Nokia 808 – 41 Megapixel coming in May 2012

Posted by BA on Feb 29, 2012 in Mobile, Nokia, Nokia 808 | 0 comments

Nokia has just announced their ground breaking 41 Megapixel camera with a phone built in. The device can take amazing 41 (effective 38) Megapixel still shots and a 1080p video recording capability. If you think your 12 Megapixel N8 is amazing, now is the time to stop thinking on those lines because this beast has a xenon flash as well.

Some of the amazing new features of Nokia 808 are listed below:

How to use Nintendo Wii controller with your Nokia Phone

Posted by BA on Nov 1, 2011 in Gaming Consoles, Mobile, Mobile Accessories, Mobile Apps, Mobile Keyboards, Nokia, Nokia N8, Wii | 0 comments

Just did bit of a hack and it feels so good to control this Nokia phone running Symbian with Nintendo Wii controller. The feel is even greater when you play a game using this remote when your Phone is connected to a TV via TV-out cable. Please note this solution only works on Symbian S60, Symbian ^3 and Symbian Anna and has been tested on a Nokia N8 with Symbian Anna installed on it.

Here we go and Best of Luck!

Hardware used in experiment

1. A Nokia N8 smart phone with Symbian Anna
2. A Wii remote controller RVL 003 (Don’t have one? Click here to buy)
3. A USB desktop keyboard or a standard Bluetooth keyboard (Only for touchscreen-only phones. Optional for phones with physical keyboards).

How to connect

1. Install a simple application named MOBIPad (link at the end of the post).
2. Run Mobi Pad and from options menu choose to connect to Wiimote
3. Press 1 and 2 simultaneously on the Wii controller and wait till the app says connected
4. Done! The remote now works all across your apps and everywhere in the OS.

Catch for Touchscreen users

Touch screen phones like Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic or Nokia N8 do not have a physical keyboard and hence Options menu cannot be launched to start connection with the wiimote. You can use a Bluetooth keyboard or a normal USB keyboard to access the menu. Simply connect the Bluetooth keyboard via bluetooth, or use the USB connector that came with your Nokia N8 to connect a desktop USB Keyboard to your phone. When you run MOBIPad, press Windows/Menu key to open the menu and there you are with a working app on touch-screen.

You can download MOBIPad application from this link.

Note: Please note this program is provided as is. I’ve found it working and apparently it doesn’t do anything wrong to the phone.

Word Target on Nokia OVI now

Posted by BA on Dec 2, 2010 in Mobile Apps, Nokia, Nokia N8, Nokia OVI apps | 1 comment

A highly addicting word-game that has been very popular on iPhone is now available on Nokia phones as well. This fun game challenges your vocabulary by asking you to make words from a given number of letters in a limited amount of time. The game requires your 100% attention and you can extend the available game-play time by quickly typing more words, as each word gives you more time as well as score.

This is the first game by Pepper.pk to land in Ovi store and I’m a proud member of the team that developed this game

You can read more and download the game from here.

Make wireless speakers at home – DIY how-to

Posted by BA on Nov 28, 2010 in Nokia, Speakers, Technology | 2 comments

Today I’ll tell you how you can make your own wireless speakers. Wireless speakers of different sort are available in the market but they are much more expensive as compared to the wired ones. So how do we make a wireless speaker at home? Here we go

What do we need to make stereo wireless speakers:

1. A pair of good old wired speakers, may  be a pair that you already have.
2. A stereo blue-tooth headset, any cheap one will do.
3. A basic tool to cut/strip wire
4. A female 3.5mm stereo connector
5. A basic wire soldering tool or a tape to hold a twisted wire together

The trick is to use an A2DP based blue-tooth headset, connect it to a wired speaker and you are ready to enjoy wireless music.

Where to get a blue tooth headset

If you have an old Blue tooth headset, you are in luck. If you don’t have one, you are still not out of luck. Stereo blue tooth headsets are not that expensive and you can buy a cheap variant here. Luckily I had a used Nokia BH-502 blue tooth headset that I have used for this tutorial.

How to connect the female jack to the headset

This process depends on which headset you are using. I used a Nokia headset that was easily to open using a screwdriver. I simply removed the foam covering on the earpiece and opened three screws to expose the audio wires. If you have a different headset, all you have to do is to find the wire that connects to the both ear pieces. Warning: You may have to cut the plastic, metal or whatever body parts of your headset and you will eventually render your headset useless as a headset after this.

You need a pair for left ear and one for the right ear. Usually the wiring has a left channel wire, right channel wire and a common that connects to both ears.

Same is the case with the stereo 3.5mm female jack, you have a left, right and a common. You simply have to disconnect the wires from the ear pieces and connect to the 3.5 mm jack, hence the audio received by the blue tooth headset will be redirected ot the wire. Later you can connect a pair of wired speaker to the 3.5mm jack.

In most of the cases, the wiring in the headset is very very thin and handling the wires and soldering them is difficult. You can also leave the wires intact and connect the 3.5mm jack to already connected wires. In this case the audio will get directed to both speaker jack as well as the headset tiny earpieces.

Final Steps

Make sure you pack the headset in a box, casing, cover or something that helps avoiding any unintentional wire pull as the headset will be a bit of a wires mesh now . All you have to do is pair your blue-tooth headset with your audio transmitter that could be your mobile phone or your blue-tooth enabled PC. All the sound that you play on the blue-tooth A2DP sound output will now be available on 3.5mm jack that you can connect to your favorite wired speaker without any direct connection between audio transmitter and the speaker.

Please do share your experience if you try something similar out. Happy untangled life.

Nokia N8- First Impressions

Posted by BA on Nov 4, 2010 in Nokia, Nokia N8, Smartphones | 3 comments

Just got a Nokia N8 and I’m super excited about it. I have not spent much time with it but there are a few first impressions of the device that I wanted to share with you guys.

• Unlike Nokia, its battery is locked inside, you cant remove it (that easily)
• Unlike Nokia, (well unlike most of them) its running pretty fast and pretty smooth out of the box
• Unlike Nokia, it’s lightweight and good looking.
• It has a large camera sensor and a very slim Xenon flash

At least I wasn’t expecting above in the box for me

I’ll be posting more about it from now on, so stay tuned

Nokia N8 available from Ufone in Pakistan – Price Revealed

Posted by BA on Oct 2, 2010 in Nokia, Nokia N8, Smartphones, Ufone | 14 comments

Have you been waiting for Nokia N8, the next big phone by Nokia in a long long time? Yes I want that 12 megapixel camera, yes I want that 720p HD widescreen recording and the HDMI output, yes I need the Symbian ^3 and the wait is over. You can order your N8 now from Ufone (obviously within Pakistan).

The details are that Nokia and Ufone have decided to launch the phone at a special price. I’m not sure when the phone will  be available in market but it is available now pre-order for Rs. 42000. ( USD 487 or 350 Euro). You’ll not get the phone right away. You pay Rs. 5000 for booking and as soon as it arrives, you’ll get one (apparently around 15th October). Moreover, this is announced as a special discounted Ufone+Nokia launch price which is even less than the announced price of EUR 380+.

If you can’t wait to see this device, just visit your nearest Ufone customer care center.See this link for more details and a list of service centers where the phone is available for you to check out.

Nokia Kinetic – Stand Up Notifications

Posted by BA on Jul 22, 2010 in Handsets, Mobile, Mobile Design, Nokia, Smartphones, Technology | 1 comment

Kinetic is a concept phone conceived by a designing student Jeremy Innes-Hopkin. The phone looks great and the different concept about the phone is how it shows the notifications. Whenever there’s an incoming message or call, the phone instead of ringing or showing light based notifications, will stand  up to attract the user’s attention.

I know it’ll be an engineering challenge but the designer has done his job, now it’s time for the engineers to turn it into reality.

Apple’s press conference – Nokia and RIM unhappy

Posted by BA on Jul 18, 2010 in Apple, BlackBerry, Competition, iPhone 4, Nokia | 4 comments

Apple on Friday released the video of their press conference. Steve Jobs has presented his case and made some good point and then demonstrated how other popular phones also loose signal when held tight in the user’s hand.

RIM and Nokia have objected the way their phones have been mentioned in this session. The press conference video shows three different phones that loose signal when held tight in the user’s hand, one of them was BlackBerry Bold 9700. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, founders and co-CEO of RIM have objected by saying that Apple is dragging RIM into their self made debacle.

Jobs also mentioned in the session that you can find pictures all over the internet of Nokia phones saying “Dont touch here”. Nokia has responded to that by saying that Nokia has spent thousands of man hours researching the way people hold their phones and they have been pioneer in making internal antenna featuring phones.

In addition to leg pulling and dragging, there were some concrete announcements in the press conference as well. Apple has announced free bumper cases to solve the antenna problem so that nobody gets to touch the metal border on iPhone 4. Moreover, Apple has also waived the return fees for unsatisfied iPhone 4 customers. These two measures are good enough, why on earth they had to be drag other phones into the scene? They’ve sold all of their phones already, haven’t they?

You can watch the Apple’s press conference video by hitting this link.