Have you registered at the S60 site? If you haven’t you should! In addition to the usual benefits like getting 25% off on all Nokia Software Market software and getting to make application wishes, there are nice free S60 themes up for download, including two ‘My S60′ themes - one in white and one in blue, available both for S60 v2 and v3 handsets. The White S60 is a theme I absolutely love and was looking for!

Although in the supported handsets list, for some themes, phones such as N82 & N95 are not there, the themes work well if you download the version for any other 3rd Edition handset. Whats more they look good on the E90 too.

To grab these and the other themes, plus applications such as Call Filter, Music Box, PhotoLocker, SMS Export and Clock Screensaver, just register and go here.

Nokia Beta Labs has been really turning it on these past few. The Nokia Music PC application that was demoed way back last year has finally made out in an early beta form. The idea behind the application was ease of use and convenience. The application makes possible to rip CDs directly to a connected device (just drag and drop the CD icon to your device – job done!) and move playlists you have created while out and about back to your PC collection. Nokia Music is also one of the first applications to take use Microsoft’s new WPF technology.

As part of their policy of remaining open, the PC application should function with any MTP-compliant device, whether it be a Nokia device or another brand MP3 player! Future versions of the application will also integrate Nokia’s Music Store and things such as artwork retrieval and a recommendations feature.

Give it a rip and let them know what you think! Some people are reporting that they are having issues getting it to run on XP SP3 and the team is working on it. I’ll meanwhile install and see how it goes from there!

Download!

Although this was kind of expected at some stage, Crave brings news that Nokia at Where 2.0, announced Maps on Ovi, a Web component designed to to complement its mobile mapping software, Nokia Maps 2.0.

As part of the Ovi brand of Internet services, which includes the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage gaming platform, Maps on Ovi will allow users to plan their trips on their desktop or laptop and then synchronize (automatically or manually) it with their smartphones. Conversely, if you’re already out on the road, you can record routes and points of interest on your handset and then upload them to the Ovi service when you return home to share with family and friends. The interface on Web side is similar to what you’d see on your phone for ease of use and a more seamless experience.

This is great news, just goes to show how serious Nokia is about becoming an internet company. Michael Halbherr, vice president of context-based services at Nokia, said “now it’s not so much about route calculation (since that part of the technology is pretty solid) as it is about what we can do with the data. The next step is about discovering, collecting, and sharing those experiences.”

Maps on Ovi should be ready for public consumption by the summer and I can’t wait. The ability to plan on the computer’s bigger screen and keyboard and then just sync across would be just wonderful!

Via: Atmaspheric Endeavors

Its time for congratulations and consolations! Its past midnight GMT and the entries are in. A huge thank you, to all of you for taking part. In total we had 43 entries and its time to announce the winners! Each comment was assigned a number and the winners were chosen by generating 5 random numbers from Random.Org. The first two people win a Platinum licence and its Gold for the other three. Congratulations!

Read on for the results!

2 - Arjun Parsi

20 - Seher

13 - Hallux

16 - Aatif

8- Roberto

A big congratulations to all of you, I will be contacting you shortly. Here’s to a safer smartphone!

For the rest of you, who weren’t that lucky we still have the special ‘The Symbian Blog‘ 30% discount (valid till 15 May) that brings the price of the Platinum down to 20.99$ and Gold to 13.29$, quite a deal for such a wonderful piece of software. Use this link to grab it now!

Thanks Marco once more!

]]> http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/05/13/guardian-licence-winners-a-discount/feed/ Vaibhav Guardian Licence Winners & A Discount Guardian Winners! http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/05/13/geo-tagging-in-share-on-ovi-is-finally-a-go/ http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/05/13/geo-tagging-in-share-on-ovi-is-finally-a-go/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 20:29:15 +0000 Vaibhav Sharma http://thesymbianblog.com/?p=777

We have just had official word from the Share on Ovi Blog that things have been worked out and Geo-tagging is a complete go. SoO (Share on Ovi) will now will recognize if GPS information has been embedded in the photo and if so, will display a map of where the photo was taken. Previously we were left to try and input location information ourselves, I’m glad that almost useless ordeal, is over. I am beginning to like this service more and more and if they can keep on improving, it’ll really be wonderful.

Photos taken using Location Tagger or with phones such as N82/N78 that have Geo-tagging capabilities inbuilt contain location data in the EXIF headers and such pictures will now be displayed with a relevant map. For those pictures that lack such data, we will still be able to add location information.

On another note, there are two things I’d like to have in SoO:

- Ability to open Images in a new window; makes for much easier browsing.

- A decent desktop uploader that can preferably give me a right click ‘Send To’ option.

The SoO team is looking for feedback, so if have have any issues or suggestions, drop them a line.

Hot on the heels of my Guardian review, comes the great news that the new Guardian website has gone online and the application is available for download/purchase and thats not it.

As a special thank you to all The Symbian Blog readers, we have been able get free licences for the application. It appears as if Marco Bellino, the developer, is extra fond of you folks and has very generously offered 2 Platinum and 3 Gold licences, exclusively for you readers!

In order to win all you need to do is put your name and correct email address in the comments and you will be entered. Please do make sure that you give us a correct email address, as that’s how we’ll contact the winners.

Contest closes at Midnight GMT and we will then pick 5 random entries, to get their licence code. In case you don’t win, don’t worry, we still have a 30% discount if you purchase the application using this link, valid till the 15th of May. If you’r not quite sure what this application does, read this and visit the website to see the differences between the various versions.

Thanks Marco for the freebies!

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A little while ago Biggzy brought to light a guide on how to download a file with any extention, that the phone does not recognise, with the default S60 Browser. I have now made a video outlining what you need to do in order to get it to work.

Another good news is that FP2 devices will be capable of downloading any files without the need for any ‘tweaking’.

I have been playing with the 3rd Edition version of the hugely successful application Guardian, by Marco Bellino. What are my reactions? I am very pleased. There is just so much this small piece of software can do. As the name suggests, the software is basically meant to protect your phone from unauthorised usage, if it gets stolen or even otherwise. It comes in three different variants, a free basic version, a Gold and a Platinum version; naturally functionality keeps increasing with each higher version. For the purpose of this review I will be running the full blown Platinum.

It has been a while since S60 devices started shipping with an inbuilt GPS and it has also been a while since we have been losing devices. Since GPS can virtually pinpoint our exact location on the map, how cool would it be if we could use the phone’s GPS remotely to track it anywhere in the world? This is exactly what Guardian does, it enables us to pin point our phone anywhere on the planet even if we have lost it. This feature alone deserves a WOW! However, Guardian is just getting started, read on for more.

It is an application which barely takes a minute to set up and then hides itself from the menu while continuing to run in the background. The application running indicator is also not displayed next to it, even if it is enabled.

The setup, like I said is pretty straightforward. There is an option to ‘Enable’ or ‘Disable’ Guardian, followed by the option to enter the phone number to which notifications would be sent in case of loss. The software automatically registers the current SIM in the phone and authorises it, the ability to authorise additional SIM cards is present in the Gold and Platinum versions.

APPLICATION LOCK

Next in line, is the ability to password protect the various applications in the phone. (3rd party and Default both). As I recall, even entry level Motorolas’ have the ability to not only password protect the whole phone but also individual applications, sadly this feature has been missing on S60 for a long time and I see no plans to include it. There are many occasions when a person needs to lock only a particular section of the phone e.g. lock Messages when you give your phone to someone to make a call, lock the Gallery when you do not want your peers/family to see certain pictures/video. I could go on.

Guardian also brings this wonderful feature, by simply selecting the applications we want to lock and enabling Guardian we can rest, assured. If someone tries to open the Gallery, he will be prompted to input the password, if he/she fails to, access will be blocked. Using this feature we can even prevent unauthorised installation of this or any other application by locking the ‘Application Manager’. Neat!

The above dealt with the time the phone (thankfully) was with you and not lost or stolen. The following deals with what you can do once you have lost the phone.

As soon as another (unauthorised) SIM card is inserted in the phone, Guardian will send you a text on the number you enter in the Recepient option with the following details:

This will give you the phone number of the ‘Theif’ and all commands can now be executed by sending a message to this number. Playing with this software gives quite a empowered feel, with all the commands present, have a look.

GET GPS COORDINATES

The number 12345678 represents the password or the secret code for Guardian and sending this SMS to the theif’s number you just got, gives you:

The exact Latitude and Longitude along with a link to Google Maps that opens up in the phone’s browser itself. Mighty cool. I was trying this application out with my E90 that was inside my room, placed not very near to the windown and still it got a lock. (A positive for the phone and not necessarily the application, but the better the GPS, the more effective the application)

ALARM

Now that GPS lets you get close to the phone, how about a command that makes the phone let out a loud noise for as long as you want, after all this way you will locate it easier?

Once this command is sent, the result is that the phone emits a loud noise no matter what profile it was set on. The duration is determined by the ‘time=” dialog. The number represents seconds. This function might not have exactly the use I suggested above, however it is useful in one more area. Many a time we put the phone on silent/vibrate and forget where it was kept. It is in those situations too that this feature will be handy.

LOGS / DELETE

Guardian also allows us to recover as well as delete personal data from the phone. In case you want the last outgoing calls, sms, contacts from the phonebook, everything can be pulled. A different set of completely customisable commands allows us to delete received and sent sms, phonebook entries, photos, videos and voice records in any combination or individually.

FAKE SMS

Sending a Fake SMS on the theif’s number is also a fun feature of this application.

Now in practical life, I doubt anyone of us will send such a message, however as with this application’s other features, this has a parallel use too. Using the two phones in conjunction a person can make a false message with the sender as a friend/foe whatever and write anything inside to use it for his/her benefit! Neat!

COMMANDS

This is one of the biggest issues with the great application. How are we expected to remember all these different commands? We are not. The developer Marco has made it is easier for us here too. If I write “*12345*commands*” and send it to the theif’s number I will receive a complete set of customised commands ready to be sent as a forward!

VERDICT

Whether or not can this software allow you to get your phone back is not for sure at all, inspite of the GPS tracking. (A smart theif may flash the phone first. but then there are a lot of dumb people in the world too). However, that is only one dimension of the program, there are so many other things it can do; lock applications, send Fake SMS, locate phone with a sound and so on. It is also not heavy on the RAM or the battery. In light of these factors it comes out as an application that makies the phone seem complete.

The new Guardian Website is scheduled to go live today, go check the application out. I am not sure of the price as of now, but will keep you posted.

Update: The website is up and the Platinum version is 29.9$ and Gold is 18.9$. However, as a special thank you, to you, the readers, we have 5 licences to give away and a 30% discount too. Details here.

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It has been a while since Nokia has got the message that smartphones need ample RAM. If we look at just a few of the recently released phones, it becomes clear all of them have a decent amount of RAM, be it the E90, N82, N95 8GB even the slightly lower end phones like the N81 and E51 have been endowed with enough RAM.

What used to happen was that people new to S60 and its multitasking abilities used to hit the red key thinking they were closing the application and it would merely go to the background where it would stay in the memory and as the number of such applications increased, they would clog up the phone. To overcome this situation newer devices shipping with OS 9 killed the application when the red key was hit, this resulted in better performance and people were happy.

However let us look at today. Since phones have enough RAM Nokia makes certain applications live on inspite of the red key kill, to speed things up for us. The contacts, the menu and a few other applications stay on, hidden. So much so that in the music phones we cannot even kill the Music Player application if we wanted to, red key or no red key.

My point being that current smartphones, the mighty Nseries and Eseries, the multimedia computers as Nokia would call them are pretty efficient at managing multiple open applications. I tested the N82 and you would be surprised to know that I could run each and every application on the phone without even a single one crashing! There is no way in the world anyone is going to use a phone in that manner.

I know that we can simple keep something running and minimise it by hitting the menu key twice but there’s another another reason why I say this. Many a time, the red key is hit accidently; while in some applications the data is saved, in the others its all gone. E.g. Messaging will save the draft, but if I have the Web Browser open and I make a mistake, everything is gone, I might have been writing an email and its gone, poof! I don’t know if its ever happened with you but it happens to me, specially when I’m using a phone I’m not comfortable with yet.

Read on for my proposal.

Now, here’s my proposal.

= Make this option customisable - make two modes ‘Dummy’ and ‘Expert’.

= By default, in the Dummy mode, settings remain as they are - red key kills.

= In the Expert mode, let me choose what to do. Whether the red key will kill or not.

= Let me select specific applications that do not get closed by the red key.

= Let me choose the number of applications I want to keep running.

So whats the harm of letting us leave a few applications running in the background. Battery impact for less experienced users? Yes, thats an issue so may be we could cap the number of applications that can remain open. Say 5, and once a new one is opened after 5 and minimised, the first one to be sent to the background saves any current data and closes to make room for the newest entrant. (This is only valid in the dummy mode - experts are expected to know the impact). May be with time these ‘Dummy’ and ‘Expert’ modes could be developed to include a lot of other things such as applications shown, functionality and so on).

What I basically want is being able to make exceptions to the red key kills rule. The above is just a random though I had, what I suggested is not foolproof and there must be loopholes but this is how S60 should be, customisable. I am sure some of you have similar thoughts and some disagree, but lets see if we can work something out for the S60 bosses to think about.

Neil over on iGadget Life has just received a pre production Nokia N78 and has put up an unboxing video and pictures for us to enjoy. In the video, he goes through the new Photos application & the FM transmitter amongst other things and we get a glimpse of how the transitions in FP2 devices work.

If you recall the N78 was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which I was fortunate to attend and therefore was able to have a brief play with the device and here are my thoughts.

Jump over to Neil for pictures and more.

While still on the topic of the N78,  the Nseries Workshop has put up a detailed tutorial on the N78’s FM transmitter, worth a read.

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]]> http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/05/10/nokia-n78-unboxing/feed/ Vaibhav http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/05/10/s60-contest-show-your-s60-smarts/ http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/05/10/s60-contest-show-your-s60-smarts/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 18:45:02 +0000 Vaibhav Sharma http://vaibhavsharma.wordpress.com/?p=767

Saara over at the S60 Blogs announced an interesting contest a few days back. Its pretty simple, all you need to do is make a video of your S60 tip or your favorite application and submit it to the show your S60 smarts video contest group on YouTube. By doing this, you’ll have a chance to win a brand new S60 device or a Bluetooth headset and Handango gift vouchers.

They also have two demo videos up, one demonstrating the Nokia Sports Tracker in action and the other highlighting the S60 browser tips. Have a look, get an idea of what you need to do and get rolling! The contest is open until 20th May, so you have loads of time. Best of luck!

Details on how to enter below.

CATEGORIES:

1. Share your S60 insight - Show your favorite S60 tip demonstrating why is it so handy. Tag: myfavoritetrick

2. Show your favorite S60 application - Share your favorite S60 application or an internet service you can use with your S60 device and tell us how and why it makes your life good. Tag: myfavoriteapp

HOW TO ENTER?

1. Check out more information and official rules.
2. Create your S60 tip or favorite app video. The video should show an S60 device. A list of all S60 devices from www.s60.com/phones.
3. Become a member of YouTube, if your are not yet.
4. Upload your video to your YouTube account and tag it with either “myfavoriteapp” or “myfavoritetrick” depending on the category you want to enter your video to. Allow the possibility to comment, rate, embed and syndicate your video. The spoken words of the video should be in English.
5. Go to www.youtube.com/group/showyours60smarts, and click Join group.
6. Click Add video link & select your video to enter it.

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The folks over at the Beta Labs are really turning it on. Close on the heals of Nokia Communication Center and updates for Maps, Location Tagger and others comes a new beta - Nokia Step Counter. It allows us to count our steps and determines the distance we covered and then computes the energy expenditure. An option to compare our activity levels on different days by looking up the summaries stored is also there.

As the name suggests, it counts the number of steps you take by analyzing how you ’shake’ your phone.  The idea beind the application is that since most people have their phone with them everywhere they go, it is natural to use the accelerometer in an S60 product to track your daily activity.

Details and screenshots below.

The team beind the application has tried to make sure is accurate in most situations and it should work well when you have the phone in a pocket or a handbag you wear over your shoulder, holding it in the hand might present a problem though. The team is looking for feedback on accuracy and also wants to know whether we would like to see more statistics in graphical format or a more profound summary which goes beyond the obvious steps/calories/distance numbers?

Give it a shot on your N82, N95 or n95 8GB. Do keep in mind that there are two known issues which the team is working on fixing, one that height and weight must be entered in cm and kg regardless of whether Metric Units is chosen in Settings -> User and second that if the scheduler is disabled and the Step Counter is run past midnight statistics might be incorrectly allocated to different days.

Download!

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AAS reports that Nokia has temporarily removed Windows Vista from the compatibility list for the Nokia Software Updater. My reaction? Its about time they did that. A lot of us have been having trouble updating our devices on a Vista machine. I almost bricked my E90, fortunately things worked out after a little hit and trial and the same Vista machine made it work. Here’s the error people generally get, infact Antony had written about it earlier.

For someone new to S60 and Firmware upgrades such ‘not so pleasant experiences’ would go a long way in making them not trust their Nokia devices and PC applications. However, what is good to see is that Nokia has taken notice and are acting on it.

I’m sure the support will be back soon, till then we wait; and yes, look for XP machines!

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We heard about the Liam and Dora a while back and it finally looks like they will be a reality soon. Infact, as soon as tomorrow if the buzz floating around the blogosphere is to be believed. Meanwhile feast yourself on the lovely looking devices, the E66 looks slick!

The E71 on the other hand will have a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, GPS navigation, built-in WiFi and HSDPA network support and all of this in a 112 x 57 x 10 mm body. 10mm - Wow! Jump below for pictures.

Nokia E71

Via: Unwired View & Engadget

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The folks over at Beta Labs have been keeping busy these days. They have just released a new PC application called ‘Nokia Communication Center‘ which is a new simplified concept for managing messages and contacts in Nokia PC Suite. The good news is that it works with all Nokia devices that are compatible with PC Suite. The bad is that because its an early Beta it might have certain issues. From what I’ve seen of it so far, I like it!

Meanwhile the Nokia Text Messenger gadget for Windows Vista which fetches you the latest text messages from your connected Nokia device and displays them in the sidebar has also been updated.

Also, the wonderful Location Tagger has also received its last update.

Furthermore, the Nokia Channels application has also been reloaded and rebranded and launched as Nokia Headlines. A complete rundown of all the above below.

NOKIA COMMUNICATION CENTER

This new concept replaces four existing Nokia PC Suite features – Nokia Phone Browser, Nokia Text Message Editor, Nokia Contacts Editor, and Nokia Multimedia Factory – with one simple solution. This is an early release with the following features:

• Create and send messages easily
• Receive, view, forward, and reply to messages as they arrive
• Compose multimedia messages effortlessly with easy access to the images on both PC and device
• Manage messages, and sort and group them to quickly find what you are looking for
• Display all your messages in a timeline
• Manage all the contacts stored on your device
• Add new contacts with ease
• Create contact cards complete with thumbnail images

Depending upon the feedback Beta Labs receives, this will be integrated into the upcoming PC Suite versions.

Known Issues:

1) Opening unread message might crash application.
2) Export/Import functionality might not work correctly.
3) MMS management/sending might not work correctly.

Download!

LOCATION TAGGER

Now that Nokia plans to include built in Geo-Tagging for selected devices [e.g. N78] this application is being shevled and will get no more updates. It however is quite stable and works well already. The latest release includes:

• Persistent log. Now when you exit the application, your list of images in your logs tab will not disappear. When you delete an image from the Gallery of File Manager, the item will also be removed from the logs tag.
• File renaming. There is additional option in the Settings menu to rename tagged file. The file name will be added _NLT as suffix. For example, if the original file name is image001.jpg, it will be renamed to image001_NLT.jpg. This feature will allow you to easily differentiate between tagged and non-tagged files.
• Get location from cache. As you may know from our last posting that Location Tagger tags pictures with the last known position in the last 1 hour. If there is no last known position, it will put pictures in the queue until time-out. We added a new feature that allows you to get location from GPS device’s cache.
• Optimization and some bug fixes. This new version should run relatively faster than the previous one.

Download!

NOKIA HEADLINES

I have seen few people use this service, but according to Beta Labs it is still going strong and therefore has recived this update and rebranding.

New features:

1. New name and icon: Headlines
2. If the battery level drops below 14%, the intelligent content background updater stops automatically.
3. After reboot background updater starts automatically.
4. Publication content packages are stored to memory card when available.
5. Possibility to offer “preinstalled” publications.
6. Add content item added to Option menu in My content view.
7. Possibility to fetch advertisements from publisher’s own Ad serving platform.

Key fixes:

1. Memory leakage fixed when browsing back and forth on headline tabs.
2. Memory full notification fixed.
3. Minor UI fixes in All content and My content views.

Download!

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The N82 with the killer looks is in the house. It is just BEAUTIFUL and at this point I will shut up and let the pictures do the talking. Loads of shots below.

- SLIDESHOW

- COMPLETE HI RES GALLERY ON OVI (54 Images)

CLICK TO ENLARGE

If you liked these pictures, check out the complete 54 Image Gallery here.

The Complete N82 Review:

- MultitasKING - N82

- Reflections - Nokia N82: Build, Feel & Camera

- Reflections - Nokia N82: Usability, Multimedia and Performance

- Reflections - Nokia N82: N95 8GB Comparison & Final Verdict

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A little while back I wrote a N82 and N95 8GB comparison to pick out a winner and although close but the 8GB won. When we look at the Eseries for a flagship, there is only one device looking us in the face, the E90. While Nseries has a tendency of churning out flagship devices at a quick clip, this isn’t quite the case with Eseries. Traditionally Eseries has been all business with poor cameras, the old pop port, not so great music and so on while the Nseries has been all of that and then some more. When the E90 came out, it bridged this gap, at least theoretically with a 3.2 auto focus camera, stereo speakers, A2DP, GPS almost everything that one looks for in a music phone. But is it enough to make a long time Nseries owner jump ship?

This post pits two unlikely phones, flasgships of two different series against each other and we try and pick a winner.

INTRODUCTION

E90- The E90 is the latest Communicator from Nokia and built on the same form factor as the previous 9xxx series. However it is now based on the S60 platform. The best aspect of this device is that the outer and the inner screen have both been integrated and whatever goes on, on one, when you change screen is immediately available on the other. This makes it a complete phone even if we for a minute forget it has something inside too.

N95 8GB- The 8GB is a slider based on the N95 and tries to cover up whatever fallies it had. It is a good looking device that fits in the hand well, the build quality is good and more importantly it is top spec for today’s standards.

SPECIFICATIONS

E90- The E90 boasts of a huge 800 x 352 pixels, 16 million color internal display and the outer is brought up by a 240 x 320 pixels screen. It also features a 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS, 2.5mm jack, mini USB, port , microSD slot, full backlit QWERTY and a 1500 mAh battery. What is notably missing is TV Out.

N95 8GB- The 8GB on the other hand has even better specs with a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens camera, GPS, a 3.5mm plug, miniUSB, TV Out and a large 2.8″ 240 x 320 pixel display. The battery on this device is 1200 mAh.

CAMERA

The E90 packs a 3.2 megapixel camera, however without the Carl Zeiss branding. The pleasant surprise here was that Nokia decided to include VGA video recording at ‘upto’ 30 FPS. In comparison to the Nseries giants who can do VGA, the E90 seems to struggle a little more with low light conditions. As far as still photography goes it does well for random shots, however you will not carry it along as your only camera. The 8GB on the other hand can easily take that role.

MUSIC

Considering its an Eseries taking on an Nseries, most would jump to the conclusion that this is no contest, but the E90 surprises. It features stereo loudspeakers with decent volume and a 2.5mm jack when used with an adapter and headphones that can put the 8GB to shame. There is the same 8 band equiliser, however support for formats like wma is missing on the E90. The radio is plain and not the Visual Radio found on the Nseries, in fact its reproduction also seemed worse. This round will therefore still go to the 8GB due to better loudspeakers and the 3.5mm plug; narrow victory though.

CONNECTIVITY

Both devices are HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth and IR capable thus similar in terms of connectivity. However inspite of having WiFi it does not feature the Home Media client that allows us to stream/copy music and video over a WiFi network. This is sorely missed.

SCREEN

This is an interesting battle. A 2.8″ 240 x 320 screen v/s a 800 x 352 pixel widescreen. Lets examine it with the help of various tasks they are used for.

WEB BROWSING - The E90 is a clear winner in this department due to its huge inner screen, which on most occasions displays websites in the same manner as you would view on a laptop with almost no horizontal scrolling required.

PHOTOS- When it comes to displaying photos the E90 does have its share of difficulties. There is no slideshow! While the 8GB displays them beautifully with the Ken Burns (Pan and Scan) effect. Individual photographs do look good on the E90’s Hi-Res screen though.

VIDEO- Wide screen video is always a pleasure to watch, however its not as freely available as we’d like. The real player does not even utilise the entire screen and the videos are shown in a small box and the actual physical area covered is less than on the 8GB. When it comes to playback with CorePlayer, full screen video is possible because of the program’s rich features. But if the video is high bitrate and high resolution, then it stutters to the point where it becomes pointless to watch. Bottomline being that you need to convert video to suit the E90 and only then will you be pleased with the results. Therefore because of the additional work required in the E90’s case the winner turns out to be the 8GB. Moreover the loudspeakers on the backside, due to their positioning, also do not help the E90.

TEXT ENTRY

There is a debate about T9 v/s QWERTY and I personally prefer T9. The good thing about the E90 is that it has both. I have found myself a lot of times turning to T9 when I needed to enter a lot of text. The 8GB features only T9 and thats where it obviously looses out. The QWERTY is great for entering usernames, passwords, filling forms etc.

SIZE AND WEIGHT

This clearly is a negative for the E90, but the question is does it pack enough to make the user ignore this aspect? The communicator mode requires two hands to operate it and sometimes becomes a problem, specially say when you want to use the device lying down. I have found myself reaching for the N95 on a number of occasions if I wanted to browse while still in bed. Its normal phone mode has a much smaller screen than the 8GB, fully capable though. It is good enough for on the go browsing or any other task, but if one is to use such a huge phone in that mode on most occassions, it kinda defeats the purpose of buying a E90.

One contributor to the E90’s bulk is the 1500 mAh battery which I love. The 8GB on very heavy usage barely makes it through a day while the E90 can do almost two. When you feel the battery is running low, you can restrict yourself to the E90’s outer screen and thus save some juice while on the 8GB the entire 2.8″ will light up no matter what. I personally do not mind the bulk much and the E90’s all round capabilities still win it for me.

WE HAVE A WINNER, BUT DOES THE WINNER TAKE ALL?

I am writing piece from the prespective of an existing N95 owner who is looking to upgrade. What options does he have? N82? N95 8GB? Both of those devices are very similar to the N95 and offer benefits such as xenon and better battery or large screen and better battery. Here is where the E90 comes in. It offers both a better battery and a larger screen.

The dilema I faced when I was looking for an upgrade for myself was between the 8GB and the E90. Since I had no plans to sell/dispose the N95 off, I went in for the E90 because I always would have recourse to the camera or TV out whenever I needed it, its just a matter of swaping the microSD. Thus this was more about making a combo rather than one device.

Had I bought the N82 or the 8GB it would have rendered my N95 useless and give me very little in the way of a new experience. But would I have bought the E90 if I did not have a 5 megapixel device as a back up? The answer is a resounding no. So if you are going to have just one device, choose between the N82 and the 8GB, if not, E90 is definately the way to go! The E90 wins it, but on the back on a Nseries. It doesn’t take all!

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