Nokia N97 Mini Gold Unveiled

Nokia didn't grace us with any new phone announcements this year at MWC, but is now all set to ship an N97 mini Gold Edition.

Under the 18-karat gold plated exterior is the good old N97 mini. There's absolutely no difference, except cosmetically, between the two versions.

The phone will include:

* 3.2 inch TFT LCD with a 360 x 640 pixel resolution
* 3G, EDGE/GPRS
* GPS with A-GPS Support
* Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB 2.0
* 5 megapixel camera
* 8GB of on-board storage space
* External memory support (microSD) upto 16GB
* 3.5mm handsfree socket

The Nokia N97 mini Gold Edition will be available in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia for 625 euro in the beginning of Q2 2010.

Sony Ericsson J105 Naite Mobile Phone

Environment friendly packaging and materials used in design Well designed and light weight Extremely good battery life Plenty of relevant features Decent 2MP camera

Social networking features didn't work

Sony Ericsson’s Naite is the cheapest (so far) of their new environment-friendly range of handsets called GreenHeart. The J105 is all about the environment from the packaging to the materials used in the construction. Here’s a closer look at one of the county's limited eco friendly handsets.

Form Factor
To start off, the Naite is packaged in a small but neat box made of recycled material. All instructions are printed on the box and there's just one pamphlet inside. Even the charger is designed to provide lower energy consumption. The handset itself is built from recycled, recyclable materials and uses lead-free paint. It looks classy and well cut. The 2.2-inch TFT LCD is clear and easy for viewing and the buttons and navigation set up are very conveniently designed for comfortable use. What SE could have done is go with an AMOLED display that uses lesser energy which would mean an increase in battery life and less charging. The Naite is still an extremely slim and light weight handset so carrying it around is not going to be an issue at all. A set of volume/zoom keys are located on one side and SE’s proprietary all-in one port is located on the other. Normally I’d have my beef with having just one single access point for the USB, Charge and handsfree but since it’s designed to cut down the use of materials I’ll let it slide.

Sony Ericsson has also been using microSD cards with all their new handsets. The M2 card seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. I doubt there’ll be any complaints. The Naite’s hot swap slot for the same is located under the rear panel. The Naite also has two cameras – a 2MP fixed focus shooter at the rear and a VGA video-call camera just above the display.

Features and Performance
Interface
There’s nothing new with the SE UI, but there’s nothing to complain about either. It’s smooth and there’s no lag which means accessing information is quite effortless. To cut costs, the handset doesn’t incorporate an accelerometer so the media app’s orientation has to be adjusted manually.

Media
The music player is nothing to write home about. It’s not too loud but the music quality is still quite good. Stereo Widening, EQ presets including Sony’s Mega Bass setting and a five band customizable EQ option allow you to make a few adjustments to the overall audio output. The FM radio was a non issue as reception was quite good on an average. The Naite also has a voice recorder of course, but don’t count it being able to provide clarity of speech from over 2 feet from your mouth. Sony’s PhotoDJ, MusicDJ and VideoDJ apps are all present to help you pass the time tweaking your media.

TrackID to identify music either via recorder or via the radio is also on board and so are a few games. For video playback 3GP and MPEG4 formats are acceptable. Unlike most of the Java mobile handsets, the Naite plays all files in these formats quite well without any framing.
More detail..

5 Things to Consider When Buying an HDTV

Planning on buying an LCD TV? Check out these 5 simple tips that will aid your decision.

Size: Bigger is not always better when it comes to screen sizes. It really seems to be so, but if you have space constraints, then a 55-inch mega screen is no use. Consider the wall where it will be hanged, its bareness, its size etc. Thus the size of your wall dictates the size of your screen, but then that’s just the beginning. Read on.

Viewing distance: Just having a bare wall is not enough. If you are too close to the wall then your screen size makes a huge difference: too large and you will see the pixels. Not good. Too small and you cannot see clearly, especially if you get a 32 inch full HD screen and sit farther away. Remember this formula: viewing distance should be about ¼ of the screen size, BUT viewing distance is in feet, and screen size is inches. Thus for 32 inch 16:9 LCD sit about 8 feet away.

Price: How much money do you have realistically? The HDTV is still a luxury, and even though Croma's latest marketing campaign urges you to buy giving the excuse that recession is over, think about facts like spending, say, Rs. 10,000 more on just one more additional feature. For eg. 100 Hz Motion feature in TVs looks like sh*t anyways, why pay extra for that? Get a lower end model, provided all else about the HDTV is equal. Marginal benefit starts falling rapidly after a certain point in our market.

Image source

Features: This is more of a corollary of the previous mentioned point: only pay for what you need. If watching Youtube or accessing Flickr on your TV is not your idea of fun, then forget the high end models with internet connectivity for videos. Stick to good old cable TV. But on the other hand check which brands have the same features for a lesser price. Do horizontal A/B comparisons, and for that take help from super cool, informative, almost orgasmic sites like Tech2.com, run by a bunch of handsome geeks.

LCD or Plasma? This is a much broader topic, and the truth is LCDs have Dwarfed plasmas long ago in terms of market share, but, don’t write off that plasma TV just yet. IN summary, if you're more of a film watcher than gamer or sports fan, go for a plasma. Plasmas have way better contrast, and also much deeper colors due to that. Image looks richer from a mile away. The new LED-lit LCDs are definitely an improvement, but then in India the latter costs a bomb.

Mobile Accessories, CDs, Set Top Boxes to Cost Less

While consumers will have to pay more for petrol, diesel, cars, TVs, cigarettes, tobacco, air-conditioner, gold and silver with the hike in excise duty the good news is that mobile accessories, medical equipment energy efficient CFL lamps, set top boxes, compact disc, toys and books will be cheaper on account of some tax concessions offered on these items by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Union Budget for 2010-11.

"Symptoms of economic recovery are widespread and more clear now," he said.

Before announcing the tax measures, Mukherjee substantially cut income tax rates along with other direct tax concessions that would result in a net loss of Rs 26,000 crore to the exchequer.

Also the extension of the benefit of 4% SAD (special additional duty) exemption on mobile phone parts, components and accessories to March 31, 2011, from the June 2010 deadline was announced.

SanDisk Ships Highest Capacity SD Card

SanDisk has begun shipping its 64 GB Ultra SDXC card, the company’s highest capacity SD card.

With its 64GB capacity, up to 15MB/sec read speed and Class 4 speed rating, the new card is based on the new SD 3.0 specification, that helps consumers record long-duration HD videos. The 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC card can store more than eight hours of such video with recording speed of 9 Mbps (HD standard).

"SDXC is the successor to the popular SDHC card format" said Susan Park, director, retail product marketing, SanDisk. "The 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC card delivers the speed and capacity consumers need for extended HD video recording and improved rapid shooting of still images. The card is an ideal complement for recently-announced SDXC-compatible cameras and camcorders"

Since the SD 3.0 specification was recently released, only a handful of devices may be immediately available that support SDXC cards. However, the pace of new camera model introduction supporting the SDXC format is accelerating. Canon announced at CES that all of its new VIXIA camcorder models and PowerShot cameras are compatible with SDXC cards. Widespread adoption of SDXC is expected to occur across a range of consumer electronic products including HDTVs, Blu-ray recorders/players, camcorders, cameras, mobile phones, navigation systems and computers. SanDisk ImageMate memory card readers are compatible with SDXC cards if the connected PC uses an operating system that supports exFAT.

The 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC card comes with a lifetime limited warranty. The card is available immediately at www.sandisk.com via the U.S. e-commerce site with a price of $349.99, and will be available at SanDisk locations around the world soon after.

Understanding the Technology Behind 3D Movies

3-D movies is the short name for a Stereoscopic 3-D film, a illusionary motion picture technology which has its roots based in stereoscopic photography. Based on the principle of depth perception (three-axis rule, also known as the third dimension), stereoscopic photography creates the 3 dimensional illusion by shooting the image at two slightly different angles. The glasses through which such images appear as 3-D are created on the cross-eyed view technique, the same principle as that of binoculars.

Projection System

Such a film is generally shot using two perspectives which are not too different from each other. This can either be done using two cameras or a camera with dual lenses set a uniform distance and angle from each other. The two angles can also be computer generated graphics.

Since there are two sets of films, special projection hardware is used to display the film. The film appears as a single image with the help of special glasses. Such hardware is not only available for the 70mm movie screen, but can be used for television broadcasting too. There are several new technologies which use alternative techniques cut down on costs. One such technique is ‘RealD 3D cinema‘ technology.

This is the Pace Fusion 3D digital camera, which was used for the movie Avatar.

Single Camera Projectors

‘RealD 3D cinema’ method uses a light based technique known as the circular polarization for creating the stereoscopic image-type projection of the film. It means that using this projection system, the film need not be shot using two lenses. This reduces the cost considerably as the film can be relayed as both a 3-D projection as well as a 2-D projection, because the film is shot as 2-D but projected as 3-D. Since it’s not a color imbalance but a light based simulation, the glasses for the two are different too.

Red/Cyan Glasses

Stereoscopic photography creates an image known as anaglyph. Although two lenses are used, a single image is created. These are generally superimposed through two color filters, one in red the other in cyan. Thus when a 3-D image is projected using a stereoscopic projector system, glasses with one red and another cyan lens create the cross-eyed effect, to make the image appear as one. Although this technique has become obsolete for movie viewing, it is still largely used for Blu-ray disk or DVD movies and for promotional purposes.

RealD Projector Glasses

The RealD projector alternates images 144 times per second between the right and left eye frames. This is the crux of the circular polarization method. Since the camera has a single scene shot at normal 24 frames per second, the RealD projector displays 48 frames per second to create the 3-D effect. The silver screen on which the film is finally projected absorbs the excessive light generated because of the high frame rate display. Thus the glasses used for such a viewing have a slightly dark set of lenses which absorb the unwanted light thrown by the projector lamp. If there are rapid transitions between scenes, viewers may experience motion sickness or nausea.