My Android Experience so far…..

From the unboxing to first impressions of HTC Magic can be followed in my other blog here.  But here are some more of my impressions on using HTC Magic so far,

• Android 1.5 with Sense Interface is for pretty stable with no hangups and fast to work with
• Android App market access in India is a great way to enhance and add value to the phone but restricting access to paid apps is a downer and also not mentioning whether its completely a “FREE APP” or a “AD SPONSORED FREE APP” is a irritant
• Basic phone qualities like network reception and call quality seems good. But without a dedicated desktop software to sync contacts (not a fan of syncing my phone contacts to google contacts) , messages is a let down. No Call / Message / Data counter is also a downer.
• Messaging with onscreen qwerty (potrait or landscape) with the word suggestion is nice but the messaging thread system jumbles the order of the sms sent & received is a downer
• Music and Video are good to hear and see. No FM and No 3.5 mm jack is a downer
• Camera is pretty slow to refresh and focus but the snaps in good lighting conditions comes out nice.
• Browsing with the default android browser is good.

So far the Android adventure is good but a official HTC ROM update to Android V2.2 would be most welcome

• The first thing i felt in my hand, was its weight but for the overall dimensions of 115*62*12.5mm at 95 grams, with its solid black plastic and a trackball it looked like a blackberry
• The next thing was that the screen seemed small (320*240 Pixels, 5.58cm) when compared to the keypad area of the phone, making it somewhat bottom heavy
• The user interface doesn’t try to mimic the blackberry to the full with some nice animations of its own. Even though some features looked simple and direct, there are plethora of options buried deep inside which will need a somewhat steeper learning curve
• The phone hadn’t gprs activated in it so I didnt try out the much hyped ‘Facebook’ access , the opera mini browser and the nimbuzz chat client
• The sound was loud and clear, might be the effect of Yamaha amplifiers
• The qwerty keypad seemed ok, since i am not a user of qwerty keypads i can’t pass a judgement on it
• The phone had GPRS / EDGE and also bluetooth and usb connectivity
• The 2MP camera has nothing special to shout about, it should do ok in well lit conditions
• The phone has a micro SD card slot (under the battery) and a decent media player to handle audio and videos
• And the main features of these smaller brand phones is the dual sim support so it supports two gsm sim cards.

At 4050 Rs, the Q5 looks like a blackberry with some nice features……

• Finish wise its still the same solid and mettalic feel of E71 but the device seemed much more compact than E71 (114 x 58 x 10 @ 128g).
• The black color front face looked nice but somewhat the stainless steel back was somewhat off putting for me. And the 5 MP camera bulges out of the backside slightly giving a somewhat mixed reaction in me.
• The major downer for me was 2.36″ screen still going with 320 x 240 resolution and I still am not fond of Nokia’s default font (which looks jagged to me )
• The Symbian S60 V3.2 UI with some snazzy transition effects ran smoothly on the 600 Mhz ARM 11 processor
• Disappointingly the audio quality of the voice on other side of the call was not very clear
• The Nokia Messaging App for mails and messenger was easy to setup and use but will it give the same experience as a blackberry was a big doubt to me (as html emails weren’t opening inside the mail window itself)
• The new trackpad was weird for me and it didn’t feel as smooth on the other hand I came across a BB 8520 and the trackpad (even though i am using it for first time) was excellent to touch and use.
• Connectivity wise E72 had all bases covered with GPRS / EDGE / 3G/ USB / WLAN / Bluetooth
• The 3.5 mm jack with micro SD slot (8GB card came in the box) with a capable audio and video player makes it a good media player
• The 5 MP camera was good
• The one thing going for Nokia when compared to Blackberry is that with a GPRS 98 Rs. (Mobile office in AirTel) mail and messaging can be done with internet browsing too whereas Blackberry’s internet and mail service plan is @ 899 Rs.

The Nokia E72 has a lot going for it being Symbian, cheaper to run, 5MP cam, free ovi maps and at Rs. 17,500/- (375 US$) brings a lot to the table………..

• First thing, that struck me was how the phone seemed somewhat big first time when i held it in my hand. Official size : 107.5 x 45.5 x 13.8 mm @ 80 grams. But holding it in the hand for a while made it ok and the phone was plasticky but solidly built
• The 1.8″ 128 x 160 pixel display was ok but font styling could have been nicer in my opinion
• A typical Series 40 phone so the user interface is pretty straight forward with lots of customization options
• Connectivity wise also good for a low end phone with GPRS / EDGE and microUSB and bluetooth.
• The music player with FM radio and a microSD card slot (upto 8 GB – Nokia claims) and a 3.5 mm audio jack makes it a worthwhile music player
• One curious thing was that how music played in the music player was loud whereas ringer volume was not that loud
• I didn’t test out the VGA camera which is more of a gimmick according to me

For a no non-sense mobile phone the Nokia 2690 would be on the recommended with some nice additions like music player, memory card slot, gprs etc.

1. A complete ‘FULL STOP’ to random restarts and increasing the speed with which messaging / contacts and other application opens

2. A threaded conversation style in the sms screen and also a tab to select the contacts to whom we have frequently sent sms (avoiding the hassle of scrolling thru the contacts list every time) and a sms counter to keep track the no.of sms sent (it’s unbelievable that such a basic functionality is not there)

3. Kinetic scrolling in all menus from the main menu screen to all the internal menus. Avoiding double and single click confusion, by keeping all the things in a single click

4. A more advanced task manager ala a windows task manager where we can see / stop the tasks or applications running in the phone thereby freeing up more RAM

5. A album art based list in the music play list

6. To sort and display images in a folder in the gallery rather than displaying all the images in a single window irrespective of the folder in which its kept

7. Since the three keys are all touch keys, there should be a way to answer / reject calls using these keys even though the key lock is applied (this is a irritant in a daily use scenario)

8. A free pdf reader would be a nice add-on app.

9. USB charging via the provided data cable would be nice too

If you have any suggestions / ideas please post your comments here…..

• Opera Mobile : The katest version 10 is still in beta but provides a great browsing experience, the only let down is it is RAM hungry
• Touch Comic : A great app for reading comics in cbz format, with option to zoom , fit to width etc.
• Fring : A great app for chatting, making video calls and some social networking too
• Device Info : This is a great little widget listing out all the phone’s hardware and software resources in a graphical and easy way
• GMail : Its a java app, but a easy way to catch up with gmail. Its not perfect for a touchscreen phone but still my daily used app

Still there are some more free apps like skyfire, nimbuzz  which I am yet to try. If you know any free good apps for Series60 V5 please post your comments here

• The first thing that impressed me was the solid build and the refined finish which when you hold makes you feel good
• I was surprised by its weight which felt lighter than my nokia 5530 and the back battery cover lid with patterns was cool
• The 2.4″ 480 x 360 screen was excellent and the user interface was nicely designed but still somewhat confusing when delving deeper into the sub menus and stuff
• The 3.5mm audio jack coupled with  a nice media player and memory card slot makes it a fun phone for entertainment needs too
• The blackberry app store was a nice way to extend the phone with lots of free apps and easy to use features
• The qwerty keypad was easy to use even though i haven’t had lots of experience with those type of keypads
• The chat messages of messenger like gtalk getting integrated with the messages list and way of notifying and accessing them becomes a whole lot easier
• The browser didn’t support youtube or flash videos was a major downer
• There was no FM radio which would have been a nice addition

At 18,500 INR (395$) its a excellent business phone with a nicely complemented 3MP camera and multimedia qualities.

The music player could have had a option for browsing music by flipping through album art ala iphone anyway the player does the job of sorting and playing music.

The video player also does the basic job of playing videos well. I first tried to convert video to 640 x 360 pixels but now I found out converting videos into mp4 with 640 x 480 pixels and then using the options in the video player to “Stretch” fits the screen perfectly and if the source video quality is good the converted mp4 plays and looks excellent in the 2.9″ screen.

Playing games was a mixed bag with some games requiring stylus and some being played with fingers, anyway my favorite games being Disks, MatchEm and The word game (all free and available in OVI store).

Battery seems to hold out well with extended periods of hearing music and playing games and as a portable multimedia player the Nokia 5530 seems a perfect fit for me.

The phonebook migration was a hassle with the exported data from MyPhone Explorer not able to be recognized by OVI Suite. But by using Microsoft Outlook I was able to get it done. Usually I edit contacts in my SE phone and then sync it to computer but in my 5530 I do all the editing stuff and creating contact groups in my laptop and sync it to my phone which I find more easier.

Syncing photos, music , message all are pretty easy and straight forward. But the given music player didn’t have the capability to do any Tag editting might be the Nokia OVI player app helps in that matter (But I haven’t tried that yet). I also haven’t tried using the online OVI contacts, calendar sync service and so I am not sure how far it works with the OVI Suite.

But updating Nokia 5530 firmware to V11 through OVI suite was a breeze and the process went without any Hiccups….

To conclude, pretty good app somewhat bloated but easy to use via bluetooth / usb cable but could have had features like a OVI store client inside and a better way to archive sms in the pc etc.