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Why I’m leaving Sony Ericsson for Nokia

Max Limpag — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:00:12 +0000

Like Saul, my conversion happened on the road.

I was on my way to a meeting and needed to constantly check my e-mail as well as keep my instant messaging (IM) accounts online when it hit me, like the Biblical blinding light, that the Nokia E71 is the best mobile Internet device I’ve used.

It isn’t just the ease by which the device is able to use multiple Internet access points—from various wi-fi hot spots with different security settings to HSPA —it is also the dependability of the device in keeping that connection.

In the two weeks that I was asked to test an E71 review unit, I’ve never experienced having difficulty going online and staying there.

When I was asked by Nokia to test the E71, I was a rabid Sony Ericsson fan boy. But a decade of using Sony Ericsson phones was no match with just a fortnight with the E71. By the end of the test, I had decided to shift to an Eseries device later this year.

Adjustments

The biggest adjustment when shifting phone brands is the keypad layout. The adjustment is made harder when shifting from the regular keypad to a full QWERTY.

But I came to the E71 from the Sony Ericsson P1i and the keypad adjustment was very minimal. It was, in fact, an improvement and quite unlike my initial adjustment from the K750i to the P1i, whose rocking dual QWERTY keypad takes a long time to get used to.

Searching for contacts to insert into messages is also such a user-friendly experience with the E71 and its S60 relatives compared to the annoying way searching names is done in the P1i and its UIQ 3 siblings, a dying and orphaned brood of a handful of mainly Sony Ericsson smartphones.

The P1i takes the first and last names as a single string and when you start typing a contact’s name, it searches for it last name first. This makes texting cumbersome and slow, especially when you are sending a message to someone who shares a last name with several of your contacts (typically a relative).

There’s no such nonsense in the E71.

My initial impression was that the E71, albeit thinner than most phones, was too wide to be handy. It was an impression that was immediately debunked hours after using the device. You eventually get used to its flatness.

The phone comes with integrated assisted GPS and Nokia Maps. I wasn’t able play with it but I did install my preferred Google Maps and My Location worked with it. The feature plots your location on the map and indicates it with a blue dot. It’s listed to work with Google Latitude, although the service isn’t available in the Philippines just yet.

The phone also comes with an integrated 3.2 megapixel camera. It has an FM radio, Bluetooth connectivity and all the features you’d expect from a relatively modern multi-media phone.

But you don’t buy the phone for its camera are any of these extras. You buy an E71 because, save possibly for the Blackberry, it is the best mobile Internet and messaging device in the market.

The phone has built-in support for mobile e-mail that’s easy to set up. But after running the built-in e-mail client for the first time, I decided I liked GMail for mobile application more so I proceeded to install and use it instead. The Gmail application is not only easy to set up and use, it allows you to manage multiple GMail accounts as well as e-mails run by Google Apps for Business.

While the built-in browser does the job, I always prefer Opera Mini and so proceeded to download and use it for the entire run of the test.

I also installed Fring, an application that allows you to connect to your IM and VOIP accounts, including GTalk, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and several others.

These three—GMail for mobile application, Opera Mini and Fring—comprise my troika of essential digital mobile applications and with the E71, I have all the things I need to be truly on the go.

Sony Ericsson K850i impressive

Max Limpag — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:11:28 +0000

I spent two glorious days last week testing the latest model in the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot line: the K850i. When Jonjie Gonzalez, Sony Ericsson’s press relations man in Cebu, invited me to test a K850i demo unit for a day or two, I jumped at the chance. I am, after all, a rabid Sony Ericsson fan-boy.

The Sony Ericsson K850i comes with a 5-megapixel camera and a slew of standard Cyber-shot features that distinguish the line among camera phones.

Sony Ericsson K850i. The latest in the Cyber-shot line comes with a built-in 5-megapixel camera and a lot of features that distinguish the line from other camera phones. The phone, however, no longer has the small mirror that helps you position yourself when taking self-portraits. Click on photo to enlarge.

It has a dedicated camera button and does away with the active lens cover of previous versions of the product line. I’ve gotten used to the active lens cover–a sliding cover that activates the phone’s camera when you expose the lens–and had to stop myself a few times from using my fingers to slide a non-existent cover. But doing away with the moving parts that make up the active lens cover makes the phone more compact.

The K850i, however, does not have the small self portrait mirror that had been a fixture in its phones. The small round mirror, which helps you align the phone to make sure that you get yourself inside the photograph, is very useful for taking self portraits, preferably beside belly dancers (darn, I missed them during the launch). I can’t understand why the company removed it.

Camera features

The built-in camera comes with auto focus; Xenon flash, which helps you get good shots even in badly-lit environments; 16x digital zoom; and image and video stabilizer. It also comes with BestPic, a feature that lets you take nine successive shots on a single press of the camera button. You will then be asked to choose which image you want to save. BestPic is great for taking photos of fast moving subjects although I wished it will just save the entire set instead of having to force you to choose a single image.

IMPROVED PC SUITE. The Sony Ericsson PC Suite that comes with the K850i is a massive improvement compared to the software. It is now more integrated and comes with tools for sending and receiving text messages; managing files, contacts, and calendar entries; and connecting to the Internet.

The phone also comes with a lot of preset configurations that manipulate how the camera processes images. On the first day of my test, I had a hard time figuring out why photos I took indoor and at night were very dark, even with the flash firing. It turned out I forgot to change the settings to one of the “twilight” presets, a setting that improves photo quality in poorly-lit environments.

When I turned it on, the images were better. If you want to check the quality of images taken by the k850i, check my Zooomr set here, click on “all sizes” if you want to view the actual size of the photographs.

Mobile Internet

I used my Smart Buddy account with the K850i demo unit and for good reason: I am a satisfied and frequent user of the company’s mobile Internet. Smart charges an affordable P10 for every 30-minute block of mobile Internet usage.

Using the K850i as modem. The Sony Ericsson PC Suite simplifies management of the phone as an HSDPA modem. Above, the suite said I was connected to Smart’s GPRS network. When I tested the K850i, I did not activate the 3G settings.

The K850i is a multi-band phone and has HSDPA connectivity, a wireless connection that offers blazing download speeds. I wasn’t able to surf sites or test other applications but my experience in using Google Maps for Mobile indicated great downloading speeds. I also tried using it to connect my PC to the Internet and the PC suite indicated I was connected through GPRS although speed tests showed I was having a connection in excess of 500 kbps (and yes, I unplugged the LAN cable that was connected to the router).

Another great thing about the phone is that it works with the My Location feature of Google Maps for Mobile.

Sony Ericsson PC Suite

One of the best things about the phone isn’t with the unit itself, it’s with the CD that comes with it. The Sony Ericsson PC Suite that comes with the K850i is a massive improvement to the software. It is a great piece of application that makes connecting the phone to and using it with your computer such a wonderful experience.

It wasn’t always like this. I used to just skip the PC Suite installer that comes with a Sony Ericsson phone and just use its drivers. After installing the drivers, I would then connect my phone to the PC and use Float’s Mobile Agent, an open source software that allows you to manage contacts and files, send and receive text messages, make and receive calls from your PC.

FILE MANAGER. The file manager tool in Sony Ericsson PC SUITE. Click on photo to enlarge.

But the PC Suite version that comes with the K850i makes Float’s Mobile Agent, which works with the phone, superfluous. The new application suite is an even better piece of software. It’s a centralized phone management application that will allow you to send and receive text messages, manage contacts, files, and calendar entries, update your firmware and use the phone as Internet modem.

New keys layout

The K850i has a new navigator keys layout. This is the biggest adjustment for someone using older Sony Ericsson phones. The OK or selection key is no longer contained within the four navigator keys. Instead, you have to press somewhere above the keypad and right below the screen. But the interface is cool, though. It’s “semi” touch screen. The keys were engineered in such a way that it almost feels that the bottom part of the display is touch screen.

The first few minutes of using the navigator and alpha-numeric keys were a bit awkward. But pretty soon, I got used to it and was pressing buttons at my usual speed. Come to think of it, I’ve gotten used to using the K850i layout that when I returned to using my dependable (albeit now ancient) K750i, I found myself pressing the bottom part of the screen.

FLOAT’S MOBILE AGENT. While FMA works with the Sony Ericsson k850i, it has become superfluous because the PC Suite that comes with the phone can now send and receive text messages as well as manage files, contacts, and calendar entries.

The K850i is a great phone, no doubt about it. The suggested retail price is at the P20,000 level. But you can get the phone for free with Smart Gold’s P3,500 plan. If you’re frequently out of the office but still need to regularly connect to the Internet, the K850i will do well as an HSDPA modem for your laptop or as standalone mobile browser, e-mail client, and RSS reader.

Sony Ericsson K850i test: Google Maps for Mobile with My Location works

Max Limpag — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:45:27 +0000

Google Maps for Mobile‘s My Location feature works in the Sony Ericsson K850i, the latest in the Cyber-shot line to hit the market. My Location is a cool feature that places your approximate location on the map using GPS (Global Positioning System) or mobile towers.

If you have one of the recent phones that report cell sites, Google Maps will draw a blue circle on the map to represent your approximate location, as determined through the use of cell sites.

WHERE AM I? Anywhere from Fuente Osmneña to the middle of the Cebu harbor, according to this location data provided by Google Maps for Mobile running in the Sony Ericsson K850i. I was inside the Sun.Star Cebu office on P de. Rosario St. when I ran the application. Click on photo to enlarge image.

I previously tried the service with the K750i and K800i but both units don’t report cell sites they are using to connect to the network My Location won’t work with them. Last week, I tried it with a K850i demo unit lent to me by Sony Ericsson Philippines for testing and got it working in no time.

I used my Smart account in testing the K850i so its cell towers were the ones being used to plot the phone’s location.

It isn’t GPS, which is accurate up to a few meters, and the blue circle that indicates my general location covers an area that seems more than a kilometer wide.

While eating my usual after-midnight dinner in Chowking on the highway in Mandaue City near the San Miguel plant, My Location drew a circle that would have placed my general location as far apart as the intersection in Wireless, the area near the Cebu International Convention Center and right before the old Mactan-Mandaue bridge.

When I tried My Location in Lapu-Lapu City, near the two intersections that have recently become cesspools near Mactan Doctors’ Hospital, Google Maps said I was somewhere in Taguig City. Imagine that. Sitio Kagudoy, Taguig City. I don’t now how Google Maps gets geographical data on the cell sites but it got this one really wrong.

When I tried Google Maps at the Sun.Star Cebu office on P. del Rosario St., I was given a general location that, according to the software, was within 1,700 meters. It’s a pretty large area (check the photo).

I asked my wife to locate me using Smart’s Person Finder service and the service said I was “near Sacred Heart Church, D. Jakosalem St, Bgy. Cogon Ramos, Cebu City.” It’s pretty much the same wide area.

Do I hear a collective male sigh of relief? You can be looking at hookers on Junquera St. and the system will say you’re near a church.

The area used to be smaller. I remember being reported as somewhere near University of San Carlos when I was inside Sun.Star Cebu. Maybe cellphone towers have become stronger and gotten wider coverage that they are now farther apart.

Using Google Maps for Mobile with the K850i and my Smart account was such a joy in a geeky sort of way. But unless you’re a frequent traveler, you won’t find much use of it. My daily commute is such a routine I could probably tell you what size of potholes are in which part of the the main highway connecting Cebu City to Mandaue City and Lapu-Lapu City.

New Google Maps for Mobile tracks your position using cell phone towers

Max Limpag — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:52:33 +0000

Google released last week a new version of its Google Maps for Mobile application. The release, as with many of Google’s products, is designated “beta,” a label used for software that is still being actively tested and not yet released to the public.

I’ve read about mobile maps applications before, including the earlier Google versions, but I never bothered trying it out because I don’t travel much. In fact my daily travel is such a routine I can tell you what size of potholes are located in which part of the highways in Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu Cities.

GOOGLE MAPS FOR MOBILE. A satellite photo of Fuente Osmena rotunda as seen through the Google Maps for mobile application running in my Sony Ericsson K750i. Click on photo to enlarge.

But what caught my interest in last week’s announcement is a new feature in Google Maps: it can now plot your location using the cellphone towers of your mobile network. The application then displays a blue dot showing a bigger light blue circle to display your approximate location. That feature is called My Location.

Previously, you can plot your locations in mapping applications if you have a GPS (global position system) device or module. With the new Google application, the software can plot your location via triangulation of your position using the cellphone towers that connect your phone to your mobile network.

Phone models

The My Location feature, however, works only in more recent phone models. I tried it with the Sony Ericsson K750i and it didn’t work, which I expected. I tried it in the K800i and it still doesn’t work. For the feature to work, your phone must be reporting cells it is using. You can check in the application itself by going to Help, then About then read the settings listed there. If the screen says “myl: N/A,” it means My Location will not work with your device.

I don’t know on which phones the feature will work but I suspect it will work with the Sony Ericsson K660i, a fabulous phone that’s making me drool.

I don’t know if Google will ever allowing you to share locations but it would be a good application. If it is able to get position data without the application running (but is is this even possible?), it would be helpful in tracking the general area of the unit when it gets stolen or lost.

Sharing location information is also helpful for families. I, for one, don’t mind sharing my location info with my wife. If something happens to me, virtual knock on digital wood, I’d like her to be able to track my general location. I know I shouldn’t do it but I also know I’ll have the urge to track my sons when they are already in high school or college.

Tracing a cellphone’s location

Locating a person using his or her cellphone is already possible with both Smart and Globe. The two companies have person finder services that triangulate the phone’s location based on cell towers.

The accuracy of positions in the mobile version of Google Maps, according to the company, depends on how wide the telecom cell is. Google said areas with denser mobile towers will have more accurate position data.

An article on Smart’s person finder service earlier said that in urban areas, cellsites are within 1 kilometer of each other. In the provinces, the average distance ranges from 1.5 to 3 kilometers. I don’t know whether this is still the case right now considering the rapid expansion of the Smart network.

But a few months back, I asked my wife to get my location via WIS when I was near Queensland, a motel near the reclamation area. When she checked my location, the system said that I was near White Gold, which is a department store about 50 meters away. It’s pretty close. (After I wrote about this in my column, an editor “gently” scolded me, saying it will give wives an idea on how to track their gallivanting husbands.)

If you’ve been able to get My Location working in your phone, do send me word. I’d like to know how accurate the position data is in the Philippines.

But even if I couldn’t get My Location working, I still enjoyed using the Google Maps mobile application. It is as easy to use as the Gmail for Mobile application, which I consider the gold standard in third-party mobile software.

Installation

Navigating maps and zooming into details is easily done in the application. In the photo above, you can see the application zooming into a satellite image of Fuente Osmeña rotunda.

The free application works in most Java-enabled phones, all color BlackBerry devices, Windows Mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003, 5.0 and above, and Symbian Series 60 3rd edition devices.

Installation is very easy. Just go to www.google.com/gmm in your phone to download the application. The screen will prompt you to download the correct version for your phone. I tried and had it working in a K750i and K800i using a Smart connection. I tried it with a colleague’s K800i using a Globe account but the application couldn’t connect to the Internet to download map data. She tried it a few more times in a couple of days and still couldn’t get it to work.

There still isn’t a map for Cebu but you can choose satellite view to zoom into areas in the metro. The quality and sharpness of the images are scaled-down versions of those you get using the PC application or the website.

Here’s a video introduction to My Location posted in the Google Maps for Mobile website:

Sony Ericsson unveils the K660: ‘engineered for mobile Internet’

Max Limpag — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:25:25 +0000

Sony Ericsson has unveiled a phone that I’m sure will give second thoughts to those already set on upgrading units this Christmas. The company announced earlier this month the coming availability of the Sony Ericsson K660, a phone that the company said was engineered for the mobile Internet.

The phone will only be available early next year so you might want to postpone your Christmas phone upgrade by a month or two.

FUNKY COLOR FOR A COOL PHONE. The lime on white version of the Sony Ericsson K660i, an HSDPA-enable phone that has been engineered for the mobile Internet. Click on photo to enlarge.

The K660, which will be marketed as the K660i in the Asia-Pacific region, is an HSDPA-enabled phone. The phone can access so-called “mobile broadband” networks that offer higher connection speeds. This not only makes browsing on the phone faster, it also makes it a good laptop accessory—as mobile modem.

I don’t know how wide HSDPA coverage is in Cebu but in my previous experience with PLDT WeRoam, I got strong and consistent HSDPA signals within downtown and mid-town Cebu City areas. I got a consistent GPRS speed at home in Lapu-Lapu City but this was a few months back. I suspect things have improved since then, based on my wife’s experience with using her Sony Ericsson K800i as modem.

The phone was engineered for mobile web browsing. Martin Winkler, head of web marketing at Sony Ericsson, said the company’s ” vision is to offer ‘Generation Web’ a mobile Internet experience that’s rich, user-friendly and satisfying.”

It offers landscape browsing, an option that allows you to view and navigate pages sideways, to make use of the wider screen. It comes with Google Maps for Mobile and I might work with the My Location service, a really cool service that places you in the map by using triangulation of the cellphone towers being used by your phone. I tried the service in my K750i and my wifes K800i but both phones don’t work with the service.

The phone, as with any multi-media unit released in the market today, also serves as a media player. It comes with e-mail and instant messaging clients. I also comes with a camera with a two-megapixel resolution. In my experience, this picture quality will do for online publishing. It has Bluetooth connectivity and serves as a USB mass storage when connected to a PC. It can record both audio and video.

It comes in a funky color “lime on white” or the so-so “wine on black.” It got me in “lime.”

Will I be upgrading to this unit? Nah, I’d wait for the latest in the K750i, K800i line to have a lime on white model.

Smart TextMail and mobile alerts on tasks, website availability

Max Limpag — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:07:17 +0000

One of my longest mobile experiment drew to a close early this month with my rediscovery of Smart’s TextMail.

For more than a year, I’ve been trying one service after another in an effort to get my e-mails sent as text messages to my mobile phone. The answer, you might say, is simple: buy a Blackberry.

I’m not, however, prepared to spend thousands of pesos for the device and its mobile e-mail solution when I have only very specific alerts in mind: website availability and tasks reminders. For regular e-mails, I am perfectly satisfied with the GMail for mobile Java application.

ONLINE PLANNER. My current online planner of choice, Scrybe. The free service allows me to manage my tasks and get alerted of deadlines via SMS messages sent through Smart TextMail. Click on photo to enlarge image.

I run and help oversee several websites and need to know whenever the servers where these are hosted encounter problems so that I can work on fixing it or submitting a support ticket. All the sites I run are monitored by free web server monitoring services that check every few minutes or so whether these are available.

Whenever the monitoring services I use detect any of the my sites to be down, it immediately sends an e-mail to alert me of the problem. I wanted to be able to get that message as an SMS alert. Sure many of these services offer SMS alerts, but for a fee.

Tasks management

I also manage my tasks online. For projects where I work with other people, I use ProjectPier or Basecamp. But all my tasks—whether work-related, blog-related, or personal—are managed from a single online application.

I tested one application after the other, looking for one that offered SMS notification of deadlines. Google Calendar offers SMS notifications for the Philippines. The listings page says you can enable notifications for Smart, Globe, and Digitel. I have a Smart phone but have never been able to enable it. The settings page gives me an “invalid carrier” error message after I enter my Smart number.

I then decided to use Remember The Milk, a free online tasks manager that offers SMS reminders to Philippine phone numbers. The problem was that in several instances, the SMS messages came late, several hours after when I wanted to be reminded of a task. Remember The Milk is also limited to task management. I’ve also tried Backpack and it’s great for managing tasks but again, some SMS alerts are received later.

I found a better service with Scrybe. I say it’s better because it also allows me to manage my web notes. Scrybe is a really cool service for managing tasks and storing notes and it has an interface that’s such a joy to use. (Blogger’s note: I’ll write more about the service later.) Scrybe is an invitation-only service so if you want an account, leave me a note below and I’ll send you one.

Scrybe and SMS alerts

I transferred my tasks management to Scrybe because with it, I did not need to use another service for my notes whenever I need to do web research. The only problem with Scrybe is that it doesn’t offer SMS alerts for Philippine phone numbers. What it offers is sending alerts to a mobile phone e-mail address (your mobile phone number@your provider’s web address). For several months, I wasn’t able to use its SMS alerts.

E-MAIL, SMS ALERTS. Scribe notifies you via e-mail or SMS of deadlines of your tasks. I was able to activate SMS notification by using Smart’s TextMail service. Click on photo to eenlarge.

I knew the best solution was Smart’s TextMail but for several days of playing with the service a few months back, I couldn’t activate it, not even when a tech support staff from Smart guided me through it. When I still couldn’t activate the service, I gave up trying and made a mental note to try it again after a few months.

Early this month, I tried Smart TextMail again and found that it had been improved. I was told that it’s now being managed by a content provider, Mobile Arts (warning: the web site plays horrendous music so you better turn off your speaker.)

Registration

The service has also been transferred to www.mySmart.com.ph. I tried registering for the service about two weeks back and in no time, my mobile e-mail address was set up. If you don’t explicitly register for a username, your mobile e-mail will be your Smart number @mySmart.com.ph. The mobile number is in international format so if yours starts with 0918, it will be written as 63918.

To get your own personalized Smart TextMail address, send REG USERNAME PASSWORD YOURNAME to 200. The username you enter will become the first part of your e-mail address. After registration, add the e-mail address of the servers that send you alerts so that their messages are immediately sent to your phone.

If you get a message from someone not in the address book, the server just notifies you of the message and asks you to reply with G if you want to get the entire message. In my case, I added to my address book the e-mail addresses of the senders of my website availability notices and the e-mail address Scrybe uses to send reminders.

In using the service for more than a week, I find that I get the alerts as soon as these are sent. I now know immediately whenever any of the web servers I use is down. With the alert, I can then check the site and send a support request to the web host.

Scrybe notifications for tasks deadlines are also received on time and I’m now able to fully take advantage of it’s task management service.

I’m just using some of my TextMail account’s services. It is a full mobile e-mail solution if you’re comfortable with managing e-mail using text. It even generates access numbers for e-mail addresses. Any text message you send to these access numbers are processed and sent as an e-mail message to your contact. The SMS alerts are free but you are charged P2.50 each time you send a message.

I just hope that Smart TextMail maintains this quality of service. It has become an indispensable tool for me.

From YouTube to your phone, MP3 player

Max Limpag — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:49:01 +0000

It was love at first note when I heard Amy Winehouse sing. Her voice exudes raw emotion unmatched in decades.

I first played my copy of her Back to Black album in Rhythmbox in my Linux laptop, while I was struggling with getting a graphical interface to Subversion working. When I heard her sing, it was as if I mangled my system and did an svn merge that automagically produced a track from my collection of songs of Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, and Dodo Greene.

I finally settled with using RapidSVN but I wouldn’t settle with the few Amy Winehouse songs I had. I browsed YouTube to view videos of her performances (especially her AOL sessions) and played them over and over again. Over and over and over again.

I wanted to sleep to her songs. I didn’t want, however, to leave the laptop and the modem router on. The siren’s calls were too strong, I knew I had to have her songs in my MP3 player.

Luckily, I had bookmarked VConvert.net weeks earlier, when I spotted a link to it in the popular bookmarks page of del.icio.us.

VConvert.net is a service that converts videos in YouTube and other video sharing sites into files that can be played in your computer, phone, PSP, iPod or any other digital media player. When I spotted the link weeks earlier, I tried converting a YouTube clip of Nina Simone into an mp4 file. The file it produced, however, did not play when I tried it in my Sony Ericsson K750i.

CONVERTING ONLINE VIDEOS. Vconvert.net allows you to convert videos from YouTube and other video sharing services for playing in your PC, phone, or mp3 player.

VConvert.net can convert the videos into mp4, mp3, wmv, mov, 3gp and flv formats. It’s mp3 conversion, in my experience, is flawless. With it, I was able to convert Winehouse’s acoustic sessions and her recent performance in this month’s Mercury Awards. I was also able to convert her covers of “Will you still love me tomorrow?” and “To know him is to love him.”

If you still haven’t heard Winehouse sing, here’s a video of her singing Me and Mr. Jones live:

Here’s Amy singing You Know I’m No Good:

Sony Ericsson makes me sing the blues

Max Limpag — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:19:54 +0000

Inside the junk food section of a downtown department store, I decided to stop listening to my jazz collection at home.

Two weeks back, my family sought shelter in a Cebu City pension house from a scheduled overnight brownout in Lapu-Lapu City. We went to a downtown department store to stock on food and refreshments when we ended up, inevitably, on the biscuits and junk food section.

SONY ERICSSON CONNECTORS. If there’s one weak spot in Sony Ericsson phones, it’s the way its data cable and earphone connects to the unit. After a year, you’d start to experience cutting off of connections.

Our four-year-old son kept saying he wanted potato chips so I brought him to where there were rows of various potato chips in different flavors. He got one pack, placed it in the grocery cart, and then sang “you like pot-ah-to, I like patata.” He sang the song repeatedly that night–on our way to another department store, on our way to the pension house, while eating the potato chips.

His brother got into the act, repeatedly singing the line “everyone’s gone to the moon” in a mock Nina Simone rendition. It was a room full of singing, out of tune.

I got the message.

I took out the Nina Simone compilation perennially stuck inside our DVD player (it’s the last CD I play before I sleep and I never bother taking it out).

I then got the earphones that came with my Sony Ericsson K750i. It lay unused for a couple of months because I stopped using the phone as a music player. When I attached the ear phones into the phone, the message that the profile had changed to “portable hands-free” did not appear. I wiggled the connector a bit and then the phone indicated that the portable hands-free had been attached.

I then played songs in the phone only to hear nothing in the earphones. I detached and re-attached the earphones, wiggled the connector a bit only to hear the music coming out of the phone’s speakers. It took a few more minutes of adjusting the connector before music came out of the earphones.

If there’s one weak spot in Sony Ericsson phones, it’s the way accessories connect to it. After a year, you’d start to experience cutting off of connections for the data cable or earphones. What I’d do is adjust the connector a bit and not move the phone (if I’m doing USB data transfer or using it with Float’s Mobile Agent).

But it’s in the earphones that this problem is particularly irritating if not downright unsettling. Imagine listening to a full stereo playback of Coldplay and then everything goes mono, with one speaker going out.

I tried cleaning up the phone’s port and the data connector but I still encountered problems with the earphones—at times it works but then when I walk or the phone gets moved, music inexplicably goes off in the earphones and gets played on the phone’s speaker. It’s okay if you’re just listening to songs, but what if you’re listening to Bedroom Radio?

I just wished Sony Ericsson would choose jacks as connectors for their earphones. It’s less prone to connection cutoffs. I don’t know if its technically impossible to use jacks because even its Walkman phones use the same type of connectors.

After a few days of trying to fix the problem, I gave up on using the K750i as my digital media player. It’s still a perfectly fine phone and I still use it extensively for taking photos. But for listening to my music collection and podcasts, I now use the Creative Zen Nano Plus. It’s a cheap MP3 player with recording functions, which comes handy during interviews.

Zyb goes social with new version

Max Limpag — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:18:45 +0000

Zyb, a web service that provides free online phone data backups, has launched its new version with a better website interface and several new features, including social networking through phone contacts and micro-blogging.

I find Zyb a useful service and use at least once a month to make sure I have an off-site backup of my contacts list.

My primary backup of phone data—contacts, messages, and calendar items—is in my personal computer. I use Float’s Mobile Agent not only to manage my phone, a Sony Ericsson K750i, and send messages with it but also to archive messages and back up my contacts database.

NEW ZYB SERVICE. The website now offers social networking via phone contacts and micro-blogging.

Zyb, however, provides an easier backup solution that’s also more convenient. The website allows you to store all your contacts online and synchronize it with your phone. If you add another contact in your phone, it will be uploaded into your Zyb account once you synchronize the data. The service reminds you at least once a month to synchronize your data to make sure your Zyb account has the latest version of your phone contacts.

Synchronization is very easy. In my phone’s case, there’s a Zyb button in my Synchronization menu. When I click on it, my Zyb account will get my latest contacts database in just a few minutes of synchronization and at just a few pesos (I use Smart Buddy and it charges only P10 for 30 minutes of mobile Internet connectivity).

BACKUP OF PHONE DATA. Zyb offers an easy way to back up phone data—such as contacts and messages—online.

If you lose your phone or get a new one, you can just connect to Zyb and synchronize your data and in just a few minutes, you new phone will contain all your previous phone contacts.

Zyb also allows you to back up important SMS messages. In my case, I get a mobile number where I send the messages to and then these get automatically stored in my Zyb account. This service is useful for archiving messages that contain important data.

While I use Float’s Mobile Agent for archiving my phone’s messages, I see the possibility of using Zyb’s SMS backup in cases when I’m off my Windows PC and need to back up an important SMS message. I tried sending a text message to Zyb’s listed number and in no time, the message I sent was already stored in my Zyb account.

Zyb’s new version extends the service beyond just backing up phone data. It can now help you connect to people via the Zyb service using details in your phone contacts. I was able to invite a newsroom colleague into the service by using my Zyb account. After she signed up, the website then alerted me that one of my phone contacts was now using Zyb and asked me whether I wanted to connect with her.

Zyb now also offers micro-blogging. With Twitter becoming all the rage among bloggers, it makes sense for Zyb to provide the service. I tried it for a few times but micro-blogging isn’t really for me.

Among the site’s new features are:

Users can connect to the people in their mobile phone’s address book to keep in touch and share mobile content
Connected friends can keep their contact information updated in each other’s phones
Users can micro-blog from their phone and broadcast the blog to people in their phone’s address book
Users can upload pictures from their mobile phone and tag the pictures using the phone’s address book
Users can expand their social network by searching for people with whom they have mutual friends

If you’re looking for a solid backup solution for your mobile phone data, check Zyb out. And when you do sign up, make sure you regularly synchronize data or you’d rue your failure to do so when you lose your phone.

SOCIAL NETWORKING. Zyb now offers social networking using details in your phone contacts.

Windows Live services coming to Nokia phones

Max Limpag — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:13:34 +0000

Nokia has announced that it has partnered with Microsoft to provide a suite of Windows Live services “specifically designed for Nokia devices.” Users of compatible S60 devices in selected countries can now download Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces.

Users of Nokia Series 40 devices will be able to download the services only next year. Current users of Nokia N73, N76, N80 Internet Edition, N93i, and N95 can get the suite via the Download! application in their phones. Nokia asked users to check http://www.nokia.com/windowslive whether the application is available to their country. I opened the site and got an error instead. But Nokia said in the press statement that the application is available in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, UK, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The applications, according to a Nokia press statement, will allow users to “seamlessly move between contacts, mail, messenger, phone calls, text messaging, camera, gallery and browsing all in an integrated way.”

The announcement by Nokia comes on the heels of a report that “traffic to Google’s maps, e-mail and mobile searches on mobile phones and wireless handheld devices rose 35 percent between May and June.” The iPhone is credited with the 40 percent to 50 percent jump in the use of Google Maps on mobiles.

I neither use Windows Live services or Nokia devices but the announcement caught my eye because I have long been on the lookout for applications that provide a more integrated web service experience on mobile devices. My benchmark for the integration is the GMail for mobile application. I use it to check my e-mail on my phone every day.

Unlike applications that run on PCs, there is less room for errors in mobile applications. Users see it as part of the phone suite and it should just work–the way you expect the device to be able to make calls or send and receive messages.

Google is working on its own suite of mobile applications that will access its myriad of web services. I can’t wait until it’s offered for download.