Quad Band PhonesTelecommunication Options For the International Traveler

These days, a mobile phone that comes without a built in camera is very unlikely to happen, but it is usually the case that almost all of these phone’s with a built in camera are (for the most part) less than ideal for making any quality pictures. That doesn’t mean that some nice photos can’t be taken, and with use of a few normal photography tricks and making sure to use features and options within the phone’s camera, you will be capable of getting a lot more out of the limited camera technology available.

When it comes time to taking photos with your camera phone, it really comes down to 2 different questions; What can the phone’s camera do? What can you do with the phone’s camera?

1. What can the phone’s camera do?

You need to discover what the camera phone’s tech potential is, what limits does it have, and whether or not the camera phone is capable of making the picture that you want. Luckily, the answer for the question is as easy as finding out the specs of the camera phone (as well as having an idea of their meaning naturally). Make sure to look for and have some understanding of these specifications.

-The Megapixels- What are the total megapixels the camera has?

-The Zoom- What form of zoom features are used (optical or digital)?

-The Lights- Look to see whether the camera phone can make any artificial lights (such as a flash).

-The Adjustables- Make certain of what options (including EV, white balance, and a night mode) that the phone has.

Finding out what these specifications mean is a big key for making good photos with your camera phone.

2. What can you do with the phone’s camera?

In order to be able to make decent pictures from your phone’s camera, you should know how to mix some standard skills for photographs using a typical camera with a few particular skills needed for photography on a camera phone. A successful mix of these two can produce some surprisingly high quality pictures if ideal conditions are met, but don’t act too surprised if the pics still don’t appear as you thought it should. It is still just a camera on a phone and thus is limited to what it can do.

-Megapixels are best when set to their highest setting- For most of the phones with a built in camera, two to three megapixles (MP) are the max that will be seen. Use it! It may take up more memory space from your phone, but you will get a higher possibility for taking photos that are worth keeping and even getting printed out. Quick advice, higher megapixles don’t necessarily give you better photos, however, if your phone’s camera isn’t capable of shooting at bare minimum 1MP pics, you honestly shouldn’t think of using them for anything more than some quick action pictures which stay in the phone (they really are much too tiny to be printed out or displayed on your computer).

-Movement is bad- When using a normal point and shoot camera, if you have a bit of movement it is not ideal but still acceptable for a beginner photographer. When a phone’s camera is in use however, any moving is even more exaggerated and will end up giving you some truly bad looking photos with just the littlest shake. Try to stand as still as you can to have a higher probability of a nice picture.

-Get closer to your subject that you need to photograph- Camera phones, as a rule, will not be good with multiple subjects from multiple distances. To take better quality photos, try to get closer to your subject so all of the camera’s focus can remain on it, in turn helping the picture to be clearer.

-Forget using digital zoom- Really, don’t do it. Using digital zoom makes any photo appear pixilated, actually lower the resolution of a shot, and will , in my opinion, be an unattractive picture every time. Optical zoom (if your phone comes with it) is acceptable if you need to use a zoom, but I still like getting nearer to a subject.

-Figure out lighting- To get a usable photo with a typical camera, a vital factor to keep in mind is the lighting. When using a camera phone lighting has an even more obvious effect. Too much light or too little light ends up as a bad photo. Your best bet would be if you are located in areas that are well lighted. If impossible, then figure out the phone’s adjustable lighting settings (below).

-Discover the phone’s camera adjustable settings- When you are in situations when you can’t get ideal lighting setup, you had better know the right way to use a phone’s adjustable settings as a way to compensate for this. The two ones you need to use the most are white balance and EV, which will help you deal with low light or extremely bright situations. Also be, see if there is a “night mode” setting that can be used as well as taking care to use the any flash.

With a bit of work, and lots of experimentation, you’ll be taking high quality pictures using even the most basic of mobile phone cameras.

Many people are aware that China is the world’s mass producer of brand name cell phones such as the iPhone. However, China also produces off brand cell phones that are often available for sale worldwide from various sales channels. So what are the differences between the phones produced in China for famous brands and those that are made for OEM?

1. The Phones Appearance

Branded phones often have very large teams of researchers whose job is to design the look and feel of a phone. They spend uncounted man hours testing different appearances and designs in an effort to come up with a phone that is good looking and is within the price range that has been set.

Chinese off brand phones almost always skip this step. They most commonly will buy a case molding and then fill that with their own components. These moldings are often based on internationally famous brands such as Blackberry, and unfortunately this tendency makes many Chinese made phones look like copies of originals (indeed often that is the intent when they buy the molding in the first place). The very basic reason, besides trying to piggyback on a famous brands good looks, is that it is much cheaper to buy a pre-made molding for a phone than it is to research, prototype, and then mass produce your own.

2. The Phones Chipset

Branded phones use a variety of different chips for their different phones. Often the chips that are selected are done so on the basis of cost vs performance. Chipsets with high MHz processing speeds are invaluable when a phone is running some of the flasher functions, so are necessary for most smartphones. Lower end phones on the other hand can get away with chipsets that have a lower processing speed, which reduces the price of the phone.

Chinese off brand phones are almost certain to be running off only the MTK chipset. The MTK has two generations currently used in most of the phones.
The MTK6225 is generally used for lower end phones, and besides allowing all the standard phone functions, also lets the phone have touchscreen capabilities, WAP internet browsing, and some basic media functions (like a camera/ video camera, MP4 player, MP3 player, and sometimes Java).
The MTK6235 is the higher end chip that has a larger MHz processing speed allowing larger screen sizes, a higher resolution camera, EDGE connection speed, and Wifi capabilities.
Both of these chips are not in the same league with chipsets with famous name brands when it comes to processing speed, however, they are good choices for Chinese producers as they allow many of the features of previous generation brand name phones and cost much less.

3. The Phones OS (Operating System)

Branded phones often will produce their own OS that is unique only to their branded phone, such as the Blackberry OS or OS X iPhone. Also, if a company does not want to spend the money on this they may purchase the rights to an OS such as Windows Mobile and either leave them alone or tweak them to make it unique.

Chinese off brand phones are almost all using the same OS, known as the nucleus OS. For them, this is a very good choice as the nucleus OS is known for its light weight architecture for ease of programming, having very little demands for processing power (necessary with the MTK chipset), being easily available for purchase, and still giving the ability to make a phones interface look slick if done right. All this adds up to less time and money spent in developing a new phone.

4. The Phones UI (User Interface)

Branded phones will have a variety of user interfaces built off their OS. This is so they can have a unique look and feel that separates them from other mobile phones.

Chinese off brand phones also are able to create a myriad of different user interfaces based of the nucleus OS. However, they often use their creative license not to create new interfaces to separate themselves from competitors, but to recreate a more famous UI from branded phones. This is done either to complement the phones molding (also patterned on branded phones) or as an easy way to make a slick looking interface that is already proven to be popular. The most common user interface people will see will be based off the iPhone icon driven interface.

All around, Chinese phone manufactures have the tools to create just about as varied and interesting phones (internally and externally) as branded phones, but in an attempt to keep costs down they will often take shortcuts. One piece of advice I offer is that you make very sure of your supplier if they come from China. It is very easy for them to offer “Name Brand” phones at ridiculously low prices that might even look like the real thing, but as you can see from this article, they are not. Keep that in mind when you purchase your phone from China.

From the E series of phones made in China, the most recent development has been a move towards making slider phones that reveal a QWERTY keyboard underneath. The very first of these was the E1000. Being the first, is this a good buy or more of an experiment gone wrong?

Being the originator of the E series of QWERTY slide out phones, the E1000 was the first to bring many of the traits that have been seen on the E series phones since. Chief among these features are of course its QWERTY keyboard hidden under the screen, its large breadth of built in apps, its higher quality internet connection ability, and being one of the first phones from China to allow auto rotation of the screen from landscape to widescreen view based on orientation. Even if its design is a bit like Nokia’s, the E1000 also tried to make a phone that looks good at the same time. All around though, it is a solid phone that has sold very well and has created several other phones in the series (E2000, and the E3000).

Here are a few of the E1000’s specs.

-The phone is constructed from high quality PCP with CE qualifications.

-The QWERTY keyboard is a sliding design, which can easily be slid out from under the screen when needed, and nestled back under when not.

-A sensor in the phone automatically detects if the QWERTY keyboard is slid out or not, and will adjust the screen for best viewing (widescreen when the board is out, and landscape when it is in).

-Phone navigation is done using touchscreen when in landscape mode, or using touchscreen and keyboard input when in widescreen.

-The total weight is a hefty 150 grams.

-The phone’s measurements are L112xW57xH16 (length x width x height).

-It comes with a resolution of 320×480 displaying on a largish 3.2 inch screen.

-Two SIM ports set to dual standby are built into the phone.

-The earphone jack used by the phone is non standard and proprietary, meaning it will not work with non proprietary 3.5mm or 2.5mm earphones.

-It come phone carrier unlocked, and can receive signals on any of the 4 GSM networks used worldwide.

-Internet access is solid with access using Wi-Fi, as well as EDGE 2.5G, GPRS, and WAP 2.0 networks.

-The battery life will average a user more than 70 hours under normal use conditions and with the wifi off.

-Along with more standard features such as a TV player and FM radio, a camera and camcorder, a java platform for adding more applets, and a MP3/ MP4 player, it also comes with a RSS reader via snaptu, two internet browsers (UCWEB and Opera Mini). an email client, a word doc and PDF reader, and access to Google maps.

The biggest pros and cons of the E1000 include:

Pros
-Some very big pluses are that the QWERTY keyboard is both easy to slip in and out, it is very easy to use with any program on the phone, and that the screen will auto orient depending on whether you have the keyboard in our out.

-Users will find the preinstalled apps to be both useful, and pretty cool.
At 1.9MP, people may assume that the camera is not so good, but with care you can come out with some very excellent quality pictures.

-EDGE access to the internet is solid and stable, but Wi-Fi is actually quite speedy.

Cons
-This is a monster of a phone at 150 grams, and is a bit heavy than you might expect.

-The plastic, though of good quality, is all over the phone, and gives it a certain cheap feeling.

-Once you start the internet in either landscape or widescreen view, you are stuck in it as the sensor will not work even if you slide out the keyboard or return it to under the screen.

The original of the E series, the E1000 brought about many of the features that have been showcased in future models and has many good points of its own. It is honestly as good a phone as any you will ever get out of China.

Link:
You can see the E1000 QWERTY Phone on our online storefront.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a concept that many people have come to understand. You use a VoIP service such as Skype to either make computer to computer voice calls for free, or use their service to make computer to cell phone voice calls for a fee.

GoIP (GSM over Internet Protocol) uses a your GSM SIM card number connected to a GoIP router to seamlessly connect to other cell phones over the internet using VoIP (whether making or receiving calls).

While this may not seem a large distinction, the main draw when using GoIP over a VoIP system such as Skype is that you are able to keep your original phone number when you using GoIP. You are able to use the increasingly popular and inexpensive VoIP calling service that many have come to rely on when making international calls, but now there are no new numbers to remember and pass on.

As a practical example, imagine you want to set up call forwarding for when you are traveling internationally. Using a traditional VoIP call forwarding system, you must make sure that all your possible contacts have the correct VoIP telephone number if they want to call you. Using GoIP call forwarding however means that any time your cell phone number is called while you are traveling internationally, the system will forward the call to the number that you designate, costing you nothing, and the caller paying only their normal rates.