47 posts tagged “nokia”

The MOTO ZN5 is a 5MP camera phone with xenon flash.

There's a review at M-R here:
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/motorola-zn5-en.shtml

Things that jumped out:

• The camera UI seems WAY better than my N82's UI.  I love how the number keys have functionality 
• 500 mhz processor and dedicated optics processor: This means the camera loads really fast and images are processed faster.
• 32 MB or RAM.  No multitasking here.  Its not a smartphone, so don't expect any expansion.  This is also makes it a better camera phone.  If I have 5 or 6 apps running on my N82, it takes longer for the camera to load.
• RAW format.  Fucking awesome!  I would love for my N82 to have that option instead of compressed images.  I imagine the time wasted for processing the image for jpg compression would be no different than the time to write a large RAW image.
• Video quality sucks eggs.
• 3.5 mm jack makes it better than Sony Ericsson's C905.
• micro USB 2.0 makes it better than the N82

1. Nokia N82: smartphone OS and better video
2. MOTO ZN5: non proprietary ports, great camera UI
   
3. SE C905: 8MP camera, nice aestthetics, good UI
   

Hello my baby hello my honey..

20080619495

I recently flew home from Houston to Los Angeles.  I got myself a window seat.  I was pleased to find my seat had two windows.  Inspired by a post by Monadi at phone-rush, I wanted to try GPS in mid-flight for myself.

Before takeoff, I set the N82 to offline mode and then turned it off.  When the pilot started talking, I first turned on my N95.  It took a few minutes to get a GPS lock.  I couldn't move it around without losing the signal.

I turned the N82 on and it didn't take long for it to get a signal.  I was able to keep the N82 in my shirt pocket and maintain a signal lock.  I turned on the GPS data application and got this screenshot:

I first changed a few settings.  I set the units to imperial and the GPS filtering to low.  I then activated the Sportstracker. Here is a map of my position art:

As you can see, Sportstracker logged my journey from mid-Texas to Southern California.

There is a log of the journey with a few images at the sportstracker website:
http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=236804

N82: camera and battery trials.

A while back, I went to watch wrestling in Burbank.  I’ve attended a lot of local wrestling shows and learned that sport mode does not work indoors. 

This is a picture using sport mode from September of last year:

As you can see, this picture is practically all black. 

Here’s an example of auto mode

The picture is still quite dark and very yellow.  The flash fired, but it didn’t help.  The ISO speed is 100 here.

I’ve found that using Landscape mode, Incandescent lighting, +0.5 exposure and high ISO settings gets accurate results.  Here’s an example with these settings:

I have those settings set up in the User defined scene mode.  These settings are helpful for capturing fast paced action, since there’s no time wasted on focus.  The problem with the user defined mode is that it takes three clicks to activate.  It would be really easier if the camera remembered the last settings used when closed.  Another great alternative would be to have keypad shortcuts.  Unlike the S60 Web browser, the number keys don’t do anything with the camera.  For now, the only way to keep these settings active is to leave the camera open and let it go to standby.  This leaves the lens unprotected and subject to dust.

This is a problem for me, since I love to sit in the front row.  Often the wrestlers will fly out of the ring and into the crowd.  When this happens, I usually close the lens protector.  It gets pretty annoying having to set up the settings each time I open the camera.

I shot over 100 photos that Sunday and by the end of the night, 3 hours of taking pictures, I still had 5 bars left on the N82.  This battery performance astounded me.  My N95 would only last about 90 minutes before hitting 1 bar of battery left.  The need for my Proporta mobile charger wasn’t needed any that night and made me very pleased.

There’s one thing the N95 has over the N82: left handed shooting.  With the N95, I could hold it in my left hand and easily make one handed shots.  With the N82, my left hand shakes due to the pressure required to press the capture button while maintaining a good grip.  I have, however, gotten the hang of one handed shooting with my right hand.  But this makes my wrist strap useless.

Over the past week, a lot of squawking has been made about N-Gage games being stuck to one handset.  People are apparently really upset that if you upgrade to a new phone, you lose your N-Gage licenses and have to buy the games all over again.

I just don't understand why everyone is so upset. 

Let's say games were not tied to one handset.  I could buy a game like Tetris and then share my login details with a friend. Or worse, I could post my login details on a message board and now hundreds of people are sharing the same game. 

Think about that from a business perspective.  Electronic Arts probably would have made $1000 from all those people buying Tetris.   Instead they'll make just $10.  There's no incentive to make more games if piracy like this will be easily rampant. 

Without more games, N-Gage dies.

If someone can afford to switch handsets every 6 months or so, how can they not afford another $30 or so for a few games? 

Maybe Nokia will want to consider a "Comes with Games" package.  They could add another $100 to the handset price and have it come with unlimited N-Gage licenses.  This could ease the pain of losing N-Gage licenses when switching phones all the time.

I could never get Sports Tracker working right on my N95.  I'd always run out of ram.  Since I'm trialling the black N82, with its 90mb of free ram, I can finally let loose with multitasking.

Yesterday I went on a walk to Radio Shack to buy an adapter.  I was able to have the music player running in the background while I turned on the Sports Tracker.  Taking pictures wasn't a problem.  Each picture I took came out great and neither the music player or Sports Tracker application crashed.  There was one problem though.  I forgot to charge up the N82 so I ran out of juice halfway on my walk.

When I came home, I plugged the N82 back in and uploaded my workout.  I had to search around a bit to figure out how to add pictures to the workout.  I found the instructions at Black Phoebe

My workout/photowalk can be found here

What I'd really like to see is a way to have an embeddable widget I could place here instead of just a link.  There are widgets for facebook and blogger and some other sites, but they show only your last workout.  I want to be able to share a specific workout.

I tried to upload the the kml file to google maps, but it wouldn't take it.  I tried a bunch of methods, but I couldn't get it to work.

Ideally, Sports Tracker and Share on Ovi would be working together with Nokia Maps to get a great united solution.  But I think we are a few years away from that.

Also,

Recently, filmmaker Spike Lee announced a partnership with Nokia to make www.nokiaproductions.com.
The site wants users to upload mobile created films and Mr Lee will pick the best ones to assemble a larger film.  This reminded me of a project from 2 years ago.

I'm a big nine inch nails fan.  I have pretty much every release in CD format.

nine inch nails front man Trent Reznor has opened me up to a lot of new music.  A few months back, he posted this silly video with a really great song.

Backstage in Sydney

I've had my Nokia N800 for a few months now.  I've gotten into a routine in my use for it.

My main use for it is the Video Center.  I get my daily shows like Rocketboom, MoBuzz, Tekzilla and GeekbriefTV and weekly shows like Cranky Geeks.  Shows from Revision 3 coded with Quicktime Small play back in full widescreen on the N800.  Geekbrief TV has the best quality video of any show I've seen available without need for conversion. Mobuzz works great with its PSP feed and is a very close second in quality.

My second use is for Jaiku.  Using an app called Mauku, I can keep track of my contacts all day long with a great finger friendly interface.

My third use is for internet browsing.  The N800 is really great at handling message boards.  Unfortunately, the N800 is not robust enough for Google Reader.  Using the mobile version works very well, but doesn't have the ease of use of the full version.

Fourth is IM.  It takes a little bit of hacking with Red Pill mode to get the IM client to support multiple protocols, but having AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk and more all in one app is great.

The fifth most common use is weather. This is something my N800 does better than my N95.  With OmWeather, I have a 7 day forecast with current weather conditions.  I really wish someone would make a good weather app for S60 that could have an Active Standby plug in.

Occasionally, I'll use Canola to listen to music, but I usually use my N95 for that.  I don't plan on using the N800 as a music device until A2DP is fully implemented.