My new phone - Nokia Navigator 6210 - Never get lost again

What are the top two foolish things for a person do do during these time of recession?

• Changing a job
  
• Unnecessary spending money on gadgets
  

Having done both of them the past month, lets throw some more light on my the second one(the first is going to a boring talk anyways) i.e. shelling out around 14k for a GPS enabled phone in India where roads are re routed daily, house numbers are more randomly defined than a Java random number generator :-).
Nokia Navigator 6210 is my latest phone. Being a loyal Nokia fan for almost the last ten years, my first task was cut shot when i decided to go for a GPS phone was that I would be looking out only for Nokia. Call me biased, but i personally feel Nokia platform (Symbian) has got some great support and usability of Nokia phones is definitely an USP.
Quite a few phones are now available in the Nokia stable offering GPS facilities. But the cheapest one at this time was Nokia 6210 with 6 months on Navigation license (though being a Navigator series phone an unimited Navigation license was expected).
To clear your doubts first what is Navigation and is it the same as GPS. Though Nokia's site does have a good explanation of the same, for the impatient ones Nokia Phones now come bundled with an application called Nokia Maps (2.0). GPS Feature is free for life and you don't pay anybody anything for them (except minimal data transfer charges if you use AGPS which quickens up the initial GPS process). Using GPS you can find your current location on the map which is updated as you walk or drive. This feature is free for life across all Nokia GPS phones i know of.
But navigation takes this a step further by providing various value added services like routing of directions, voice based navigation, POI (point of interests) etc. In Nokia 6210 this comes free for the first 6 months and 8 Indian cities and later on you can buy a license of your liking.
Besides the default Nokia 6210 Navigation, you can also installed third party apps like Google Maps (+ves reliable, free, -ves no voice based navigation, data transfer charges as maps are downloaded over the internet), mapmyindia.com(one time license fee) etc. Personally i am a big fan of Google Maps.

Coming back to the phone, below i briefly mention some of the pros/cons of the handset and my recommendation about the same. You can get a details of the phone features and specifications from its official website http://www.nokia.co.in/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_934156

Pros

1. Good navigation features (AGPS, 6 months free navigation)
2. Digital compass for pedestrian navigation
3. Great screen size and display
4. Battery life is good
5. A true smart phone with lot of support for third part apps (like voip, messengers etc.)
6. Firmware is pretty stable and hasn't crashed on me after 3 weeks of continous use.
7. Works as a pretty good music phone too.
   

Cons

1. Build quality is a real bummer has a plasticy feel written all over on it, and is very much susceptible to dust.
2. The top three keys below the sliders are not very easy to operate. So this phone is a strictly no no if you are an avid texter
3. Being a Navigation phone a lifetime navigation license was expected. But it comes bundled only with a 6 months navigation license.
4. Images taken from the camera could have been better. The LED flash sucks
   

Recommendation

Go for it if you are looking for a great GPS smartphone. If you are loooking for good build quality or a music phone there are definitely better options out there.

Rating 7/10

Internet Problems (Edge) on Nokia Navigator 6210 with Airtel Mobile Office in Delhi, India

I have a Nokia 6210 phone bought from an authorized Nokia Care Center in Delhi two weeks ago.  The software version on the phone is 3.08 dated 11-June 2008. It also mentions custom version as 03.08.c00.01

I am an Airtel Prepaid customer in New Delhi, India and had been using Mobile Office service on my prepaid number for some time. It worked perfectly fine for my Nokia 6233. On my current Nokia 6210 the Internet connection works fine for the first time through the built in browser or though any other application (like Google Maps, Gmail etc) which required internet and displays the sign  signifying that the edge connection is active.

 

The problem is that once I close the application the standby sign for Edge network is displayed as follows and no matter what I am unable to use the internet connection on the phone until I do the following

1. Restart the phone (which definitely isn’t a good option)
2. Wait for around 8-10 minutes after which the Edge on hold sign disappears and is replaced by  which means that the edge is available
3. I found this out accidentally, but if I press the keys *123# which I typically use for enquiring balance, the on hold sign goes away and is replaced by the Edge available sign.

 Not sure where the problem is. I really doubt it’s got to do something with Airtel as the same number worked perfectly fine with my previous Nokia phone in the same area. In addition my wife’s phone (again an Airtel prepaid number) is working great in the same area. So either this has got to do something with the handset or the compatibility of the handset with the Airtel, New Delhi.

 

I have tried various sets of setting from the following sources

1. The wizard in built in the handset
2. Getting the settings from the Nokia site
3. Getttng the settings from Airtel Customer Care

 

But with all of them I am facing the same set of problems.

 Anybody out there facing similar problems or have any suggestions for the same?

Update 22nd April 2009

This most likely looks like a problem with Airtel or compatibility issue between Airtel and this handset. The reason i say so is that recently Airtel has also launched daily plan for mobile office with the following tarrfis. You can view this menu by keying in the following *567# and pressing the dial button and choosing to activate internet (if you get an message that mobile office is already activated, deactivate it once and then activate it again)

1. Rs 10 per day for 3 MB
   
2. Rs 20 per day for 8 MB
   
3. Additional data for the above to be charged at 20 paise for 50 kb.
   

Already existing plan 30 paisa for 50 kb

Once I migrated to plan 1 or 2 above the problem ceased to exist. So this means once the internet connection is stopped and i get an update form Airtel regarding the balance in my prepaid account, that seems to be the root cause of this issue. As this thing does not occur with Plan 1 and Plan 2, the problems do not exist there. 

Any ideas anyone?

Airtel Drops a Bombshell in the form of "Airtel' Fair Usage Policy"

Comcast did it, so did AT&T in the US along with numerous other ISP's. It's the turn of Airtel to follow suit. As per the notice put up by Airtel they would be implementing an "Airtel' Fair Usage Policy" which gives them the power to cut down your bandwidth speed to half (at the same charges) after you cross a specified data transfer limit in your unlimited(They should now remove this word, isn't it?) data broadband limit.

The details of this awesome :-) plan are available here 

http://www.airtel.in/applications/xm/Fair_Usage_Policy.pdf

The rest of the details are pretty sketchy here, not to mention since when this has been implemented, where we may check our usage, whats our usage etc. etc.

Strange that we do get automated calls and all kind of advertisement with our Airtel Bill, but Airtel found it quite unnecessary to inform us about this update from their end which would be hitting us directly. I found an online petition against this move from Airtel which can be accessible here  http://afup.broadbandforum.in/

If you feel this issue is important to you, use the power of Social Media (twit, blog, social networking sites etc.) to spread the word around and make people aware of it, as looks like Airtel is not gonna do that for sure.

Delhi 6 Music Review

Movie - Delhi 6

Music Director - A.R. Rahman

Director - Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Lyrics - Prasson Joshi

After creating magic with Rang De Basanti in 2006, the trio combination of A.R. Rahman, Prasoon Joshi and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra are back with Delhi 6. So do they manage to carry on their RDB phenomena forward? You bet they do...

Rating 9/10

Slumdog Millionaire Music Review

After winning the Golden Globe for best music and getting four music related Oscar nominations Slumdog Millionaire "original" audio cds are finally avaiable in India. So does the music lives up to the hype it has been creating for the past two months now?

Ringa Ringa

Singers - Alka Yagnik, Ila Arun

For some strange reasons the Indian version of this album opens up with the typical bollywood item number "Ringa Ringa". You can definitely feel the hangover the song "Choli Ke Peeche" in this song and the fact that the same set of singers have been used for the same heightens the same. Personally I thought this was the weakest link of the album, but surprisingly this still made as the opening track. Ila Arun and Alka Yagnik are great as usual.

Jai Ho

Singers - Sukhvinder Singh , Tanvi Shah , Mahalaxmi Iyer, Vijay Prakash

One of the song which has won A.R. Rahman an Oscar nomination is definitely the picks of the album. Allegedly this song was created for the film "Yuvraaj" but unluckily (or luckily ;-) ) Subash Ghai decided not to use it in his film and hence it was used for SDM. Poetic lyrics by Gulzaar sahab are great with Sukhvinder Singh again not disappointing. Definitely one of the tracks to look forward to in this album.

O Saya

Singers - A.R. Rahman, MIA

This song produced in collaboration with MIA has got SDM one more Oscar nomination. Song played alongwith the titles in the movie is amazingly picturized in the slums of Mumbai and A.R. Rahman and MIA lend some great vocals to this song. My favourite in the album, but I guess this may lose out to "Jai Ho" as the frontrunner for an Oscar winner.

All of the rest are typically instrumental songs, gelling really well in the movie though my favourite being "Latikas Theme" and "Liquid Dance". The album is finally concluded by the soulful number "Dreams On Fire".

To conclude I would not recommend this as Rahman's best work, but this definitely another gem in Rahman's cap. Go and enjoy this wonder. :-)

Airtel Offering "Mobile Office" service to Airtel Prepaid in Delhi. Does it rocks or shocks!!!!!

Airtel finally listened to their prepaid customers and recently started offering "Mobile Office" services to their prepaid customers. Though "Airtel Live" services had been available to Airtel prepaid customers for some time, using which we could access limited internet services through the mobile but there was no way we could access the internet using laptop/desktop using our mobile device.

"Mobile Office" to the rescue. One fine day I got a message from Airtel stating that "Enjoy internet services on your Airtel mobile! Dial *567*1#(free) to activate GPRS. 30 paise for 50kb of download without any monthly rental". Not bad I thought, after this at least I would be able to access gmail on mobile (as it never worked with Airtel Live settings on the mobile.). In addition I thought this might also be used for accessing internet on my mobile during my 2hours + of commute daily (at least for chatting if not for browsing purposes due to bandwidth constraint.

Finally I did activate "Mobile Office" on my mobile, and things worked pretty fine, for a few weeks. But with Airtel you can always expect the unexpected. I suddenly noticed that while i am using the internet on the laptop via the mobile for a data transfer of around 2 MB I was charged Rs 150 instead of being charged around Rs 12. I thought maybe it was an error on my part, so for the next two days i specifically noticed my balance before and after connecting to the internet and below were my findings

For 800 kbs I was charged around Rs.50
and
For 300 kbs I was charged around Rs.10

Surprised and shocked when i called the customer care (121) and was regularly juggling between their complaint desk (198) and customer care (121). Nobody had a clue what to do, finally one fine guy at the Airtel Customer care did register the complaint and gave me a reference number. Though I am not very optimistic of this issue being resolved in the near future (being Airtel of course) - refund of my balance is obviously out of question. So just wanted to make all of you aware in case you were planning to use "Mobile Office" for connecting to the internet.

Ghajini Music Review....

This has been a lucky year for A.R. Rahman fans. Begining with a grand opening in "Jodhaa Akbar" followed by a peppy young album in "Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na" alongwith the melodious "Ada". There was no stopping for Rahman with Subash Ghai's magnum opus "Yuvraaj" and finally wrapping up the year with probably the year's most awaited films "Ghajini". For starters being an Aamir Khan movie (and the so popular haircut) , being sold for a record 90 crores even before the release and A.R. Rahman's music made it one of the most sought after movie of the year. So does Rahman does justice to the hype which this movie has managed to create even before it's release ? Read more to find out

Guzarish - Javed Ali, Sonu Nigam (Guest Vocals)
The track begins with a soothing song in the form of "Guzarish". This was the song which was first played in the teasers/promos of Ghajini and really does lives up to the expectations. Javed Ali has done a great job with the vocals with the surprise package being Sonu Nigam, who I believe for the first time has provided his vocals in the background which has really added magic to this song.Lyrics are good an undoubtedly one of the better songs of the album,

Aye Bachchu - Suzanne
To begin with I thought that this was one of the worst song which A.R. Rahman had ever composed and that too for a movie like "Ghajini" was highly disappointing. After a few listenings in typical Rahman's style this turned out to be really addicive and turned out to be favourite in the album. Enjoy the song at high volume to get a feel of this "electric" song with fast beats and liberal use of the "Electric Guitar". I am sure this might turn out to be the song of the movie, once the movie hits the theatre.


Kaise Mujhe - Benny Dayal & Shreya Ghoshal
This slow romantic number of "Ghajini" boasts of some simple but powerful lyrics by Prasoon Joshi. This slow and romantic number grows on you and forms an integral part of this album. Benny Dayal and Shreya Ghoshal look in great form in this song and looks like Rahman's knack of getting the best out of his singers continue.

Behka - Karthik
Visually the most popular song of this album because Aamir Khan features in 5 different looks in the songs and in the end all of them come together. Now this is what i call a typical Rahman song with a lot of freshness. The kind of hip hop beats adds a lot of magic to the song and the best part of the song for me is definitely the segment from 3:58 - 4:08 in which the singer sings in a single breath non stop. Now this is something which only A.R. Rahman can extract from his singers.
In addition from 2:20 - 2:40 the song reminds me of "Maangta Hain Kya" from Rangeela. Karthik has done well with the song and voice blends pretty well with the mood of the song.

Latoo - Shreya Ghoshal
For me this in definitely the weakest link of this amazing album. Looks like a typical situational song with kind of funny lyrics like "Latoo Latoo mein tujhe pe Latoo". Lot of english lyrics thrown in tries to add some punch to this song, but fails. This might catch up once the movie releases.

Kaise Mujhe (Instrumental)
Now there is one thing with A.R. Rahman that at times the instrumental version of the song sounds more powerful than the actual version of the song. "Kaise Mujhe" falls in that category, with just the background music and the background vocals this song is real winner and definitelty one of the high points of the album. Listening to this one would really transform you into a whole new world.


So the final verdict for me this is definitely Rahman's album of the year and his best since "Rang De Basanti", though i still need to hear Rahman's two upcoming albums supoosedly releasing this year "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Connections". Go ahead and grab this album right away.