Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

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)

Well this was kind of a slow day in the news department until just now. A German website, NokiaPort.de, claims to have reputable information regarding the future Nokia roadmap. Now most of this information should be confirmed on September 2nd, so we don’t have long to wait to see whether this is true, although the information does seem to be logical, for lack of a better word, so I would say that if its not all true, then at least most of it is.

Xseries
This is claimed to be the successor of the XpressMusic line, which seems to make sense, and that the line will be introduced with a new phone released at Nokia World 09. The phone is rumored to be similar to the recently released 5530 XM but with 3G, GPS, and costing about an extra 50 Euros. Quite a fair deal for something that takes the best from 5530 XM and the 5800 XM and meshes it into a better phone.

Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about the Xseries line. I mean I understand that its a natural extension of the Eseries and Nseries line-ups, but I rather liked the XpressMusic line. It clearly indicated that it is not a smartphone, but a music-centric feature phone. I suppose that doesn’t really matter anyway since the XpressMusic line only contains smartphones anyway. And with that, what will be differentiation between the Nseries and Xseries? I guess we’ll just have to wait until NW09 to find out.

Cseries
Sadly, the only news on the Cseries is that it is likely to be introduced (and explained?) at NW09.

Maemo 5
The recently previewed N900 is likely to be the only Maemo 5 device for a while. However N920 is rumored to come out next year, but we may get a chance to see it on Sept 2.

Touchscreens
More touchscreen devices will be announced at NW09, with most of them staying in the same segment as the N97 Mini. To me this means it will be the “high-end-but-not-flagship” segment, and even I don’t know what that means. However speaking of touchscreens, it appears that Nokia will be moving to capacitive screens in the future, i8910 already proved S60’s compatibility. I think this is both good news and bad news, as capacitive is great, but resistive can use styli and consume much less battery power, so its a trade off.

Eseries & Touch
Not news: Nokia is working on a touch enabled, S60 5th Edition device for the Eseries; still not news: the device will be available no sooner than in 2010. Will we see a preview of it at the conference? Who knows.

Xenon flash
Sadly, Xenon flash seems to be an unpopular feature with Nokia, with it appearing only intermittently on its devices. This comes as a disappointment to me as that would have swayed my decision in my next flagship purchase quite a bit. I understand the reasons behind this: expensive on the battery and on the wallet, but it would have been nice to see this on flagship and camera-centric models at the least.

OMAP3 entering the mix
Its nice to see that Nokia is finally starting to use more leading-edge CPU’s in their phones. Hopefully this will bring things like HD video playback and HD TV-out to their models, maybe even higher resolution screens! But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

September 2nd is looking to be a VERY exciting day!

-Nokia FanBoy

via: NokiaPort.de (read)

Well this is rather strange. There have been quite a number of leaks recently that haven’t come from Eldar (probably because he already previewed and leaked these phones). These ones came from a french blogging site: BeGeek.

Since the PR shot is clearly visible, I’ll just move straight into the spec update. What Eldar didn’t mention, is that the internal memory will be available in 8GB or 16GB (as opposed to N97’s 32GB). The screen has shrunk to 3″ from N97’s 3.5″, and the internal memory has risen to 280MB from N97’s 50MB! And before you say that the internal memory doesn’t matter, think about the fact that programs installed on the internal memory start up much faster and are still accessible when you’re connected to the computer in Data Transfer mode.

Finally the price is being quoted as 170 Euro below that of the N97. This brings the spec comparison to:

• Smaller overall size
• 3″ screen (vs 3.5″)
• No D-pad on slide-out keyboard
• Smaller keys on QWERTY keyboard
• Metal battery cover
• No camera slider
• 8/16GB internal memory (vs 32GB)
• 280MB phone memory (vs 50MB)
• 170 Euro cheaper

Well with this latest spec bump the N97 is beginning to look more attractive, especially with that price drop (presumably that would be for the 8GB model, and not the 16GB). However it would still be interesting to see just what the device looks like compared to the N97 side-by-side, and whether the OS has been changed or tweaked and in what way. Of course the CPU and RAM can make a huge difference. In other words, just wait until Sept 2nd and see then.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: BeGeek (read)

Well it appears as if more information is leaking out about the Nokia Booklet 3G, and its not even September yet. This time we get some more pictures (including a shot with an E71!), and a rumor as to what CPU the booklet uses!

In short, the pictures are below, and the Booklet is rumored to use the Atom Z530. The CPU is the dual core descendant of the Atom family, and would be quite capable of producing 720p content, which is all one can expect from a netbook. Still, it would have been nice to see it introduced with Tegra, but I guess the Windows requirement makes things difficult.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Reuters (read)
and: Engadget (read)

Well it looks like the Nokia N900 just can’t sit under wraps. The 32GB, 5MP, GPS-equipped, Maemo 5 Internet Tablet just had to get all prettied up for its press release shot. However this time its a French blog that got the shot, and not our favourite Russian Mobile-review. However something just occurred to me: Why is it that Nokia is still putting 5MP shooters on its devices? I mean don’t get me wrong, the camera quality of my N95 8GB is superb, its just that the N86 is so much better and it would be nice to see that camera on more devices. Well anyway, the device will be announced at Nokia World 09 and we will get to see the full spec list and a plethora of images flooding the net shortly there-after. As for now, we just get to sit in our chair, wondering what it would be like…

-Nokia FanBoy

via: BeGeek (read)

Yet again we see Mobile-review with a copy of a device which not only hasn’t been released, but hasn’t even been announced yet! This time he got a hold of the Nokia N97 Mini. With this we see the confirmation of the device’s existence as well as a glimpse at the differences in the spec list:

• Smaller overall size
• No D-pad on slide-out keyboard
• Smaller keys on QWERTY keyboard
• Metal battery cover
• No camera slider
• 8GB internal memory (vs 32GB on N97)
• Approx. 100 Euro cheaper

The difference in the spec list isn’t exactly all that amazing. In fact, for a difference of only 100 Euro’s I wouldn’t consider this over the original N97, however it would be nice to see a comparison shot (M-R doesn’t provide one). My overall feeling about the device is quite similar to Eldar’s – the device isn’t all that impressive, and while the build quality is better than the N97, I would prefer the N97 still.

Read the review for more details.

N97 Mini vs 5730

N97 Mini vs N900

-Nokia FanBoy

via: Mobile-Review (read)