Budget Android steals and deals

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Budget Android Deals !

Everyone s talking about Android nowadays.
They are everywhere, and almost all manufacturers except for may be Nokia / Blackberry / Apple have a model or two in their Android product portfolio. There are benchmark products from each manufacturer for all the models.From Samsung it is the Galaxy SII and Galaxy note which top end bleeding with all their technology,brightest of screen and fastest of processor. From Motorola it is the Milestone series . But all these are insanely costly for a mobile phone. You really dont have to stretch your budget all the way

Here are some of the models which I found were really good, They will meet all your expectations regarding an Android device, Although you might not be able to update it to ICS Android 4.0. I think the stock Android version which runs on these machines is much more than enough to enjoy all the benefits of Apps market and millions of Apps Android market has to offer

Sony ericsson XPERIA X10 mini - Market Price -Rs 9000



Although this might not be a very new phone, I love the form factor. It is not too tiny,yet just the right size and screen also is kinda bright. No you cant compare this to the Nokia CBD or Samsung Super AMOLED. But it is decent enough indoors. Plus you get the Timescape Navigation from Sony erricsson to make things a little more interesting

During the time I was writing this, Mobile was available for as less as 9 k ! come to think if it, It s a bargain at that price I would say given Sony s build quality and device form factor

Here are the vital stats
Rear Camera     :     5 MP
GPS     :     GPS,A-GPS
3G     :     3G Data Only
CPU     :     600 MHz ARM 11 processor
OS     :     Android OS v2.1(Eclair)

Sony Ericsson Xperia W8 - Market Price -Rs 9300


Well this is all that the XPERIA X10 Minis is sans the Camera, But who cares I get the walkman series headphone and branding. But seriously, It s a shame current crop of phones including the Walkman Live series from Sony is not a match to the Original Walkman series of phones. Sure there are improvements. But sound quality is not drastically or dramatically better than say Nokia. I have a Nokia N8 and could hardly notice any difference in sound quality. Plus nowadays you get really awesome headphones if you are willing to spend a couple of grands (best I would say is the Bose ) . So why would you go for W8 . I really dont know there is nt anything logical I can say to make this phone worth your attention. But you do get the Android and Walkman in a single package that too a little less in price !

Next up in our Android steal is

Motorola Quench XT3 - Tested market price - Rs 12700

I really am not a very big fan of Motorola. Although I have used a Motorazr and at that time it was one of the most sharpest most stylish phones around. Even to this date it still is kind of stylish. I really dont know why they are nt manufacturing the moto razr series. Almost all the other phones Motorola made were really difficult to use. But that might be history as now they have Android on their portfolio.

The Motorola Quench XT3 is a 3.2-inch capacitive diplay mobile phone running the Android OS .It features Wireless LAN coonectivity,full HTML browser, and a 3 mega-pixel camera . It is a good value for money mobile phone except it sports older version of Android (1.6) OS and there is no word if it will receive any upgrade to the newer versions (2.1 or 2.2) .It also features trackball for easy navigation. Although I did like this phone, in terms of build quality. There is something about Sony which makes me want to stick to Walkman. So I think I ll give my vote to Sony this time

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For Each and every day !

Monday, April 23, 2012

Another day . Infact it was Monday . Some people call it blue . Some people hate monday . Infact I heard that most no. of heart attacks / road accidents / love failures happen on a Monday morning . It is the one day which breaks the spell of two glorious day of doing nothing at all . But I guess in among the myriad things marriage changes is your perception of Monday ! I was thankful for another day of being in a perpetual continous eternal relationship with a complete stranger was survived . Infact this survival is not without defeat or shame or daily bankrupcy . I cursed every shopping mall and handicraft shops along the way ..In Trivandrum .. I always loved Thiruvananthapuram . Infact it is the one place I wanted to settle down once after I was thirty or forty .. But I never ..ever ..have seen so much of shops ..Until I was married !

Life after marriage was always filled with shops .. Shopping and immenent bankrupcy at the end of the day . Before marriage it was elegant.luxurious/drunk/petrol burning  living even with just 10 k per month .and after marriage ..it was bankrupcy even with 100k salary every month , Month after month !

Rationalist , existentialist , communist , humourist , philistinist .. in among the many things I was , I was never a male chauvanists , Infact some friends even considered me a male feminist . But somehow , I became a MCP everytime I even remotely suggested skipping that piece of unwanted junk from these junkyard shopping malls !

So if you are in Trivandrum there are a few places you must watch out for if you are married !

1 - Pothys
2 - Jayalakshmi
3 - Entire stretch of Chaala near east fort
4 - Occasional fairs

If you know of any other shops which an make you an MCP , please do keep me posted !! I think marriage does test you , I guess you want to brainwash yourself into believing that these tests are to help you adjust mentally to the reality .. of being .. married . To the stranger who is the partner ..In sickness and in shopping mall !

When two becomes one ! Story of King and Commisioner ?!!

The one thing missing in todays youth ? Is it traffic sense,Humour sense ? or like Our Mamootty sir would say , sense , sensibility ..SENSITIVITY !! When I saw the crowd at the movie King and Commisioner , I understood it was a combination of all these things plus intelligence / creativity/ ideation etc etc which was missing from todays youth . How else could you explain the sensational hit of Krishnananum Radhayum ? Oh my god if you did nt see it yet , You must to see it to believe to what extent people can go in the name of making a movie . To say Krishnanum radhayum by Santhosh pandit sir is a brainless numbwit is to make the understatement of the millenium . It is such crass , so much crass that we have to really see it believe it . But it makes for a hell of an roll over floor laughter . But .. But really butt you have to understand this kind of entertainment is like enjoying a Curry puff (croissant) made out of your own brain . That part of your brain which is fed up with watching the kind of movies which we had been made to watch over and over again




You see Seeing such a movie would have ruffled the feathers of Sense ..senzibility and Zensitivity of mega super aging yet still romancing stars like Mammotty and Suresh Gopi . So they decided to come together to re-enact / remake the so called magic of theatrical elocution skills in the name of china wall long dialogue delivery . I mean only them , Only these people can carry of Mallu accent ..I mean Lolakutty is nothing in front of them . They pass of their manglish with so much panache that you actually feel proud of the your mallu accent when you speak English !

Then why did I ever go to watch the movie in the first time ? I actually was as confused as you all were as I was standing in a line which was longer than the dialogue maraaoed by these two in the movie . You see I was angry that day . By looking at the posters , I felt so much identified . You can see so much of anger in the posters that you actually feel good about feeling angry . So I was angry , I only wish I had a gun ( Just so that I can say the dialogue . . . Sense venam , Sensitivity Venam ! Sensibility venam ) What was I angry at ? well it was like a variety of subjects that I was angry at .. First of all the strike at maneshwar due to which I was driving a Fiat punto . Then the price of petrol !! then the fact that I was ... paired opposite a very nice ..person in real life ! oh god ..Looking at the posters you feel like feeling angry even if you are perfectly happy and smiling and happily married too ..

LIttle Facts ~!

The King & the Commissioner is a 2012 Malayalam political thriller film written by Renji Panicker and directed by Shaji Kailas, starring Mammootty and Suresh Gopi in the lead roles. The film was earlier reported to be a successor[2] to 1995 film The King and 1994 film Commissioner and its sequel Bharathchandran I.P.S. of 2005, however director Shaji Kailas reportedly said that the film features a new story in a new background where the lead characters of his and Renji Panicker’s films (Joseph Alex IAS & Bharath Chandran IPS) are coming together.[3] Mammootty and Suresh Gopi are reprising their roles Joseph Alex IAS and Bharath Chandran IPS respectively. The film released in more than 200 theatres all over India

You see one very nice thing about Kerala is that they produce the best ..and the very worst films ever made in India . And something even more strange and interesting about the State of Kerala is that it is the same very people who make , act and watch these kind of very best and very worst of films . So who is watching the King and Commisioner ? ? It was me that day .. The very unfortunate me . You see the little I tell about the story the better . Cos Actually even after watching the movie ..keenly .. Well I was atleast trying to watch it without being brain numb ..But hey , I did nt wear helmet inside the theatre . so I guess my brain was indeed numb by the time I watched the movie . So it took like a week of Ayurvedic Kerala massage by beautiful ladies to recover myself and my brain from the hopelessly irrepairable brain damage from hearing dialogue the size of open page editorial of The Hindu ! I wonder why on earth someone would deliver a dialogue so long , so immaculate just few micro second before killing or before being killed .

I hail Mammooty and Suresh Gopi ! May their sense ..sensibility and sensitivity prevail before doing another film

The DIggyDog

Monday, August 9, 2010





It was not that I was lonely , I was only as lonely as the every single individual , male , female and auto drivers of this universe of Bangalore ! Before I came to bangalore , it was just a place on map . The location for a number of beautiful girls in my Orkut/facebook/blogger/twitter/Gmail... friends list ( mostly strangers ) . But now bangalore was staring me in my face . with all it s dust , Traffic . and the million and one people squeezed into the most unavailable inch of every bus and footpath! I wonder if all the people in India ..mallus , Tamilians , Northies .. MIddle east and west of india too ... wanted to go home at the exact same time , to the exact same place ..Worse part of it was they all seemed to have a car , or bike ...they honked and emited toxic fumes !


The strange , idiotic , non sensical , insensible lonliness was particularly amplified by the fact that my room mates , Had three , four or five girl friends , who constantly flirted with them for being ..their romantic girlfriends ! What was more , they were not that bad looking at all !

Jealousy !

How could I be jealous . I was not jealous ! I could never be jealous . Cos jealousy is supposed to be bad right . And here I was , The most righteous guy in the universe of bangalore ! There simply could nt be anyone more more righteous than me ! ..Well I was jealous . Of the dogs and cats ! HOney and bees ! Nature was running past me like an express train without any stop . There I was . Stuck almost with the way I was , What I was ..was it making me ..catching this train .. But remember I was not the only lonely me .. There were million , Exactly one million two hundred and two thousand people who must have been lonely ! I mean ..

Well I was nt always this unpopular and stranger ..without friends or girl friends . I was ..like the Magnetic person in College ! and school . Its just that once when you are employed in a computer company , You just dont get to see people in a relaxed mood sleepy appreciating your wit and sense of humour ! Well college was done , The KSR college of Non sense was done with . Now it was a time I worked with people whose tensed face reminded me of my IT returns , and need to get a loan , House loan , Savings ....

Oh god I was aging ....Fast!! Like I was aging with light years .>Each year added a million years to my expiring and exhausting ..time limit on this earth !

SO what I do ..

I just booze !

With my friends ! This was a time I discoverd that .. DSP Black was a good brand of whiskey , when ofcourse mixed with ..COCA Cola ! or Pepsi !

But when you wake up with a Hangover . You realise that ..t s not a permenant solution to all your problems ! So you .. face another lonely day with all your lonliness .

So I decided to call her . My old school friend , A fellow blogger . The only person who had enough intellectual stammer to have an arguement with me . So I call her on a Monday . Evening . I thought she be surprised ! Shocked ..and pleased ..

So she says .. She wants a job . She already had a job . But she wanted a better job . She asked me if I knew any consultants  .. yeah right , It was the last thing i wanted to hear !

So All men and woman of Bangalore universe was very brave , besides being good looking . They even smoked cigerettes as they sat behind their boyfriends or girlfriends Scooty ! They speeded the traffic filled clogged highways of Bangalore ! But I was not one of them ..

An existential tamil movie with Dr Vijay

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

I was going up stairs ,It was so far away my floor , I was like in basement floor , I needed to go only to the first floor , But it seemed so far away . Then I reached it . Immediately I remembered , That I need to go to the first floor . And to me going to first floor , was only from the basement floor . Why would I want to go to the first floor if I was already in the first floor .Okay , So I go downstairs . To the basement floor , Actually I used the stairs . just to make sure that I really do go to the basement floor . Then I reach there . Now I was happy , I knew where i wanted to go . I wanted to go to the first floor . I push the button frantically . so that the lift may reach ...Was I mad . Was I in a dream . Were my faculties to reach the first floor permenantly damaged and affected by the apparent illusions of reaching first floor . I wanted to make sure . So sure that I made it more sure by going again to the basement and reaching the first floor ..




How is it . No It s not a dream . I was explaining the opening scene of my very spiritual movie to a friend of mine . My friend Mr Vijay . Okay sorry . Dr Vijay . He is a super star . Okay upcoming superstar . He wanted me to make a very special movie about him . There was a reason why he wanted to make an intelligent movie about him . The entire tamilnadu , Andra and Kerala state is accusing him of being really stupid . Yeah you heard me right stupid . His latest movie , SURA , where he comes swimming out of the ocean like a water dog . Okay dolpyn . . was nt very impressive in the box office . Despite humorous numerous songs being very singable and catchy , He was yet to have more than twenty people seeing his film in the theatre for the last four months , And those twenty people were there because they were deaf , dumb , or beggars who were given free tickets .



So he was upset . It was a stage where anything and every single thing he did was becoming a monumental blunder . At one point of time he even shouted at the hapless journalists . .



He said ..SILENCCEEE ..I mean he shouted and screamed at the god forsaken journalists ! and they were shocked this smiling friend of mine scream on top of his voice the way he would shout at the villains of his movie !



So I explained him , about the movie again , My movie about him . The most intelligent movie about anybody especially Dr Vijay ! (He got the doctorate for being so mentally challenged movie after movie , Every movie and all movies ) So this memory loss and apparent compulsion to move constantly is highly symbollic of the human crisis . Our inabilty to understand our purpose and state of mind as we struggle to come to terms with our existance ..



Dr so called Dr Vijay , My friend was looking as if I had just groped his lovely wife in front of him. I mean his mouth was wide open !



He said ------. Machaa but where is the kuthu songs .. I mean dappan kuthu .. I always have an opening songs



and I said ----But Mr okay sorry Dr Vijay this is not your run of the mill masala movie . This is a movie about a man in an existential crisis to find the first floor . The first floor is symbolic of our achievements . It is a highly intelligent subtle movie about .. well ..err .. you know the futilities of struggles . It s like we never reach . just to make sure that we reach , we travel again and again . . To the same places that we travelled . We do the same things . Again and again for the same exact reasons . Like we have been doing for generations . This will be one of the most monumental films of your carreer . You will beat Dr Kamal haasan ..in the process !



I could nt exactly gauge the reaction . It was like watching him act a intensely emotional scene of his movies . I mean he was like blank . without any expression . Now this was good . This was good because it may be misinterpreted as the lack of existential interests in passing things . A sort of like expression of enlightenment . But to the more curious and sensible eyes , He was looking like lost . Not ordinarily lost . Extraordinarily lost ! Lost like an idiot with an idea !



So he wanted to know when he will have a song ..



and To this I said - No mr Vijay . Oh sorry Doctor Vijay . There is nothing like a song .. No songs are possible ever in an intelligent movie . You see intelligence has got this naive yet honest sincerity due to which we could nt have something as stupid as .. spontaneous musical movements without reasons ...



SILENCE ...He was shouting like he was shouting at the journalists . its not that I was making any noise ..It was just that all these things were too much for him to handle ..



Anyways He acccepted to do the role ..and he accepted do even finance .It was a question of his pride ...To make atleast one intelligent movie in his career .But on one condition . That he may do some minor modification to suit his style .. I should have known . .



The next day We sit with a couple of his good for nothing assistant directors .They bring us coffee and discuss things with us . We even had kerala chips . . Then started out work .. Apparantly the song was something he could nt compromise ..



So we had a kuthu song . So instead of begining from the basement floor . We begin with Dr vijay coming in the bike . There are a thousand and one of his well wishers (in the movie ofcourse ) before he bursts open into song and dance . He says philosophical things in the songs and political things too . He sings about Nuclear weapons and love of mothers to their children . Then the next scene was apparently about going towards the lift as the lift is already having a heroine . Then the lift gets stuck in the ground floor . There the lift technician is a guy who murdered his grandfather . Then they fight . Obviously the girl was the daughter of this guy ... Then there is another sad song . Then there is a clash of love ..revenge . There is apparently twelve thousand fights and more songs too.



The movie was recieved very well by all types of Audience . It was even considered for the national awards for the apparent lack of expression in Dr Vijay s Charector through out the movie .He was praised as a wonder . A genius . . . Looking at the movie for more than once was a challenging acheivement and a testimony of tolerance . May be it was intelligent after all ! It was a device designed to test human tolerance to non sense .Apparently the people like to challange themselves often too . All is well I guess as long as it runs for more than two weeks !

I love you my friend

Monday, June 21, 2010

Is there no god , is god so insensitive as to be a silent witness to my overwhelmingly desperate attempts ..to be with her . The only her in my life . the perfect her . . .the lady of my dreams ..

I had her in my dreams yesterday too . Even in the busy hours of traffic when half the world and a moron was honking me from behind . I was lost in her . I was lost in my dreams about her . What was it about her . She was not the most beautiful women of the world . She was not like the beautiful women I had seen . She was hardly the most well dressed . She even made me feel embarressed that I was obsessed with her .

what was it . was it the fact ..that she used to help me .with my studies . . That she used to carry my notebooks if I had missed it in the class . Was it because she used to scold me for the spelling mistakes in my blog . May be it was because she used to walk with me . The most beautiful walks of my life . when we used to be so silent that we hardly missed nothing . Absolutely nothing . everything to us was very clear . We were almost absent in those moments . We were one with the beautiful trees . She had this innocent little charming things to say . Some boring things . yet her innocence had santified it from the boredom ..

She was a friend of mine . A friend of mine when I needed her . May be she was my best friend . with whom I shared everything . Like my secrets , that I feared snakes and roaches . Like the time I stole fifty rupees from dad ....Like she scolded me ..Like she pinched me every time when I used to smell cigarettes . She was like my mother . May be more as she was my friend too . . . . Motherly friend ...heavenly friend . She was not god ..But everything else and much more . .

where was she . Does nt she know that I cry , That I miss her ..even as I have become a man . . Like a man almost twenty five for the last five years !! It was like some seven years ..since I saw her . heard from her . . .She was like ..almost absent except for these painful memories and dreams about her . . was she really real . existant ? No now she was not there . To see me cry . . I thanked god . . As it would shock her ..to think that this communist rationalist passionless absurdist existential philosopher blogger can cry . But yes . The pain was absolutely real . It ached , Like a head being chopped very slowly , it killed me slowly to learn that she was gone almost forever . Were it all lies ..

So sorry am I miss sunshine and beautiful beaches . I am sorry , so sorry that I said to you ....

That I love you .. that I wanted you to live with me forever as My dear wife . . I am so sorry that I did nt realise that you were much more . You could only be much very more to me than someone who is just a wife . You were my friend , My only friend .. . But how could you ..just leave ..Just once when I said ...I love you ..

May be you read much more than words . May be you read a man , Twenty three years old . His passion , His selfishness . . . His stupidities . You were looking for a man , I was still a boy . Your friend I was ..

Are you still the same my friend ....Are you still ..at me ..for wanting you ...destroying everything so fine . so funny about us ..for making you want to move away from you and us

I wish I really could tell that boy . . . make him understand . .that life is not so simple . To make the girl you love understand and accept that fact that it s love ...


It is but too late now , I am too old now , Like I am thirty million years old now and so dead now ..

To revisit the past ..and meet two people , You and me ..To tell us that ...

It is okay . the world wont care , nor would these stars , trees , and morning sunshine . That two people did stupid things . . and were angry at each other for a while . That we can still call , converse , and hug ..

be a man , and you my women . . For you see you se ...i am still the same , the love still remains .. I still cherish..the moments that were we !

The extraordinary Love affair with love

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Love , it is an existential crisis . It is a crisis of much bigger magnitude and scale than that of hunger ,death ,religion ,world wars,and rising cost of petrol and itch gaurd ! so what is love , and more importantly why oh why is love ! ? is there any purpose . I dont see a dog devdas/romeo , or a cat paro/Juliet ! yet love in effect is always and almost certainly sexual . I mean the love that I am talking about , which is the existential crisis could only be sexual

Love as seen by an average Indian film maker

My early exposure to things other than Indian or some outsider perspective was from the numerous firangi phoreners who came visiting my monsoon clad Kerala . There was this beedi sipping couple from Amsterdam (To protect the identity of Sam and Rosy I am not revealing their names), to whom I showed numerous malayalam/tamil/hindi/telgu films . Being the Indian kid I was , I judged a film by the number of fights and the height of the fall hero took to save the heroine . And of course songs make or break any average Indian film . So the universal theme of every single one of them was LOVE . Action stories have love , thrillers had love , There was not a damn film without hero or heroine s . Ofcourse there was this rare one or two released once in every one thousand two hundred ninty seven years which dealt with things other than love , or fight , or revenge . But they were not meant to be seen by humans with ordinary thinking or Indian thinking . it was an exercise of intelligence only meant to be suffered in a dark theater with depressing silence . .

So love was everywhere in an Indian films . in fact so much so that the thing which made one movie different from other was perhaps different actors . So you had the same story repeatedly and shamelessly told for over a hundred years . Only with very minor costume changes . and of-course music was slightly changed . Earlier it was an influence of carnatic music , With Maestro (So called) Ilayaraaja with same tune and raaga for every song . But they were sad . Reminded them of their failed love affairs .Some times so sad that , concept of sadness as a feeling was introduced first time to the growing kids only by these songs . The prime example would be the following link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8a01hyNlh4

So here is the Hero of the film , Mr Quintessential hero of any south indian love story . he is so sad that he did nt even get the time to shave . So he sings this song

Vellai pura ondru ponathu kaiyil varaamale

so it was so pathetic to hear this song and this sadness ,that usually females and males even dogs , fell in love and was ready to do anything , so that this guy may stop singing and shave his pathetic beard . So it was sympathetically pathetic love !

I guess if it was nt for the literature ,songs and films there just would nt be any love . Why would there be love . what was this existential feeling of being incapacitated without the presence of certain someone in your life . I have heard sane sensible reasonably intelligent guys being greatly depressed when they were ,like denied their interests (romantic/sexual)in a certain members of opposite sex . Of-course it was mathematically impossible for the most attractive female in the class to be in love with almost sexteen guys in the class .But our raging and often boiling hormones was blind to mathematics , physics ,biology and general logic too.So we all fell in love at the same time with the same girl(s) So it was love traingle and quadrilaterals

But was it really love , The love which I had felt for her .

Well she was as I told you almost three times ,The most attractive in our class , And I was studying in Second standard . I dont know what had made her so attractive , being Eight years old , I was almost her age . She was not as attractive as Shakeela or reshma for that matter (they are mainstream hollywood actors in Kerala ) But she was slightly fair (the universal factor which made people feel attractive or attracted ) And she had this pencil box which made weird electronic sounds when she opened it . And yeah I was extremely shy and self conscious in front of her . I used to sing , songs aloud , Just to make her notice me . And in school bus , when she sat in front of my seat , I constantly watched her . some times , some rare times , When I fell down , or sang songs , she looked at me too . It lasted for three milli seconds , May be even less . But that was like .. some moments etched in my little tiny irregularly beating heart . It was when I was in eighth standard , Roughly at the age of fourteen , that we had telephone connection in our home . It was an exciting time. She being what she was , she had a telephone almost immediately . Yeah it was fashionable and innocent back then to ask for people s number and it was easy to figure out people s number from through the directory . So we used to talk . . And we used to talk . And god the conversation lasted for almost twenty five million lifetimes for the almost two three hours Come to think of it , it was a hopelessly dull conversations. But it felt good to talk .it felt sexually right to talk , normal . Even at times I felt proud that I was almost having a steady telephonic relationship with a girl of my Kindergarten dreams

Soon our lives took us to different streams . Me was mostly unemployed and uneducated except for my masters . She remained dumb despite her degree in Medicine . Then we met other people and so conveniently forgot ..each other .She was nt that beating heart , mesmerizing angelic female . was this the fading love . this was repeated , The whole cycle of extraordinary females and their falls to ordinary mortals ..many times

But each time this cycle had left me feel more empty than previously , Each of the cycle of life , had wiped my belief in love stories as told by films , songs and literature . People were people , Just ordinary or extraordinary as you yourself are . You just see them with this magnifying glass . which make you feel sad , after you realize that they could fart ,snore ,and smell

yet the vicious cyle of love letters and telephonic conversations continue . As they say wars are due to the hopelessly depressing boredom , so is love . Although completely illogical and serving no purpose for evolution , Love continues to exist . In-fact evolve and refine itself into poems and great world literature . It fuels passion , kissing s , and depressions of us . . the hapless humans trapped in our want to love and be loved . Love may be god , But its absence surely invites devil !