With larger screens and even video-centric devices (Think N96) pushing their way into Nokia’s line, more and more consumer are looking to their mobile devices as a viable on-the-go viewing option. I never really liked watching video’s, especially long ones on mobile devices, the screens were simply too small. But ever since I got the 5800 XpressMusic with it’s larger screen and potent speakers I found myself enjoying the overall video viewing experience. Watching videos on the 5800 has even become part of my daily routine of Podcast listening and video watching. The Nokia Podcasting and Video Centre  apps are a key part of this experience, literally making your smartphone an on-demand media device. But in the case  you want to take your own movies or videos, you’ll need to convert it to a format and video size that your device will accept. I’ve been recommending the free Super encoder and while it’s still an excellent choice, there are better options if you want faster performance.The problem is that the the encoding process is slow, even on a modern PC. The video card’s performance has been steadily increasing, but it’s computing power has been primarily limited to 3D games. But lately there’s a growing trend of  using the power of the video card to accelerate all kinds of computing tasks. Enter Nvidia/Elemental Technologie’s Badaboom and ATI’s AVIVO video encoders.

With the latest graphics card drivers,supported video cards and the software mentioned  you are able to encode video using the power of the video card, leaving your PC’s CPU free for other tasks. In case of the latest video card you are able to encode a video much faster than your CPU. A process that used to take hours can take minutes, with a minimal performance hit. Do you encode many video to put on your Nseries devices and you have the supported ATI or Nvidia cards, than you might want to take a look at these two programs. AVIVO is free, but Badaboom isn’t. But judging by the encoding speeds it’s totally worth it!

Have you tried Badaboom or AVIVO?

SDHC cards have SD Speed Class Ratings defined by the SD Association. “These new speeds are available in a new specification defining the minimum data transfer speeds for both SD/SDHC memory cards and SD/SDHC host products. This enhancement is easily recognized by three levels of Speed Class, class 2, 4 and 6.  Speed Class 2 guarantees a MINIMUM transfer speed of 2 mega bytes per second (MB/s), Speed Class 4 guarantees a minimum transfer speed of 4 MB/s and Speed Class 6 guarantees a minimum transfer speed of 6 MB/s.”

It’s very important to notice that the speed class rating specifies a minimum transfer speed. So instead of showing the typical maximum, which in many cases is never reached, this system shows a guaranteed minimum. In many cases the system will easily surpass this minimum, with a transfer speed that’s much higher. A good example of this is this benchmark test done here with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I used a class 2 16GB microSDHC card, which guarantees a minimum transfer speed of 4 MB/s, but in reality what we got was actually almost twice that at 7.4 Mb/s. Using a card reader we could even see a dramatically higher transfer speed of 19.7 MB/s!

I’ve also been seeing some people who got a “class 2” 16 GB card and wanted to exchange it for the class 4 model, claiming that the class 2 card was “slower and that it would “slow things down.” This is definitely not true. Checking with the same test here, even a class 2 card is enough for even the fastest of Nseries devices; the N96 and 5800 XpressMusic. A card reader is our was able to squeeze 19.7 MB/s out of a class, which certainly more than any Nseries currently on the market, including the N96 and 5800 XpressMusic. Below you can see how much juice we were able to squeeze out of “mere” class 2 card:

A golden rule applies when buying memory cards for your Nseries device: cheaper class 2 memory cards are more than enough for current Nseries device, even the newer devices with enhanced transfer speeds. Things might change quickly though with future devices…

Sources close to Mobileburn.com have revealed that Nokia has discontinued the N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition. “Distributors have apparently been asked to send any remaining stock back to Nokia.” The sources reveal that the abrupt cancellation is due to “the slow WiMAX roll out in the USA as well as an issue with the current WiMAX switches in use not offering optimal performance.”

With rumors floating around about new Internet Tablets Coming this year, the N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition might soon be nothing but a memory in the past. This also just might be a good time to find a good deal on one of these rare beasts, which basically is a N810 with WIMAX in black package. We can certainly file this under rumor as this has not been confirmed, but this piece of info does tie in with recent N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition that showed up online at CompUSA/Tigerdirect and only a few weeks later were taken down. Nokia give us an Internet Tablet with 3G and we’ll forget this one. N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition you will be missed.

The beauty of mobile devices lies in the fact that at least in theory you should be able to perform all tasks that you‘re accustomed to on a PC , Notebook or Netbook. In theory. The reason why I mention this is because there’s a popular local Social Media site called Kitatin.com and ever since I’ve had my first Nseries device, the N70, I’ve been trying to access that site with the built-in browser, with not much luck. All of these devices were able to at least open the site, but many elements like the forums are not rendered making the site pretty much useless on the Nseries mobile device, with the N800 and N810 being the only exceptions. Recently I got a 5800 XpressMusic, so I decided to try again and to my surprise it rendered the page, with working Foruns! This is something that I was only able to do on the much more advanced browsers of the Nseries Internet Tablets. Not sure what Nokia did with the 5800’s browser, but it was enough to do what earlier was only possible with the “Internet-capable” Tablets. This also probably means that there’s a good chance that site that didn’t work on previous device should render just fine on the 5800. Do you know some site that are difficult to render on a mobile browser? Let me know.

A while ago I talked about how fast the N96 really is when it comes to reading/writing to internal memory. We’re talking about big improvements here over previous generation Nseries devices. Nokia has managed to bump the speeds up from 0.8Mb/s to as much as 9.5MB/s using internal memory and 5.2Mb/s using a slow microSD card!

The 5800 XpressMusic now joins the ranks of the N96 with these enhanced transfer speeds, quite handy if you’re going to fill that included 8GB card.

Using HD Tach to do a quick benchmark on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic equipped with 16GB class 2 microSDHC with get the following numbers in Mb/s:

While the numbers speak for themselves it’s important to point out a few things here. First thing worth mentioning is that the N96’s internal 16GB memory is slightly faster than using a memory card. Also worth noting is that the N96 5.2Mb/s using a memory card was done with a slow card, using a quicker card should put in the range of the 5800’s 7.4 Mb/s.

Most important of all though is that the 5800 is really fast, all using “just” a class 2 memory card! Even higher speeds *might* be possible with those fancy new class 4 cards!