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!

Ok, so its not Nokia, or Symbian, or even gadgetry really, but its still pretty flipping cool. I was walking around Downtown Vancouver over the weekend and clear as day (or evening in my case) I saw Fringe’s Walter Bishop (John Noble) walking down the street. It was the first time I’ve seen a celebrity and in my excitement I didn’t get a photo or an autograph. However, since this is Vancouver, I decided that it was best not to pester/harass the actor, since I’ve heard so many times before that actors enjoy Vancouver due to the relaxation they get from not being followed around. On the other hand, a friend of mine pointed out that actors that are in the limelight probably enjoy being in the limelight, and thus would enjoy having someone recognize them and show enthusiasm. So next time I see you Mr. Noble, I will be getting out my camera

But seriously though, Fringe is an amazing show and I can’t wait till the next season, especially seeing as how they’re filming a lot of the footage in Vancouver!!!

-Nokia (and Fringe) FanBoy

Ok, so I know this isn’t about Nokia, or Symbian, or Android, or HTC, or anything technological really. This is about me, but this is a blog, so live with it.

I just applied for graduation at Simon Fraser University. I’m doing their Joint Major in Computing Science and Business Administration (it’s a Bachelor of Business Administration degree for me). And I kind of put it off to the last minute, so late in fact that the late application deadline is August 14th. Now that wouldn’t really be a problem, only I also put off my Co-op Work Term report letter so that my last semester says F even though I have until August 14th for that letter (last semester I took 5 courses and decided to extend my work-term on a part-time basis, spread over two terms but only charged as one term, so my coordinator allowed me to write the report at the end of this work term, which is August 14th). Of course that would be my 5th Co-op work term, and I only need 4 to complete the diploma with that Co-op… umm… designation (?), but I suppose I’m just a little nervous about it. Besides that I’m pretty confident I’ll be good. I mean I have a 3.3 CGPA – not great, but not bad either, I’m satisfied with it.

Of course I still have two courses that I absolutely must pass, which I’m not really worried about, I mean the final is only worth like 50% of my mark, LOL. But anyway, I just felt like sharing that with the world.

-Nokia FanBoy

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)

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).

Why do companies insist on continuing to manufacture and release these things!?!? I don’t believe that people actually buy these things, and those that do wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one out in public!

I guess I can sort of understand why they’re so intriguing: potentially 3D viewing, completely private, large virtual picture without requiring bulky screens. But there are no 3D sources for them yet, or not portable ones anyway, and likely won’t be for the next while. And the glasses are so big and bulky I can’t imagine carrying them with me anywhere, even if I have a backpack.

Personally I wouldn’t consider them until they manage to make high-def OLED screens that are printed directly onto regular-sized (sun)glasses. I would consider a slightly bulkier frame it had to house the battery, however having something attach to my phone which will house the battery within would be quite acceptable I think. This would lead to a very minimalistic design, keeping you from looking like an idiot, and could be integrated with eye-tracking software which would even allow for more ubiquitous computing
Just imagine, you’re walking down the street and realize that you’re lost, you look at an icon on the “screen” and the navigation application pops up showing you exactly where you are! Or you decide to stop at a coffee shop, as you’re walking up to it some reviews get pulled up and you find out that they serve the best Nanaimo bars in town!

Anyway, just some of my thoughts and opinions on where this could, and should, be headed. Until we’re far enough along that line I don’t see this being common place.

-Nokia FanBoy

So the lack of Wordpress on my new Magic continues to force me to write up my posts via computer. Fortunately for me readers, this means that my posts now have some photos included in them.

This post is in relation to tethering and Roger’s policy on doing so. As recently posted by Engadget Mobile (read), Rogers is currently permitting tethering for those with a data plan of 1GB or higher. This policy is said to last until December 31st, at which time those that need tethering abilities will have to call in to Rogers to have it enabled for their account. Now this raises a couple flags to me, the biggest one being “Will I have to pay to have tethering enabled?”. I first signed up for the 6GB/$30 data plan last year when the iPhone came out and drove the pricing down, however when I signed the 3 year contract required to get that promotion, I did so with the understanding that I will be able to use my phone for tethering to my computer. If Rogers goes and forces users such as myself to now pay even more for the service which we signed a contract for to begin with, well let’s just say there will be a large number of Retentions calls. My other concern is how will they track tether via programs such as JoikuSpot? I mean with regular tethering I understand that the phone sends out a specialised code to signify that there is a computer using data via the phone, however with the program there is no such signal being sent out. Of course Rogers could start looking at large amounts of data being transfered over a short period of time, however using YouTube, internet radio or SymTorrent could easily surpass what any laptop browser could require.

Finally, I believe that this policy will only affect those that signed up for a data plan before June 8th, 2009. Presumably this means that those of us that have had the same data plan since before that date can continue to tether without any issues (including those with less than 1GB of data). What is not clear, however, is what happens come December 31st – will everyone have to call in and confirm/sign-up for tethering, or just those that signed up after June 8th?

The mobile space seems to be getting more and more interesting, and I will be sure to follow it every step of the way.

- Nokia FanBoy

So everyone has dual core computers, and sure they’re fast, but they consume more power! We only have more cores because we can’t get them to be any faster without the use of liquid nitrogen! But dual core phones? Yes! Won’t that seriously hinder the battery life? No!

I’ve gotten a number of people asking me about why they would want multi-core and I always have to explain that there are, in fact, benefits to running two+ cores on the phone as opposed to one.

To understand why, I first have to explain a little bit of physics behind computing and power consumption.
As everyone knows, the faster a processor, the more power it consumes, and that holds for single-core and multi-core processors. However, what if we put some hard numbers into this? Say we wanted to process twice as much information in the same amount of time. This means that we can either double the processor frequency, to handle twice the operations, or we could toss in an extra core, to have each one handle half the operations. However, what does that mean to our power consumption?
Well if we double the number of processors we obviously double the power consumption to double the workload capabilities. (note: its a little more than double power consumption and a little less than double computational power to account for the extra operating system computations and extra hardware to deal with the extra cores) Now, while the double processor frequency will give us true doubling in computational power, the power consumption will actually increase four times! What if we want to quadruple the computational power? The quadruple in speed will result in 16x the power consumption!

So while the twice-fast-processor may be a tiny bit more powerful than the dual-core processor, it uses nearly twice the battery power!

But how valid is this?
Well we can take a look at the pro’s and con’s of each approach.

Dual core processors have the disadvantage of increased complexity if they are to be fully utilized. Let me explain what that means. Up until a few years ago, software was written for linear execution, and when dual core processors were introduced they didn’t actually perform twice the work because the software couldn’t properly utilize them. Software had to be rewritten to support parallel execution. The same thing is true for phones! Phone software will have to be rewritten to support this new style of processors before the software will actually utilize both cores!

On the up-side, however, the operating system could be slightly modified to allow two programs to run on different cores, thus still producing twice the computation.

Of course, there is another benefit: turning off one of the cores.
If the phone is not performing any computation heave tasks, there is no need for the second core to be consuming power. A similar effect can be achieved with throttling the faster processor, however the power savings aren’t as great as those in the dual core processors and they still add more complexity.

Another issue: heat. Faster processors generate more heat, which becomes a big issue for small devices with no ventilation to speak of.

Finally, processors can only get so fast (just like what happened with computers), and software is becoming more and more demanding on computations. So really, we have no choice! We have to go to dual core, it just so happens that there are also benefits with going to dual core processors!

Which is why I can’t wait for Cortex-A9! But that is a discussion for another day

Hope you found this helpful, feel free to ask questions or just leave comments below. I promise to answer all of them as best I can

-Nokia FanBoy
Posted from my Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

So I’m not sure about my readers, however I am a little upset that Widsets closed down.

I’ve been using Widsets since its early days and i’ve always enjoyed the various widgets they provided. I had one for horoscopes – the only one I can see on Ovi Store costs 7 Euro; I had a couple apps which downloaded some pretty amazing photographs, such as 500 mpx, and I cannot find anything similar to that on Ovi Store.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that Nokia opened up the Ovi Store, however I just wish they didnt close down Widsets, as there were some great things available there.

Of course the benefit that Ovi Store has over Widsets is the ability to download and install native and Java apps as opposed to just some widgets. Too bad they didnt port something to support those widgets via WRT.

Posted by Wordmobi

First off I have to appologize for not writing anything in such a long time. I have been extremely busy with work and school and have had very little time for myself.

I did, however, find the time to stay on top of what’s going on in the mobile space, and have found some intriguing news which puts my in a position that I have to make some decisions.
There are basically a number of phones which I would like to try out:

• HTC Magic (Dream is too heavy)
• Samsung Omnia HD (a.k.a. i8910)
• Nokia N97 (or other N/E-series Nokia touchscreen)

This puts me in a bit of a jam because I don’t really know what to get. I wanted to try out these phones because I wanted to see what Android is like, to see what other manufacturers have made of Symbian, and of course to see Nokia’s take on touchscreen devices.

Now the Magic is easy – Rogers recently released it on their network and my upgrade cost is $150, which I could possibly lower by some $50 after talking with retentions.

The i8910 and N97 are a little more difficult, mainly because I’m not made of money
I could wait to see what Rogers comes out with in a couple months, or I could look on craigslist/eBay and pick something up there, and of course i could just find an online retailer and grab it from them. Of course both of these phones are Very expensive, so I will not be able to afford both. And the fact that Nokia is supposed to release 4 more touch screen devices this year doesn’t make things any easier.
Granted, to make them more affordable I could sell the Magic after playing with it, however I’m not one to sell a phone, no matter how bad it is (in fact I still have my very first phone that has a broken screen). So that’s not really an option.

The most likely course of action is going to be to wait two weeks until I have a bit more time on my hands, then pick up the Magic from Rogers (given nothing else changes), and come fall or winter pick up either the i8910 or N97 once they fall in price, or maybe Nokia will have released some new totally better phone by then

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from my Nokia N95 / SU-8W combo

Posted by Wordmobi