Tech Bangalore

Nokia 5233: Full touch music phone targeted at youth

Prashanth — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:03:57 +0000

Here I come again with another mobile phone review. This time it’s not a phone which costs a bomb, which you can’t think of buying! It’s Nokia 5233, a full touch phone running on Symbian S60 5th edition.

Nokia 5233 sports 3.2 inch touch screen, 2MP camera, 3.5 mm audio jack, 70 mb internal memory & external (microSD) expandable upto 16GB. Touch is pretty good & responsive but better with stylus than fingers. I always ended up typing wrong words even after using the phone for a week full time! Anyway that also depends on personal choices, I don’t really like typing on a touch screen.

Home screen has contacts widget, music player controls & application shortcuts. Contacts widget is like a fast dial, u can add contacts which you keep calling again & again. Clicking on a contact here pops up recent activity done with that contact like messaging, call logs. You can also add an RSS feed to contact & track! (I used Friendfeed RSS feed of my friend). Application shortcuts can also be configured based on your requirement.

Though it has a 2MP camera, you can take descent pictures from it. Music quality is comparable to any other music phone in market. Since it supports upto 16GB of external memory, you can store hell lot of music in it. 3.5 mm audio jack gives you an opportunity of using ear phones of your choice.

Since the phone runs on Symbian S60 5th edition, almost all the symbian apps which are there in market will work. When it comes to phone, availability of apps is one the major considerations for me. All major symbian apps like Gravity, Fring, Nimbuzz, Google Maps…etc work on Nokia 5233.

What’s not there?

Well, it’s important to know what’s not there before going for a phone. Nokia 5233 doesn’t have 3G, GPS & Wireless. It is really impossible to put them all into such a low priced phone. Decision is yours, you know better what you need. If you really need those features, I suggest go for Nokia 5800. I heard 5800 is much better after recent firmware update.

How Much?

I have been to my cousin’s marriage last week & did a small research with the phone! I asked around 13-15 people “What could be the price of this phone?”. Most of them said it’s around 20k!! Yeah, it looks like that! But the MRP of the phone is Rs.7,999, should be less in showrooms.

Airtel GPRS new plan, Rs.19 for 200MB!

Prashanth — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:39:38 +0000

Airtel is getting more competitive in it’s GPRS offerings by offering one more GPRS pack at very affordable price. My friend Ashwin posted a screenshot sometime back which says about this new pack:

So, as per the screenshot if you easy recharge with Rs.19, you can browse free till 200MB. Though it’s unclear how much validity it carries. If you know, do let everyone know via comment section.

Update:

As Chaitu commented here, validity of this plan is 3 days.

Airtel GPRS, Rs.98 for 2Gb per month! How to get it?

Prashanth — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:22:14 +0000

Airtel has recently rolled out a new GPRS pack which is very competitive with GPRS packs offered by new providers like Docomo. With new plan user gets unlimited browsing all through the month for just Rs.98. Though Airtel calls it “unlimited”, it comes with fair usage policy limit of 2Gb. If you are using GPRS only on mobile device, 2Gb is more than enough for a month. If you are connecting your laptop or PC to browse internet, then you should be counting on those bits!

To get this plan, just “Easy Recharge” with Rs.98. But, before that activate Mobile Office on your number. To do that dial *567*11# & you will get a confirmation message. Dialing this activates basic plan of Mobile Office, which is 30paise/50kb, pay as you browse. After you ERecharge with Rs.98, it overrides the basic plan & you will get 2Gb of free browsing. It’s instant

If you don’t have settings send ALL to 543210

Update:

To check your usage details & expiry date of the pack dial *123*10#

Bloggers who are in Nokia’s invite list for super secret announcement!

Prashanth — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:34:17 +0000

Just inspected the source of the page http://events.nokia.com/countdown/ to get the entire list!! I’m listed too, but not yet contacted by Nokia! Nobody has any clue on what Nokia is going to announce!

I made the list just to reduce the pain of scrolling on the countdown page

Norton Internet Security 2010, makes life easier!

Prashanth — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:42:10 +0000

Seriously, been using free anti virus since years, but my computer is still vulnerable & keep getting affected again & again. I don’t understand why they aren’t powerful. For me, an anti-virus software should be “Install & Forget”, it should be capable of taking care off all sorts of malicious bad software, trojans, spywares & let me concentrate on work!

Norton Internet Security 2010 does just what I wanted to. It takes care of all bad stuff & allows me to do my work peacefully. As you can see in the below screenshot, NIS has got really nice dashboard which tell you everything about current processes.

Clicking on the performance button shows how NIS is performing on your machine, how many issues it has found, details of the issues it found, memory/CPU consumption ..etc, everything plotted over a nice graph.

Elegant settings window allows you to configure NIS as per your requirements. Certain things which you might already know like scheduling scans, network settings, computer settings, web settings, everything comes under this. All these settings have a simple button which can turn ‘on’ or ‘off’ anytime .

We surf internet all the time. But, the fact is we find new sites via search engines (or I can say just Google?). NIS nicely integrates with Google search results page & shows whether the listed links are safe to visit or not. In my opinion this itself hugely reduces chance of getting infected!

With NIS you can have better understanding of installed applications. Norton scans every installed application & automatically finds out whether to trust the application or not & assigns proper access rights. Norton also tracks CPU & memory usage history of all applications!

Today, my friend’s came come with an infected thumb drive & asked me to format it since he was unable to fix it with the free anti-virus he had. I just plugged the thumb drive in, NIS automatically scanned the drive, found the threat!! I just clicked “Fix” & bingo! NIS took around 5 to 10 seconds to fix it & all the data was safe.

It just covers everything! I don’t think my PC would ever get affected with NIS installed on it! There’s still a lot of settings & configuration available, I just gone through few which impressed me.

Tata Docomo launches 5 new GPRS packs

Prashanth — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:37:47 +0000

Tata Docomo has announced five new GPRS packs as follows:

-To pull internet settings please sms “INTERNET” to 52270 and save them as default settings on your mobile

-To get Recharge Instruction for all packs: Call 12526(toll free) OR Dial *135*# OK

-To activate the Rs. 5/- Daily Pass, SMS ”GPRS” to 121

-For more information on the TATA DOCOMO GPRS Packs visit: www.tatadocomo.com/gprs.aspx

Google announces it’s own phone “Nexus One”

Prashanth — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:54:42 +0000

Google has announced it’s own phone “Nexus One”. Following are the key features of the phone:

Powerful 1GHz SnapDragon processor
3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen
512MB of RAM
512MB of ROM (Internal Memory)
MicroSD slot expandable up to 32GB
5 Mega Pixel camera
Google Android OS
GPS, Google Maps
Accelerometer, Light sensor & proximity sensor
Active Noise Cancellation for clear calls
Google Earth debuting on this handset & will be available to other Android devices soon via Android App Market

Nexus One is priced at USD 529 & not yet available in India. Check out the phone at http://www.google.com/phone.

Airtel SMS shortcodes for activating daily/weekly unlimited GPRS packs

Prashanth — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:06:51 +0000

Airtel has two unlimited GPRS packs for it’s prepaid customers. One day pack offers you unlimited browsing all the day for Rs.20. Similarly you can go for weekly pack for Rs.99 & do unlimited browsing throughout the week. Getting these packs activated is quite simple via SMS shortcodes as follows:

To activate daily pack (Rs.20), send MO to 56123
To activate weekly pack (Rs.99) send MO to 56122

Since I’m not an Airtel user, I don’t know more about other GPRS packs Airtel is offering. If you are aware of any, please share it with others in comments section.

‘Gift a broadband’ with BSNL! No charges for first month! No installation charges!

Prashanth — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:30:05 +0000

BSNL Bangalore is offering a scheme for celebrating Christmas & New year called ‘Gift a Broadband…’. You can just walk in to any BSNL customer service center & purchase a Greeting Card enclosed with gift voucher to avail a new broadband connection. This greeting card costs you just Rs.100. Following are the benefits user who applies for new broadband gets using this scheme:

Free Broadband Starter Plan (Rs.250) for a month
No rental on modem for a month (Rs.80)
No installation charges (Rs.250)

So total value is Rs.580 & you are paying only Rs.100. This scheme is valid only till 31st Jan 2010 & user has to apply for broadband within that date.

Nokia 5230 touch phone launched in Bangalore

Prashanth — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:16:08 +0000

Nokia has launched it’s new touch phone 5230 in Bangalore. This phone is mainly targeted at youth who love to listen to music. Nokia 5230 features 3.2 inch touch screen with dedicated music control buttons, 2MP camera, 70MB internal memory, microSD slot expandable upto 16GB. Nokia 5230 runs on Symbian S60 5th edition & that opens up doors to huge number of apps for the device. MRP of the phone is Rs.8,499, yeah I was shocked too! It’s pretty affordable & value for money I should say.

Check out the launch event video happened at Garuda mall, Bangalore: