I’ve always been impressed by those high-speed memory cards, offering speedy transfer rates of several MB/s over the standard vanilla cards. The advantages are clear in multi-megapixel digital SLRs and even compact digital cameras that are now capable of HD video capture. But how would these fair in the mobile environment? Are there any benefits when compared to slower Class 2 and 4 cards? One would certainly think so, especially since 8+ Megapixels, HD video capture and multi-Gigabytes of media is quickly becoming the norm. Enter Lexar’s High-Speed Mobile microSDHC Class 6 cards, with both 8 and 16GB flavors and includes their Mobile USB Card Reader. Let’s find out as we review Lexar’s speediest solution.

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Both the N96 and 5800 XpressMusic are known for their speedy file transfer at around 5-7Mb/s. With a device such as the N97 its crucial to be fast considering there’s 32GB to be filled and the possibility to increase this with memory cards. With our trusty benchmark HD Tach we come to the following numbers:

With an average speed of about 6.7MB/s and Burst Speed of about 7MB/s the N97 is fast.

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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!

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For some time now Nseries users have been complaining about the slow speed when transferring files using the USB cable.  As indicated in this previous post, this slow performance was caused by the 0.8MB/s transfer speed when reading/writing to either internal memory (N95 8GB, N81 8GB) or memory card (The rest of the Nseries). Even The Symbian Guru indicated this in this post right here. Stating that: “Unfortunately for the N95-4, syncing media is usually a torturous experience. This is primarily due to its inability to transfer data above USB 1.1 speeds. What that roughly translates into is a “slow as a slug” data transfer rate. USB 1.1 data syncing through the mini-USB cable is single handedly the most crippling aspect of the N95-4 and Nokia should’ve known better than to release a Flagship Nseries handset with such limited data syncing bandwidth.”  In comes the N96, which reportedly has improved performance quite a bit. Let’s find out if any of this is true.

First up is the N96’s built-in 16GB memory. Using HD Tach, this is what we get:

This clearly shows how dramatically the N96 has been improved when it comes to transfer speed, beating even the Internet Tablets. With an average speed of about 8.5 MB/s  and even a burst speed of 9.2 MB/s , it’s fast!

Let’s see what type of numbers we can get once we use a microSD card.  I used the 2GB microSD card that was included with the N82, since my N96 sample didn’t come with the included 8GB microSDHC card. I also didn’t have my  16GB microSDHC card with me, but this test will be updated soon.

Even with the slow 2 GB microSDHC card, we still see the N96 lead the pack at 5.2MB/s. My guess is that with faster cards you will actually see higher number. So, with the N96 it actually makes sense to buy one of those faster “Ultra” branded cards.

Conclusion

Nokia has dramatically improved the N96 data transfer speed via USB, this is for both the internal 16GB and memory card, beating all previous Nseries devices, including the Internet Tablets that, that until now held the performance crown. If your planning on getting the most out of  the N96,  it actually makes sense to buy one of those “Ultra” branded cards as the N96 will definitely squeeze every drop of performance out of it. Hmm, I wonder how the N85 will perform…

Sandisk has done it again! It wasn’t long ago we reached the amazing 8GB mark for storage in the tiny format called microSDHC. Now we have in fact doubled the capacity reaching an impressive 16GB  of storage on a medium no bigger than your average finger nail. The idea behind this post is try to clear misunderstandings behind the microSDHC format and see how a typical Nseries device, in this case the N82 black performs with the new 16GB cards.

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The Nokia E71 is another handset supporting microSDHC, meaning that it can use microSD cards up to 32GB. Wondering how fast you can fill up those cards? The transfer speed is going to be key! Using the HD Tach storage benchmark using the included 2GB memory card and we got the following numbers (in MB/s):

Basically it speeds is about as fast as recent Nseries devices like the n95 8GB or even earlier devices like the N76. Only the Internet Tablets are faster at 5.1MB/s.

Kishonti Informatics, the guys behind JBenchmark have released their latest benchmark in the form of JBenchmark SVG.

The new version features:
- Heavy load on animation, DOM access and modification, spline and polygon rendering
- Mapping test
- User Interface simulation
- Font rendering
- Gaming
- Cartoon animation
- SVG load and parse test
- Low level performance tests

What’s cool about the JBenchmark series, including the new JBenchmark SVG, is that you can customize the benchmark by choosing what subtests to include. These subtests are like small test benchmarking your Nseries performing different tests like gaming, cartoon animation etc. and upload the results and compare to other devices.

If you’re interested in more graphic-intensive benchmarking you can always try the Futuremark’s SPMark for Symbian OS or Nokia E3 Tech Demo. The hardware-accelerated Nseries are known to ace these test, but how do they perform in 2D, animation and mapping tests?

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If you remember a few days backed I talked about this cool 3D tech Demo designed by FutureMark for Nokia. All of those nice graphics are made possible by the N82’s Texas Instrument’s OMAP 2 chip which just happens to have Imagination Technologies’ Power VR MBX core with VGP.  In fact the E90 has it, including all variants of the N95, N93, N93i, N800 and the new N810, although the situation with the N800 and N810 is still a mystery to me. The great thing about this chip is that it has support for Open ES 1.1. This comes down to these phones being capable of displaying some pretty impressive graphics as you have seen in my previous post. This also makes them of one the fastest devices when it comes to 3D graphics. With faster I mean graphics pushing power to enable higher frame rates.  So how much faster are the E- and Nseries devices equipped with the OMAP 2/ Power VR MBX combo when  compared to devices from other brands? To find one, we have to do something that many PC gamers have done for years: benchmarking.  Benchmarking is basically running a program or a set of programs in order to assess the performance of computer hardware. But in this case we are going to benchmark a phone!!! (I mean multimedia computer, sorry Nokia)

How do we benchmark? FutureMark, the same guys that created the demo I talked about before have several 3D demos to test your device’s performance. They also allow you to upload your scores (Java only) and compare them to the scores of other users. This will allow you to see how your device does against other models and manufacturers. The app also includes information about your device including CPU and OpenGL technology being used. Strange that among the many apps it also reports that the N82’s CPU is running at 206Mhz. Anywho, all samples of a specific model like the N95 should perform the same, but the cool thing is that sometimes you might be lucky enough to get a sample that just happens to run faster and thus scores higher. Most of their benchmarks are not free, but luckily there’s SPMark for Symbian OS v9 (3D gaming) and SPMarkJava JSR 184 (Java performance).

SPMark for Symbian OS v9 and SPMarkJava JSR 184 can be downloaded here and here. How did your device fair against the other? What scores did you get?

Over at the Daily Mobile they have found a Tech Demo apparently that Nokia used or is supposed to use at E3. The benchmark starts with the Nokia and FutureMark logo, so I would guess it was specifically made for Nokia by FutureMark for demo at E3. I looked on the FutureMark site and it wasn’t available anywhere on their site, indicating that it probably a custom made benchmark. To showcase how this thing runs on a 3D accelerated device I have created a video of it running on the recently announced N82 which according to the product managers also has the OMAP2 which enables it to produce hardware 3D accelerated graphics. The demo should work fine on all OMAP2-equiped devices like the E90, all variants of the N95, N93 and N93i. It should work on other devices, but due to the lack of the 3D hardware it will run very slow and some graphic effects will be disabled. The file can be downloaded here. You will need a program that can open .RAR files to view the content. Any of you with the N80 or N73, how does it run on your device?

Update: an owner of the N73 confirmed that it doesn’t run at all on that device.

The Nseries models, especially those aimed as “imaging” devices have suffered a lot of critique due their slow camera start-up.  The N95 was a good example of this: by the time the camera was activated the photo opportunity was already gone. Even for group shots it took way too long: by the time the camera had activated the smiles had turned into fake grins followed by an expression on their faces that could only mean one thing: get it over with it! Even if the camera had activated things were far from over: you would have to half-press the shutter button and wait for it to focus. By this time they would think that you had already taken 5 shots, only for them to be confronted by me saying: ”wait it’s focusing.” With the development of the N82, Nokia seems to have taken photography very seriously as it has a proper lens cover, excellent image quality and low noise (which I’ll cover soon) and most importantly a very fast camera activation time. As a bonus it’s pretty fast at booting too, just in case you have to quickly turn on your device. It seems like those days of slow camera and phones start-up time are over for now, as there will always be room for improvement. But for now it’s there is no denying that the camera start-up time has been increased dramatically. To illustrate this I’ve made a video. Are you happy with the performance levels the N82 has achieved?