Nokia 5800 and Ovi

During my recent Thailand trip, I really came to appreciate my decision to go in for a 5800 rather than an iPhone.

1. You can swap SIM cards easily. I reached Thailand and found Airtel charging me Rs. 100/- per min incoming and some equally exorbitant charges for SMS etc. Browsing around a bit in the airport itself, I found a dtac shop selling a dtac happy prepaid card for just 99/- Baht which allowed free incoming for a month. Also, browsing via GPRS was 1 Baht a minute - I quickly sent off an EMail to all my friends and colleagues teling them about my new temporary number and I was all set.
2. Maps are downloaded to hard disk. Before I left for Thailand, I downloaded all Thailand maps to my device. It is really convenient in a foreign country to be able to find your way with GPS without paying data charges (and GPRS is not that fast in the first place)
   
3. Dictionary App. OK, I am sure no one has even heard of this before. But Dictionary is Nokia's free dictionary and translation app that gets installed with Firmware v20. Sitting at home, its pretty useless. Out in a Thai market, surrounded by people who dont know English, it becomes a killer app. I installed Thai language and text to speech file on my phone and it was amazingly useful while roaming around

I also tried out geo-tagging a few images this time around. I havent gotten them uploaded yet, lets see how they turn out...

Once I got back one of the first things I did was upgrade my frimware to v21.0.025. For some reason, the firmware had disappeared in Nokia Software Updater, but I managed to get it via OTA update - which supposedly is not supported in India. Nokia India seem almost drunk in the way they manage things sometimes - firmware appear, disappear, reappear months later. Ovi store is available over a browser, but the phone app cannot be downloaded via "Download!". I install the app by downloading it off an unofficial website and it works perfectly - meaning there is no logical reason for it not to be available in India.

Still Nokia is a pretty good company - their approach to a phone is to treat it like a computer. You can download just about anything from anywhere and install it. More and more apps have been coming out for the 5800 - Nokia Mobile VPN is now supported on the 5800. Also, I managed to successfully register myself on My Nokia for the first time - till date, whenever I went to the site, it would somehow manage to crash at the registration screen. Another cool thing I got working is Ovi Sync. This synchs your contacts and calendar to Nokia Ovi over Wifi via the 5800's inbuilt Synchronization app. After this, you can edit your contacts/calendar in your browser, and synch it back to your phone all without ever attaching a single cable. Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 is also now available for 5800, it adds quite a few new features.

Nokia India offers Wavesecure as a free app. This allows you to backup your data to Nokia's servers. In case of phone theft or loss, your phone will automatically lock itself, preventing the use of another SIM with it. Also the data can be restored onto a new phone, essentially keeping eveything on the phone safe.

Ovi store is a very nice addition to Nokia's services. When I first got a 5800, I complained that the Download! app was truly pathetic - even lying about app prices. Nokia has improved on that a bit - at least it now shows "Payment in App" as an option. Still, Download! is no App Store. Ovi Store on the other hand is a decent competitor - the interface is clean and functional, and browsing apps, games and videos is really easy. I found the selection of apps on it rather limited - the best thing I found so far is free videos from Lonely Planet. However, its shaping up to be a real value add for Nokia customers. Lets hope it gets better as time goes on...

Thailand Trip Photos

Photos from my Thailand trip are now up. I have bulk uploaded more or less all the photos here. This is the first time I was able to use my 55-200 lens and some of the wildlife shots are really nice. Normally, I am too lazy to post process my photos, but this time, I will trying to do a bit of that (using Photoshop Express :)) and will upload the results to my Flickr account...

Windows 7 RC

Considering the elections on last Thursday, I took Friday off too to get a looong :) weekend. Luckily for me, Windows 7 RC was released at the same time and I downloaded it. I had the 64-bit beta version installed and despite various warnings that I would have to reinstall from scratch, I was able to find a guide (thanks to LifeHacker) on how to upgrade from Beta.

1. Extract the ISO to a Flash drive
2. Open sources\cversion.ini in Notepad
3. Set MinClient to 7000.0 and save it
4. Run setup from the flash drive inside Windows 7 Beta to upgrade to the RC version
5. Wait and watch as your system reboots 4 (maybe 5!!) times

RC seems pretty much same as Beta - there are minor UI differences, but unfortunately, according to SecurAble, XP mode is not available in my cheap E2200 processor. It seems this problem is Intel specific - most AMD processwors will not face this issue. Not that I care - I am not planning to move to Windows 7 full time anytime soon - XP works well for me, and I still havent got my TV Tuner working in Windows 7. In the meantime, Anandtech has a great article on Windows 7 RC, you can also hit Lifehacker and Microsoft Springboard to find whats new in Windows 7 RC. There's also a video from Microsoft in WMV format if you are interested.

BTW, there's a new firmware v21.0.025 available for the Nokia 5800. In typical Nokia style, its NOT available for India region as yet.

Of Shozu and Telephoto Lenses

March seems to be jinxed for me - blogging wise. Last year I didnt get a single post out and I literally forced myself to write something this year to avoid the same situation. Lets hope April will be better :) At least I am not ranting about my PS3 anymore!

I finally got my 5800 updated to v20 firmware - and its BIG improvement. The UI looks glossier, the response is snappier, it doesnt crash as often on USB Storage Device mode in Windows XP, you can use the front camera for photos and geo-tagging of photos is also supported. The firmware was out on March 6 in India, but I only realized it was available on the 31st - I was trying to use FOTA and that is not supported in India so it kept telling me no new firmware available. I finally got it installed on April 4 after being forced to install Ovi Suite to backup my data. This time, I found that the suite is reasonably lightweight. It does install some services but as long as you dont install Nokia Music and Video apps, its not the nightmare I was visited with last time.

Nokia has been releasing some cool apps for its phone. However, the best app I have found by far as yet is Shozu. This amazing app allows me take a photo with my phone, and upload it to Twitpic, while sending a backup copy to Picasa, or any other of 50+ sites. Twitpic also Twitters the photo. This then updates my Facebook status using the Twitter Facebook App. Net result - a real killer app (and money waster considering Airtel's GPRS rates). Unfortunately, its multi-platform so no advantage Nokia here. BTW, it seems there is a HelloOX hack like a jailbreak for Nokia phones - why you would need it though, I dont know...

Besides this, I had been a bit dissatisfied with the zoom capability of the 18-55mm kit lens on my D40, so I decided to buy a better telephoto. After some research on the available lenses, I decided to go for the 55-200mm VR lens from Nikon. I was lucky enough to run into a nice promotion on EBay - and now I am getting a Aiptek 7" Digital Photo Frame for free with the lens :) Here's how the lens looks like (ya I know the pic sux - taken with my 5800!)

Here are some comparison shots with my D40. First the image using the Kit Lens (18-55mm, maximum zoom)

Then the image using the 55-200mm VR on, maximum zoom

Finally, the image using 55-200mm VR off, maximum zoom.

As expected, VR is not much use during daytime, i.e with fast shutter speeds.

Lastly, I had been trying out Echopic for the last couple of posts since I felt too lazy to go through the hoops Imageshack forces on you... Well, my patience (or lack thereof) has been rewarded - Echopic seems dead and I will have to re-upload the images and update the blog posts anyway. Alas!

Gaming and the iPod Touch

Just when it became possible to jailbreak my iPod Touch 2G without all manner of convoluted contortions, this happens. (I haven't actually jailbroken it yet - but still, it is doable... for now) While the new OS is all shiny and exciting (or will be once its released "sometime in summer 2009"), I am sure it will only add to the amount of time it takes to release a proper QuickPWN type solution for the iPod Touch.

The other interesting thing in the announcement of the new OS is the possible addition of a new iPod Touch model. Apple has historically shown a tendency to not maintain hardware capabilies across hardware iterations. Basically, each time a new hardware revision comes out, the processing power of the device increases - this is an unusual policy for a company which demands that apps work equally well across all hardware iterations. Console makers normally throttle performance on newer hardware even if they have faster CPUs for example, to make sure games run on launch consoles just as well. In Apple's case, the device capability goes something like this: iPod Touch (1G) < iPhone < iPhone (3G) < iPod Touch 2G. So the release of a new hardware will lead to more work for both developers and testers (as well as loss of my bragging rights for having the most powerful iPod Touch)

I have been buying quite a few iPhone games, the latest being ExZeus and Enigmo. I know I can probably get them for free if I jailbreak, but the things are quite cheap ($5 at max) and I really don't want to void my warranty over that. In fact, one of the best iPhone games I have found (iDracula) costs only $0.99 and recently added a ton of content - additional maps and gameplay modes.

There are quite a few sites where you can get reviews of iPhone apps and games - for some reason, traditional gaming sites (like IGN) haven't really caught up to the gaming appeal of the device and as a result are rarely consulted. Some of these are my personal favorites SlidetoPlay and Touch Arcade. There also some sites that cater to all types of apps - such as AppVee and 148 Apps.

The quality of games coming out is also steadily improving - ExZeus's graphics are stunning and show what the hardware is really capable of (alas -it kills the battery though) Apple is trying to push the iPod Touch as a gaming console, I think they are largely going to succeed. Japanese console makers have never really been comfortable with online models, and the DS just might have finally met its match with the iPod Touch and its extensive AppStore. (The PSP and UMD never even had a chance I think)

In other notes, Nokia is releasing quite a few free apps for the 5800, go grab them :) Support from third party developers is also increasing - see this list of chat applications for example...