Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

How ironic that the same day I wrote my post on the state of Mobile Operating Systems, Entelligence released a very similar post. Must be something in the inter-webs.

Of course this article has a different take on the entire state, one which is quite interesting and totally worth a read.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Engadget (read)

Well here’s an interesting prospect. The phone that I was sure I was going to get for myself, despite its large size, is possibly going to come out in a smaller version. Of course the size difference isn’t large – maybe 3mm more narrow, 5mm shorter, and 1-2mm thinner (and presumably lighter?) – which gives it dimensions in the area of: 111 x 52 x 14 mm or 80.8cc. This means that it will be some 10% smaller than the larger version.

So what do we get with this reduction in size? Obviously the screen is smaller, although not by too much, the fold-out keyboard loses the D-pad, and the camera in the back loses the sliding cover. And all-in-all the phone seems to have a cheaper look to it.

Is it real?
Hard to say, this could be just a really good copy of the real thing. It does seem somewhat redundant to release the same phone with just a tiny bit smaller body, although the N97 is a little on the large side to begin with. Of course it could all be in the interest of pricing it lower than the actual N97, cutting out more features (the camera could be a 3.2MP), and releasing it to the mainstream public. Lets just hope that Nokia knows what they’re doing if that’s the case.

Update:

It seems as if Symbian-Freak came into possession of some confidential documents from Nokia: Europe & Eurasia Roadmap. And it would appear as if there is more truth to the rumor than originally anticipated. The roadmap clearly shows Nokia N97 Mini as an item under the Explore category. While I’m not sure what that means, at least its not an Entry model, which, in itself, is already good news! Finally, the roadmap seems to show a Gantt chart on the right, and while the time-frame isn’t visible, it would appear as if this model wasn’t planned to release for a while when the roadmap was made.

Decide for yourself: Is it real or just a really good fake?

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Engadget (read)
and: Symbian-Freak (read)

We, users of real mobile operating systems, have long taken for granted the ability to access or file system, however iPhone has just recently released an application that allows iPhone users to access their file system. The problem is, you can’t access all files (I’m going to take a wild guess and say that only files created within that program can be accessed, which kind of defeats the purpose), I’m not even sure you can save email attachments in there. Although one nice thing is that you can share those files with other users by sending a virtual link to that file and, I guess, they would download it as they wished.

However, the biggest issue: its not even free! You have to be a MobileMe subscriber in order to use the application! I’m sorry, but if having to pay in order to be able to access your own files isn’t a rip-off, then I don’t know what is. Kudos Apple, you managed to force people to pay for something that should have been free in the first place.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Engadget (read)

I’m not entirely sure what I want to say in this post, so you’ll have to bear with me for a little bit.

In the past…
telling apart a smart-phone from a dumb-phone was quite simple. Smart phones were generally required for some features such as running multiple applications at once, being able to run Java apps, or browse HTML web pages. Even IrDA (infra-red) and later Bluetooth were generally left strictly for smart phones. Finally GPS came out, and that was deemed too expensive for mainstream phones, so smart phones were the only ones to support that feature.

But what has happened now?
Java is included on pretty much any phone you can think of, and through some simple multi-threading so is support for multiple processes. Most newer phones support HTML browsing, while some smart phones don’t support JavaScript, or web-based Java and Flash content, so that can’t be the differentiating factor. IrDA is no longer included in all but the smartest of smart phones, and Bluetooth is included in just about every mainstream phone. And GPS? Well even that is starting to get included on specialty dumb phones (that is if you can call a specialty phone “dumb”).

Where to look?
Maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong point of view, so lets what Wikipedia defines an Operating System to be:

An operating system (commonly abbreviated to either OS or O/S) is an interface between hardware and user; an OS is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer.

Ok… so not very helpful, maybe Smartphone?

A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence). There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone.

So there is no industry standard definition, but reading on we see David Wood, EVP at Symbian Ltd., defining a smart phone as:

“Smart phones differ from ordinary mobile phones in two fundamental ways: how they are built and what they can do.”

And we finally see some defining characteristics of smartphones:

• Full-featured email (i.e.: ActiveSync, BES, etc.)
• Ability to read business documents (i.e.: PDF, MS Office documents/spreadsheets, etc.)
• Advanced contact management
• Standardized application development platform and interface
• Advanced hardware – GPS, accelerometer, QWERTY keypad, touchscreen, digital compass

Of course I would say that some other features are required for a smartphone to bear that name, however many of those are found even in dumb phones so they’re not really defining characteristics. On the other hand, GPS and QWERTY and touchscreens are far from being unique to the smartphone realm.

So what OS’s are there?

• Android (HTC, Samsung)
• BlackBerry OS (BlackBerry)
• iPhone OS (Apple)
• Linux (Motorola, Asus)
• Symbian (Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola)
• WebOS (Palm)
• Windows Mobile (HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Asus, HP)

Well at the very least here we can see that some companies are putting all their eggs into one basket (Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm, Apple) while others are trying “diversify their portfolio” (Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC). Which operating system is the best? I think its more a matter of taste as the features between them tend to differentiate quite a bit, however I do believe that some heave clear advantages over others.

It is also important to differentiate between smart phones and operating systems. A perfect example is Symbian S40 vs. Symbian S60. Both operating systems are build on the Symbian OS, however S40 is considered a dumb phone OS, where as S60 is considered a smart phone OS. In this post I will be talking about the S60 of operating systems.

This also brings me to my next point: I strongly believe that up until recently iPhone OS did not even deserve to be put into the smartphone OS category. While the iPhone may have had a large following (as any Apple product), and had some innovative applications, it lacked some of the most basic of concepts available on other operating systems, such as multitasking, task management, and access to the file system. Oh wait, those still aren’t available, guess its STILL not a smart phone OS (just let me cross it off the list…. done).

So where does this bring us?
So we have 6 operating systems left, of which 3 are mature: Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry OS; 1 is immature: Linux; and 2 are still in their infancy: Android and WebOS. I’m afraid that due to the sheer number of Linux flavours out there, I will have to fore-go that OS in my further discussion. However, do not see this as a negative for Linux, its a powerful OS, I simply do not have the time.

This leaves us with 5 operating systems, all of which have done something to revamp themselves in the last year or two, and continue to do so now.

The mature Operating Systems
Symbian, Windows Mobile (WinMo) and BlackBerry OS (BBOS) have been around for a long time, and have gone through a number of iterations, bug fixes, and varying flavours. Currently they are all facing the problem: how to take an operating system that was designed for a small resolution screen, for use on a phone with hardware buttons (or a mouse, in the case of WinMo), and convert it for use in a high-resolution, finger-friendly touchscreen device. The entire thought process has to be stopped, and restarted in a completely different direction.

We can see Symbian doing its thing with v9.5 S60. However they were not able to completely turn around as they were afraid to lose a dedicated following. Their fears were not misplaced, however they approached it from the wrong point of view. When Nokia 5800 was released, it was hated by those new and old to Symbian and Nokia, as the interface was inconsistent and many things in the OS still required that stylus. I should note, however, that a stylus is not a bad tool, as I believe it is the easiest way to input Asian words/characters/text (not sure what the correct term here is). Which is also why the 5800 and N97 alike have resistive touchscreens, and not capacitive ones that cannot accept stylus input.

While Windows Mobile has been going on and on about v6.5 and v7, we have little to see in the way of hardware; and manufacturers such as HTC have quickly caught onto this and designed their own shells to put on top of the existing WinMo 6.0 and 6.1 shell, which has not changed since the early days of the OS. It should be noted, however, that the number of these shells out there signifies that it is easy to design and implement; this is a brownie point for WinMo as highly customizable interfaces are important to keep the users entertained. Finally, I give credit to Windows Mobile (or HTC at least, not sure) how easy they made the flashing process for their phones. After all, a new OS means new features, new interfaces, and with an all-touchscreen phone, it practically becomes a new phone altogether.

At last we come to BlackBerry OS. I have only played with it a short while, however even this purpose-built operating system is being revamped for mainstream use. Of course since the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 came out in 2006, BlackBerries have been regarded more and more as a mainstream phone with a status symbol. I believe this to be mainly attributed to the reduction in the size of the phone than in the improvements of the operating system. The newest OS revamp, arguably the second, was caused by releasing the Storm – BlackBerry’s first touchscreen phone. The issue here, much like with Symbian and Windows Mobile, is that all that RIM did with this operating system is put an under-designed touchscreen shell on top of an operating system that was never meant for it.

All three of these operating systems are amazing at what they do, the problem is, that unless their designers scrap everything they knew about interfaces and start fresh, these operating systems will be doomed to fail.

The immature Operating Systems
This brings us to the newest, least mature, and yet the most promising operating systems in the market to date: Android and WebOS. Each system brings something new to the table, and generally does so quite well.

Android was Google’s way of driving the free and open culture, while at the same time strengthening the grip on all of your data. I’m not going to bad-mouth Google, I believe they’re a great company and have done some great things, it just scares me as to how much data they have on just about anyone in the world. (on to Android…) Android was designed from the ground up to be used with fingers, and not a hardware keyboard. Granted, the original release required a keyboard and would have been useless without one, however that was not due to poor design, but under-development due to time constraints. My Magic, for instance, is quite usable with just 8 hardware buttons and a trackball. The next positive aspect to it is the operating system’s embrace of today’s open culture. Because designing for the phone is so easy, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of great applications all vying for your attention. Besides that, replacing this operating system in my Magic has so far been a breeze and I hope other manufacturers support this. My only gripe with it is the rather simplistic task manager.

WebOS, on the other hand, I haven’t use yet. Although based on what I’ve heard about it, it too seems to be quite promising. For instance that live-card-based home screen is definitely an interesting concept, one which I would be quite interested in trying out. However the resource limitations of the Palm Pre means that we can only have a handful of application open and running at the same time. This would be fine if only I didn’t have a half-dozen applications running on a regular basis. Of course this is not a short-fall of the operating system but of the hardware, so it shouldn’t be judged quite so abruptly. While WebOS will support all of the advanced features, this OS is simply too immature to be able to tell where it will lead. For that we need to wait at least one or two more iterations of it.
In fact, not having a logo shows just how immature the operating system really is. Come on Palm, we want that logo!
 
 
 
 
Conclusion:
Besides iPhone OS not being a real operating system, I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you hanging on this one. I guess you can think of each of the descriptions of the different operating systems and their own little conclusions, but besides that there really ain’t that much to say. Do feel free to ask questions and I’ll do my best to answer them all.
My only word of advice: when you’re looking at which operating system to choose, ask yourself: are you looking at the OS itself and its features, or is the shell responsible for some behaviour/functionality? While this may not make that build of the operating system usable for you, it may prove that the OS itself is fine, and maybe only a new manufacturer is all that is required.

-Nokia FanBoy

Well this is some interesting news on a Tuesday afternoon. While Rogers may not be the first to do this, the fact that we will soon be able to use these kinds of speeds is quite amazing.

But lets be realistic for a minute. I am currently running a 7.2Mbps-capable phone, and my tests are returning about 2.4Mbps. When I was using a 3.6Mbps-capable phone, my tests returned 1.2Mbps. So we can make the naive assumption that when Rogers rolls out 21Mpbs, we will “only” be able to effectively use about 7Mpbs of it. Now I mean that is mighty fast, but its only 33% of advertised speed.

On the other hand, how much do we really need it? Most cellphones can’t handle those speeds, I was surprised mine could handle 2.4Mbps. This is mostly going to be noticed by people with data cards and USB modems, and I would question just how useful it is to have such a boost in speed on a laptop, especially when overage charges are quite high. What I would much rather see is improvements in latency (response time), as most packets that go in and out of phones are fairly small, so its the response time that plays the bigger part in effective throughput.

-Nokia FanBoy

Source:
Engadget Mobile (read).

So recently I decided to find myself a good Sense UI (HTC Hero’s version of Android) port for my Magic. The process was pretty straightforward and actually quite simple. I will have to post some of the steps and give my thanks to the appropriate developers, those guys really are amazing! I am using Fatal1ty’s Rogers ROM, v1.4.

I will say right away that the ported OS was a little bit more buggy than the original, so if you’re looking to get rid of those “Force Close” messages, this ain’t the way to do it. Also, it seems to be unable to work with WiFi, and I haven’t tested Bluetooth yet. So again, if those features are important to you, holding off for a bit might be a wise choice. Mind you there are a fair bit of improvements as well, and you’ll see those following.

Home Screen:

Well lets start with the main menu then. I’m sure you’ve seen renders of the screen, or screenshots using the SDK, however since I’m running Win 7 64bit all you get is photos, which should be a nice change .
The home screen is broken up into 7 screens, with the middle screen being the main one. Moving between the screens can be done by moving the current screen left or right, or by scrolling right or left (note that the directions for moving the screen and scrolling are reversed – don’t know why but they are). The screen position is identified by the white line marker just about the menu/phone tab at the bottom.
You start out with some basic configurations, and you have 6 “Scenes” to choose from: HTC, Social, Work, Play, Travel and Clean Slate. Each of the scenes has the 7 screens set up in its own way, with some emphasis on each of the parts. I decided to start with the HTC scene and customize it. Any customized scenes can be saved, and I’m not aware of any limitations.
The screen is populated with widgets, which HTC was nice enough to provide plenty of their own, such as music, weather, stocks, etc. I won’t go over all of them, but the following is basically an overview of the widgets that I use. Note that while HTC have done a wonderful job of making their own widgets, all originaly widgets still work flawlessly.
Starting with the home screen, when adding a widget you can usually choose which one you want to add. For example when adding the Clock widget there are some clocks which display times from different regions of the world. For some, the size also changes, such as in weather, you can add a small weather widget, or one that takes up the entire screen (see below).
Moving to the right, you will see the miscellaneous screen. Here I want to point out the GPS and Bluetooth toggles. You can also toggle Airplane mode, Mobile Network (2G/3G), and Wi-Fi. These toggles are in the HTC Widget menu, under Settings. They work quite well and I find myself using the GPS toggle quite often. Although I suppose what would be more useful is if I could state that program X can toggle Y when Z happens. That would prevent some programs from automatically enabling some settings, but at the same time would bypass some unnecessary steps.

The other widget you will see here is the People widget. I haven’t used it a heck of a lot, but I do imagine it would be useful for many people. The people that go into this widget are customizable, however it would be nice to see an automated, statistics-based method of adding people to the widget. For example, if I talk to some four people more than the rest, then add them to the list automatically.

Next up is the Music widget. To be honest I find the music application included here to be much more useful than the original one, but more on that later. The widget comes in two sizes, and here you will see the full screen one. The smaller one takes up half the screen, and allows the same functionality. Of course, selecting the widget brings up the music player.

The Weather widget is also quite nice. You can add multiple cities and move between them by flicking up or down on the big weather icon. The icons themselves move, and while I haven’t seen the “windshield wiper” from Windows Mobile 6.1 widget, I haven’t been through any rain either . Again, just like the music widget, this too can come in half-size and display the same information.

The Messaging widget is kind of neat in that it displays the latest message from each of the contacts. You can scroll between the contacts by flicking up or down on the message, same as the weather widget. The name of the contact, picture (if applicable), time, and message content are displayed, and you can delete the message right away (by clicking the trash can). You can also view all messages (by clicking the list button) or compose a new message (by clicking the pencil).

The Email widget is almost identical to the message widget except that it gives you more space for the email, and allows you to flag the email right away. As you can see, MS Exchange ActiveSync is fully supported, which goes for contacts and calendar as well.

There are many more widgets available, but I just haven’t had the time to look over all of them. I will, however, note that the Stocks widget seems to be very nice, and displays the stocks quite nicely. I’m sure someone out there has a screen capture of it

Screen Lock:
Although I do not have a screen shot of the new screen lock, I don’t think I like it quite as much the previous one. To unlock the screen you simply drag a tab down the screen. I find myself unlocking the screen without realizing it on a regular basis, since turning on the screen is as simple as pressing any button and then you just have to slide the tab down a tiny bit to unlock.

Music Player:
The music player is a nice improvement over the original one in Cupcake. The improvements are mainly: more touch-friendly interface, some nice UI additions, and a lock-screen addition.

When choosing between listing albums, artists, playlists, etc. you simply slide your finger over the horizontal tab bar (which I am covering with my finger currently ). You could actually click on the icons too, but this is so much more fun. This interface actually reminds me of the home screen slider on the HTC Touch Windows Mobile 6.1 build that I have – makes sense given that its the same company. Actually I’m kind of surprised they didn’t do the same thing on the home screen as this tends to be more efficient, but I guess they wanted a different look.

The artists list is very similar to what you would see on the original music player, except that HTC uses a white background and black lettering, which I find easier to read.

When viewing the playlist, or any list of songs, if the MP3 is embedded with album covers then those will be displayed on the icon on the left. The same goes for the list of albums.
The full list of tabs is: Albums, Artists, Playlists, Songs, Genres, Composers, and Purchased. I don’t really know about that last one, I guess it has to do with DRM, but I know that on my phone it says “No music found”.
Going back to the Now Playing screen for a moment, you will find two icons on the top: left – shuffle on/off toggle, and right – repeat toggle.
The nicest addition to Android, one that I, ironically, did not get a pictures of, is the music controls on the lock screen. When you start playing a song in the HTC Music Player and then lock the screen, the lock screen will show the album icon, as well as previous, pause/play, and next controls. Also, where before the volume controls worked at any time, now the rocker is only active when the screen is on (whether in lock mode or not).

Applications List:
The application list in Sense UI is mostly the same as in Android’s home screen, however here when you close the screen and open it again, you will find that the applications did not move to the top, but stayed in the same position as before. Also, to open this window is not a touch-and-slide motion as in the standard home screen, but a simply touch of the up arrow on the bottom left.

Flash in Browser:
Unfortunately, the flash that comes with the browser does not work all that well. I am not sure what the issue is, however streaming videos seem to not want to play. This really isn’t too much of an issue for me as I don’t really use YouTube all that much, more often relying on SMS or games to keep me entertained. However, I must say, websites in general display very well, I was quite pleasantly impressed. The only down side is that when I go to my online Rogers account, I am unable to download the PDF version of the bill.

Problems:
Since this is a developer build, and not an official HTC build, it is bound to come with some problems. For instance, where before the text messages would time-stamp exactly three hours ahead, now the time-stamp seems to change from 2 to 4 hours behind. Also, I have been having a lot of problems of people sending me text messages that I did not receive. Since SMS is my main mode of communication, this is a big deal for me and I will attempt to get Rogers Tech Support to resolve this issue for me. Also, WiFi (and I think Bluetooth) don’t work. This isn’t too terrible, however I am quite upset that I cannot control VLC with my phone; I was really hoping to play with that application.

Conclusion:
All in all, its an improvement, hands down. I am very impressed with the work the developer community performed with this build and my hat goes off to all of them. While the rom does have a number of flaws, they are counteracted by the improvements brought forth over the old versions. Some flaws are big enough to force people off of this build, however the improvements for others will make this a no-brainer. I will try to get the SMS problem fixed for mine, but will be on the look-out for a new version that will hopefully fix these problems if Rogers Tech Support can’t.

UPDATE:

Battery:
I must apologize that I completely forgot to include the most important improvement of all: the battery life. This one caught me by surprise the most as I did not expect this at all. Not only that, but it doesn’t even fit in with the specs for the Magic and Hero, as the battery improvements in Hero are marginal at best. But after installing this ROM my phone lasts some 20% longer. Granted, maybe half of that is attributed to the mere excitement of a battery life increase, but even 10% improvement is quite large.

Multi-touch Input:
Finally, the added multi-touch support for browser and gallery. This isn’t a major improvement, but it is a proof-of-concept and I think the most that will be taken away by this is that we can now expect 3rd party games and application to provide us with amazing and breathtaking applications for this. As for the browser and gallery, its a nice touch, but I would have rather seen it for Google Maps.

Hope everyone found this helpful, and drop any comments/questions you may have about this.

-Nokia FanBoy

My favourite website to go for reviews just got their hands on the HTC Magic and have posted a full-blown review. The main reason why I like going to the website is because they tend to provide, while slightly biased, very detailed reviews, including extra’s like 360-degree spin, high resolution photos, screen captures, and my favourite – the audio signal quality chart. They also provide highly detailed specs of every GSM phone there is out there, and allow for searching and comparing of phones. They also provide phone ratings, and even links to sellers.

Actually it was the audio signal chart that I wanted to look at most. GSMArena calls it Tolerable, and its exactly what I expected after using it to listen to music – virtually no lows, and good mid to high range, maybe dropping off a little early on the highs. Comparing to the iPhone 3GS, the numbers look quite poor, however when I’m listening to it in my head phones, most songs really are tolerable. I’m sure that those with lower expectation of audio quality would even be pleased with it.

I’m using Ultimate Ears: SuperFi 3 Studio, and sorry if it seems a little like a sales pitch, but the head phones really do sound amazing, especially when you get them for $34.99!

That said, the overall review takes a generally positive light of the phone, probably a little more positive than mine, and compares the phone to the iPhone 3GS, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and HTC Touch Diamond2. If you’re serious about getting the phone, have a read through the review, its good fun if nothing else.

GSMArena: HTC Magic review: Practical magic

-Nokia FanBoy

I was glancing over various posts throughout the web today and two posts caught my eye. While I likely wouldn’t have covered something as dry as financial figures for a company, even if its Nokia, reading these posts highlighted that most news can be spun two ways.

The cold, hard fact of the matter is that while Nokia is enjoying a steady increase of market share and operating profit compared to Q109, when compared to last years (Q208) figures, the numbers look a little more dismal.

GSMArena (read) is reporting that the numbers are a success, that Nokia is looking good as its coming out of a hole of a depression:

Nokia have just announced their Q2 financial report. The numbers are showing sings of recovering from the shock of the recession – their operating profit went up by almost 51% and their estimated market share increased a percent to 38%. The total number of phones they shipped was just over 103.2 million, a healthy improvement over the 93.2 million the previous quarter.

Symbian Freak (read) on the other hand is reporting this in a more negative aspect, instead focusing on the fact that compared to last year, the figures are horrid.

Nokia’s second quarter 2009 reported operating profit decreased 71% to EUR 427 million, compared with EUR 1.5 billion in the second quarter 2008. Nokia’s second quarter 2009 non-IFRS operating profit decreased 62% to EUR 775 million, compared with EUR 2.1 billion in the second quarter 2008. Nokia’s second quarter 2009 reported operating margin was 4.3% (11.2%).

Of course, I have to be fair, by the end of the article Symbian Freak did state more positive aspects of the figures and showed that Nokia is, in fact, doing well.

But the tone of the articles was set before most of the words are read, and that was done by the photos used. Both websites used similar images as the icons for their articles: a stock-esque arrow moving in either a positive or negative vertical direction as it moves forward in time. GSMArena uses a positive line shooting into the sky, immediately below the Nokia logo. Symbian Freak uses a negative line, falling to the ground, accented with a bar graph in the background showing the same statistics, and a depressed-looking stick figure at the location where the arrow meets the ground.

The main reason why I wanted to post this is just to point out that different websites, reviewers, writers, etc. can show different sides of the story, or even the same side from a different perspective. While that is not a surprise, what did catch me off guard was that I would have expected the two websites to be reversed.

-Nokia FanBoy

I recently got my InvisibleShield in the mail, and being sick and tired of carrying my Magic in its silicone case I decided to put on the shield right away. This is actually the second one that I’ve purchased from them, and this is also the second time that it took an absolute eternity for it to get here. Maybe customs holds on to it for a long time, since there is a vial of liquid inside, maybe they don’t send it out when they say they do, or maybe they just choose the slowest shipping possible. Whatever the reason, I seem to get $1 products from Honk Kong faster than a $25 product from just across the border.

Regardless, I must say that just like last time with my N95 8GB, immediately after putting it on I had that feeling of “Oh why did I buy into this crap…”. However even a day later I’m quite happy that I did.

For anyone debating whether you should get it or not, ask yourself whether the phone that you have is going to scratch easily, and whether you care that it does. While the shield itself is quite small, it does change some of the properties of the phone: the phone becomes less slippery since the shield has a slight silicone/rubber feel to it, and since the shield comes in many pieces, where those pieces end you feel somewhat sharp edges of the shield. Personally, I like the fact that the phone is less slippery, and I don’t particularly care about the somewhat sharp edges.

As far as the installation goes, it was a bit of a pain for both phones, and having a second person there really helped. The biggest issue with the installation process is the fact that the shield comes in so many pieces; the Magic came in 9 pieces and the N95 8GB must have had even more. The second issue, is that you have to spray this liquid onto the shield as you put it on, and then use a squeegee to get the air bubbles and excess liquid out from under the shield. However, the shield does take the shape of the phone quite nicely, even stretching and compacting where I wouldn’t have expected it to. After some labor, the final product really does sit quite nicely and provides amazing protection against scratching.

For those that are going to apply this product, some word of caution: don’t be stingy with the spray – you’ve got lots of it and it will make installation easier, and when you’re done installing and think it looks disgusting don’t take it off right away – the shield needs some time to sit and get all the imperfections worked out, so give it time.

I am a little worried with my installation of it as there are some fairly large bubbles on the back and I’m not sure whether those will work out, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I will be posting some pictures of the final product later in the day.

-Nokia FanBoy

Update:
Ok, so it took me a little longer than I thought to get my hands on the photos I was talking about. Regardless, I have them now and they’re here for your viewing pleasure
So you know, the Nokia N95 8GB has had the InvisibleShield for many months now (as can be seen by the dirt and dust on it), while the Magic has had it for about 48 hours. What you will notice is that in those 48 hours most of the bubbles have disappeared, leaving only one or two that were really big (and even those are now gone). Also to note that I didn’t put on the shield on my N95 8GB for a long time also so there is a lot of damage to the housing from before having the invisible shield on it.

click for full-size image

InvisibleShield: Magic (front)	InvisibleShield: Magic (back)
InvisibleShield: N95 8GB (front)	InvisibleShield: N95 8GB (back)

Nokia recently released a new phone specifically for AT&T: the Surge. Well I started wondering just what the market segment for the phone is, whether its something that’s actually required, and why it is not labeled as an N-series, especially since on first impression the Surge seems like the perfect candidate for that label.

Well after looking through its specifications it becomes clear that it is quite underpowered for the N-series, and is actually missing a couple features:

• 2MP camera, as opposed to 5MP+
• QVGA video, as opposed to VGA
• 2.5mm audio jack, as opposed to the standard 3.5mm
• No WiFi

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons why this phone should be given the N-series label:

• Symbian S60
• GPS with A-GPS
• Full HTML browser with Flash support
• Innovative features and design (i.e.: QWERTY keyboard)
• Large body to fit some of the features

So then why is it that the phone is not given the N-series label?
Well the biggest reason is probably because this appears to be an AT&T exclusive, and may be re-branded later. Also, some of the features really are a killer for the high-end label: 2MP/QVGA camera, non-standard 2.5mm audio jack.

But what does that give us?
A phone that is clearly not media-centric, but includes some rather unexpected high-end features, such as GPS. Since this is a Nokia S60 device, Nokia Maps, Garmin and Google Maps will run without any issues, and AT&T added on their own Navigator solution as well.

This brings us to the main questions: What is the market segment and purpose of the phone?
The answer is not immediately apparent, since a smartphone with GPS and social capabilities would be expected to have a decent camera, however when we look at the price, both the purpose and market segment become clear. The main purpose is to bring portable, always available social medium to the masses. This means that every corner that could be cut, was; and the price reflects this: $79 after subsidies.

While I can understand the lack of a proper camera, since 2MP is plenty for pictures posted on Facebook, I do not agree with the removal of WiFi. Bringing constant social connectivity to the masses means bringing the price down as much as possible, but removing WiFi means that the users will then have to pay for cellular data, which is well known to be expensive. Of course, carrier subsidies can be increased if the carrier has reason to believe that the price of plans will go up with the sale of the phones, but one would be foolish to save $100 now just to have to pay that to the carrier in cellular data charges when spending more and getting WiFi would save money in the long run.
But I guess its true what Economics teaches us:

Money now is always better than money later

-Nokia FanBoy