Beware at Bommanahalli Junction, Mobile Thieves are too smart

On my way to office on a daily root in my Maruti 800, I was stopped by the traffic light in Bommanahalli junction. The passenger seat window was rolled down. It was typical traffic at Bommanahalli junction people moving around across the road without caring about the traffic, there are vendors selling and autos trying cut across the road…

I had kept my Samsung Corby Pro mobile phone on Dashboard on the left side.

The traffic light turned green and vehicles started moving slowly, I saw one guy walking towards my vehicle on the right side and he was very close to the Car and almost bumped into the side mirror. As the traffic was moving, I started moving very slowly and suddenly realized, Car’s back wheel went on a small hump. The same guy came to me and said, Sir, you just went over my foot, can’t you see? I got little worried and told him why you came so close to the car when the traffic is moving, I yelled at him. He ignored me, and as the traffic picked the pace, I could not stop and drove away to office. It all happened in less than 2-3 minutes.

 

Thought kept coming to me, as I felt bad that I just ran over someone’s foot. I went to office and realized that I haven’t taken my phone from the Car, went back to the Car to realize, I just lost the phone.

For a while I was shocked not for losing the phone but on the plot these con men laid to steal the phone. I got to hear the same story from one of my friends again from the same location and thought I should write about it and spread the awareness. This time traffic thieves were able to distract attention even when my friend had his wife sitting next to her in the Alto car. The passenger window was rolled down just enough for a hand to slide in.

Here is how the targets are chosen by the con man

1. You are driving a small car and have the left side of the window rolled down (does not matter if you have someone sitting next to you)
2. Stuck in the traffic light in the Bommanahalli junction, below the flyover (this could be on both places, you are either on the Begur road trying to go on Hosur road or you are on Hosur road trying to come inside Begur road)
3. You have a smart phone which is kept near to the left window or on the dashboard

Were you victim of such misdeed? Let’s avoid such instance by spreading this message.

Samsung Corby Pro Review

While reading few posts / reviews before buying the Samsung mobile, one thought which kept troubling me was whether a Nokia fan like me who has been using Nokia for 10 years, will switch over to an alien phone?

While, the days rolled and I have been using the phone for last 5 months and realized that, I kept myself in the dark. Not that, Corby pro enlightened me but so many things are possible with Smart phones now.

Let me stick to the objective of this post – critical review of the phone Samsung Corby pro – poor man’s iPhone. I know before coming to this post, you would have had read and understood the functions, features, capabilities, technology, etc etc, how this post is different?, I am sharing the experience of usage on a day to day basis and what are the some of the practical aspects of the phone.

Pros and Cons of the Phone

Messaging and emailing – I think, I have to agree with the sales guy who told me that, in touchscreen phones you tend to get bored as it may become little cumbersome to type message, the QWRT feature is the savior.

Google Application, Corby comes with Google application; funny thing is I still could not figure out how to link the Google application to the Wigit bar on the phone startup.
· One problem here is, when the phone is tilted when using the Google application, the screen does not change to fit horizontally. Imaging you are using QWRT with on a vertical screen.

Image editor feature is really amazing in this phone – has lots of features crop, reduce image, upload to Picasa.
· Check few Sample photos here - http://picasaweb.google.com/santhguru/MobilePhotos

Installation
· Installing the desktop software Samsung Kies for interfacing with mobile. You get 2 CDs here, one for installing .Net 3.5 and other for Kies software. I struggled to install this, it took an hour to install, UI of Kies is very impressive but it’s heavy

Multi tasking
· When you run multiple applications, it shows a Task manager, which enables you to close the application one by one

WiFi connection is pretty good and fast, no hassles at all
GPRS – I am still figuring this out.
Browsing: for a quick browsing it’s ok
YouTube : plays really well and quick..

MS office support:
MS word documents in the readable format it supports, but editing is not allowed. Does not support opening of excel and power point.

There are few more things I would like to add, please visit again and thanks for reading..

Value Added Services – A Blessing in Disguise to Mobile Industry? (VAS Vs Voice)

By-products are playing a vital role in today’s economy; sugar cane’s by-product molasses generate decent profits then main product sugar. But sugar will never let the Sugar industry into trouble unlike telecom industry, wherein voice based services are being taken over by VAS. India’s leapfrog effect gave fancy mobiles in the hands of more then 121 million people (12 Cr) and currently 6 million mobile users are added every month (March 2007). As per Cellular Operator Association of India (COAI) the total subscriber base in India today is 121 million mobile users, three times more than the traditional landlines subscribers

After the dawn of VoIP technology, it has been predicted that the voice calls (core services provided by Telecom companies) will be free of cost. Apart from being charged for connecting to Public switched telephone network, the VoIP to VoIP voice calls are literally free as of now.

Now, the question is, telecom’s core services (Voice) seems to be in the back seat and new services such as VAS will take the driver seat? Answer to this question is reflected in numbers given below.

Potential of VAS Market, very difficult to find the exact number, my quick web research resulted into these figures


“Revenue from Telecom services to touch $ 33 Billion 2010 and 10% of this will come from VAS
- Size of the VAS Industry
Rs. 2000 Cr (as per Lehman Brothers)
Rs. 2850 Cr “


Another report says, the Total revenue of 6 telecom companies (top six Indian telecom players, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, BSNL, Hutchison Essar, MTNL and Idea Cellular) expected to reach $50 billion from $22 billion (2006-07). The VAS market will be 7 to 10% of the total market.

VAS market is predominately controlled by the Telecom operators, now there are many VAS Services providers who are making inroads into this market. Some of the early bird VAS Services provider include Onmobile, Mauj.com, Hungama Mobile, IMI Mobile, Mobile-2-win – Innovative Mobile Mktg.solutions, India Games, Smart trust, ACL Wireless and Mcheck.


Future: Imagine having complete financial freedom with respect to paying your credit card bills, rent, insurance, telephone bills using your mobile, your mobile will be your virtual wallet. Services provider will offer new things, controlling your home via home tracking/networking, vehicle tracking, TRP Rating Services, High resolution gaming, Localization etc all using Mobile Phones. The above pie diagram is definitely going to add many more slices which will change our day to day life. Recently, ET carried out a survey, and found that, People will not be able to live without mobile. I think over a period of time, it will be Roti, Kapada Aur Mobile.

Some of the good resource on VAS can be found at
brew.qualcomm.com/bnry_brew/pdf/brew_2005/b105_sethi_tatad.pdf
http://www.business%20standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=283762&leftnm=1&subLeft=0&chkFlg
http://coai.in/
www.iamai.in/mobile.pdf