Archive for March, 2007
Sony Ericsson W710i
Sony Ericsson’s latest cellphone, the W710i clamshell, combines your typical Walkman phone functions with fitness applications that include a pedometer, calorie counter and a timer that records your run’s lap times and average speed. The pedometer, once started, works in the background and discretely displays the number of steps you’ve taken in the external LCD. You can fire it up in the morning, slip this compact clamshell in your pocket, and go about your day’s business. When you finally get home, you can check how far you’ve walked during the day, as well the number of calories you’ve burnt.
The outer display also displays the tracks currently playing when in Walkman mode. Surrounding it are rubberized buttons to control the player’s functions. Sound quality was excellent via the slightly uncomfortable earphones. The W710i also supports A2DP via Bluetooth – so this should work perfectly with most Bluetooth stereo headsets. It’s a good thing Sony Ericsson ships the handset with a 512MB M2 stick – as the 16MB of internal memory just isn’t enough.
The other nit of the phone includes a 2-megapixel snapper . While pics look great on the sharp 262k-color display, once transferred to a PC, image noise becomes evident. This is further exacerbated when shooting indoors, or in low light.
That’s not to say that the W710i is a bad phone. On the contrary, it’s a good – but not great – phone. While multimedia performance is up to par with the rest of the Walkman phone range, it’s just a shame the W710i’s camera can’t quite keep in step.
Current Price: P16,700
Using CellPhones To Audit Election Results
It is interesting how the cell phone is now used by groups to monitor the upcoming elections. There is a new group that aims to conduct an Elections audit:
The Filipino voters—and that should naturally include all political parties—should uphold Halalang Marangal, the general slogan of the organization of the Network of Citizens for Honest Elections and Truthful Statistics whose acronym is NoCheats. The objective of this group is laudable. It aims to insure that the May election is fair and honest, insure through an audit system created by this group of upright people.
It’s successful implementation tough is still subject to the veracity of people’s reporting. We just hope they succeed somehow - for the good of all Filipinos.