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One features that many modern desktops and laptops have, is the ability to do a bit-for-bit factory restore. Basically restoring the machine to the very exact same state it was when it came out of the box with all it’s pre-loaded applications, settings and other customizations through either an included DVD or separate partition on the hard drive. So how does this apply to the mobile space? Let me tell you.

As it currently stands, I’m not aware of any consumer friendly way to restore Nokia’s current Symbian^3 devices to the exact out-of-the box state, without causing any negative effects. The N900 is one exception to this rule, with a procedure that restores it to the exact factory defaults, but this method is exclusively for the N900, which you can find here, but it’s far from the ideal one-click option that I would consider “consumer friendly.” Any mobile enthusiast would agree that a complete factory default is critical feature for these devices: I know many mobile users that like to restore their devices from time to time, clearing out “junk” and bringing back that smooth operation you had when you first got your device. Or maybe you’re selling your device or giving it to family member or friend, having the ability to do restore your device will not only give them that fresh out-of-the box software, but it will remove all private data and those other customizations that isn’t really relevant for them.

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As a Nokia N8  owner, I can definitely say that one of the added bonuses is the ability to charge via either the microUSB or the Nokia 2mm Charging connector. When comparing the N8 to the newer E7 I noted that the latter lacked this feature, perhaps indicating that Nokia was now  committed to using microUSB exclusively on their newer devices. After using the N8 as my main device, I’m convinced that they should keep both charging standards, especially in their high-end smartphones and these are here’s the reason why.

One charger for both device and accessories

One major difference between Nokia and other manufacturers is that they take accessories very seriously. Just look at the original Nokia accessories being offered for the N8 or E7 and compare this to the original accessories being offered for other devices by their manufacturers  and you’ll quickly  see one major difference: Nokia offers a lot when it comes to accessorizing your device.  Another difference, but one that’s not so obvious, is that most of these Nokia accessories don’t use microUSB, but instead Nokia’s own tried and true 2mm Charging connector. My Nokia BH-905, the BH-214 and even the BH-505 use the 2.0mm charger and not microUSB, probably due to size and space constraints. But the result of all of this is that you’ll probably end up with a microUSB charger for your device and a Nokia 2mm charger for your accessories. Why not have just one charger? With the N8 I can just keep this one charger for both my accessories and my device. Nokia E7 users, sadly, can’t say the same.

2 connectors, more chances of finding the right charger

Despite writing for The Nokia Guide and being a tech enthusiast, I don’t always have some fancy external battery or charger with me. Many times it comes down to ending up with an empty battery and having to borrow a charger from a friend or colleague. Some have USB chargers, while other have Nokia devices with the 2mm charger connector. Point is that having both connectors, increases my chances of being able to find something that will charge my device, enough to make or receive that very important call.

Also consider this, Nokia sold billions of devices and as a result there are millions or billions of these 2mm chargers around. You’ll be surprised at how many places people just happen to have these charger laying around, perfect if you need a quick charge.

I scratched my device with the microUSB!

If you look at the microUSB connector, you’ll notice that it’s quite sharp. I once scratched my N97’s screen when trying to insert the USB connector, my hand slipped and as a result I ended up with one deep giant scratch. I’ve hear similar stories where people with deep scratches on their device, all because microUSB connector. Even now when I’m connecting the USB cable to the N8 I’m very careful not to accidentally scratch the metal body of my trust N8. The same cannot be said about the 2mm connector, which has a rounded edge, making scratching your device almost impossible. It’s also a lot simple simpler: insert and your done. With microUSB I have to look at the connector to see which is the flat side all while being careful not to scratch the N8.

I’m sure many prefer microUSB, but as always having choices is ideal. I’m just happy that the 2mm charger is still around on my N8 and hope that Nokia continues this dual charging method.

Images courtesy: NokiaN8

Cheap Calls to Australia

Nokia is known for it’s excellent camera smartphone’s but what many are not aware of is that under the hood, some of these are amazing music devices. We’re not just talking about devices marketed as “Music phones”: edgy look, bundled improved quality headphones (or speakers) and media keys. While some of the Nokia devices do have many of these traits, they’re actually capable of pumping out some seriously good tunes using audiophile grade head/earphones. Perfect examples of these are the N91, N91 8GB, N81, N81 8GB and even the N900.

With the N8 now readily available, we wanted to check out how it truly faired on the music front. Testing the N8 would also give you an idea of what to expect from the C6, C7 and E7 as they all share essentially the same hardware.

When we’re talking about audio quality, we’re not talking about the built-in speaker or the Dolby surround feature using HDMI out. In fact surround sound does not necessarily equal good audio quality, as many would think. In this case it’s purely the stereo output through the built-in 3.5mm headphone jack and doing some serious listening, using some audiophile grade in-ear monitors (IEM) from Shure and 320kbps MP3 and Wav files.

I started the test with Lakmé’s The Flower Duet, testing the N8’s capability to cope with a very dynamic classic. The N8 passed the test with flying colors, faithfully producing The Flower Duet with all it’s dynamic complexity while still being able to drive the Shure earphone without a portable AMP at glass breaking volumes. I was also impressed with the amount of detailed produced during the low-volume parts of this piece. Older Nokia’s were plagued with lack of ample audio headroom, but the N8 is another those devices can go loud, and I do mean loud.

I played a bit with the equalizer, but felt that using the default setting, the N8’s output was good enough to get the most out quality headphones without the need for further adjustments.

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The N900 has a single ARM Cortex A8 CPU running at 600Mhz, a stark contrast to today’s modern Android devices running at a whopping 1Ghz. Most Android users will probably take a look at the N900 ‘s spec and dismiss it as running at “just” 600 MHz, but is this really the case?

It’s no secret that the N900 can multi-tasks like no other, capable of showing a live view of all open applications in the Dashboard, Nokia’s multitasking interface for the Maemo OS: that YouTube video playing in the browser will continue playing, showing a live view, even when accessing this so called Dashboard. Something that those newer 1GHZ Android devices simply can’t accomplish.

From the PR1.2 and earlier, the N900 could be considered  moderately fast when it comes to speed, slowing down after some heavy multitasking. With the release of the PR1.3 Update, the N900 received several improvements and features, among them also quite a performance boost. Now it’s not only capable of handling several application at a time, including plenty of eye candy, but it’s now really fast, too. When I thought about it, I realized that it was also running at that same 600MHz clock speed. Even some user that had overclocked their N900 in the range of 800 to 900MHz all the sudden realized that it was speedy at the stock 600MHz!

All of this brings us to the following question: Is a 1 GHz CPU in a mobile device a good idea? Perhaps, mobile handset makers like HTC clearly seems to think so. Is it necessary to run a modern mobile device? Definitely not, with the N900 being the best example of this, running at “just” 600 Mhz. This also clearly shows that it was never about the clock speed, but efficiency. Symbian is famously known for running running quite smooth on lower clocked hardware, now it seems that Maemo and hopefully MeeGo will soon join this group.

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.

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I have to admit, I’ve been a little hard on Symbian lately. But it didn’t happen over night. A lot has happened over the past few years. Take for example the N97. Beautiful hardware with underpowered processor and aging UI. Slow to react and lots of memory and RAM problems. It was just this week that I was reminded by two friends that I was the one that recommended them the N97 and boy they weren’t really happy about the recommendation.

Let’s not forget about Symbian’s aging UI. It looked great backed in the days of the N95 and even the N82, but by the time we got to the N97 it was starting to look a bit dated. When we saw the eye-candy on the Maemo-powered N900 it practically looked ancient. Sure, Symbian have multi-tasking, but not much RAM: Devices like the N97 could multi-task, kind of, until you started to open those apps and that’s where it all came crashing down. The N900 luckily proved that Nokia could do, in fact better than anything out there on the market.

Now that the N8 is close to release, should we give it another chance? Well maybe we should. The N8 does seem to have an updated UI, beautiful hardware and lots of new tricks. But will 256MB of RAM be enough? The N900 for example has 256MB of physical RAM, but has an additional 768 MB of  virtual memory. This is something we’ll just have to try too see how it works on the final product.

We will give Symbian another chance, yes the N8 is very tempting. This means we will be covering the latest Symbian devices, but Maemo 5/MeeGo still remains our OS of choice.

Will you be giving Symbian another chance with the N8?

So, you bought the N900, what’s next? With news about MeeGo devices being announced soon, the obvious question remains: Will the N900 get MeeGo? Or will I need to buy a new handset to enjoy MeeGo? Here are are reasons why we think it the N900 might get the full MeeGo treatment.

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Nokia enthusiasts didn’t have much choice when it came the OS, either you went the basic S40 route, or as any true Nokia power user would, get Symbian. But that’s about to change. With the N8 launching soon and MeeGo devices to follow shortly after, Nokia fans are in a unique position of having the choice between 3 different operating systems: Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo. Yes, Maemo will hang around for a while, but eventually will be completely replaced by MeeGo, leaving the choice between it and Symbian.

With the impending release of the N8, Nokia powers users have  the choice of either buying now or wait for the very first MeeGo device, an OS that most of us have yet to see the final product. While only a lucky few can get both devices, most of us will have to choose where our hard-earned cash will go for the next months or years, making the choice even more critical.

The N8 sports impressive specs and Symbian is a proven OS, but its dated UI might leave you wanting for something more 2010. MeeGo on the other builds on Maemo, which has a lot of eye-candy and multi-tasks like no other, but it will certainly have less apps compared to Symbian and the uncertainty behind any new OS is sometimes hard to swallow.

Are you in the MeeGo or Symbian camp? And why?

By checking up on the facts at www.dialaphone.co.uk you can compare phones and see which operating system is best for you.

Nokia phones are known for three things: good reception/call quality, solid build and easy to use menu. While that last one might be slowly slipping away, there’s no denying that Nokia devices are known for their incredible ability to get good reception even in difficult areas. There have been countless cases where I was the only one with reception, while others had 1 or 0 bars. Considering all the news around Apple and the antenna design of the iPhone, one thing is for sure, if the actual phone feature and good reception is a high priority, Nokia is still the best. With all the features being added, sometimes we forget that it’s still a phone and meant for making calls.

This what Nokia had to say about antenna design:

“Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.
Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.
In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.”

So Apple mostly prioritizes form, while Nokia chooses function/performance. What these two are not seeing is that a good device should have both. When you prioritize the over the other you get compromise, a good design closely matches form and function.

Do you agree that Nokia is still number 1 when it comes to antenna performance? Is reception/call quality important for you? Let us know.

Via:Engadget

Image Courtesy: S60 Blog

As you might have noticed, we haven’t been covering Symbian-based devices lately, focusing completely on the Nokia N900 and the upcoming MeeGo OS.  We started The Nokia Guide to cover the Nokia devices we’ve come to know and love, which at the beginning were Symbian-based. But as the mobile market has gotten progressively more competitive, especially from Android, we feel that Symbian-based devices have lost their edge to the point where we’re simply not covering them enthusiastically; we won’t buy them and won’t recommend them to our readers. As a result we’re going to make it official what we’ve been doing for a while now: stop covering Symbian-based devices. We feel that Symbian is becoming irrelevant and upcoming Symbian^3 and^4 don’t seem to change that. Other Symbian bloggers, such as our friends at Symbian-Guru are taking it one step further.

Luckily this doesn’t affect the Nokia N900 and upcoming MeeGo devices. I’m a happy Nokia N900 owner myself and would easily recommend it to our readers. Because Maemo serves as the basis for what will become MeeGo we have very high expectations for this platform and for this reason we will continue to cover Maemo and MeeGo exclusively.

Microsoft recently scrapped their plans for KIN and are completely focusing on Windows Phone 7. Nokia should do the same: scrap upcoming Nokia N8 and it’s QWERTY-based version and focus on MeeGo and getting developers on their side.

What do you think? Is Symbian becoming irrelevant?