Paradesi

Watched the movie by Bala yesterday(16-Mar-2013). Have been his fan from the beginning and had liked all of his movies. Till now Pithamagan is the one that i was most impressed, next comes Nandha. Naan Kadavul is more than a movie to me. Ofcourse Sethu the first impression, and even he dint disappoint me with Avan Ivan. I know there are some of his fans who got disappointed with Avan Ivan.
Coming to Paradesi, it was an absolute feel of the pain of our ancestors who got into the work at initial tea estates for the british. Though i cant personally verify the facts or details, i still can logically guess with my own limited knowledge that most of it if not all mentioned in the movie must all be true. Such a riveting visual register of past, now comes the question of commercial elements! Could he avoided those songs especially by the christian doctor in the movie, but finally its a movie and all his movies he made sure to have comedy,song and action. Is it really Bala to blame? i personally believe he would  be more than happy to take a documentary like movie without any of them but will our majority audience take it? He makes sure though in all his movies, he portrays closer to real, quality and way of life applicable to his characters.
This movie made me realise that i am slowly forgetting what our ancestors went through, am sure many did feel it the same way. The color tone, bgm, music, dialogues, locations, editing...everything looked perfect. Ok, some did complain about the makeup especially vedhika's! i dont feel like i should be worried about it at all.
Finally, if you dont watch it, its not Bala at loss.

Jelly Bean 4.2.1 - SMS send/receive problem

Disclaimer: Below information is shared to just help others based on my personal experience. Do it at your own risk. Am not liable or responsible whatsoever.

After i inserted the new microsim to my LG Nexus 4, everything worked except the incoming messages. After calling the cust care twice got to know the problem was with message center number that is wrongly set.
For latest android phones, the option to update message center is not direct. Especially with 4.2.1, you have to update two values.Message center number is specific to every career and is also shortly called SMSC. To know more about this go here.

Now let us go to the update of SMSC:
For usual phones, on the message settings, you will be able to find the 'Message Center' where you can update. this is the usual 12 digit number with a + (eg : Idea MH - +919822078000). If you do not know your message center number, you can get it by google or by calling your cust care.

On recent android.phones, the option is not available on message settings and the value is not straight as well. For 4.1.1 the SMSC value must be 16 digit PDU format number. To get this 16 digit number from your normal message center number, check this link . For Android 4.2.1 , it is two values separated by comma, first is the normal message center number of the service provider inside double quotes, and the next is 145 or 129 . Eg Usually for india service providers  : "+919822078000", 145 (145 indicates the message center number with + otherwise 129).
Follow below steps:
1. Dial *#*#4636#*#* (also ie *#*#info#*#* )
2. On the displayed testing  screen select 'Phone Information'
3. Now scroll down to see the empty field for SMSC
4. First 'Refresh' to see the already existing value
5. update SMSC
a. For Android 4.1.1, you have to update the field with 16 digit pdu without quotes or + eg: 0791198904100130 (SMSC PDU format - airtel TN)
b. For Android 4.2.1, as mentioned above  "+919822078000", 145
6. Update and refresh. If you dint receive any update error and if the same value that you updated appears after refresh then you are done.
7. Restart your phone  and you are done. might take 10 mins to reflect. You should now be able to send or receive SMS.

Spent two days to get this through and hence created a post on it to especially help 4.2.1 users as other info are available on google already.

LG Nexus 4 - Review

Its been more than a week now that using it. Since ppl have already started asking me abt hows it, have been telling everyone that this phone is more than worth the money i paid. And thats true atleast for me. I never worried about non removable battery or memory expansion.
I had already owned Nexus S (that i lost) and a Galaxy Nexus (Wife's actually) and so perceptions are accordingly:

• The phone is indeed attractive both front and back. 
• After i got the Amzer TPU hybrid case, it is more comfortable to hold and use, though that covers the attractive back side.
• Feel of the performance is good. (1.5 ghz Processor and 2 GB RAM)
• Camera has so many grt features. But infact Photosphere isnt impressive, not sure when i would use it and it also demands a lot of patience to click a photosphere image. HDR seems to do a grt job. The photo editor has new options. Multi finger Zooming is comfortable than dragging as in Galaxy nexus. Focusing 'after zooming' had some issues to be frank. 8 MP click did look grt. Getting to select options on the screen with a finger touch creating the focus circle is actually interesting, you have to feel it to understand.
• Tested android beam sharing an image 
• USB, Bluetooth and wifi - all tethering options available as before.
• Speaker sound quality seems better than galaxy nexus, not sure if its because galaxy nexus is already in use for many months now.
• It has also gesture typing (swype in samsung) that i am yet to use properly. No comments.
• I dont feel it heavy (139g)
• Battery seems fine too. (2100 mAh). Wireless orb charger yet to come to market to test that.
• Other Jelly Bean features continue and infact a few minor additional features because of the update to the jelly bean as well. 
• I dont use it much for games but just tried 'temple run 2' that looked fine.

For complete tech spec, go to gsmarena. To compare with Samsung S 3 again.

One thing i missed is, it needs only Micro Sim and am yet to use it with one. So hadnt mentioned about call/signal qualities...

Update 17-Feb-2013 : Been using with an IDEA sim now for a week and i have frequent call drops! It continues even after 4.2.2 update. If anyone gets a solution or any update on it, let me know.

update 21-May-2013:
call drops arent happening much, probably becoz of 4.2.2 update
Display is bad in sunlight, doesnt auto adjust enough
Camera on closer objects doesnt focus rightly 

Update 03-Sep-2013:
Last 2 weeks hardware sound buttons arent responding frequently. works on restart but fails shortly after

Update 17-Dec-2013

After the update to kitkat the volume key issue is resolved. But I don't feel otherwise much abt the new update.

Update 27-Dec-2014
Got Lollipop update. Had random reboots, but after the 5.0.1 patch, reboots reduced. So far so good, infact lollipop UI features are looking good