To update you on the Nseries Urbanista blogger global relay race I had talked about a few days ago, I can now confirm the identity of two other participants. One of them isn’t unknown to the Nokia/S60 community, I’m talking about Mobileburn’s Jay a.k.a. Jose_R.A.M. The other confirmed participant is Ms Jen, from the Black Phoebe blog who also uses Nseries for moblogging. As you guys already know this trip is going to be highly interactive, but I was passed along a few details that I didn’t know about. It seems each participant will get a customized widget on their sites/blog which will be streaming all their produced content during the trip. It will make use out of what seems like a modified version of the Nokia SportsTracker app. It will track our route across an image of the world, on which you will be able to click down on certain locations which will then reveal thumbnail images with text produced by each participants.  This trip is getting even more amazing as the details get in. I just got to confirm now who the 4^th blogger is going to be. Let me see what other crazy stuff I can convince the WOM World team, especially Siobhan to add to the trip

What’s a good phone without a good case, right? I know that some of you don’t really care about using cases and just put it in your pocket and be done with it, but if you’re like me your phone only leaves the case when you’re actually using it. As I found out when using the classic N95 it pays to have some kind of protection just in case you drop it. One day I had actually dropped mine and boy it was one those nasty drops, where the case got damaged and all scratched up, luckily the phone escaped without a single scratch. I’m pretty sure that without the case it would have been a completely different story. Which brings me to today’s mini review: The Nokia CP-235. I have to say though that my N95 8GB hasn’t arrived yet, but hey it’s better to get the case first than the other way around, as I always say. So today we are going to go ahead with the case review without the phone!

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One of reasons I started the Nokia Guide was to help those just starting with S60. Yes I know, these days haven’t done much for you new S60 users, but I’m hoping that with this post to get back on track. My apologies!

One of the first thing I recommend new Nokia S60 users is not only to keep up with the latest news, but actually become part of the S60 community through various popular forums. Why? This is where it all happens! As news breaks out it will quickly find its way into the forums, much quicker than most sites or blogs. This is the place where juicy details get out about upcoming unreleased devices and on top of that this where real users share tips, tricks, ideas and real world experiences about the devices they so love (or hate) with each other. It is this collectiveness of ideas and experiences that quickly spreads around and that is constantly updating itself, is what makes it so unique and certainly useful. But sometimes it’s not all about learning or about the devices, sometimes it’s about the members themselves: this is one of the places to meet and hang out with all the members and possibly makes new friends. So what forums do I recommend? When summing up a list of the best mobile community forums what would the list be without the Howard Forums, a.k.a HoFo. Howard Forums is a part of HowardChui.com and is one of the most active mobile forums I have come across. With one of the highest number of active users, this is the place to find answers or help others. One of the things I’ve noticed about Howard Forums is that it is one of the best places to find the latest news: as news breaks out, this is probably one the first places you’ll hear about it. Another forum worth mentioning and one of the rising communities is the N95 User Forums, by Brandon and Pseudofinn. N95 Users is quickly becoming THE forum community for N95 users, so you definitely might want to check it out.  Probably one of the first forums I joined a long time ago and probably one of the very first around and certainly one that has a lot of active members is the Mobile Review forums. While not quite as active as Howard Forums, it’s certainly up there and is one the premier places t to get the scoop on unreleased devices. The other two worth are of course the AllAboutSymbian forums and the Symbian Freak forums.

Currently I’m looking into joining new forum communities, what other forums do you think I should join?

It’s amazing what’s possible with the N95, even more amazing are the people that think of these things and that are able to make it happen. Such is the case behind the “ShakerRacer”. What they basically did was use a standard RC car and replaced the standard remote control component with their own microcontroller and a Bluetooth-module. After that they wrote a small application that translates the movements of the N95 acceleration sensor to commands that can be understood by the car. The end result is nothing short of amazing as the video shows. More info can be found here.

Via: Symbian Addict

When I first got the N81 8GB and now the N82 I noticed that they came with the Nokia CA-101 microUSB cable that has a handy thingy that holds the cable together. I think the proper name for it might be a “clamp” but I’m not too sure. I wanted to blog about this, but I actually forgot about it, but after comparing the cable with the one that came with the N800 I remembered about this. I presume the N95 8GB also came with this, but again I’m not sure. Can N95 8GB owners confirm this? If you’re like me you have many devices with their USB cable and no matter what you do these cables always manage to become all tangled up and if you have them all together it will become this giant USB cable spaghetti. A small but thoughtful detail that helps to make things a bit neater: all they need to work on now is the USB charging.

The N82 is better on the imaging department. The N81 8GB is better when it comes to music. All of this is common knowledge by now, but let’s say music is your number one priority, how much do you actually sacrifice if you get the N81? To answer this question I put the N81 8GB against the current best when it comes to imaging: the N82. Remember, the idea is not to see which one is the best as we already know how this one is going to end. We are going to compare the images and see how much we actually give up when we choose a music phone, in this case the N81. The N81 8GB might be a music phone, but still has a camera! To make things a bit interesting I took the images in less than ideal conditions. Most cameras are able to take decent pics in abundant natural light, but it’s when the light conditions deteriorate that’s when the real differences start to appear. Let’s take a look at the results.

Test 1: Macro

The first test consisted of doing a macro shot. I must admit that here I chose to use a very short distance; even the N82 had some difficulty focusing correctly at such an extremely close distance. In the end the N82 produced pretty convincing results with lots of detail, natural colors and correctly focusing on the subject. The N81 8GB on the other did not only fail the macro test completely, but also had unnatural colors and lots of image noise. In all fairness the N81 8GB lacks any auto-focus or close-range image setting, so it’s impossible for it to accomplish such a test. But the unusually high noise and unnatural colors is unforgiving. It’s clear here that choosing the N81 8GB will give you the best in music, but when it comes to marco-shots you can completely forget it.

Test 2: Macro (Text)

Here I basically took a newspaper and turned the flash on both devices to off. The idea was to see if they could correctly focus on the text and make it sharp enough for it to be legible. This test produced the same results as the first one: The N82 fails miserably, not only making the small text unreadable, but there’s lots of noise. This test confirms that the N81 8GB is unable to do macro-shots.

Test 3

In the third test we move farther from our subject. Things look much better for the N81 8GB, although the N82 shows that the colors are a bit of and that the noise can be lower. Test 3 confirms: you lose color accuracy and noise is big factor.

Test 4

The images here were taken at a longer distance when compared to Test 3. The N81 8GB seems to be correctly in focus. The colors are again way off. Here I can conclude that shots taken at a larger distance will be correctly focused. I would say 50cm to infinity.

Test 5

The colors on the N81 8GB are again incorrect. Changing the White Balance doesn’t help either: it takes images that look vivid, but these are in no way natural looking.

Test 6: Flash

The N82 is able to analyze the scene and “see” that this is a close-up shot and correctly adjust the flash for the image not to become too overexposed. The N81 8GB on the other hand can’t do this, as results the image comes out overexposed. And as confirmed in Test 1 and 2 it is not able to do macro shots, as results the image is not correctly focused.

Test 7

This test is meant to show how these two devices perform in low-light without flash and at a close distance. The N82 performs excellent. The colors on the N81 8GB are ok, but as confirmed in test  1, 2 and 3 it cannot do macro shots and the noise is a big issue.

Test 8

In this final test we can again see that the N81’s colors are a bit of and noise is again a big issue.

Conclusion

Getting the N81 series means getting the best music experience in the among the latest Nseries devices as it has dedicated music controls, Navi wheel, key lock and excellent audio quality, but the N82 isn’t left far behind when it comes to audio quality. But I do have to stress that the audio quality on the N81 is AMAZING. So when you choose to go the audio route (N81), what do you actually sacrifice in the imaging category? Based on these tests we can mention:

-You gain lots and lots of image noise

-No macro focus, so you can forget about those close-up shots

-Less detail and less to work with when doing image editing, cropping etc due to the 3 megapixels less

-Unrealistic colors vivid colors

-Poor low-light performance

-Weaker flash

-The LED flash is not able to “throttle” down; as a result close-up shots that make use of the flash are ruined by it.

The N82 is able to take good to excellent shots in pretty demanding conditions, the N81 8GB on the other hand will take its best shots in bright conditions where the subject is not too close: anything starting from a distance of about 50cm to infinity. To answer our initial question: how much do you actually sacrifice if you get the N81? Based on these finding, you sacrifice a lot and I do mean a lot. The images produced by it are only useful really for those quick shots for sending via email or to be put on WebPages and that’s if you keep a distance from your subject and have enough light. Otherwise the end result would look more like a study in pointillism. But if music is your thing, the N81 is the device to get.

If you’ve owned Nseries devices before you’ll know that the S60 browser comes with several useful bookmarks like links to download video, apps etc. On the N81 8GB after firing up the browser I was greeted with a link to download apps, as usual I like to look around and see what neat little app I might find. To my surprise I’m greeted with what looks like “Nokia Sensor,” a type of social Bluetooth app developed by Nokia that up till today was stuck with support for only 2nd edition devices. So by now I’m all excited that Nokia Sensor has finally received 3^rd edition blessings. When I click the link my excitement turns into disappointment when I’m greeted by the following text: “Downloads are for supported devices only.”  Yes I know that! But why in the world would you put a S60 2^nd edition app for download on an S60 3^rd edition device, only to tell the user that “Downloads are for supported devices only”?  What about saying: “No download available at the moment” or something, but the need to “fill” up space with unsupported software is unnecessary and just short of an April fool’s joke. Somebody needs to get this fixed and quick! I’m sure they can find apps to fill this space with, how about Widsets and MSN Live?

If that wasn’t enough if I go into Office folder to find Converter, Adobe PDF and ZIP. All very useful for the Office environment, but where is the Word, Excel and Power point reader? Sure, this is not en E-series device, but we have to remember that the N81 is by definition still a smartphone. Event tough it’s a music-first device, what’s a smartphone without its ability to at least read Word, PowerPoint and Excel files?

I was browsing the Nokia Europe site checking for updates when I noticed that they have this very cool mini game called No Secrets. The idea is that you need to use this virtual N95 to solve the game. I’m still playing the game and I’m currently at 50% at finding the secret. Anyway, check out the game and let me know what you think. What is the secret?

Auto rotate is finally here and it’s hopefully here to stay! But the situation with this feature is not all good. Sure it’s a wonderful element to have as there are many way to implement this in apps and games and it’s one of those cool things to show off to family and friends, but analyzing the deal with auto-rotation I had ask myself why oh why Nokia?

Why Oh why…..

1)…does the N82 get auto-rotation yet no word about it making an appearance in the flagship N95? Stranger still is the fact that the N95 conveniently does have the accelerometer!

2)… didn’t Nokia implement auto-rotation from the start? This makes people think that this was one of those things that IPhone could do and the N95 couldn’t.

3)….doesn’t the auto-rotation work when you turn the N82 to the right?

4)….doesn’t Nokia use a transitional effect with the auto-rotation? Sure, the process of auto-rotating the screen happens very quickly, but it’s done abruptly and looks unfinished.

5)…does the auto-rotation slow down when I install certain apps or when I have many apps installed? It’s true that some apps or installing many apps on your device will eventually slow down the device but why would it have such a dramatic effect on this feature? Isn’t there a powerful 3D that is capable of impressive graphics, why not put it to use to accelerate the UI and the auto-rotation?

Hey guys just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be part of WOM World’s Nseries Urbanista Diaries. It’s basically a blogger global relay race where one blogger is dropped off somewhere in the world where he or she encounters challenges along the way. He or she will then have to use the N82 to document and share the experience as well as using it as a tool to find his or her way to the next blogger who will continue the journey. The cool thing about this is that it’s going to be entirely interactive in the sense that you guys will be able to follow the 4 bloggers including me along the trip as we document the journey in images, video, sound and text. We will keep you posted about the route and where we are located at the moment, this will allow you to suggest things to do, activities to attend and in some cases even meet up with some of you who are in the area! This will be an opportunity to showcase the N82 as tool (to find your way around as I never been to some of these places), but as a way to share the sights and sounds, not just when we get back, but actually during the trip. I will keep you guys posted as the details come in. Once the trip starts, my blog/N82 combo will be my tools to keep everyone informed where I am. I will probably use the GPS function to pinpoint my exact locations. Hmm, I wonder who the other three are going to be?