by jaganath on August 12, 2008
What Else you can do with the N82
The GPS
N82 is another n-series handset which has an onboard GPS. The assisted GPS implementation on the N82 is fast and sensitive. Most of the time, I could get a fix within 10 seconds. I never lost the fix when I tried the sportstracker application for a 40 km stretch while driving in my car.
When I tried the Nokia Maps, I could see that the Digital Cartography situation India has not improved much since I tried it about 6 months ago on my N95. The maps still need a lot of work before they become useful in this country.
Office Chores
The Nokia N82 comes with QuickOffice read-only versions which are quite useful if you just want to carry and read your documents on the go. The keypad is not so helpful when it comes to typing lot of text, so I would recommend not to upgrade to the paid version. Because of the smaller screen, the viewing comfort is also not so good on the N82 (Hmmm.. I am really spoiled by my N95 8GB).
For corporate mail, you can use the Mail For Exchange application which is available through Downloads. Mail composing and reading are quite usable on the phone.
Music
Though mostly regarded as an imaging phone, the N82 is no slouch when it comes to music. The 3.5 mm jack on the top makes it easy to carry the phone when your earphones are plugged in. There are no dedicated keys to control music playback though.
The sound quality is top notch and can easily replace your mp3 player if you have a large capacity mini SD card. I could sync music quickly from my mac to the N82 through the Nokia Multimedia Transfer utility. The N82 is a lethal musical combo when combined with my V-Moda vibe earphones:
The N82 is truly an all-rounder mobile!
Conclusion: Sadly, my trial is coming to an end tomorrow. I wish I could have the handset for a couple more days as I will be coming across many photographic moments during this independence day weekend.
I will publish my final thoughts on this handset tomorrow.
Read part 1 of this article: Nokia N82 hardware walk through
Read part 2 of this article: The camera
by jaganath on July 14, 2008
I recently purchased a Philips DVD player, which I would rather call as a media player than DVD player because of the USB port that it has. Through the USB port, I can play MP3, WMA, MP4, JPEG, DAT and DivX files among a host of other formats. Apart from media players, USB ports have now slowly started appearing on digital televisions and monitors too. New LCD television sets like the LG scarlet now feature USB ports through which one can play media files like JPG and MP3. At this moment it appears like the TV manufacturers are not including DiVX and H.264 support on the television sets itself fearing cannibalization of their own media players. But this is set to change as more people opt for digital media in which case you can slowly see decoders appearing on the television set itself.
On the other hand, the optical media business is still set to stay on for some more time as newer HD formats like Blue Ray are catching up fast. This doesn’t mean that we will start seeing TVs with optical media drives built in. Many small TV manufacturers have tried this in the past, but it never caught up. The reasons are simple. Optical drives are bound to fail faster when compared to the longevity of a TV set. Most TVs are sold only because of boredom rather than electrical failures. Also, you do not want to send your 60″ TV for repair because the built in blue ray drive failed. They are better kept separate.
Devices like the Kodak HD Player and XBOX 360 could easily extend your PC and bring digital media wirelessly to your Television set. All these devices point to a “solid state media management” in the future, which could see Televisions which support multiple digital media formats. Five years from now, Blue Ray may not exist and we will see movies distributed in USB drives.
by jaganath on July 11, 2008
Though the official launch of the iPhone 3G in India is a few more months away, the App Store is already up and functional! You can browse and buy applications for the iPhone from here! I was able to create an account with my Indian credit card and sign in!
Before I start purchasing applications, I am just waiting for an unlock solution to be available for my gen 1 iPhone!
by jaganath on July 7, 2008
Most companies and educational institutes have strict IT policies. You normally do not get administrative rights for your work PC. If you need to install any software which is not approved by your IT department, you have to either go friendly with that admin guy or do some hacking yourself. I have observed that IE is the default browser in most companies and they do not allow you to run Firefox. What a shame?
One way to work around this problem is to use the portable apps. While the intention of portable apps is to allow you to carry essential software on the go (typically using a USB key), you can also use these to install software on your PC even if you do not have administrator rights. Just select any folder of your choice on the PC while installing. Portable apps now have a rich collection of software including openoffice and mozilla suite. Of interest for most people could be Firefox, Thunderbird and Pidgin. There is Gimp too, in case you are interested.
So go ahead and fool those admin guys in your company.
by jaganath on July 3, 2008
Finally, the Indian Central Government has given up. RIM sternly refused to open up the services so that the Government can snoop into see if any of the corporates are trying to plan a terrorist attack.
The Indian Government is known for some of these archaic decision making which are borrowed from the license raj of the 80s. Now that they have realized it is not so dangerous after all to use an encrypted email device, the government has allowed the continuous functioning of the service. The Telecom ministry should now focus on getting the 3G licenses auctioned so that the already delayed services can be started before it is too late.
by jaganath on April 7, 2008
The admin panel went through a major revamp in Wordpress 2.5. While most of the changes are welcome, IMHO, I think they made a mess of the widget management system. Gone is the ease of the drag and drop widget changing on the fly. Lets say if you want to move a widget from sidebar A to B, you have to first select sidebar A, remove the gadget by clicking on Edit and then Remove , then select Sidebar 2, click Show and then add the sidebar from the list of unused gadgets. Sounds like a lot of work, isn’t it? It is. I don’t understand the logic behind this.
Why change something that is easy and is working very well?
by jaganath on April 4, 2008
HDR photography has become a popular hobby and craze among many digital photography enthusiasts in the recent times. It is not that you need a high end Digital SLR to shoot these kind of pictures. Mobile phones with high quality cameras like the Nokia N95/N82 can help in creating some amazing HDR photographs. TheNokiaBlog has published a how to on HDR Imaging with n series phones. Worth checking out if you carry one of these phones.
[via All About Symbian]
by jaganath on March 6, 2008
E-TEN, one of the little known Windows Mobile manufacturers, is going to be acquired by Acer. This is great news as E-TEN’s handsets will now get global exposure. In case you didn’t know, E-TEN makes some of the best Windows Mobile phones in the planet. IMHO, their E-TEN X800 is the best smart phone in terms of specifications.
This definitely is a win-win combo as Acer will also get a series of world-class mobile phones in their portfolio. When it comes to Windows mobiles, Acer now has an answer to ASUS - their arch rival.
[via msmobiles]
by jaganath on February 7, 2008
…but this time, it is in the mobile world. Web browsing on mobile devices always had its challenges. Smaller screen size and lower processing power meant limited browsing experience on the handset. Technologies like WAP came and went without much enthusiasm from end users. The reason for the failures are simple: Users expect the same level of browsing experience on the handset too. It is too hard to view a page like www.yahoo.com on a mobile device.
The ill-fated Thunderhawk was the first mobile browser to offer desktop level browsing experience on the handset. Thunderhawk never really took off because of its requirement for a monthly subscription fees, which was a steep $49.99 per year. Later on, Opera became quite popular with its SSR (Small Screen Rendering) technology which offered a HTML view which was adapted to the screen size. Not desktop quality, but still usable. Their multi platform support made Opera a default choice for many handset vendors.Later, Nokia came up with a stellar browser on the S60 3rd Edition handsets, called the Minimap browser. Based on the Webkit rendering engine, the S60 browser offered unparalleled browsing experience on mobile handsets. The following screen shots show how the S60 browser works. The red square you see here shows the area you want to zoom.
If you have used only the Apple iPhone, you will realize the similarity. But hang on, Nokia did it much before Apple.
Opera Mini (a cousin of the native Opera application, but written in J2ME and uses an intermediate proxy server like the Thunderhawk) and Apple Safari also provide near desktop experience on mobile phones. S60 browser is more complete with its support for flash videos as of latest updates on Nokia 95 8GB.
Interestingly, the browser war on mobile devices is far from over. The recently announced Opera 9.5, the upcoming PIE on Windows Mobile 7, another Microsoft browser code named deepfish, a newcomer called Skyfire and above all, mobile Firefox will all be vying for a share of the mobile web traffic in the coming months. Exciting days ahead, no doubt!
Update: Corrected the Thunderhawk subscription cost.
by jaganath on February 5, 2008
For people living outside the United States, the best way to buy recently launched books is Digital downloads options provided by many online book vendors. Most of the time, Amazon used to launch the digital editions along with the paperback or hardcover editions. With the introduction of Kindle
, Amazon’s e-Book reader, Amazon has dropped e-Book options for almost all books. For every book available in the Amazon store, you can either buy the paper edition or kindle edition but there is no way to purchase DRM protected digital downloads. I can’t see my previously purchased huge collection of digital editions on my ‘Digital Media’ section too.
This is very bad news for people like me, because there doesn’t seem to be any plans of launching Kindle in this part of the World. That means I have to go with other online e-Book vendors for purchasing digital books. Currently I am using Powell’s Books, who have a decent collection of digital editions.
