Nexus 5 and KitKat Treat: Live!

After all these drama and PR games of specs/image leaks, the curtains have been finally pulled! LG made Nexus 5 has been announced along with much awaited android flavor – KitKat (Don’t be frustrated, if you didn’t win any contests here and there šŸ˜› )

On FlipKart: Nexus 5 (32 GB)

Nexus5_tilted

Some KitKat’s Sweetness

KitKat-Android

A smarter caller ID: Whenever you get a call from a phone number not in your contacts, your phone will look for matches from businesses with a local listing on Google Maps.

All your messages in the same place Never miss a message, no matter how your friend sends it. With the new Hangouts app, all of your SMS and MMS messages are together in the same app, alongside your other conversations and video calls. And with the new Hangouts, you can even share your location and send animated GIFs.

Emoji everywhere Emoji are colorful Japanese characters, which are now available as emoticons in your Google keyboard.

HDR+ photography HDR+ mode on Nexus 5 automatically snaps a rapid burst of photos and combines them to give you the best possible single shot. Daytime pictures are vivid with clean shadows, and nighttime photos are sharp with less noise.

Nexus 5
Watch this video before you read boring text šŸ˜›




..well to be brutally honest, this video dint impress me as much

But Nexus 5 device in itself is so well designed, it grabbed my attention much before I watched these videos.

learn_entertainment

Nexus 5 Specs
Nexus 5 comes with 4.8 oz and 8.59mm thin.
Display: 4.95ā€ 1920×1080 display (445 ppi). CorningĀ® GorillaĀ® Glass 3
Operating System: Android 4.4, KitKat.

Processor:
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragonā„¢ 800, 2.26GHz
GPU: Adreno 330, 450MHz

Camera: 1.3MP front facing and 8MP rear facing with Optical Image Stabilization.

nexus5-dimensions

Dimension: 69.17×137.84×8.59 mm, 4.59 ounces (130g)
Battery:(under test environment)
2300 mAh
Talk time up to 17 hours*
Standby time up to 300 hoursā€ 
Internet use time up to 8.5 hours on Wi-Fi, up to 7 hours on LTEā€”
Wireless Charging built-in

Audio: Built-in speaker. 3.5mm stereo audio connector

Wireless:
Dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
NFC (Android Beam)
Bluetooth 4.0

Networks:
2G/3G/4G LTE

North America:
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
CDMA: Band Class: 0/1/10
WCDMA: Bands: 1/2/4/5/6/8/19
LTE: Bands: 1/2/4/5/17/19/25/26/41

Rest of World:
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
WCDMA: Bands: 1/2/4/5/6/8
LTE: Bands: 1/3/5/7/8/20

Memory:
You can Choose 16GB or 32GB internal storage (actual formatted capacity will be less)
2GB RAM

Ports and Connectors:
microUSB
SlimPortā„¢ enabled
3.5mm stereo audio jack
Dual microphones
Ceramic power and volume buttons

Sensors:
GPS
Gyroscope
Accelerometer
Compass
Proximity/Ambient Light
Pressure
Hall

Device Color: White and Black

nexus-5-color-white-black

Price:
For 16GB variant $349
For 32GB variant $399

Nexus 5 Price In India
Nexus 5 – 16 GB – Rs. 28, 999
Nexus 5 – 32 GB – Rs. 32, 999

These devices are officially unlocked and are not bound to any contracts.

My Views On Nexus 5

nexus-5

Camera
It’s an awesome device. But you may think, these days smartphones are shipping with 32 MP camera’s and Nexus 5 is stuck with 8 MP!, well clarity of pictures don’t just depend on Mega Pixel rates, so lets wait with the new additional camera features Nexus 5 is shipping with. I’m sure, they’ve taken much care about video recording and photo capturing, as it has been highly emphasized in promo videos. The new HDR+ fixes all your shaky captures!

Sensors
It also comes with cool sensors. We could play around and create wonderful applications for devices running KitKat.

Speed
2GB RAM in a smart phone is awesome. Not long ago we had only 256 MB of RAM in our desktop computers šŸ˜› – good old days. So we could expect this smart phone to be a faster device.
Also not to forget: CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragonā„¢ 800, 2.26GHz and GPU: Adreno 330, 450MHz

..talking about the speed – According to Sundar Pichai, head of Android, apps have been fine-tuned to use less computing power, with new android KitKat. Also, Google wants KitKat to be compatible with even the low end(hardware wise) android devices. Application developers could build application that would run based on the memory the device has. This way, Google is aiming to bring android KitKat to all the android enabled devices. But providing upgrade to these devices are left to device manufacturers. This way, Google wants to bring uniform user experience for all android device users.

Nexus Devices
If you follow our blog, you might already know that, I love android devices. Recently I bought Nexus 7 (first generation tablet) and I’m still loving it. It’s really an amazing device.

As always, one of the biggest advantage of Nexus devices is that it gets the new versions of android( updates ) sooner than any other devices. That being said, Nexus 4, Nexus 7(both 2012 and 2013 models), and Nexus 10 will be getting KitKat i.e., android 4.4 in coming weeks.

You can order Nexus 5 from FlipKart: Nexus 5 (32 GB)

New Chat & SMS Widget inside Classic Yahoomail!

I was using Yahoomail as usual, and suddenly something popped up with a water bubble bursting sound. I could see a blue widget above my email folders. I never did anything to get this. No settings, no modifications, no plugins. I was just checking my mail and the blue widget appeared and after a refresh it disappeared. I used the back button in my FireFox browser and took the screen shots of the chat & sms widget.
It had already imported all the contacts and mobile numbers from my Yahoo! messenger.
It looks cool, loads fast.
Here are some screen shots:
New-Yahoo-Chat-in-mail-box-Classic

It appeared in the Classic Yahoomail and not in the upgraded version of YahooMail. Upgraded version of Yahoomail already has a separate portion for chatting. But this is something new and better, as we need not move from the inbox to start chatting(some what similar to that in Gmail.)
Yahoomail-classic-chat-sms-settings

Yahoomail-classic-chat-sms
Click above image to see in full screen
Yahoomail-classic-chat-sms-box
Tab for multiple user chat
Did you notice this widget in your Yahoo mail? Hope this is in the initial state of testing. And Yahoo! will rollout this feature to all its users some time in the future.

Got the Chat and SMS widget back in my Yahoo Mail again. Its not disappearing now. Its nice to chat and adds more fun to its already famous Mail

Google SMS Channels: Group messaging System

SMSChannelsLabsLogoIts a great news for many people in India(2nd largest mobile users). Now we can publish and receive SMS messages from Google SMS Channels.
Google SMS is free for both content publishers as well as mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS.
We can create a group and send updates to all those who subscribe to our text updates, via SMS. Interestingly, we can integrate our blog using our feed and our SMS subscribers will receive the updates whenever we have a new article in our blog. And subscribers can choose when(time) and the number of SMS’s to be received through Google SMS service.

Presently there are a great variety of groups from most popular GoogleNews Channel to blogs and famous newspapers groups. We can subscribe to all these group’s updates.

We can post an update to our SMS group, using our mobile or directly from the web or automatically from our blog feeds(when there are new articles published).
We need to keep in mind that, our text updates won’t reach our SMS text update subscribers as soon as we publish something, it always arrives to their mobile inbox only at the time they have chosen to receive the updates.
google-sms-settings
If you are not getting SMS updates, then you need to look at the settings in your Google SMS account.

Hope Google will extend this service to many more countries shortly.

For a complete explanation of this service and a self explanatory help center, click here.

If you are from some other country(other than India), and if this service is available in your country also, then please share some details with us.

Send and receive Orkut Scraps on your SMS enabled mobile phones[India&Brazil Only]

Orkut-logoOrkut is a very famous Social networking site in Brazil and India. I have heard that, in Brazil, if 20 are in a cyber, 18 of them will be accessing Orkut. Hope this is not the case in India, but still Orkut is a popular site to get in touch with friends and family.

But its difficult to be in front of computer all the time to get in touch with friends and family. So Orkut had introduced a separate version of Orkut for mobile internet users. But as we all know, most of the service providers charge high rates for providing mobile internet.

So now Google’s popular social networking site Orkut has introduced yet another cool feature, by which we can use Orkut from our cell phones without internet connection. Yes, I am talking about the SMS feature. Orkut had introduced SMS feature in Brazil long back. If you are from Brazil, then click here to learn more.

So I was expecting Orkut to release the same kind of feature in India too. And the day came soon, and now we can use orkut’s new SMS feature, to scrap our friends, look up their contact information and receive scrap notifications.

I always had a thought that Google may merge its Orkut and dodgeball.com to give us a great social networking site. Now Orkut SMS service would look more similar to dodgeball.com( by Google ) service.

To get started click here. There you will see option to specify your mobile number to receive notifications. You will have to verify your mobile number first to start using this service.




When I first saw the list of service providers, I felt like, I am missing something. And suddenly I could realize that, Big players like Airtel and Vodafone where missing from the list! Hope they include them as soon as possible, orelse they will be loosing many customers, before acquiring them.

I use Spice SIM in my Nokia 6630(“3G enabled iPhone will be released on Aug 18th and Aug 22nd by Vodafone and Airtel respectively, in India”. And I will be purchaing iPhone with Airtel soon..).

Spice charges 2Rs for sending mobile verification SMS.

Though I used my Spice number to signup for this service and sent the verification code to the correct number, still this service is not yet activated to my number. I received no confirmation message from Orkut either.

And surprisingly I spotted another aspect….which I have not shown in the above video. When I click on the link “Having Problem?”Ā  It shows the following message

Currently orkut SMS works only in Brazil. If you are still not able to register your mobile number visit the SMS help page.

Here is the screen shot…

Orkut-India-SMS-registration-problem

What should we call this…an error or is this SMS feature still in pre-launch mode in India or is it a pre-registration or whatelse ?

Is this Me alone or everyone else having the same problem with registering their mobile number?