Ajitabh Pandey's Soul & Syntax

Exploring systems, souls, and stories – one post at a time

Tag: Nokia

  • Nokia X – A Review

    Few days back I purchased a Nokia X (Black) from flipkart using the mobile application and it cost me Rs 6877/-, which was a very good price available especially looking at the fact that the Nokia Store itself is selling for approx Rs 7500.

    About the Phone – Nokia X

    The Nokia X is a dual SIM phone with 3G services available on SIM 1 and 2G on SIM 2. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual core processor running at 1.2 GHz and 512 MB RAM. The internal storage on the phone is 4Gb and there is a micro SD card expansion slot available which can take upto 32Gb micro SD card.

    I found the performance of the phone very good as compared to some of the cheap Chinese quad core / 1Gb phone out there in the market.

    The phone display is 10.16 cms and the main camera is 3.2 mega pixels with a resolution of 2048×1536. If you are not using video calls then the secondary camera on front may not be missed by you. I don’t miss it. The primary camera photos/videos are very good quality for a normal person. Specially the shutter speed is pretty fast. The 3.2 mega pixel Nokia quality is very good.

    The phone has a plastic body and a solid Nokia build. Its feels quite light and is very handy.

    I have been using this phone from few days now, and I must say that I like it very much.

    The User Interface

    Nokia X uses windows tiling interface. You can resize and move tiles around to have a customized look and feel of the phone. Personally I find the user interface quite refreshing change from the standard android UIs which appear almost same in every other android phone.

    Multitasking and Fastlane

    Fastlane is a screen with quick access to most recently used apps, photos, notifications, calls etc. It appeared first in the Symbian based Asha series. To see this screen you can swipe right or left. In order to edit what appears there, long press any application and edit it or click on the settings icon to customize Fastlane. What gets recorded in Fastlane, is configurable. There is a difference in speed when you launch a recently used application. This clearly indicate that multiple applications are running simultaneously and Fastlane can be used to switch between them.

    The Applications

    Nokia X runs the Nokia X platform, which is based on the Open Source version of Android. In a nutshell, this is Nokia’s own android and does not have any support for Google Play Store. However, there are a lot of applications available on Nokia Store. For any application which is not available on Nokia Store, several third party stores can be installed (by enabling the third party stores in the security settings). I have used 1Mobile Market for installing some of the applications (like Yahoo Mail, Flipboard, 2048, Flickr, What’s App etc) which were not available on Nokia Store. But the application on Nokia store are growing fast.

    I downloaded the Gmail / Youtube etc applications from 1Mobile Market, but it did not launch displaying that the Google Play services on which it is dependent are not installed

    There are instructions on internet on installing the Google Plays by rooting the device, so if you are keen on going google way, you can take this step forward.

  • Nokia Asha 310 – Sync Contacts With Google Contacts using SyncML

    Nokia Asha 310 Image
    Nokia Asha 310

    Today I swapped my aging 4 year old Nokia 5800 Xpress Music with Nokia Asha 310 (Dual SIM with WiFI) from a local mobile store. The phone after the swap cost me Rs 3600/-.

    From last more than 8 months or so Android is my primary phone and prior to that for close to two year it was Blackberry. Along with these two devices I was using Nokia 5800 Xpress Music and another Nokia 500 for my second phone.

    The primary requirement I had was to ensure that I find some way of syncing contacts with google contacts as my android is configured to do so. This provides me a backup of all my contacts at google and will ensure that I can enter/edit my contacts at one devices and they will be available everywhere. Also google provides ability  to recover contacts (upto a certain amount of time) in case they are accidently deleted.

    In order to sync contacts I used SyncML. Support for which is enabled by google from quite some time.

    In order to configure Nokia Asha 310 to sync with google contacts, follow the following steps. We need to start with creating a personal configuration option first –

    • settings -> configuration -> personal configuration -> add new
      • Specify the account name. Anything will work here as it is just an identifier text entry, in case you are syncing from  multiple sources. My account name is “Gmail Contacts”.
      • server address should be https://m.google.com/syncml
      • username must be your username including the domain name (e.g something@gmail.com). If you are using google apps then you should use that domain instead of gmail.com.
      • password must be your password. You will be asked to enter it twice for verification.
      • contacts database -> database address is the one which is important for us as we will be syncing with it. For Gmail (and Google Apps) you should specify ‘contacts’ here. There is no need to specify username and password again here.
      • calendar database -> database address should have the value of ‘calendar’. In case you do not want to sync calendar you can leave it blank.
      • notes database -> database address should have the value of ‘notes’. In case you do not want to sync notes you can leave it blank.
      • use pref. acc. point – Set this to either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. In case you set it to ‘No’ the you need to setup the access point values. I have set it to ‘Yes’, so that whatever my preferred access point at the time of sync is, will be used.

    NOTE – Database names is a place where SyncML protocol lacks standardisation as different providers use different names, so you must know the database name in case you have a different provider.

    Next the sync settings can be configured as below –

    • Settings -> sync & backup -> sync with server -> sync settings
      • synchronised data – select the databaes which needs to be synced here. I have all three databases viz. contacts, calendar and notes selected
      • sync settings – Since this is a dual SIM phone, you will have to select either SIM1 or SIM2 and the select the configuration profile which you created above viz. ‘Gmail Contacts’.
      • automatic sync – This can be set to daily, weekly, monthly or off modes. In case you set it to off then you need to initiate sync manually when you wish to sync the databases.
      • rules for incoming – There are three possible values – Always allow, Always reject, Confirm first. The meanings are obvious. The first will always allow the incoming data and sync it, the second will always reject incoming data (in this case changes on your phone will be sent, but changes from google server will not be received) and confirm first will prompt for appropriate action each time. My setting is ‘Always allow’
    • Settings -> sync & backup -> sync with server -> sync now can be used to initiate the manual sync.

    Hope this post will help interested folks.