Cell Phones. One area where India rocks. No questions.
Ok, lets see the differences :
- In US, first of all, its very difficult to get a cell phone connection!. You need to have a good “credit history” to get a cellphone. If you don’t have a credit history, you need to pay some deposits. And guess what? I was told that I need to deposit $750 to get a cell phone connection since I did not have any credit history!!! In India, almost everyone can manage to get a cell phone service. No major deposits etc!
- In US, almost all the providers ask you to sign a 1 year or 2 year contract. In India … “What contract?? Are you kidding?”
- In US, you get a mobile phone with your plan. This is good one way, but then you will have to sign a one year contract for sure (and pay some money for the handset…offcourse less than the market price - but this depends on the plan and the phone in question)!. In India, you have the freedom and flexibility to select your phone, based on your budget, from Rs 500 to 25,000! And you can change your handset anytime (except CDMA providers)
- In US, the airtime charges (or the call charges) are way too high!! There is air-time charge for incoming calls too!. In India, incoming is *free*, and the outgoing calls tooo are hell lot cheaper compared to US. Infact, I had almost forgot the term “air time charges” !
- In US, some plans charge you for receiving SMS !.. Nice way to get screwed!. In India, I don’t know of any plans where you get charged for receiving SMSes.
- In US, sending out SMS is pretty expensive (from 4 cents to 40 cents!!!). In India…….its 1/10th the price!
- In US, prepaid SIMS are contract free, but are way too expensive. i.e., the postpaid plans them self are expensive, but prepaid is more expensive. In India, the call charges on pre-paid and post-paid are almost comparable.
- One more point is, in US, with most of the plans, you get some free minutes. If you are within the limit, then you are safe. But if you exceed, then you will be charged like crazy. And the minutes are used even if you call a Toll Free number! Most plans count the minutes for incoming call too!
I also noticed that in US, Nokia handsets are not that popular. I haven’t seen many people use Nokia handsets. I found more people using Motorola handsets.
Clearly, India is far ahead! Hope to see similar progress in other areas too!
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March 15th, 2006 at 08:22am
Got hold of Nokia 9300 smartphone for a day. My uncle has bought this handset. He handed it over to me for a test drive / setup kind of stuff. Was experimenting with it for all the time today morning.
I always thought that my Nokia 6600 was kind of bulky, but after using this, i am kind of happy ;). This one is bigger, and heavier too. But it looks cool. Infact, it looks very professional. Kind of very high tech.
Ok. Coming to my observation…
The only major difference feature wise between nokia 9300 and nokia 6600 is the keyboard or keypad. Otherwise both the phones have more or less the same features, including most of the software (not all). 6600 has a camera/imaging functions. Nokia 9300 does not have it. Its cousin nokia 9500 has the camera too.
The screen is kind of too narrow. 640*200 (w*h). Like an tower. The aspect ratio is 3.2:1. On the other hand, nokia 6600 is 176*208 (h*w) pixels.
Nokia 9300 runs on Series 80 platform. The UI is pretty neat, but i found that it lacks consistency. Could have been better. And since it runs on a series 80 platform (s80) , the programs that run on s60, (i.e., nokia 6600) wont directly run on Nokia 9300. You have to find the appropriate versions.
I managed to get Smart Movie player, and Ultra MP3 for Nokia 9300. Ultra mp3 player rocks on 9300. But when it comes to smart movie player, the broad screen is of little use. Most of the screen is unused. I also installed some games on it. Clearly, 9300 is not a gaming machine.
One very good thing about nokia 9300 is the response time. The UI is pretty fast and responsive at most of the times compared to Nokia 6600. Also, lot of stuff is natively supported. For e.g., you can open word docs, spreadsheets, presentations etc. But in case of Nokia 6600, you need to add some additional software. The same is the case with MP3 playback. Also found that the bluetooth transfer works much faster with this phone. It rocks. Internal memory is 80 MB, which is one major plus point.
Nokia 9300, current cost in Bangalore/India - around 30K INR
Nokia 6600, current cost in Bangalore/India - around 11.5K INR
At the end of it, i am still happy with Nokia 6600 :) One major plus point about nokia 6600 is … there are tons of software already available for it, and its very popular, and affordable.
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July 17th, 2005 at 08:17pm
Finally after lot of R&D, yesterday i could finally browse the net over my 6600 using my PC’s internet connection over bluetooth !
Two things are possible.
1. You use the GPRS of your Mobile phone and browse on your PC.
2. You use the DSL (or other high speed connection) of your PC to browse on your Mobile phone.
#1 is pretty simple, and is very easy to setup on Nokia 6600. But #2 is not that simple. After reading lot of forums, i found that Nokia has on purpose blocked this feature in 6600.
If you have already done a search on this topic, you would have definitely come across this page. But the instructions there are quite cryptic, and not very clear. So, i did lot of search on various forums, and finally got it right. What i have done is, i have basically documented the steps that i followed to make it work. Do give it a try!. It might work for you as well. If it works (or doesn’t) do comment here!
Steps…
First lets set up the PC. Things to do on PC :
- Deactivate all the Checkboxes in mRouter (at least the ones of the Bluetooth COM ports)
- Goto Bluetooth settings and Deactivate everything else in Local services than Bluetooth serial port, note the com port you set as bluetooth serial port
- Goto Phone and Modem options, go to “Modems” add a new one, activate “I will select it from a list”
- Choose “Communications cable between 2 Computers” from the list (in Standard Modem Types)
- Select the COM port from step3
- In the modem settings set maximum port speed to 115200
- Goto Network Connections and create a new connection (wizard)
- Select Set up an advanced connection -> Next
- Accept incoming connections -> Next
- Check the Communications cable between two computers -> Next
- Do not allow VPN connections ->
- select a username you want to give access to your pc over Bluetooth (that’s the username you will set on the phone later) -> Next
- Select Internet Protocol -> Properties, select “TCI/IP address assignment” and set the IP range to something like 10.0.2.2-10.0.2.254
- Remove Internet Connection Sharing from all interfaces
- run cmd.exe and enter the following commands:
netsh routing ip nat install
netsh routing ip nat add interface "YOUR LAN INTERFACE NAME" full
netsh routing ip nat add interface Internal private
YOUR LAN INTERFACE NAME has to be replaced with the name of the interface connected to the internet
- if there is a “Bluetooth Network” connection in Network Connections delete it
- In network connections choose the incoming connection just created, and open its properties.
- Click on the users tab, check the last checkbox which says “Always allow directly connected devices to such as palmtop computers to connect without using a password” (this step helped me!)
So, that’s the setup on the PC. Next we need to configure the 6600
- Download gnubox6600.SIS and install it on your phone. Search Google for GnuBox
- Create a new Access Point on the phone (Setting|Connection|Access points|New access point|Use default settings).
- Use the following settings for it:
- Name: Bt (This name is important, the gnubox software will look for it, since its hard-coded in the code)
- Data Bearer: High speed (GSM)
- Dial-up number: e.g. 2222. It doesn’t matter what you have here as long as it’s not empty
- Username: the username you gave access to the incoming connection earlier
- Prompt password: No
- Password: Password for the user on Windows
- Authentication: Normal
- Advanced Settings: Use Login Script Yes
- Advanced Settings: Login Script
CHARMAP [windows-1252]
LOOP 10
{
SEND “CLIENT”+<0×0d>
WAIT 3
{
“SERVER” OK
}
}
EXIT KErrNoAnswer$OK:
EXIT
Be careful that you get it exactly as show here, including line breaks. You could save it to a file, send to the phone and copy-paste to the settings.
- Advanced Settings: Use PPP Compression Yes
- Run the program you installed at step1 (gnubox)
- Inside gnubox: Options-> 2box Direct -> Bluetooth, select your computer, leave gnubox running in background
- Run the nokia wml browser select “Bt” as access point and connect.
- You can also use any other internet app like Agile messenger, real player, opera, profimail etc
I was able to connect, and view my website and could read this blog too. I was also able to receive and send out mail using profimail, and the built-in mail client.
I hope this posting helps all the Nokia 6600 owners, specially in India!
Update (Sep-16-2005) : Check this page and this page for more info on GnuBox for nokia 6600
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March 30th, 2005 at 04:36pm