Monsoons bring cheer

Well, I haven't updated this one in ages. So here's the latest.

Seeing the monsoons round the corner, Dad finally decided to end the punishment and humiliation of having a broken screen. So he decided to fund a new chasse for my poor defeated 6610i, to 'prevent the rainwater from getting in'. Whatever.

But, yes... look at Nokia's great customer service... "That'll be 500 bucks sir" went the lady. Dad: "I'd like to have a bill..." "Oh we're sorry we can't issue a bill for this. It's not company maal na" and then suddenly realising she's said too much, she acts like she's very busy with arranging the stuff on her desk. In a small voice: "You see, we've stopped manufacturing this model and its parts, but this is a good piece...". That was enough. We walked out of the proud Nokia Care outlet at Matunga station. Bought a nice robust body without keypad at Thane station for just 60 bucks. So that's the story of how Nokia tries to cheat customers. Sheesh. Waiting for when I'll get to switch to Sony Ericsson when funds are coming in for me!! Still not sure whether I'd want to get rid of ye olde faithful 6610i... sigh...

And now my cellphone looks as good as new. I'm proud of it and love it. Have taken to violently gaming on it yet again! Hehe. Am addicted baby!

The Great Mobile Phone Rip-Off

“So what are you wearing Mahalingammm..?? Ooh! That’s fii...iine!” as three bachelors collapse into fits of laughter. Remember that ad? “Get paid for the calls you make. Switch to Chaste Mobile today!”

Wow. What sort of a brainless moron do you need to be to actually believe THAT! You can’t expect to ACTUALLY get paid to call your aunt in Honolulu or her neighbour’s dog’s mate’s owner in Haldipur. Fuh-geddaboudit. And, no big surprise. The company bombed. Despite the suggestive name, hilarious ads and juicy claims. A quick look at its official website today revealed that they too have realized the repercussions of making blatantly false promises. There’s not a whisper about getting paid to call the aforementioned people or others. Instead I saw a desperate bid to revamp product names used by other operators. My opinion is that they’re just biding their time till they get a proper publicity manager who knows the ins and outs of twisting words to mislead people. Well, one thing’s for sure. They’re not going to get anyone soon. All the good ones are already taken… working for their rival telecom companies already!

Speaking of other telecom companies, SR’s Big (Punjabi: Vadda) Phone seems to have a very loyal clientele. Myself being one of them.

BigPhone, to tell the truth has greatly improved and made my life so much simpler since February 08. Actually the credit goes to the TRAI. More on that later. Pre February, their GPRS charges were an atrocious Rs. 49/- p.m. dissolving my SMSing capacity like sulphuric acid dissolves limestone. Even SMSes, were painful on the wallet at Rs 2 per pulse. And making calls was absolutely out of the realm of my world. Rs 4? Crazy, are you?

And then there was light. Along came the TRAI (Telecom Regulation Authority of India) and its tariff regulation act and the abolition of Access Deficit Charges (ADC). ADC was initially introduced for making up the money required to maintain telecommunication services in rural reaches of our country. But it soon began to eat into the pockets of the metro-men and the heads of the corrupt sharks in plush offices. So TRAI decides to cancel ADC charges. Similarly for tariff regulation, TRAI conducted a statistical survey and found that telecom companies never have to spend more than 75 paise on calls; 2.05 per minute in the worst case scenario. Hence it imposed a ceiling tariff of Rs 2.4 per minute on operators. Now all this data was collected a couple of years back, so a drop in call-costs for the operator is certain as the traffic has increased exponentially ever since.

Now, obviously, where there is truth, there will be fire. Telecom companies expressed their indignance by pulling up their socks for a slew of “value-added services”, among whom my very own BigPhone is, possibly, the most active in this regard. My GPRS now comes free of rental (only charges of 1paisa per kb data transfer apply) (Say Hallelujah!). I can now send SMSes to any network anywhere for just 20 paise. Calls to other BigPhone mobiles come at half a rupee. And I have great network coverage in all the right places. Life couldn’t be better.

But BigPhone has its own share of thumbs-downs. The SMS plan I mentioned just now is labeled as “free”. I guess I’m supposed to ignore the fact that I pay a rental of Rs 100 a month to get 500 messages. 500! Yes 500. I nvr relzd it, bt I do txt tht mch J Hehe. But what about normal people whose thumbs haven’t atrophied yet? They still need to shell out Rs 1.50 per pulse. Why, today’s newspaper proclaims that transferring data from the Hubble Space Telescope to NASA is cheaper than sending a text message!

Take the example of Chaste Mobile. And ad on their site proclaims their Caller Tune service runs thus (Directly Copy-Pasted): Cost of Service

Monthly Subscription charges are Rs. 30 Download Charges per tone is Rs. 15 valid for 90 days. (Auto renewal every 90 days for Rs. 15) Download Charges per Shuffle Album is Rs. 45 for 90 days (Auto renewal every 90 days for Rs. 45) All calls to ******* are charged at Rs 6 per min You do the math. Consider a 10 minute call to arrange for someone else to hear “Mauja Hi Mauja” for 3 months. (30*3) + 15 + 15 + (6*10) = 180 (I hope I totaled it right). And if you want to brag a bit more and Jab We Met goes out of the loop, shell out another 15 bucks to get the latest Race song. Which person in their right mind would waste their money like this?! And of course these rates were advertised only in fine print at the end of all the usual colourful pompous claims. Most people will miss it. It’s like they say. Experience is the best teacher.

There have been times when my Dad has innocently dialed one of those 6-digit value added service numbers “just out of curiosity” and disconnected without really buying anything, but received a bill of Rs 50 for the same. Call charges, dude! Rs 8 per minute! And even if he HAS subscribed to anything, he can’t unsubscribe because the 6-digit numbers keep changing and Customer Care can’t help. So now he’s stuck with this caller tune – “Main zindagi ka saath nibhataa chala gaya!” since over a year and can’t do anything about it but pay Rs 30 every month for something he doesn’t want.

I have such a saga of my own to tell. I’d successfully hunted down my service people and asked them to cancel the Caller Tune subscription on my phone once. They did remove the ‘dhin-chak’ song I’d chosen, but put their signature pug dog-song in its place and contentedly cut the rental the next month without my knowledge. You see, I don’t call my own number so I didn’t realize that the song was there. Sic.

And don’t even get me started on network coverage.

I’m sure that if I don’t get a placement after completing my BTech, HawaTel will hire me on the spot as the female who announces “The HawaTel subscriber you’re trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later”. I can imitate this line perfectly and can even do the music jingle that comes along with it, thanks to the fact that more than half my friends have HawaTel phones that are never EVER within network coverage. Sigh.

Anyway my word processor says it’s been 1092 words since I started and my neck tells me -“get off the comp and let me relax!” So I’ll stop cribbing now. Be back with more later.

Signing off

El Buscador

An afterthought: Just to spread the consumer awareness, let me provide you a link that every mobile subscriber needs to see. It has the real laws on it. Click here.

Game On!

Being a total mobile gaming freak, I know how frustrating it is to find the right kind of games for your cell, that are built for your cell. Especially when your cell is not a Symbian at the very least. So for the benefit of all the frustrated Nokia Series 40 gamers, allow me to list my all time favourite WAP sites for downloading .jar and .jad format games, good ones, relatively virus free and non-porn-advertising.

www.wap.mypuk.com
www.waptrick.com
www.cellufun.com
www.gameloft.com
www.wap.sayni.net
www.wap20.mygamma.com
www.worl2006.wen.ru/downloads.wml#c1

The first four WAPsites are the best and my favourites. Watch your step at mypuk though. All games are not clean. Some just make your cell hang. But oh well, you're literally spoilt for choice (over 2000 java games). Cellufun is awesome.

And yes. It's no use pointing your PC's web browser to these sites. That's why I haven't hyperlinked them. They purge things in .wml format. Not much use on a PC.


In the meantime, just for bragging rights, let me list the games on my cell phone right now. (I'm supposed to be studying right now, but I'm sick of studying why metals should corrode, so I'm doing this)

• City Builder 2: Just like SimCity! Magical but rather clumsy
• 1941 Frozen Front: ok-ish strategy game
  
• Connect4 SP: Addictive mind chow but slow
• Mr Sudoku: Huge collection but slow, again
• 3D Adventure: Rudimentary FPS with stereo walls a la Wolfenstein 3D
• Extreme Snow Boarding: Crazy gadget!!
• MiniGolf Castles: Perfectly melds into boring lectures
• Black Hole: Cool RPG with a nice, though unidirectional storyline
  
• Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Play as Aragorn as you thwack the dumb orcs.. muhahahaha
• FIFA 04: Too good. Pity the 6610i doesn't support newer versions
• Vans Skate n Slam: Wicked adrenaline puncher
• (applause)Medieval Combat: A tribute to Mortal Kombat, helps vent out anger. KO graphics with all the gore and kewl magic make a winner. Wish there were more bloodthirsty characters to control...
• Harry Potter: Crude Pacman style one
• Gem Game: Just like Bejeweled. Highly addictive
• (applause)Asphalt Urban GT: In a word... Wild. Hey I drive a black Lamborghini Murcielago AND a bright yellow Gallardo!
• XR-Jetski: Loss. Wasted 50 bucks on it cos of the cool name

AND NOW... DRUMROLL

• Prince of Persia: Harem Adventures
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
  
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
• YES! I have them all courtesy Gameloft. They're the only reason I wish I had a better cell! Mindblowing, hot Prince, even more mindblowing hot moves. This series has had me hooked for ages.

• Car Racer 2: Ok-ish sort of racing game that I haven't finished since a year due to a bug. Still on my cell in the hope that it'll go away one day :s
• Tour de France: Poor graphics, but lots of scope for tactics as you cycle for victory.
• Adidas All-Star Football 1.0.0: Yes! I play as Becksy-poo!
• Mobile Pet Dog: My cutie pie poodle Astro V5 whom I feed regularly and who has died 5 times already :D
• Mobile Pet Penguin: Cute fella too
• Cellufun Sudoku: Neat but limited collection
• W Corps: Another cool tactical but bugged one that I haven't finished but aim to some day...
• LOTR Trivia: Awesome!
• Flintstones: Puzzle. One of the unfinished ones
• Boarder Cross: Cute snowboarding game but slow to respond
• Periodic Table: Well technically not a game, an app that has pulled me out of tight spots many times ;)

And the standard fixtures:

• Bounce: Cheat's the way to go baby!
• Chess Puzzle
• A converter.

Whew. long list huh? And these're only the ones on my cell's short memory as of today. I update regularly. Don't raise an eyebrow. Each game does not exceed 6okb space and hence costs me not more than 60 paise (cheers to Vodafone). Cool or what?

And I haven't even mentioned all the games I've tried (which I won't remember in any case).

But two series deserves a mention. Drumroll.

• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Extended Ops
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Sexy missions, careful tactics required and fairly responsive controls. Good ones but I prefer the PoP series. Didn't get the same from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Series though. Pity.

• Townsmen 1, 2 and 3 are also great strategy games that make for great playing when you have the time, or when you're likely to have long breaks between two moves. Three cheers.

Most of these games are courtesy wap mypuk and Cellufun.
There are a whole lot more that I shall brief you about in further posts. Watch this space for more.
So now that you know what a hard-core mobile-gamer I am, I'll stop this monologue with yet another "GAME ON!"

Thumbing Through the Past

I started my tryst with the cellphone at school, when Moothamma (masi) gifted Mom her old cell to use during hospitalization after a hysterectomy. She didn't really use it then, but Mom realized that I'd really taken to the cell. It was a humble blue 2100, quite one of the high end ones in those days. So the cell became mine. And I was officially the youngest owner of a cellphone at school. No-one had my cell number as no-one had a cell to store it in, but I carried it around with me everywhere, feeling all grown-up and busy. Those were not the days when every school kid struts about with an N-70 like now-a-days.

A little more than a year later, when I was fed up of playing Space Impact and Snake II, Pop gifted me my then dream-cellphone. A Nokia 6610i. Don't laugh. By that time cellphone mania had pretty much caught up in colleges and a 2100 was so NOT it. Snort. The rest, as they say (though I'm not sure who "they" are), is History.

I can't imagine a single day without my faithful 6610i. It has been with me through thick and thin, been through the thick and thin spaces I try to stick it into, fallen ten score times, proferred its tender 2-inch display for me to crack, weathered its buttons painfully as I texted away, withstood the onslaught of deadly viruses and back-door worms from my GPRS connection with no more than a sputter and to this day braves my unwieldy maneuvers as I game away on the 40-odd .jar games it can store for me at a time.

I love my cell and am not about to swap it for another in a hurry. (Huh what did you say? N-95? Bring it on! Hehe!)

Beginning Transmission

When I tell someone that I maintain a blog, pat comes the query : "What do you blog about?" Um. Well. Ahem. "Nothing in particular really." But I've tired of umm-ing and ahem-ing every time. Been mulling over this one for a while. I've finally decided that my blog six-pack needs a tribute to the CellPhone. It has long since come to rule my life and lifestyle.

So, that's what this blog's about. Let's see how much crap I can come up with about cellphones.


Read on...