N86 Announced

After Samsung had released a 8MP S60 camera phone called the INNOV8 and Sony Ericsson announced their Idou 12MP Symbian phone, Nokia announces their 8MP phone the N86:

For those holding a N82 or N79 and hoping for an upgrade, the N86 only features dual LED and no Xenon flash.

In case you're still interested, here are more quick details:


N86 DatasheetName: Nokia N86
CPU: Freescale MXC300, 434 MHz ARM1136JF-S RISC + StarCore SC140 DSP
RAM: 128 MB (user accessible: 71 MB)
Network: EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 WCDMA 900/1900/2100 or WCDMA 850,1900,2100
Weight: 149 g
Dimensions: 103.4 x 51.4 x 16.5 mm
Battery life (stand by): up to 11.5 hours (WCDMA), 13h (GSM) (these values seem too low so the datasheet might have a typo)
Battery life (talk): up to 234 minutes (WCDMA), 378 minutes (GSM)

As in all Nseries, the N86 will include 802.11b/g WiFi connectivity, support video capture at 640x480 up to 30fps, feature a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, and support Nokia's ngage gaming service. Luckily the N86 features the amazing 2.6 inch OLED display that got high praises on the N85 and it also integrates a FM transmitter that was a strong selling point of the N79. The N86 includes 8GB of internal memory and supports microSDHC up to 16GB.

Spec-wise it's a strong phone but something I would've liked to have seen last year. For all those Nokia users that have been asking for better materials on the Nseries, you'll be happy to know that Nokia's added a chrome trim on the sides of the top half. The design looks a bit like the N97 but the number pad reminds me of the older Motorola T720 from almost a decade ago.

Nokia 6650: Chronicles

http://www.nokiachronicles.com


The stylish Nokia 6650 supports AT&T's fast 3G HSDPA networkAfter a long disappearance of S60 phones from AT&T's line up, AT&T just released the Nokia 6650 this past month. To promote the 6650's multimedia prowlness, Nokia and AT&T have teamed up with WOM World to feature photos taken by bloggers around the US.

A group of 20 bloggers from across the US were sent Nokia 6650 loaners to take photos and videos of their day and Multimedia Message Send (MMS) it to Nokia. Of course, being MMS, we're all limited to 300KB in size so doing video was very tricky so most people stuck with photos. So go visit http://www.nokiachronicles.com to see what these bloggers do when they're not at their computers.

If that's not enticing enough, I'm featured on Chapter 2 incase you're interested to see what I do.

Here's some of the photos I shot with the 6650:

You can view all my 6650 photos on my Ovi Channel

Nokia N97 Announcement

Yesterday morning the Internet was abuzz with news of Nokia's latest announced N-series device, the Nokia N97.

Sporting a haptic 3.5 inch (360 x 640 resolution) touchscreen and running S60 5th edition, the N97 echos similarity to Nokia's just released 5800 XpressMusic. But adds a slide out QWERTY keyboard. Being a N-series it also adds TV-out, uPnP, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 5MP autofocus Carl Zeiss optics camera with 640x480 30FPS MPEG4 video capture.

Quick facts:
Name: Nokia N97-1
Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 WCDMA 900/1900/2100
Weight: 150 g
Dimensions: 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm
Battery: BP-4L 3.7V 1500 mAh
Battery life (stand by): 430 hours (GSM), 400 hours (WCDMA)
Battery life (talk): 400 minutes (GSM), 320 (WCDMA)
Source: Nokia

Reaction on the Internet to the N97 has been generally positive. Most people feel this is a worthy phone to fight Apple's iPhone, the form factor resembles a lot like HTC and Samsung's latest touch screen phones, and Nokia has been slow to adopt this form factor.

I feel Nokia took too long to announce a phone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. It would've been a very competitive phone if this was released a year ago. Apple's App Store and the stability of the iPhone 3G variant will make adoption of the N97 a challenge in North America. However, for the rest of the world, where Nokia holds a dominating marketshare, the N97 is going to sell very well with its unique form factor in Nokia's line up. This is a critical and necessary phone for filling a void in Nokia's portfolio and looks to have what everyone wants in a phone. A North American variant of the N97 with 850/1900 HSDPA 3G has not been announced which is necessary for Canadian Rogers or US AT&T to adopt the phone. I'm still hoping a well executed mass produced QWERTY slider/bar E75 is released to help Nokia improve its marketshare in North America.

Featured on S60 Blogs

My S60 Ambassador report about Nokia Maps compared to the iPhone's Google Maps is featured in this week's report of the week on the S60 blog!



Source: http://blogs.s60.com on 10/31/2008 at 11:50pm EST


I recently joined S60 Ambassadors after hearing about it at the S60 Evening in NYC. As a S60 ambassador, I'm suppose to tell the world about my experiences with S60 and in return I get points which I can redeem for awards. The award thing does sound pretty vague but since I already talk about S60 to everyone around me, I found my channel to write down my stories and recognized for it.

Although there is the general S60 stories, from time to time there are campaigns to push a certain service/product and awards given to ambassadors at the end of each.

To get points, I have to write reports of my discussion with people around me about S60. Depending on the quality of your report you are awarded 40 or 50 points.

Each week a report is chosen and featured on the S60 blog. This week happens to be mine so I won a 2 month trial of the Nokia E71.

You can read me S60 story at: Maps 2.0 Report of the Week: Anotheran Beats Back the Taunts

Live from the Nokia Productions Premiere

i'm blogging live at the Nokia Productions Premiere

The Nokia Theatre:


The VIP floor:


Spike Lee giving a short speech and talking to the DJ


Avril Concert:

Nokia Premiere Itinerary

I'll be flying to Los Angeles tomorrow morning to attend the premiere of Spike Lee's video for Nokia Productions. If you have a question you want me to ask Spike Lee, just leave me a comment or message me!

Here's my itinerary (all in local time):

Day 1 Tuesday 14th October
9:00 Fly out to LAX
13:00 Attendees to meet with WOM World / Nokia - Hotel
14:30 Travel to Hotel to interview Spike Lee
15:00 Interview Spike Lee
16:00 Late Lunch
16:45 Head back to Hotel
17:00 Time online and prepare for Première
18:15 Arrive at Nokia Productions Première
Time at Première
TBC Return to Hotel

Day 2 Wednesday 15th October
7:00 to 9:00 Breakfast
10:00 to 12:00 Online time
12:00 + All attendees fly home

It's going to be a busy two days!

I will be on twitter so you can follow me here: https://twitter.com/anotheran

You can follow the Premiere here: http://womworld.com/nokia/takeyourseats/

Evening with S60 in NYC

I'll be attending the Evening with S60 event this evening at the New York Nokia Flagship store (5 E 57th Street, NY 10022) from 7:30pm - 10pm. Some Nokia developers/engineers will be attending since they're in town for the Web 2.0 Expo. They'll also have demonstrations, food, drinks, and giveaways.

I hope you've already registered at the S60 events page.

Looking forward to meeting all you phone enthusiasts!

I won a trip to LA from Nokia Productions/WOM World!

I'm so excited! I'm going to Los Angeles in October!

I got into work this morning and was surprised by an e-mail from WOM World:

Hi Eric,

Congratulations! I'm pleased to tell you that you're one of the winners of our movie death scenes challenge for Nokia Productions, meaning that you've won a ticket to the LA premiere of Spike's final cut of the movie on October 14th.

Our Assistant Directors have considered all the entries carefully and definitely felt yours was among the best for originality and effort, so well done!

The ticket is for the evening of October 14th where you will get a chance to attend the premiere with the Assistant Directors and the other winners, attend the Avril Lavigne concert afterwards, and live blog from the event for your community. We will also provide flights or other transport to LA from within the USA for you, and a hotel room for that evening.

Just let us know the travel arrangements that best suit you, to arrive in LA by 12pm on October 14th, and we'll start sorting things out. If you sadly can't make the date, the ticket will be offered to one of the runners-up.

Look forward to hearing from you soon.

Cheers,
WOM World / Nokia

WOM World is a Nokia sponsored resource that provided me with some of the phones I've reviewed on my blog. WOM World had provided me a Nokia 5310 to create movies based on life for Spike Lee's movie in Nokia Productions. They had 3 video categories: Birth, Life, and Death. There was an added challenge given by WOM World for the last category and that was to recreate a movie death scene with your phone.

Here was my movie death scene submission:



It was so time consuming to do it with the Nokia 5310 they gave me but luckily I finished it in time. I actually went out to Toys R Us to buy the SUV and brought some lego characters from home.

It was all worth the effort!