VC’s Techie CockTail

At the time when I first started writing in my blog a budget phone in the price range of 125$, will have  a maximum specification of a basic color screen at 128 x 128 pixel (STN – basically dull), polyphonic ringtones and might be a VGA camera and Infrared.Nowadays this segment has seen a dramatic makeover with VFM phones emerging left, right & center from all the mobile phone manufacturers.

This time I came across a Nokia 3110 classic. Its a typical Nokia Series 40 candybar phone. But beneath its somewhat bland exteriors its feature packed for a phone costing around 4750/- rs (110$). Let me list out some of its notable features,

• First & foremost its reception and call quality are excellent making it a nice phone importantly
• The black plastic body weighing around 87 grams is nice to hold and quite sturdily built
• The 128 x 160 pixel 65,000 color TFT screen was nice & crisp to look at.
• A good phonebook system with multiple contacts, calendar, reminders, alarms make it a handy PIM
• A media player which supports mp3 / wma / aac / 3gp / mp4 playback with micro sd card slot to expand memory makes it a capable portable multimedia player
• A camera with 1.3 megapixel is quite a good one at the current price range and will be useful as a snapper in well lit conditions and when you don’t have a digital camera in your hand
• Connectivity department is well stocked up with GPRS,EDGE, USB, Infrared (one of the few phones to still have it), Bluetooth with A2DP
• With extras like FM, Java games and apps it will be a ideal companion on the road or in your free time
• Last but not the least the Nokia Series 40 UI is quite easy to work with and there are lots of ways to customize it.

Its quite a impressive phone , the only downer was the ringtone volume which I felt was not that audible (it might be that a louder mp3 file could have made it better). But at this time, I think its just a step ahead of its competitors like SE W200i, LG KG 195 & Samsung E250

written by Vignesh \\ tags: 3110 classic, Mobile Phone, Nokia, w200

After a brief encounter with Samsung E250 a budget slider, here is another “Svelte” & “Sexy” slider from Samsung’s so called Metal Series – E840. For starters its retailing around Rs. 9,000/- ( 225 US$), so its not as expensive as its looks. Its finished with a mettalic shimmer and the entire screen when it’s not active looks like a mirror. Even though it looks stylish when its new,its prone to scratches so you would have to be Xtra careful to preserve its looks.

Its specs at a glance,

• Size: 101.5 x 52.5 x 10.6 mm
• Weight: 99gm
• Screen: 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches
• Network:     GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• Messaging : SMS, MMS, Email
• Camera : 2.0 Megapixel
• Connectivity : USB / GPRS / EDGE / Bluetooth (with A2DP)
• Memory : 70MB Internal & MicroSD Card slot

The top row of keys are touch sensitive making it very ‘touchy’ to use, I couldn’t get any tactile feedback making it difficult to comprehend how much or how many times I’ve pressed a key. The slider mechanism felt soild even though the mobile I used (my friend’s) has been through alot of rough stuff. The music quality was crisp but not that loud through speakers. The camera was OK. One of the things I admire about Samsung is the Picsel viewer which enables us to view office and pdf documents, but I couldnt test the feature on this phone and the other thing is the Display. To say the least its EXCELLENT. The color reproduction is bright and when the same picture was compared to a Nokia N72 the Samsung’s display won hands down.

People who are looking for a nice stylish slider with solid features can try this phone. But after using Sony Ericsson so long I found the User Interface somewhat plain (icons and customization didn’t help much) and every action needed extra presses (like opening a video needed one press to select the video, one to open its menu and the third press to play the video).

written by Vignesh \\ tags: Mobile Phone, Samsung

As i mentioned in my previous post on W200i , the LG KG-195 Dynamite is a worthy contender in this budget segment (it costs the same as W200i @ 4700/-). Some of its pluses compared to W200i are

• TFT screen, much brighter & crisper compared to W200i
• Bluetooth is available even with A2DP profile (i.e stereo bluetooth headphones for wireless music)
• A flight mode where you can operate music, games etc whereas in W200i only music is accessible
• A hot swap micro SD card , cheaper than W200i’s memory card micro M2
• It allows you to record FM directly

But as always some of its minuses to W200i are,

• User Interface not as refined and as easy as W200i
• Customization like themes not as exciting as W200i
• Java software , games support is a bit iffy
• Address book sync support is a problem

written by Vignesh \\ tags: LG, Mobile Phone