Still don’t have Adobe Reader LE 2.5 for your S60 device? Maybe looking to get it for your N8? QuickOffice normally sells it for $19.99, but by using the Discount Code: save10adobe, you can get it for just $9.99.
Know any good deals? Let us know.
First of all, we want to thank all of you who have entered the contest as we got some great suggestions and great stories on how you use Documents To Go. We were originally suppose to announce the winners sooner, but decided to extend the contest a bit longer. But now we’re finally ready to announce the winners! And they are……
1.Robert Micallef
2.Sacha Obado
3.Robert Granlöf
Congratulants to our 3 winners on the license key for the Nokia N900 Documents To Go Premium Edition courtesy of Dataviz.
The emails of our 3 winners will send to the Product Manager, who will get in touch very soon with your free license!
The N8 is probably the first device I’ve ever looked at and considered colors other than the traditional Black, Grey or White. Even the Orange looks good! At Nokia World it was fun to see several Nokians proudly showing their N8 in colors other than the Grey and Black, in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen those colors in person. It was all about the bright Blue, Orange and Green. The N8 is the first device of this new design language that is sweeping through Nokia (The E7 is another example of this design language) that is all about metals, thin and perhaps fun(?) devices. Judging by the colors it sure seems like it. Hey even, the normally serious E7 was shown in bright color on the show floors, although we’re not sure if those colors (on the E7) will make it to the shops.
So comes the important questions: What’s your favorite N8 color?
One device, different peripherals
The most important thing to realize here, is something that the C7 product manager mentioned:
“The C7 shares the same engine as the N8, C6 and E7. They’re all exactly the same. Same hardware, same chipset, same everything, same clock speed, processor, absolutely everything. In terms of performance, there’s no compromise, they’re all running the same engines. The differences are in the way the peripherals are arranged between the devices. On the N8 for example we’ve got a 12MP camera with Xenon flash and so on, on the C7 we’ve got an 8MP camera with LED flash. On the N8 we’ve got 16GB of memory and on the C7 8GB of memory and both expandable through microSD cards.”
So basically we have three devices at their core with the same hardware: a Single ARM 11 CPU running at 680Mhz. On the graphics front, we have a chip capable of 2D/3D Graphics HW acceleration with OpenVG1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support. The differences lay in the peripherals and these peripherals will vary depending on the price, position and use of the device. As an imaging device, obviously there’s going to be a lot of emphasis on the N8’s camera for example. Think of Charles Darwin’s finches, they were all finches, but with different beaks to adapt to their environments and diets.Choosing one of these devices means, choosing the combination of peripherals that suits you best.
Above you can see a handy chart that compares the features that these three devices don’t have in common. They features have been categorized in three groups: Green (Good), Yellow (Neutral) and Red (Bad). Notice that this is a subjective categorization, as negative to some might be neutral to other, etc.
At Nokia World 2010 we got an interview with the product manager responsible for Nokia’s portfolio of high-end Bluetooth headsets, basically the BH-600, 800 and 900 series. Among all the headsets being shown, there was one that truly caught our eyes: the BH-806, the successor to the Nokia BH-804. The 800 series is all about compact size, high quality materials and style. So it’s wasn’t a surprise that the soon-to-be released BH-806 looked stunning with it’s curved metal body and overall minimalistic design. If there was a headset that could go head to head against the Jawbone Prime, this would be it. The product manager revealed that the product wasn’t ready yet as the final selection of the metal being used and texture was being finalized, but the arching design was pretty much done. We were also told that the final accessories to be included in the box were still being selected, but judging by previous models in the 800 series, it’s safe to say that we will see a neck strap and desktop cradle/charger.
The pictures should give you an idea how small the unit is, but the metal being used and it’s texture could still change in the final product.
By now you must have seen many show floor videos and photos of the E7 in various colors, including Blue, Orange and Green. According to the product manager, at launch the E7 will only come in two colors: Silver and Black. The reason: it’s still a business device, which traditionally play it safe when it comes to colors. We were told that more color choices will follow later on, depending on the market reaction. So if you’ve been waiting to bring that bright Orange E7 to your next meeting, we have a feeling you’ll have to wait a bit longer.
What’s your favorite E7 color?
According to the specs sheet, the E7 will have 256MB of RAM, will this be enough? The N97 instantly comes to mind when talking about Symbian and RAM. Considering how the lack of RAM played a large role in the disaster that was the N97, it’s completely understandable why those interested in the E7 would be concerned about RAM, we would be too. The N97 had what seemed like enough for the task, 128MB to be exact. But by the time the OS was done booting and you opened your Nokia Messaging and a few apps, you would already be dangerously close to just 15MB of RAM! Anymore open apps and they would start to close all by themselves.
Luckily things are looking much brighter for the E7, said to be released in Q4. First of all it has 256MB of RAM, that’s 128MB more than the N97, which certainly is a good start. Compared to other modern smartphones like the Nexus One and EVO 4G with their 512MB of RAM it doesn’t seem nearly enough. But consider this: the current multi-tasking king, the N900 has “only” 256MB of physical RAM, half of what’s available on these other devices. Yet it still manages to do some serious work thanks to a neat little feature, which it now shares with the E7.
Noticed that how I used the terms “physical RAM” instead of just RAM? That’s the secret to the N900’s powers and hopefully the E7, too. While the N900 has 256 MB of physical RAM, when that is completely used, it starts using the remaining 768 MB of virtual memory. This pool of extra virtual RAM is called a paging file, basically it uses a part of the disc space as RAM. At Nokia World, the product manager mentioned that the E7 reserves a part of the built-in 16GB of disc space as paging file for RAM. This means that you can expect similar performance to the N900, when it comes to RAM, which is a very good thing. Have you ever had an app close due to the lack of RAM on the N900? I haven’t. The E7 samples at Nokia World didn’t have the final firmware, but with many apps open, it seemed to maintain its snappy performance. Things are starting to look good for E7 and Symbian. At least now the concerns about the lack of RAM can be finally put to rest.
Update: Symbian^3 Supports writeable data paging, so chances are the N8 also supports this.
I just had some more time with the N8, E7 and C7 and one of the first things I wanted to check was the support for Flash 10.1. In all of these cases I’m glad that they all support this features which is supposed to bring hardware acceleration and many mobile optimizations. Flash based video should play as smooth as possible.
Nokia E7
Nokia N8
Nokia C7
I sat down with Product Manager for Messaging at Nokia, Davis Fields, for a little Q&A. We covered everything from the service outage on Nokia Messaging to the provisioning SMS.
I just had a quick look at the Nokia E7. You know that Maemo/MeeGo is my platform of choice, but from what I’ve seen, I’m VERY impressed: the device is beautiful and fast. Here’s a quick video of the E7 and my first impressions of the device:
-Extremely good-looking device.
-Positioned as the replacement for the E90
-Looks more Nseries than Eseries, even more with the vibrant colors
-The screen is one of the best that Nokia has produced so far, deep blacks and great colors
-Considering the large screen, the device is thin. N8 thin to be exact.
-It’s really really fast. It flies through the apps and doesn’t seem to show any sign of slow down.
-The keyboard is really good, flat like the N97, but much better.
-Had a bit of a difficulty opening the device, because it was really thin.
-Full Office editing from Quick Office.
-At quick glance the interface does look a bit like the N97, but while using it you really learn to appreciate the subtle differences that make for a more polished looking interface. There’s a lot more eye-candy.
-The new visual multi-tasking looks and feels great. Very responsive and reminds me of the Maemo OS. It the multi-tasking windows don’t show a live view like the N900, but rather screenshots of what’s going.
