Nokia 3230 – Affordable smart phone, value for money

This is yet another candy bar phone which has almost all the features, I was using this phone for almost more than a year or so. This is one interesting and affordable nokia had given, whose price had been reduced very much these days, when I bought, it was 14.7k, and those were the initial days of its launch.

I don’t want to give a full spec of this phone here, for which u can always refer to the site, I wanted to comment on the features, to say how they are, how best they have been done.

This phone had a decent camera which can give a good picture (In good light conditions only) to fit your laptop screen, which I found very useful, and I have taken lot of pictures with this phone, almost all have turned out to be very good, you can have a visit to ma blog where you can find most of these pictures. The camera enables you to keep a record of your old memories and it is very much supported with the resolution offered by 3230.

The next things is you can install whatever application you like to have on this phone, after downloading it from net, which are easily available for series 60 phones. So you don’t need to worry that Nokia had not given that application. The GPRS is very good and you will experience high speed net connection on your phone.

The next thing is the user interface and the display. The display is big enough for almost all the applications, but not sharp enough as compared to samsung phones of the same category. The UI is very user friendly, but slower, you feel it normal after few days of usage. The ringing always starts with some unknown sound, which I think is a bug with the phone, and never vibrates for incoming message, even when you set the vibration mode on, but that may not be worth complaining unless you are a SMS freak!!.

The voice quality is not good when you switch on the speaker, or even when you don’t use headphone, you feel very uncomfortable when you talk for long, especially for me when I use to talk for hours together, but battery good enough to support this kind of scenario. FM is one of the good features, but always needs the headset, even when you are putting loud speaker on.

The keypad is less, which first make you little uncomfortable, but later you will get adjusted to it, not worth complaining about. The Rally pro is one of the best time pass game and its very nice; you will feel the same speed as on a computer, you never felt bored with this game, rest of the games are useless.

The wallet feature is very much useful if you have many passwords and all to remember, when you have many credit cards and many accounts. Which I feel is one of the mandatory features all phones should have.

Last, but not the least thing is it supports MMC cards up to 512 MB in size, which can help u to use ur phone as mp3 player, more like an ipod, but obviously compromised on quality of sound. And u need a MMC card read/writer for this to transfer songs from ur PC, u can as well use this ( card + MMC reader ) as a thumb drive in case when u need one.

Overall, it’s a nice phone in terms of feature, but quality wise you need to compromise on the size of the phone and quality of audio, rest all fine, and enjoy 3230.

Pulsar – The rhythmic pulses to feel you alive

Pulsar is one of the power bike launched by Bajaj, a complete Indian company. I have bought this bike recently, about 6 months back, after a thorough search on all available products in the same category. I bought it for the reason that, its stylish, stabilized in market, packed with all the necessary things at right places, I say you read the previous like twice. Yes. It has all those things which you will feel is very much necessary when you want to have a comfortable and smooth ride. I will tell about these things in a while.

This is a 150CC bike, which will obviously cannot give the mileage as of that splendor as mileage and power are always inversely proportional, So now I have decided that I will go for power, so I have to compromise on mileage, but then how much I have to compromise is another factor, I have heard that pulsar will give a mileage of about 50-55Km/lit, But I will tell you from my experience, it will give at the max 45-50 Km/lit, not more than that under normal city conditions, I have not tried it on Highway as I am using it only for Bangalore, yet to try it out in some trips. But then 45-50 is a reasonable value I believe, for the pick-up it give you, which make you always lead after a traffic signal.

The style is un-matching to any bike in the class; a pulsar is a match to the pulsar. When you park it looks like a well maintained bull..!! You will feel proud to ride on it. It has two mini tights at the head-light if you had observed which give a better look to the bike and let you to put it on in foggy mornings.

I was using a passion plus before, which is also one of the best bikes in class, but after all it’s a 100cc one. The suspension system I found better than passion. The bike is little heavier and bigger than passion which makes it smooth on road. The seats are perfect for riding posture. After riding pulsar, I feel passion to be very much uncomfortable to ride. It usually takes me one or two days to get adjusted to it, whenever I go home.

The Alloy wheels make it more stylish and easy to wash and maintain, with that normal wheels in passion, I use to struggle to wash it properly, it use to take lot time too. The self start is another optional feature, which is also a kind of essential feature, with which you will feel the comfort of car to start the vehicle.
The things which I mentioned earlier saying fully loaded are the engine off button, which is far more a better idea to use rather than turning the key. The pass button is very much useful when you overdrive especially at night time. The indicator is far more advanced compared to passion, where in you have some kind of luxury. The Horn is well placed and well designed, and more powerful to make anyone give you way.

About the max speed and stability, I can say that you can reach up to 100 Km/h with out any worries. You will not even feel that you are at that speed when you wear the helmet. But after that I have not tested, because as I said I have not gone to any trips after getting this bike, But I am dam sure you can definitely reach 110-115 at least.

I have been using it for about 6 months till now and as till now no problems reported. I think its one of the best and affordable power bike to go to when you think you need some more power than a 100cc bike, keeping fuel cost in mind.

Passion Plus – A real passion for value

I have bought a Passion plus - Black - Purple two years back. I have not written any review on this till now, and now it’s the right time to write a review on it. As I think, the more time you spend with something, the boring it becomes.

I have been using it for last two years, and very recently I have changed to Pulsar. But then Now I am not comparing pulsar with passion here, as I think they both belong to different category of bikes, as Passion is a 100CC bike and the later 150CC.

As far as ma passion plus is considered, I should say that its passion plus because of its better look compared to mere passion.

First of all I want to know u all, why I went for passion leaving all other bikes. I was in college at that time, so I can’t afford to have a very sportive bike, but then I also can’t take a simple bike, which does not have a sportive look, example Bajaj CT-100, even thought many of ma friends were telling that it gives a better mileage. So I found passion had a trendy look and also was very much affordable at that time.

When it comes to the mileage, I have tested it sometimes giving approximately 60-65, depending on the ride conditions, most of the times; I tested on NH-17, as I used to go home on this highway every weekend. Now it’s been two years, now also its gives a mileage of approximately 55+. Obviously Hero Honda has a better engine, which had been stabilized from years to give a better performance in Splendor. The same engine is present in Passion plus.

One thing here needs to be noticed is that as splendor was a light weight vehicle, the speeds more that 70 use to be unstable, (Ma dad had a splendor before, and I have tested it for speeds) But Passion plus does not. It’s highly stable even at 90 Km/h. I am not exaggerating here, but I have ridden it at that speed. Its max speed it 90Km/h and it does not go beyond it, at whatever case. So you are always safe. But then brakes are not disc ones, so you should be careful before reaching the speed, for me I use to go in stretches of long straight high-ways.

What else you expect from a bike, I have never changed a tire, never went for any repair, have done all the free and paid services on time, that’s all. It’s one high performance, risk free, maintenance free bike. Passion plus is a very good unless you want some power bike.

Security Limitation

I am not going to write about the security limitation of our parliament and its consequences here; as all of you know it’s not worth writing about it. But then in a MNC at least you expect some kind of minimum security for your belongings inside the gate. But then I agree that they also try their best to provide the same. It has its own limitations. To keep your things safe, you need to overcome such limitations by yourself by keeping yourself away from being prone to such things.

Recently I had lost my helmet in our company parking area, to speak the truth is not worth bothering about, but then the matter here is not you lost your helmet, it’s that you have lost, or someone has stolen in a secured area. So how can you be sure that one day you will not loose your bike also?

We have really a very good security system to trace out even in case if something gets stolen. We have cameras all around monitoring everyone going here and there. But then is that enough to keep your things safe? If you consider my case, I have kept ma helmet on ma bike, without locking it, that’s ma fault, I agree. But then when we traced it back, we can see all the things starting from arrival and keeping ma bike and helmet there, and after a while we could see that some house keeping guy is standing near ma bike packing something in his bag. I could not see my helmet on ma bike at that time. This was just after a min or so. But then what we can see after seeing this? We can’t see his face. Whom we can say that is the thief?

There is an inherent security limitation, by which we can’t see all the events; we can see only what has been recorded. One more thing to mention here is that since the parking area (MLCP) belongs to many companies and most people roam around there after the lunch also. So they can’t restrict someone to enter the place. All this had made thieves job easy. So don’t raise you eyebrow incase if you lost your vehicle one day from MLCP. All you can see at the end is someone is taking it out.!!