We are a year old!

This post comes in a little later than it should have (ok a whole lot later!) but since I’ve been busy shifting my base it’s been a little hard to get some blogging done. I know I have the N97 and the E75 with me, but it’s more about finding time than anything else.

It was on the 7th of July, 2008 that I decided to start blogging about phones. A couple of days prior to this, my girlfriend had told me that she had begun blogging and that I should start too. it was her insistence which led me to start a blog. the question at that time was ‘What do I blog about?’ and as I said I thought about phones. I had been following them for a a couple of years and I thought that I had gathered enough knowledge about the industry to have my own view point.

So I began, with a humble post about my experience with mobile phones. I was a regular reader of Darla’s blog and Symbian-Guru amongst a whole lot many. Ricky Cadden a.k.a The Guru gave me a few tips (I’m sure he doesn’t even remember! lol!) about getting in touch with WOM World for trial devices. I contacted them and it wasn’t until a couple of months later that they mailed me asking if I would like to trial the E66. I was overjoyed!

It would be the first of many trial devices I would get from WOM World. My relationship with the warm people at WOM World(no pun intended here!) grew and they kept on sending me devices after devices against my requests (E66, E71, E63, N96, N85, E75). And today here I am, taking part in a global contest of ‘Teach the Technophobe’, You can read about it here.

Thank you so much WOM World and all the people I have interacted with, you guys are really great!

During this time I came across another person’s blog. He had used the N80 just like me and although he had upgraded faster than me, his story seemed similar to mine. This blogger was none other than Clinton Jeff of ZomgitsCj. Over the years I became a regular visitor to his blog and in time we became very good friends. In addition to the many blogs he wrote for, Cj would help me out by putting up blogposts on topics when I could not blog due to my rigorous MBA schedule. We would (we still do!) catch up online and have some of the most interesting and intellectually stimulating conversations about mobile phones and the internet. It was uncanny, how we would have almost identical view points.

Thank you Cj for all the help and support you have given to this blog and me. If it weren’t for your contributions (posts and chats), this blog would not be where it is today.

Another person I must thank is Ravindra Dissanayake. Ravindra till last year was writing for Symbian-Life Blog. I used to love his articles, always simple, lucid and packed with content. This prolific blogger (in my eyes at least) went on to create Symbian Stories, before he vanished to Australia for further studies (I hope you and your wife are doing alright mate!). Around then, Meraj of Phone Report V2.0 offered me a position at Phone Report V2.0 and I accepted. Ravi also requested me to take over the reins of Symbian-Life Blog, I would then start blogging on three different blogs. But I must admit, it is indeed difficult to fit into Ravi’s shoes.

Thank you Meraj and Ravi for giving me such wonderful opportunities and allowing me to become a bit wiser. Thank also for all the guidance and support you continue to give to me. I am indeed thankful to you guys for putting me on the path of growth.

Carlos, a regular visitor on both the blogs (this one and Symbian-Life Blog) also helped out in times of stress. He would write a few articles for me on this blog, when I was trying to set myself with all the blogs I was writing for. Thank you so much Carlos for helping me out in times of need. I hope you still visit this blog!

Mike Macias, I would like to thank you too for being a great person to look up to. Your N82 blog in many ways is like the Bible for N82 users. I have always received support from you, no matter how big or small the issue. Also if it weren’t for you, I would have never bought this great netbook I have now.

All of these people and many more have played a very important role in developing this blog in their own ways.my readers and all the people who have commented. All the websites and blogs that have linked to this blog and those who I have linked to.

The S60 Ambassadors Program also provided me a lot of opportunities to meet some great bloggers and hear their story and give me a wider perspective of the S60 platform. Various forums like Symbian-Freak forums, Howardforums, and many more provided loads of knowledge about S60, and it’s quirks.

The high point of this first year came when I was invited to the N97 Blogger Meet, in Gurgaon where I met Axel Meyer and got to play with the N97 way before it was launched. Along with this WOM World invited me to be a part of a global campaign ‘Teach the Technophobe’.

I also want to thank D3x, Rita El Khoury, Varun Krishnan, Vaibhav Sharma for everything. Listening to your rants and passion for phones has always been inspirational, I hope I can reach the same place where you are today.

This blog has also been instrumental in me getting a job at Spice Retail Ltd.

So as I celebrate the completion of one year of this blog I want to thank all the people who have contributed to the success of this blog. I want to thank all the software manufacturers for trusting me and giving me an opportunity to review your applications, also Nokia for having me review your devices. I also want to place on record my gratitude to all the readers, fellow bloggers, friends and my family for all your support. Thank you everyone!

Follow me on twitter for updates: @adityasinghvi

Subscribe to our RSS feeds for updates.

Eseries gets firmware updates

Yesterday saw the E66 and the E71 getting firmwares updates. Thee E71’s firmware has been bumped to V210.21.006.

The E66’s firmware has been bumped to V210.21.007. The firmware is available for the European and the Asian codes. The remaining countries and areas will have to wait a bit longer till it is made available there.

Do remember that the the E66 and E71 does not have UDP (USer Data Prevention) so please backup your phone data.

E71 Review Part-2: Lighting

I continue to review the Nokia E71, this time it is the lighting aspect of the phone that I will concentrate on. In my last post on the E71 I talked about the design aspect of the phone.

I have found the E71 to be very good on this front. The designers over at Nokia have yet again delivered a product which has uniform lighting across the keypad and the screen.

Backlighting:

The backlighting of the screen is brilliant. Just like in the E66, I am using it a notch lower as I find it sufficient for my needs. There is no portion of the screen which feels lit poorly. The sensor does a good job of detecting the need for backlighting. E series designers have learnt from the mistakes of the various N series phones and made sure that they are not repeated with their line. Reading in absolute darkness has never been an issue with the E66 and it is the same here. I would give the E71 a full 10/10 for screen backlighting, not a single flaw out here.

Notification Light:

This feature which is very much absent in the N series phones (I’m sure you know that by now). The E71’s notification light is similar to the E66’s notification light and it can be configured according to the user’s needs. The light will flash every 10 seconds when the phone is in idle mode and every 2 seconds when there is an event (missed call, message, email, MMS). The light is soft and does not disturb the eyes. The E71’s notification light rests within the D-pad just like in the E66. The design of the innards is also the same as it was in the E66. It is good to see that the E71 is similar to E66 in terms of hardware and is different only to the extent of its shape(slider and candybar). Macbook’s LED lights come to my mind when I see the E71. Probably the only thing that separates the E71’s notification light and the E66’s notification light, is that the light spreads to the other buttons in the E66 and the spread in the E71 is very little, I really liked this spread of light. Just for that the E71 loses a few points. I would give the E71 a 9.7/10 in this department.

Keypad Lighting:

The keypad lighting is in white for this handset. The white colour seems to be quite in vogue now days. All the keys are uniformly highlighted across the the handset making it very easy to be read even in pitch darkness. The soft keys and menu buttons are evenly lit. Nobody is going to complain of dimly lit buttons over there. The ‘qwerty’ keypad also is lit very evenly. I found no problems in reading the keys in darkness. Although, the size of the keys is a problem and the feeling that I got when using the E66, is missing here. The volume and record key on the right side of the phone is also illuminated. When it comes to lighting the keypad, the engineers at Nokia have done a great job. The white E71, I feel will offer a better experience over the dark (mocha) E71. So if you have an option between the colours, go for the white E71. Not only does it look very beautiful, but I think it will offer better legibility than even the dark E71. The keypad lighting for the E71 gets a solid 9.5/10.

The bar set by the E66 in this category was very high. It scored a perfect 10 in all the departments of lighting, a hard act to follow up for the E71. The E71 tries to trump the E66 here, and though it can’t quite match the E66, the E71 comes a very close second losing by mere 0.8 points to the E66.

E66 Review Part-5: Internet & Maps.

E66

This is the last part of the review of the Nokia E66. Tomorrow I say goodbye to this wonderful piece which has amazed me with its looks and performance. The E66 has definitely moved ahead of the Nseries in terms of functionality. In this last part I will tell you about the Internet and Maps functionality. The two feature which are absolutely important for the business user.

Internet:
When it comes to internet, the E66 is ready to connect you to the web. Even though I have complained about the time it takes to connect to the web on a Nokia using WiFi, I will have to say one thing about the Eseries, it still works in the same way as any other Nokia, but for some reason is faster. I found connecting to the internet using WiFi to be very quick. Though I still miss the tabbed browsing functionality, I found the browser to be snappier than the browser found on my N82. (I can’t believe i said that!) The websites are rendered very quickly and the transitions used make the entire experience stress free. I wish though that the E66 had a bigger screen.

The internet experience has been superb on the E66. I would give it a good 8/10.

Maps:
This is a very important feature for a business user. Imagine going somewhere and you need to know certain details, like the nearest gas station, or the nearest restaurant, better still if your boss is with you. What a chance to impress him!
The Maps application works just like you have seen it work on other Nokia GPS enabled phones. It initially takes time (20-25 minutes) to get a lock onto your co-ordinates, but thereafter A-GPS kicks in and getting a lock on is fast. It could take a little more time if you were moving. I downloaded the maps for India throught the Nokia Map Loader. I haven’t faced any problems using it. Though India is not limited to just the 4-5 cities given in the maps. I hope Nokia realises that by providing maps for a handful of cities, it hasn’t covered India.

In terms of the software, the application worked very well, without any difficulty. I would give the Maps application a solid 8.9/10.

With this comes to an end the review of the Nokia E66.
Please leave your comments. Incase you want to read the other parts of the review, here are the links…

Part-1
Part-2
Part-3
Part-4

E66 Review Part-4: Camera & Accessories.

Taken with the E66

Continuing from where I left off, This is the fourth part of the review of Nokia E66. In this part I will concentrate on two features, Camera and Accessories.

First off, the camera,
Camera:
Given the experience we have had with ‘business’ phones, sporting cameras, I expecting the E66’s camera to be a let down. I had read a lot about the E66’s camera and had fixed my mindset. I must say, the phone’s camera has been quite a revelation. I was pleasently surprised with the E66’s camera. It evoked fond memories of the N80. Well firstly, the camera application on the E66 is totally different. One will find all the usual settings in the phone. Let me list it down…
1 ) Switch to camera/video mode.
2 ) Scene Modes> Auto, User Defined, Close-up mode, Potrait, Landscape, Night, Night potrait.
3 ) Flash Mode> Automatic, On, Red-eye, Off.
4 ) Self Timer> Off, 2 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds.
5 ) Switch to Sequence mode
6 ) Colour Tone> Normal, Sepia, Black & white, Negative.
7 ) Switch to view-finder grid.
8 ) White Balance> Automatic, Sunny, Incandescent, Flourescent.
9 ) Exposure Compensation> every 3 notches from -2 to 2.

As one can see, the options are limited. A Nseries user will find a lot of the options missing. But then again, this is a business device. The E66 possesses a 3.2 megapixel sensor, with autofocus. There is no Carl Zeiss lens in case you were wondering. So how did it fair? Well it played the job of a camera pretty well. With just a single LED, the photos in low light are nothing to write about.

In the day however, it is a completely different picture. The photos clicked seemed sharper than my N82’s. But when seen properly on the computer, it is a completely different picture. The N82 also known as the ‘imaging king’ to many bloggers, shows yet again how it is way better than many others.

The E66’s photos seems to have more colour in them. I guess that while processing the pictures the phone boosts the colours. While an average person would like it, seasoned photographers, and camera users will not.

The macro mode function works very well for this phone. It delvers very good results, again spoilt a little bit only by saturation of colours. It also seemed to creater sharper images in this mode. There was a distinct sharpness vis a vis the N82’s rendering of the same subject in the macro mode.

In Landscape mode, the E66 completely lost it. On a sunny afternoon when the photo was clicked, the N82 gave a far more realistic representation, while the E66 made it seem like it was evening time. I got an orange hue in the entire picture! very bad rendering!

In Auto mode I took a photo of the sun and clouds, here there was a purple hue to the entire photo. The N82 however had no such effect, and gave superb results. I agree that comparing the N82 to the E66 is unfair, but I did not have any other camera at that time. And it is not about how big the picture is but how good is the software and hardware which processes the image.

Other things I noted was that the white colours seemed to be a little bluish. When clicking a photo in potrait mode, the picture seemed a little blurred. Now after having pointed out so many flaws why do I say that the camera was a revelation? Simple, it is a good camera, it does the job well, compare it to a Nseries phone like N82, it fails. For a business user, it won’t make a difference because this is not a camera phone but a phone which happens to have a camera. I would give the camera a 7/10. It captures details fairly well, but colour reproduction is an issue.

In terms of video recording, I haven’t played around with it. Simply because 15fps is definitely going to have jerks and breaks in between recording when compared to a phone which can record at 30fps. On a parting not the camera’s software seems be that of the N80. I remember a lot of the features were not there in that phone too. But it was trusty and reliable.

Accessories:
The phone came with the standard list of accessories that any smartphone comes with.
1 ) Data Cable
2 ) Charger
3 ) Memory card (Micro SD)
4 ) PC Suite (Eseries)
5 ) Headset.

The two other things it also came with, were the lanyard cable and a pouch. let me talk of these two things first. The lanyard cable was the first thing I put on the phone and removed almost instantaeously. it had a metal piece in it, which would have definitely scratched the phone. The leather bit was white in colour keeping with the overall colour of the phone. This accessory is of superior quality.

The pouch was made with leather. White in colour, it looked every bit different from the grey pouches everybody had. The white colour definitely makes a statement. The insides of this pouch were in red. The materials used a very good indeed and I am thoroughly impressed with the pouch. I wish all Nokia phones had such pouches. The white and red combination is looking much better than the grey and red combination.

Moving to the other accessories, the music output is something we have already discussed earlier, so I won’t go into it. The headset is a white one with silver plastic inserts for buttons. It makes the entire thing seem a bit out of place. The headset is comfortable in the ears and I had no problems keeping them in my ears for about an hour and a half. The rubber used to envelope the wires is good quality. What I would have liked is if, instead of the silver colour, a metal coating would have been used. The E66 is a business device and the headset does not potray the same image.

The data cable is a standard USB to Micro USB cable (CA-101). I faced no problems is using it. The same cable is used for a number of Nseries devices. The charger (AC-5E) is something that really caught my fancy. When did Nokia chargers become so small and compact? It seemed as if the chargers were a whole generation ahead of the Nseries chargers I have been using all this while and all this while I thought that my Jabra BT3030’s charger was compact. The charging with the AC-5E is quick and effortless.

I even tried using the Jabra BT 3030 with phone. Pairing was quick and effortless. I had no problems in taking calls and making any. The inclusion of AVRCP is a great thing. Though for some reason it wasn’t working properly with my headset.
Overall the E66 scores a respectable 7.8/10 with regard to accessories. The headset uses a 2.5mm plug instead of a 3.5mm, which kind of takes the ease of using other headsets away. The charger is defnitely a generation ahead.

You can read the previous part of the review also.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.

You can see the photos clicked with the N82 and the E66 here. The photo showing first is taken from the E66 and after that from the N82.