Tag: nokia

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Cloud Computing With The Nokia E51

New hardware, especially new phones, may come and go but the cloud (they should just have called it the matrix) is definitely here to stay. The way to go then is having your data in the cloud. However, setting up and using my Nokia E51 to access the cloud wasn’t so straightforward, so I’m listing down some tips that might help.

Browser – the traditional way of accessing the Internet. The E51’s built-in browser is capable enough but if you want full access to Web 2.0, you’ll need Opera Mobile. Unfortunately, there’s no way to make it the default browser.

Mail – forget about the “e”, traditional mail is dead. I use GMail for my personal mail.You can use the E51’s built-in mail client which can be easily configured for GMail and is quite functional. But it’s sometimes it’s a bit kludgy so you might want to use the the GMail mobile client.

Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks – I try to use the Google address book as my definitive contact list and calendar. To sync the E51 with them, you need to install Nokia Mail for Exchange and set it up with Google Sync. No Tasks syncing unfortunately.

Instant Messaging – Fring allows you to connect to your contacts in Skype®, MSN Messenger®, Google Talk™, ICQ, Yahoo!™, AIM®, etc.

VOIP – Fring allows you to make SIP, Skype®, Google Talk™ calls or even its own fring VOIP service. Less charges by your telco service provider.

Social Networking – other than the browser, you can also directly access Facebook and Twitter via Fring.

Photos – todo

Music – todo

Videos – todo

Games – I have Assassin’s Creed on my E51! It’s just a 2D side-scroller though :P Looks like gaming still has some way to go before phones can go massively multiplayer online games. But you have quite a few choices of mini-games, including some online ones.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have problems and I’ll be glad to help.

 

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Nokia USB Charger

I have no computer, much more a network connection, at the new office I’m deployed to so I’m forced to use my netbook and phone for surfing and downloading. Needless to say, having both WiFi and HSDPA activated is a huge drain on the battery. So I looked around for a USB charger.

The first logical place to go to is of course your friendly neighborhood Nokia service center. They had some but at a staggering P1,200. Next stop, was CD-R King, purveyor of cheap electronica where I endured a somewhat slow queue only to be told that they sell them for P90 but are currently out of stock. I finally found it at Games and Gadget for P220. Not as cheap as CD-R King but it sure beats out-of-stock.

Now I can extend my surfing to as long as my netbook has power and as long as I can stomach the expensive telco charges.

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Nokia E51

nokiae51My Nokia 5310 XpressMusic bit the dust after a horizontal fall. I went back to my trusty old Sony Ericsson K700i while searching for the perfect replacement phone.

The perfect replacement phone has to be small, slim, and most importantly black. My first choice, the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition fits the bill and is the coolest but is a bit too expensive. My second choice is still the Nokia 5310 which is the second coolest. Reason why I got one in the first place.

But lately, I was thinking of going back to my geeky roots and get a gadget phone. You know, those phones with everything but the kitchen sink. So what would that phone need to have? Bluetooth, GPRS (2.5G), EDGE (3G), HSDPA (3.5G), VoIP, WiFi, etc. aside from voice, SMS, and other phone things.

The Nokia E51 is all that (okay, less the GPS) and more. It comes from a line of business-oriented smartphones and so it has everything you need to remain connected wherever you may go. It’s so business-oriented it doesn’t even have Snake!!! But hey, all those three-letter acronyms is really where the fun is. So who cares, right? So I got it and so far I’m not disappointed.

UPDATE: Very good phone overall but after just over a year of use, ALL the rubber buttons along the sides have disintegrated. Talk about planned obsolescence. Makes me want to boycott Nokia.

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Nokia 5310 XpressMusic

Black is back. I’ve been eyeing the Nokia 5310 for quite some time already. My primary reason being it’s one of the, if not the smallest, slimmest, lightest phones out there. The personal multimedia player features clinched the deal. However, what held me back was the availability of only red and blue accented models. I thought that a silver accented model would be better. But I was surprised that Nokia actually did one better and released an all black model. Nokia has been releasing black models recently including the 6500, the 6300 (originally in silver), and now the 5310. I guess they finally realized that silver nor pink (supposedly the new black) just isn’t as classic and versatile as black. Of course they’re not the first, Apple had long discovered that black iPods and black iBooks sold better. Welcome back black!