My precious… Nokia 5800 (Intro 2)

Price
I got my phone at only RM1350, less than RRP. Some user even claimed the price can be as low as RM1280. With my budget, for a phone this price actually quite expensive (>RM1,000). However, for all the features, it is a good bargain.

A quick glimpse at the spec:

• 3.2-inch touchscreen display with 16 Million colors
• 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
• Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM/EDGE radio
• 3G UMTS/HSDPA
• Bluetooth 2.0
• WiFi
• GPS
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• TV-out port
• 81MB internal memory (expandable to 16Gb with mciroSD)
• 111 x 51.5 x 15.5 mm
• Video Support : H.263, Flash Video, H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, RealVideo 7,8,9/10, WMV 9
• Audio Support : AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, MIDI, RealAudio 7,8,10, True tones, WAV
  

For more details, visit this link.

3.2" Touchscreen
The screen is superb. Although this is my first touch phone, I have no problem navigate with one hand and the screen is responsive. I still get confuse to touch once or twice to open or run a program or shortcut but I found it much faster to navigate in touchscreen environment if compare with non-touchscreen (key pad). (The response is much faster in V20)

Another thing about the screen is it 640x360 resolution or known as nHD screen. With it supports of MPEG4, I can watch video smoothly with my Tube. However, all video must be converted to 5800 compatible format.

High memory capacity
Last time I thought 2Gb is enough. But now 16Gb? 5800 comes with 8Gb microSD memory card but it also can support up to 16Gb microSD. So, it means more musics and videos can be cramp into the phone. I tried storing mp3 and .mp4 file to 90% of the 8Gb microSD. The first time refreshing in Music Payer it takes around 4-5 minutes to read all the new sound files. After that, it takes only a few seconds to open. So far, I have never faced any "hang" when accessing the memory card.

The Built
5800 place firmly in my hand. The size is suitable for my daily usage and easier to carry around (not bulky). However, the front cover look like from low quality plastic. It squeak when I pressed the front cover and at night, a can see small gap with light leaking.

However the back cover is secure tightly and hard to open which is good for me. But I don't like the camera cover design. As you can see in the picture, no swipe/slip cover like N73me. The plastic cover, I believe, may reduce the amount of light penetrate through the lens, so with lower light. the higher the noise in the picture.


Interface
The interface is same like any other S60 phone. Because last time I own a N73Me, so I rearrange the shortcut to be similar like N73 interface. I use Shortcut Bar instead of Contact Bar. I just hope that the calendar in the home screen can reflect the exact date.

My precious… Nokia 5800 (Intro)

I heard about 5800 a.k.a Tube since May 2008. From the rumored pictures, what really fascinated me was the 3.2" touch screen. The screen is bigger than any other Nokia N-series. Other than that, the phone looks like ordinary candy bar phone.

The phone claimed to be Nokia's first touch S60 device. Because I was happy with my old N73ME , I didn't really care about all the hype. I assumed with all the rumored features include in this Tube, the price will be beyond my limit (>RM1.5k). I even think that 2Gb is enough for my daily use phone. Or is it?

In December 2008, I read that 5800 already available in Malaysia although it was not officially launched. What surprise me, the Recommended Retails Price is RM1499, below than my early assumption by RM1 (ha..ha... actually, I thought it will be RM1700-RM2000). The rumored features are throught. This phone really packed nice features like 3G, Wifi, MPEG4 and many other standard N-Series functions. So, starting from that, I was planning to get 5800 for my birthday present.

Now, it is already a month since I own the Tube. So here is my experience with my precious one.

(Note: I already upgraded to V20)

Quick Sneak

Pros

1. Large 3.2" Screen with 640x360 resolution (nHD)
2. Touchscreen.
   
3. Support MPEG4 with 640x360 resolution
4. Come with 8Gb microSD memory card.
5. Faster response (compare to N73).
6. Fix firmly in my hand (not too big and not too small)
7. Full screen wallpaper.
8. Nice lock key
9. Good loud speaker
   
10. Price
11. Nice search function in Home Screen(v20)
    

Cons

1. Low quality built for front cover.
2. Using none standard usb port.
3. No slip-cover for camera.
4. Sim card hard to remove, need to remove battery
   
5. Images quality from camera is low.
6. No volume bar in Music Player (probably firmware problem).
7. No pencil button.
8. Can't turn off camera sound (some region can disable the sound)
9. Lack of office suite.
10. H264 not fully supported

Please continue reading for more details.

Celcom Power38

Today I went to Celcom Centre to register for a new postpaid plan. I decided to subscribe for postpaid plan after more than 4 years of using prepaid. At first I decide to subcribe for Celcom Executive Plan but the saleperson finally manage to convince me to go for Power38 plan. So, here the comparison of prepaid and postpaid plan.

Other networks	Prepaid Mid Plan	Power38
Call Rates (adjacent)	RM1.40/min	RM0.20/min
Call Rate (Non-adjacent)	RM2.60/min	RM0.20/min
SMS	RM0.20/sms	RM0.15/sms

These are the only 3 things that very important for me. Some of my friends are from neighboring state and not within the same network. Some are living in Kuantan but using phone number registered at different state. So by using prepaid, I pay more specially when outstation.

The registration is smooth. Other than the time needed for writing the application form, I wait only a few minutes before my number were called. Actually I didn't need to go to the counter because they already set up a booth outside the premises for promotion and registration. But because I wanted to use my old prepaid number, the registration need to be done at the counter.

So, how much I payed during registration? Actually none for new number but in my case, I payed RM50. This RM50 is for processing fee to use my old prepaid number. However, for each registration they give free handphone. One is Samsung (I forgot the model name) and another is Vodafone 225 (I pick this one). So, upon registration I got one phone and a sim card. The saleperson said that the activation will take 24 hour.

VMware Player with Linux

After using several Live CD a few times, it is time for me to use the installation option. But I don't want to mess up my WinXP installation and make a dual boot. So I do some research to find the best solution to try all the functionality of the Penguin with out me sacrificing my WinXP. So, after some searching and reading, I found out that VMware Player is the answer.

VMware Player

VMware Player is a free VMware product. It enables user to run virtual machine on Windows or Linux PC. So meaning that if you run WinXP, you also can run Linux within your WinXP and vice versa. From www.vmware.com, it stated that "VMware Player runs virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, VMware Server, or VMware ESX and also supports Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats." At first, I thought that I need VMware Workstation to to properly create and run Linux and for once I thought my Linux way stop there, but nope...

How to use?

Just follow this step by step guide.

Download VMware Player from this link. Click here. Beware that the file is large (>100Mb).

Install VMware Player.

If you don't have any Linux .iso file, please download.

Create a folder and put your .iso file that folder. Example D:\vmware\

Go to this site http://www.easyvmx.com/.

Click super simple - virtual machine creator.

Enter Virtual Machine Name (Example Ubuntu 8.04), Virtual Machine OS (your Linux's Distro name), Virtual Machine Memory Size (try 512MB), Virtual Machine Disk Size (default) and LiveCD(click enable and please enter your .iso file name here).

Click "Create Virtual Machine" button download My_Virtual_Machine.zip file in the next page.

Unzipped all the file in the zip file into your created folder from step 4. Make sure your Linux .iso file also in the same folder.

Run VMware Player.

Click open and go to the created folder.

Select .vmx file.

So, now your LiveCD is running with you need to burn the image file and also without you reboot your system. You also can install LiveCD without worrying your WinXP installation. The installation will use your virtual hard disk (.vmdk file). This file can be very big depending on your linux installation.

.vmx file can be open using normal text editor (example, notepad). You can play a bit with the setting but you need to restart VMPlayer to see the effect. If you afraid to make any adjustment, open www.easyvmx.com, and click easyvmx or easyvmx v2.0. Try enable your usb setting to enable you thumbdrive in Linux environment.

I test the guide using Ubuntu 8.04 with easyvmx setting. Everything work fine. I wrote this post in my Ubuntu environment without any hassle. The only problem I have is to mount my hard disk.

Play with Linux

After I read a post at MielonG's Diary, I try googled to learn more about Linux. Actually, this is not the first time I use a Linux distro. Back in 1998, I try to use Mandrake. That time, the installation was not as easy as current linux installation. As a new linux user, to know about swap, usr, var and many other partition name was like a kid trying to learn calculus, so confusing. That time to find help using internet was hard. The only way to learn was by going to library and read a lot of books without the search tool

The nightmare didn't stop there. After installation, I need a few days to get my sound card and tv card to work properly. After 2 months, I reverted back to Win98.

So now, with all the 2 months knowledge disappear within my briliant brain, I challenge myself to play with Linux again.

Now, once again I'm a newbie

My Test Machine

E4300 Core2Duo Processor 1.8Ghz (no overclock)

2Gb DDR2 X 2 (Total 4Gb)

Intel® P965 Chipset Motherboard

500G Harddisk

ATI HD2600XT 256MB DDR3

Onboard sound

Live-CD

From wikipedia,

"A Live CD or LiveCD or CD Live Distro is a computer operating system that is executed upon boot, without installation to a hard disk drive. Typically, the LiveDistro is named after the bootable medium it is stored on, such as a CD-ROM or DVD (Live CD/DVD) or a USB flash drive (Live USB)."

Live CD is like linux on disk. No installation needed and no change made to hard disk unless we instructed to do so. There are a lots of Live Cd available in the internet and of course there are free to download. Example Ubuntu, Mandriva, Knoppix and Fedora.

I already tested all the Live CD mentioned above. Surprisingly, all are easy to use. Anyone can try using them without any Linux knowledge. My internet connection and all my hardwares work wonderfully. So I highly recommended Live CD to everyone who want to feel and learn Linux.

Linux CD also can serve as installation disk. But I haven't try this option yet because I don't want to mess up my current OS installation.

Next post, VMware with linux.