From Dumbphone to Smartphone =)

I have been using dumb-phones for around 6 years. They were alright for my day to day needs, not that I didn't miss some features time to time. But they were simple and reliable companions. Then I came across a Samsung i900 Omnia , not as the primary phone though. IMO it wasn't much reliable for my day to day work, battery backup was bad, Sound quality was not up to my standards, Touch screen was an abomination >_<, and not to mention I hated Windows Mobile 6.5 with that resistive touch screen.

My C902 was almost 18 months old (Still rocking) and I wanted a change, Something reliable with good feature set and something "Smart" xD. So it was either Symbian or Android, I had already ditched WinMo after the bad experience with the i900. Funny thing is I always tend to forget iOS as a smart phone OS (You know what I mean :P ).
Symbian is stable and has a lots of applications but at the same time the UI is boring + old skool. Not to mention more and more developers are abandoning the Symbian ship.

I went ahead and bought an Xperia X10 Mini, teh cheapest and smallest Android device on earth. I must tell you, it's an Eagle in a Parrot's clothing, don't be deceived by the looks. The little thing sports a Qualcomm MSM 7227 600MHz CPU, 256MB Ram (128MB user accessible), and all the bells and whistles you could think of, got a pretty decent camera, and heck it's even got the same Adreno 200 GPU as it's big brother Snapdragon Q8250 (as far as my research is correct). UI is very fast, animations are smooth, capacitive touch screen is a treat to use, and since this thing is small (2.6 inch touch screen) it doesn't draw unnecessary attention when I'm travelling in the Bus :D. On the first day I took it to the office most of my office friends asked me "How do I open the slider ? or the Qwerty Keyboard", LOL

In the next post I will upload some of the cool apps I use.
and BTW here is the link for the Phone specs :)

Impressions on Sony Ericsson C902

It’s been a month since I bought my shiny, brand spanking Sony Ericsson C902. I never thought I would caught up with this mobile mania, My K550i (@W610i) wasn’t bad at all, due to some *sweet* reason I decided to buy a new mobile. There were few contenders in my dream list, as I’m aiming for not so high (lol) they were not that expensive or dreamy for most of the guys... he he.

Here are my concerns.

1). Fast UI.
2). Multi tasking capability.
3). Good Camera. (Well! Better than my modded K550i)

4). Good Multimedia capabilities.

5). Can it be modded to my needs. ?

6). Good battery life.

And here are the few contenders.

1). Nokia 6500Slide. (S40 / Lacks Multi tasking: Crap)

2). Nokia 6220Classic. (S60 / Great camera, Multi tasking, el-cheapo look though :-/ )
3). Sony Ericsson K850i. (A200 / Superb Camera, Multi tasking, great look, chubby though :-/ )

4) .Sony Ericsson C902. (A200 / Great camera, Multi tasking, slim sexy spy (lol) look, relatively smallish screen :-/ )

So the C902 finally won my heart and cost me 35K. Hehe.

Here are the pros,

1). Well built very slim metal body.

2). Exceptional, stylish camera slider.

3). 5MP Auto Focus Camera with Face Detection, Geo Tagging ( Saves the accurate location of the photo taken in EXIF information, and can be viewed on a map /flickr yada yada) and all new Photo Flash+ 8 Touch sensitive Camera buttons. (After all it's a CyberShot :-) )


4). Great multimedia capabilities. (Super fast Media manager , handles 5MP pics each about 2MB like nothing)
5). Accelerometer sensor.

6). HSDPA- 3.6Mbps : w00t!

7). One of the best displays of SE : Great sunlight legibility.
8). Smart search for contacts, filter SMS into categories.

9). Track ID Music recognition (It Rocks)

This screen shot is from a live footage of mine. lol (Refer the previous post for full details)

10) .Yeah baby! This (A200) can be modded .. :)

11). Great battery life.

Unfortunately here are the cons,

1). Slower UI compared to my K550i :( (Still C902 wins hands down in media playback)

2). Photo flash is not as powerful as Xenon or as SE suggests.

3). Smallish screen. 2.0” (Coz of 8 Touch sensitive camera buttons around the screen)

4). Distant Night shots are far from perfection due to underpowered LED flash, not a complete disaster either.. lol

5). Display is a Fingerprint magnet

Click to view the full sized image

As you can see there are many reasons to buy this nifty thing though there are few drawbacks as well, who cares ? Nothing is perfect.. lol
As a whole I'm satisfied with SE C902 and recommend to everyone

P.S: On a side note I would like to mention that this is the James Bond's phone in Quantum of Solace :P

Pictures : Courtesy of a 5610XM (Yohan :-) )