Previously touched on, but worth a more detailed look in my opinion. They provide a good amount of sound isolation, blocking out background noise, whilst also keeping the noise in, therefore making them useful for crowded situations as they are less likely to disturb anyone nearby. They’re also much cheaper than typical sound canceling headphones (that normally cost upwards of £65). Although, the cost also means there do seem to be some occasional quality issues, anyway, lets dive in with some of the cheapest…
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.
Recent events have led me to use both Nokia’s latest phone and operating system (Symbian ^3 on the Nokia N8), as well as Google’s Android operating system on the ZTE Blade / Orange San Francisco. As most people tend to have the same uses for mobile phones, such as twitter, camera, torch, music, etc, I thought it would be useful to put together a list of the “must have” apps for the platforms, and show what the most similar apps are on both platforms. If you want to add the Apple versions, please get in touch, or leave it in the comments, and I’ll add to this list.
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.
The Nokia N8, aka the N8-00 – from Tesco Direct (currently the cheapest place to buy the phone without a contract) – is one of the latest smart phones from Nokia – running a new version of Symbian’s multi tasking operating system called Symbian^3, it also features one of the best cameras on any mobile phone, with a 12 megapixel sensor, and Xenon flash.
Main Features / Specifications:
12 megapixel camera, with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash
HD Video recording – 720p – image stabilisation available (digital)
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.
Nokia N8 – one of the customisable home screens nearly full of widgets – click to enlarge.
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 internetas 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.
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…
With the imminent release of the Nokia N8 and the new operating system Symbian ^3 – what sort of problems could Nokia fix and improve upon? Or rather what am I hoping they will resolve or implement in their next OS / Phones?
- RSS feed widget on home screen (ala The Sony C905 from Oct 2008) – Comfirmed in this video.
- Improved UI Design / Icons – read somewhere that Nokia were planning on a refresh before actual release?
- Improved Web Browser – the built in Symbian web browser has been poor for a long time – it needs to support email subject definition in email mailto links (it doesn’t understand the ? option).
- Improved sharing features – ie. Photo share to Twitter, FB, Blogger, not just OVI
- Built in Twitter client and home screen widget
- Improved battery life or sleep mode(s) – using the phones features often drains the battery too quickly.
- Have a screen that works outside even when battery is low (what’s the point in the light sensor if it doesn’t do anything?)
- 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?
- Lots of memory (RAM) for multi-tasking, the Nokia N97 has 256mb* but only 73mb was available, the Nokia N97 Mini has 512mb with 277mb available to the user*, and the Nokia N8 has 256mb, but will it be enough?
Whilst the imaging options (filters – vignette, colour filters) look greatly improved (based on Mobile-Review’s look at the new OS), in the built in photo editor, it would be nice to see the same sort of Apps as Android and iPhone devices have – Photoshop for Symbian anyone?
The MP3 playback on the N86 is very good (much better than the Satio) and features stereo speakers which are useful for video playback – and it would be nice if this level of quality should continue (Unfortunately it looks like the Nokia N8 only has 1 speaker).
However, whether Nokia fans will continue to be faithful is another matter. Will they wait for the Nokia N8 to arrive even when numerous Android phones and the new iPhone4 are already available, and then if they do use the N8, will it be enough to encourage them to wait for Symbian ^4? Even as a Nokia “fan” I don’t know how much longer I will remain “faithful” to Nokia. Especially as the Android onslaught continues…
The problem with cameras on mobile phones is that they’re all crap – do you want to know why?.
In the olden days (you know when people used film cameras) no matter what camera you had, whether it was a cheap piece of plastic crap or the best SLR in the world, it all had one thing in common: 35mm film*. And the one thing 35mm film did well, was take photos no matter what the lighting conditions. Even in dark situations, without flash, you’d still be able to get some kind of photo from it. * assuming you weren’t using a 110 or APS camera. An example on flickr, and another example above with flash (I assume the flickr link is using 35mm film which measures 24x36mm).
With a digital camera – nearly all of them have flash (I’d estimate 99%) – so in dark conditions you can use the flash and get a half decent photo (generally speaking). Some of the time you can switch the flash off, setup the self-timer, put it on a wall or a tripod and take a half-decent night shot. Which is fairly impressive considering how small the sensor is in relation to 35mm film. (The average compact digital camera sensor size is 7.2mm x 5.3mm (1/1.8 sensor), this is roughly 5x smaller than 35mm film, with an average Pixel area(µm2) of 2.6 – 3.8µm2) (Using a 12mp example: Canon Powershot G9 with a 1/1.7″ sensor, the pixel area is 3.8µm2). Example above taken with the Casio Exilim Z120.
On a side note: Do you remember when Digital Cameras were still new? Like in 2002 or 2003 when digital cameras were still so new that they had to write “Digital Camera” on the front of it somewhere so that you knew it was a digital camera? Simply being a digital camera in 2001 was so exciting and new that they simply used those two words together as a marketing tool / selling point for the camera. Now you’re lucky if you even have the model number written on it, and rarely do you find the manufacturer name on the back these days. (They used to always put the manufacturers name underneath the screen – like this). Now it’s more likely the be the huge number of megapixels or optical zoom or screen size that’s plastered all over the camera.
With a camera phone – most of them don’t have a real flash (maybe 1% has a real xenon flash (the Sony Satio is the only recent one) that is equivalent to the flash you find in a Digital Camera) – and the rest – if you’re lucky (or unlucky depending how you feel about it) – has an LED or a “twin” LED flash. The problem is that even with (or without) the LED flash, the camera’s just don’t cope with low-light situations. You can put the phone on night mode (if you’re lucky), put it somewhere steady^ and switch on the self-timer, and hope it takes a successful shot. The problem is that the sensors in camera phones are even smaller than compact digital cameras. They just can’t get enough light into the sensor, and that means in low light situations they produce crap noisy images that are over-processed so much that you’re lucky there’s any image left to view. Further problems are caused due to the small sensors lacking the ability to capture dynamic range, so dark areas are underexposed, and bright areas are overexposed, further reducing detail in images (the example above taken with the Nokia N86 – where’s the detail in the steps?). The latest 12 megapixel camera phone sensors made by Sony have a 1.4µm pixel size – which is again 2.7x smaller than compact digital camera sensors. (2.6mm x 1.96mm estimation). This is roughly 13.8x smaller than 35mm film.
In a nutshell – it’s all about the light – 35mm film cameras can absorb lots of light, and therefore take photos in dark conditions and get as much colour and detail as possible. Digital Cameras, more so compact cameras, have much smaller sensors and struggle in low light, but don’t do too bad a job of it thanks to having a flash, however, they are very much on the limit of acceptable image quality (that’s why Digital SLRs get better image quality – they have larger sensors). Camera phones on the other hand have had to miniaturize to the point where image quality is badly affected, and the only way to get good photos from them is to use them in ideal light, or have a real xenon flash for times when lighting is poor.
^ Options are limited as I don’t know of any camera phones with tripod mount, and you’re generally lucky if the phone will stand on it’s side without falling over. Even on the “Photo-centric” Nokia N86 8mp you can’t stand the camera on it’s side without it falling over!
As a phone – it’s okay. It has a great screen (the built in videos are quite impressive) although it’s not as colourful as the Nokia’s OLED screen. Acceptable touch screen – although I’m not a big fan – so never really got completely used to (or happy) using this phone. The stylus seems quite loose – which has resulted in me loosing it once, and nearly loosing it a second time. The phone feels a little cheap – very plastic – although the sliding lens cover is quite nice and the shutter button feels decent. It’s interesting (and a little surprising) to see Sony ditch Sony M2 memory cards and instead include an 8gb Micro SD cards. (It looks like Sony are doing the same with all their cameras and giving the option of Sony MS or standard SD cards). What else does it do… find out below…
Previously I was particularly scathing of the Nokia N86 8mp Camera Phone – but perhaps, after experiencing the touchscreen Sony Satio, and updating the firmware of the Nokia N86 – my experience using the phone has been a little more pleasant, and it seemed about time to post my re-evaluation of the phone.
Most of the issues originally reported still exist (and pretty much all of them are still relevant), but being aware of the limitations has let me work round most, sorry, some of the issues (and ignore or avoid the rest), until I can get a “real” smartphone (see Android phones), and finding 3rd party apps has certainly helped.
First of all you’ll need to install Opera Mini (version 5 Beta 2 works very well*) as the built in web browser is pretty rubbish, and data hungry. Another good app is J1CK.Tweet which is a simple and easy to use twitter app, with a decent number of features, such as letting you take photos and post them on twitter / twitpic (and then onwards to facebook if you use the facebook selective twitter app and #fb). See what I mean about needing to find a work-around or two?
You can also use Opera Mini for RSS feeds – but I haven’t found an app for this problem yet. (The built in RSS feed reader hides inside the built in web browser).
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The built in Sat-Nav software is still pretty annoying, and limited to 10 days of use. One feature you can use is the walking mode – and as long as you don’t drive over ~29mph – you can still use this as a handy navigation system when stuck with no other solution. (The N86′s built in Sat-Nav software is by Nokia, and called Nokia Maps – and is noticeably better than the Sony Satio’s bundled navigation software: “WisePilot” – when I first used it, it only had four locations available: Sweden, Germany, plus two other European countries, which were not much use when I was in the north of England!)
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There is still no facebook integration built in apart from the “Facebook app” – which is basically a shortcut to the website, and an icon. It uses the built in web browser, and the web browser still doesn’t accept email addresses with the subject defined after a ‘?’ question mark. You can get round this by adding an email account to the phone, and adding your facebook mobile email address to your contacts, or by using a 3rd party twitter app (see above). But it’s hardly elegant or particularly easy.
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Running too many programs at once is an issue – and by too many – I mean about 4 or 5 apps. Load up Opera Mini, Web Browser, Email, Music Player, etc and then try sending a text message to someone – and the phone will freeze, unable to open the text message page, and will give no error message, just an empty screen. You can go to each application and quit them one by one, but sometimes it’s just quicker and easier to switch the phone off and on again.
Battery life is still awful. The only solution to this is to carry a USB cable with you at all times so that you can charge it when you’re in front of a computer. If you’re staying anywhere overnight, you will need to take the wall charger, battery life is around 1 or 2 days. If you actually use it, the battery life is appalling.
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The battery life can noticeably affect the visibility of the screen in bright light – so it’s important to keep the phone charged at all times. The screen does look very good – the colours are very bright, the screen is clear and crisp, assuming the battery is fully charged – and the sun isn’t out. Although the screen does seem to scratch very easily.
Since the last issue with ovi.com and their on-line services I’ve avoided them completely. However I’ve had to use the OVI desktop software – this is a big huge mess of an installation – centering around “Nokia Ovi Suite”. The most useful feature of this is the ability to plug in your phone and use it’s internet connection when yours is down, but the Sony Satio version of the software is much better, simpler to install and use, and gives you more useful information when connected to the internet. (The Sony Satio software is also easier to install, being cleverly stored on the phone, so that you can install it where-ever you take the phone, instead of the Nokia software coming on CD, or needing to be downloaded).
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The camera uses an LED flash, which despite Nokia’s claims of excellent low-light performance thanks
to the f2.4 aperture lens, just isn’t adequate for indoor shots of people. It simply isn’t bright enough when compared to cameras with a real flash (see DigiCamReview.com or the Sony Satio) and photos of people with any movement will come out blurry (see the examples below, these are fairly typical of the results you’ll get indoors). In fact it’s so bad that one nights photos with the Nokia N86 8mp were completely unusable – I took about 12 shots with the camera with flash, they were nearly all blurry, with poor colour, featured lots of red-eye, and were not even decent enough to put on Facebook (with it’s lower than VGA photo requirements). In comparison the same number of shots taken with the Sony Satio on the same night all came out well due to the Sony’s Xenon flash.
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Photos outside, in good light, can be pretty good. By pretty good, I mean good for a camera phone (see the examples shown – these are some of the better photos taken with the camera). I still think even the cheapest branded digital camera from Kodak (see below), Fuji, etc would be better than the Nokia N86. The macro mode is fairly good, but often the photos look a little washed out (lens flare?), and the camera is very sensitive to any dirt on the lens. Photos are still overly compressed and end up on average between 590kb and 1.9mb which is quite small for an 8mp camera (averaging around ~1.2mb).
Overall – this camera phone is pretty rubbish – but “acceptable” as a phone as long as you don’t expect too much of it. Don’t expect it to do RSS feeds properly or well (it needs a dedicated app for this), don’t expect it to do Facebook properly or well (ditto), and don’t expect it to do Twitter at all unless you get a 3rd party app. Most of all, don’t expect it to be a decent camera, simply because it can’t take decent photos indoors. The twin-LED flash solution, is just not good enough, and if you want a camera on your phone then you will need to get the Sony Satio with a real flash, or better yet, just get a cheap digital camera, such as the Kodak Easyshare C140 for £49 – it had a real 3x optical zoom lens, and a real flash!
After three months of use I’ve grown to accept the phone’s limitations – and grown to appreciate it’s design – I like the buttons, the sliding design, and compact size. It’s easy to text and phone people*, and the camera is acceptable in good weather**. But saying that, a dedicated digital camera is always going to be better, thanks to a real flash and better image quality – the images from the Nokia look over processed, and the colour seems poor generally. The phone works fairly well on the internet (better with Opera Mini) and is a decent enough phone if you don’t want to switch over to a touch screen, are a fan of Nokia, and you don’t expect too much from it. However, saying all this, it’s still pretty rubbish, and should have been, and could have been much better!
Pros:
Uses the new Micro USB connection which is now the world-wide standard for all mobile phones! Hooray!
The kickstand is quite useful for video watching (iplayer etc)
Uses the standard 3.5mm stereo jack
Wide angle 28mm AF lens
Cons:
Satnav limited to 10 days navigation.
LED Flash (no substitute for a real flash) – doesn’t light subject well, but does create red-eye
Poor value for money (especially when new, as with most new contract mobile phones – £238 sim free)
* apart from the crashes obviously.
** assuming you don’t have a real digital camera with you.
Tested with software version 20.115.229.01, 21-09-2009. Face detection was added with the firmware update.
Ah Sony… you take Nokia’s Symbian operating system and make is so much better… yet you still fail at providing advertised features! Your advert shows Facebook, Twitter, all integrated into the phone… yet they’re not, and Sony’s own blog recommends using snaptu, or symabook (in ALPHA!) to get this functionality…
THE SONY BOX features a mystery facebook app – but is this on the phone, pre-loaded, or available anywhere? Not to my knowledge…
Someone, somewhere*** says you can upload images STRAIGHT to Facebook – this is simply not possible without MANUALLY adding your own personalised email address to the phone! And where’s the direct uploading to Twitter? Nowhere, it doesn’t exist. The phone comes with built in setup to send photos to message (MMS, email), bluetooth, To web – which features Blogger*, PicasaWeb, Webalbum**, Flickr, Youtube, and Other…
“Other” lets you add stuff, for example, you can add your personalized facebook email address to and this will work quite well to upload photos (you can also send MMS to facebook’s email address, and add them as a contact to speed up the process), without you having to spend money sending MMS messages.
* Blogger is most annoying of all, this will upload your photos to a brand new blog on blogger.com – how about letting us upload to our own already existing blog?
** Webalbum takes you to Sony’s “PlayNow” website, and simply says “There are no items available” so basically doesn’t work.
*** will confirm source.
I’ll update this further on the phone… but for now, I’m slightly unimpressed. And what happened to the Cybershot branding?
And on the subject of Symbian – it seems like Sony and Nokia are using Symbian for some unknown reason, like these projects started years ago before they realised that they should be developing for Android. Motorola “decided to axe the entire Symbian product line as well as phones using several other operating systems.” (NYTimes) and have just released one of the most impressive new phones: The MotorolaDroid based on Android 2.0. Even Nokia seem to be hedging their bets by developing new phones with Linux based operating systems: The Nokia N900 / based on Maemo.
If web connectivity and the ability to upload to social networking sites isn’t built into the core of a mobile phone operating system these days, then it just isn’t good enough, and releasing apps (Sony), patches (Nokia), and updates for features that should have come with the phone, isn’t the right way to go about it. By the time your updates are available, people will have already jumped ships, and will simply be “putting up” with the phone until they can get out of their contract, or get rid of their phone, to switch to an iPhone, or an Android phone.
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and Auto HDR Photography.
