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Blackberry – Will it be successful in India?

Blackberry phones have starte pouring into India, but theres a catch you need to buy your Blackberry only from the Operators, a selling strategy totally new to Indians and couple it with the fact unlike US, the Mobile Operators dont give you any rebates, rather they price it much higher. Now compare it with Nokia’s E Series  phones, sold across the country in most Mobile stores, and backed by Nokia Service network.

I had the oppurtunity of using Blackberries in US and felt their build was not as solid as the Nokia’s succesful E61i, but the fact which made Blackberry a big hit in US was the Blackberry Connect/Push Email. In India most companies dont support Push Email, most of them support Exchange Servers (from Microsoft) and Both Nokia and Blackberry do pretty much the same in terms of  handling Pop/SMTP emails and Exchange Servers.   So Blackberry apart from the name really doesnt add much to the Indian Customers.

Add to that  Nokia’s popularity and resale values, you can expect very few to go and pick a blackberry ahead of a Nokia ESeries Phone. Then you got a load of free apps for Symbian compared to Blackberry adding so much to the usability the Nokia Phones.

With E71 Nokia probably has the best designed and refined QWERTY keyboard phone its hard to see how Blackberry can put one across the Nokia.

[ps: Now dont come n tell me Blackberry is so successful in US, the fact is Nokia doesnt have any deal with Mobile operators for subsidising its phones. This is the main selling point for US, no one pays the full price of any phone there. The model is very different in other countries]

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Google to launch Browser Sync for Google chrome

Of all the softwares I miss the Browser Sync for Firefox the most, when Google withdrew the plugin late last year, I thought probably Google was worried about privacy concerns and dropped the plugin. Only after the launch of Google Chrome I realized the real reason. Maybe Google was little selfish in pulling the plug of a very popular plugin, but then thats how the industry is.

But now Google is launching the plugin again but only this time the plugin will stay much longer thanks to Google Chrome. A sneak peek was given in Google’s development blog about the launch of the Browser Sync. It is expected to be launched in a week and it will not have all the features of the firefox plugin.

The first beta of the plugin will have ability to synchronise only the bookmarks and later versions will add other features like History,Passwords etc. All these information will be stored under your Google/Gmail  Account.

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The Apple Ipod Touch 2G or the Ipod Nano 4G or Ipod Classic 6G?

Before I owned the current generation Ipod’s I definitely had the above question which one is the best? Which one of the current generation Ipods have the best music quality? Better Usability? More features?  Now with more than few days with each one of them I can help with some answers.

Music/Audio Quality :

They are all the same in terms of Audio Quality.Also the headphones given with all the three ipods are exactly the same and they all sound bad. So get some good headsets from Sony,Sennheiser or the Bose.

Features :

If you are someone looking for features then Ipod Touch will win undoubtedly in all the features other than what you typically expect from a Music player. Ipod touch allows you to check mail,Watch youtube videos and browse internet and lets you use your ipod just like a Mini laptop (Given that you have access to Wi-fi), all these features are very relevant to US customers. But many of them become totally irrelevant say to customers in India (thanks to lack of wi-fi in 99% of places).

Same goes with the Video feature, though videos can be fun with Ipod Touch, but watching a full movie will drain your battery (same goes with Ipod Classic and Nano too).

In terms of music features all the ipods namely the Ipod Nano 4G,Ipod classic 6G and the Ipod Touch 2G all are very much the same.

Battery :

The battery performance of Apple  Ipod Touch and Ipod classic is much better than the Nano, the Nano’s battery in a normal usage would’nt even last for 6-7 hours for music, if you keep playing with it. The other two are far better in this regard.

Usability :

The Ipod touch is the best in terms of usage, the scrolling of long lists and spotting songs is best in the Ipod Touch. Both the Nano and Classic lag behind. After using the Touch I felt crippled with the Ipod Nano.

But the Nano makes up for its shortcoming with its small size, very easy to carry in your pocket, which is practically not possible with the touch or Classic. Inspite of all the extra features I felt more comfortable with the Nano just because of this reason.

Final Choice :

This is definitely upto the individual choice, if you want a highly portable device then Nano is the best. Want more storage than 16/32 GB then the classic is the option. If you want to carry around and play with more features like browsing/youtube then go for Ipod Touch.