Mobile Phones on Hi from Dwipal

To pre or not to pre

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:49:00 +0000

My perspective on the Palm Pre…

Pros:

Keyboard
IM / Chat
Background Apps
Address book integration with Gmail, Facebook, etc
Sprint's network

Cons:

No international / global roaming possible (due to CDMA)
Plastic body, prone to scratching easily
Browser seems to have some font/rendering issues (check out yahoo.com on the pre)
Device a bit too small (its a plus for some people, I would prefer to have an iphone-sized screen)

Verdict:

Still confused.

Phones I've owned

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 07:43:00 +0000

Sprint LG LX1200 (08/2002)

Samsung VGA 1000 (01/2004) Sanyo PM8200 (08/2004) Sony Ericsson T608 (06/2005) Nokia 6225 (12/2005)

Sprint PPC 6700 (01/2006) Cingular Sony Ericsson z520a (02/2006)

Sony Ericsson W600 (03/2006) Sony Ericsson K750i (04/2006)

Verizon Palm Treo 700p (04/2006)

Verizon Motorola Q (11/2006) Motorola RAZR V3x (11/2006)

Sony Ericsson K750i -> W800

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 20:59:00 +0000

I recently bought the SE K750i Phone. It is a great phone, with a 2 MP camera which actually takes pretty good pictures. However, there were some issues with the phone which caused a minor annoyance:

It did not have the “search” function in address book. You can only go to the first character of a name, but cannot actually type in the full name.
Even though it had walkman functionality, you cannot use it on airplane.
I was having issues with its reception at some places (like my living room), where my old SE z520 was working fine.

So anyways, these things were enough to do something to resolve them. Because of the poor reception at home, I was even considering getting the Nokia 6270 (Nokia has a reputation to have really good reception). On looking up the web for playing around with K750i, I found some links where people installed the W800 firmware on this phone without any problem.

I followed the guide on http://www.esato.com/archive/t.php/t-113981. It uses a software from totalserver.net (which is around 15$) to flash the phone. However, the operation was flawless and within half an hour, I had a perfectly working W800 phone.

From initial looks, W800i is almost the same as K750i. Some people claim that it takes better pictures, and has a longer battery life. I have to verify this yet. But having a searchable address book and better reception alone was totally worth it.

Final Verdict: Sony Ericsson K750i with W800 Firmware ( Highly Recommended ).

Update: There are still major signal issues with Cingular on this phone.

Comments

Pang M.Y (November 01, 2006):

i just bought a K750i with W800 software but the reception is still poor even when driving in town, the line will cut off suddenly. Have you ever experience this? Music sound quality is superb but call sound quality is bad maybe due to the reception

Dwipal (November 01, 2006):

Yeah.. I have constant issues with the reception on this phone. It doesn’t catch signal where other phones easily work. Guess was a bad purchase :(.

None (December 01, 2006):

You can search in the K750i. you just need to keep typing as you would do in a search and it will keep moving by itself in the address book.

The reception of course remains a minor issue. I am more pissed off by the fragility of the phone me being a rough user.

None (April 07, 2008):

Sony Ericsson W900i video blog at mobile zone blog

None (September 16, 2008):

Comments

Pang M.Y (November 01, 2006):

Dwipal (November 01, 2006):

Yeah.. I have constant issues with the reception on this phone. It doesn’t catch signal where other phones easily work. Guess was a bad purchase :(.

None (December 01, 2006):

You can search in the K750i. you just need to keep typing as you would do in a search and it will keep moving by itself in the address book.

The reception of course remains a minor issue. I am more pissed off by the fragility of the phone me being a rough user.

None (April 07, 2008):

Sony Ericsson W900i video blog at mobile zone blog

None (September 16, 2008):

None (December 04, 2008):

Hi Nice Blog .ipod battery share the characteristics common to Lithium-based technology found in other devices. Like other rechargeable batteries, these batteries may eventually require replacement.

The Phone Story...

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 23:42:00 +0000

So I have been in the market for a new phone since a really long time now. After giving a shot to the Sprint PM6800 PDA Phone, which was a really bad experience in all the terms (Windows PocketPC+Mac interoperability, Sprint Customer Support and others), I decided that it was the time to move away from CDMA to the more “open” GSM phones.

After checking out all the phones, there were not many options available for Cingular compatible phones (there are very few quad-band, or 850 Mhz tri-band phones in the market). So I decided not to get something very fancy and ordered the Sony Ericsson Z520a from Amazon.com (it was -100$ after rebates!)

Having waited impatiently for 3 days, it finally arrived, and I set it up and called cingular to port my old number to this new one. They advised me to confirm with amazon if I can do this. Well, anyways, I called Amazon, and they said that my rebate will be cancelled if I ported the old number to this one !!!! Its like WTH! I could have just bought the phone from a store and not wait for 2 days !!! No wonder AMZN stock is going down.

So basically, in the end, I decided to give it all up and just got the number ported. Now I am a proud owner of the Sony Ericsson Z520a GSM phone. This phone has all the features I wanted (bluetooth sync, remote control, flip phone, good battery life) without the extra baggage. Its all going to be a happy ending with a good phone that is not badly crippled by the provider.

Comments

None (February 12, 2006):

Check out http://www.cingular.com/SLVR_iTunes/Forget iTunes part, its still a cool phone, quad band and stuff, and iSync! … I want to trade my k700i now!

Dwipal (February 13, 2006):

dont like the SLVR phone..1. not flip (i like flip phones)2. not sure if it supports salling clicker (RAZR does not support), salling yet does not say that this one does.3. 200 bucks?!4. Check this out: http://www.1800mobiles.com/motorola-l6-phone.htmlits the slvr without itunes (and its triband :( ) but its PRETTY CHEAP.5. sony has the UI stuff, so actually, even though i bought salling clicker, i was able to control itunes and all using the phone directly.

None (February 14, 2006):

I hate flips :)- there is hope from salling clicker :)http://www.salling.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1949&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=150check out the last post by ‘salling’. might take a while for an update though.- the phone is already on amazon for $50. (albeit with conditions & rebates), but the unlocked one is starting to show up for $250 at some sites and ebay powersellers

Comments

None (February 12, 2006):

Check out http://www.cingular.com/SLVR_iTunes/Forget iTunes part, its still a cool phone, quad band and stuff, and iSync! … I want to trade my k700i now!

Dwipal (February 13, 2006):

None (February 14, 2006):

I hate flips :)- there is hope from salling clicker :)http://www.salling.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1949&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=150check out the last post by ‘salling’. might take a while for an update though.- the phone is already on amazon for $50. (albeit with conditions & rebates), but the unlocked one is starting to show up for $250 at some sites and ebay powersellers

The Perfect Phone

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 01:12:00 +0000

Since a very long time, I wanted to get a phone that is actually just a phone. It should:

Look like a phone (not a brick)
Synchronize with the computer (Mac) without any special software
Have bluetooth
(if possible) NOT have a camera.

You will find tons of phones with the above features for GSM (T-Mobile/Cingular), but there are none for Sprint. Sprint is very notorious in crippling the features from their phones. So recently, I needed to get a new phone, and found the perfect one: the Sony Ericsson T608. This phone was sold by Sprint 2 years ago through phone sales. You can not buy it online or through the normal sprint stores, but if you call them and complain that you want a bluetooth phone, they will send this one to you. This phone has everything that a phone should actually have, and it seems to be untouched by Sprint, so has its features intact. I had decided to leave Sprint if this phone was not available.

As this model has been discontinued (rumors say that Sony made only 10,000 of these), I bought a used one from eBay. Turned the phone on, clicked the bluetooth button on the mac, and its up and working! All my contacts, calender, etc. is perfectly synchronized. I can also send files (ringtones, pictures, etc) through bluetooth to this phone, so no need of using random software. Finally there is peace in the Sprint World.

Well, sprint just released the “Samsung Blade” (a motorola razr copy), which claims to have OBEX support. Its not added to iSync as for now. And its not exactly cheap. Till then, T680 Rocks!