http://www.fonearena.com/blog The Mobile Blog Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:36:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/34337/meet-the-fone-arena-team-jon-choo.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/34337/meet-the-fone-arena-team-jon-choo.html#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:28:36 +0000 Michael Hell http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=34337 Welcome to our interview series here on Fone Arena, something we wanted to do for quite some time now. We invite you to (virtually) meet the team working behind the scenes, we invite you to meet the Fone Arena Team! Each week I will conduct a new interview with one of our authors, in which you’ll get to know us a bit better. This week I'd like you to meet Jon Choo from the UK. I've had the pleasure to meet Jon at the Ovi "good things" trip, and then again at Nokia World last year in London. A true tech enthusiast and very nice guy, enjoy his interview! Who are you? Introduce yourself! Hi, I am Jon Choo. I grew up in Malaysia but spent all my adult life in Britain. I currently live near London. I enjoy fell walking, watching films, video gaming, camping, photography, attending live music, socialising and doing cool stuff like flash mobs. I am also a twitter addict - you can find me on @jonchoo Tell us a little bit about your "mobile career". What did you do prior to Fone Arena? Prior to joining Fone Arena, I ran my own blog (jonchoo.blogspot.com). In fact I still do. ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/34337/meet-the-fone-arena-team-jon-choo.html/feed 1 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/33738/meet-the-fone-arena-team-%e2%80%93-sandeep-sarma.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/33738/meet-the-fone-arena-team-%e2%80%93-sandeep-sarma.html#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:21:57 +0000 Michael Hell http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=33738 Welcome to a new interview series here on Fone Arena, something we wanted to do for quite some time now. We invite you to (virtually) meet the team working behind the scenes, we invite you to meet the Fone Arena Team! Each week I will conduct a new interview with one of our authors, in which you’ll get to know us a bit better. This week, please say hello to Sandeep Sarma! You wonder what Sandeep thinks about mobile phones, what his favourite OS is and what he likes to see in his dream phone? read on! Who are you? Introduce yourself! Hey, my name is Sandeep Sarma. I am an Indian but grew up in Bahrain (Middle East) and currently living in Chennai. Apart from my love for phones, I have a passion for photography, movies and music. I also love everything that is related to technology. Oh and I also love Swimming and Travel. Tell us a little bit about your “mobile career”. What did you do prior to FoneArena? Well, I started mobile related discussion on online forums etc at the age of 12 and started blogging at the age of 14 with Daily Mobile. A few months later, I started my ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/33738/meet-the-fone-arena-team-%e2%80%93-sandeep-sarma.html/feed 4 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/32512/the-nimbuzz-growth-story.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/32512/the-nimbuzz-growth-story.html#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:41:40 +0000 Varun Krish http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=32512 Nimbuzz is one of the most popular mobile applications with over 40 million users. The application has gained popularity amongst users mainly because it offers free messaging and calling features. FoneArena had the chance to speak to Geoff Casely , VP Global Business Development at Nimbuzz . If you use a smartphone or feature phone user , we are pretty much sure that you might have heard of Nimbuzz or use it constantly. It is a free application available to most major mobile platforms including Java, Symbian , Blackberry , iPhone  and Android which lets you login to multiple Instant Messaging accounts such as Google Talk , Yahoo Messenger and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The app also offers free calling between other Nimbuzz users. If you wish to call a landline or mobile phone you can choose to use Nimbuzz Out which is a paid service offering international calls at low rates. The application was launched 4 years ago and has about 40 million users worldwide today. It is seeing no signs of slowdown and adding more than 100K users a day. Majority of the user base comes from Symbian and J2ME phones but they are seeing strong ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/32512/the-nimbuzz-growth-story.html/feed 0 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/33061/meet-the-fone-arena-team-rita-el-khoury.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/33061/meet-the-fone-arena-team-rita-el-khoury.html#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 06:47:42 +0000 Michael Hell http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=33061 Welcome to a new interview series here on Fone Arena, something we wanted to do for quite some time now. We invite you to (virtually) meet the team working behind the scenes, we invite you to meet the Fone Arena Team! Each week I will conduct a new interview with one of our authors, in which you’ll get to know us a bit better. This week, we'd like you to meet Rita El Khoury! You don't know Rita El Khoury? Oh it seems like you have spent the last few years on the moon then .. :) Who are you? Introduce yourself! Hi, my name is Rita El Khoury, I am a pharmacist by profession, a mobile enthusiast by passion. I have lived in Lebanon almost all my life, aside from going a year to Paris, France, for a Masters in Medical Research. When I'm not trolling the internet for medical or mobile news, or managing my pharmacy, I can be found watching a movie, listening to music, swearing at the traffic in Lebanon or testing my creative talents with some new video. Tell us a little bit about your “mobile career”. What did you do prior to FoneArena? My first smartphone was the Nokia ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/33061/meet-the-fone-arena-team-rita-el-khoury.html/feed 3 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/32407/meet-the-fone-arena-team-asad-rafi.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/32407/meet-the-fone-arena-team-asad-rafi.html#comments Fri, 11 Mar 2011 06:30:14 +0000 Michael Hell http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=32407 Welcome to a new interview series here on Fone Arena, something we wanted to do for quite some time now. We invite you to (virtually) meet the team working behind the scenes, we invite you to meet the Fone Arena Team! Each week I will conduct a new interview with one of our authors, in which you'll get to know us a bit better. Starting off this week, is our friend from Pakistan, Asad Rafi! Nice to meet you Asad! Who are you? Introduce yourself! Hello, my name is Asad Rafi. I am a 17 yr old boy who lives in Pakistan, and sometimes in USA. I am a very big fan of everything related to tech world. Besides blogging, I study and read books, actually most of the time surfing on the net and learning about different things. In my free time, I watch movies, listen to songs and play football but it’s so hard to get free times these days! You can catch me on Twitter @asadrafi. Tell us a little bit about your "mobile career". What did you do prior to FoneArena? I started my career as a blogger 2.5 years ago, when I was just 15. Well, before that I never ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/32407/meet-the-fone-arena-team-asad-rafi.html/feed 4 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/19930/martin-cooper-says-android-phones-are-as-good-as-the-iphone.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/19930/martin-cooper-says-android-phones-are-as-good-as-the-iphone.html#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:13:28 +0000 Asad Rafi http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=19930 Martin Cooper is the man who gave birth to the next generation of communication which we all today know as the mobile phone. He invented the first mobile phone and also made first mobile call in April of 1973. Today every single person has a mobile phone, and there life is complicated without it. Lot of companies are investing millions of dollars on mobile phone research. Recently Martin Cooper gave an  interview to CNN, he said: We knew that someday everybody would have a [cell] phone, but it was hard to imagine that that would happen in my lifetime. And now we’ve got almost five billion phones in the world… Phones have gotten so complicated, so hard to use, that you wonder if this is designed for real people or for engineers Martin also said that " Phones have gotten so complicated, so hard to use, that you wonder if this is designed for real people or for engineers." Somehow, he is right because not every simple person can use a phone, before using a phone you have to read tutorials and guides, but for geeks it's easy. He said that " We're going to have a lot ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/19930/martin-cooper-says-android-phones-are-as-good-as-the-iphone.html/feed 0 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/16341/why-htc-is-betting-big-on-the-indian-handset-market.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/16341/why-htc-is-betting-big-on-the-indian-handset-market.html#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 16:53:28 +0000 Varun Krish http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=16341 Recently we had the chance of speaking  to HTC India. HTC who has been known as a PDA player for quite sometime now has made a surprise move by launching the Smart at a Sub 10000 price point. HTC feels that reaching the Sub 10K price point has been an achievement for them.  Dive in to read the full text of the interview. HTC has launched the Smart at Rs.9990 on Airtel's Network and Airtel users get 100 MB for free usage for 3 months along with Free Manchester United content and Music worth Rs.100. The company is also providing Bollywood content in a tieup with mBollywood . HTC is targeting the phone at youth and aims to provide a value for money touchscreen smart phone to Indian users. The HTC Smart is available first in India. "We have not only achieved a price point but have customized the product for Indian Taste"  says Ajay Sharma, Country Manager, HTC India. He also adds that "We feel we have touched the right spot for people to upgrade from a feature phone to a smart phone." HTC Smart packs a  similar version of the Sense UI found on company's high-end phones.  Sense UI brings ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/16341/why-htc-is-betting-big-on-the-indian-handset-market.html/feed 13 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/13372/interview-with-julien-fourgeaud-of-symbian-foundation.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/13372/interview-with-julien-fourgeaud-of-symbian-foundation.html#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:57:22 +0000 Team FoneArena http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=13372 Julien Fourgeaud is a Roadmap Catalyst at the Symbian Foundation. FoneArena's Varun got a chance to interview him where we ask Julien about Symbian - the most widely used smart phone platform in the world. Here is the text of the interview Varun: I have been a long time user of Symbian phones. But don't see much changes on the UI front . This is a reason many people bash Symbian for , more so due to the rise of iPhone and Android. Are you guys working on improving the UI with Symbian ^2 and future versions? Julien: Symbian^2 UI is mostly based on S60. There are small changes but nothing major. S^2 is an intermediate version that has already been feature completed. We are using it to validate our release process and contribution model. S^3 will start bringing UI and especialy UX improvement, it is a step towards the full makeover that S^4 will be.From kinetic scrolling to single tap (contribution from Ixonos) as well as more gesture support. Qt is also gonna bring a lot more flexibility and we're definitely looking at more 'eye candy' while keeping performances and developers priorities in mind. Varun: Development on Symbian has always been always seen ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/13372/interview-with-julien-fourgeaud-of-symbian-foundation.html/feed 6 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/7270/interview-with-henri-moissinac-about-facebook-mobile-and-india.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/7270/interview-with-henri-moissinac-about-facebook-mobile-and-india.html#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:50:12 +0000 Varun Krish http://www.fonearena.com/blog/?p=7270 I recently had an interesting discussion with Henri Moissinac of Facebook Mobile about their Mobile Strategy , their growth in the mobile space and their plans for one of the largest markets in the World - India. Nokia is the largest handset manufacturer in the world and Facebook is currently the largest social networking site. The partnership between Facebook and Nokia started with Nokia's popular devices Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97 and the partnership has been quite fruitful till now, with applications and home screen widgets released for Nokia 5800 and N97. That being said, the future possibilities seem endless and quite promising with the recent announcement of the Lifecasting application at Nokia World which ushers in a lot of excitement for the users. The Facebook app on the iPhone platform is by far one of the most downloaded applications on the Apple App Store and the recent 3.0 version of the app is quite simply one of the best applications developed ever on the iPhone platform. Henri said that that the first Mobile version of Facebook was developed for Blackberry phones and that the Facebook Connect feature was featured first on the iPhone and is now getting expanded to all the ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/7270/interview-with-henri-moissinac-about-facebook-mobile-and-india.html/feed 0 http://www.fonearena.com/blog/6793/interview-with-sumeet-gugnani-of-microsoft-india-on-windows-marketplace-for-mobile.html http://www.fonearena.com/blog/6793/interview-with-sumeet-gugnani-of-microsoft-india-on-windows-marketplace-for-mobile.html#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:31:45 +0000 Varun Krish http://www.fonearena.com/blog/2009/08/21/interview-with-sumeet-gugnani-of-microsoft-india-on-windows-marketplace-for-mobile.html FoneArena had the chance to interview Sumeet Gugnani, Director of Mobile Communications Business , Microsoft India. In a hour long interview Sumeet spoke about Microsoft's upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 , Marketplace and also answered our queries about Windows Mobile. Dive in to catch the text of the interview. Can you please tell us what is Windows Marketplace for Mobile? Windows Marketplace for Mobile represents a tremendous opportunity for the developer community to generate revenue by enabling them to reach millions of Windows mobile phone users directly . The  applications will be made available to customers after a simple security and compatibility check from Microsoft. There are over 50 million Windows  Mobile-powered devices worldwide. The Marketplace will help the developer community reach this large user base. It will also work as a centralized repository of applications for users to browse, experience and purchase applications. How do developers get started ? Windows Marketplace for Mobile has opened for developers to submit their applications starting May 1, 2009 for a period of three months. All that the developers need to ...]]> http://www.fonearena.com/blog/6793/interview-with-sumeet-gugnani-of-microsoft-india-on-windows-marketplace-for-mobile.html/feed 2