RDS in India - Big FM

I was in Mumbai over the weekend for interviews as interviewer (not an interviewee) on behalf of my company. The event was held in hotel Tunga Paradise in Andheri near Seepz. The overall experience was good.

At the end of second day I went to my maternal aunt's home in Worli. The visit was a surprise one as I had not told them I was in Mumbai for the fear that they will feel bad if I couldn't find the time to go. My cousin bought a new mobile finally after using a LG phone with Reliance WLL service for almost 4 years. The plan was to buy a Sony Ericsson phone from W series, because she is music freak and the one with no joystick, because my experience was not good with joysticks.
After lot of R&D she finally bought W810i. The model is now almost out of market.

Sony Ericsson produces some of the most feature packed phones. And I have found the user interface and user experience to be consistent across the range of phones. This was the first time that I actually listened to some songs on a W series phone. The sound quality is amazing. The FM radio reception if above average. And of course there are other usual features like camera, bluetooth, GPRS, midi composer etc.
The surprise of day turned out to be support in the phone for RDS. Although I had heard of it I had never seen it in works. And the channel that is supporting it is Big 92.7 FM. The type of data it transmits currently is track, movie/album, artist. I am not sure if it also transmits the channel name itself or any advertisements. Apparently it also has support for AF, alternate frequency, which is part of RDS. It is nice to see which song is being played so that you can decide whether to mute/unmute the phone.

I hope next time I go to Mumbai even more channels are supporting RDS and I am carrying a phone that can make use of it. :-)