Life with Me in the middle
Posts tagged nokia
Nokia makes the 5250 a reality
Aug 24th
Love it or hate it a Symbian^1 phone at this price point will easily become an instant hit. At $150 unlocked you are not going to find a much better phone. What do you think, will this be a success for Nokia?
Amplify’d from www.boygeniusreport.com
Today, Nokia made the music-centric, full touch-screen 5250 handset official. The device will include a 2.8-inch TFT touchscreen with 640 x 360 resolution (16:9 aspect ratio), 512 MB of RAM, quad-band GSM, 2 megapixel camera, micro-SD card slot (expandable up to 16 GB), FM radio, and will be powered by Symbian^1. As an added bonus, your 5250 will come pre-loaded with Guitar Hero 5 Mobile. The device will be available in Q4 and will retail for 115€ (~ $150 U.S.). Hit the read link for the full press announcement.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9yxXka
Nokia impresses with their latest Ovi store video
Jan 20th
I am very impressed with Nokia’s latest video efforts touting the Ovi store. This video is both creative and captivating and makes you want to grab your phone and start buying applications. What do you think?
The apps begin to flow for the Nokia N900 with the Ovi store (beta)
Jan 12th
via unwiredview.com
If you are a Nokia N900 owner get ready to have even more applications readily available for your device through the Ovi store. The Ovi store is still in the beta stages but shows great promise and is a great step forward for the Maemo platform. With the Ovi store coming to more and more Nokia devices it is providing a consistent experience on loading applications to your devices. Consistency is an important thing because it allows users to move between devices and feel at home. Even more important is that it will create customer retention if the experience is a good one, creating a demand for future devices.
Have you tried the Ovi store on the N900 yet? If so what are you thoughts?
Skype Video On Symbian Thanks to Fring
Nov 24th
One week with the N96 as the be all do all
Feb 18th
David Gonzales over at Electronic Pulp has started his first week with the Nokia N96 as his only device for all multimedia and communication needs. Sadly I feel a rather bad review is on its way. I currently use the N96 as my primary device and I’m far from happy in many ways.
I won’t go into detail about the many things I dislike about the N96 right now but I did want to cover just a few. It should be noted that I am using the NAM (N96-3) variant of the device with the latest firmware release.
Firstly, when you pay close to $700 for any device you expect it to be fast and efficient. Sadly in the case of the N96 performance is not one of its strong points. I consider myself a very patient person and don’t tend to be overly obsessed with how fast something works as long as it works, but in the case of the N96 it tends to be neither at times. Moving around the device is not snappy as the N95 but I don’t mind that. The biggest trouble I have with performance is loading proper connections (Edge/3G/Wifi). The N96 is running on S60 3rd Edition FP2 which has some “improvements” with automatically connecting to the best source without user interaction. Not only is this painfully slow it doesn’t work at all at times and leaves you staring a useless application that can no longer process anything.
I admire Nokia’s attempt to make things easier with selecting connections because this is one of the most complained about issues with S60. However the implementation that is on the N96 is poor at best and is nothing more than a headache. I waste way too much time worrying if I am going to be able to connect to this or that to make it useful at all. Let us specify what connection we want for each and every application along with having a default, that if no other is specified, will always be the defualt. If they did this life would be good. No more prompting no more worrying.
The last topic I wanted to bring up was maturity of firmware and phone features. I find it very hard to believe the N96 was ever ready for prime time when they released it. Why? Because I feel it is still not ready. There are far too many issues with the device to charge what they do for it. Not only this but the software is just not there in the marketplace. I can’t tell you how many times a shiny new application comes out from Nokia and their supposedly flagship model, the N96, is not supported. This alone shows that the device was never ready for prime time and was put out way to early to hopefully get a few sales from gadget obsessed people like myself.
With all of this said I am looking forward to following up with David on his blog to see what his overall impressions are with the N96. If its great one week will feel like a day. However if he feels like I do one week will feel like 3 long months and he will have or hope to have something new in his hands ASAP.
Why oh why do you hate me Mr. N96
Dec 29th
I have been using the N96 for a couple of weeks now and I am getting more frustrated every day. The firmware release that I am currently stuck with, 11.018, is driving me mad. It seems to crash at least once daily and I have to yank the back off pull the battery to get it back up again. This is not something I would ever expect from a high end Nokia N-series device. Frankly I cannot believe they ever put a software version out this bad.
My previous phone was a N95-3 which I loved in every way. I then moved up to a N95-4 (8GB) which was even better. You would think the next logical step for a media junkie like myself would be the N96 right? Wrong! This smartphone has the potential however its problems out weigh all of the positive things it brings to the table. I send a lot of text messages and sending on this revision of firmware is painful sometimes. I select a contact select create message and wait and wait. Even the things you would think it would excel at such as viewing photos, lags like a low end device. When you are moving through the photos it takes 1 to 2 seconds for the image to properly render. On either N95 this would be a second max with thousands of photos on the phones memory card.
While these things are annoying I could live with them knowing they would be fixed whenever they actually release the firmware update to us NAM N96 users. One thing I cannot live with is the huge problems with 3g and wifi connectivity. At times it takes 3 times or more to get the connection to work to check email or surf the web. Wifi umm yea right, your lucky if you can get it to work at all. I have almost given up trying to use wifi to download my podcast and watch videos.
As most of you know I’m a huge S60 advocate so this is painful to write but paying almost $700.00 for a phone and getting this is a real disappointment. I am going to continue to hold out for a couple more weeks if I can. I want to see if the firmware makes it out to us NAM users. Beyond that I’m giving up. Come on Nokia help me out here please.
Why the N96 went back into the box..
Dec 16th
I have been using the N96 for a couple of days now determining if this is the right phone for me. At first I didn’t like it all. I have been so used to the N95 form factor that something thinner felt kinda funny in my hands. After playing with it for a while though I did grow to appreciate not having a huge block in my pocket. Form factor aside the S60 feature pack on this phone was pretty impressive. They have added a lot of eye candy and everything seemed to work okay.
It sounds like a win win right? Well yes and no. I’m a pretty heavy user of Nokia Chat so of course I attempted to install this. Guess what? You got it, the N96 is not supported. Okay huge strike in my book but lets move on. My next step is to install Nokia Messaging (Email). I start through the guided installation process on the website. I select my phone and it ask me this funny question. Is your firmware version 12.0.0.0 or above? Well of course its not. I have been trying to install the latest firmware on my phone from the first minute I booted it up with no such luck. For some reason my phone, unlocked/unbranded, is not able to find the firmware upgrade that I’ve been yearning for. This was my last straw. I got the N95 back out and it has become my primary smartphone for the time being.
Has anybody been able to pull the firmware for their N96 (NAM) yet? If so how in the world did you get it?
Amazon Video on the N96
Dec 15th
I recently transferred my first Amazon mobile video to the N96 to see how it performs. My first impressions were actually not that great. I kept having a problem with the decoding of the video. The screen would turn into a green blob of blocks and then recover on random scenes. I know it wasn’t a problem with the video because I can watch it outside of the N96 and all is well. Overall the quality if great if they can work out these kinks.
I have only tested one video, “The Dark Knight”, however I would guess that the overall experience will be the same for all videos. I have not tried to rip anything and move it over yet but I’m guessing it will all work like a champ just like the N95-3. The question is, does the Amazon VOD (and mobile download) have a viable solution for movies on the go for us Nokia owners? Anybody else out there trying this?
What happens to the tablet?
Dec 2nd
As all of the news of the new shiny N97 flows through the web I can’t sit here but wonder what is going to happen with the Nokia tablet lineup. The N810 has been one of my favorite devices now for over a year. I constantly hear from people what kind of phone is that, and as always I reply with a smile, its a internet tablet. Like most of you I plan on upgrading my N95 to the N97 come the US release date. I ask myself what would I need a tablet for now?
Video
My tablet has been my primary on the go video watching device even though my N95 plays the same videos using Core Player just as good. When it comes down to it I chose to use the N810 due to the screen size. With the release of the N97 I have a good size screen and equally, if not more capable, video playing device in an all in one device. Sure you can argue that the tablet allows me to play more formats using mplayer etc.. but honestly when it comes down to it I rip all my own videos and can put them in any format I like. Thus this is not an issue for me.
+1 N97
Audio
The tablet has been incredible as an audio playback device. With a large choice of media players for the tablet (Media Player, Media Streamer, Canola) its easy to find what works just right for you. The sound quality on the tablet is much better than that of the N95 that I use. My N95 is plagued with the annoying hiss and being an audiophile it drives me nuts.
The N97 appears to be on par if not better than the N96 as far as audio quality. The media player is reasonable and very easy to use. If they add support for flac playback then would put the icing on the top for sure. Again why would I need a tablet for audio playback when I have an extremely capable phone.
+1 N97
Internet
When it comes to internet browsing the clear winner in my book is the N810. Having the almost full internet in the palm of your hand is hard to beat. The experience is far from perfect and I could go on forever about performance but overall it wins. With the N95 the browser gets the job done but is not what I would call great. With the recent introduction of skyfire things change a bit but its still a long way from being ready.
+1 N810
Navigation
For those of you that have used the navigation on the N810 in the real world you know exactly what I mean when I say slow and inconsistent. I tried for several months to make my N810 the primary navigation device in my car. It doesn’t work well enough to replace the N95/N97 with nokia maps or my stand alone TomTom.
Now that Nokia introduced Maps 3.0 I can’t see why the tablet would even be an option for navigation. I can easily see using my N97 as my primary navigation device for car, motorcycle and on foot.
+1 N97
User Interface
I cannot officially talk about the new N97 touchscreen but from what I read the screen is sensitive and easy to use with your fingers. The N810 is great and I love it but its not the most responsive touch interface I have used. I had an iPod touch for around 6 months and the difference between the two was huge.
Maemo and S60 both offer very different user interfaces and both have great features. Personally the S60 interface is a bit cumbersome and can take some time to get used to. However once you learn it you can navigate very quickly and get anything you need to do done very quickly. Maemo has a unique interface and I find it very simple to use. Maemo is biased towards using a stylus which sometimes can become annoying. My main issue with maemo is the inconsistency between applications. Having to use the stylus for this and then use your finger for that can get a bit old. A more consistent guideline for UI design on maemo would be a huge help. Make the buttons bigger folks 
. Bottom line I cannot say one or the other is better.
Conclusion
If Nokia wants me to keep both devices they are really going to have to step up the tablet line and make it something that just knocks our socks off. I don’t know if I can justify buying another device that does almost the exact same thing just because its cool anymore. What are you thoughts?
Nokia World 2008 Or Bust?
Dec 1st
If you haven’t heard yet Nokia is planning to release some world shattering news regarding a mobile device. Or are they introducing a new service, maybe a lunchbox who knows. The one thing we do know is that Nokia has been tight lipped about this and thus far nothing has leaked and we are only hours away. Typically at least one leak is out there on the internet and rumors start flooding from that. In this particular case it appears that Nokia did something right by only including the need to know people related to this project and threatened them short of their life to keep this a secret. Either way they did something right and the hype is building for those Nokia fanboys.
I have been searching all day looking for a leak but as stated above none can be found. I personally think they will be releasing not only a new N-Series device but a new service that makes this new device stand out from the crowd. With the development of the OVI Suite and several other new purchases I think they have come up with some new type of device/service that allows us to communicate like never before.
As for me I am hoping and praying for a new tablet with a SIMM card that allows me to transform my do it all device into a phone so I can for the first time only carry around one device for a change. Other rumors are they will release the new N-Series touch screen that has been in the works for some time. Doing this could be risky business. If they don’t get it right this time they may lose those S60 fans that have been waiting on moving to another platform. However if they put out a device with a new service that wows even those Cupertino, CA folk then we have a winner on our hands. These days it seems like the only ones being highly creative and innovate, that we hear about in the mainstream, are apple and apple. At least this is what the response you would get asking any non techie, “What is the best smart phone on the market?”. As for me I would preach Nokia and S60 because I can do things with my N95 that the “other” phone couldn’t dream of. I take a ton of pictures and video of my family and post directly to ovi all from my phone. I can stream live video (QIK, Kyte) to anybody that wants to watch. Sending SMS/MMS, email and more with ease. And the best of all I can do all this from any unlocked phone that I can afford. The problem is there is no sex appeal to it and as we all know sex sells.
So with that said I’m lifting my glass to Nokia for this hidden gem they are planning. I just pray that it stand up to all the hype they are getting. Plus I’ve been good this year, as far as you know, and I need to ask for a new shiny device. Wow me Nokia please oh please wow me.