Category Archives: Gadgets

Gadgets, Music, Rant, Technology

My Worst Purchases-Bose QC 35 II

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Continuing with my series, the next entry in the list is the Bose QC 35 II headphones, which I regretted buying.

Bose QC 35 II
The Bose QC 35 II, stellar headphones

Don’t get me wrong, the Bose QC 35 II are great headphones, with stellar sound quality and impressive noise cancellation. I just realised after buying them that I am not a “wearing huge headphones in public” kind of guy.

A bit of history, my earphones of choice used to be the Bose Soundsport Wireless, which I happily used for a few years, but lost during my last trip to Xiamen, China. I was quite devastated and for some time, considered buying the same earphones again, but couldn’t find them anywhere in Xiamen. I almost bought Apple Airpods from the Xiamen Apple store, but somehow controlled myself because of the poor audio quality.

After returning to India, I saw the Bose QC 35 II on sale at half price and I had wanted to dip my toes into Noise cancellation, so bought it.

The sound quality & the noise cancellation blew me away (Sony MX3 performs even better they say, but I was a Bose purist then). However, after the first few days of use, the novelty began to wear off. I would feel awkward walking in public with them around my ears, sitting at my desk in office. Having phone calls on them looked even more awkward so I started regretting my decision very soon.

On top of that, Apple soon launched the Airpods Pro, which had everything I wanted in the original Airpods and I was done with the QC 35 IIs.

I eventually sold them to a couple of illiterate Gym Bros via OLX at almost the same price I bought them for, so the regret didn’t last for long.

Gadgets, Mobile, Technology

Mobile OS feature Comparison

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I wrote a post earlier comparing various mobile O.S.es on things like features, stability, battery backup etc. Here I’ll do a comparison of some features I find unthinkable to live without. This is not an exhaustive feature comparison, just some features which I regularly use. I have used Stock OSes to compare. CLick on the image for a bigger version






  • Multi-tasking:- Symbian/Android & Blackberry OSes support full multitasking, where any program minimized will keep running in the memory in the background and will be able to perform all functions it normally can, in the foreground. This means that a minimized browser will continue to load a web-page in the background, a messenger application will continue to stay connected to its server and keep you online.  iOS and Windows Phone 7 on the other hand have a slightly different concept of multitasking. Any minimized application is frozen in memory and can perform only basic functions in the background. This means that a browser will not continue to load web-pages in the background, but will resume where it left off. However, messenger applications will be allowed limited connectivity so that they stay connected with the server and can show notifications whenever there’re any updates. They below semantic explains how this works on Windows Phone 7.
The latter method is inherently more restrictive, but more efficient in battery, RAM and CPU usage, especially for users who forget to close apps after using them.
  • Notification LED:-  Symbian, Blackberry (and some) Android phones support a physical LED on the phone front, which would blink whenever there’s a notification (Missed call alert, unread message, email etc.) that needs attention. Blackberry goes a step further and employs 7 different colors in its notifications LED depending on the kind of alert. Now this feature was present on feature phones since the last 10-15 years but has conveniently been left out by Apple & Microsoft in iOS and Windows Phone respectively. This feature is even more important on modern smartphones where the display is  switched off when the phone is in standby. There’s no way to know if you have any notification without bringing your phone out of standby and looking at the display.
  • Profiles:– I have a been a Nokia user ever since I started using a mobile phone and this is one of those features I am completely used to and cannot live without. Basically, profiles allow you to configure different behavior exhibited by the phone when there’s a notification. I have at-least 4 different profiles I use everyday (General, Pocket, Car and Sleep). e.g. in General, there’s high volume ringing and no vibration, in car, there’s low volume ringing and no vibration, in pocket, there’s no ringing, only vibrations, in sleep, there’s no vibrations but ascending ringing tone. This is just one aspect that can be customized; I am used to customize everything e.g. message tone, e-mail tone etc. iPhone, Windows Phone 7, Android all allow just a toggle between “General” & “Silent”. For me, this is not enough.
  • Free turn-by-turn Navigation with offline maps:-As the names saw, this is the ability of the Mapping/positioning software to provide turn-by-turn voice based navigation. Nokia has an excellent Maps application which can do this with ease, Android’s Google Maps version supports this only in a few countries, iOS doesn’t support it a all natively, nor does Blackberry or Windows Phone 7. However, it is confirmed that Windows Phone 7 will get Nokia Maps for Nokia Windows Phones. Offline support means that the maps for a certain country/region can be stored on the device rather than the device downloading it from the server every time the maps application is invoked.
  • Access to device Filesystem:- This mean that you can simple connect your phone to the computer using a USB cable and without any software installed browse the device memory card/native filesystem, copy files to and from the device. Nokia, Android, Blackberry all have it, but iOS and Windows Phone 7 don’t. This means that you have to reply on a software like iTunes and Zune respectively to copy files to and from the device and also that there are only a few supported file types you can copy to the device. Far cry from how I often use my Nokia as a USB drive to transfer files
  • Custom ring-tones:- Frankly, this is not a must-have feature, but something I have got used to. Symbian, Android, Blackberry all alow you to set any mp3 file as a ring-tone. iPhone doesn’t allow this without a jailbreak, Windows Phone 7 allows this, but you have to trim the mp3 file and rename it etc.
Everyone may not want all these features, but are something I would look for whenever I would like to switch to a different O.S.
Gadgets, Mobile, Technology

I want a new phone, but I don’t know which

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It’s more than 6 months since I got my Nokia E7-00 and I am already bored with it. Earlier, I always knew which phone I wanted to buy if I had the money, but currently, there’s no phone in the market I would rather have.
This is why I want a new phone:-

  1. Software update roll-outs are too slow. Belle for newer Symbian phones is already out but update for existing phones like the E7-00 would still take at least a month more and maybe even 2 months.
  2. The beta applications by Nokia (Maps etc) which make the experience bearable are still un-refined
  3. Widgets are fixed at rectangular shapes and suck big time. There’s no good weather widget available at all
This is why I don’t know which to buy:-
  1. Apple iOS is still restrictive/too proprietary to hold my attention for long
  2. Android is too un-refined and power consuming
  3. There are currently no good Windows Phone 7.5 with a physical keypad available (Dell Venue Pro does not have good reviews and HTC HD7 is HTC)
My best bet should be to wait for a Nokia Windows Phone device with Nokia Maps and other Nokia add-ons.
Gadgets, Music, Technology

Bose® In-Ear Headphones

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I recently had the opportunity to use bose in-ear headphones and I was so moved by the experience that I had to write a post.
Firstly, I wanted to know what the hype is about bose products and why they cost so more. Maybe it was this because of which my expectations were high. These bose headphones are good, but not as good as I expected. If you’re looking for noise cancelling phones, these are not for you. They fight very lightly in the ears but are very very comfortable. I normally use the generic headphones that came with my phone, so I like to keep my equaliser to high bass. The bass on the bose is so strong I immediately had to turn my equaliser back to normal. I started off with sad but true by metallica and the depth of the sound blew me away. The song sounded amazing. Next I moved on to marooned from pink floyd’s division bell. Again, amazing, with the bass just a bit high, overwhelming the mid range. Coming back to life sounded amazing, the bass on high hopes
was physically irritating to my skull and I had to lower the volume. Bose also says on the package that the headphones produce “natural sound” which is not entirely true, as the music sounds enhanced in the low range.
To change the genre I turned to Dire Straits. I started off with So far away, continued to Money for nothing and finished off with brothers in arms. Again, normal songs sound good, the songs with already prominent bass tracks just overwhelm the mid-range. By this time i’ve listened to an hour worth of songs but the headphones are barely noticeable and so comfortable that if it wasn’t for the sound or the wires
hanging off, I would not even know they were there. I am normally not a fan of in-ear earphones, but these are really-really good.
Pros:

  1. Excellent sound quality
  2. Excellent comfort
  3. Good Bass
Cons:
  1. Bass sometimes too strong, overpowers mid-range
  2. Better earphones available within same range
If you listen to a song for the music, the clarity of the instruments, there may be better options available. If you want just loud music with thumping bass, this the the thing for you.

I myself have added the Klipsch Image S4 on my wishlist and will be getting these bad boys as soon as I get my pay at the end of the month.

Gadgets

Saved!!!

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Just when I thought that I was doomed, my luck changed abruptly for the better. We went and pleaded with the service centre guy and convinced him to overlook the evidence of water/vodka in the motherboard and replace it under warranty. Anyways, he seemed like a nice guy because he agreed and will replace the motherboard for free.. As for me, I am so happy that I am gonna celebrate tonight… See ya..
Song of the day:-Run to you(Bryan Adams)

Gadgets, Mobile

One month review of O2 XPhone II

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It’s more than a month I have been using my new phone. So I thought it’s time I wrote a fair review about it. Following are the pros and cons of this smartphone.

Pros.:-

  1. Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
  2. 64 Mb integrated storage
  3. 32 Mb Ram
  4. Mini-SD card support upto 4 gb
  5. Fast processor
  6. Large and very clear display with exceptional clarity
  7. Speakerphone
  8. Sleek and suave
  9. Keypad Light Sensor
  10. Long battery life
  11. Above average camera quality
  12. Runs .exe files and installs software directly out of .cab files
  13. Bluetooth/Infrared Connectivity
  14. Great Multimedia Album with zoom in videos
  15. Great mp3 quality in Windows Media Player 9 and other applications.
  16. Mirror on back for self-portrait
  17. Great t9 dictionary with intuitive suggestions while typing.
  18. Good volume
  19. Wma/wav ringtones

Cons.:-

  1. File explorer software has to be downloaded from official website.
  2. Maybe hard to use for newbies.
  3. Lack of mp3 ringtones(Can be rectified by 3rd party software)
  4. Sub megapixel camera
  5. Office apps not bundled
  6. Windows Media Player 10 not present
  7. Memory Card not hot swappable