Saturday, July 4, 2009

Moving

This blog has moved to our website...


Cya there...

Friday, July 3, 2009

Bubble or Opportunity?

Guess the amount of money that has been invested in start ups working in pure play Apple apps. 1, 2, 10, 50 million USD?


Now, I dont know if its a bubble or an opportunity. For now, sitting in India, clearly it seems to be the latter.

Our website is up...

Our website is up :) Take a look (whoever is reading this blog, apart from me) Visit hndhld.com

We are on twitter too (twitter.com/hndhld) - now that's overkill for an audience of 1, dont you think?

What else is on in our lives? We seek to crack the secret code of Symbian over this weekend and also include the airport volvo routes in the volvo app...

And there is a ton of work staring at us...

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Desi app stores?

The biggies are gonna roll out Desi app stores. And that seems to means Nokia and RIM. Apple gets mentioned in the piece, but their response leaves us with the feeling that they have no such plans. Sony Ericsson gets a passing mention. Google, no word...It basically seems to mean that Indian developers will be allowed to put up apps - it probably wont mean anything more than that.

What is big idea of a desi app store when the global version can do the trick? It is as great an idea as having an India specific social network. But there are already apps like Cab Lite in which Indian operators are present, so it does not prevent people from making "worldwide" apps too. In any case, this is good news for teams like ours.

And it is a good thing to create markets for apps. One, it will prove to many of the naysayers that the Indian IT market has no talent. It will also be an answer to the many who doubt Indias technical expertise. Also, it lets people do stuff that may be "too small" or in the "blind spot" of phone companies. The good thing about apps is that it allows users to customise their phone. In a nation with a multitude of languages, this is the best way to customise. But if that needs to happen, apps have be made available to phones with a much lower budget...

But there is a lot of potential out there...

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Bangalore BMTC Volvo routes

Here comes our second app in the Android market. We have put up the Bangalore BMTC Volvo bus route finder as an app. Enter the "To" and "From" destination to get the appropriate Volvo bus routes. Enter just "To" or "From" for bus originating and terminating respectively. Or just get the route number listing and routes.

The Bangalore BMTC Volvo route finder is useful even if you new to the city. So, if you are visiting Bangalore (and have an Android phone), do install it and try out these bus services.

Go green, use public transport.

We are planning to enable the next version with GPS capability too...

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Android phone in India

Finally, the Android phone is set to be launched in India.

We will keep you posted as our apps for the phone get ready.

The price point of the phone (on contract with Airtel, a la iPhone), though, disturbs me a bit. At 30k, I am not sure its a steal, unless both Airtel and Google have some ace up their sleeve. At this price it mimics the iPhone plan. 10K lesser and it would have given iPhone (not exactly selling like hot cakes in India) some food for thought...

In the meantime, Google, can you please let Indian developers upload paid apps into Android?

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Augmented Reality

As it is, we are living in "The Matrix" and to top it we have virtual reality, second life and now, this. Augmented reality.

By definition, Augmented reality (AR) technologies offer the ability to layer data--including images--over our perceptions of the physical world. While science fiction versions of AR usually involves high-tech eyewear, real-world AR is moving swiftly from the labs to the users via advanced smartphones. These handhelds offer everything a basic AR setup needs: a good display; a camera to see the world; and location-awareness.

But, this is the first step really and you will see a lot more as all these worlds converge. The only thing I am willing to say at this point, is, it will all be on your phone...

Monday, June 22, 2009

And heres how to do it

To stay ahead of the curve, I mean, as Apples 3.0 demonstrates.

While the rest of the world believed that launching zillions of "phone models" was the key to success, along came a "computer" and "mp3 player" company that made all of one (or three)models, yet is perhaps the most successful mobile phone company in the world.

Related read. While everybody believes that the web is the end for newspapers and newsmagazines (including us), the Economist sits pretty. Superb read.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Jai Hanuman

So, finally, after months of trial and error, we managed to get our first app on the marketplace. It is a very simple one, where we have tried to digitise the Hanuman Chalisa.

Lots of learnings, lots of missteps, but finally we made it. Do let us know how you like it.

But then again, this is the first one. We have a few more in the pipeline that will be up soon...

Friday, May 29, 2009

Coming up next, Context sensitive phones

What exactly is a context sensitive phone? It means, that the phone knows what you are doing - running, travelling or sleeping and then it adjusts certain parameters within itself - like brightening or lowering the display, magnifying contacts.
And both Apple and Google have filed a patent that signifies their intent... (via Fast Company)

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Mobile as center of life

Heres a glimpse of the mobile phone as center of life in South Korea (link via). Read the whole piece - it tells the next steps for mobile phones. There is a vast pool of untapped potential for this device and we will see it being unleashed over the next few years.

Also, heres a solid piece by Niti Bhan on the potential in the MTN-Airtel alliance titled African potential, Indian Experience.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Plox Lite

If you have ever played tower defence, this is a familiar game, but on a phone it seemed to be doubly exciting. After Trap, this is another game that I was completely addicted to for a while.
Worth a try...

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Music Lite

This is not a multi-touch application, but does its job well for a single touch app. Its a nice musical keyboard with an option for a piano and a keyboard (with the full extended version avaiable for a payment).
Clearly worth it, if you are into this sort of thing!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Trap!

Heres a game I was completely addicted to. Trap is the name and what you are supposed to do is trap those floating balls using lines that go end to end. If any ball meets any unfinished line, then you lose a life. There are various bonuses, special balls and stuff to keep you occupied for a long long time. It does not seem so great when you start, but as you play, like any good game, it is supremely addictive.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Zebra paint!

A stunningly simple painting application - really loved by kids. Choose the colour with your finger, touch the relevant spot on the screen - thats it. Choose from a range of pre loaded pictures and a whole range of colours on the palette. Keeps kids busy for a while...

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Android 1.5 sneak peek

Take a sneak peek at Next gen Android...
For the full list of features, go here...

Thursday, March 19, 2009

OS 3.0 released

This is not the blog to read about OS 3.0. There are clearly, better places on the web like Engadget. But do read the link to see the "potential" that can be unleashed with this device. In that we at hndhld also concur that the potentilal of this device - or potential of wireless handheld devices has just about been tapped.

Fast company has an article that points to the direction that many of us have been. The iPhone is almost there as a gaming platform competing with Sony and Nintendo and perhaps a certain Xbox as well? Hmm...

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Image Search

The new google image search is superb! It detects (atleast thats how it appeared to me) that you are connecting from a mobile device and tailors the results appropriately!

With the new Image Search results, you can easily scan up to 20 images on a single results page and get the details for images that interest you. From the details page, you can view a larger thumbnail, visit the web page containing the image, or view the image by itself in full size. The new results page also supports "search-by-style" filters, which allow you to restrict your search results to people's faces, clip art, line drawings, or photo content. [Google Mobile blog]

Where will you read books?

The great book reader war is on. Yes. Its Kindle versus google. Kindle wants you to buy a new e-book reader, while Google is giving it on your mobile phone. The big difference is that Kindle lets you buy almost anything on Amazon, while Google will let you buy stuff on its "book search". Right now it is too early to call and clearly, they can both co-exist, but since this is a mobile phone blog, here goes.

15 million books in your pocket. Imagine that!

How many do you want to read? Go ahead, download that book and read it on your phone..

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Google Latitude

Google Latitude is such a smart idea.

Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather. [Google Blog]

The future of the mobile phone is not the phone itself, but the network that it enables. So, imagine the potential uses of Latitude - if a group of friends is visiting a new city, you will know where each one of you are. Its so easy. (You will relate to this only if you have gotten lost in a new city while going together in a group). I also think it will be wonderfully useful for senior citizens...

Premium app store?

Wired reports that rumour has it that the iPhone will soon have a premium app store.

The Apple App store is a big hit among users. Independent app makers can make hundreds of thousands of dollars hawking games such as iShooter or Twitter apps like Tweetie.

But along with the increased downloads, developers have seen the average price for games pushed down steadily. Three weeks ago, Silicon Valley Insider analyzed prices of the top 100 paid apps in the iPhone app store. Their spreadsheet showed apps prices dropped an average of 19 percent over the previous two months.

A premium section or a tiered App Store could help change that. The premium section could offer a channel for the more expensive products and protect the $20 price point. [Wired]

Dont know how far it is true, but this is a good direction. And if Apple does it, can the others be far behind?

Monday, March 16, 2009

Touch and gaming

Over the past few weeks playing with the Gphone, I have no doubt that touch is perhaps going to evolve as a great gaming media in the days to come. A recent article at Wired pretty much talks about the same.

There have been rumours that the iPod Touch is being primed as a gaming platform. Once you play on a touch sensitive platform, it is easy to see why.

Sure the Wii is great (and though I dont have one, I am fan of it) and Playstations and Xboxes are good - this is an awesome gaming platform - plus, you dont need to buy a newfangled machine to get going.

And, as for kids games, well, dont get me going on that. Almost everybody who owns an iPhone or a Gphone has their kids completely hooked to it! More thoughts on this coming up...

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Power Manager

The power manager app is a nifty app that lets your conserve battery power. It shows battery life in percent, battery status and automatically lets you conserve power if you are running low. Nice...

Monday, March 9, 2009

Tub Thumper

What are you waiting for? Beat those drums - lightly, with your touch ;)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Ding!


Now, doesnt that Ring a bell? Choose from desk bell, gong and cow bell. Cute, we thought :)

Friday, March 6, 2009

Steels a steal!!

We took a look at Chomp SMS that changes the SMS interface of the G1. If there is an SMS program, can a browser be far behind?

Actually there are more than a few browsers available on the G1. Other than the default browser (with which I was neither impressed nor unhappy), we tried out the Steel. The Steel practically makes the slide-out keyboard redundant. On touching the address bar, the virtual keyboard pops up and you can enter the address of any site.

Once you click a link, rather, touch a link, the superbly intuitive thumb level controls take over. (See pic.) You can chose to either copy, share, open, enlarge or magnify depending on where you have "touched".

The copy, paste option particularly impressed me, because otherwise the copy, paste function takes a little while getting used to. So, right now, Steel is what we are using. Got to try out the Opera too sometime...

Software is king!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The most popular

First up, we decided to try some of the more popular apps. Those which exploit the full features of the phone or which bring out the whole point of the Android phone. Two of them qualified right away. Chomp SMS and Labyrinth.

If you ever end up buying the phone, Chomp SMS will probably be the first on your list. It converts whatever format the G1 had for SMS into a iPhone similar format. Cute, fast and works very well. It even recreates a virtual keyboard for you that vibrates for every alphabet you touch.In one word - unmissable! This is one app that has got a lot of publicity and we were keen to see how it worked and we were very happy with it. (Of course, it does not let you forward and therein lies a secret.)

Perhaps it was done this way. The original SMS format for the phone is, well, just about ok. Chomp SMS gives it a dash of panache. Perhaps it was done to prove a point. That software is king in this phone. Do whatever you like. (or as that popular Honda ditty used to go - Hate Something, Change Something.)

Whoever has heard of accelerometer has probably heard of Labyrinth as well. Now, having realized that a statement like that is an overstatement, let me retract that. The best way to tryout the accelerometer functionality is to try out Labyrinth. It involves moving a steel coloured ball through a maze of holes into a specific hole using your hands to tilt and shift the phone and hence the ball. When the ball falls into any hole, you get a tactile response (neatly done) that is almost spooky the first few times.

And while it is not easy, it is real fun. Steady, slow hands do the trick. And the first 8 levels are free, post which you can download the entire 800 levels. Freemium model? Absolutely.

More later...

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

On starting

Remember that you need an active data connection on your SIM card to boot up this phone - not sure how it will be when it is launched in India - but for now this is required. Second, you need a google account to get started. One google account per phone is how it is supposed to work, but you can check mails of any google account (for instance, if a friend wants to check etc.).

Without this basic step, you will be stuck. So, get a google account and an active data connection - which you can later deactivate once you have the phone up and running...

Monday, March 2, 2009

Apps and more

It took us a while to figure out (dumb us) after surfing the Market website trying to figure out how to download apps to the phone, that the App Market existed as an icon on the phone itself! And having found that after a bit of stupidity, we kept searching for games only to find it listed separately.

The app market is sort of a vicious circle. There are two ways of listing - one is by popularity (downloads) and the other by date. The "popularity" ensures that you see apps which are most downloaded and hence they get downloaded more often. Sure thats a crib for newer developers but the only way you can overcome it is if you decided to try out the newer apps sorted by "date".

Saturday, February 21, 2009

GPRS, GPRS BSNL

Finally, after tons of effort, we got BSNL running on the Gphone. The call center had no clue and made me run on wild geese chases. But finally, I tinkered with the manual settings and managed to get it running both on the Gphone as well as an older Nokia.

What are the settings?

On this page, there is a link that gives manual settings for devices. The South Zone link is here...

Take a look at it carefully and configure it as they say. If it works, great. If it does not tinker. I mean, if your number is a Category A, try the B settings and vice versa. Right now, my phone is working on a combination of these settings...All the best

Update: https is not working yet. Have to figure out why that is so.

Friday, February 20, 2009

First things first...

First, we had to lay our hands on a T1 developer phone. Having done that, it was a challenge getting it to work on the local networks. BSNL gave us so much trouble - you can get more if you talk to a wall. So we gave up on BSNL and switched to Airtel. So, Airtel it is for now. Now, a word on Airtels GPRS services - fast, blazing fast. We loved it. Customer service while way better than BSNL, could do with improvement. But that is as far as Indian cellphone networks go...

Coming back to the Gphone, this phone is nice - best of all it is open source. And it will develop its own set of fans. And why not. Just that the battery could be better than what it is today - especially when the GPRS is always on. And since then, we have been at it. Downloading apps, trying them out. Remember that this phone is not yet launched in India, but a phone like this has trememdous potential. It is not yet launched in India and that should happen anytime...

The app market is a treat. There are hundreds and thousands of apps for you to chose from. Games, Recipes, Finance and what have you. And the phone reaffirms something - Software is king in this phone. Don't like something? Go ahead and customise it, change it, the way you would want it. And that is unlike any cellphone by and large - though by now most cellphones are going the open source way and the applications way. 

So, join us on the Android journey...As they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Boot up


The phone does take a little long time to boot up. Not sure if this is because this is a dev phone. But beyond the boot up screen, it requires a data connection for it to be configured over the next steps. So, that was an important lesson for us. A longer story on how we did it, next...

Wednesday, February 11, 2009