[Via] LMN

Next up is the latest Point and Find application that Nokia is bringing up which was showcased at Nokia World 2008. Point & Find application lets your phone do search via the use of your camera, where you open your phone’s camera and point it at for eg. a Hollywood movie poster, and the application automatically tells you about the movie. Check out the following video for a quick demo. I am really looking forward to this application

Okay, now a really interesting device was just shown up on Nokia USA website. It’s the 5710 XpressMusic rumors a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, as well as a slight visual makeover from its present counterpart 5700. Well lets see if we can get an official word on this.

And, finally Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will go on sale in the UK on Friday 23rd January for £249 SIM Free (includes VAT). Available exclusively through the Nokia Flagship Stores in Heathrow Terminal 5 and Regent Street. From Friday 30th January, the Nokia 5800 will then become available through Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile UK, Virgin Mobile, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U.

5. No Comes With Music (Okay, we know its still not available in many countries but what good is an XpressMusic without a music service. Although the Amazon MP3 store will be there but the eat as much as you want will be gone. So, can you live with that?)

4. No Ovi (I really like the Ovi umbrella services. They are great way to share media and files straight from your device and keep your contacts in sync. No way Google can substitute these)

3. No Beta Apps Or N-Gage or Download Folder. (God, these are my daily dose of medicines, can’t live without them.)

2. 5800 with a QWERTY keypad (Android seems not to have a touch QWERTY support so that would mean a 5800 would have a slide QWERTY)

1. Nokia Joining the Open Handset Alliance (Like Sony and Garmin have but then making Symbian open source, even though it has its goods and bads, would not have made sense)

The device has phenominal build quality with no creaks or play of whatsoever. Rest I’m sure you all must have heard in the video. A real detailed review is coming up so keep a check. So, if you want one then click here to pre book one for yourself. Well, pre booking is done with a Rs 2000 advance with your local Nokia dealer and the final device should cost around Rs 19000 t0 22000 (depending upon dealer location). This is what we got from the first lucky owners of the device about the sales package contents: Sennheiser LX90 earphones(MRP 4000) and a Priyanka Chopra calendar (for those who prebooked it) + the Phone (duh!), battery, charger, headset, data cable, tv cable, carrying case, stand, 8 gb mem card, a plectrum chord, nd dvd/usermanual. It also comes preloaded with 283 tracks. So there you have it. Ask your local dealer for more details . To find Applications and Themes for 5800 Check our forums

Vishwas brings in his thoughts and has this to share,

” OK. I checked the demo piece at NPD today. For overall experience I give it 8.5/10. Some of the things were slow. For example, camera is still slow (even if better quality), qwerty keyboard was slow, display rotation from portrait to landscape was extremely slow, causing me to wonder whether it will change at all. It did change the orientation but not before blanking out the display for almost a second. Hope the final OS takes care of this. Stylus was toy like yes. Speakers, I was hearing so much about them but did not find them loud at all. Max volume in a crowded mall did not sound as if they are great speakers. What else. Yes, the camera still and video quality is good. GPS/GPRS did not work, nor did WiLAN, so could not check anything regarding maps and internet. In terms of booking and price and goodies, the price is 20k. 600/- for the headphone (optional). No more goodies promised, maybe a box of chocolates thrown in. Phone will be pre-bundles with 100 hindi+100 english songs and special AR Rehman album of 9 songs. Delivery date is not fixed, they just say first week of jan. He mentioned he has to make payment to Nokia in full before he receives the order. He is not likely to do that before 31st.”

If you think you need more then check what Zorawar has to share,

” i went to the dealer yesterday and lay my hands on the demo set. the built quality is pretty decent and so is the finger touch response. speakers dissapointed me a little but the guy there said the final versions for sale will have a better quality. also he said that this is not the final software. about the Sennheiser headfones, he said he might be able to adjust them in the total price and give me a best buy. so that way the phone should cost me 20 grands includin the Sennheiser headsets. i also used the wifi on the fone and the google maps too. the comfort level is very good, pretty handy, but will have to get use to the all touch screen, specially the kyeboards for faster typing, but that should not be an issue. also the camera gave great results with the flash as i clicked the guy at the counter only. the guy has confirmed the delivery on 3rd jan, 09.”

And finally we have a Chennai’s take on the device,

“I checked out the device at an NPD here in C’nai. Device does look plasticky and does not look like a 20k mo device. The photographs all over the do justice to the device. The UI itself was slick and familiar (same ol symbian) with larger icons everywhere. Checked out most of the features (messaging, thumb pad, hand writing recog., mini qwerty etc)., all work fine. I found the stylus worked the best with zero wrong inputs and the telephone style keypad (abc) (def) style worked with zero errors (no typos) for messaging. Wi-fi was quite fast and i liked the Google Chrome like thumbnail view of pages recently visited very attractive. Pictures were OK. Could not test GPS as we could not get it to work for some reason. I also realized that its going to take sometime to get used to the device as there are many ways one could do the same thing (media bar, menus, shortcuts..) It was fun pre-booking ”

(Pictures: Norman)

The approximate price will be around 21k (+/- depending upon local taxes)

This can much be anticipated after the earlier statement by Devinder Kishore saying “We will have lot of touchscreen phones coming up, including an N-series device very soon.” Well, may be its a bit of the inner story and things cooking up behind the Nokia doors but I feel we are yet to witness some amazing Touchscreen Symbian S60 Devices this new year. Following are a couple of screenshots for you to have a look. So, the big question, knowing that we would have Nseries Touch Devices coming really soon, would you still buy 5800 XpressMusic phone going to be launched next month?

In India there s one thing that connects us all as one be it a farmer irrigating his fields in Punjab or an IT guru working at a Multinational Company (MNC) based in Bangalore. A bollywood actor in Mumbai to modern day youth in a Delhi University. All are tied on together with one pure string of belief, spiritualism, culture and Mobiles. Yes, thats right slowly mobiles have made their way into the spiritual world and are now offering us amazing services which not only connect us to our spiritual side but also makes it easy for us to stay connected to the rest of the world. So is this way of getting connected with our roots something good or is the corporate world playing a dirty game with innocent people to sell their fancy products? Lets find out:

The Up Side

These days mobiles have improved in their technology so fast that it has now enabled us to carry our hymns (shabads, seminars etc.) as music format and enable us to listen to it whenever we want to. The coming Nokia N96 has DVB-H which can enable us to even watch serials like Ramayana (on NDTV Imagine), Mahabharat (on 9X) and Aasth Channels straight from our mobiles. But there is still time and these things look a bit far away at present but Im sure this is going to be the case in the coming years. But there is one catch to all this! With the benefit of getting a phone along with these capabilities mobiles these days have gone NUTS i.e. they first are really expensive (as I could easily get a music player like an iPod way cheap) and even if you by them, they tend to be too complicated which you sure can handle but your parents would have a hard time getting through. Not to mention what grandparents would have to go through to get them working. To make this point more understandable here is an example, my father is so busy that he hardly has time to learn the different complexities in a mobile and my grandmother is too old to figure out the way even though she has a lot of spare time and always ends up calling me for help. (I somehow see that touch screen coupled with local language (on the likes of 5800 XpressMusic can make things a little simple, but how simple we will have to wait and see)

Not only mobiles but a whole lot of GSM and CDMA 1x service provides in India (Bharti AirTel, Vodafone, TATA and Reliance etc.) are offering us services to listen to hymns and even get updated daily quotes from our religious books even on our cheap handsets which do not offer video or music capabilities. These services not only connect the concept of mobiles with our grandparents but also help the youth to get in touch with its spiritual self. But these too have a catch, they too are a little expensive to subscribe and only a minority of mobile users subscribe to these services.

The Down Side

Let me start with service provides first. Recently we have seen some of the service providers advertising their products with commercial based on religious settings. For example a son calls his grandfather for a temple and makes him hear the ringing of the bells from his mobile. Now the point here was that the network coverage has improved, but the use of the bell made a direct connection with not only young but old people too. Im not a marketing expert but is this right to use our spiritual beliefs to market their products?
Now we also have a few religious programs on TV that are watched by millions and we find the likes of Nokia sponsoring them thus giving its name a visual feed to all watching.

This is what I had noticed the past month as we are heading in for a festive season here in India, I believe not only mobiles but all corporate houses make use of these promotional stunts having no respect for the consumers belief, for just getting those extra sales.

When will this stop. Is this the way it will be. The point I want to address here is that having your spiritual content on your phone is good but mobile phone companies and service providers using our religious beliefs as a tool to market their products is bad.

My take
I would love to have my religious content on my cellular device but I cant really see a point why mobile companies are using this as a tool for main stream commercials to market their product. But this is not all, I need your opinion on this too.

Do you feel the same? Have any service providers or mobile companies done this in your country? Or am I over reacting to this? Please feel free the share your views.