Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

Ok, so this is something that I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time but never seemed to get the chance. Now, it seems, that the news wagon is fairly slow, little going on, so I figure its the perfect time.
I see this being a multi-part (or multi-session) post, as there is quite a bit that I would like to go over. I’ll try to draw on real phones but hey, this is just my imagination talking, so that might now always be possible.

Well first off, what is wrong with the current phones? Why is it that I say that there is no perfect phone out there?
My perfect phone does not yet exist as the features I want somehow seem to be mutually-exclusive. I want my phone to be a powerhouse and have a long-lasting battery, but it seems that the only phones out there that can do that are almost big enough to be someone’s house. I also want the phone to by thin and light but then you can forget about the features. Anyway, here’s what I think the perfect phone would have:

Signal Strength & Quality
Starting with the basics, I want the phone to work just about anywhere, that means that it has to have a strong, clean signal even when speaking in an elevator or underground parking garage. To be fair, most of today’s phones do this quite well. I use my N95 8GB just about anywhere and only in a couple confined places do I regularly lose service (such as the London Drugs in Lougheed Town Center). Now, the interesting thing, is that my Blackberry 8100 seems to have signal in some places that my N95 8GB does not, and vice-versa. So there must be something that can be done in order to get signal everywhere. Of course, often times the stronger signal results in shorter battery life, and I think there should be an option to boost the signal strength in places where the signal is weak (with the option to only do so with a hands-free, since the radiation output will be quite significant).

Telephony
Next up, is the most basic thing that the phone should do well: telephony. While this encompasses the signal strength/quality topic, its actually much larger than that. For starters, the earpiece on the phone has to be of high quality in order to let you hear exactly what the other person is saying. The sound should be automatically adjusted for the surrounding environment. The microphone should filter out that same environmental noise so that the person on the other end of the call is actually able to hear me. That said, the microphone, or microphones in the case of noise cancellation, have to be of very high quality as well. After all, this is the single most important function of the phone. Additionally, the user interface surrounding telephony needs to be very well thought out: the volume buttons in the appropriate location, the loudspeaker or call-muting easy to turn on off, of course the bluetooth accessories need to pair effortlessly, and connect and work without any glitches.

Display
We all use our phones outdoors, in fact, its nice to think that we spend more time outside, so this should be even more important! Although realistically we spend little time outside, instead breathing in conditioned air, with the eerie glow of the monitor as the only light source at times. But in all seriousness, this is a very important part of the phone, especially if its a touch-screen phone or if you, like me, use it a GPS.
The phone screen has to be vibrant, have high contrast, be easy to see on bright sunny days, and have a nice, high resolution. Of course depending on the resolution of the screen, whether its a touch screen or not, and the form factor of the phone itself, the screen should be of a good size. For instance, an all touch screen device should have a 3.2″+ screen, preferably 16M color AMOLED, with VGA or higher resolution; where as a qwerty E71-like phone could have a 2.4″+ screen with HVGA resolution (of course 16M color AMOLED still stands).
The capacitive vs. resistive touch screen technology is really a trade-off, so its not a requisite, however I would rather have the resistive only if it implemented that super-high-sensitivity resistive technology that was shown around a while back. (if anyone wants the link let me know I’ll look around)

Build Quality / Durability
This topic is actually quite an extensive one, so I will try to briefly go over what I think this should be. First off, high quality materials need to be used. That’s not to say that it has to be metal, although it helps, but there are very high quality, pleasant plastics around as well. Plastics, while being lighter, tend to be less resistant to damage if only very thin sheets are used. Personally, I would rather have my phone out of metal, even if it means it will be heavier, because its more durable and can make the phone thinner/smaller. Of course the exterior is not the only important part of it, the interior design and construction of the phone has to be held to high enough standards that the phone being dropped is taken into consideration (e.g. by placing rubber dampeners at critical points), as well as the phone wouldn’t make creaking sounds when squeezed. Now Nokia phones used to be this good (not sure about the current generation), but then the quality seemed to drop. For example my E60 was build with amazing quality, dropped it a million times and it just got a couple scratches and that’s it, where as my N95 8GB is not quite of the same construction, and I won’t even start on the old and very popular 3310. To be fair, the E71 has very commendable build quality, so it could be that the E-series is held to a high standard than the N-series, which is understandable.
There are some interesting concepts out there, like the Nokia 3720 Classic, which look like a regular phone but are really very durable – that’s what build quality should be like (given that the touch and look aspects are as I described).

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Update:

Ok, so I think its time to add some more details, don’t you?

Storage Capacity/Memory Card
I strongly believe that there is no reason to carry around multiple devices when just one device will suffice. Case in point: I don’t carry around an MP3 player because my N95 8GB gives me fantastic audio quality. Granted, 8GB of music is getting a little low, and because of that I’ve had to scale down my MP3’s to 192kbps – being an audiophile I would like to have 320kbps. There are of course many reasons to have large amounts of storage, especially with phones capable of capturing and outputting HD Video content. This means that more space consuming files will be stored on the phone. Personally, I believe that having a 32GB internal flash drive, with the ability to insert a 32GB microSD card will provide plenty of storage. The first 32GB would give 99.95% of the people out there enough storage, however having the ability to carry around a couple extra microSD cards would cover the other 0.05%. The only other option is USB-host capabilities and enough juice to power a 1.8″/2.5″ hard drive – but that’s not very realistic.

Processing power/speed
This is kind of a multi-hardware piece topic in that its not just the CPU that matters. Case in point: my E60 had a 220MHz CPU, which would have been enough, only the very limited amount of RAM made multi-tasking nearly impossible. Also, I’m finding that more and more manufacturers are integrating GPU’s in order to boost performance, which works quite well, even if it uses a fair bit of power. What would be nice to see is a multi-core CPU, perhaps at 400MHz-800MHz variable clock speed, with the ability to turn off a number of the cores. The CPU should either have a dedicated GPU (potentially integrated into the main processor circuit), or be designed with GPU demands in mind (that is, vector/shader calculations, and so forth). The phone should also have a minimum of 128MB RAM, however 256MB or even 512MB would be nice to see. Bottom line, is the phone should not slow down even when having to draw multiple three-dimensional, semi-transparent, reflective objects, or when encoding/decoding HD Video content (camera recording, or outputting to an HDTV). Of course all this would have to run smoothly even with multiple processes running in the background.

Audio
We all listen to music, many of us, like me, prefer to do so on our phones. This means that dedicated, specialized hardware is a requirement, in order to get consistently high quality across all frequency ranges. This also means that the phone needs to have a standard 3.5mm audio jack, as well as good quality loudspeakers. I rather like my N95 8GB’s 3.5mm solution, which supports a variety of equipment, including TV out (albeit at QVGA quality). One thing, however, that I liked more on my E60 than on my N95 8GB, is the way it handled call and message tones when playing music: instead of pausing the music for the message ring, it just decreased the audio volume, beeped, and brought the volume back up. Something like that shouldn’t even be that difficult to make configurable.

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Update 2:

Alright, it’s that time again, lets update this again.

Battery
We all hate it when this happens: you’re in the middle of your day, hours away from any potential power source, when the icon on the right appears on your phone. What tends to make it even worse is when you know you will have to call someone, listen to music, or even use the GPS function to get home. So what are the options? You can always carry around a spare battery or charger, but that gets more problematic when you don’t have any place to put it. You can keep charging your phone whenever possible, but sometimes, that’s just not possible due to time constraints or lack of a power source. Well there are two more options. They may be more complex, however are still quite realistic.

Option #1: We can drastically reduce the power consumption of the hardware. There are already a number of components that do that, such as a new generation GPS chip, with higher sensitivity and much lower power consumption. There is also the Bluetooth/WiFi on a single chip (part of Bluetooth 3). And finally, different printing processes have different power consumption levels, such as 60nm, 45nm, 32nm, etc. All of these combined can drastically reduce the power consumption of the phone.

Option #2: We can use different battery technologies. Different technologies have different properties, and there are two main ones that I am thinking about. Using a different composition within the Lithium battery can yield up to a ten-fold increase in the capacity, or it can allow for charge times of a couple minutes. Both of these technologies are already past the concept stage and well into prototyping. Really the biggest issue is the mass-production set up. The biggest players in these are carbon nano-tubes, and Lithium Air. The capacity is an obvious one, however the fast charge time would allow for charging stations in malls, gas stations, and other locations. There is, I should say, another technology: Fuel cell. It falls under the higher capacity category, however I believe its still too far off to really call it.

The best part about these two options is that they’re really not exclusive, both can be incorporated at the same time. Allowing us to use our phones, and indeed other gadgets, for days on end.

Camera
To me, a good camera on my phone means that’s one less gadget I have to carry around, and as much as I like gadgets, I don’t like to carry them all. There are some limitations on the current cameras, however if you understand that this is still a cell phone and not a dedicated camera, those limitations become quite insignificant.
First off, the camera should be 5-8MP, as any higher resolution and the dpi becomes too high and not enough light is captured on each pixel. The sensor should also be larger than what is used now in order to capture more light, although with small quarters it might take some fancy printing technologies to get it to work just right.
Second, the camera should have some sort of optical zoom – there’s already a Samsung W880 with a 3x optical zoom, but that phone is a bit bulky, a little on the large side. There are a couple of different variations on the standard optical zoom, such as Origami optics, and they seem to work quite well, some are even getting close to production.
Third, the phone should have a dedicated camera processor, kind of like Motorola’s ZN5. Having it will allow more complex features and better quality processing, as well as increasing focusing and shot-to-shot speeds of the camera. Now, it is quite possible that a graphics-derived CPU will be able to handle all the calculations and produce good quality, but it seems that a company who’s sole purpose is cameras will be able to give better results. A Nokia-Canon partnership would be nice to see.
Fourth, a dual-led light and a zenon flash. Enough said.

GPS/Compass/Navigation
Well I don’t really know what to say here. This is kind of a two piece: hardware and software. Both have to function well, with slightly different requirements for each one. The hardware needs to be sensitive enough to be able to quickly obtain a GPS signal in streets with high-rises all around. A digital compass and an accelerometer should be used when GPS isn’t working, or simply to quickly sense changes in direction. For example when turning or when navigating through tunnels. Finally, the navigation software needs to have the most up-to-date maps, should be easy to use, with clear instructions. I’ve always like TomTom’s software for its interface and navigation speed, however Navigon’s interface seems quite intriguing as well. Bottom line: it should be a pleasure to use, not a nuisance.

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Update 3:

Alright, time for the last and final update of this little article. And thankfully, there’s just one piece left. Well there are more I’m sure, but one left that I am going to talk about.

Money
I know what everyone’s thinking – “The phone should be free!” Well I must disagree. We all tend to buy more expensive things because they’re better, they last longer, and more of a pleasure to use. And to be honest, I wouldn’t like the device nearly as much if I got it for free than if I had to spend my heard-earned money on it.
So what is a good price for the be-all, end-all device? I guess it would depend on just how much of the criteria the device meets. For instance, if the device doesn’t have GPS then the price needs to reflect that. If everything I mentioned is met I would say that a good price would be around $1,000, however I doubt I would actually buy it for that much.
That’s really the killer now, isn’t it? I mean if the phone is perfect I should be willing to spend that much on it, however if I’m not going to spend my money then why bother, right? I guess that’s why we don’t see a lot of these “perfect phones” out there, however many come mighty close. I suppose manufacturers are doing the best they can given that not a lot of people will buy these phones.
But at the same time, there must be enough people willing to spend that much. I mean I would like to think that when I start making more money I’ll be able to afford these phones. And for now I would contend with waiting a couple months for the price to fall and then buy the phone for $500 – $700, of maybe even just buy it used!

Bottom line, the phone needs to be priced fairly according to its specification. Releasing very expensive phones with low sales volumes doesn’t mean the phones will cause the company a loss since they have a lot of marketing value. I would be proud to have a phone manufactured by the same company that gets “The best phone of the year” award year-in, year-out.

I hope this wasn’t too boring for you and that you actually got something out of it. I will be making a point-form recap of this, but for anything with detail you’ll want to look here.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: my brain!

So I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. I’ve used my Android-based HTC Magic for about a month’s time, and I’ve posted up what I felt about it in comparison to my Symbian-based Nokia N95 8GB. But now I went back to my N95 8GB and have for about a month’s time.

My first impression going back to the Symbian phone was really more of a “It’s good to be home” feeling. But after using it for a while I realised just how much more thought out the OS really is. Not only does it allow for some customization not available on the Android, but it runs better. Its much more stable, running for days, if not weeks, without crashing or having to reboot. There are no major memory leaks, and multi-tasking on it is a joy!

Besides that OS, the hardware is much more impressive. I rarely used my Magic’s camera, but the camera on my N95 8GB has such impressive quality that I never have to think whether I will need a camera wherever I am going. Text messaging on this phone is much more pleasant due to the addition of a hardware keyboard.

I must say, however, that Android does have its pluses, and so does the Magic. For one, the Android market is easier to use than the Ovi Store, even considering that the Android market has a terrible search. Also the applications available on the market are better – I downloaded some music players and, while they didn’t improve audio quality/support, they did add some interesting functionality such as immediate lyrics or song suggestions. At the same time, I really liked how HTC allows you to upgrade the OS via a ROM file. Different OS versions out there come with their ups and their quirks. While I didn’t like the fact that the quirks seemed to be quite large and annoying, I did enjoy being able to install a new firmware when it came out because I know someone had ported it (I am referring to my v20 N95-4 when N95-2 is on v30+).

Since I’ve been using my N95 8GB, Mike has been using my Magic and has found some even more fascinating programs. For example, he found a spectrometer that kept us amused for an hour, playing different songs into it and seeing the visual representation – it was quite interesting to see how much richer a voice is compared to an instrument.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction that Symbian is going in, and whether Nokia should consider other OS’s. To be honest, I think that there is a lot of potential in Symbian, and I hope that Nokia draws that potential out. But operating systems such as Android have already built on that potential and are already available, which will make things much more difficult for Nokia. I think that Nokia is doing well to stand by its operating system, especially considering how stable and efficient it really is, but it won’t be easy to win against the new hot shots on the block.

Also, things I would like to see on Nokia devices:

• Easily and safely exchangeable OS versions (a la HTC phones)
• Much higher support for applicatoins, more so those centered around entertainment
• Smaller, lighter, sexier touch screens (X6 is definitely an improvement)

Well these are my thoughts for a Saturday afternoon,

-Nokia FanBoy

Alright, so Nokia 8800 is a series of phones which I would love to have but for their lacking of a smartphone OS, never will. Or at least that was the case up until now. Out comes the Nokia 8800 Erdos – the newest addition to 8800 line which includes the Sirocco, Arte, Sapphire Arte, Carbon Arte, and Golden Arte.

Up until this point, these phones have been functionally simplistic, outdated even, but designed with elegance and grace. This gave them a very high price and made them rather exclusive. Well I’ve always likened the phones with, for example, the Smart car – something interesting to look at, but I would never own one. And for me, the breaking point has always been the lack of a smartphone operating system since I need to connect to MS Exchange.

The 8800 line so far has seen little in the way of redesign – physically and functionally. But the Nokia 8800 Erdos comes with a completely new design and improved functionality:

• Symbian S60 (looks like 5th ed)
• 2.4″, 16M color, OLED, QVGA display
• Touch area on display
• GSM/WCDMA + WLAN
• Bluetooth 2.0 (with A2DP)
• AGPS
• 5MP AF camera with Carl Zeiss optics + LED flash
• VGA @ 15fps video
• 8GB internal memory
• Slide and lift T9 keypad

While the overall specs are not that big of an improvement, the biggest, most important improvement is the operating system. Not only does this open the handset to a wider market, but it improves overall user experience. This is also the first 8800, or Nokia for that matter, to feature a touch area on the display (different from touch-screen), which could signal the introduction of gestures. The phone, like other 8800’s before, features a T9 keypad, however this one slides up when the phone opens, making it easier to type, and if the OS really is S60 5th, then it will be the first to match that keyboard type with the OS.

Anyway, enough out of me, take a look at the sleek and sexy design of the 8800 Erdos in the video below:

-Nokia FanBoy

via: CellPassion (read)

Ok, so its been a busy week and its not looking like today is going to be any quieter. Thus, I will only update on the important things, and only mention the main points.

Qt, the development suite that Nokia acquired a while back, has added multitouch and gesture support for its 4.6 release. This applies to Nokia’s Symbian and Maemo powered devices. Actually this precludes aa interesting point, namely, this means that there will be Symbian and Maemo powered devices with multitouch capable screens. This can be achieved either by using a capacitive screen, or by using Stantum’s technology on resistive screens. Now we already know that Nokia is using capacitive screens, the Nokia X6 is an example, however I do hope that Stantum’s technology gets incorporated as that would still allow for use of a stylus.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Symbian-Freak (read)

Nokia’s capacitive-touchscreen-wielding, XpressMusic-replacing, 32GB X6 is supposed to come with a mandatory CWM subscription, inflating the price of the phone. Now lets face it, this is a service that most of us will not require because we already have our music collections obtained by “various” means. Thus, having to pay for a service we likely get for free is somewhat “less-than-smart”. So we get a cheaper variant of the X6 to the rescue: one that “Comes Without Music”, but also comes without half of the internal memory. Now the memory won’t be an issue if the phone sports a MicroSD reader, otherwise it may be a sore point. And to be honest, I would rather have the MicroSD reader and have to buy my own memory than have no card reader and 16GB built-in. At any rate, the CWM 32GB X6 is expected to be priced at an insane 530 GBP ($940 CAD), and the CWM-less 16GB variant to be price at a less-insane-but-still-outrageous 345 GBP ($610 CAD). I guess we’ll have to wait and see just how fast that price ends up dropping post-release.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Symbian Freak (read)
Also check out Engaget’s hands-on.

Ok, so I don’t have that much time today so I apologize right away for any posts that seem to be poorly researched or don’t add much more to the existing information.
Nokia released new firmware for the N97, which makes the decision ever so much more difficult again: N97 original or N97 Mini? Of course, it is expected that Nokia continue to update firmware of its flagship devices (except for N95-4 apparently – I want my v31 damn it!), and with every update the device will gain new competitive edges. When I hacked Rogers-branded N95-4 and upgrade from v11 to v20 I gained a number of improvements, including surprising ones such as greatly improved battery life. But in the case of N97 vs. N97 Mini the firmware update brings joy to existing N97 owners, and headaches to those undecided between the two devices. Take a look at the video if you’re unsure whether to upgrade your existing device, or which device to get in the first place.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Engadget (read)

Seems that there are a number of hands-on videos out on the interwebs now, and while most of what they show isn’t anything new, there are some that show neat tid bits of information.

In the X6 hands-on the reviewer shows an interesting function of the music player that allows you to select your mood and plays the corresponding music from your library. Actually seems like a really useful feature, sort of reminds me of a similar music player for Android (see my earlier Android reviews). The X3 doesn’t actually seem to bring anything new to the table.

The Booklet 3G doesn’t show anything new either, however it does provide a nice overview of the hardware and shows you the relative size. The device does look quite attractive, although the screen could have been bigger. You can also see the size of the battery at the bottom, and to be honest, my hopes are up that it will be able to run for 12 hours of decent usage, not just a 12 hour standby sort of thing.

The N900 preview is actually quite interesting, even if the preview is more of Maemo 5 preview than the N900 itself . The OS has multiple desktops, and kind of reminds me of Android, which was my first interaction with that sort of system. The dashboard shows running programs and appears to be well designed, but of course only time and usage will tell. Anyway, I won’t spoil anything for you so just take a look at the video.

The N97 Mini preview is also somewhat telling, but more so because I would like to see the Maemo 5 UI on the device instead. Besides that there isn’t anything new on the video.

- Nokia FanBoy

via: Engadget (read)

So Nokia finally released the official spec’s to the N97 Mini. Since I’ve covered the phone a couple times already I’ll just say what I’m thinking:

First of all, the phone sports a Quad-band HSDPA!! I’m pretty sure that’s a first somewhere along the lines, and even if it isn’t, its still damn impressive. The screen is smaller, sure, at 3.2″ you won’t be able to see things as clearly, but the phone itself is nicely smaller, with dimensions of 113 x 52.5 x 14.2 mm and a weight of 138g, the phone should make the original N97 feel like a beast. And finally, the phone sports a smaller battery at 1200mAh, which is a down-side, but not an overly large one. The phone still sports decent talk and standby times. The biggest downfall, however, is the price: 450 Euro (or $710 CAD). Especially considering that I can pick up the full sized N97 for less than that. Lets just hope the price falls quickly and more people can afford it.

So would I pick up the phone? I might, if the price was more reasonable, but its certainly going to give the original N97 a run for its money. Wait… is that a good thing?

-Nokia FanBoy

via: GSMArena (read)
and: Engadget (read)

So today is the big day of the Nokia World 09 show. And it appears that Nokia officially unveiled the Xseries with two new models: the X3 and the X6. The series is an obvious replacement of the XpressMusic moniker, and the X6 appears to be replacing the 5800 XpressMusic. In an odd move, Nokia went for the single-digit model numbers for the new Xseries, however I expect that will change after a couple more releases.

Nokia X6: the touch
The replacement to the 5800 XM improves on the old model in a number of ways:

• The X6 is slimmer: 13.8mm vs. 15.5mm
• Uses a capacitive touch screen vs. resistive
• Sports 32GB internal storage vs. 81MB
• Upgrades to a 5MP shooter from a 3.15MP
• And adds on a second LED for dual LED flash
• Adds support for geotagging
• Includes Ovi Maps 3.0 vs. Nokia Maps 2.0
• Uses the updated S60 5th UI

On the downside, the phone weighs 13g more (122g), however that’s not too much of an issue. What I did find impressive, however, is that Nokia managed to get virtually identical battery life despite using a capacitive touch screen, which tends to be a little power hungry. The phone does, sadly, lose the microSD card slot, which would have been nice to have on occasion.

Overall, however, the phone looks pretty impressive and I’m sure it will be lots of fun to play with. By the looks of it, the S60 5th UI is the same one as on the cheap-o 5230, so I think I will still go for that as my next phone. Especially considering the X6 is expected to be shipped out at 459 Euros ($725 CAD), which is more than what the N97 is currently worth!

Nokia X3: the slider
The Nokia X3 looks to be replacing the 5610 XM, and the specifications are fairly similar. The phone actually looks to be even a bit of a downgrade from its XM-branded ancestor. The Nokia X3:

• Loses 3G
• Loses the vibrant 16M color screen for a 256K color screen
• Downgrades to a 860mAh battery from 900mAh
• Loses autofocus on the 3.2MP snapper for an enhanced fixed focus
• Is only able to record QCIF@15fps video vs. VGA@15fps

On the upside, the phone

• Sheds 8g for a 103g weight
• And slims down to 14.1mm thickness from 17mm

Besides that the phones are virtually identical. It is interesting to compare the two bodies, as the Xseries line-up seems to bring a complete redesign of the phone’s exterior. Although to be honest, I’m not entirely sure if I like the X3’s look vs. 5610 XM’s; however the X6 does look much better than the 5800 XM. The pricing of the X3 is much more radical however, shipping out at 115 Euros (or $181 CAD).

So what do you guys think? Do you like the new redesigns? And would you get either phone for yourself?

-Nokia FanBoy

via: GSMArena (see X6 and X3)
and: Engadget (read 1 and 2)