Gratefulness…

Before I start this post, a word of thanks to Rahul Gaitonde, who posted one of my older posts on Nokia N-Gage (:-) Keep on writing buddy, someone is reading :-D) on his blog and rekindled my writing spirit. It is like Amitji watching Himesh Reshamiya’s attempt at acting in ‘Aap Ka Suroor’ and appreciating it. Gives me enough fillip to create ‘Aap Ka Suroor – 2’, nonetheless. The only sad part is that I have replaced my ‘N-Gage Classic’ with the ‘Nokia N-70 Music Edition’ phone. After much R&D, I managed to narrow down on this one. Other phones which I considered were Nokia E-62, Nokia E-61 and Sony-Ericsson w810i. This time, I wanted a phone that looked like a phone and thus had to eliminate both the E-series phones. Another shortcoming of E-series phones is the lack of FM tuner. What made me decide on N70ME over w810i was the 1GB RSMMC, familiar Symbian OS environment and the fact that I was upgrading from one of the first generation N-series phones (Yes, I’ve heard that N-Gage Classic and N-Gage QD were the first two N-series phones).

The Nokia N70 Music Edition



It's a 108.8 x 53 x 17.5 mm, 126 grams black phone with Triband GSM and WCDMA. It comes with 22MB internal memory, a 176 x 208, 256K colour TFT screen, a 2MP camera and a VGA camera. On the connectivity front, it supports GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Bluetooth 2.0 and USB Pop-port.

On the software side, it has Symbian OS 8.1a (S60 UI) and comes pre-loaded with a lot of software like QuickOffice suite, Acrobat Reader, etc. Has decent stereo sound output and comes with a 1GB RSMMC, enough to store around a couple of hundred mp3s. And this feature-packed phone comes at a price of INR 13200.

Pros and Cons

• Has looks of a decent executive phone


• Has next generation connectivity options like 3G and EDGE, lacks WLAN though


• Good PIM capabilities


• 2MP Camera comes with a cover


• Not very impressive battery life


• Decent Sound quality, but inferior to most of the walkman phones


• Comes pre-loaded with useful software


• Comes pre-loaded with 100 songs (No necessity at all)


• Visual Radio

Why Music Edition?
The things that differentiate an N70 from an N70ME are

• 1 GB RSMMC


• ME Headphones


• 100 pre-loaded songs

The music edition headphones are the ones that come with an N71. I haven’t really compared these with the N70 headphones but I’ve heard that they are better than the original N70 headphones. Visual Radio (FM Tuner) makes it a complete music phone.

What has changed?
One striking difference between N-Gage Classic and the N70ME is the ease by which I can set up the phone for different functionality. Settings’ Wizard lets me configure, GPRS and EDGE for any GSM operator in India at the click of a button. Configuring GPRS in N-Gage Classic was more complex. Things like connectivity with PC, Synchronization, etc have all become a layman’s stuff as opposed to techie stuff earlier.
All in all, N70 Music Edition is a great value for money buy.

Talking of music, Sleeveless Mini Mathur – 3 ;-) has commenced and this time the judges include Udit Narayan, Alisha Chinay, Javed Akhtar and the ever-available Anu Malik. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, it’s Indian Idol -3. Lack of Sonu Nigam on the panel of judges hurts but again, can be done away with so long as Mini is hosting the show. It still being the early, piano round episodes, I get to hear more of music and less of those emotional result declaration episodes where everyone takes Atalji-style pauses wherever possible.

Among the other things, I have learnt the macro-economics behind the relationship between inflation, money supply and appreciating Rupee, the hard way. Having bought a lot of tech-stocks on correction, and having averaged out on every subsequent correction, here’s my attempt at explaining the rupee appreciation.

The Rupee appreciation was a long anticipated event taking into consideration, deluge of foreign investment (FDI and FII) inflows in the recent past and around 200 billion dollars worth foreign reserves in the Indian exchequer. However, like india, most of the Asian countries have prevented their currencies from appreciating for a long time now in the fear of losing out on exports to their other Asian counterparts. However, in the backdrop of high inflation at the time when some of Indian states are going to polls, government took every possible measure from CRR hikes to price control threats to some industries to curb inflation. The appreciating rupee came to the rescue here as rising rupee means cheaper imports and thus lower costs. The RBI intervened as little as possible and let the rupee appreciate. Weakening of dollar against all major currencies was also one of the causes of rupee appreciating against the dollar. Now, with inflation tamed to a more acceptable level and exporters crying out loud against this sharp rise, government has assured the India Inc. against any such further sharp movements in the rupee. However, as told by commerce minister, Mr. Kamal Nath, appreciating rupee in the long term is a fact of Indian economy and that whether they like it or not, the exporters have to live with it. Huh!!! I think that is enough for today…

My N-Gage

Ever since I got my first smart-phone I wanted to write about "The New Generation Mobile Phones" and especially "My Nokia N-Gage Classic". I had bought it in the month of November year before last to celebrate my so-called good score in the 7th semester engineering exams (So-called because it was good when compared to my entire engineering academic performance till then… ;-)). It is a 3’’ X 7’’ black beauty that made my wallet lighter by around 10K rupees (No, I was not looted… It includes a 256 MB SD MMC). Actually it was the most precious thing I possessed then and it continues to be the most precious thing I possess till date (Yes I am earning these days but again I’ve become too lazy to go to mandi and buy some stuff apart from the fact I don’t like spending my hard earned money ;-)). I had done a lot of research on the Internet before narrowing down to this piece and among the other factors that influenced me to buy this one were its modest cost (other smart-phones where almost twice its price) and the fact that I can use it as a repellent for street dogs to bhagaofy them when I return home late in the night. Poor quadruped creatures really think that it is a stone and run away. :-D.

Going a bit technical it has a 104MHz ARM924 Processor, 3.4 MB System Memory, 3.5 X4.15 cm TFT screen, FM Radio, Hardwired MP3 Player, is enabled with Bluetooth 1.1, J2ME and GPRS and uses Symbian OS.

Going a bit aesthetic some people find its shape really sporty whereas some people think that if aliens use any mobile phone it is N-Gage.

I have increasingly grown dependent on the phone and now a normal life seems impossible without N-Gage. I get up in the morning with N-Gage alarming me at 6:30 sharp. The ‘Talking Clock App’ can play all sorts of monstrous sounds to wake me up. I am seriously thinking of recording my ML’s “Prasad, what are you doing today?” wala dialogue that he says with a “God, what an over smart, idiot you are” expression on his face to use as my wake-up alarm and frighten me up in the early hours. At eight o’clock it reminds me of important events of the day including anniversaries and birthdays. I never send any “Wish you many many happy returns…” SMS though, as ‘SMS-Timer App’ automatically does the job for me at 10 o’clock. While I am traveling to the office, I put on the headphones and listen to Malishka blabbering some useless stuff on 93.5 or at times the loads of Junglee Songs stored on my MMC. N-Gage has stereophonic output giving you an acceptable sound quality (though not as good as an IPod or a sony-ericsson W800i). In the meantime I update my daily expenses using ‘Money Manager App’ by adding an entry for the 11 rupees that I gave to the Rickshawwallah as I was a bit late as usual and was most likely to miss my bus. At this point, my analytical mind demands all sorts of statistical data about my expenses and I watch a tabular representation of all my expenses ranging from food to traveling. I frown after looking at a big 0 against the row having “Expenses on Girlfriend” header. After my bus reaches the office premises, N-Gage automatically switches to “Silent Mode” with ‘MiniGPS App’. It is one of the most intelligent Apps on my cell that actually uses and remembers the cell ids of different cells as I move around them and does anything from “Reminding me about buying a magazine when I pass by local Paperwallah or switch the cell off whenever I enter the office conference room. I immediately head towards the canteen when my ML calls up to know my whereabouts. Damn… I have ‘smartAnswer App’ working for me here… I press a short-cut key that plays traffic sound in the background and I tell my ML about the deadly Mumbai traffic and how I get stuck on road everyday (Probably he will give me a release from the project after listening to my sorrow story everyday ;-)). After making an entry of the lunch expenses in the canteen in the afternoon, I return back to my beloved chair and put the headphones back where they belong. Dhawal drops by in the lazy afternoon hours and challenges me to a one-on-one ‘Virtua Tennis Game’. After beating him badly in the game (He thinks I have better playing conditions as N-Gage's 9-way round cursor joystick allows me some magical shots that his bulky 6600 does not allow him to play) I get back to my work. At around 5:30 or so Yogita sends in a message on ‘Bluetooth Messenger’ to ask if I am going to join in for another half an hour of tea break in the canteen. I lock the PC, message Rohit on the Messenger about the important meeting in the canteen and get going. Late in the evening at around 8:30 Varun calls in from Chennai to update me about the newer problems that he’s introduced in his life on the day. He also uses some very decent language for our ML. I obviously have ‘Call Recorder App’ switched on to save our conversation for re-airing in the canteen at the evening meeting the next day. While coming back in the evening, I use ‘SmartMovie App’ to watch my Friends Collection on my cell. Watching on tiny screen is not very interesting I must say but kills time nonetheless. I go home and switch on my computer. I synchronize my mobile with the computer and also use ‘ProfiMail App’ to download my Gmail Inbox onto the mobile so that I can read mail whenever I have time. There are a hell lot of other things I do with my mobile like looking up meaning of words in the middle of a meeting when someone uses a word outside my limited vocabulary, Browsing from the mobile by sharing my computer’s internet connection over Bluetooth using ‘OperaMini App’and so on…

I wanted this post to be an informative one mentioning latest advances in the world of mobile phones and capabilities of Smart phones but it turned out to be an ode to my “Nokia N-Gage Classic”. I will cover technicalities of S60 phones in some other post.

By the way I still cannot stop myself from appreciating my phone a bit more and the latest news is that someone has recently offered me a resell value of Rs. 6000/- for my phone (Yes this time it is without that 256 MB MMC :-D). I am not going to give it up at any damn cost though.