that’s a word but it sure is hell should be. The Symbian OS is generally much more responsive than an out of the box WM device. Even though you don’t notice the lag after a while in a WM device after a while because you’re used to it, you can tell the difference when you use a Nokia phone.

2. Profiles

This is one thing I have absolutely missed the most. The ability to preconfigure message, call and email tones, levels and vibrate settings into presets has been sorely lacking in WM. Sure there are third party applications for this ability (as for most additional functionality) that work just as well; but this should really be included in the basic phone features.

3. Browsing

The included browser with the Nokia devices is just a delight to use. The cursor allows for precision compensating for the lack of touchscreen. The biggest improvement however is the speed of rendering, it’s just blazing fast. And then since the layout is web-like and not mobile-formatted, looking at full websites on a handheld device is great. (This is in comparison of the browser of WM6, not WM6.1)

4. Connection Managing

Should I set it to, any of the applications will let me choose the connection I want it to use. This is especially useful, when you have a data plan but also access to WiFi at a lot of places. Not only will this let you save up on the data plan (if it’s not unlimited) but allow faster data transfer too since Wifi at most places generally seems to be faster.

5. PC Suite

Most people don’t realise it, but the Nokia PC Suite is actually a brilliant application; miles ahead of Windows Mobile Device Center or ActiveSync. Among other things it will let you configure synchronisation, pictures and file transfer, install applications. However what stands out most for me is the almost perfect backup and restore application and the desktop messaging. The former will backup files (phone memory and memory card), contacts, calendar, notes, messages, settings and bookmarks. This is a huge time saver when it comes to upgrading firmware. The desktop messaging will allow you to send text messages from your desktop when connected to your phone.

6. Firmware Upgrades

Nokia periodically releases Firmware upgrades for it’s phones (mine just received its last week). These mostly include performance tweaks and bug fixes, but can often include significant upgrades. Flash Lite 3 was included in the last E90 update which allows me to view flash content directly on the web page now. These upgrades aren’t generally found with Windows Mobile phones.

I still have a few complaints with the device and the operating system too. Some of them stem from my use of the WM operating system, others being general annoyances. I’ll be talking about them in a separate blog post.

Acer jumps into the UMPC game too.

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 29, 2008 in Default | 1 comment

We know that Acer was planning an entry in the oh-so-hip UMPC market fairly soon and confirming that a lot of information has come leaked out today.

Here’s the scoop as it stands:

Specification:

No word on the price from the forum leak but digitimes.com seems to think it will be at 299 euros (US$469.49)

News Source: 3Fire , Mobile01

Picture source: UMPCPortal

Dell Mini boasts impressive keyboard.

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 29, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

Gizmodo managed to get a sneak peek at Dell’s forthcoming into the UMPC market. Dell had earlier announced that they will be releasing a product sometime in the Summer to compete with the likes of HP and Asus. There is no word on the specifications, screen size or price, but one can certainly expect some information soon. Atleast with the red colour it’d be safe to say the ultraportable will be coming in a variety of colours too.

However what stood out the most is the unconventional key layout. The function keys have been totally let go and the Shift, Caps Lock and other keys have been dramatically reduced in size too in order to give enough width to the letter key which tend to be more frequently used. Another thing visible in the pictures is the lack of a bezel. While no information is given on the screen size either, my guess is it might hold a 10″ screen in a 8.9″ casing similar in size to the HP 2133. More pictures on Gizmodo while a HP vs Dell comparison has been posted below.

Link: Gizmodo Gallery

Windows 7 to feature multitouch! Can I hear ‘Revolution’?

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 28, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

Steve ‘Sweaty’ Ballmer and Bill Gates showcased one of the major features of Windows 7. They use the Dell Latitude XT (which is already available in the market) to showcase the operating system which looked a lot like Surface, except (obviously on a smaller surface). The usage was quite fluid and refreshing and one can see this being useful in a variety of situations. This is brilliant work building on the already mature tablet PC platform perfected by Windows over XP and Vista. It’s interesting to note at this point Micorosft has been in the touch screen sector since 2000 with Windows Mobile and since 2002 with Windows XP Tablet Edition.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

What YOU can do with Windows!

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 25, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

Windows users often get a lot of flak from Apple fanboys about lack of the Operating systems’s ability to do shiny 3D UI stuff. However what most people (including Windows users) fail to understand is that Microsoft really wants the user to take control of the system and use it the way they want it. Which is why there exists such a vast 3rd party application library to do tasks from the most minute to the extremely complex ones. And the same applies to the UI aspect too; 3rd party applications give users an incredible amount of control so they can personalise anything from their wallpaper to the logon and boot screens.

I found these screenshots floating around on the internet with some claiming them to be that of Windows 7. But it doesn’t take a computer scientist to figure out the fake. However a lot of them are real interfaces built on 3rd party applications and they’re just what’s needed to prove my point. Windows is customisable to such an extent where you can completely change the look and feel of it beyond recognition. I’ll stop babbling right about here and let you have a look at them.