Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

First a little background on the whole cell phone business, I love mobile phones. My first tryst with a powerful phone was with a Nokia 3100, ok do i hear you laughing ? , well the Nokia 3100 was a Series 40 phone and the 1st one for  which huge amounts of customizations were available and possible via wap sites (most popular one being the ones hosted on tagtag.com , those were the days ).

Anyway , since then I have had an Imate (JAQ) (pathetic service in India),  an Asus (P320) phone (bad build quality), LG (M550) (bad battery and availability of spare parts), a Sony Ericsson (K700i) (awesome phone, no complaints, but I hear service is bad anyway).

I have also briefly used the Samsung C100 (good phone) and Nokia E71 (which is my dad’s phone). Now the Nokia E71 is a powerful phone (not to mention expensive for my pocket too). So its the price factor where the Nokia E63 enters, firstly the looks and physical features.

The Nokia E63 has a plastic look with a matte finish , the E71 has a metallic look which makes it look much more classy.  The metallic look is also a fingerprint magnet and this problem is automatically solved in our Nokia E63 phone. I bought the phone from US BTW under a crazy Amazon deal. The phone has a similar keyboard with a small exception, the spacebar key is smaller than your E71 and allows you to start the flashlight instantly. The smaller spacebar is infact a hindrance to typing if you have big hands like me.

Other than that the E63 lacks GPS, I had grown quite fond of GPS and its omission is an obvious down-point. You can however pair up the Nokia E63 with a bluetooth GPS device.

This was the 1st part of the review, you may read the 2nd part at Indiantechblog.com

Its actually my dad’s phone, but the Nokia E71 is a perfect Indian phone. Rugged, smart and filled with features to the top there is never a dull moment with it. Major features include, good email support, QWERTY keyboard, Wifi and GPS. It kind of reminds me of my old Palm Treo 650 currently being enjoyed by my brother in the US. But be sure to buy a screen protector for the E71 since it has a large screen and silver area near the screen. Good screen protectors also protect the silver area near the screen.

My last 2 mobile phones have been Windows Mobile phones, so i have kind of gotten addicted to the layout and functionality of Windows mobile. But this phone has sort of rekindled my love for Symbian devices which are not touchscreen. Touchscreen is no longer a novelty these days with most cheap Chinese phones being touchscreen and trying to emulate Windows Mobile devices and/or popular N-series models from Nokia. Plus touchscreen phones without keyboards are pretty difficult to use. Qwerty keyboards on the other-hand are indeed a pleasure to operate on.

So this phone has a great battery life, awesome screen, the pictures on it are crisp and clear. The camera is great. Although sometimes the photos can look to be a little bit too overexposed.

The Wifi is superfast and the interface overall is very very responsive. It really kicks the butts of N-series phones in terms of speed. It kicks the butt of my Windows Mobile phones also.

But all in all, super cool phone to have

I pity all of you who dont know about GPS and Geotagging photos. I have been hooked ever since i discovered it. I use the Locr utility in my windows mobile cellphone (also works in Symbian phones). Your phone must have GPS or you must have a Bluetooth GPS receiver.

That way, the photos you take will be implanted with GPS co-ordinates of the location you took the photos at. Its accurate to about 50 metres or so. See the dot highlighted in the photo above, it should have been in the bottom right building. So it essentially means if someone wants to nuke the NSIT COE block using GPS, he/she will hit the library instead

This way when you share photos, you can share the photos using a map with your friends and family. That way they will be able to see where the photos were taken.

Locr is an amazing software. I first discovered it in my father’s Nokia E71 (review soon). Anyway, i installed it on my Asus P320’s windows mobile, thank god the version worked on my phone also even though it was meant for windows mobile 5 and my phone has windows mobile 6.1.

So it has versions for both windows mobile and symbian, so far so good. So the long and short of it. The software allows you to easily embed the information about the GPS coordinates of the location you took your photo. This info is easily recognised by Flickr and Zooomr. So you can actually see the photos you took on a map (and trust me it looks awesome).

Currently i have taken only photos at my house, so i cant show you the feature for privacy’s sake. So i will show you the photos in locations when i go out. Your phone must have GPS for this feature.

  Well if you have a Windows Mobile based Bluetooth phone and love exchanging files among your friends , then there are 2 questions you must have asked yourself or a friend.

1. How to receive incoming files via bluetooth , most windows mobile users find that by default the incoming file feature is disabled in Windows Mobile phones.

2. How to ensure that files received via bluetooth are saved directly onto your memory card. Most smartphones and Pocket PCs have limited internal memory, often just enough to support the default Windows Mobile installation.

The straight answer is a software called Obex Inbox (3rd party software, research before use). Install the software and reboot your Windows Mobile phone.

Now goto settings on your Windows Mobile phone and Just give the path as Storage Card/folder in your Obex settings and all incoming bluetooth beams will be stored in your storage card.

For more Windows Mobile tips and tricks keep watching the blog . The screenshots are taken on the Asus P320 smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.

Well these are general facts about using bluetooth on your windows mobile mobile phones, most people complain that that they are able to send files and images via bluetooth but when receiving they receive errors like “Unable to Connect” or unable to send files. Most think that this error is caused due to their Windows Mobile Phones, but it isnt so (technically), Imate, HTC, Asus etc. wont make phones with bluetooth not able to receive files.  The trick is basically the same for windows mobile 5 and windows mobile 6, i have taken the screenshots from windows mobile 6.1 on my Asus p320 phone, but i remember it was more or less the same on my Imate and its windows mobile 5.

These are the steps needed to setup your windows mobile device to receive photos/music/data files:

Step 1: In Settings click on Bluetooth, select the mode tab and switch on bluetooth and make this device visible to other devices.

Step 2: In Settings , click on Beam and check receive all incoming beams.

After you complete these 2 steps all of your bluetooth incoming beams should reach your mobile phone and you should be able to share photos, files and music with your friends and receive it from them.

But another problem, all incoming files are stored in my documents, how do you ensure that these are stored in storage card ? Answer to that next week