Category Archives: Mobile

My List of Mobile Handsets (updated)

23 November, 2024 Scurvy Dawg 10 Comments

I’ll go back in time now and make a list of all the mobile handsets I have owned till date. You may notice that the list is quite long, with it being especially dense in the first few years.

The iPhone X still holds the record of the longest used mobile handset by me (almost 3 years).

Year	Phone	Comments
2003	Reliance LG RD2030 (CDMA)	My first phone, my father had to pull many strings to get me this.
2004	Nokia 3530	My first colour phone. I miss the paragliding game.
2004	Samsung C100	Had a hidden temperature sensor and a notification LED supporting customisable colours.
2004	Samsung X100	Slightly better than the above.
2004	Nokia 1100	My first phone with a torch.
2005	Nokia 2112	My last CDMA phone.
2005	Nokia N-Gage QD	Didn’t have stereo audio for music playback.
2005	Nokia 3510i	Purchased Second hand.
2005	O2 Xphone II	One of the best phones I had.
2005	Motorola C350	When the above got stolen. I think I got it for ~₹1000, second hand. Shitty.
2006	Nokia 6100	Second Hand.
2006	Nokia E50	One of the best phones I had. It was the sleekest Symbian ever. I still use the Text Tone “Flurry” as my wife’s message tone.
2006	Sony Ericsson J100i	Shitty.
2007	Nokia N73 ME	It was thick, but had a good (back then) camera.
2007	Nokia E51	Back to the thinner E Series.
2007	LG KS20	One of the worst phones I had. It was unrefined and shitty.
2008	Nokia E51	Went back to E51.
2009	Nokia E52	Good phone, died on the flight to Palo Alto. I spent an entire weekend in San Francisco and many days in Gurgaon trying to get it repaired, but failed.
2010	iPhone 3G	Got this as a temporary phone in Palo Alto, later gifted to mother. Used only a week.
2010	Nokia E63	Mooched this one off my father.
2011	Nokia E7-00	First phone I ever pre-booked, and got immediately after returning from Turkey. My first AMOLED phone.
2012	Nokia Lumia 900	Was obsoleted by Microsoft within a few months of launch. Got it from SGBest.
2013	Nokia Lumia 720	Got it from MGF Metropolitan Mall
2013	Nokia Lumia 925	The Lumia 720 didn’t feel premium enough, so.
2014	Nokia Lumia 920	The Lumia 925 didn’t have wireless charging, so.
2014	Nokia Lumia 830	Slightly bigger screen, but LCD.
2015	Microsoft Lumia 950XL	Lumia Flagship. Also, a big mistake.
2017	Apple iPhone 7 Plus	First legit iPhone.
2018	Apple iPhone X	Gift from a fiend.
2019	Apple iPhone XS	Got it for dual SIM during travel, gifted iPhone X to wife.
2020	Apple iPhone X	Swapped Xs with X with wife, as I switched jobs and didn’t need to travel anymore.
2020	Apple iPhone 12 Pro	First phone I bought in a long time with money I already had
2022	Apple iPhone 14 Pro	First phone I bought with a 120Hz display
2024	Apple iPhone 16 Pro	Current Phone

List of Mobile Handsets

As you can see, my mobile handsets have gone through different eras:

2003-2005 : Feature Phone era. I generally bought any handset I liked.
2005-2011 : Symbian Era. I mostly had Symbian phones with some other platforms sprinkled in between.
2012-2015 : Lumia Era. I purely had Windows Phones.
2017-Present : Apple Era.

Let’s see what the future brings.

Mobile, Technology

iPhone 14 Pro first impressions

19 November, 2022 Scurvy Dawg 1 Comment

So I upgraded from my iPhone 12 Pro to an iPhone 14 Pro. Here’re my takeaways after 1 day:

The camera module is huge. There’s a perceptible slope to the phone when lying flat. The phone looks stupid without a case. Like it has sprouted a tumour.

iPhone 12 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro Camera bump without case — Camera bump without case

iPhone 12 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro Camera bump with case — Camera bump without case

But the cameras take very nice macro images. Will get creative with this in the days to come.

Fabric Macro, iPhone 14 Pro — Orange Macro, iPhone 14 Pro

It is and feels heavier than 12 Pro. I am glad I didn’t get the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which I almost did. My little finger is already suffering.

FaceID is noticeably faster.

The dynamic island is cool. Even the parts with the FaceID sensor and the camera are touch sensitive. Hope more apps develop cool features for it.

Dynamic Island, iPhone 14 Pro — Music, Dynamic Island

Although, the notch on the older iPhones had become invisible to me, I still can’t un-see the dynamic island. Also, the Dynamic island sits a bit lower on the screen compared to the older notch, so app content starts even lower. This change is just barely perceptible.

The always on display is cool. Time will tell how much battery it uses up.

The display is cooler (as in colour temperature). I think my iPhone 12 Pro Display was unnecessarily warm.

The 120Hz display difference is visible, especially during screen animations and when using the 12 Pro.

Will sell the iPhone 12 Pro once my eSIM situation is sorted out, hopefully in March 2023.

Gadgets, Mobile, Rant, Technology

My Worst Purchases-Microsoft Lumia 950XL

18 July, 2020 Scurvy Dawg 3 Comments

Continuing with my series, the next entry in the list is the Microsoft Lumia 950XL, which was my 29th phone.

I was super-excited to buy this phone since the day it was announced by Microsoft. In the months leading up to the actual launch, I used to send my family members to the Microsoft Store at Ambience mall every Sunday (one-by-one) to ask about the phone’s launch date. I even had a Google search alert setup which sent me emails as soon as any news article were published about this phone. Although this phone was great on paper (Great hardware, huge display, excellent camera), this phone was my 7th Windows Phone overall and by the time this phone launched, Windows 10 Mobile was all but dead.

I remember the day this phone launched; I had just started a new job that week. I immediately dropped everything I was doing and went to Ambience mall to buy it (For ₹55,000; of course, I had pre-booked the phone months ago). The store employees told I was the first person in North India to get my hands on this phone. At that time I thought I was special. In hindsight, it is clear now, I was one of the few fools in North India to buy a Windows Mobile (at the tail end of 2015).

Within months, Microsoft announced the death of Windows 10 for mobiles. Within weeks after that, app developers abandoned the platform. There was still a small community online of loyal fans but we were more and more reliant on 3rd party apps for basic services. Uber, specifically, was a huge pain point. There was no easy way to search for destinations, you had to zoom out on the map, zoom in to where you thought you wanted to go and mark the location manually.

I also remember claiming some of the phone’s cost from my company (There was a company BYOD policy) and my manager laughing at me that I spent such a huge amount for such a phone.

Slowly and painfully, over the next year, the number of useable 1st party apps dwindled to almost zero and I eventually made the jump to Apple’s (Walled) Garden putting an end to my Lumia misery. If I could do things over, I should have bought an iPhone for the same amount and prevented myself from a year of misery.

Mobile, Rant, Technology

Features I want to be implemented in the Nokia Lumia series

10 January, 2012 Scurvy Dawg 2 Comments

I have been a smartphone user for almost as long as I have used a cellphone. As a user, I have evolved over these years. Most of my smartphone experience has been with Symbian (95%) and Windows Mobile (5%).

Planning to move to a Nokia Windows Phone in the future, these are certain features I am used to, which I find sadly missing on Nokia WIndows Phones
Notification LED: Its an LED on the front panel of the phone which blinks periodically whenever there’s a new Missed call or SMS.
For me, this is highly useful because most modern smartphones don’t show anything on their screens when in standby mode and you have to press a button and go to the lock screen to see whether there are any messages or missed calls.
Windows Phone supports this for Missed calls and voicemails only, not for SMS.
Nokia Windows Phones don’t have a Notification LED at all.
Profiles: I prefer to use different profiles when I am at home (Loud Ringer, no vibration, email alerts), when my phone is in my pocket (No Ringer, vibrations, no email alerts), when I am sleeping (No vibrations, low volume ascending ringer , no email alerts, calls only from family members) and Silent (No notifications at all).
This is something I have gotten used to such an extent that I felt terrible when I had to use an iphone for a week.
Windows Phone does not have this functionality natively at all.
Without these 2 features, there is no way I can buy a Nokia Windows Phone.

Gadgets, Mobile, Technology

Mobile OS feature Comparison

16 October, 2011 Scurvy Dawg Leave a comment

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

14 October, 2011 Scurvy Dawg Leave a comment

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:-

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.
The beta applications by Nokia (Maps etc) which make the experience bearable are still un-refined
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:-

Apple iOS is still restrictive/too proprietary to hold my attention for long
Android is too un-refined and power consuming
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.

Mobile, Rant

My Latest Mobile Phone…

26 March, 2006 Scurvy Dawg 6 Comments

A Motorola C350

No, this is not the picture of my handset, it’s a picture from the website. The theft of my phone had left me penniless so, somehow after conjuring up around 2000 bucks, I went off to the second hand mobile shop to search for a cheap phone with USB Modem capabilities. What I wanted was a samsung C100 but I couldn’t find that in any of the shops so I decided to settle for a Motorola C350. As I had already used my friend’s handset for a week, I knew that it had a decent modem with USB connectivity. Anyways, I have tried to list the Pros and Cons of this wonderful handset(not the original one but the second hand piece that I have) below.
Pros:-

Decent modem with USB pop port.

Cons:-

Pathetic display with huge dots forming up the tiny screen.
Screen conveys a feeling of depression.
256 color screen.
Pathetic menus.
Disgusting text entry mechanism.
Extremely bad ringtone quality.
Body looks like the handset fell off a moving vehicle and a few trucks ran over it.
Poor battery life.
Crashes whenever some memory operation is performed.
Lack of profiles.
* key of the keypad broken in 3 places.
Switches off automatically
Vibrator louder than the ringtone.
Maximum 2 lines of text on the screen at a time.
After a message has been typed, you have to press atleast another 6 buttons to send it.
Poor phonebook.
Doesnt support picture messages, sms ringtones.

Gadgets, Mobile

One month review of O2 XPhone II

28 December, 2005 Scurvy Dawg 3 Comments

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.:-

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

Cons.:-

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

An Insight into my Hindside