Mopocket has an interesting article on mobile phone buyer trends in the US based on a  study conducted by  the NPD Wireless group.

Some interesting facts from the report:

• Preference towards “good brands”
• Low price is not all that important
• Men are more likely than women are to care more about having the latest technology, a highly regarded brand, long battery life, and the key capabilities and features they want.
• Women more so than men, tend to be motivated more by easy-to-use flip phones and price considerations.
• Young buyers look for “cool,” middle-aged look for a wide range of capabilities, while people past middle aged want a flip phone.
• Manufacturers offering a wide array of flip phones have enjoyed more success rate with flip phones being the second most cited reason for choosing a phone

Link to report

People surely are moving away from free eye-candy phones towards phones which offer them the functionality they need. I’ve observed these changes around me as well, since quite a few of my friends and acquaintances are adopting phones Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry phones. It was sort of expected, with phones becoming a lot more than a simple phone. People use them as organizers, email/word processing and multimedia devices.

I really don’t understand why the U.S. market is all about flip phones.  There seems to be no logical reason! Is it because of the compact form factor?

Graphs from the report:

Its possible and I just did it!

It involves using Python for S60 and Raccoon (links in the freeware section - Utilities).

Its 1:32 a.m. and I’m really tired. Expect a full post with screenshots and a tutorial tomorrow!

For all you non-believers, here’s a screenshot:

I’ve been wanting to tinker around with Vox for some time now and I finally got some time to sit down and register and play with it today. I realize now why so many people have Vox blogs. Its more of a community place than a blog center, with all the neighborhoods and personalizations and the lovely themes.

My Vox Blog: http://abhishta.vox.com/

There isn’t much to look at right now, since I’ve just started, but I think I’ll enjoy the overall experience. So if you’re on Vox, join my neighborhood!

It was basically an impromptu decision that I took after waking up from my afternoon nap.
But I’m happy to say that the upgrade was a success.

The N91 is one of the best Symbian devices I have owned. Its music capabilities in particular are quite amazing. It has replaced my Creative Zen Touch as the mp3 player of choice.
Surprisingly, I’ve noticed that my actual phone usage has gone down. Its about a 15 min walk to campus for me and I remember taking a lot of photos and shooting whilst walking through the campus when I used my 6620. My hands would immediately reach out into my pocket and the Camera/Video Recorder would turn on and snap! But lately, ever since I started using the N91 as an mp3 player, I’ve almost stopped clicking photos and videos!! My guess is that it s due to the fact that it takes a long time to de-attach the phone (with remote and all) and then re-attach it again.

I’ve also noticed that I no longer spend as much time on the phone as I used to. My BT headset, which I’ve used a lot for calling was just lying around unused for the past two weeks.

To test out my theory, I’m actually going to try to not use my phone as an mp3 player for the next few days.