* 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

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.

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)

- 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…

* Source: Wikipedia.

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…

It’s got WIFI, GPS, a huge 3.5″ screen, and almost everything else you expect from a modern phone (except for a facebook / twitter app etc which are noticeably missing), and surprisingly it doesn’t have built in stereo speakers, instead it only has one internal speaker.

Another thing noticeably missing is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and the new MicroUSB charging standard – instead it uses Sony Ericssons standard connection, and provides an adapter for when you want to plug some earphones in (which then ties up the connection so you can’t use it for anything else like connecting it to your computer).

The earphones look better than the ones shown on the box but come with a really short cable so you can’t use them with anything else – they sound fairly clear, but seem to lack bass, and the rubber fittings aren’t as rubbery as they should be. (Cheap £8 Creative Labs EP-630/A Noise Isolating Earphones (Sennheisers duplicates/copies?) sound much better than the provided Sony earphones).

The Nokia N86 seems to have slightly better mp3 playback quality – and nearly no background hiss – whereas the Sony has noticeable background hiss when not playing anything. The Sony also distorts above 70% volume, with 80, 90 and 100% adding no extra volume other than additional distortion.

Software – Symbian S6 v5 – the buggy touchscreen version of the software – so buggy at one point that the phones were recalled / withdrawn from sale until they had a software update for the phone(s) involved (including the Nokia N97). Although it’s been updated with Sony’s own home screen(s): Quick contacts, Web shortcuts (default to the fairly horrible built in web browser), Home with Music, keypad, media, messages, and a Google maps shortcut, Photos (shows your most recent photos), and Shortcuts which can be customised.

The built in photo / media viewer seems quite poor – for example in and mode (portrait or landscape) – zooming into the photo doesn’t fill the whole screen (see examples).

As a camera – it’s better than most camera phones – simply because it’s got a real flash. It’s also got a focus assist lamp. But compared to real cameras – it’s very slow to switch on – slow to focus – and slow to take the photo. Colour is good – bright and saturated – without being overly saturated and there is very little ghosting or “white-out” / lens flare.

As mentioned above, the shutter button feels quite good with a two step process – half press to lock focus and fully press to take the photo (much better than the Nokia N86). It’s strange that the camera doesn’t have the “Cybershot” branding – even though previous Sony Ericsson phones have had the branding – even “lowly” 5mp camera phones.

Focusing indoors in low light is mostly successful, although 1/10 is probably out of focus. The camera does a very good job of toning down the flash when taking macro photos with flash – which is quite impressive as often normal cameras struggle with this. (see the Delonghi Cafe Treviso Coffee Machine Review for numerous examples)

16:9 Aspect Ratio

Speed / Timings:
Switch phone off: 12 seconds.
Switch phone on: 35 seconds
Switch from phone to camera: 2 seconds
Continuous shooting “BestPic” mode (without flash): takes 9 photos at 9fps, at 12mp – then you can save one or all of them (or any number of pictures you want).
Menu speeds are fairly slow.

Touch focus is quite neat – and lets you press the screen where you want to focus and it’ll take a photo. Overall having a 12 megapixel camera on your phone is overkill – particularly if you’re only going to be uploading them to facebook! Even a 1 megapixel camera would be good enough for facebook – with it’s 604 pixel wide photos (less than VGA resolution).

Photo editing options (same as Nokia N86) – the options are brightness, contrast, sharpness, resize, crop, rotate, annotate, clipart, text, something, square, red-eye reduction, black and white, sepia, something, shame there isn’t the option to increase saturation / colour. (Using the contrast option does a good job of increasing colour though)

Video recording is better than the previous Sony camera phone (the C905) – it now records VGA/30fps but nothing spectacular or impressive like HD or 720p (like most real cameras). The phone also has a video light that you can use to light dark subjects.

Overall - this is a usable phone – with an excellent camera and flash for a camera phone. If you want an excellent camera on your phone, this is the best currently available (as you should be able to see in the included sample photos) mainly thanks to it being one of the only current camera phones to feature a real flash, but other aspects of the phone are a little annoying (lack of built in facebook / twitter apps, slow software and initial bugs). The touchscreen isn’t really good enough to convert me into a touchscreen user, and I much prefer the buttons on other phones. Also, you would most likely get better results from a compact camera, with even budget cameras offering a 3x or 4x optical zoom lens, 10 or 12 megapixel sensor, and more photo options.

Pros:
Real Xenon flash
Large 3.5″ screen
Good shutter button

Cons:
Cheap build quality
Poor touchscreen
Sony charging connection, and no 3.5mm jack built in

Nb. The fairly poor / average photos of the Sony Satio were taken with the Nokia N86.

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?

Links: Flickr Satio Photos

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 Motorola Droid 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.