My New Android Smartphone - Samsung Vibrant Galaxy S

I was thinking of buying an android phone from long time. I was very close to buying Droid X phone. But I was not sure if I will be able to honor the two yr contract I would have to take had I bought it from Verizon. The contract breakage charge was restrictively high. When I learnt that T-mobile was offering Samsung Galaxy phone with a lesser contract breakage and for a lesser cost, I jumped at it and lapped it up. I received the phone yesterday and I have been playing with it from then.

It feels amazing to use it. It is very light and it has 4 inches AMOLED screen which is very bright. You can really watch videos on it and they feel real. The touchscreen experience is also very good. After using the scroller where you just do a scrolling motion with your finger, my previous experience of clicking a button to scroll down would just doesn't appeal anymore. I am not attempting a review here. I am just listing the facts which I liked. The concept of home screens is good. Whatever you want you can create a shortcut on the homescreen and without going to menu inside menu, you can just click it from there. It comes close to a laptop experience rather than a phone experience.
All google applications like GMail, Maps, Talk  are very well intergrated into the phone. Though typing is not very easy, with Swype application practice, you can type without much effort. Phone is good and it syncs contacts from google so it is amazing. It syncs photos from picasa etc. So whatever photos are there in picasa you can directly view here.
One special application I loved is the Amazon Kindle application. The experience of reading a book is very very good. I already read a novel Gone Green on the phone. I definitely see myself reading more books on the phone.
5 mp camera is very very good. The clarity of the pictures is amazing. The calendar app is synced with google calendar and it will give me reminder of events from google calendar also. I think this is very useful in staying organized and it would definitely increase my productivity. One more thing which I love is the voice search app. You just have to speak into the phone your search query instead of typing and it works very well. Very very useful.
On the flip side, the screen has the full original resolution i.e 960x800 px and the photos you set a wallpapers don't automatically get re sized as in other feature phones and you have to select an area which you want to set as wallpaper. This fact will take some time getting used to. Also there are no good telugu songs streaming apps for Android. Raaga.com has an application for iPhone but not for Android I don't like that fact. But they have a  mobile website which uses flash. Android 2.2 has flash but the version of android on my phone is just 2.1. Samsung says it will update to 2.2 by end of this year so hopefully I should be able to stream songs on my phone directly.
Update 1: The battery life is not really great. But if you play a lot with the phone, it will get discharged pretty soon. For normal usage you can get by with charging once a day, but if you want to browse on it or play games on it, I think you cannot use it more than 6-7 hrs continuously. It seems the display is taking most of the battery. So I switched to reading books in white letters on black screen instead of the default black letters on white screen.
On the whole, very satisfied with the phone.

My Mobiles - Nokia Vs Sony Ericsson

My first highly used mobile phone was a silver colored Nokia 6030 which I bought in October 2006. This phone was good basic model. It was a color phone and it had FM. I have talked for a long time on this phone approximately 1000 hrs. After these many hours, I could see that the battery was discharging fast and I decided to change the battery. As the silver color of the mobile looked worn out, I decided to replace it with a new case. So I scouted for original Nokia batteries in Koti and it costed about 550 rs for a new one. But I thought it was a little too much for a phone I bought for 2600 two years back. So I went to another authorized Nokia dealer and asked him to get me an original Nokia charger. He said it costed about 400 and that he would remove an original from a brand new phone and give it to me. I was stunned, because if they are removing an original from a new piece, that means they will put a duplicate one in that and sell to unsuspecting customers. Hmm, anyhow I bought it and also a new black case for my mobile. It stayed with me till the middle of May 2009 till it was stolen. I wrote about the ensuing drama after that here. But speaking of the phone, it was a very very good phone. I never had any problems with its software or battery. It worked very well. And I dropped it many many times.

I am reminded of two particular incidents which show the durability of Nokia mobile.

Once, when I was running behind an RTC bus to catch it, my mobile literally jumped from my shirt pocket and fell on the ground from a running bus. I got down, collected the pieces fallen on the ground, the battery came off, the case came out. I just assembled it again and switched the mobile on and nothing happened. It was working as before.

I put my clothes in the bucket for washing without removing the mobile in it. I realized it just a minute after I put in the water. I removed it but by that time, some water might have crept in. The center button was not working. I switched it off as presence of water will short circuit the internal circuits, and I put it under (not above ;)) a burning gas stove for few mins, again switched it on and after half an hour everything started working fine again. Except for that half an hour, my experience with Nokia phone was very very positive.

After I lost that mobile, I bought a Sony Ericsson C510 phone. It had all the wanted features like mp3 player, a 3.2 MP camera and bluetooth with 1 GB free memory card. It costed about 11,800 with insurance. I wanted to buy a Nokia mobile only but I saw the photo quality of Nokia mobile and didnt quite match the Sony experience. So for only that I bought a Sony ericsson.

Used to a Nokia, the battery was a let down. I had to charge it daily but I will accept it because of high usage. The photos are very good.

When i was getting used, I observed that the phone would hang sometimes and i have to restart it (In my two months of usage i did it only twice, so we could consider it an exception). But I was disappointed very much when the phone did not start when I tried restarting after changing the sim card.

And dont ask me about the customer service experience. It was very bad. There is no reception. When I went to the person taking the complaints, he asked me to wait and after that he didnt call me. After some time, when he didnt call, I went and asked then he noted it down. He told it was a software problem and it will take one hour to reload it. After one hour, he told it is not working and asked me to come and take on Monday. I had to beg him to repair it that day only. After lot of prodding, he agreed to do it that day only. On the whole, the sony ericsson customer service centre was run very unprofessionally, though it was not unbearable. A lot can be improved in the customer handling and experience. Already in two months, it gave me a scare. Im just hoping I never need to visit the customer service again.

One thing is clear, I can never take the sony phone for granted no where near how I would treat my Nokia phone.

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Mobile Phone Theft - Modus Operandi && Indian Police Stations

It all started with forgetting my earphones in my room. My brother dropped me at the bus stop to go to the office. Its my habit to put on my head set as soon as I get into the bus and filter the noise outside. That day when my brother left me at the Chandana Brothers stop, I remarked that I forgot to bring my ear phones. He asked if we need to go back and bring it. I said it is fine and that I was already late to office and hence I will go to the office.

I was standing in the bus stand waiting for my bus 216 to come, watching my newly redressed phone - I changed the battery and the panel of the phone.. It sparkled like a new one.

Getting onto the bus and to get a seat in our bus is a mini war. We have to see the bus coming before it comes to the stop, hop in to a running bus competing with all the fellow travellers also are waiting like the sprinters waiting for the whistle in olympics, and then rush to get a seat. As I was performing this ritual on a fast approaching 216, I forgot to observe that someone might have been attracted by my new look mobile phone. So i just couldnt believe myself when after some time i tried to find my phone in all my pockets and bags. After searching for sometime, I confirmed that i lost it and wondered at the modus operandi. When people are trying their best to win the war of getting a seat in the bus, there are busy people with other agendas also....So, my failure to bring headset one day cost my mobile. It would have alerted me if I suddenly the songs stopped playing. So after I bought a new mobile I always make sure my songs are on, so that I wont lose my mobile again ;)

The Modus - operandi: First, there will be a group of people. While you are busy getting in to the bus they grab your phone. While one person will be blocking your way the other person wil try to leave the place and escape. So be very careful. Have the phone with you and have an eye on your phone always.

You might have seen in the newspapers that mobile phones were used in the blasts and being a law abiding citizen, I thought of filing a complaint about the loss of my mobile phone in the nearest police station. So, I went to the nearest police station and told them my story. They were helpful in that they listened to what I had to say. They asked a few questions about where I lost my phone and after I patiently answered all their questions, they said that I had to complain in a different police station. I was perplexed as to why I had to go to a different station which was very far away when I was already in a police station which was nearby to me.

After some days, I went to the said police station. It was a big one with separate rooms for different types of crimes, criminal , civil etc. One constable on hearing my story redirected me to the criminal cases room. The SI was not yet present and I made small talk with the peon there. I told him the story of how I lost my mobile and how my friends also lost their mobile in the same way. He asked about when I lost the mobile. As I waited till saturday to go the station when I lost the mobile on tuesday, he asked me number of questions to ascertain that I was telling the truth. He said that he had to ask all these questions as I waited for five days to complain. I told him, I didnt expect to get back the mobile but I came to complain as I wanted to highlight the plight of people and how commonplace the thefts have become and to request the police to take steps to stop it. I think he took it. I asked him what are the proofs I had to submit. He pointed me to a chart on the door specifying the required documents for filing a lost mobile phone complaint. It included the original bill, the IMEI number of the mobile and a 100rs challan in E-Seva. Seeing that i was discouraged to complain, thinking anyways I have lost a mobile and having no expectation of getting it back, what advantage I had of paying that challan. I asked if there is a way I could make a complaint online and why I had to come till this station - He answered if they allowed complaints on phone and net, they would have to work 24 hours to determine which were genuine complaints and which were fake. I told him that atleast we could submit some of our personally identifiable information like PAN or any other number and would like to submit the complaint online. I told it was just a matter of time before the complaints would be taken online. If they allowed that i would have complained on Tuesday at my convenience rather than waiting for saturday to complain.

Proofs required to file a complaint now:

1. Your original bill

2. The IMEI number of the phone (desirable)

3. 100 Rs challan from eSeva.

The police department has to look forward to use technology to their advantage and ease the work of the citizens. Hope to take notice.!!!

New version of IPhone affordable

When iphone was first released, I was awed by it and immediately wanted one. But it was one whole year before it came to India and even when it came to India it costed a whopping 32,000 rs. When we weigh it with the positives and negatives, it felt as if it would be waste investment. But with the newly released iphone 3G s,  it looks the price will come into affordable regions in India. 

If the report in Tech2 is true, then I will surely considering getting one. The iPhone is a game-changer in the mobile phone market, considering that 1 billion apps are downloaded from the app-store.  

Hold on to your hats ladies and gentlemen, you’re not going to believe this, the new iPhone 3G S is due to be out on June 19th of 2009 and here are the prices –

The 16GB version is going to be priced at Rs. 9,452 ($199) and Rs. 14, 202 ($299) for 32GB. It gets better; Apple also announced that they planned on keeping an 8GB version priced at Rs. 4,702 ($99) for a while on the markets. Of course all the above mentioned prices are seem so low because they are on contract with their respective service providers. You can expect the phone to be sold at its full price once it lands on Indian shores, since our service providers just don't love us as much! 

What are your thoughts on it?