Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

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

Well here’s a video worth watching. Some Italian blog took 6 of the best devices of the year (except that Nokia seems to missing… grr…) and compared their displays under indoor, outdoor, and pitch black conditions. The iPhone does win out in outdoor legibility, and is very close to the top indoors, but when the lights go out, so does the impressiveness of the iPhone screen. I was, unsurprisingly, impressed with Samsung’s i8910 Omnia HD and i8000 Omnia II devices. They were at the very top indoors, and while they were a fair bit worse than the iPhone outdoors, they both fared very well. Nor did they disappoint in pitch black conditions, beating pretty much all of the others there.

Really, the clear winner of the whole comparison was the AMOLED technology. During any conditions it outperformed its LCD/TFT rival, displaying bright, more vivid colors, and giving excellent sunlight legibility. It would, however, be quite interesting how it fares against the Nokia N97, which I think is a big let down on the part of the blog, since Nokia’s are very well known for their excellent displays.

In the Apple iPhone vs. Samsung i8910 Omnia HD comparison photo you can also see how much of a difference a higher resolution plays on the display of the screen – 165 dpi vs 199 dpi, respectively. I first noticed this with my Nokia E60, where the pixel density was 260 dpi; images looked fantastic, text was easy to read, and best of all, I didn’t see any pixelation, it was like looking a high quality printout. I’m not sure if this effect is clearly visibly in the video, however the picture shows it quite clearly.

Another, although smaller, winner is the 16M color spectrum when compared to 65K color. You did notice the deficiency of the 65K color spectrum in color reproduction, however it was bearable, and I’m sure wouldn’t strongly impact most users. Surprisingly, this even affected the sunlight legibility, with the i8910 Omnia HD, for example, outperforming the i8000 Omnia II, even if just barely.

Personally, I felt that it was pairs of phones going up against each other:

• My personal battle of Symbian vs. iPhone: Samsung i8910 Omnia HD vs. Apple iPhone 3G S
• Windows Mobile devices: HTC Touch Pro2 vs. Samsung i8000 Omnia II
• Android devices: Samsung i7500 vs. HTC Hero

Of course you notice that the last two are also an HTC vs. Samsung battle, which Samsung does seem to win out using AMOLED and 16M color screens.

Well watch the video and tell me what you think. note: view in full screen to see in HD

-Nokia FanBoy

via: GSMArena (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