Nokia N97 Preview

Nokia's most highly anticipated and important phone for this year is the N97. It features a touch screen just like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic before it and a slide out keyboard too.



I was in Monte Carlo last week attending the Nokia Hackathon 2009 to put together my widget idea and test it on the Nokia N97, so I got the chance to play around with one for a few days...

The N97 features almost the same specs as most other recent Nseries phones such as HSDPA, 5MP Carl Zeiss camera, built-in WiFi, USB charging, dual LED flash and GPS. But it stands out from the crowd with its large touchscreen, use of S60 5th edition, and the slide out full QWERTY keyboard. As of this writing, the N97 sales package should include the phone (N97), Extended Li-Ion Battery (BP-4L), Compact Travel Charger (AC-10), Stereo Headset (HS-45), Data Connectivity Cable (CA-101), and Audio Controller (AD-54)

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (left) compared to the Nokia N97 (right)

The N97 has a slighter wider and longer screen than the 5800 but maintains the widescreen ratio.

The N97 closed:


Most people complained that the phone was too long and thick for their taste. It took me a while to get used to the thin silver diagonal button being the home key. For most previous N-series phones, the thin silver button was the multimedia key, which I always avoided.

Front:


Back:


Side:


5 Megapixel Camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual LED flash:


The N97 opened up:


Close up of the keyboard:


The keys are spaced well apart making them easy to distinguish from each other but makes the keyboard too wide to use with one hand. The Q, A, Z keys are no longer aligned above each other as on other Nokia phones (i.e. the Nokia E71, E61) and the space bar is placed at the far right. These keyboard quirks made me initially annoyed with the keyboard but you quickly get use to it by the second day.

N97 opened and behind the screen:

You can spot the display ribbon in there. I hope it doesn't come loose on production models.

Hands on:


First impressions were very good with a large high quality screen. Build quality is exceptional with a solid spring loaded slide mechanism that had little to no rattle. There was little to no creaking while the phone was closed. The OS was responsive in most cases but still faces a number of lags such as switching the screen between portrait and landscape. Browsing web pages on the N97 was amazing with smooth initiative gestures and a screen able to display full readable pages Unfortunately the rest of the UI suffers from issues found on the 5800 such as a single finger swipe doesn't scroll the length of the swipe but just simulates a single push of the D-pad. I didn't find tapping and double tapping on the screen an issue on the N97. The keyboard buttons were the right size for easy typing and provided just the right feedback. The lack of Xenon flash keeps it from replacing my N82 but my E71 is in danger of being replaced.

Look out for a full review once I can get my hands on a retail unit!

Nokia N85 Preview

More than a year has passed and the N95 has reigned as Nokia's top high volume feature-packed phone. The overpriced and slower N96 didn't do well in the market but the N86 was unveiled to serve as the N95's successor with a lower price point for the masses.



Opening it up:


Packed with almost everything you'll need such as the phone (N85-1), battery (BL-5K: Extended 850 mAh), charger (AC-10), Nokia 8GB microSD card (MU-43), Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U), USB cable (CA-101) and stereo headset with controls (HS-45, AD-54):


First impressions are very good with a large vibrant high quality screen. Build quality is much improved over the N95 with a spring loaded side mechanism but still not as solid as the older Nokia E65. There was little to no creaking while the phone is closed.



The N85 isn't groundbreaking as the phone it replaces. It features almost the same specs as its predecessor such as HSDPA, 5MP Carl Zeiss camera, built-in WiFi and GPS, and the dual sliding mechanism. But its stand out feature is the use of an OLED screen that uses less power than a traditional LCD and makes black very black as the individual pixels are not lighted. A few other little upgrades is the addition of a FM transmitter for broadcasting music from the N85 and use of 2 LEDs for the camera flash.



Stay tuned for the upcoming review as I take the Nokia N85 around the block.

Update: I've posted my N85 review

Sony Ericsson W580i Review

It has been a while since I've had a new phone to review but this one is a special one. Unlike my most recently reviews, this isn't a Nokia - it's a Sony Ericsson. When my mom was ready to replace her aging Motorola V3 RAZR which was having a difficult time holding a charge, I looked at the best cheap phone she could get. Since she was on Rogers and her contract had been up for a while, the best place was to get a phone on contract. My mom isn't big on e-mail or browsing the web so a smartphone would overcomplicate things for her. There were a few Motorola flips and Nokia flips that didn't even look as nice as the RAZR - as you can tell, she's big on asthetics. But she spotted a pink thin slider that sparked her interest - namely the W580i.

The firmware on my W580i is R8BE001 (the initial Rogers production firmware). The box contains the phone, Sony Ericsson Battery BST-38 900 mAh, travel charger CST-60, USB data cable, Sony Ericsson Stereo Headset HPM-70, 512MB Memory Stick Micro card, and Sony Ericsson CD with utilities and programs


The W580i is a very sleek thin slider running Sony Ericsson's proprietary OS.

The Nokia N97 Widget Competition

*updated*

A while ago, Nokia was accepting idea submissions for small mini-applications that run on a phone's home screen, called widgets, in their Nokia N97 Widget Competition. One winner will receive a N97 with their winning widget entry developed and running on the N97.

Since the submission deadline and preliminary voting had ended, Nokia has shorten the list to 50 widgets for everyone to vote. The widget receiving the most votes will continue along with 9 other widgets selected by the Forum Nokia panel to the grand prize.

I had submitted a few widget ideas for this competition and two out of nine of them made it to the short list:

Location based sightseeing/events


Wouldn't it be great to be somewhere and be able to find out that there's a free concert at the local park just 10 minutes? Using the GPS/AGPS of the user's Nokia device, the widget will transmit the user's location to a central server. The central will then return events happening close to the user's location and time


Ovi Local Notes


Leave your friends or everyone a note that will appear when they visit the same spot. So you can let everyone know that the pub just around the corner has great beer! Each note you create can be limited to your friends/contacts on Ovi or everyone + includes your location based on AGPS. Notes that appear are automatically updated based on AGPS.


There were a lot of quality submissions so I'm pretty happy to make it to the top 50. I hope I move on to the next round too.

You can go take a short list and vote for your favorite at: http://2009.nseries.com/competition/shortlist.aspx

There's a little quirk to the voting process: You choose one widget as your favorite, scroll to the bottom and click "Ready to Vote", then scroll to the bottom again to click "Submit Vote". You can only vote for 1 so make it count :)

*Update*
I found out this week that one of my designs made it to the top 10!


Location based sightseeing/events


Thanks to everyone who voted for me. Mine was picked by NSeries and Forum Nokia as one of the nine strongest ideas. So now my widget will be programmed by a team of talented developers from Forum Nokia on April 28, 2009 in Monte Carlo during the Nokia Developer Summit. The team will have 24 hours in what's called a Hackathon to code my widget then it'll go before a panel of judges to select a winner.

I'm really glad to see one of my ideas make it this far. I'm definitely eager to see my idea implemented into a real widget. Hope I go all the way!

*Originally posted 3/10/09

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 5800 XpressMusic Preview

I was in Manhattan this past weekend and dropped by the New York City Nokia Flagship Store just to see what was new. Inside they had the stylish 7610 Supernova powered by S40 on display. Nokia was also showcasing one of their key products to compete in the touch screen cell phone market, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic:



My initial impressions of the 5800 XpressMusic were "this is a really nice screen and I really like the simplistic icons". The phone fits my hand comfortably.

Quick facts:
Name: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
CPU: Freescale MXC300, 369 MHz ARM1136JF-S RISC + StarCore SC140 DSP
RAM: 256 MB (user accessible: 81 MB)
Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 WCDMA 850/1900
Weight: 109 g
Dimensions: 51.7 x 111 x 15.5 mm

Follow the jump to find out if the 5800 XpressMusic is worth buying.

Navigation & Touchscreen
Scrolling throw lists and menus works like any other S60 phone so you have to scroll with the scroll bar and you can't just flick your finger as you do on the iPhone. As most people have mentioned, it's annoying that some buttons require a single click while others require a double tap. This was my thought process when the menu didn't respond: the phone wasn't responsive, didn't catch my click, or I needed to double tap. That left me with an overall impression that the UI was very slow and needed a lot of work. It also incorrectly determined where my finger hit the screen a few times. To be fair, the 5800 on display was still running on initial firmware. Nokia has better get it's phones updated as first impressions are very important and firmware upgrades make a big difference.

Performance
The 5800's CPU is either not up to the task or its firmware needs a lot of work. Rotating photos took more than a second to perform, opening up the Batman Darknight trailer took a few seconds to load, and scrolling through Nokia Maps was horrendously slow. I felt like I was using a S60 phone from 3 years ago. Nokia Maps annoyed me so much with it's slow response times and incorrect gesture sensing that I turned it off after a few minutes of use. Clicking on the top right Media Bar button took a while to pull up the media bar. I came away feeling this phone wasn't ready for prime time.

Display
The 5800 sports a 3.2 inch TFT display. It's narrow and wide. A little more narrow than the 16:9 widescreen format used by most movies so playing the Batman Darknight looks really small on the screen. To me it wasn't much better than watching movies on my E71. Although it's a resistive screen (requiring you to push the screen as opposed to just touching like the iPhone), it's fairly strong so it doesn't distort too much when you push on it.

Camera
The 5800's 3.2 MP camera produces better photos than the E71 but doesn't compare to the N82 I used to take the photo above. It's a decent camera but it's not going to win any awards. One of its strength is its video capture capability that records up to 640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps.

Overall
I was fairly disappointed by the performance of the 5800 XpressMusic. Using the touch screen was frustrating as it was either slow or unresponsive. Rotating a photo required more than a second and playing a video required a fairly annoying loading time. I would never consider this phone a replacement for either of my N82 or E71. After trying out the 5800 XpressMusic, I would never consider recommending this phone to anyone and would likely recommend people to avoid this phone. I just hope the N97 improves a lot over this first S60 5th edition phone.

WidSets: More than just RSS

http://www.widsets.com

Cell phones have become the premier device for people to keep connected. And one aspect of keeping connected is to get timely updates of the news and web sites we regularly follow. If RSS reader and/or Twitter were the first things that popped in your mind then you're along the right lines. I personally stick to RSS readers too since almost every web site offers a RSS feed.

While I was going through Nokia's Download! service, I noticed an application that I've heard a lot about but never tried before, WidSets. Widsets is available on almost all Nokia phones as either a Java application for Nokia's mainstream S40 handsets and phones from other manufacturers or as a native S60 application for Nokia's S60 smartphones. It provides a consistent UI and framework for developers to develop online applications called widgets.

For this blog I am reviewing WidSets version 3.1.4 on a Nokia E71. Find out if WidSets is worth trying after the jump.

When you start WidSets it requests access to connect online. Of course you can keep it offline but you'll only be able to see what's cached on your phone the last time you were online and won't get updated content. To quickly tell if you're online or offline, the background of WidSets is black if it's offline and blue if it's online. In a way, offline and online resembles Google Gears and how, just recently, you can browse your Gmail while offline based on what you've previously viewed.


Once WidSets is connected, the workspace background turns blue. I guess it's to say it's daytime. The AccuWeather widget will display the current weather right on the widget button.Without any widgets on your screen when you first start, you'll want to browse through Widset's list of widgets. A quick glance at what's available may lead you to believe it's just another RSS reader since you have Nokia Discussions, Wall Street Journal, Howard Forums, and Wikipedia. And that isn't too far from the truth. Unfortunately most widgets don't give you much functionality and the quality between them vary greatly. So to be fair I'm going to review one of the popular widgets that is a little more than just a news reader and one that you may find useful too.


Browsing through the widgets (left) you can see the popularity of the widget and only the widget title is displayed. You can also search for a particular widget (middle). The detailed view (right) doesn't give you any added information. Click images for larger versions.


The popular Facebook social networking application makes its way onto WidSets and impresses with its features.It's a popular social networking web site that has a native application for almost all smartphones like the Blackberry and iPhone. You may have seen your friends adding the application. It's Facebook and for Nokia handsets it comes in the form of a widget. Unlike most widgets (I'm looking at you, the Howard Forums widget), you can interact with the Facebook widget by logging in. Inside you'll get all your latest notifications, browse through your friends and read their details, browse through photo galleries, update your status, and even upload photos to your own gallery. This is almost everything you can do in the real Facebook web site minus the custom applications. If you were put off by most widgets, I definitely recommend the Facebook widget if you're a Facebook addict.


Browse through your friends and view their details. Browse through photo galleries. Zoom in on any photo. Update your status or even upload a photo. Click images for larger versions.


Most WidSets widgets like Wall Street Journal Online, Howard Forums, and Nokia Discussion are just a newsfeed and do not feature any interactive features like posting comments.Unfortunately, all widgets are contained within the WidSets application so as good as the Facebook widget is, it never feels great as you can't access the widget directly as a shortcut from your home screen. The weather widget is nice that it immediately updates with the current weather when you open Widset, but wouldn't it be even better if the weather widget appeared as a dedicated application and its icon automatically updated based on the weather? You're left continuously clicking back into the WidSets application and that's the weakness. First it takes a few clicks to go into the WidSets application unless you have it on your home screen. Secondly, the UI for WidSets is laid out horizontally while all the widgset icons are horizonatally wide and fairly large. With at most 3 widgets stacked in each column, you can't see all your widgets at once and scrolling doesn't wrap so you'll be scrolling a lot to get to your last and right most widget.

Some really great widgets like Facebook, it's offline capabilities, and wealth of widgets make Widsets a very useful application to add to your phone. Since widgets are designed for mobile devices, all the content are easy to navigate on small screens. Lot of medocre widgets that don't do any more than a RSS reader, a clunky UI that needs a lot of scrolling and provides little detail to the widgets available, and a framework that limits widgets to being within the WidSets application hurt the overall user experience while using Widsets. I recommend giving WidSets a try to see if there are any widgets that interest you and whether your appreciate the WidSets UI layout.

Eric's Software Rating: Worth a try