Nokia E71 Tortured - review

Some crazy guys have done X-treme things to the Nokia E71 including freezing it, Dipping it in Beer, running a car over it and IT STILL POWERED ON!!!!

Amazing phone I say! No wonder this phone is so popular. I still get the highest hits on the E71 review post 2 years after I published it.

Facebook Chat on #Blackberry?

It might sound simple but it isn't. Palringo 2.0 does provide a facebook chat option but it never works. You will try to login and it will say "invalid username or password". It might login a few times but it will stop suddenly. (In a hurry?? go to the end of the post)

I was facing the same problem for a long time and I had almost given up. But then I wanted to have facebook chat on my desktop. So I googled it and found that facebook help center has a solution for that. It seems that facebook uses XMPP or jabber protocol for chat (I didnt know what it was before this).It said that I can use Pidgin as a windows client for chatting so I downloaded pidgin (which was a bit painful., but thats another story). Facebook gave me the settings for it which work fine (and which are generic to all jabber chat clients).

Today for some reason I changed my gtalk password, and unfortunately (or fortunately in this case) I had to delete my gtalk id from palringo because it wont let me simply change the password. So I added it again. While adding it I noticed that it had the same settings that I had used in Pidgin, which made sense because even gtalk uses XMPP. Then I thot "Hmmmm" and tried to add an XMPP/ jabber account on palringo with the facebook settings and it worked. Its not even been a day so I have no way of know that it will last, but so far its working.

So here are the steps
1. Open palringo on your phone.
2. Go down the list and add a XMPP/Jabber Account
3. Put the setttings given for pidgin on this page even the resource.
4. save

I'll keep updating if I face problems. Let me know if it doesn't work.
EDIT: I'm using Palringo on Blackberry curve 8520

Tata Docomo Launches Alcatel branded Qwerty phone

Tata Docomo has launched a QWERTY handset named the Alcatel OneTouch Net, which looks a lot like the Palm Centro and is priced at INR 5,500.

The handset comes preloaded with Yahoo's services and one touch access to the Dive-in Portal. The Yahoo suite seems a lot like the Google's mobile suite.

Tata DOCOMO will offer the following Yahoo! services on the Alcatel OneTouch Net Phone, which can be accessed with a single sign-in:
· Yahoo! Mail—Access your favourite Web mail features: Read, reply, compose and send mail, with push alerts; view attachments; get to your personal mail folders; and organize messages by customizable groups;
· Yahoo! Messenger—Message your friends reliably in real time: view their availability and quickly see their status messages; update your own status; and show your style with emoticons, avatars, or photos;
· Yahoo! Contacts and Calendar—Look up and/or add contact information and update your calendar;
· Yahoo! Homepage—One-button access to Yahoo!’s mobile homepage: the world’s most advanced mobile homepage. Bring together your favourite content and services from anywhere across the Internet to one location, all on the gorgeous 2.4-inch display;
· Yahoo! News—Get up-to-date headlines from Yahoo! on the home screen, so consumers will have the latest news brought to them;
· Yahoo! Search with Voice—Consumers can search for anything, including locations, news, Website names, and more by simply speaking. Yahoo! Search with Voice lets consumers perform ‘Wide-Open’ searches, returning relevant results for practically every kind of query. Simply speak whatever you are looking for and have access to instant answers and relevant information;
· Yahoo! Social Pulse—Provides a dynamic overview of what friends are up to, including recent photos, their status, profile updates, and recommendations across popular social networks; allows users to easily connect with people, and/or update their status across multiple social networks at once; and
· Flickr—Take, share and discover photos and videos; geo-tag photos; and e-mail them to your Flickr account from your Alcatel mobile phone.
While Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger will be lifetime-free for all subscribers on the Tata DOCOMO network, subscribers visiting the ‘Dive In’ portal will be able to enjoy differentiated services.

Blackberry without Blackberry Service

Many people today buy Blackberry phones without really knowing the limitations of not having Blackberry service. Its only after they have bought the phone do they realise that functionality goes down a lot without a Blackberry service.

I started using my Blackberry with a Mail-lite plan (unlimited Free IM and Email) but I missed the browsing function and also couldn't do any social networking without a Wi-fi connection. So I decided I'm going to find an alternative to the BB service and work-arounds for most limitations
So if you have a blackberry but don't want to use the Blackberry service read on.
(This applies only to India, I don't know about operator policies in other countries but I'm sure it can be done)

1. Go get Tata Docomo connection (or any other service provider who gives GRPS APN access to applications)

2. Go to options - advanced options - TCP/IP connections - and put the APN settings of the service provider.

3.  For email, your inbuilt email will not work without a Blackberry Service, so you can use GMail mobile app to access your GMail account. You can also set up GMail to pull in mail from other inboxes so you get all your mail from one app.One tip - Gmail mobile many times doesn't show links in emails, the work around is using a browser (Opera Mini, Bolt) and Basic html format of Gmail

4. Use Opera Mini for Blackberry. Although you don't need this application, because the default browser will work with you Tata Docomo connection, opera mini is faster and lighter in terms of data. Its not totally bug free (mine refuses to respond to the track pad sometimes), but it allows you to do pretty much everything that you would do on a normal browser except watch You Tube videos.

5. Palringo - for IM.  Again not a a bug free app, its a lot lighter than the Nimbuzz software and I have used it to log into Gtalk, Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook chat. Nimbuzz just ate all my battery, and was buggy too.

6. Most RIM applications will not work without a full Blackberry service, like the Facebook app, Twitter app and even Google Maps. I don't know about Blackberry Maps though. So I use a great app for Facebook called Snaptu, its light and sweet and can be used for Twitter. But I prefer to use Ubertwitter for tweeting. Its a lot more powerful and fun. I also use Foursquare, a location based app, that sort of rewards you for visiting places. It also lets you know where your friends have been recently so you are not left out.

If you are planning to buy a Blackberry and don't want to use the service, I'd suggest you go for another brand - there are many options (I like Nokia E and C series and Samsung Androids). But if you already have the Blackberry phone, this post should help you do everything you wanted. The only thing that you won't able to use is the Blackberry Messenger, which is a motivation for some to go for a blackberry in the first place. But I think its a small price to pay for Freedom.