Thriving with a Tablet

I got me a tablet. Or as Register prefers to call it, a fondle-slab.

This Groupon, got things rolling for me. The price point was close enough, that I could get into the world of tablets without the worry that I'd have a super-expensive paper weight if I figured the fondle-slab form factor was not for me.

First impressions, the Thrive is a great device. Feels a tad chunky coming out of the box, but on the flip side, the rubberized back feels very safe and the thickness allows it to be gripped well. One is not constantly worried that it is a matter of time before sweat on your palm will cause the tablet to slip.

Logging in with your Google account means that all of your data comes synchronized right away. All your contacts are in the contacts app, Gmail is up and running and the Photo viewer displays all your Picasa albums - all with no further configuration from you. I know this is true of all Android gadgets, but the effect is scary and giddy at the same time.

Final first impression - the screen. The 10.1 inch display packs in a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. The device is powered by the NVIDIA Tegra chip, withe graphics handled by a GeForce card. This graphics focused setup churns out crisp and smooth graphics, without a hint of hesitation. The resolution is so good, that looking at my made-for-web 600x400 crops from Picasa in full screen, made them look - ugly. The capacitive multi-touch screen is very responsive, making the user interface thus far, a real pleasure.

Addictive fitness with a fitbit

When I first heard about Fitbit, it seemed like one of those fads that seemed to sweep across the public conscience, for a few ephemeral moments before the destined disappearing to obscurity. A “glorified pedometer” someone called it. And strictly speaking it is one. But it had one redeeming quality in its favor - it makes being healthy fun, addictive.

At it's heart, the Fitbit is a nifty device that uses a 3-dimensional motion sensor, which gives it a very accurate way to measure movement. The other piece of cool technology is it's base station. Using an ultra-low power 2.4 GHz ANT radio transceiver, the base station silently talks to any device that is within 15 feet to collect motion data and post it to the fitbit website.

Which is when the real magic begins.

The fitbit experience has nailed two things - calibration and presentation. Armed with nothing more than motion data, the fitbit is able to translate that into steps, and further into calories burned all with just the minimum physiological data about the wearer. While this might not rank really high on the “accuracy” scale, it is tremendously useful on the “it just works” scale.

Once it does these translations, it does an equally good job with presenting the information without making it too overwhelming. The fitbit itself has an embedded screen with a single button, which gives enough information to whet your appetite. The website furthers this thirst for knowledge by presenting, plotting, tagging and socially comparing the fitness data. In addition, the website also allows you to log food intake, activities and other vital statistics - stuff the fitbit cannot dream of measuring.

That is me above - a relatively sedentary day, with frenzied activity getting to and from meeting rooms; and a tennis game to round the evening.

Fitbit takes the same motion tracker technology and does something else with it. By using a provided sleeve you can wear the tracker on your arm while you sleep and it keeps track of how many times you toss and turn to determine how restful a sleep you have had. Again, not the most accurate - not every toss and turn is bad and not every time you wake up do you have to move. But good enough to serve a purpose.

But in the end, what makes fitbit really stick, is the nice balance it strikes in being fun yet earnest. It does not come across as that chiseled guy in the gym who seems to speak jargon no one else comprehends, or irreverent like Groupon which may be good for selling baubles but is not the best pose to strike when you are urging to get someone to be healthy.

Yet it has elements of both; making me, for the first time, want to challenge myself to be more active.

Review: Xobni for Gmail (first look)

Xobni recently announced that they were coming up with a version of their contact management system for Gmail. I promptly signed up; and the invitation came yesterday.

Setting up Xobni

Setting up Xobni was a quick affair. Xobni for Gmail uses a browser extension, and currently extensions are available for both Firefox and Chrome. I installed the beta on Chrome.

After installation, the Xobni shows up as a side bar to the right of your Gmail inbox. The beta comes in just one color - a baby blue palette - which really stands out if you are using a skin in Gmail.

Once you are set up, Xobni connects to your Gmail account and indexes your contacts from your email. For some reason Xobni does not index Gmail contacts today. This does impact the intelligence that Xobni brings to contacts.

Using Xobni for Gmail

Initially Xobni looks like an ugly version of your contacts bar, on the right side of the inbox. The magic begins once you click on an email from a contact. The Xobni bar changes to show you more information about your interaction with that contact.

In a mostly intuitive fashion, Xobni shows you the history of conversations with the contact, recent emails exchanged and other contacts that were part of these conversations.

In the inbox, Xobni displays a "trending contacts". It seems like the trend is a mixture of recent emails and volume, but there is no way to customize that at the moment. The flip side, as expressed by a frustrated user over at Xobni's support, is that you may end up being forced to see the same face you correspond with a lot - even if that is a face you never want to lay your eyes on again.

This is clearly a beta

If you are a regular user of Xobni on Outlook, you know pretty much what to expect from this plugin. But the implementation is clearly a beta at the moment, and not everything works smoothly. I was not able to test the entire "social" aspect of the tool, because Xobni always comes back saying none of my contacts have LinkedIn or Twitter accounts. (cannot test Facebook though).

The contact photos from their Gmail accounts were also not making their way through for me. While this could have something to do with the inability to assign default (or primary) email addresses, it can just as well be an artifact of the tool's beta status.

Xobni, when it came out, was an unbelievably slick addition to Outlook. Compared to the clumsy UI and straitjacketed implementation of the default address-book, Xobni was game changer. But in the search-centric, minimalist, world of Gmail, Xobni is just another way of looking at emails and contacts. Yes, it does more than Gmail contacts, but I am not sure if it adds much to the user interaction model. If and when the social aspect of the tool begins to work, it is worth seeing if that ends up making Xobni a must-have.

Pros:

• Quick and easy installation. Indexing a Gig worth of emails took just a couple of minutes.
• A very useful, contact centric, way of browsing through emails.
• An extremely powerful way of consolidating contacts if used in conjunction with Xobni for Outlook.

Cons:

• Contact pictures, even for the Gmail contacts, are not being displayed.
• Does not connect to Gmail contacts, or use its' meta-data. Weak analytics for duplicate consolidation.
• No way to order addresses within a contact. Or delete or reorder contacts themselves.
• Social does not work (reliably?).

Netflix on Wii

As promised, I came home to find my Netflix-on-Wii disk. First impressions below.

Overall: I may watch some cartoons on it, but the Wii will not replace my hook-up-laptop-to-TV approach to watching movies on Netflix anytime in the near future. Overall the picture quality is disappointing at best and disconcerting at worst. The interface is ok. Sound is barely ok.

Interface & setup: Setting the whole thing up was a breeze. My Wii was already hooked up to my TV and sound system, so I just had to pop the disk in and wait for it to come back with a special code. I headed over to netflix.com/Wii on my laptop and entered this code (you have to be logged into your Netflix account to be able to do this, so better on the laptop than on the Wii browser). Within a few seconds the screen on my Wii changed to show me titles from my "Instant Watch" queue.

Interface: The interface was pretty typical and usable. You can browse all of your queues, in addition to a number of custom queues based on your watching habits. Each queue is a horizontal row of DVD covers. Unfortunately, this is not cached, so every time you come back from a movie, you see a row of blanks while the images are fetched. Clicking on a movie takes you to a information page. There you can "Resume", "Play from beginning" or "Remove from Queue", while reading the blurb. For TV shows you can continue watching from the episode you left off on, or browse through all the episodes. You can also rate the movies. No way to read reviews yet though.

Video: This was a major disappointment. I watched to scenes from two movies - the initial scene from the Shawshank Redemption (regular aspect ratio) and a few action scenes from the Full Metal Jacket (widescreen). The movie started about as quickly as it did on my laptop, but suffered from severe lack of color-depth and frame-rate. Watching the initial scenes of the SR with the fluid camera work was dizzying. Edges were choppy and the blacks were atrocious. FMJ was a almost as bad. Fire and smoke looked remarkably good in some of the action scenes, but again, when it came to edges and people, it just wasn't fun watching them. And if you have anything bigger than my 32" TV, you should pop in a motion sickness pill before, say, you watch Harry Potter on his broom.

Audio: Was barely alright, maybe the same as from the 3.5mm jack on my laptop. No 5.1 or any surround sound yet - good ol' stereo. But overall, the volume was a bit low, and I had to turn the amplifier up a bit. Beware though, when you switch out of the Netflix channel onto the Wii home menu - the ping will be annoyingly loud. On the positive side though, was the fact that there was no choppiness, or lag even when a movie was paused and played at random points.

Movie Controls: When you wave the Wii controller during a movie, you see the pause/play button, the time bar and a back button. A slider on the time bar can be moved to any point in the movie. You do get a quick preview of where you are, with screen shots, so you don't have to guess at where you want to end up. Overall, the controls mimicked the controls of the standard player pretty well.

Final Thoughts: The last problem with the Wii is the fact that it does not use a Infrared controller. Presently I have a IR remote to run everything else in the A/V setup. Watching movies on the Wii means keeping around one more item on the table, which you can *never* replace with a remote.

My 5800 - Top 10 faults

Nokia has done a very good job with the hardware requirements of the 5800. As noted in my earlier posts here and here, there are a number of things to love about the phone. But, as with anything else, there are always room for improvement, and here are some key opportunities. You will see that a number of examples are more interface and software related that could be modified in the future with an upgrade, which only speaks to the solidity of its specifications.

• Video Acceleration: For all its capabilities, the phone definitely misses that zip 'on the toes' feel factor. It is not so much with the running of an application, as it is apparent with any screen changes. It could be games, switching orientation, changing between applications. There is a nasty delay, not bad enough for you to realize upfront, but just enough to slowly eat away at the quality of your interaction with the phone. What makes it worse is that that whole UI seems to be riddled with hacks to compensate, making interacting with the phone a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. Cramming in just that additional video acceleration, could have freed up resources just enough to make the phone feel a whole lot zippier.
• Uncomfortable SIM slot: The Nokia 5800 has a unique SIM slot, that involves a notch that needs to be opened and the card slid in. However, to take an existing SIM out, there is no easy way. The back needs to come off, and the SIM forced out using one's nail or the stylus. For anyone who travels with the phone - it is definitely a major annoyance.
• Thick-headed approach to text input: This is one of the biggest annoyances with the phone. There are a total of four different means to enter text into the phone - QWERTY (landscape), mini-QWERTY (portrait), T9 predictive and handwriting. And you can choose one and only one - changing orientation does not automatically choose an appropriate keyboard. Which means no matter how you are using the phone, when it comes to entering text, you need to change orientation to the method you had set before, and use the keyboard. Here are some potential alternatives - allow preferences for the portrait mode. Switch to a full QWERTY mode for landscape orientation and the preferred mode for portrait. And here is taking it further, be aware of the stylus being pulled out, and maybe switch to the handwriting mode.
• Contacts bar: Of the two standby screens, one is a contacts bar. Really useful and comprehensive bringing in calls, SMS and email into one location. But, you can only have four friends. And everyone needs to have a picture. And if they have more than one numbers, hard luck - no way to specify (other than setting a default in contacts) which number you want to reach them at. So if your contact does not answer their mobile, tough luck. To try their apartment number, go rummaging through contacts, just like any other contact - rendering the contacts bar useless.
• No predictive input for QWERTY: Soft keyboards are inaccurate. The Nokia soft full keyboards do not offer any predictive correction of near miss key strokes. They already have T9, this just has to be a different sort of one to many mapping, and having no support at all is a big miss.
• Large buttons in landscape mode: The phone interface looks comical in landscape. The entire right side of the screen it taken up by big bulky soft keys, creating space for five buttons when applications typically have need for only two. Taking up twice the space required for buttons in the landscape mode is a egregious waste of the gorgeous screen real estate.
• Browser: In spite of the intermittent tantrums of the bundled browser (where the program just shuts down in a huff), it does a reasonable job rendering the pages. However, the interface definitely needs a lot of tweaking before it is anywhere close to being done. Here are a few examples, there is a full screen browsing mode with no back button. The browser supports tabbed browsing, but you cannot open a second tab unless the website opens a new window. Copy paste doesn't work on web pages. Try to copy the address of your current page - you wouldn't believe the hacks required. This gives you a flavor of the idiosyncrasies of the browser.
• Applications: S60 V5 breaks compatibility with S60 V3 which in itself has the FP1 and FP2 variants. What this means is that all applications need to be redone for compatibility, and there just aren't enough applications around the 5800 even 5 months after its launch. Scrounging for new applications seems to be the main activity of the blogger groups built around the phone. Nokia did put out some applications and is working on an app store, but they seriously run the risk of alienating developers for mobile platforms by fragmenting their development platforms this way.
• Soft key for Menu: Every thing on the Nokia 5800 can be done via the touch-screen, except for one and only one thing. Opening the menu, which for some strange reason can only be accessed by using the white menu key. This wouldn't seem that much of an annoyance till you realize that the screen is designed for single-handed use, till the need to use this button makes it impossible. Not to mention, it fully breaks the UI consistency.
• Clunky inconsistent UI design: Which brings us to the last point - the overall theme of many of the points above. More examples. Contacts uses a good-idea-in-theory-but-bad-in-practice interface where the buttons change based on your contacts and the previously pressed buttons. Something like the NeverLost interface on Hertz cars. That probably never went through a consistency and usability tollgate. Or consider the interface to add contacts on the contacts bar - looks suspiciously iPhoneque, while nothing else on the phone does. I am sure that never went through a consistency tollgate either. Overall the UI design looks like it has been built by engineers to demonstrate touch on the phone as opposed to a consistent user experience. That probably sums up what I think is the biggest fault with the phone.

There you go! That should serve as a good list for now. On the whole, the phone is not bad. But if this going to be the future of the touch platform for Nokia, then the platform needs a lot of work. And platform is not just on the phone (i.e., the user interface and the touch enabled S60 V5), but also the community and application universe developed around the application. By all accounts, the buzz around the 5800 has been phenomenal. Now the ball is in Nokia's court.

My 5800 - 12 reasons it's awesome

I have had my new Nokia 5800 for about 3 months now, having bought it in January 2009. During the period, it has gone through two firmware upgrades - first from v11.0.08 to v20.0.012, and the second one from v20.0.012 to v21.0.025. The first updated clocked in at about 133 MB and was available only via their NSU (Nokia Software Update) service the second one weighed in at only 4 MB and was available OTA (Over the Air).

Of the two, the second one seemed to have worked its magic on the phone, really making the interface more responsive, while the first one delivered the bulk of the enhancements. With two major upgrades in less than 3 months, it is ample proof that Nokia is indeed looking to the Nokia 5800 as a testbed to iron out any and all problems with its touch platform, before it start rolling out the big guns - the E series and the N series. That said, back to the question at hand - what really works with this phone.

• Screen: This is probably the most gorgeous feature of the phone, that you see as soon as you switch the phone on. With a width the same as VGA and a height only a third short of VGA, the resolution is great. And there is no better way to experience this than by playing one of the bundled videos. (You may end up trying out the bundled Dark Knight trailer.)
• Sound: The other think you will notice when you play the aforementioned trailer, is the sound. For a tiny set of speakers on a palm-sized phone, the sound is remarkably good. You can actually make out the different frequencies, and including, a very solid handling of base without the expected crackle.
• Basic phone functions: The Nokia 5800 does a good job at doing what it is supposed to do - act like a phone. It is surprising how many smartphones are so choc-a-bloc with features, that somehow the basic functions of a phone take a back seat. Not with the 5800. Calling, maintaining connectivity, the speakerphone, contact management etc are all exactly as expected. Not having to sacrifice a phone to get a smartphone is a terrific feature of the 5800.
• Size and Weight: At 109 grams, the phone is surprisingly light. And it fits beautifully in your palm, without being too wide or too narrow in depth. For me, the form factor of an iPhone did not seem as comfortable. The small details, like the recessed edge of the touch-screen, for example, adds a lot to handle of the phone. The build of the phone is pretty solid too. Even though it is built of plastic, there is very little of the plastic-y creaking during operation.
• Storage: The 5800 comes bundled with a hot swappable 8GB Micro SD card. The hot swap means you do not need to switch the phone off to remove or add the card. Nokia, by bundling in a decent sized card, adds a lot to the bottom line of the deal.
• Variety of Input methods: One of the advantages of a resistive touch-screen is that you can have input methods other than just the finger. A capacitive screen depends on the capacitive effect of the human finger to register a touch. So, it fails with a gloved hand, or a stylus. The 5800 on the other hand, comes with a stylus, a pluck (ex-guitar pick), finger, finger-nail etc. And taking the flexibility further, the phone comes with a variety of methods to input text - a full QWERTY keyboard, a mini-QWERTY, a T9 style touch input and even a stylus driven hand-writing recognition method.
• Battery: One of the surprising aspects of the phone is its long battery life. One the days I ignore it, with just a couple of calls, the battery seems to last and last. With a little more strenuous usage, the phone easily lasts a couple of days on a single charge. Of course, no amount of batter-life is enough, but what the phone brings definitely counts as a plus.

• Multi-tasking: A smart phone is supposed to do more than one thing, at the same time. With one of the three dedicated buttons dedicated to multitasking, it is not an after-thought. That said, the phone does struggle once a number of large applications are running in the background. But as long as you don't treat it like a laptop, it does a pretty good job.
• Proximity & ambient light sensors: Small capabilities like this get lost sometimes. But the ability of the phone to set screen brightness automatically, switch off when held to the ear all add up to a solid user experience.
• Other hardware capabilities: From a capabilities perspective, the Nokia 5800 is stuffed. In addition to everything else it comes with an FM Radio and twin cameras including front-facing camera for video calling. The primary camera comes with a short range flash, not for a room, but definitely great for those pub snapshots.
• S60 platform experience: The Nokia 5800 is built on top of the S60 platform, version 5. The version 5 is the new touch enabled operating software, that includes sensor frameworks to deal with the other hardware capabilities of the phone. Having the legacy of the S60 platform, means the the basics are already in place. Phone, contacts, copy-paste, application control, basic UI characteristics are all tried and tested. Applications too follow a well established method to interact with the end users. While the 5800 sometimes feels like a clunky touch interface, the core of the system is in place and works like a charm.
• Price: Has to be one of the best features of the phone. Retailing for under $400 (unlocked and unsubsidized) it is almost half the price of the iPhone and the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. Not having to jail-break anything or break warranty for flexibility is one of the best features of the phone.

In short, the biggest positives of the phone are its capabilities - the sheer hardware capabilities and the underlying S60 software. Which leaves the interface components and applications. Coming up in the next post - where the Nokia 5800 definitely needs a little help.

My Nokia 5800

The Nokia 5800 has been my primary phone for the last three months or so. My earlier phone, the Sony Ericsson T610, was getting old and was in need of a massive update (retirement). Being a Sony Ericsson user, the idea of switching to Nokia seemed pretty unimaginable to me at the time. But try as I might, there wasn't a SE phone that seemed to fit the bill. Having delayed my purchase of a smartphone, my list of requirements seemed to be growing all the time.

When I started looking for a phone in late 2007, my list of requirements was driven by the phones at the time, particularly, the iPhone. On a number of levels, the iPhone was almost a no-no from the beginning. I never saw myself buying an Apple product - I adore them, just don't agree with the approach and philosophy of the company. Anyways, driven partly by the iPhone and the other phones at the time, this was a list of parameters I had come up with for my first smartphone.

• Touch screen: This was a must have for me. The way I saw it, the touch interface was going to be the standard interface philosophy soon, especially in mobile interfaces. Not to say the keyboard would be redundant, but the ability to interact with on-screen elements (for certain activities), without need for surrogates like cursors and element focus seemed to be the natural progression. And I wanted in on that. And for me, the physical keyboard was completely optional. Also, I was not sold on either the capacitive or the resistive touch screens. And so did not have particular loyalties to either camp.


• Other sensors:Proximity, light and orientation sensors was definitely high on the list. I figured, I will have to carry a second device, that was more focused on communication and email - so why not focus on the fun factor with my personal phone. Lack of an orientation sensor was almost a definite deal-breaker. For a fun phone, that definitely had a big cool factor.


• WLAN(WiFi): Was another must have. My plan was to have that as the primary means of getting data in and out of the phone. That would also save me a data-plan with my mobile carrier, which were not cheap to come by.


• 3G: Was optional for me. The way I saw it, the 3G network wasn't ubiquitous enough to base my purchase on being able to use it. Especially given that I would be traveling and therefore not necessarily have 3G coverage all the time. The other side effect of this decision was that I did not have to worry about the NAM and Rest of the world 3G variants before I got my paws on my phone of choice.


• Quad band: That said about 3G, it definitely had to be Quad band phone. Given, the same traveling nature - I did not want to get stuck with a phone that would not work in all my locations. My SE T610 did not do 850 MHz, and I had done my share of blaming the network (ATT) in public, secretly knowing that my phone was really to blame.


• Flexibility and Freedom: This was one of the most important requirements. In two ways - firstly I did not want a branded and locked phone. I wanted the flexibility to be able to change SIM cards across different locations. (See need for traveling above). And secondly, I wanted to be able to install and uninstall applications the any way possible. I did not want either my carrier or my phone manufacturer to determine what I did with my phone. The other piece of freedom - access to the file system of the phone, without the need to install a clunky proprietary program.


• Screen: QVGA (320 x 240) or better. Why? Coz the iPhone did QVGA.


• Battery: At least 1200 mAh. Again, that did not really mean anything without a strong support from the device itself. I hoped for a regular usage of 2 to 3 days, and heavy use of a day before having to recharge.


• Application ecosystem: Given that Apple was the only viable option dictated that this was not a necessity. But, as long as I was able to get a system that was open enough - It was a matter of time before people started trying to replicate the App Store.


• Camera: This surprisingly was not really high on my list. Primarily because, I was yet to see a phone that did a tenth as good a job as my SLR. And there were physical reasons to it - a camera phone had the sensor the size of my pinky toenail. I did not expect to do any serious photography on my phone. On the off chance that I was to witness a UFO landing, I just hoped to have a video mode to create a grainy, shaky, unrecognizable account of the event.


• Other connectivity (Physical & Bluetooth): Bluetooth was an expected minimum. Physical connectivity was not that important, as long as I had my WLAN access.


• Browser with Flash: The browser had to be a full fledged web browser, running javascript and hopefully some form of Flash lite. Again, I was sick of my piddly little text-ey browser on my T610.


• Memory: Expected a few gigs, but more importantly hope for one with an external card, which could be upgraded as and when I ran out of space on the phone itself. I have a tendency to run out of space - rather quickly.

The phones I was reviewing, at the time, were a wide variety. But they boiled down the the following:

• HTC Touch


• Sony Ericsson XPeria X1


• HTC Touch Diamond


• Samsung Omnia

It was neck and neck between these phones (though the Omnia went to the bottom of the pile pretty early) and it seemed just a matter of which price point I was comfortable with. As time went by, the Diamond seemed to slowly but surely rise to the top. XPeria was priced too high, and the screen of the Diamond beat that of the Touch hands down. Until the Nokia 5800 came along. If you look back at the list of requirements I had, you can see how well the 5800 stacks up. Next post - what I love about my 5800.

GMail: A First Look

I am sure that it would be very different for someone like me, who has been desperately looking forward to have a dekko at GMail to give anything other than a positive first view of GMail. So I sat over it a full weekend, and I still feel the same about it. So here is my review of GMail. This in fact is one of my first full fledged reviews.

gee mailing away,

- GMail <> Gnu Mail?

GMail

This is todally wonderful. They actually said that I was an active user of blogger. Wonder how they found that out. Read news that this beta was now being opened for blogger users. Was disappointed when I came here the last time and did not figure out how to do it. Anyways, now that I am in, feels totally wonderful.
I dont know what it is about technology that gives me the shivers. Have been feeling hopelessly cold the last few minutes, because the excitement has still to settle in. Whopeee! I am Betaing for GMail...

The first reports of GMail rolling in. Using it for a few minutes, the the single most important feature is the simplicity of the interface - almost austure. No more options to sort by this and that. No more complicated interfaces to to deal with the various sort options you use to view messages by. There are just three elements - the mail, the message group it belongs to and the time it was sent. Period. Nothing else matters.

Have exchanged almost 11 mails till now and I have just four items in my inbox. One of that is a set of conversations with 8 different mails in it. So this is their famed feature of message grouping. Also, there is no complicated viewing of the mails possible - grouping order is just based on time and nothing else. Virtually no views of threading are possible as of now. Dont know if that is a good thing or not. Will tell you later. The interface for viewing the grouped conversation is also interesting. More about it in a more structured Beta Report. Will do it over the weekend.

Second most important item as far as first looks is concerned. The mail is blindingly fast. As fast as google. Imagine what that is going to do to your view of the Internet. Keep imagining, will get back to it later.

As I said - will come back with a full report during the weekend. However the reason I am writing this is to link to my site and increase the number of pages linking to it. Seems www.anarchius.org is not being linked by enough sites for it to be spidered. Will change it. Also keeping track of all that I am doing to get it onto the google index. Will keep you updated on that too.

warm regards,

- anarchy

www.anarchius.org

Sony Ericsson T610

I recently bought this piece, and thought I'd introduce you to it. I was seriously considering buying a cell, and of course no Nokia for me. Agree, nokia has quality, but it suffers from the same problem that plagues all industry leaders. The basic technology is cheap, but all bells and whistles are priced out of the world. And frankly Nokia low-to-medium range cell look like rot.

So, the shootout started, between price and features. I was looking at a slightly above base product, and at the same time could not afford a communicator. I landed somewhere around T68i, primary because of the way it looks. Then I was with a friend who had a T810, which had a similar screen if not the looks. And the 256 color screen put me off. It just did not pack the zing I wanted. T68i was out. Then, something else happenned. Some brain cells, which had been hibernating, woke up. And I wanted a camera with the phone.

Enter T610.

Looks could just kill.

The first look at the phone, and it looks like half a phone. It has a gigantic 128 by 160 pixel, 65000 color screen, covering more than half the front of the phone. the key pad starts with four navigational buttons, two for screen prompts and two more as "clear" and "up level up" buttons. Sandwiched between these four buttons is a very small and extremely handy joyclick (it isnt much of a stick, and you can click with it too!). Below the navigation is the regular keypad. However, the keys are really accessible rounded rectangles, small but handy and wide enough to never have a cross clicking of keys. The entire phone weighs just 95g, and is of a block design. The grooved sides provide a nice way to grip the phone when talking. You dont feel that it is just going to drop. The back of the phone has a 3d sony ericsson logo, and an inconspicuous dark circle - your 33mm lens ;)

The screen and the interface

The lively 65000 colors is what catches your attention first. Indoors, the colors are vibrant, and well contrasted. The icons are well constructed and intuitive. The main desktop is a treat to look at. The problem crops up when you try to use the phone out in the sunlight. The visibility of the display drops, and leaves the screen almost useless. Shading the screen, helps, but does not improve matters by much.

The interface is governed by your ability to use the joystick and the navigational keys. Nokia users will find the interface "counter" to what they have been using. The joyclick is also a tad difficult for the first time user. However a few days and a little practice can upgrade your usage speed enough to avoid being the bottleneck.

The icon-driven menu is informative and useful. Navigation starts from icons and has layered menus underneath. Maybe, the icon interface could have be extended to the later layers too, rather than continue with the plain vanilla menu interface. Messages are displayed via a "pop up" screen. Some menu options have a help option too, to provide additional information. The eye-candy is good, usability is better.

One final comment about the interface is the T9 input. They call it "predictive" but it does not. However, it works like the usual one-click input. However, it is slower than that given by Nokia. The T610 makes up in part, by giving a VB IDE style, auto complete popup during text input. It is slow, but it makes up.

Features (drool, drool)

Camera: a 1:1 CCD based camera. Means, low quality photography and bad response in low light. But dammit, this is a phone. Takes pics in two sizes, one at 1:1 giving you are 320 by 240, and another one smaller, with marginal improvement in quality. The camera is accessible via a shortcut key on the left edge. A very cool nikon-style click sound when the shutter is hit. Rapid saving of photo, in under 5 seconds. 2 megs of memory, use it as you please.

WAP: Another shortcut key on the right edge. To be frank, I have not yet found the actual link that leads to starting a browsing session. Render of pages is decent, however streaming multimedia is not supported, so you cannot watch video and the like.

Themes: The look on the phone is handled by means of themes. Colors, shades, wallpapers are all part of the theme. Some realyl good themes are bundled.
Connectivity: Bluetooth, Infra red and possible a data cable. Usage is quick and painless.

Games: The days of the snake is over. We now play GOLF, which sounds as if I was potting a ball in a billiards table. Supports JAVA and Morphun games too. But I miss not having a snake handy.

Programs: Do you know what a midi synthesiser looks like? No? Did you have a chace to ever play with a program called the Rave eJay? No? Check out the awesome music composer in the T610. You can choose from like 120 pieces to arrange 4 tracks to build really new pieces. Want to be woken up with the crash of an orchestra - well, make it yourself. Hey, talking about software, you have a paint program in the phone too. You will not be jobless when you wait for your delayed flight.

Others: You get a Outlook sync on a bundled CD. Slow, but it works. And there is a pretty nifty interface to even map fields between the T610 and your Outlook. You also have all your other nifty thingies - voice commands, organiser (nice interface), screen savers, 32 phonic sounds (we will come to that later), personalised rings and pictures etcetera etcetera.

In Use

Memory: You have 2 megs, shared between all your pictures, sounds and themes. You dont want to be caught without memory for the crucial shot of your girlfriend laughing. Swap the existing stuff out. Use bluetooth, or infra red, but clear your desk, you never know what might be coming in.

Battery: This beast of a display drains your battery like crazy. Remember, talking was once the biggest drain, the display just joined it. Add some sessions running JAVA games and you know what that can do to a battery. Keeping a once a day schedule of recharging is not a bad idea. But of course, it charges up pretty quickly.

Heating: A gentle warming during prolonged use (games/charging), but nothing out of the ordinary.

Voice Volume: Get used to low volumes. You may want that louder, louderer option for that concert - you dont have it. However, regular use is pretty workable.
Ring Volume: Is low. Is abysmally low. And the loudest is pretty much half of what a nokia 3315 can whip up. But wait.

Do you know the polyphonic sounds are actually midi files? (oh, the composer also stores its sounds as midi files)

Do you know you can transfer midi files two way between a computer and a phone using bluetooth or infra red?

Do you know there are freeware available that can be used to jackup the volume of your midi files?

Do you know that you can google for almost any midi file you can think of?

Now dont ever crib about not having enough volume, or enough options for ring tones. Dont even tell me that you "paid" to "download" polyphonic ringtones to your phone. :)

I love this phone,

- ravi

Listen!

Day before yesterday, I bought this. For those of you who dont want to click or dont have the internet attached to your internet connection, that is a Creative Inspire 2500 2.1 speaker set.

A 2.1 Speaker is 2 satellite speakers and one subwoofer. The power is about 17+6+6 watts RMS. But that is the last thing i care about. The quality is brilliant!!

I had another set of speakers that were also from Creative, but of the SoundWorks category. Now I used to think this was the best ones. But somehow, they seemed as if they were kinda screechy. Somehow high on the tweeters. But with this, the sound is a lot more clearer. The highs and lows are very very well balanced. I dont think I am an audiophile, but this sounds a lot better than the one I had earlier.

scream, with speakers that are well balanced.

~!nrk