I had a chance to get my hands on the Zain router, running on the LTE/4G frequencies in Kuwait which still hasn’t been fully certified from the Ministry of Communications. So people are asking the main reason for the delay is MoC, they have everything deployed for a little while now, but as usual politics is what stops things in Kuwait, but MoC is a totally different story.

Getting my hands on it I had a bit of skepticism but I did try AT&T’s 4G services and I have seen how fast it is and its scary fast. So the first thing I wanted to do is test it where ever I can, and this case I tested it at work and friend’s places and my home. Overall I am impressed with the hardware, it is solid and gets a lot of signal, decent speed even when it is low signal, and that was the important test for me, even with low signal it was getting decent speeds around 10 MB.

It’s a Huawei modem, looks good and simple, 4 Ethernet ports on the back and right now the services are not open to the public. The worst signal I got was ranging from 8MB to 16MB, up to 32MB to 42MB. Those are some very scary speeds, and surfing the net feels lighting fast, I do love fast internet. And for 33 KD a month honestly its not too bad, but the cap should at least be 200 or 250 GB not 80 GB

Pros:

• Gets decent speed even with bad signal
• It doesn’t have to be next to a window like Mada so you can place it inside your house and it will work
• It has reached 42 MBPs with me, which got about 4.1 MB down with downloads

Cons:

• The Cap is 80GB, thats nothing compared to the speed
• You can buy more space but its overpriced in my opinion
• Its not consistent at times, but I think they are just ironing out a few kinks in the system

Based on what speeds can be reached you can reach which is 2.1 MB/s to 4.1 MB/s you can use up your 80 GB cap in 11 to 6 hrs depending on your speed. And previously the 21 MBps had a 60 GB limit from Zain so logically it should be at least 120 GB based on their original capping scheme. Overall I think the cap is ridiculous but they are going to do it then a person should get a good bang for their buck with a 250 GB limit.

If you reach the cap you can buy an extra 25 GB for 12 KD or 5 GB for 3 KD, overall I think the pricing is off and not proportional but at least they give you an option to buy more data. For a 15 month contract you get the first three months 50% off and the device for free with 33 KD per month after the first three months. Overall the package is pretty good.

Testing In Shuweikh

Sometimes it would hang a bit, in an odd way and torrents would slow down even when the surfing speed is still high so its a bit surprising. The main issue is consistency, nothing beats a fiber connection but if you don’t have the option then this is the next best thing for surfers. Some gamers will like it but if you care about your ping then this is a bit on the high side. So its great for surfing and certain amount of downloading, not for heavy internet use, but its the perfect back up to your home internet if something goes wrong.

Testing in Miseela/Bidaa

In my case I have crappy land lines so I depend on WIMD and I’m honestly very happy with them even though they are a bit congested still at least a solid 12 to 15 MB and hitting 20 MB in the evenings with no cap. If you can have fiber thats always better but then again this device will really do the job because 4G coverage is supposed to be all over the country by the time it rolls out.

Testing In Fintas with One Signal Bar

Overall I think its an excellent product but they are working out the kinks, it did really reach those high speeds but we have to keep in mind nobody is on the network and it isn’t commercially available so until it is then we can judge the real speed based on the number of users, I hope they have the band width to accept the number of users who will get on board. I’m not sure when it will go commercial because the issue isn’t with Zain its with a governmental entity and you can never guess when they will be done.

Speedtest with VPN on, overall not bad, surfing speed feels quick

This is a prototype unit and usually the Google Nexus gets released around the end of the year so the specifications might change. According to the site that got it’s hands on the prototype it’s rocking a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, 1280 x 768 4.7-inch screen, 2GB of RAM, and just 8GB of storage, all of which matches earlier rumors. It’s also running Android 4.12, but there have been rumors flying around that it will be released with Android 4.2, but we would never really know.

When it came to the choice of manufacturer I honestly I’m not too happy, I was hoping they would go back and try HTC since I love their designs or they could try the Motorolla Razr Android since they were very cool designs, Samsung was always a good choice, but LG? really?

I think the back looks cool, it reminds me of the nexus wallpaper. And yes the screen looks crappy, but I they have the brightness turned completely down. I am very interested in seeing how this turns out. I’ve never had an LG phone but I keep hearing their phones have questionable quality. Im not sure exactly how they pick the manufacturer but I have heard that they put in a bid with a mock up design and it google picks the one they like. Well I just hope Google knows what they were doing, and I know I’m going to buy it because its the next Google phone. In Google We Trust.

Link: Gizmodo

It looks like the end was sooner then I expected, my BB doesn’t even ding anymore, no more group messages no more random questions people. Even the people who have BB left answer me 6 to 24 hours later, never instantly like they used to. My Blackberry 9900 is still functional without any major issues, a few slow downs here and there but overall the thing is working.

My main reason for keeping the BB going was because of “The Diwaniya” Group, the one group that is always beeping and funny things were said. But now it seems like a deserted desert and I’m the last one holding down the fort. People had to choose which phone they wanted and with the arrival of the amazing Samsung SIII it has accelerated the death of BB. Even with their new release of the OS and any great hardware they have in mind, I think its too little too late, people have moved on, they either chose to join the Android Camp or the Apple Camp. It was good while it lasted and I have my BB 9900 1 year to this date but now no one is there, not worth keeping it anymore, from the 200+ contacts and always active BBM down to 30 people and only 6 people who only use it, its not worth keeping it going. I’m probably going to drop it in a couple of weeks.

Everyone is on WhatApp, I’m not on it yet but I will join it later. From what I have seen its not that good, but everyone is on that platform.

The one thing that I loved about GMail from day one is we stopped getting spam, with yahoo it was getting bad and with hotmail it was basically garbage getting dumped on you. With Google they caught 99.99982% of all the spam that came out. But when it comes to text messages we get so many random text from shopping extravaganzas to nut case candidates to the randomest things, this is all on my Zain lines. I don’t use text messages as much as used to but seriously they are a major pain with all these spam texts that we get from 88990, 99077, and so many other random numbers, and you are charged for receiving them even when you are abroad. As we were complaining online and included Zain Kuwait in the Twitter conversation they let us know that we could unsubscribe from the Ads via the above text actions but there is a bit of skepticism, so hopefully we can get out of it but lets see for how long. There is no laws regulating how cell phone companies can use our numbers and no real ways for them to check, we are left uninformed of what we can do to protect ourselves from being spammed but this is a decent step in the right direction and lets see how long it will last without ads.

Last year and the year before RIM was struggling, now they are just a sinking ship, when a few years before that it was everywhere like wildfire, everyone had a Blackberry. I still kept mine because of our Dewaneya being on it, and honestly it is still the best group communication App out there, I think they should have sold it off as an App in the App Store and Android Market, it would have helped sustain Blackberry on the software side.

They held on for so long and still RIM didn’t turn around at all, and a lot of people got fed up with it, they even switched to Android because some people didn’t want Apple. The whole of 2011 didn’t change anything for RIM, and Android & Apple just kept coming up with more updates and better handsets. People started shifting, it feels odd when people start leaving your contact list, at first its normal but then it just got ridiculous, floods of people disappeared. It was honestly sad some of these people were gone, it was nice to to star in touch with them. To be honest up to this point there isn’t an application that is better then BBM and nothing beats a good Qwerty keyboard but they had their problems and they didn’t progress. We are still stuck with the 10 MB which is pretty much useless when roaming, it gets used up in two or three days at most. I don’t know why but it feels like I was abandoned when I see the status update “BBM OFF – WhatsAPP +965##$##$##”, as if the person just gave up and left.

Now the migration has begun, very few people are left on Blackberry, I’m still holding on to it and using it when I can. I’m not a fan of WhatsApp even though pretty much everyone shifted over to it. I tried ChatON and a few other Apps they weren’t that great either. I think I’m probably going to stick to it until this piece of hardware quits, then I don’t think I will be getting another Blackberry until I see some drastic changes in the coming future.

The cloud dashboard for your mobile phone

Simply enough its a service that lets you manage your phone calls, text messages and contacts from a remote browser. Discover a new way of managing your phone calls, text messages and contacts remotely from the browser. Currently its working for Android only, and I think some sort of integration with Nokia, not iPhone integration because of the way the application works.

• Syncs your contacts, messages, and history to this application which you can control online
• They give you lots of statistics about the people you call, who you call the most, the number of messages sent, if you like statistics you will love this program
• The only thing to keep in mind is that they do have access to your phone, your messages, and you phone book which can be a bit freaky but it seems to be a legitimate company
• The simple idea for me is that if my phone is somewhere in the same building but I’m on the laptop, I can see who is calling and answer or reply, its a very cool and simple concept

Link: PhoneDeck

Every once in a while I do this, I get something that has been on my to buy list as soon as its out even though I wanted to do abit more research. It seems this I will be doing a lot of testing with these two lovely products. Usually I think of Dubai Duty Free as a rip off that I can always get things cheaper online and I am better off getting it from Amazon. But when I saw the items in front of me I had to take a look of them, then I walked off and thought that I will get them later.

• Canon G1X
• HTC One X

After a little while of thinking I thought to check the prices in Amazon and in Dubai Duty Free just to make sure and this is the simple breakdown for the HTC One X its $645 on Amazon & $681 in Dubai Duty Free, for the Canon G1X its $799 on Amazon & $815 in Dubai Duty Free. I couldn’t believe, the difference was so small, I always thought the difference would be huge but I was surprised it was so little, at that point I had to do very little thinking and the one thing that was stopping me from making a purchase was no longer there. It seems everything I purchased had a an X in it, and I have to say that I am currently very happy but my credit card took a hit with this purchase. For now my appetite for electronics has been satisfied and I will be posting a review or a decent write up on both, the camera will be first of course, I was snapping pics with it since I got it.

Over the last year and half a lot of companies and specifically telecom companies have gotten heavily into all types of social media. They are active on blogs, in events, facebook, and twitter and other platforms that they can expand on. I’m honestly proud that these companies see the value of social media in Kuwait and its strength, we are ahead in the region on this aspect and we keep moving forward which is a good thing.

It feels like more companies are taking social responsibility and they are giving people more direct access to them and it helps resolve issues. Also it does expose them to more criticism which most companies don’t like, and there are those who don’t care at all. Now a lot of companies, especially the Telecom companies have been sponsoring blogs which is a good step, it supports the community and it gives them an air of legitimacy. But then also brought another creature to evolve which are the Blogs For Cash movement, they make blogs just to sell off ad space and make money, and usually they don’t last too long or their content is crap but still they keep popping up.

Now Telcos are getting more and more involved with lots of events, I keep seeing people post about them and I do get invited but 99% of the time I don’t have time to go and other 1% I would rather do other things. They are handing out iPhones like they are candy and pretty much the next hot item, which is great and good for people to review and experience their service. But recently a lot of these gifts and sponsorship come with strings, string that I for one would never accept. At this point they tell you can talk about their competitor, you can’t attend their events, and you can’t really bad mouth their products. When the money comes with strings such as those I wouldn’t want it no matter how much they are offering. Whats funny is that recently I have noticed blogs which are Team Zain, or Team Wataniya, or Team Viva some keep trying to buy out the other. In reality it isn’t a bad thing but when they interfere with the content to this degree its unacceptable and its a very bad path they are choosing, some still don’t apply it but some companies are. At the end it is the choice of the blog to make the decision of which sponsor they would like on board.

With the end of the Mobile World Congress everyone has something to show, there is a lot software vendors there but its where all the big mobile players show off their new phones and the line up for Android looks very enticing. I don’t really need a new phone since my Galaxy Nexus is a fantastic phone but damn these phones have amazing specs and look hawt.

HTC One X

As usual HTC come out with powerful machines, they were the powerhouse of Android when it first came out and still come with some impressive hardware. The main issue I had with HTC is that they had too many phones, I didn’t know what was good or bad from them and it seems they learned that lesson so they came up with the HTC One line up, only three phones and the One X is the powerhouse of the bunch. Also I was a huge fan of the HTC Sense User Interface since initially it made things so much smoother with Android 1.6 but over the past two years it has gotten a bit bloated and not simple as it used to be and they are planning to fix it with the new line up which is excellent.

• CPU Speed 1.5 GHz, quad core
• Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4
• Total storage : 32 GB RAM:1 GB
• HSPA/WCDMA:Europe/Asia: 850/900/1900//2100 MHz
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE:850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Sensors: Gyro sensor,G-Sensor, Digital compass,Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor
• NFC3
• Bluetooth with aptX® enabled (Bluetooth® 4.0)
• Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n
• micro-USB 2.0 (5-pin) port with mobile high-definition video link (MHL) for USB or HDMI connection (Special cable required for HDMI connection.)
• Camera with ImageSense – 8 megapixel camera with auto focus, smart LED flash, and BSI sensor (for better low-light captures), F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens, 1080p HD video recording

Sony Xperia S

Sony do know how to design their phones and in this one it seems they got it right. The one part they always do an amazing job with is their cameras, they seem to be the best possible cameras out of all the phones but you never know what to expect. But the design of this phone looks very clean cut, and I had the last Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, it was a fantastic phone so I’m looking forward to their next line up, but I would wait until they ship with Android 4.0, I wouldn’t want it with Gingerbread since I have been using Ice Cream Sandwich and it is a fantastic operating system.

• Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread) (Upgrade to Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich, planned in Quarter 2 2012)
• Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon
• Dual-core 1.5 GHz
• 4.3”, 1280×720 pixels 16 million colours TFTDisplay
• Reality display with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine
• 12.1 megapixel camera with LED flash and Auto focus / Sony’s Exmorâ„¢ R for mobile CMOS sensor
• Front-facing camera (1.3 megapixel, 720p)
• HD video recording (1080p)
• Talk time (up to) 8 hours 30 minutes / Standby time (up to) 420 hours
• Internal phone storage: 1 to 1.5GB / RAM: 1GB / Flash memory: 32GB eMMC
• Networks: GSM GPRS/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900 / UMTS HSPA 850, 900, 1900, 2100Colors: Black / White

Samsung Galaxy S III

No specifications have been released by Samsung yet for this phone, but it seems it might have a Quadcore chip and all the bells and whistles to make it one very powerful phone. The S II surprised the market and Android became synonmous with the S II, even people who didn’t know what Android is they know its Samsung Galaxy SII, so now with the SIII I’m expecting it to be top of the line. At this point they are expecting some news in March and a release date set for July.

Its no surprise that Samsung has been very successful with their Galaxy line up. They built an excellent product with solid hardware and smooth software, and everyone loved it. They are taking this formula and expanding on it, to be exact they are expanding the Galaxy family.

The Samsung Galaxy Y Duos and the Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos are a new part of the Y Family. One is a touch screen and the other is a full keyboard, and I think that Android is in need of a full keyboard. They will be running Android 2.3, not ice cream which I think is a shame. But the one feature of these phones which stand far above the rest is the Duos part, simply meaning two sims in one phone. Both of these phones are all about the dual-SIM action, perfect for those who have two lines and don’t want to carry two phones.

The Samsung Galaxy Y Duos, like the original Y, features a 3-inch QVGA (320×240) TFT LCD screen and a 832MHz processor running Android 2.3. The Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos, as the name suggests (naming convention says Pro means keyboard, remember) comes with a QWERTY keyboard and a slightly smaller screen at 2.6 inches.

Both phones will launch in Russia to begin with and will hit the rest of Europe in early 2012. No word on a UK price as of yet.

Link: Pocket-Lint