Connecting People: October 2013

Gadgets have always attracted most of us, and mobile phone is one such invention which has been advanced so much, that imagining life without it, is impossible now. Most "Saints" those who claim to have given up all materialistic stuff, keep mobile phones these days, so as to keep track of their "followers" and likes!!

My journey with mobile phones started back in 2002. After winning "Math Modeling" competition in my 2nd year of B.Tech., along with my friend +gaurav agrawal, I got some 1.5k as prize money, and planned to buy a mobile (of course I had to pool in more money!). The cheapest mobile I could find in the market that time was a Motorola, which looked bigger and heavier than the Walki-Talkie! I bought a second hand AirTel sim from a senior of mine, which brought my phone to life instantly.

Motorola - My first phone (not actual model)

It had a battery as heavy as today's portable external HDD! 2-line mono-color display, mono-phonic rings, vibra (but only with ringing), silent mode option etc. I had to charge it twice a day just to keep it on stand-by. I don't remember how the battery performed for in-call use, as I hardly made any calls with it given the steep call rates (Rs. 8/min incoming and outgoing!). Not sure if they had SMS service that time. It was definitely equivalent of Ford's Model-T of phones, and as Henry Ford had said, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black", the phone also came in only one model, one color!

I don't even know the model number of the phone, leave alone other specs. Only thing I remember is selling it off in 10 days for an Upgrade! Bought it for around 1.8k, sold it for 1.3k!

Mitsubishi Trium, Very Advanced for it's time

My next upgrade was a relatively unknown phone: Trium from Mitshubishi, bought from Grey market of Chennai! It came only in one color option - Navy Blue; better than the earlier Black one. I bought it with another friend of mine, Aneesh DasGupta (aka Matka). Both of us were very happy with the purchase, as we could negotiate for bulk buying - around 2.3k each! Well, it was green back-lit, 3 line display, with an active wall paper (a black butterfly moving its wings!). Best feature was it's 4-way center key, which came in Nokia phones (market leader at that time) much later. The center key gave customizable shortcuts! The front flap on key-pad was dummy, and did not do anything; it was just for the show. The antenna could be pulled out for another 6". In fully open condition (flap open and antenna pulled out), the phone was easily 1-foot long!!! One of my friend, +Annapragada Ravi made a comment after seeing me using it once, "abbe, radio par commentary sun rahaa hai kya??"

The phone soon broke (sweat entry in ear piece while talking too long!) and I had to get it repaired for a hefty amount. After almost an year, the software went real bad, and as I switched it ON, the display would go blank; phone would work though! I figured I could reset the display from setting menu by increasing the brightness, but reaching the setting menu was difficult without a working display! Well, the phones at that time did not have an HDMI Output. So I took Aneesh's phone and tried to reach the setting menu while learning press of each key. Mugging, being one of the key attributes of that age, I learnt the key sequence by-heart, and surely worked for my phone! That was probably the most advanced "screen-lock" system ever designed: random sequence of key presses to switch ON the screen!!

I used the Trium for another year with this advanced screen-lock, only to upgrade to a better phone in my 4th year!

Moto C200, One of my favourites!

Panasonic GD55 - Always dreamt of one

I was back with another Motorola phone, C-200. Very compact, poly-phonic ring tones, and much more. Used it till end of my B.Tech., before I moved to Canada for higher studies. I liked using this phone a lot, as it was easy to carry, and had very simple menu to use. The purchase was inspired by my friend, +Amit Mitna 's Panasonic GD-55, which was the smallest phone available that time! I always wanted to have a GD-55, but could not afford one, so settled for Moto C-200. Don't remember having any issues with it and don't remember where it is now!

During the same time, my friend Aneesh, along with +mahitosh patankar upgraded to a Sony Ericsson, T-102. Beautiful phone with Blue light and many good features. Looking at this, I decided to get a Sony Ericsson some time in future!

Sony Ericsson T-102, Aneesh's and Mahitosh's next phone

Well, I moved to Montreal, Canada in Sept-2004, and it was time for a new phone. And of course this time, phone with 2 years contract, to make phone almost free! The first purchase was with Bell-Canada, and I opted to low-end AudioVox flip phone for almost $30. From here began my journey of flip-phones, and I always loved them. Along with my roommate, +Rakesh Surendra , I bought this phone, in red color and Rakesh got the blue one (only 2 colors available!). Good thing about flip phone is (other than it being compact), it needs only one Camera! The camera on outer front flap could take self-portraits, and front display in mono-color would show what your are clicking, when the flap is closed. Colored screen for first time, ability to store few songs, camera with flash, internet support..... this was just wow for me! This was my first and last CDMA phone too. Used it for full 2 years contract period, and when it was time to renew the contract I decided to change the carrier. Bell-Canada was not the cheapest to offer the plans as I paid almost $45 per month for 2 years!

I switched to Fido, again with a 3 year contract, however, I did not plan to stay in Canada for that long. With given technology limitations, I could not do number portability from Bell's CDMA to Fido's GSM service. Meanwhile, Bell-Canada gave me amazing offers, to continue with them, and then Fido did the same. I ended up retaining both phones/numbers for less than $45 per month total!! How the negotiations worked out is explained here. This time, I wanted to have a no-compromise phone, and selected a Sony Ericsson Z710i. Available in Dark Grey and Champagne colors only, I chose the grey one!. Sony, famous for it's optics and sound, had put a wonderful (for that time) camera and music player in the phone. The camera was even tilted with respect the flip cover, so as to take take straight photos when flap is open (flap opens < 180deg). Dedicated music buttons on front flap outside, so as to control music on the go! Even the hands-free had music control panel! I had put a 256Mb memory I guess, and had around 50 songs in it! One of the smart feature was it's horizontal antenna, so as to make it comfortable in the pocket. Sony used this design in many more phones.

Sony Ericsson had started marketing it's phones for different USPs, such as 'W' series for walkman, 'K' series for camera etc. The Z series was ultimate of all, and had all best hardware available! This was the time, when Infra-red was assumed as a good technology, and the phone had that too! I brought this phone back to India, while gave away my AudioVox to a friend of mine in Canada itself. Since, this one was on 3-years contract, I had to jail-break it in 2007 sometime.

Sony Ericsson Z710i

After coming back to India, I started with one of the phones, which a friend visiting from India, had forgot with me in Canada: the mighty phone from Nokia's 3000 series, 3315! It was so heavily used, that the number panel had gone blank! This was my first Nokia phone! A demotion from what I had been using, but this was the quickest thing I had ready with me, given my Z710i was locked. The problem was not only that my Z710i was locked and I could not use it, but I had put a daily alarm in Z710i while in Canada, and even if the phone is off, it would come to life automatically at alarm time, would ring and shut down. I could not even switch off the alarm as it would not let me go past the first locked screen. I had to remove the battery and store it, till I got it "unlocked".

The Nokia 3315 was easy to use, and well of course the most sturdy of all! It doesn't need a description here, as most of us have used it or it's siblings some or the other time in life!

Destiny brought me back with Motorola soon! I bought a phone for my father, but he refused to use a mobile phone, and I ended up using it for few months. It was an economical Motorola C115, from the same C family, of which I had used C200, 3 years back. This was starting of 2007. The phone was basic, had very hard keys, and of course had nothing to satisfy my greed. It was just a short stop, before I could find a job in India and treat myself with a bigger phone!

Soon enough, after getting a job in Mahindra, I saw a smart phone with a friend +Jaideep Gurav. It was Sony Ericsson P990i!! One of the biggest and most high-tech phones ever! What was so special about the phone? Well, everything! It was smart-phone, with touch-screen (resistive), with stylus, with number-pad and a full qwerty keyboard, and on screen key-board, with hand-writing recognition, with blue-tooth, infra-red, 3G ready, front camera for Video chat, amazing rear camera (2MP only but great quality!), Blackberry service compatible, dedicated camera key, came with it's docking station to charge, listen to music and connect with computer at same time! Came with replaceable panel if key-pad to be removed and to be used as a palm-top. Included a small tool-kit with it! The price was around 24k when Jaideep bought it, and I got it for only 12.5k from some online deal! Jaideep was definitely not very happy, but I loved the deal and the phone! The 'P' series from Sony referred to the Professional series.

The phone had everything I could imagine. An inbuilt app for business card reader, which would take photo of any business card, and do optical scan, and converts the whole info into contact-card of person, with all fields including company info, addresses, and even Logo! The resistive screen made it so precise to use the stylus, that even using on-screen qwerty virtual keyboard was easy. Hard keys all around it, and so many shortcuts, I rarely had to go inside the menu. Music quality was AWESOME, typical Sony! Another good feature was the physical scroller, which made the phone-use even simpler. Just can't explain how many functions it had! Only difficulty I had was to find a suitable case for it!

The phone was made for fun as well as business! This was probably one of my most favorite gadgets I have owned till date (all gadgets I mean!). It made me addicted to touch screen and qwerty key-boards, and till this day I look forward to having a physical key-board in the phone! I gave it to one of my friend when I upgraded in 2009, and then gave it to my brother to use temporarily. Haven't sold it yet, and would rather retain it just for the love! The phone was predecessor to the P1i series of Sony. It was only limited by that time's technology of processing power and RAM, but till that time, no one was looking for these details. Being smart enough (the phone), I did download many applications for the phone! It did come along with free document viewer & editor (word, excel, ppt, pdf!).

Well, in 2009, the race for smart phones had begun, and I did not want to stay behind. I thought of upgrading again, but something state-of-the-art this time. But had no money. Big bro came to rescue and offered me a phone as gift. I had my eyes on Sony Xperia X1. Full touch-screen, and slide key-board! It would have all Sony qualities anyway, music and optics! When I visited Delhi, we went for phone shopping, but not to find a single dealer keeping Sony. The Xperia was another dream phone, which paved the path for current Xperia series of Sony Androids. But I could never own one.

Well, the closest rival to Xperia was Nokia's grand entry, N97! The most expensive phone of it's time. Big brother happily bought one for me! Costed him 30k! Had all possible hardware in it, accelerometer, GPS, ambient light sensor, etc etc. I had installed tons of applications on it. Nokia's OVI store did not exist that time, and I had to look for symbian applications all over the web! I used this phone for so many things, music, camera, GPS navigation, data logging and what not! This was my first true smart phone. Camera, 5MP, Carl Zeiss optics, with LED flash; I would go back to Nokia phone some day just for the camera! There was nothing better than it's camera for next 2-3 years! The stylus was big, and had to be stored in the pouch separately. I had bought many accessories for the phone from time to time. It had stereo speakers, and listening to songs from phone directly was fun! The tilted screen while opened, gave it a unique look. The key pad was soft, and four-way mouse pad was very useful. The phone was mighty in many terms.

Nokia E-75 Competition for

I had another option, while buying it, Nokia E-75, a business series phone. Had almost everything which N97 did, but the touch-screen, and costed 10k less! But, 'dil hai ki maan-ta nahin' and I settled for N97 only! Now I think E-75 could have been a good option, given the problems I had to face with N97. Well to start with, since there was no dedicated slot for stylus, I lost it soon, and ended up buying many after-market substitutes. Then the screen became non-responsive so many times, and phone used to hang very often, thanks to it's very low RAM and high 32GB internal memory! Then the side lock button got lost, and I had to install an application which would use the ambient sensor to lock and unlock the phone! Nokia also realized the problems very soon, and launched the N97 mini, with smaller screen and 8GB internal storage. My friend +Sagar Shah bought it, as he was much impressed by my N97. His mini worked better than my N97 in many ways.

N97 though had one of the best cameras ever, but had a very peculiar problem: the sliding camera cover. Over time, the cover would accumulate dust and would cause scratches over camera lens. The day time photos were still great, but night photos with flash got screwed. Many people had this problem, and that is why probably Nokia eliminated the cover in N97-mini. Duel LED flash was superb though! I sold mine just last year for 7k!

N97 Camera with scratches

The phone was followed by many smart phones later from Nokia, and next in line was N-900, with open source software! People good with coding bought this phone specially to design their own GUI! Nokia had also launched a very similar model, which I did not know till very late, N79. It was candy model, and had same hardware of N97, except the touch-screen and qwerty keyboard. Nokia wanted to make it so similar, that it carried over the slide lock button (which eventually goes bad), and slide camera cover (which again goes bad). It was the closest to N97 after N97-mini, in terms of hardware and functionalities.

Nokia N79 - with changeable back panels

N79 Camera carried over from N97, 5MP Carl Zeiss with Slide cover

I got to use N79, after my N97 stopped working, as my wife had one. I gifted her a new phone and got N79 for myself to use briefly. Again, the software had issues and phone started behaving crazy! Nokia has to learn one thing, as long as they were making non-smart phones, they were market leaders, and known for the quality and reliability. But the smart phone series (specially the N series) had so many glitches, that you feel like throwing away the phone at times. If nothing, Nokia can learn from Apple that giving all the hardware is not must, but making the hardware work is most important. This was my 3rd Nokia phone, and probably another Nokia is not coming in near future, since I have shifted to Android totally!

To get N79 from my wife, I had gifted her a Micromax Bling. One of it's kind, and girls' favorite at a time! Perhaps the cutest thing ever happened to phone was Bling! Looking at it just getting opened by side flip was fun!

Well, I never had to use it myself, thank God, but had my share of going through the settings and performance. The phone was so girlish, that not only it had fake diamonds studded all over, and had a mirror at the back, and wasmade like a make-up kit, and had a pink theme, but it also had women-specific apps! It did sell like anything! Sure, Micromax's marketing team did a good job in putting together the requirement, only if the engineering team had put the same effort in making a decent quality phone. My wife did not even use for an year and started demanding another one, due to it's poor voice performance and call drop issues. Well, for 5.5k it was not a bad deal to use for an year, and recently sold it for Rs. 500 with the broken glass! Meanwhile, I used it as MP3 player, connected to my music system! Micromax launched another phone later on same platform for men, called 'Eclipse', which came in carbon black color, and did away with all the jewelry.

I had to buy another phone for my wife, and this time with her choice, we got HTC Wildfire for 13k. The competition was with LG Optimus One - entry level android from LG that time. The phone was good, touch was great, little slow, but ok for her. Nothing amazing about the phone, and nothing to complain about. Only that she dropped it so many times that I had to replace the touch-panel 2 times in 2 years. Sold that too recently for 3k with partial working screen! Camera was the most let-down feature of the phone, given the era and specs (5MP). My Sony P990i's 2MP was much better at job! HTC upgraded the model to Wildfire-S, with improved RAM, which was very much required, and eliminated the optical button at the bottom, which mostly went unnoticed!

HTC Wildfire: Nothing great, nothing bad

My wife has finally moved to Karbbon Titanium S5 very recently, which comes highly recommended btw. I haven't used it much, other than installing apps for her. But the phone is great for the price (bought it for 9.7k)!

Well, after trying all hanging phones, including N97, N79, HTC Wildfire, I finally wanted a phone with REAL GOOD config. Waited for almost 6 months, and finally got myself a Samsung Note-2 last year. The DAY it was launched!! Paid 40k, and 3 days later, Samsung reduced the price to 37k!!! Really bad move on Samsung's part. Now at least I am not buying a Samsung phone in it's first month of launch, in future. Now the phone is available for 28k in market. Well, Note-2 does not need introduction again, but it is again one of it's kind, with Capacitive screen BUT with a stylus or S-Pen as they call it! My experience of P990i and N97 comes back with Note-2! S-Pen was probably the biggest reason I bought the phone for. With technology shifting from Resistive to Capacitive for better touch-feel, they had to do away with stylus. But Samsung's magnetic screen brings back the fun! High processing power and 2GB RAM with many more high-tech things, Note-2 is still one of the fast phones in the market, given how rapidly technology changes these days! I am fairly happy with it, and have to live with it's limitations.

Hopefully, Samsung has improved the Note-3 for all problems in Note-2. The overheating of Note-2 while using internet is one of the most common issues. Keep it in your trouser pocket, and you start to feel the 'heat'. The S-pen design is not as good as original Note (1), as the new S-pen has spring action nib, which does not give a firm feel while writing. The back panel for such a huge phone is made to slip out of hand intentionally, so that you drop it more often and shift to Note-3 in 1 year!. Note-1 had matt finish and came with free flip cover. Flip cover for Note-2 has to be bought for 1.7k extra!! That is like almost as much as the first phone I bought! While making S-notes, the palm touches the 'back' button by mistake and your are out of the application for no reason. Well, after spending 40k on it, I will have to live with it for at least another 2 more years, and this time I am not upgrading just for higher processing or higher RAM, but for a new technology all together - will wait for flex displays or something else!

May be a good time to mention a special phone, which I have never used or even seen in physical form, but it has played very important role in my life, Nokia 8210. I was named after this in my 1st year of B.Tech. Rest is history as some of my friends know!