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.

Mobile Phones are better than Computers – Green Computing

Posted by BA on Jul 16, 2010 in Green Computing, Handsets, Internet, Mobile Apps, Nokia, Nokia OVI apps | 0 comments

Mobile Phones consume very low power

What do you use your computer for? Surfing Internet, chat, gaming, social networking, downloading, desktop computing including documents, spreadsheets or presentation making or just watching your photos and videos? Today’s mobile phones are capable of doing it all, rather sometimes more than the traditional phones. They have faster processors, more ram, faster  wireless Internet connectivity and larger memories.

Today I will start another series of posts that will tell you how to use your phones to do things that you usually do with your computers including desktops, laptops and netbooks. This series of posts will include tips, tricks and software that you can use to avoid the use of computers and just use your phone

Why are mobile phones better?

If you have not done so, you can read my earlier articles that prove that laptops are better than desktops, because they take around 60 watts of power as compared to a few hundred watts. Then we also discussed that netbooks are even better than laptops taking half the power as compared to a full sized notebook. Today we will move one step ahead.

To prove my point I used this app called Nokia Energy Profiler. The app is a free download available on Nokia OVI store for almost all Nokia devices. The application gives you exact numbers in terms of power consumption, network bandwidth utilization and a few more important things that you never come to know when using a  mobile phone. Just like any other computing device, Nokia phones consume low power when idle and take more power when performing more computation.

Here are a few screen-shots. As you can see, when the phone is idle, it takes 0.18 watts on average. When navigating the menu and viewing simple content like photos on the phone screen, its consuming 0.23 watts on average. In the third screenshot, the phone is being used for a voice+video call over a wifi network and the battery usage is at it’s top, that is around 2 watts.

Idle State

Phone Menu Use

Skype Video Call - High Power Consumption

Sudden Spike when receiving call

In the last screen shot you can see the sudden rise in battery consumption when there’s an incoming call ringing and picked up.

In any case, this particular cellphone is using less than 2 watts of power which is way less than the other computing devices we listed above.

Conclusion

Use mobile phones for your computing needs whenever and wherever possible. You’ll save power and will contribute your efforts in keeping this planet green. Happy Green Computing!

ROFL @Apple – How do you hold your Nokia?

Posted by BA on Jun 29, 2010 in Competition, Handsets, iPhone, Nokia, Smartphones, Technology, Telecommunication | 4 comments

There have been news and posts all around that Apple has advised iPhone 4 owners not to hold it in a specific way to avoid any signal dropping issues. I’ve not tried the new iPhone (nor am looking forward to) but Nokia has posted a comprehensive post on “How to hold  your Nokia” and they make the point absolutely clear that you won’t lose any signal, no matter how you hold the phone. Sarcasm at it’s best!

Following is the number of ways in which you can hold a Nokia phone :p

BlackBerry Facebook page reaches one million fans

Posted by BA on Jun 25, 2010 in BlackBerry, Handsets, iPhone, Smartphones | 1 comment

BlackBerry’s Facebook page has crossed one million users mark today. Are you a fan yet? Research in motion is the second most popular operating system in the world. According to a report by gartner, number of handsets sold running Symbian OS was highest in the world with RIM’s BlackBerry OS on the  second postion. Following table lists the most sold handsets by operating system. Apple’s iPhone OS is on number 3. Following table shows the list for Q1 2010.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner

Download BlackBerry App World in an unsupported country

Posted by BA on Jun 15, 2010 in App Store, BlackBerry, Handsets, Smartphones | 82 comments

** Update **

Guys, following post is no more valid. Even if you get App World on your phone, it will not connect to the server as long as you are in an un-supported country connected through an un-supported career.

BlackBerry App Worldis RIM’s official application store for BlackBerry Apps. Quite interestingly, the app store is not available in all countries. There is a list of countries that are supported and many countries are left out. The store is available in countries like United Sates, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany France and a few more to buy and download apps. In addition, App World is also available in some countries where people can only download Free apps. They cannot buy these apps. App World with free-apps-only mode is available in countries like China, Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, Thailand etc. You can view the whole list of supported countries here.

If you are not in a country where BlackBerry app world is supported, you are out of luck. You can’t download the app world from RIM’s website. Though we have a bit of a workaround for that. You can user your BlackBerry browser to hit this link :  http://bit.ly/bbappsworld . Make sure you open it using your BlackBerry phone, not your PC browser to launch the installer that will install BlackBerry app world  on your phone. Please note that you will not be able to buy or view any paid app but you will be able to download, use and review the free apps at least.

Compatibility

I have tested this link on BlackBerry Bold 9700 as well as on a Storm 9530. Let me know if it works for your or not.

Nokia C3, Nokia C6 and Nokia E5 coming soon

Posted by BA on Apr 14, 2010 in Handsets, Nokia | 34 comments

Nokia announced three new phones with social networking and Internet focus. These three phones are targeted at three different markets and all three of them have a full Qwerty keypad.

Nokia C3

Nokia C3 is the first ever qwerty Nokia based on Series 40 with a home screen access of social networking tools. Nokia C3 is a low end device with a 2.4 inch screen, wifi capability and a 2 mega pixel camera and is expected to hit the market in the second quarter of this  year. Yes you can find it pretty soon and it’ll cost around EUR 120.

Nokia C6

Nokia C6 is a symbian phone with a slide keyboard, 3.2 inch touch screen and a high class 5.0 mega pixel camera. Obviously the handset is positioned high and it will be available very soon as well. As early as early May I say. The estimated cost of the handset will be around EUR 300.

Nokia E5

The third phone announced is an E series business qwerty phone with business customers in mind. Access to corporate email like Exchange and Lotus notes is the focused feature and the phone will be available around August 2010 with an expected price tag of EUR 240.

If it’s been a while you’ve upgraded your Nokia phone, this announcement by Nokia gives you an opportunity to upgrade to a latest handset that matches your needs and fits in your budget.