I’m an admirer of quality products and Jamo makes quality speakers, the sound quality of their speakers are amazing, their designs are unique. Now the Jamo A 804 is something different, from the review on Yanko design they have described what I would want from front mounting speakers. You can use these as a set on their own with the subwoofer, of course powered through an A/V receiver. And you can later add it for a 5.1 or 7.1 system. This speaker has great quality sounds from low to high frequency, trebles and base conveyed perfectly, covering from movies to music, high paced action or intense conversations and scenes. This speaker excels at all forms of sound while looking good, and that isn’t the best part. Most of the times when you have a setup such as this you always have to sit in a specific spot to get the best sound, with these speakers you can sit in any location and get the perfect amount of sound with the 2.1 setup.
Link: YankoDesign
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Voice Coverage:
- Zain is good, except for those dropped calls at quite a few locations
- Wataniya has good coverage, a few problem areas but overall good
- Viva seems to go from bad to spotty coverage, pretty much the worst of the bunch
With the new Google Phone its a very Data oriented phone with lots of different services and integrated items that require constant data usage. You can manually configure the APN details so that you can access 3G/Edge of your network. The biggest adopter and advertiser of Google Android phones currently is Viva, the other operators haven’t adopted Android Phones yet. Now the surprising part is this, I have used my Google Phone with Zain and Wataniya, the settings work automatically and I’m on the 3G network right away downloading data and it transfers to a wireless network that it recognizes if it connected to it previously. It puts the priority on normal wireless if its available before using 3G/Edge. Now the surprising part is Viva, the settings don’t download right away, speaking to the technical staff they run you in circles and they don’t even know. I even tried explaining to them the exact details but I honestly couldn’t get a coherent answer from them. With Wataniya and Zain they knew exactly what I was talking about and they provided me the APN settings and the exact details, IPs, and ports. Overall for voice services in Kuwait you either go with Wataniya Telecom or Zain.
I have had the Nexus One for a while now and at the same time I have my Blackberry with so its interesting to have two data intensive phones. Usually I always had one dumb phone, just to make calls and data phone since getting the Blackberry two simple roles but since getting the Nexus One I have been enjoying surfing and the ease of accessing my emails and other Google applications. The Blackberry is a simple smooth operating system which has great data management, keeps everything lite.
Blackberry 8900
- Handles Data Usage Efficiently
- Great Battery Life
- Great Signal
- Applications
- Blackberry Messenger
- Good Sound Quality
- Excellent Speaker
- Durable, has taken some ridiculous falls
Nexus One Android
- Excellent Screen
- Lots of Applications
- Best browsing Capability, works with Flash
- Best Gmail Integration
- Works with Wifi Perfectly
- Touch Screen
- Amazing Sound Quality
- Google Contacts Integrations
- Crappy Batter Life
- Fragile
- Very Customizable Home Screen
- Youtube in Full Screen
I have suffered multiple crashes from my BBM 5.00.55 so I decided to upgrade but something was acting up and then half way thru the update the phone fell and restarted which resulted in BBM disappearing from my screen.
I had to remove the software through the desktop manager and then reinstalled BBM 5.00.57 from the phone. The best and only way to really restore all contacts and groups is through your email. Back Up to your email consistently to make sure that you have the latest contacts and groups.
One I asked to restore from email it took about 20 minutes to verify the email which freaked me out a bit, then it took about 10 minutes to restore all my contacts and several hours to restore the groups which some how came through successfully. So Blackberry has a clear and good working process for restoring the contacts and groups.
I received a message on my Google Nexus One for update, I wasn’t sure what it was but I was too sleepy to think about it and just accepted it. I installed and restarted, right after I didn’t think much about it, I was reading an article on BBC then I was trying to move to things and the screen zoomed in when I realized they updated the multi-touch capability which is a very important feature to have but I was too lazy to root it or install a program for it. The update came from Google which fixes 3G issues as well as the multi-touch feature, a quick roll out for this service. Overall I am enjoying the Nexus One and all its capabilities, its interesting comparing it with the Blackberry which I will at a later point.
The Great
- Android 2.1 is more refined, works smoothly
- Amazing 3.7inch OLED Screen
- Powerful CPU, the Nexus One is a fast phone
- Excellent quality sound
- Fantastic 5.1 Megapixel Camera
- Interaction with all Google Services (Gmail, Latitude, Google Voice, Google Reader, Picasa, and others) is fantastic, its smooth and updates right away.
The Good
- Android Market Applications have built up over the past year and a bit, even though some need some more refining before hitting the market
- Very Good Quality Build
- Smooth design, and relatively thin, fits nicely in your hands but I keep hearing that it doesn’t take kindly to drops
- Decent phone signal
The Crap:
- Battery doesn’t even last the whole day, it makes it 75% through the day I use the phone a lot
- No Multitouch
- No Arabic Support, expecting it soon
- Speaker is ridiculously low and the ringer speaker is on the low side too, but you can hear the ringer clearly, I still have to get used to the new ringer
- Slow charging Battery
Overall
I think they have made great progress with all the Google Phones and I am enjoying using it. So much you can do with the data and configure this phone, this phone is for people who really like customizing how their phone works and how it presents the data to you. The interaction between all the programs with data being downloaded to the phone is very fast and smooth, I have 3G switched off and its still very smooth. The best part is surfing online with Flash working perfectly, it presents websites very well and smooth. All this information can be customized, the home screen can be customized, I like how much you can tweak it and move things around, the different widgets, and how easy it is to get to the settings page and tweak it.
Zain APN Settings:
My luck with phones for the past few days have been a bit off but this is a bit of a simpler problem. My trackball stopped scrolling down, I didn’t think much of it, I would just cause a lot of friction and it would go back to normal and never thought much about it until today. It really didn’t want to go down, I could go up, left, right but not down so it was annoying. I decided to try to take it apart myself, when I started doing that, it turns out there are more parts connected then I knew so I put it back together. So the next step was to take a very thin flat screw driver to the area around the trackball and insert, but that get the results I expected, instead I destroyed all functionality left in the ball.
Called my phone guy, asked him to replace the trackball section asap, and he hasn’t failed me yet.
25 KD for an original trackball piece with the area around it, 5 hours later the whole thing is done and fixed, good as new. I just can’t seem to change to another Blackberry, if I’m comfortable with a phone I won’t be changing it anytime and soon and switching to the Bold 9700 isn’t on the map for me right now, the 8900 does everything I need perfectly.
Sounds like its a simple enough but after trying for hours upon hours this is the best process that I have come up with that can apply to other phones.
Sony Ericsson T700 (Any Sony Ericsson) to Google Nexus One
What You Need:
- Sony Ericsson PC Suite
- Microsoft Outlook
- Gmail Account
Simple Steps:
- You Syncronize all your contacts with Outlook through the Sony Ericsson PC Suite, in my case they were 1000+ Contacts with multiple numbers.
- Then you go to Microsoft Outlook, go to the Contacts Tab
- Choose “File” then “Import and Export”, then choose “Export to a file”
- Then you export the all your contacts to Comma Separated Values or CSV (Windows) Format
- Then you log into your Gmail account and head to contacts
- On the top right side of your contacts is an “Import” tab, click that link
- Once you go to the “Import” page, open the file on your computer named Contacts.CSV and upload it
- It will upload all your contacts to your Gmail Account
- Then the Google Nexus Phone which is associated with your Gmail account will proceed to sync with all the data and within minutes you will have all your contacts on your Google phone
This isn’t 100% perfect you still have to go through your contacts and clean it up slightly, there are a few mix ups but the best part is that you edit it from your Google account which is much faster. You can merge duplicated contacts, add more data and your phone will sync up when ever it has a data or wireless connection which has made things simpler for me. I think I’m at 95% at this point but there is still some clean up to do.
Probably the worst timing for a phone to go on the fritz, I was about to start the transfer my basic Sony Ericsson to the Nexus One which was an arduous process in itself since there isn’t a simple process develop by Google yet. Just as I was about to start transferring the contacts through bluetooth to a smart Sony Ericsson it got stuck on searching for Bluetooth devices and didn’t stop, left it for about 5 minutes and it was still on the same screen. Took out the battery and put it back in and the damn thing would just keep restarting with no end in site, I tried connecting to my PC to pull the contacts with no hope, it kept trying to find the drivers but it kept restarting. I haven’t backed up my contacts in a year, I was going nuts and I had to go to a afternoon part of the funeral so I dropped it off at my phone guy since I gave up all hope. I had people calling me and I had no clue who they were, I had full conversations then asked them who they were, I had to keep explaining that I lost my phone, it was the only way.
I dropped it off at 2pm, I was tormented for many hours, I was going nuts. I got a call from my phone guy to pick it up at 8 pm, the screen and keyboard were shot so I was happy that everything was working. First thing I did was back up the phone numbers and performed the transplant to Nexus which is another story.
I ordered the phone after seeing the post on Uptill1, I wasn’t keen on it right away but after reading the specs I decided to jump onboard to the Android platform. Also because my Sony Ericsson phone now hangs whenever it feels like and lets me access my contacts when it feels like, so its time for a change.
I really like the clean packaging of the box, you open it up and see the phone as it has been in all the blurry images. The Nexus One is a lot bigger then I expected, its just as big as the iPhone but a lot thinner which is nice, compared to the Blackberry 8900 Curve its thing but tall.
Now the process begins to transfer the contacts to Android platform, and I know you get really tied up with your Gmail account because of this. Now I have to figure out a solution to transfer 800+ contacts from my old Sony Ericsson phone to my Nexus One, I have a feeling it will not be a pleasurable experience. You would think that after all this time someone would come up with a software to transfer contacts without any mistakes that you may face, and I know that outlook process is a bit on the retarded side, it doesn’t take all the information of your contacts, if one contact has more then two to three numbers assume a few of the details will be disappearing, overall its going to be annoying. Other then that I am really looking forward to trying this phone it got a lot of good reviews, and what criticism it did get it doesn’t bother me.
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