Technology jargon busters

Series 40 and Series 60 – S40 or S60 are mobile User Interfaces (UI) that work with the Symbian Operating System. S40 and S60 UIs are usually found in some of the lower end Nokia handsets. Nokia now have Belle as well. 

Screen Lock or Hold – Most, if not all, touchscreen handsets come equipped with a screen lock button, so settings and features aren’t activated by accident. This is the same as a keypad lock on other non-touchscreen handsets. 

Sensors - Just like the human eye, cameras have sensors which detect incoming light and are sensitive to the three primary colors - red, blue and green. Any color on the visual spectrum can be broken down to a mix of variable values of these three primary colors, and conversely these three colors can be used to form any color. Traditionally, cameras used film that had three separate layers, each sensitive to a separate primary color. In digital cameras however, the sensors perceive values digitally and convert them to a universally accepted file format such as JPEG or RAW.

Shutter speed - Shutter speed is the amount of time the mechanical shutter of a camera stays open, so that light can pass through it and on to the sensors or the film. The shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second such as 1/2s, 1/4s, 1/8s, 1/15s, 1/30s, 1/60s, 1/125s, 1/250s, 1/500s, 1/1000s, 1/2000s, 1/4000s, 1/8000s, which basically defines how long the shutter will stay open.

Shutter Priority - Like aperture priority, shutter priority is a mode in prosumer and professional level cameras where the user selects the shutter speed and the camera decides the amount the aperture should open according to the scene at hand. This mode is ideal to capture moving objects where the photographer wishes to have one or more elements of a scene blurry.

Stereo cameras - Pretty much every 3D camera is a stereo camera, which means it has two separate lenses and most of the time two separate sensors.

TrackID – TrackID is a feature found in most Sony Ericsson handsets. It allows users to record a segment of a track being played via loudspeakers or over the radio. This recording is then sent to a server in order to extract information like the name of the song and artist, album etc. to be retrieved. An active internet connection will be required on the handset via a service provider. MusicID is the exact same thing that’s evident in Motorola’s newer music oriented handsets. The app Shazam works in a similar way. 

UMTS - Universal Mobile Telecommunications System is one of the 3G mobile cellular technologies. Also understood as 3GSM in many cases, it essentially implies a sort of hybrid combination of 3G with its speed and GSM with a more globalised standard. 

Unlock – Unlocking carrier locked phone implies you would be able to use it as an open GSM handset so that it would no longer be tied to a single carrier. You’d be free to use any service provider's SIM card and services attached to the same without disrupting the use of the handset in any way. In order to Unlock a phone, you’d first need to Jailbreak it. 

Up Conversion - Since the advent of HD, there are workarounds to achieve HD from normal SD footage and this is done by up conversion. Simply put, up converters can artificially create higher res images from low res ones. It’s nothing like the real thing, except of course there are some very high end converters sold separately. This process is also known as upscaling.

Incredibly small USB flash drive

USB – Universal Serial Bus is simply a wired standard used for interfacing between a mobile handset and a PC for various purposes be it media and data transfer, backing up of information or even recharging the battery. Mobile phones usually have this in mini-USB and micro-USB variants.