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.
Category: Platforms
Software Related to mobiles
Samsung Omnia comes to India
Samsung launched its fully-loaded handset, Samsung Omnia (SGH-i900), in the Indian market recently. A touch phone that features Samsung’s patented TouchWiz user interface is a stylish and fully loaded handset that could be tough competition to some HTC touch phones.
Specs:
• High resolution screen
• 3.2-inch WQVGA LCD screen
• On-screen QWERTY keyboard
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system
• MS Office documents such as PowerPoint, Excel and Word
• Outlook Express
• 12.5-mm
• 16 GB Internal Memory
• 16 GB microSD card from Sandisk
First Google Android phone coming to T-mobile today
The stage is all set for T-mobile to launch the G1 handset today at New York.
The handset powered by Google Android operating system will retail at $199 , the same price Apple iPhone3G
8GB is available with AT&T.
The Gphone is manufactured by Taiwanese phone maker HTC
We will try our best to get our hands on this phone as it is going to be available in USA starting this October
New Asus PDA P552w launched
Asus launched a new PDA handset called the P552w.
The P552w runs on Window’s Mobile 6.1 Professional. This handset has a touch screen and aims to be a competitor to HTC Touch Diamond and other touch screen mobiles.
The handset features Glide (Gester technology) which uses the handset’s touch-responsive user interface to make navigating and performing tasks on the mobile more intuitive and interactive, by scrolling and flipping pages etc. with the touch of your finger.
Some of the widget-like applications are called – Multi-Home, Anytime Launcher, EziPhoto, and EziMusic. Continue reading “New Asus PDA P552w launched”
Nokia N96 in stores from September 16
The Nokia N96 launched by the company in India recently will be available across stores from September 16th.
Touted to give tough competition to the Apple iPhone, this handset will be available for Rs 35,000. Read Fonearena’s coverage of iPhone Vs N96 here.
At Rs 35,000 it is an expensive phone but with higher features than iPhone which at Rs 32,000 – 36,000 is not cheap either.
Catch the full phone specifications of the N96 here.
Palm Treo Pro quick look
The Palm Treo Pro (christened 850 previously) is a Windows Mobile PocketPC for GSM users.
The handset is not launched yet, but its images have been splashed all over the internet lately.
Specs &features at a glance (likely changes may occur):
• 400Mhz CPU
• 256MB ROM, 128MB RAM!
• 320 x 320 pixel screen Continue reading “Palm Treo Pro quick look”
Nokia E71 Review
E71 is the latest fashion statement from Nokia
Its only 10mm thick and is rich in features. We will run through all the important features in this ESeries device
I admit that being a die hard Nokia fan. I just loved to get my hands on the device . Its such a sexy phone.
I would say its the sexiest and most beautiful phone Nokia has ever made .
Form factor , Display and styling
The phone looks damn small compared to the E61i and the metallic body makes this phone feel special and classy.
display has undergone reduction in size only 2.36 inches but it packs a 320X240 resolution and is clear and easy on the eyes
the phone comes with a 2GB microSD card and its hot swappable – port is present on the left.
volume keys are present on the right.
Connectivity
Its a Quadband GSM phone with support for 3G and HSDPA
Infrared , Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP , WIreless LAN a/b/g or WI-fi , A-GPS and 3G support . It’s also got support for HSDPA
There is a also a data cable which comes with the phone and port is below the memory card slot on the left.
Calling
Call handling was fine , no issues .
Keypad
The keypad has improved a lot over the E61i and E62 . As a matter of fact , I traded in my E61i to get this E71 and i am not regretting it
The click and feel of the new keys is great and gives you a good experience overall
There is also support for Predictive Text Input although most QWERTY phones drop this feature.
Frequent Texters / SMS freaks will love this phone for sure.
Theres is the normal D pad which has good response.
there are dedicated keys for home,calendar on the left and for phonebook and messaging on the right
keys are pretty close to each other and occasionally you might press the wrong key.
User modes
This phone has interesting new way of separating your work and personal life
Theres something called Switching modes and you can basically have 2 home screens for the phone.
You can have you personal mail accounts show up in one screen and have you corporate email show up on another.
Its a bold attempt to solve information overload.
Messaging and Email
Emailing has not got better in any Nokia phone. I added my gmail account and I did not have to enter any server information.
I just entered my email and password and chose my Wi-fi connection and it started .
I was up and running in under 30 seconds. Thats pretty good
SMS got a lot better and you can do a lot of stuff with the improved notifications system.
Mobile web browsing
Mobile browsing has got a bit better but not as cool as the iphone. I admit i have been bitten by the iphone bug
But one killer feature all of you would love . you can watch youtube videos within the browser it self .
you can actually watch streaming vidoes within the browser only which is a great improvment.
Nokia might beat the iphone hands down in this league if it improves this feature a bit.
Software , Applications , Performance and Memory
This phone runs Symbian Os 9.2 with S60 Feature Pack 1. There is some software which comes preloaded on the phone – Quickoffice(Quickword, Quickpoint, Quicksheet), Adobe PDF Reader, Active Notes
We installed Google maps , gmail app and youtube app.
It seemed to run much faster than E61i which was damn sluggish.
Theres about 110MB of phone memory and it ships with a 2 GB card, so you might not have to buy one immediately . It supports upto 8GB of memory expansion.
Camera
This e series phone has a 3.2 mega pixel camera with flash and zoom. this is good enough considering the fact that this is not a multimedia phone but a business phone.
[Sample image taken with phone]
VGA video recording (320x240px) similar to VCD quality is possible and fine for capturing great moments. Camera does not have shutter. There is a mirror on the right so that you can look into the phone while clicking your photo. There is a camera on the front but is meant for video calling.
Multimedia
Audio
There is a single speaker on the top left of the screen . Its louder than the E61i and is not bad at all for music playback. Its not perfect. Music gets a bit choppy with bass.
music playback is time upto 18 hours but sadly no 3.5mm port only a 2.5mm
There’s FM Radio too
Video
You can capture upto 1hr of video . Theres Real Player and it supports Flash Lite 3, mp4, .3gp; H.263, MPEG-4 VSP,RealVideo,H.264
Battery
Battery life is great ! 10 hours of GSM/2G talk time is as good as it gets . A 1500 mAh battery is packed at the back for device.
Conclusion
Considering the fact that the Nokia E71 is a business phone competing with the blackberry phones and other enterprise devices,
its a clear winner in most areas. Camera’s not the best but decent enough compared to E61i.
If you are looking for a phone for mainly calling , messaging and plenty of connectivity options and a fast OS plus phenomenal battery life this phone is a great buy for around Rs.20000.
This is a short review , please leave a comment if we have forgot to mention any feature.
We are still playing with the phone
HTC P4350 launched in India
Not just a good looking phone this one! It’s an action packed business phone, if that’s what you are looking for.
The Quad-band PDA phone HTC P4350 has been launched in the Indian market.
Specs &Features at a glance:
• 17mm thick, 168 grams weight
• 2.8″ TFT-LCD, 240 X 320 dot pixels with 65,536 colours
• Landscape view screen
• 2.0 Megapixel CMOS colour camera
• 5-way navigation control
• Semi-automatic sliding QWERTY keypad
• Windows Mobile 6.0 Direct push-email technology
• Internet browsing
• Pocket MSN Continue reading “HTC P4350 launched in India”
Nokia 3600 slide
Nokia has been kind enough to keep showering India with Handsets after handsets, and by that not any tiny weenie one’s , the best handsets and most promising one’s and most of them having their global debuts in our Sub Continent.
The recent to follow trend is the promising Nokia 3600 slide. Any old world model that’s re shaped re sized and re made this is the remake of the old 3600, only in the slider form and the OS is the new nicer revamped S40. It’s a treat looking at the mobile and its gonna be a show stealer for the women folk.
Palm Centro smartphone now in BLACK
Palm, Inc. has unveiled a new version of their Palm Centro smartphone in Onyx black colour.
It looks decent.
According to some folks there is a certain amount of flair and fashion sense as well in the phone
I kind of disagree with that. Black looks stylish, but also somehow very ‘plasticky’. However, each buyer to his own. If Black is your choice of colour, the Palm Centro is now available in Black across stores in India. Continue reading “Palm Centro smartphone now in BLACK”
Samsung i8510 INNOV8 announced!
It is called Innov8 and the ‘8’ certainly stands for the 8 megapixel camera this high end handset is equipped with, apart from the Symbian S60 smartphone OS(3rd edition Feature Pack 2). Oh wow! Action packed and feature packed.
Specs and features:
• Quad-band GSM
• 2.8-inch QVGA display
• 16 million colours
• Resolution of 240 x 320 pixels
• Accelerometer for automatically adjusting screen orientation Continue reading “Samsung i8510 INNOV8 announced!”
The S60 user Interface: A revolution waiting to happen
S60 is feature-rich software for smartphones with advanced data capabilities. Based on the Symbian OS, it includes an application suite, user interface framework, and middleware components. The flexibility of S60 allows for a variety of hardware designs and software configurations.
S60 devices include built-in features varying from messaging and calendar to a wide variety of personalization options and advanced web browsing.
The touch user interface in S60 smartphone software offers licensees the opportunity to develop devices with a variety of input methods, whether it is a touch screen with a traditional keypad, touch screen with a QWERTY keyboard or touch screen alone, supporting both finger or stylus optimized input, in addition to the range of access options that already exists today.
S60 touch user interface comes with support for tactile feedback, which means that there is a physical pulse and feedback when the user taps on the screen. This provides better awareness of the device’s response.
Existing S60 3rd Edition applications will run on touch enabled devices unmodified. Tools will be made available for developers to further optimize the touch experience of their applications.
Also, the new UI Accelerator toolkit will allow device manufacturers to develop rapidly and easily impressive graphical effects and new types of interactions, further increasing the user appeal and excitement. Continue reading “The S60 user Interface: A revolution waiting to happen”
BlackBerry Thunder pictures surface
The Thunder is BlackBerry’s first ever Touch Screen Device. It is touted to be a piece of mobile perfection.
It runs on OS 4.7 and is also known as the BlackBerry 9500. The user interface is quite similar to the iPhone, while the media player is already up and running. Other confirmed specs include a 360 x 480 touch sensitive display.
India the Preferred Mobile Destination
Be it tourism, finance, economy, or newest technology, India is now the most preferred destination for all activities. India is now abuzz with activity and yes the world has finally understood its true potential. Well this is certainly why nokia has launched the Nokia E71 and the Nokia 6220 classic here, first amongst several markets. Nokia said India is an emerging market has the largest base for its handset markets. Moreover it’s a strategic move to take on a nearly close yet far rival Samsung.
Nokia E71 retails for 19500 INR and Nokia 6220 Classic retails for 17500 INR.
more info on E71 and 6220 classic follows
Sony Ericsson Remi
It is not only Nokia that launches a remake of its previous models or adds a tag ‘classic’ to its already old outdated model numbers as it has run out of numbers.
Latest to jump into this bandwagon is SE. Remi is the code name for the latest Sony Ericsson handset. A replica of the classic pioneer handset T610i that catapulted SE into the mass market segment. Continue reading “Sony Ericsson Remi”