Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

Well this is rather interesting. I have always disliked the way Apple used the courtrooms to their advantage and was rather pleased at just how little court time Nokia puts other companies through. Now if Nokia sued a different company I would have been upset, however this being Apple I am torn – on the one hand I disapprove of suing just to get your way, to postpone the launch of a product, etc. but on the other hand, this is Apple we’re talking about, the company that seemingly sues left, right, and center.

The details of the lawsuit aren’t exactly open to the public as yet, however we do know that it is due to some patents regarding GSM, UMTS, and WiFi, among others I’m sure. Also, the cause of the lawsuit is, of course, Apple’s iPhone, and Nokia states that 10 patents have been infringed on.

A brief history: Nokia has an amazing patent portfolio, having invested well over EURO 40 billion into R&D. Nokia’s patents are considered essential to industry standards. And Nokia has also successfully entered into patent agreements with over 40 companies, including some of the leading manufacturers.

I am really interested to see where this goes, and I am really quite torn on the matter. Of course its going to last quite a while so don’t expect updates too often.

-Nokia FanBoy

read: press release
via: Symbian-Freak (read)

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)

Ok, everyone knows that the EXIF information recorded on Jpeg’s and other image files includes the camera model that the picture was taken on. Everyone should also know that when you’re PhotoShopping your image and you copy/paste and create new files, that EXIF information gets deleted! Thus, we must take the following with a grain of salt. Namely – professional and prosumer photographers that use DSLR’s are likely to edit their photo’s before posting to Flickr, often erasing their camera model information from the image! On the other hand, the iPhone “photographers” out there likely don’t care about editing (and why should they, the camera is incapable of anything decent anyway) and will likely use a built in program that will upload the photos automatically, thereby preserving the camera model information.

Thus, I move that the stats depicted in the screenshot do not correctly depict the true stance of cameras being used on Flickr. Of course I understand that other aspects affect the stats also. For example Flickr is used more in North America than in other places, thus it makes sense for iPhone to be on top as opposed to Nokia N95 (for example), which is more likely to use Ovi since its built in and Nokia is more of a European manufacturer.

On the other hand, it is nice to see that out of the 5 most popular cameras, Canon DSLR’s take the first, third and fifth places, and not some cheap Point & Shoots!

-Nokia FanBoy

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)