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Friday, May 14, 2010

Nokia N97

Nokia N97 is the tip of the spear in Nokia's smartphone lineup. It is the most powerful, smartest and fully featured phone of the company. It is also the first Nokia phone to make use of a large touch-display and that alone has raised the expectations from die hard Nokia fans that have refused to switch over to the iPhone. And Nokia has put quite a lot of work and thought in the N97. I had a first look when Nokia was still developing the N97 and I was looking forward to get my hands on the final product. In this review, I will tell you how I used it, and how well it did. Does the Nokia N97 live up to the hype?

Context

Nokia N97 mainly as a smartphone with Exchange support. Web browsing was tested regularly to read news and check various sites. Facebook was accessed via the Facebook application included in the phone.
Phone Highlights

* 3.5" Touch Display
* 32GB internal storage + 16GB optional storage vis flash card
* 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Lens
* GPS
* WIFI, Bluetooth
* 3.5G
* FM Radio
* Complete specifications (pdf)

Phone Basics (Very Good)

Nokia N900, As with any phone, the first thing is how good the sound quality is, and how easy it is to dial a number or a contact. The good news is that the sound quality is good, although the volume is not very loud. It would be nice to have a more powerful sound output. Dialing a number is quick and relatively efficient. There's no need to use the physical keyboard as the virtual numeric pad works great and there was no typo whatsoever while dialing numbers.

in Nokia N900, Dialing a contact is a bit more complex, if you have a bunch of them. From the contact list, you can scroll and click, or type a name and click. Typing a name requires the use of the physical keyboard, which is not very practical if you phone was closed. The T-Mobile G1 suffered from the same lack of virtual keyboard. Every qwerty slider phone should have one. As you try to dial, the phone will ask you if you want to place a video call, each time! I've not seen anyone use video calls (ever), so I think that Nokia should have the option to skip that question. After a week, it was getting on my nerves. Answering calls is easy, so is placing people on hold, or hang up. Good job Nokia. Locking and unlocking the phone is also easy and foolproof, thanks to the side button.

Physical Design (Good)

Nokia N97 is a nicely designed phone. The design is agreeable to look at, and the build quality is good, except for the battery cover which has a plastic feel - but it needs to be flexible because it's *removable*. The display is a mixed bag: it has a resolution of 640x360 but the colors seem a little faded and the clarity seems inferior to other touch phones. I suspect that one of the display layers has something to do with this. Two people that I've shown the phone to immediately made the same remark as well.

Next to the speaker, you will notice a front-facing camera and a proximity sensor. The 5 Megapixel camera is in the back, protected by a sliding lens cover. There's a "camera" button that makes taking picture more natural than taping on the screen (which often induces a last minute shake that could makes photos blurry). The keyboard sliding mechanism feels solid.

Nokia N97 is a little thick (15.9mm). The bottom part is basically as thick as Blackberry curve or an iPhone, and the display is 3mm (or so) thick on top of it. These 3mm represent what it takes to add a physical keyboard to a phone like that. The T-Mobile G1 is even thicker at 16.35mm. If you want a big display and a full keyboard that's the price to pay right now.

Nokia N97 use a standard micro-B USB connector and a standard voltage, which makes it compatible with BlackBerry chargers or any USB micro-B cable.

Touch Phone (Just OK)

Nokia N97 can be used as a pure touch phone. Nokia has done an "ok job" on the tactile user interface. It's mostly intuitive, except for the setup menus. Nokia N97 uses a double-tap system to avoid accidental clicks vs. drag interpretations. For example, in the menu, if you want to go to my contacts, you need to click once to select "contacts", then click a second time to actually launch the application. Depending on your tastes this can be great or annoying.

Nokia N97 portrait/landscape switch, works most of the time, but it sometimes won't switch from portrait to landscape and you will have to open the keyboard to force it to do so.
Nokia N97's display, provides a tactile feedback upon clicking. It's interesting, but it won't help with typing speed, if you wonder. It might be something that you want to disable to expand the battery life a bit. Some functions like "Unlock" or "Menu" are accessible only by the hardware buttons, which is weird, considering that most people would expect everything to be accessible via the touch display. It's not a roadblock, but it's not completely intuitive.

Responsiveness (Average)

Nokia N97 is a mixed bag when it comes to responsiveness. It is responsive and does what you want, but if there are a few applications running it will get slow. Secondly, it's too much work to go and close them one by one, so I suspect that most people will do exactly what I did: nothing. All phones should have a "close all apps" icon on the homepage.

Homepage Widget (Well Implemented)

Nokia N97 has the best homepage widgets implementation. On many phones, widgets are messy (like the OMNIA), but Nokia has done a good job at maximizing the use of screen space. The default homepage includes Facebook.

Keyboard (Average)

Nokia N97 keyboard suffers from the same issue than all sliders have: the buttons are very thin, which reduces the typing speed - at least, for me. To be fair, this is one of the better slider keyboard that I have played with recently. Also, the keys are spaced just a little too far apart, making the finger travel much and that makes the typing slower too. The space key is oddly placed too. As an alternative, I would propose having an Sym, Shift and Func (to get the blue characters) on both side of the keyboard and place a recessed trackball, instead of using directional "joystick".

For those who text in the dark, the keyboard has a beautiful backlighting and the two-tone (white and blue) characters make it very readable. Other phone makers should definitely take notice.
Text/Email (Good)

Nokia N97 has a lot of email options and the one that I prefer for work is Exchange: it is well implemented and works flawlessly. Emails arrive instantly and the only thing that I noticed is that upon a soft reset (battery removal), the phone does not cache the Exchange email and spends time doing a "sync" from scratch (that can take a couple of minutes).


Mapping (Great)

Nokia N97 comes loaded with Nokia Maps, and I can say that it is my best "out of the box" experience with a default navigation app. Unlike Google maps, the Nokia maps are cached on the device itself, so once they are onboard, they are not downloaded (over the air) again. Better yet: you can pre-load an entire city, country or the whole world (4GB) so that Nokia maps doesn't load the maps while you're traveling. That cuts down on roaming charges, waiting time and frustration.

Nokia Maps is fast and lets you scroll the map smoothly. Upon a zoom in/out it will take a second readjust the level of details (see video). I found the compass be not very useful in pedestrian mode. Using it makes the map rotate left and right -all the time- which doesn't help the overall map readability. Nokia should also improve the search and use a single text field like Google Maps does. It is also not possible to select an origin/destination directly on the map. That would be easy to add.

Nokia Maps can send .lmx files that contains a geo-position, but unfortunately, there are no popular applications out there that read them, so you're stuck with sending it to your Nokia-wielding friends.

Overall, Nokia Maps is a great mapping software and one of Nokia's finest application. I only wish that Nokia would make it available to other platforms like Google does.
Web Browsing (Very Good)

The Nokia N97 has a good browser, it worked with pretty much all the sites that went to, including Yahoo Finance and Google Docs. Y! Finance is usually an interesting site to try on a phone because it's hard to render on small displays. The N97's resolution is high enough to display it correctly, so that's a win. It is possible to log into Google Docs and view text documents, but sheets did not work, even in read-only mode. Adobe Flash Lite is supported. You can go on YouTube, follow links to YouTube and do things that you would normally do on a computer, without going through a YouTube "app".

YouTube is the real deal: no “app” required
Ovi Store (Bare Minimum)

Ovi Store is a very basic implementation of an app store. The bottom-line is that there's nothing very exciting about it and most of the coolest application are already embedded in the N97 (my own preferences here, obviously). Browsing the store is a bit tedious and slow, I guess that I would rather browse apps on a PC and download something from there. "Existence" is often superior to "perfection", but I hope that Nokia will improve the store soon.
Data Connection (Normal)

These numbers can vary depending on your location and quality of signal. I wish that I had more time to run around San Francisco, but this is what I got at the office:

* 3.5G: 630Kbps
* WIFI: 1.4Mbps

Note that it is technically possible to use the Nokia N97 as a 3.5G modem. It works only via Bluetooth, which tends to deplete the battery faster. I think that a USB tethering option would come in handy in the future. The modem drivers are in the Nokia PC Suite or can be downloaded separately if you don't want to install all the software package.
Camera (Very Good, for a phone)

It won't come as a surprise that Nokia has a good 5 Megapixel camera. Of course, Megapixels don't mean much in terms of quality, but in my experience this is "good" to "very good". The flash works well too. In my tests, I found that the N97 had a photo quality superior to the Blackberry 8900 that we usually use to live blog. To see more photos, including full-size ones, head to our Flickr page.

I had some issues with the video recording: the auto-focus never worked (!). Nobody else seems to complain, and Nokia has not replied to my email on the subject. At the moment, I'll file this as a "problem with our unit", but drop a comment if you noticed this elsewhere.
Multimedia (Just OK)

With 32GB of internal memory and the possibility of adding 16GB more via a microSD card the storage is great. With Windows Media Player (iTunes is not supported), it is relatively easy to sync files with the N97 (who uses WMP to manage media files?). Make sure that you connect with the "Media Transfer" option and the N97 will appear in Windows Media Player. From there you can drag and drop things that you want to sync. It takes seconds to sync a dozen .mp3 files. WMA files with DRM won't work (Rhapsody...). As you can guess, the sound quality was definitely OK and will be limited by your earplugs, unless you are walking around with expensive audio gears.

You can play music while reading your emails if you want. If a call occurs during the playback, the music will stop and will restart where it stopped.

The video playback demos included in the phone were working fine and looked like they were running at 30 frames per second. The image quality is just OK - not great like it was on the HTC Touch Pro. After playing with the Samsung OMNIA HD, it's hard to be impressed. The N97 video playback is good enough to enjoy a TV show. On the video side, the big question is where the content will come from. Users rarely take the time to convert their desktop videos to a mobile format, even if there are good options out there to do it. The store content was very interesting to me, but you might find something there...

Another thing of interest is the Radio. it works really well and tunes itself to available local stations. The sound was very clear on the few stations that were found immediately. Cool stuff.
Battery Life (Average)

During the test, I found the that average battery life was about 1.5 to 2 days with my usage (see "context" up there). Obviously, this will vary a lot depending on your own usage, but the bottom line is that most people would charge it daily, but if you forget it, you won't have a dead phone in the morning.
Nokia PC Suite

The Nokia N97 can be used in conjunction with the Nokia PC Suite, a client application (for Windows) that helps you manage your phone for the comfort of your PC via USB. The last time that I looked at the PC Suite, it was solid and these days, I prefer to do everything directly on the phone, but you should know that it exists. Right now, the last thing that I want to do with a smartphone is to install a bunch of stuff on my PC to manage it.
Conclusion (Average to Good)

Nokia is playing catch up in a market that has become extremely competitive in the past couple of years. In that game and at that price, there's only one thing that really counts: the user experience. The Nokia N97 is not a "bad" phone and it doesn't deserve the some of the harsh reviews that I've seen recently. In fact, it has good hardware, great storage, and nice design. It is also better than the Sony Ericsson Xperia. The pricing however, is way too steep ($599 unlocked).

The user interface (UI) is mostly OK, although I wish that it could be used solely with the touch display. There are inconsistencies that should be fixed and Nokia should seriously think about upgrading its user interface design by making it be more intuitive and look more modern.

Nokia fans who were anxiously waiting for the N97 will probably forgive its shortcomings, but I'm personally having a hard time to be really excited as there are excellent alternatives out there (at attractive prices). If you are already in love with the N97, I bet that you won't change your mind in light of this review and that’s OK. For those who are on the fence, I guess that you will stay on the other side.
Read More..

Nokia N900


Nokia N900 packaging is comparable to Nokia N97. The matte black packaging shows the new Nokia smartphone, cloqué like. There aren't any additional photos in addition to the kind name. Upon opening, we discover the Nokia N900 straight away. Furthermore, numerous various common accessories are incorporated, like a headset, a information cable, a charger, a video-out cable and also the manuals.

Nokia N900 Maemo Five's menu framework is entirely new, meaning it takes time to get used to. Following startup, there are numerous of home screens to the user to scroll by way of. Widgets, average shortcuts or contacts could be extra to a home display. This framework is observed on a number of mobile or portable phones nowadays and is really convenient. It enables you to create your own user environment, containing every thing which is essential to you, in an easy way.

Nokia N900, In addition to the style as well as the speed, many of its functionalities strongly depend about the phone's running method. Particularly because the introduction of the Apple iPhone, it has become essentially impossible to complete without easy to install job applications when personalizing a mobile or portable telephone. With the arrival of Google Android, which has quickly grow to be a regular inside mobile or portable telephony, and which is now used by numerous smartphone manufacturers, the competition has also increased. Nokia usually uses the Symbian OS for high-end portable phones. Symbian allows installing applications, as well as managing your agenda and email account is easy and straightforward. Apart from Symbian, Nokia also utilizes a more developed Open up Supply working system, the Linux-based Maemo. The Nokia N900 could be the initial telephone to utilize this running system, where it's called Maemo Five. This can be a entirely new encounter to the user.

Nokia N900's menu consists of 15 icons. Thanks towards the numerous layers, it's graphically extremely neatly organized. Particularly using the clear overview in the wide open plans, the use is very similar to utilizing a desktop PC. Also, all of the settings are nicely grouped together. And again, it requires time to get used to, although playing with it for a while will show you the way pretty quickly. Obviously, it has been extremely well thought-through.<

In Nokia N900, Upon opening the Internet browser in the main menu, you'll access a good listing of bookmarks. These are accompanied by a screenshot. At the end, the address bar is observed to insert characters using the keyboard. The Internet browser is easily, all pages are displayed correctly. Even flash internet sites are well-rendered on the Nokia N900.

Connecting to Wi-Fi happens smoothly, the same as searching for obtainable networks. As well as the Wi-Fi connection, also a fast HSDPA connection is enabled. E-mail is simple to set up, right after choosing a country, a big listing of ISPs seems, that are set up by default. It is then simply a matter of entering the login data.

Nokia N900 also supports Exchange. Thanks for the full QWERTY keyboard, you'll be able to sort longer messages without a issue. Nokia N900 features an integrated digital camera with Carl Zeiss lens and a resolution of 5. megapixels. The camera practical application begins automatically the moment the lens include opens. The practical application starts up really swiftly, to ensure that you can rapidly capture that one moment. In case the lens cover is already wide open but the practical application is deactivated, you can also activate it through the shutter release button or by picking 'camera' in the menu. Right after start-up, two black bars look on each sides alongside the viewfinder. The proper bar contains the icons to the settings.

Nokia N900's bar alongside the viewfinder offers admittance towards the adjustments. There are four icons which represent the recording mode, the flash, the settings and also the captured pictures; therefore enabling effortless adjustment of the shooting mode and flash settings.
Read More..

NOKIA X6


Nokia is conceived to be one of the most modern mobile phone makers of the new generation. Nokia just carries on getting well improved and more refined with every new merchandise that they are establishing. Once again, Nokia is here to captivate us with its groundbreaking touch screen phone, the Nokia X6.

Nokia X6 supplies a more reactive feel than its forerunners. The touch screen offers a very delicate feel and does not call for much effort when tapping a particular option on the display.
Nokia X6 mobile phone will just respond at the lightest touch. The Nokia X6 mobile phone boasts an astounding 32GB of memory making it a very invoking music phone for most people. Just think of the big number of data files you can stock on this mobile phone.

Nokia x6 slowly being reckoned as the best among all the rest of Nokia's line up of phones. The music player is easy to control and even bears the playlist DJ feature that will allow you to sort your music. Audio output is astonishingly crisp and clear and is way superior likened to other music mobile phones out there. This device literally comes with music because this mobile phone arrives with a license lasting for 12 months to download music tracks for free. In addition, an AM/FM radio tuner was also injected to wrap up the music mobile phone package.

Nokia X6's camera is extremely brilliant as it provides a 5MP auto-focus functioning on a resolution of 2592 X 1944 picture elements and utilizing Carl Zeiss optic lens also. Hence, seizing important moments is a gratifying thing to do. Catching pictures in the dark is simple to do with the help of the dual flash characteristic, illuminating even the darkest moments.

Nokia X6 is also packed with many connectivity picks. You may pick out from 3G/HSDPA, Bluetooth, WiFi, USB and GPS. With the enclosed Nokia OVI Suite, you may download your admired music, update your Facebook or Twitter accounts, whenever, wherever. Ergonomically the Nokia X6 is measure at approximately 111 x 51 x 1309 mm and is lightweight at 122 g. Battery life for this phone usually lasts to about 8 hours of talk time and an idle time of 420 hours, letting you play music and talk to your friends for the longest time. Style, Affordability, and most of all, Functionality, traits in which the Nokia X6 have in abundance.


General
2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
Announced 2009, September
Status Available. Released 2009, November
Size Dimensions 108 x 53.6 x 14.2 mm
Weight 119 g
Display Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 240 x 400 pixels, 3.0 inches
- Accelerometer sensor
- Turn-to-mute
- Smart unlock
Sound Alert types Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Speakerphone Yes
Memory Phonebook 2000 contacts, Photocall
Call records 40 received, dialed and missed calls
Internal 130 MB
Card slot microSD, up to 16 GB, buy memory
Data GPRS Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE Class 12
3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared port No
USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB
Camera Primary 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels
Features Face and smile detection
Video Yes, QVGA @ 15fps
Secondary Yes
Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, RSS reader
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games Yes + downloadable
Colors Blue
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
- Solar panel for battery charging
- Made of eco-friendly materials
- Eco Walk app, Eco mode profile
- MP3/WMA/eAAC+ player
- H.263/H.264/MP4/WMV player
- Find Music recognition service
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Voice memo
- T9
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 1080 mAh
Stand-by Up to 300 h
Talk time Up to 4 h 10 min
Solar Panel (10 min charging)
Stand-by Up to 20 min
Talk time Up to 2 min 30 sec
Read More..

samsung S7550

 Samsung S7550 Blue Earth



Samsung has come up with a unique mobile phone that works with good environment motive. The new Samsung S7750 Blue Earth that is developed keeping the environment friendly aspects in mind. The entire packaging of the phone including the body is made up of recycled materials. There is a solar panel in the device that increase the battery life of the phone and saves energy.

Samsung S7750, apart from the above mentioned unique attributes the phone comes with few superbly attractive features and functionalities. The mobile phone looks extremely cool and fresh. The blue colored body on the front side with huge 3 inches TFT capacitive touch screen is just awesome. This capacitive touch screen includes 256,000 colors and a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. Also there are few smart features such as smart unlock, turn to mute and accelerometer sensor. The overall dimension of the Samsung S7550 Blue Earth is 108 mm x 53 mm x 14 mm and its weight is 118.9 grams.

Samsung S7550's camera, 3.15 mega pixel, can click images at 2048 x 1536 pixels resolution and can shoot video clips of QVGA resolution at 15fps. The camera includes Picture Album, Picture Geo Tagging, Face & Smile detection and several other camera settings as well. MPEG4, H263, H264 & WMV video files and MP3, WMA & eAAC+ music files are supported by the presented video player and music player of the phone.

Samsung S7750 is a high end device and it carries several high end attributes like flawless data sharing and connectivity technologies including 3G HSDPA, HSCSD, WLAN Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, USB, GPRS and EDGE.WAP 2.0, X-HTML and HTML are the provided Internet access technologies given.

Specification

Display

* TFT capacitive touchscreen - 256K colors
* 240 x 400 pixels - 3.0 inches
* Accelerometer sensor
* Smart unlock

Memory

* Phonebook: 2000 contacts - Photocall
* Call records: 40 received / 40 dialed / 40 missed calls
* Internal: 180 MB
* Card slot: microSD (TransFlash) up to 16 GB

Network

* 2G: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
* 3G: UMTS 2100

Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels
Video QVGA @ 30fps
Sound

* Alert types: Vibration; Downloadable polyphonic / MP3 ringtones
* Speakerphone: Yes

Dimensions 108 x 53 x 14 mm
Weight 118.9 g
Battery

* Standard battery - Li-Ion 1080 mAh
* Solar Panel for battery charging

Features

* Made of eco-friendly materials
* Eco Walk app
* Eco mode profile
* MP3 / WMA / eAAC+ player
* H.263 / H.264 / MP4 / WMV player
* Find Music recognition service
* Organizer
* Document viewer
* Voice memo
* T9

Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
GPS with A-GPS support

Data
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G 384 kbps
Wireless Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP
USB v2.0
Read More..