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When I bought the BlackBerry 8703e from Reliance in 2007, the one thing I just could not appreciate was the bulky look and the fact that being a “Business phone” it did not have a camera or a media player.
Back then, in the price range of Rs 16,000, and with Reliance as the service provider, this was the best I could purchase.
Since a year or two, the use of mobile banking has seen a tremendous growth. Using mobile banking, any mobile phone user can send or receive money just by press of mobile buttons. In the past, there were many similar useful applications like NGPay, Airtel Mchek, etc for easy processing of mobile payments and mobile transactions.
TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) today announced the revised interconnection usage charges (IUC) for domestic calls and slightly increased them for incoming international calls. To be more specific, the domestic IUC has been reduced to about 33% approximately and IUC for international calls has been increased to 40 paise instead of 30 paise presently.
Also, according to reports, it has been made clear that the reduction in domestic IUC would be affective for all types of calls such as Fixed to fixed, mobile to fixed, and fixed to mobile. And the above changes would be made effective 1st of April onwards.
For those who don’t know what exactly is Interconnection usage charges, it is the charge levied by the telecom company to whom a call is being terminated to. For example a call is being made by a Vodafone customer to Airtel customer, then Vodafone will have to pay some amount of IUC (as fixed by TRAI) to Airtel .
In the previous years, as and when there were changes in the IUC, the call tariff by the mobile phone operators also affected accordingly. According to TRAI, even this time, it expects this initiative to reduce domestic call charges in India as domestic IUC has been reduced to about 33 percent. Hope this step by Indian Telecom watch dog (TRAI) will bring down domestic call tariffs (specially in mobile phones).
As the spread of mobile increases, it makes you wonder about the fine line between what is perceived as luxury and necessity.
One mobile – Necessity
Two mobiles – Luxury
No Mobiles – Happiness
On 17th January 2009, the TDSAT (Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal) held a Seminar in Pune on the topic Disputes resolution in Telecom & Broadcast from where certain interesting facts about Mobile phones emerged.
**India has 374 million telephone lines
**Off this 336 million are Mobiles!
**336 million Mobiles are distributed amongst 250 million GSM and 36 million CDMA
**Around 10 million mobile lines are added every month Continue reading “Interesting facts about Mobile phones in India”
Do you remember that moment when you were expecting an important phone call or that SMS from your friend .. Or you are stuck in traffic and try to browse the internet .. and you phone screen shows the Low Battery Sign .. Damn irritating isnt it ?
Well I myself end up on a low battery on my phone and curse myself when the phone switches off ..
Well over my blogging for the past six months i have noticed that people hardly know what operating system is running on their cell phones. They do know that computers run on windows or mac or linux for a handful but they are completely unaware of what their mobile is running on.That was the whole point of my starting the blog. I’m sure all know what Nseries and Eseries are but S60 is what lies in the background. So here is a quick look at what S60 OS is all about. S60, the world’s most popular software for smartphones, lets you add new applications to your mobile device and keeps you connected to your favorite internet services in much the same way you do with your PC.
In an almost diminished scenario as there are not many real players in the industry. The risk is aplenty though the future is really highly promising. Yes gaming has been taken to an all time high. Thanks to handsets like N81, I phone, and more so because of the introduction of N-gage gaming platform. But I am not talking about the symbian scenario though. Its about Neil Young.
Neil Young, a former executive in EA games has quit from his job and started a new Gaming company, Ngmoco.
Young adds that the mobile gaming industry “has been stagnant for a few years. I feel the iPhone is a real opportunity to change that industry.'” Continue reading “Former EA Games executive launches gaming company Ngmoco”
Recent acquisition of Symbian has created quite a stir in the ever increasing market of Mobile Operating Systems. Symbian OS accounts for 60 percent of the converged mobile device segment, but has been loosing share lately. This has been largely to Windows Mobile and Linux.
Symbian has largely been controlled by Nokia. And it seems pretty odd, other phone manufacturer’s paying large sum of money going into the hands of a competitor.But this will all change with the Symbian foundation. How much? Only time will tell.
Google is about to unleash linux-based Android pretty soon on Motorola handsets. So this means putting additional pressure on Windows Mobile, which charges heavy on licensing fees. Continue reading “Windows Mobile – In trouble?”
I never knew that Users would expect so much out of their mobile phone before kicking of Free Recharge contest where we asked the users 1 simple question. What feature would you like to see in your mobile phone in 2008 ?
We got about 65 Responses from users who had patiently written about the features which they would like to have in their mobile phone in 2008.
We really had a tough time picking the winners. Most ideas were good and we could not eliminate users easily. So we have picked 10 Users at Random as winners.
Congrats to the winners and A Big Thanks to all the participants.
Please find the list of winning entries below Continue reading “Mobile Innovations of 2008 winners announced”
“Pink it´s my new obsession
Pink it´s not even a question
Pink on the lips of your lover, ´cause
Pink is the love you discover…..
Pink it´s the colour of passion
`Cause today it just goes with the fashion
Pink it was love at first sight, yea
Pink when I turn out the light, and
Pink gets me high as a kite…”
So sang Aerosmith in their hit single PINK.
I sort of agree that Pink is the colour of passion and that it goes with the fashion. But the representation of pink as a “feminine” colour has been done to death especially by Mobile manufacturers.
What I can’t seem to understand is why Mobile manufacturers across the spectrum, from Nokia to Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG believe that Pink must be the colour of every woman or girls’ fancy. Because every time a phone “exclusively” for women is launched, it is in the customary PINK colour.
Continue reading “A handset for the fairer sex Not pretty PINK please!”
You must have heard a lot of rumors about the Google phone (gPhone) we have also covered about it some time earlier.
Now some interesting things have been happenning over the past week and Google is in Talks with wireless carriers all over the world
Google is reportedly holding an event on Monday
Rumors suggest that Google has built a Mobile Operating System based on Linux and is trying to integrate the same software including its google apps into Cellphone Hardware.
Its also in talks with carriers to sell the new Software.Hardware combo to its customers.
Buy.com -The Internet Superstore is one a multi-channel online retailer based out of California, United States. They are into business since 1997. They are now offering a good variety of Bluetooth Wireless Headsets for sale online.
Bluetooth headsets are a must if you need to talk on the phone without taking it out of your pocket. The prices of these gadgets have also come down considerably over the past few years. Also a large number of devices support Bluetooth these days. If you are wondering what Bluetooth is ?
Bluetooth
Its a global standard for a short-range wireless network (Personal Area Network PAN) . Its can be used for information exchange between devices over a short-range radio frequency.Popular versions are 1.1, 2.0 and 2.1 EDR . Today it is possible to listen to stereo Audio using Bluetooth provided the device and Headset support A2DP
Lets take this Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset with WindSmart for example
According to info on the website its the 11th Top-Selling product . So whats special in it ?
Features
You can choose from a lot of Manufacturers – Plantronics, Motorola, Jabra, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Parrot, Anycom, & BlueAnt
The site has cool feature called product zoom using which you can see a enlarged picture of the product and some extra details like Shipping and Stock without having to leave the page.The interface is clean despite a few third-party advertisements
You also get to post/read reviews of all products.
Most of these Bluetooth products might qualify for their free shipping, Please check with their Terms and Conditions before placing the order.
You can also get $10 of your order if you use Google checkout for the purchase
This is a paid advertisement.
Mobile Blogging – You might have heard about this term. I spoke about this topic at Mobile Blogging BlogCamp.In back in September last year.
Methods
Blogging using WAP / XHTML over GPRS / EDGE
In this method we will take wordpress.com for example
Login to m.wordpress.com and you would see the screen below
Type the content of you blogpost here.
Hit publish on your phone and this is what you will see on your PC.Do you notice that the new post is not top ?
Blogging via SMS
This is a costly solution but there are many providers like Reliance for instance which offer blogging via SMS.
You send a SMS to a predefined number with the post contents and it gets published to your blog.
Using a 3rd party Application
Shozu is a application which is currently free which lets you upload phones / videos to flickr or Youtube
Litefeeds is a free Mobile RSS reader which has blogging support.
Mobile phone theft whom to blame?
Mobile phone theft is on the rise in India.
A huge section of India’s working population use public transport.
IT, Call center jobs have lead to an increase in purchasing power.
Low Cost handsets have also lead to an increase in mobile phone users.
In a country of vast geographical distribution, the mobile phone has
transformed from being a luxury to a bare necessity. Cell phones have
become so common and theft also has risen dramatically over the past 2
years.
Major locations where theft occurs are railway stations, bus
stops, traffic signals, pathways Motorists who use their mobile when
driving might not only be risking their lives but also be a potential
target for the culprits. Of late there have been too many incidences of
bikers being robbed on roadways.
Insurance Cos had stopped offering Mobile Theft Insurance due to a
large number of false claims.
When you loose your mobile phone, more than anything it’s the personal
information that really matters.
Some pointers to avoid mobile theft
* Avoid using your mobile phone in heavily crowded areas
* Avoid using your mobile phone in public transport
* Avoid lending your mobile phone to strangers who might try to trick you
* Don’t talk while driving
* Avoid leaving your handset in your vehicle
* Do not leave you phone unattended in any place, even at your home
Fring™ is a 3G mobile application that allows you to make free mobile calls and send instant messages (chat) to other fring users and PC based VoIP services such as Skype and Google Talk at no extra cost.
fring™ calls cost nothing extra because they utilize the 3G mobile internet connections and VoIP technologies that are already embedded in your mobile handset.
I was surprised to find that this Software works in India.The voice quality was really great for a normal GPRS connection.
Will post a video or images of our test soon.
fring™ works transparently over 3G networks while bypassing traditional mobile voice and sms text messaging services. This means that fring™ enables mobile-to-mobile calls, mobile-to-landline calls, and mobile-to-PC calls including integration into Skype and Google Talk services wherever you are.
