Rating: 3/5. Good for value for money and good looks, not so much the sound.

The keyboard is almost exactly the same size as a full size laptop but touch typing is a little more difficult at the keys are flatter than normal and the gap in-between the keys doesn’t seem as large.

Alienware M11x - Reflective Screen

It’s got one of those gloss reflective screens – and it’s MASSIVELY reflective. If you are running on the battery then the default brightness is so low you only see yourself staring back at you, and you have to turn the brightness up. It seems much more reflective (read: worse) than the gloss screen on the Samsung Q430 that I recently had. The blacks aren’t very black, there seems to be a lot of “backlight bleed” with the whole screen looking mostly grey. The default black wallpaper doesn’t give a good first impression of the screen – as all you can see is yourself in the reflection. (If I wanted to see myself I would have bought a mirror!)

Also it’s LOUD – after running the Windows Experience index two times, the fan in the laptop stayed on for a long time … and has not yet shut up, despite CPU usage hovering around 10% while I’m typing this. You can overclock the processor in the Dell BIOS – the options are Overclock : Enable, and Disable (which is the default).

Alienware Lights

The speakers built into the laptop seem very good. 50% volume is too loud for close use. The volume of iPlayer for example can easily be set to be louder than the volume of the fan, however it’s not very silent – and doesn’t tend to stay silent when watching.

The default speed is 1.3ghz, you can overclock the laptop in the BIOS, see here, for the scores and much more information about the laptop. Boosts CPU / RAM score from 4.1 / 4.8 to 4.6 / 5.4. GFX for both desktop and 3D is 6.5 and disk score 5.9. I think you can even turn down the performance of the GFX – perhaps this would make the laptop quieter?

Windows Experience Scores: M11x: CPU: 4.1 RAM: 4.8 GFX: 6.4 3D GFX: 6.4  HDD: 5.9 (Nvidia, CPU 1.3ghz)
Windows Experience Scores: Q430: CPU: 6.3 RAM: 5.9 GFX:4.9 3D GFX: 5.9 HDD: 5.9
Windows Experience Scores: 1510:  CPU: 4.8 RAM: 4.8 GFX: 3.5 3D GFX: 3.5  HDD: 5.1
Windows Experience Scores: R500:  CPU: 2.8 RAM: 4.2 GFX: 2.2 3D GFX: 3.0 HDD: 5.1

Yes – you can switch between graphics cards the NVidia GeForce graphics, or the “discrete” built in graphics – using FN + F6 – the built in graphics being “Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset” / “Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD” with 64mb dedicated memory.

GeForce GT 335M – dedicated video memory 1024mb – switching between the modes is quite quick although if the graphics processor is in use, it asks you to close the program before it will switch. There is a slight degradation of image quality when switching to the Intel graphics – and it’s noticeable on the external display more than the internal laptop screen (Seiko / Epson Laptop Display) - for example on an external 22inch screen. The text isn’t as crisp, but the display is quite stable.

Using the Intel graphics seems to keep the laptop quiet(er). Watching iplayer even – (the laptop CPU usage averages around 29%) – the laptop settles down to a nice quiet purr. There is still a fan running, but it’s nice to see that there’s a quiet mode as well.

More on the screen – it’s very fingerprint prone – so not only is it super reflective, you also need to make sure you don’t touch it. It also has a large border and dare I say it, it looks kind of 90s – like Star Trek The Next Generation – trying to be futuristic but in reality looking kind of dated. (More to be added…)

Pros:
+ Good value for money now that Dell are offering it for £498
+ Switchable between Intel gfx (quiet, low power), or Nvidia (loud, good for games)
+ Overclock friendly – need more speed, switch it on in the BIOS
+ Built in SIM card slot! (Firewire, PATA)
+ Metal bottom to laptop, alienware fabric sleeve
+ Excellent battery life

Cons:
- Can be really loud when using Nvidia graphics
- Not entirely convinced by the keyboard (yet)
- Reflective gloss screen (although it’s less reflective with a brighter wallpaper)
- SD / Memory cards stick out when in the reader
- Keyboard marks the screen when the laptop is closed

Not as large as a 15.6″ laptop, and not as small as a netbook, but slightly larger than 13.3″ laptops, the Samsung Q430 offers everything you’d get with a laptop, but comes in at a netbook similar price, has a battery life approaching a netbook, and is lighter than your standard laptop. What else does it feature to make it stand out? Well compared to it’s smaller brother, the Q330, the Q430 features a dedicated Nvidia Geforce (Cuda) graphics with it’s own 512mb memory. See below for it’s key features:

Samsung Q430 Features:
- Intel Core i3 350 2.26ghz CPU (dual core with hyperthreading – enabling 4 cpus)
- 4GB RAM (DDR3 – 3.86gb available)
- 320gb HD
- 14 inch 1366×768 16:9 screen with LED backlight (gloss – boo!*)
- DVDrw/CDrw
- NVidia Geforce 310m 512mb GFX
- 2.1kg
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
- Built in webcam, SD card reader, HDMI out, 3 USB sockets, ethernet, wifi etc

First switch on – easy enough, quick to go through the Windows setup process, entering the laptop name, wifi connection etc, then “Samsung Software Installing” takes over… and 20 minutes later you’ll still be waiting for it to finish installing… what I do not know (yet). But it’s probably stuff you don’t want clogging up your laptop… this is a somewhat frustrating start, as it doesn’t tell you what it’s installing or give you any explanation or choice regarding whether you want it or not.

Part of this is to ask you to partition your hard drive (I went for default settings, 160/120gb for C and D or something similar). Then after about 30 minutes in total you end up on a nice shiny blue Windows desktop. IE8 comes pre-installed, and comes with mcafee site advisor / mcafee security centre, google toolbar, already installed and active.

Design: Latch-less shiny black lid. Silver inside. Quite rattley plastic silver, textured to appear as metal, but you can tell it’s not. The keyboard looks neat with square black keys much like an Apple laptop, or Sony Vaio. There’s also an extra row on the very right hand side with Del, Home, PgUp, PgDown, End which should make it easier to access compared my current laptop (a Dell Vostro 1510), and the \ and / slash keys are in the correct place (unlike my current Vostro!). There are not really any dedicated volume controls apart from the FN + Left/Right buttons, on the keyboard. The trackpad’s mouse buttons are good with little travel and a re-assuringly responsive click.

Windows score: (Windows Experience Index)
Overall: 4.9, CPU: 6.3, RAM: 5.9, Graphics (Desktop): 4.9, Graphics (Gaming): 5.9, HDD: 5.9

Idle volume: the idle volume of the laptop is quite noticeable – there is a constant fan noise even when the CPU is doing very little. The Vostro 1510 on the other hand is silent unless under quite heavy load.

Samsung Q430 Volume Controls

The keyboard is really quite good and takes very little time to get used to so that you can quickly start touch typing on the laptop. Although the wrist rest area is a little small, as the keyboard is not as far back as some other laptops, the keyboard is still quite comfortable to type on.

Samsung Q430 Side Ports

Screen: gloss is bad for reflections, when looking at a black background you’ll either see a reflection of yourself or lights or other (terrible outdoors in the sun for example), however, the black is often very black and the gloss finish makes photos look very colourful, rich, saturated, etc, almost like a high quality photo print. The optimal viewing angles for the screen aren’t great, although when you do angle it correctly the blacks are very black, angle it wrong and you get what looks like backlight bleed. The screen is also quite low, so long periods of looking at the screen with your head bent down may not be the best for you.

Samsung Q430 DVD Drive

Flickering VGA output? using the VGA cable connected to an external monitor, the screen / image seems to wobble / flicker… fault or just a design / quality flaw – is this something they all do?? It’s worse when you are using the mouse, so could be power related, however, if the cheaper Vostro 1510 doesn’t do this, then a more expensive machine shouldn’t do this!

Battery life – Fully charged, Windows says the battery should last 3 hours.

As someone who uses an external monitor when using the laptop on a desk, I find the flickering of the external display really quite disappointing. (Something a budget Vostro 1510 doesn’t suffer from) Likewise, after using the virtually silent Vostro 1510 (the only noise you hear most of the time is the hard drive accessing), I find the default / idle noise of the Samsung Q430 disappointing. The first issue seems like it may be a fault, the second, seems like a design or configuration flaw. I don’t know whether I can learn to live with these issues… (I’m wondering whether I would have been better off with the Intel graphics based Q330… even though it has a smaller screen…)

Pros:
+ 14inch screen / compact size
+ Good keyboard – good layout, and easy to touchtype
+ Good spec for the price

Cons:
- Flickering VGA output
- Loud fan (even when CPU idle)
- Would be nice to have a slot loading drive
- unimpressed by the memory card reader – easily loses contact

These four aspects seem to be important when buying and using in-ear earphones: Sound quality, Build quality, fitment, and price, so I’ll rate each based on this, and then give a total score.

Creative Labs EP-630 (Best Overall Value) – from £8 – £12 from Amazon UK
Excellent for the price (value 9/10). Good buds – fitment wise they are very good (9/10). Good cable, build quality and design are very good for the price – assuming you get them for £8 (9/10), or £12 (8/10). Sound (7/10), very good sound but very bass driven, and not as crisp as others.
Overall: 8.25/10

JVC Marshmallow FX-34 – around £10 on Amazon UK
Cheapest foam earphones available (upgraded by the FX-35), slightly too large plastic can make them too large. Sound quality is very good, although can take some “run in”, and mine started failing after around 3 months! Cable is good and doesn’t seem to tangle. Good value for money – especially compared to other foam earphones – often costing much more. However, you can tell these are cheaply made, as the foam slides on, rather than clips on. Sound 8/10 (strong bass), Build 5/10, Fitment 6/10 (Can be too big for some people), Value 9/10.
Overall: 7/10

Philips SHE-8500 – around £12 on Amazon UK
Very good sound. Not very good rubber buds – too soft making the fitment* lose and difficult to get complete isolation from the surrounding noises. Poor quality cable, not very flexible, feels cheap, and brittle, and tangles easily. Poor design of plastic (square) making any contact with ear while fitting them uncomfortable. Sound quality: 9/10, build quality: 5/10, fitment: 5/10, value: 8/10.
Overall: 6.75/10

Nokia BH-214 (Best value bluetooth) Bluetooth wireless earbuds – from £15 – £20 from Amazon UK
Great value for money, but sound quality not so great compared to others. You can use the bluetooth wireless numbers with other earphones, so can always use these as an entry into wireless earphones. Sound quality: 6-7/10 (Sound slightly worse when using the bluetooth adapter – less bass and clarity etc), build quality: 7/10 (jack is not gold plated), fitment: 8/10, value: 10/10 (includes Nokia charger as well).
Overall: 7.75/10

Sennheiser CX-300 IIs (Winner!) – around £18 from Amazon UK^ – but sometimes more.
Good cable. Good buds. Best price / performance / quality in my opinion. In fact , if you can stretch (financially) to these, buy these and never look back. Sound 9/10 (perhaps not as bass driven as some of the others), Build 8/10, Fitment 9/10, Value 8/10 (inludes carry case / pouch).
Overall: 8.5/10

Overall: The Sennheiser CX-300 II are clear winners, offering the best sound quality, fitment and build quality, at a reasonable price. The Creative Labs EP-630 offer a lot for the price, and are runners up. And the Nokia BH-214 are worth considering because they offer bluetooth connectivity at a very reasonable price.

* Fitment – correct fitment is key / essential to getting the best sound out of the earphones, not getting the correct fitment can mean the sound is completely lacking bass etc. This is the same with all of these in-ear style earphones.

^ Recommend purchasing directly from Amazon, to avoid potentially getting fake earphones.

* Can replace this with Spotify if you have an account as Spotify is available for both.

Find new / more apps for Symbian / Nokia on http://blog.ovi.com/dailyapp/global/, Nokia Betalabs (apps), recommended apps on MobileRnR

The Orange San Francisco / ZTE Blade offers an extremely cheap entry into the world of Android. Priced around £99 (with a mandatory top up of £10/£20), it offers excellent value for money, and is one of the higher spec phones available around that price. Offering a large 3.5″ screen with a high resolution of 800×480, a 600mhz cpu, and 2gb of Micro SD ram.

Another big feature of the phone is the community support for the phone, allowing it to be unlocked for free (found via Modaco), and upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo), and potentially newer versions when they are released, it has it’s own dedicated forum here at Modaco.

Nokia N8 OLED - Orange San Francisco TFT

The “SanFran”, as some people affectionally call it, has 3 physical buttons at the bottom of the screen: Home, Menu, Back, one power button at the top, and volume buttons at the side, there is no dedicated camera button or unlock button. To unlock you press the power button and slide something on the screen based on what version of android (or screensaver) you have. Considering the whole touch screen ethos of the android operating system, it seems strange to have to use physical / moving buttons to navigate – it would make more sense for these to be soft touch buttons (as I’m sure other android phones do).

Box Contents: Phone, Battery, Orange SIM, Earphones with microphone (earbuds, NOT in-ear earphones), Wall charger (Plugs into wall and has USB socket), USB Cable (used to charge phone with wall-charge or plug into computer), User guides (quick start guide, printed 133 page manual, plus 2nd manual for orange software), 2GB MicroSD Card.

Phone quality – Making and receiving calls, the audio quality is very good, the speaker is loud and clear, and quality seemed very good with no feedback or echo noticeable. (Although you network coverage may alter your experience)

Music playback – full volume is still on the quiet side of things. The music player app is fine, nothing seems to be missing, but nothing stands out as particularly interesting either. It does the job, but only seems to work in portrait mode (and not landscape). Music playback is interupted by other app notifications!? (Could just be my OS build, 2.2, and even when the other notifications are set to silent!?)

Web browser – this is quick, responsive, and works well.

Some screenshots, click to enlarge, homescreen, app updates, task manager.

Android market (app store) – this has very nice integration with websites, you visit the site, click the link to download from the store, it takes you there and you click install, it then takes you back to the website and downloads and installs the app in the background. Very swish, very un-intrusive, very simple, very easy, the way it should be done. (I’m looking at you Nokia) It’s also ironic that you can get Snake free for the android – but no official version from Nokia for Nokia phones…

Orange San Francisco ZTE Blade Back / Battery / MicroSD / SIM slots

Expansion – Under the one piece back cover (made of plastic), you’ll find slots for the MicroSD card, SIM card, and battery. Small hole next to the camera lens – could be a reset button?

Battery – a 1250mah 3.7v battery.

Build and size: Slim, compact, the back cover covers the power button, and needs to be taken off / put back on carefully as, like the Nokia N95, it could cause problems if not treated with care or over-used. The plastic is coated with a rubbery texture, making the phone feel like a higher quality / higher price handset than it actually is, and internally the circuit boards seem very thin. The use of philips head screws make it very tempting to take apart…

Orange San Francisco ZTE Blade Taken Apart (Teardown)

There’s a hidden screw under a white dot, so no doubt taking it apart will void your warranty, there’s also a moisture detector dot under the battery, as shown above, and there are 8 screws in total holding the phone together, after taking these out, the phone then unclips with some encouragement – although you can help it along by pushing the clips surrounding the battery area – I didn’t want to go further than this as the rest looked like it needed the ribbon cables disconnecting, and this is often fiddly.

Orange San Francisco ZTE Blade TFT Screen Removed (back) - Click to Enlarge

To remove the front glass / case, you need to remove / disconnect the top ribbon cable that connects the *something* (don’t know what). The ribbon cable connections are held in place with plastic that “pops” up, and the wi-fi aerial also pops-off. The screen is quite firmly glued on to the main plastic “chassis” in the middle of the phone, and there is also a ribbon cable behind the main board connecting the top led and light sensor, and the volume control ribbon cable is soldiered on, and the buttons are glued onto the chassis, making it very difficult to disconnect / remove – it quickly becomes very fiddly.

Identifiable chips / components: (Click images above to enlarge, or to view additional images!) Top: Samsung SWB-A23 (Wifi, bluetooth), Qualcomm (hidden from view), Qualcomm PM754, AH56714, C1034003 (Power management), Underneath: Samsung 040, KA1000015M-AJTT, YK10338E (RAM), Qualcomm MSM7 (CPU, hidden from view), TriQuint 7M5012H, 1037, KORE, AT9366. Camera module: Made by MCNEX MC_32A2_48, 2010.06.04, the chip on the front of the phone, above the screen: 1KAAV0QW, Z1A0AD09.

Nokia N8 Camera with Flash - Orange San Francisco Camera with no Flash

Camera – 3.2 megapixel AF (Auto-focus) lens. Photos are awful. Terrible. Horrible. Utterly crap. Seriously substandard.

Other features? Impressions? The top bar shows you your notifications, things like texts, twitter or app notifications, and battery / connectivity status etc (3G, Bluetooth etc), but doesn’t actually let you interact with the notifications on the right of the bar… you can’t click the battery, for example, to see how much remains (like you can on Symbian ^3), instead you seem to have to go through the phones setting menu to get the information.

Updated conclusion: 6 months later: (10/07/2011) Some have said, in the comments that this review is overly negative, and somewhat lacking in it’s conclusion, and I agree. In retrospect, the ZTE Blade (Orange San Francisco) is still, to this day, 6 months later, one of the most fully featured, and lowest priced android phones available, and the good screen, and low price make it very apealling, especially with such a huge homebrew community of support. I bought it as I wanted to see what all the fuss about Android was, and I wasn’t as impressed as I felt I should have been, especially considering all the hype. There are areas of weakness such as the poor camera software (camera is poor on this phone, but may suffice in great weather, outdoors), and generally android isn’t as polished as I think it should be (this may have changed with newer versions, I tested 2.2). The ZTE Blade with a lower spec processor than most, won’t do flash, which is a huge drawback for me as I need iPlayer on my phone. Another big weakness is the high SAR levels (1.35 W/kg) – enough to give some users enough of an issue that they’ve seen a GP (Doctor) about it… Another big issue is the fact that everyone feels the need to mess with the google version of android, and try and add their own skin, apps, and money making programs to the phone. Very annoying. Anyway, to try and conclude this as quickly as possible, the ZTE Blade (OSF), is a great phone considering the price, and if well worth looking at if you’re on a limited budget and don’t mind the various issues the phone has.

Pros: (Positives)
+ High resolution 3.5″ capacitive screen (responsive)
+ Extremely good value for money
+ Easily unlocked, for free
+ Upgradable to Android 2.2
+ Tons of apps, good app store experience
+ Notification of app updates, and “Update all” button (not just OS)
+ Full screen PDF viewer (in QuickOffice)

Cons: (Negatives)
- Home screens don’t work in landscape mode (see Symbian ^3, or Launcher Pro for Android)
- Music playback is interrupted by other app noises! (even when the phone and notifications are silent)
- Limited memory as standard (only 2gb MicroSD provided)
- AWFUL camera (see Nokia N8!), lacks even basic LED flash
- Fragmented OS / Features ie BBC iPlayer is supposed to work on 2.2 (using Flash*) but wouldn’t for me, 2.1 it just isn’t available (see Nokia / Apple)
- Poor battery life (8 hours)
- No strap loop / wriststrap mounting hole
- Camera shutter sound on, even when all sound muted.
- Default install location is the phones memory, not MicroSD, easy to fill the 512mb built in.
- Difficult to use one-handed (back button awkward – and pressing the background of the screen doesn’t take you back so you have to press the back button – easier on Symbian ^3 to just press the screen behind the pop up menu)

* Flash 10.1 is needed, which isn’t available for the ZTE Blade due to the ARM6 processor.

Useful links: ChrisLowthian.co.uk How to Unlock.
Orange San Francisco also available from Amazon UK (Unlocked).

Main Features / Specifications:

• 12 megapixel camera, with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash
• HD Video recording – 720p – image stabilisation available (digital)
• 3.5″ 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED Capacitive touch screen
• Symbian^3 with over 250 new features, Java MIDP 2.1
• Web Runtime 7.2, Flash Lite 4.0, HTML 4.1, Qt 4.6.2
• 50 hours MP3 playback (when in offline mode)
• Free sat-nav navigation with Ovi Maps
• 3 live home screens with widgets
• On-demand Web TV
• HDMI / HDTV out
• Dolby Digital Plus technology*
• USB on the go – plug in USB things like pendrives, keyboards, digital cameras etc
• Anodized aluminium casing, available in: Silver white, Dark grey, Orange, Blue, Green
• Dedicated graphics processor with OpenGL 2.0 enables 3D graphics, Accelerometer
• BL-4D 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery (internal, but can be removed using torx screws)
• Internal memory: 16 GB, MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, up to 32 GB
• Capability to serve as data modem (ie “Tethering”) assuming you’re not crippled by your phone network.
• FM Radio, FM Transmitter
• Optional accesories: Nokia SU-36 Capacitive Stylus £10 (If yours doesn’t include it)

Previously, I’d questioned or rather suggested improvements I’d like to see implemented in the new Nokia N8 / Symbian^3 phone operating system update. Just as a very quick answer to see whether they have resolved my concerns I’ll look at each point (although you can probably see the answers from the screens shown below):

Nokia N8 Home Screens - Widgets, Shortcuts, RSS - Click to enlarge - here I've setup the first screen to show the interactive widgets, and favourite contacts (photos taken from twitter, phone, and facebook), the second screen I've filled with the search widget and shortcuts (making it look like an iphone or an android phone), and the third screen I've filled with RSS feeds - including an RSS feed from twitter.

RSS feeds on the home screen: Yes. By default you can get specific widgets such as the BBC News RSS Feed widget, and CNN News RSS Feed widget, these are built in to the phone as standard. If you subscribe to an RSS feed in the built in web browser, it will then appear as an option to put it on the home screens as an RSS widget.

Improved UI Design / Icons: Compared to Symbian S60 v3 or v5 (Touch), and the N97 / N97 Mini the interface is much nicer to use, graphically more pleasing, and much more responsive. The general look of the icons when in the main menu is still rather plain and not drastically different, but is more pleasing overall due to the blue buttons (they have tidied up the icons making them a little prettier, but they still have the same general look). There do seem to be some UI (User Interface) design quirks in that the exit button will move position when in landscape mode (such as the camera mode – this was not the case with the N97 Mini!).

Improved Web Browser: This is questionable. The browser is a slightly newer version (N8 is v7.2.7.2, N97 is v7.1.4), and deals with BBC iPlayer slightly differently, but is still very similar to the old browser. Overload it and instead of being able to view videos from iplayer or youtube, you’ll still get the “broken flash” icon. Apparently the first firmware update will include an improved browser. The new browser now supports Multi-touch and pinch zooming.

Improved sharing features: Photo send options are via message, mail or bluetooth. Where are the send to flickr, facebook, twitter, etc options? Update: – once you sign into Social (by Nokia) you then get the option to upload photos and videos to facebook and twitter straight after taking them! It’s a bit basic, but works well – yay!

Built in Twitter / Facebook client and home screen widget: Yes, twitter and facebook client / widget built in, called Nokia Social. This also integrates with the Contacts on the phone, and you can pull twitter / facebook friends profile picture into your contacts, and view their shared contact details on facebook.

Improved battery life or sleep mode: Too soon to say, but the screen saver looks low power (other screen saver options are: music player, which will display the track you’re playing even when the phones locks, slideshow, Big Clock, Animation or None). Wifi, and other internet connections *seem* to go to sleep when not in use, and the phone also copes well with having many apps running in the background, even overnight, without much battery life problems. With the N97 Mini, running programs overnight normally meant waking up to a flat battery, not so with the N8. The battery is the same 1200mah battery as used in the Nokia N97 Mini (BL-4D). So far the battery lasts longer than the N97 Mini, and in everyday use, the N8 battery lasts 15 hours (I will add more results later), although the battery life will be highly dependant on what features you use and how often you use them. Another new feature added to the phone, is that it now shows you how much the phone is charged in percentage, even when the phone is off.

PC software needs fixing – why are there separate apps for Nokia Maps loader, Nokia Ovi Suite, Nokia Software Updater, etc, why can’t these all be combined into one? This appears to be being resolved, with the majority of tools being put inside Nokia Ovi Suite, however there still appears to be development of Nokia Software Updater as a separate program. Nokia Ovi Suite is available on the phone to install, when you connect the phone in Mass Storage mode.

Have a screen that works outside even when battery is low: Too soon to say, however, the screen clarity and brightness looks like a significant improvement over the Nokia N97 Mini and the N8 features an AMOLED screen, although this wasn’t a good thing when the Nokia N86 8mp featured an AMOLED screen, as it was very difficult to see it in bright sunlight.

Lots of memory (RAM) for multi-tasking: Despite the N8 only having 256mb internally for the C: drive, compared to the Nokia N97 Mini’s 512mb, the N8 seems to be able to run WAY more apps simultaneously when compared to the N97 Mini – I have not yet seen any memory error messages despite running applications that cause problems on the N97 Mini. Running 11+ applications is not a problem, as Symbian^3 now has virtual memory support.

Photoshop for Symbian anyone? Already, since the release of the Nokia N8, Nokia have released a new photography app, Nokia Panoramic. There are other photo apps currently under development… see Nokia Make My App, in particular: Mobile Photoshop and Auto HDR Photography.

High Quality Audio / MP3 Playback: The Nokia N8 is already at a disadvantage compared to the Nokia N97 and N97 Mini, as the N8 only has one speaker for playback. However, it improves over the N97 Mini by including an FM transmitter. For stereo sound you will need to plug in some earphones / headphones. The music player on the N8 is greatly improved over the player on previous Nokia phones, and provides smooth scrolling through album art.

Volume is very high – much higher than the N97 Mini, and clarity (particularly treble) is exceptional, without distortion at 100% volume. The N8 is very capable of driving large headphones, at potentially dangerous volume levels, and the volume can be changed with the side volume control even when the phone is locked (this was not possible with the N97 Mini, which is nice). Gapless playback of MP3s? Nope, it almost seems like it’s trying though, with a one or two second gap.

Music features:

• Flick scroll to browse the albums in your music collection
• Ovi Music Unlimited service on selected markets
• Nokia Ovi Player
• Ovi Music store
• Music codecs: .MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB
• Bit rate up tp 320 kbps
• DRM support WM DRM, OMA DRM 2.0
• FM transmitter
• Stereo FM radio (87.5-108 MHz/76-90 MHz)

Nokia N8 Camera – Carl Zeiss Tessar Lens, f2.8, 28mm equivalent (wide-angle), Auto focus. Xenon flash at the top. Speaker hole at the bottom.

The Nokia N8 Camera: One of the greatly anticipated (and hyped) features of the Nokia N8 is the 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash. Nokia have put in a 12 megapixel sensor (1/1.83-inch) that is the same size as you find in your typical compact digital camera from Canon, Panasonic etc, and whilst nowhere near as good as the large sensor you would find in a Digital SLR, it is an improvement over the tiny sensors found in every other camera phone. As proof to how serious Nokia are taking the camera abilities of the N8, they posted 34 questions and answers about JUST the camera on the phone.

Golden autumn leaves, 12mp, 2.56mb, ISO105, f2.8, 1/155, Click to enlarge.

Camera features:

• 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• Xenon flash
• Face recognition software
• Autofocus
• Focal length: 5.9 mm, Wide-angle 28mm equivalent
• F number/Aperture: F2.8
• Still images file format: JPEG/EXIF
• Zoom up to 2x (digital) for still images
• Zoom up to 3x (digital) for video

Some photos above: click to enlarge, click again to view full size.

More on the Camera: The camera defaults to taking 9 megapixel 16:9 wide aspect ratio photos (4000 x 2248) – switching to 12 megapixel images gives the more usual 4:3 aspect ratio (4000 x 3000), and 12mp photos average between 3.2mb and 1mb, which means they are quite highly compressed. After taking over 50 photos, the ISO (when set to AUTO) has ranged from ISO100 to ISO229. Manual settings for ISO are available and can be set to Low (ISO100), Medium (ISO400), or High (ISO800).

Video features:

• 12 megapixel with Carl Zeiss optics
• HD quality 720p resolution
• Shoot 16:9 videos in HD
• Video capture in 720p 25 fps with codecs H.264, MPEG-4
• Settings for scene, white balance, colour tone
• 3x digital zoom available

The phone has a new video player, that supports DIVX, and XVID playback, including mkv files.

Plugging the phone into Windows 7 and you get some useful information, as Symbian^3 now supports Windows 7 properly:

Charge, Photos, Memory (Here it’s showing 20+gb as I’ve put an 8gb Micro SD card in), Text messages, Missed calls etc,

Other improvements: There’s a new keyboard mode (not yet supported by most apps), that lets you view your program, and your keyboard at the same time, it also implements predictive text / words, which makes using the keyboard much quicker. Simply start typing the word, and suggestions will appear making it quicker to use than the old qwerty keyboard.

USB on the go: Plug in any USB device, such as a USB keyboard or mouse, and you can use them on the phone, why not use a full size PC / Mac USB keyboard for typing instead of the touch screen? Or use a bluetooth mouse as well and use the HDMI output to connect the phone up to a large screen and then it can be used as a desktop PC replacement. Alternatively you could connect up a digital camera and start uploading photos to the internet, the possibilities are pretty amazing. Supports USB pen drives, and I suspect USB memory card readers (although I haven’t tested this personally). Or you could connect up your previous Nokia, such as the N97 Mini in Mass Storage mode, and copy everything across without having to go through a PC.

Over 250 new features in Symbian^3: From the nokia blog, we can see that some of the main features added to Symbian are: Better graphics, Multi-touch, improved multimedia (new video player, HDMI support, Dolby*, new music player), better multitasking which includes better memory management to allow more apps to run, and an “Alt-Tab” (Windows) style task switcher, nicer networking, and Qt for developers.

Some other cool new features are: (if you’re technically minded) 64-bit file server – the phone supports files larger than 2gb, and Symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) support for dual core processors such as the ARM A9. Probably the most important for Nokia users that are bored of seeing the “Out of Memory” message on the N97 or N97 Mini (etc), Symbian^3 now features Writable Data Paging (WDP) – much like the Windows Page File, once the built in physical RAM has run out, it will simply page it to the other “drives” in the phone. (see Nokia Library “What’s new in Symbian^3” for more info)

New Ovi Store: One of the listed selling points of the phone is “access to 1000s of apps in the new Ovi store” (paraphrased by me), although strangely the Ovi store isn’t actually installed on the phone, all the shortcuts are there, but when go to open it, you then need to install it. I suppose it means you are going to get the latest version of the Ovi store even if the phones been sitting on the shelf for a few months, but it seems a little strange. When the Ovi store is installed, it is a noticeable improvement over the old store, not that there was anything particularly bad about the old store, it’s just that the Ovi store on the N8 looks nicer and feels nicer to use.

Build quality: The front glass is made out of “Gorrilla Glass” – a product that is deemed by the internet as unbreakable (Video). The phone body is made out of Aluminium, and feels extremely solid and well built, and the top and bottom of the phone are plastic. The fit and finish of the phone feels and looks like a high quality product, with no flex in the plastic or screen or any other parts of the phone, and the few buttons that the phone has feel good, with an especially nice shutter release button and volume controls. The sliding lock button feels solid even though I think it’s made out of plastic. (You can also unlock the phone by pressing the menu key and pressing the screen, in case you’re not a fan of using the side unlock key)

More intuitive: The Nokia N8 / and Symbian^3 is improved over Symbian S60 v5 (used in the N97/Mini etc) in lots of little ways, making it a much more intuitive phone to use, for example: To change the clock on the home screen from analogue to digital, you press the clock, this takes you into the time / date / alarm screen, and then you simply press the clock again to switch between analogue and digital. On the N97 Mini, this wasn’t possible, instead you had to delve right into the phone settings to choose between analogue and digital clocks.

Better connectivity and networking: Apart from the phone finding wireless networks quicker than the N97 Mini, it also seems to find more networks, and seems to have better range from the router. There’s also a new “Settings” menu in the connectivity menu, it allows you to set options for switching to WLAN, Data use in home network (Auto, Always ask, WLAN only), Data use when roaming (Auto, Always ask, WLAN only) – these settings could be very useful if you have a horrible internet data tariff but excellent wireless access, and it’s also where the “Destinations” menu has moved. There also appears to be a new power saving setting in the WLAN settings. In the USB connection menu there’s a new option to “Connect PC to net” enabling you to use the phone as modem (this was possible through OVI Suite with previous phones but not built into the phones menus). Under the Data Transfer menu, there’s a new “Ovi Sync” in addition to “Sync”. Remote drives is now an option.

Better internet: Changes made in the built in browser are subtle but quite clever, increasing the ease of use of the browser, for example, the refresh button is now directly next to the options button, making it easier to refresh a page.

Even more features: (too many to go into detail, so I thought I’d start listing additional features)
- Data transfer / Phone switch tool (built into the N8 in Settings, Data Transfer, Phone Switch) – lets you transfer data from or to another Nokia onto the N8 via bluetooth, and installs the sync tool to the other phone from the N8, then lets you choose what you want to transfer over. It’s very clever, and easy to use.
- Nokia Ovi Suite comes on the phone as an installable program when connected in Mass Storage mode (copying the useful feature from the Sony Satio?)
- Pop-Up Connection Notifications – tell you when you’ve connected to the network
- Long press / hold items to bring up a pop-up menu
- The battery icon is now click-able (from the home screen), so you can view the battery status
- New Power Saving option in the Phone Management screen (Settings, Phone, Phone Management)#
- Better contact management – you can merge contacts so that you don’t have duplicates in your phone

Wish list? If I could improve or add anything to the phone, what would I like to see? Previously with the Nokia N Series, Nokia included a lens / screen cloth to keep the lens and screen clean – this should be included with such a camera centric model. The lens is very easy to get finger prints on, and it’s important to keep the lens clean in order to get the best photo quality possible. An improved web browser would be very nice – the included is a little slow, and a little buggy.

* Apparently I’m meant to remind people that Dolby is a registered trademark of Dolby Laboratories. Like you’d forget or something.

In the store and in pictures the shape of the Kensington does not appear or feel natural, with there seemingly being a lack of hand / wrist support, however, the box does contain additional wrist support making the trackball much larger than in photos (the additional attachment supports the wrist and slightly lifts it – the Logitech on the other hand, does not support the wrist, but instead supports the palm of your hand, whereas the Kensington does not with or without the additional wrist support). However, saying that, even with the additional (included) wrist support, the Kensington does not necessarily feel as natural to use as the Logitech, the buttons feel overly distanced, making it feel as though you need to stretch your fingers further apart than at “natural rest”, and the ball seems slightly higher than natural / and higher than the Logitech.

logitech vs kensington circles - click to embiggen

The Kensington is roughly twice as sensitive as the Logitech, which should theoretically mean much less movement. I say theoretically, as I found the Logitech much more easy to control in a more precise manner, although it should be possible to configure the Kensington’s cursor speed to match the Logitech. The Kensington also seems to require more effort when (left) double clicking, and has a louder clicking noise than the Logitech, right clicking takes more effort, and is slightly difficult if you are used to right clicking with your little finger. The trackball is shiney, glittery blue, like a posh bowling ball you might see on TV, and if you have kids you’ll be pleased to know that the ball is quite difficult to remove from the mouse. The scroll wheel… is very smooth, very easy to use, your fingers fall very naturally onto it, however, so far it’s not been used accidentally – although the alternative with a trackball that doesn’t feature a scroll wheel is to simply click and hold the left button on the scroll bar and move the ball, often it works just as well, and once you get used to it, doesn’t require much thought. A 5 year warranty is included.

Pros: Scroll wheel. It’s got a scroll wheel. It’s a trackball, AND it’s got a scroll wheel. Wrist support.
Cons: Loud clicks. Buttons need a firm press. Lacks hand support. Only two buttons. Takes up more deskspace that the Logitech when using the wrist support. Does not glow blue (instead there are red LEDs under the ball that don’t really show up unless you remove the ball)

So basically everything Android 2.2 does, but with a big 7″ screen?

The Nokia N97 Mini is like the beta release of the N97 – with the N97 being the alpha version, perhaps the N8 will be the release candidate or perhaps even the final product? (I am using the software release life cycle terms used for Windows and other apps as an attempt at humour – however some people who have used the N97 would probably find the terms relevant.) Click below to read the full review…

What does it have?

• 3.2″ screen – 16:9 resistive touch 640×360
• Qwerty keyboard
• 5mp autofocus camera – no lens cover
• Carl zeiss branded lens
• Twin led flash
• GPS with satnav – Ovi Map – can be used Online or Offline (preload with maps on PC or through Wifi etc)
• Own voice – out of interest anyone else let you record your own voice for satnav?
• Adobe flash support
• 3.5 headphone jack
• 8gb memory – microsd slot for additional expansion
• 1200mah battery (vs 1500mah on the N97)
• VGA 30fps video or 16:9 640×360 mpeg4 with video light
• Firmware update over the air
• Stereo FM radio (but no transmitter – N97 and N86 feature this)

On first impressions the phone feels like it has a slightly complicated and clunky operating system. Do you press something once to open it or twice? It mostly seems that you have to press it twice, once to highlight something, and then again to open it. Some sections – email, license / about this phone don’t let you scroll with the screen / with your finger, and instead you have to use the right hand side scoll bar (which can be a bit tricky without a stylus – the larger screened N97 comes with a stylus, with the N97 Mini it’s an optional extra).

The phone occassionally* crashes due to an overly complicted and under tested operating system? Or memory problems? The N97 Mini has 512mb ram, twice what the N97 has, and even though the Mini often has 140+ mb free, apps still fail to load due to “lack of memory”**, the Photos app is a particular app that will not load when memory gets too restrained.

* occasionally - define occasionally? once every couple of days would be a rough estimate on how often it crashes? ** The 140mb free is actually free on the phone’s C: drive and not actually free memory that you can run apps in – to view available memory for apps you need a third party app such as RamBlow – this lets me know that running 4 apps, I have 19mb ram free (after cleanup).

This is where I go off on a random tangent (skip if you want): Perhaps Nokia will get symbian right with ^3 and 4. Perhaps maemo / meego is the answer – start from the ground up. But why not allow the consumer the choice? Develop the best, most versatile, appealing hardware, and offer it with a choice of Symbian, Maemo / Meego or Android? (see the Nokia N900 if you want to install anything…) But then you would have to support 3 operating systems when they are already developing and supporting 2. (Which Nokia don’t want to do, as they are discontinuing support for the N900 Maemo OS [citation needed])

Heres the weird thing – Do phones really need touch screens – I mean if you think about it – do you really want to be spending every day cleaning finger smudges off the screen? Apple seem to think you do – not only the screen – but now with the new iPhone 4 you can spend all your life cleaning the back as well, and hoping you never drop it – and the front and now back are both made out of glass. /random tangent end

Liverpool Cathedral taken with the Nokia N97 Mini - Click to Embiggen

Compared to the Sony Satio – the home screen widgets seems like a much better way to get updates from social sites like facebook, twitter, email etc compared to the tabs and non-existant social apps on the Sony Satio. However the Satio does have a good on screen keyboard whereas the N97 doesnt – it would be nice to have the choice on the N97 / Mini just in case you dont get on with the real keyboard. Opera mini has one so its definitely possible. And typing too much on the keyboard reminds me a lot of the ZX81 (not that anyone even knows what an Atari ST is anymore, let alone the ZX81) – or perhaps the Psion 3 (although nothings as good as the Psion5 yet, one can always live in hope).

Internet: As an excercise in futility thoroughly testing the device I attempted to edit and post this entirely using the N97 Mini: After a while Opera Mini / Blogger stopped saving changes made – so I ended up having to revert to using a full browser on a PC. It has already wiped out and lost about an hours worth of work and crashed twice three times since i started this – seeming to coincide with losing the WLAN connection. (The built in browser fails to work with blogger)

Opera App settings managed to set itself to have the internet connection as none. And since I’d told it to always connect it was always trying to connect to no internet – not even sure why this is possible? The built in phone connection manager often caused annoying problems like this, where you’ve lost the WLAN connection, yet it will still try and connect to it, even though it’s now miles away. Occasionally you’ll need to completely exit the browser and close all data connections before it will connect properly again.

The phone’s home screen widgets are worth exploring in more detail. They let you choose what you want to be displayed and (theoretically) auto updated on your home screen. You can choose from your Apps assuming the App supports it – so unfortunately some things aren’t supported. RSS feeds aren’t supported for example – they’re barely supported on the phone anyway – you have to view them inside the built in Nokia web browser. If you get a Vodafone branded phone they have provided an RSS Reader app – but for some reason you can’t select this as one of the home screen widgets – and it appears to simply be a shortcut to RSS within the web browser.

The home screen can show 6 different widgets – and is perhaps one of the best features of the phone – providing quick access to some of your favourite things, such as time / date, calendar, email, gravity (twitter), facebook, the weather and shortcuts to apps / programs. The Nokia N86 8mp as a comparison can show only a few items and the choice is much more limited: 6 shortcuts, Ovi Chat, Calendar, Email, and “Share your photos” (limited by only supporting uploads to Ovi,Flickr and Vox).

You can get extra apps from the Nokia Ovi store – such as “Communities” (in Beta) – you can put this on the home screen as a widget – but then it regularly logs you out and then you need to re-enter your password before you get anything displayed on your home page (Communities lets you link to your twitter and facebook accounts). The standard facebook app seems to work more reliably and works well on the homescreen as a widget. Another worth trying from Nokia’s beta labs is Nokia Bots – it’s meant to improve battery life, and learn some of your favourite apps, and automate actions for you.

Ovi Maps 3.04*** / Ovi Voice*** – Ovi Voice (now updated v1.1 includes 2 extra voice commands that were missing from the original version) lets you record your own voice for directions, although before you start, you need to choose between imperial or metric (kilometres vs miles), and can’t record both for easier switching in Ovi Maps. Ovi Voice only works with Ovi Maps v3.04 or higher. To use your “own voice” in Ovi Maps you need to open Ovi maps go to the navigation settings and select “Own Voice” in the Drive guidance settings (you also need to be signed in to Ovi Maps prior to selecting “Own Voice”).

The process for making you own voice is a little more complicated than I think it could be, particularly after you have recorded your “voice pack”, it goes like this:

1. Before recording, make sure keypad tones are switched OFF otherwise the mic will pickup the sound
2. Start Ovi Voice
3. Click Record voice pack
4. Click Start – or click Units to change between Kilometers or Miles (assuming you remember)
5. Record each word or instruction one by one, by pressing the record and stop button.
6. Go through each one using << or >> and using the playback button until you’re happy, recording things like “Turn Left”, and “Safety Camera Ahead” (although I’ve never heard this when actually using Ovi Maps, instead it seems to just make a “bip bip” sound), and you can record anything you want instead if you feel it would be funnier to say “Computer says no” instead of “Route recalculation”, or you could use some amusing accent…
7. When you have finished, you need to record a brief description / preview of the voice pack, and then
8. You need to enter the name, description, of the voice pack and your name, and have the option of sharing it with the internet (which could be useful if you ever wipe your phone and want to try and re-find it again from the internet, although whether you actually will be able to or not is an ENTIRELY different matter!)
9. It then UPLOADs the entire voice pack to Nokia (whether you want to share it or not)
10. Then you need to DOWNLOAD it, before you can use it! (Surely it should already be on the phone! But I digress, I guess you need to have it “processed” or made compatible with Ovi Maps by Nokia)

Before you download it, you can play it back, share it over text, facebook or twitter, and emailing the link to yourself would probably be a good idea just as a backup to make sure you can (try to) get it back at a later date should it disappear off your phone when you need to reset it for some reason…

*** I would recommend trying to get Ovi Voice and Ovi Maps to work using a wifi connection at home as this can all fail horribly when out and about trying to use a poor mobile phone signal, as successful uploading and downloading of data is needed before it will work as a voice navigation system.

Music playback: MP3 playback is good, as with the Nokia N86, it is very good.

Camera and Photo quality: Photos are quite good considering this isn’t a “Camera-centric” mobile phone such as the Nokia N8, Sony Satio, and Nokia N86, etc. Colours are bright and saturated, macro focus is very good with a closer focusing distance than the N86.

The photo software works quite well, and lets you customise the photo before shooting, and also provides a number of fairly useful editing tools for use in playback mode / photo viewer (brightness, contrast, sharpness, crop, resize, posterise, sepia, black and white, negative, red eye reduction, etc) although a few more, such as saturation and some more “artistic” effects would be nice. It also successfully fills the whole screen when you are viewing zoomed photos (for some reason the Satio didn’t).

Email on the Nokia N97 – the default version looks the best, updating it, turns it into a more unpleasant looking black and white text affair, and I struggled to get push email working on it initially until I realised you had to link it with your Nokia Ovi account. The phone can notify you to email with a beep or be silenced. 3rd party apps such as gravity can have the same notification settings as email / text so can also beep when you get new messages. Its just a shame it doesnt appear in the notifications area at the top like the twitter and faxcebook apps on the blackberry.

Conclusions? Over the course of using the phone for nearly a month as my main phone, I’ve found the Nokia N97 Mini to be a generally pleasing phone to use, excellent at phone calls, a mixed bag for email (the latest Nokia messaging for email seems worse on the Mini, than the N86), great for twitter (thanks to gravity), and good for facebook. Photos can be very pleasing, especially in bright sunny conditions, and the touchscreen and keyboard seem reasonably responsive, with a fairly low level of user frustration… the physical keyboard and home screen widgets make this a much more useful phone than any other phone I’ve ever used, and for that reason I like it a lot! The updated (latest 3.04) Nokia Maps and OVI voice make it suitable as a real replacement for sat nav devices (provided you have a suitable car holder and charger), and I’ve used it for several 400 miles round trips without any major problems (apart from it ignoring some mini roundabouts). MP3 playback is excellent, and sound quality and volume is better than expected.

The build quality is also good, with a nice metal surround on the front, and a solid metal battery cover on the back. The nice thing about Nokia phones seems to be that, even with camera-centric models, such as the N86, is that they do everything well, for example MP3 playback is excellent on both the N86 and N97 Mini, and the camera is very good on the N97 Mini, even though it’s not a camera-centric model. Whereas with other phones, such as the Satio, it’s a camera-centric model and MP3 playback seems to be poor, and if you buy a “Sony Walkman” phone, then most likely the camera will not be as good as other models. The Nokia N97 Mini is an enjoyable phone to use, and worth considering, even if it might appear a little dated compared to the newest Android and Apple phones.

+ Good earphones provided with remote control
+ Very good quality MP3 playback, loud without distortion
+ Metal battery cover
+ Photo quality and macro focus can be very good in bright sunlight, see examples.
+ Good home screen widgets
+ Free sat nav – mostly very reliable but you will need an in car charger (not provided) – can be used offline
+ Own voice lets you record your own voice(s) for satnav voice guidance

- Base of keyboard is wobbly unless you hold it (when resting the phone on a desk for example)
- Phone rests on camera lens / pop out area.
- Feels like you have to press too hard to press the keys
- 13 hour battery life
- Random “system error” on startup (sporadic)
- Wobbly micro usb socket
- Email not autoupdating (was using old email app, updating and reconfiguring resolved this – needs to be linked to nokia ovi account)
- No stylus provided
- Seems to have a faint whistle (may be mine that is “faulty”)

(Mostly) Edited in Opera Mini. The nokia browser has a tendancy to crash whenever I try and edit a blogger post. (Started in blogger, and then transfered to wordpress, and finished editing on a PC)