It's official. I'm a camera phone junkie. Well, actually, I'm a convergence junkie, but adding in camera and camcorder is such a huge slice of daily functionality that I just can't keep away. And, in this context, I find myself alternating between the two and a half year old Nokia N86 and the newer (around a year old) N8, the latter the undisputed camera phone king and the former still a contender with the very top units on other mobile OS. Unable to make my mind up, I thought a breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of the touch-based device and the d-pad based phones might be useful. In what areas does the non-touch device still shine and can it match the class of 2011?
It's all very well me posting the odd snap onto Twitter and occasionally writing a generic 'how to' for All About Symbian. But I thought it might be instructive to take a few photos from my three current Symbian smartphones, taken in the last week, one from each, and put you inside my head, hearing my thought processes as I snapped the shot and looking at any important settings changes or physical setup that were required. At the very least, some of the same ideas might help you when you venture out into the real world, whichever camera-toting smartphone you own.
In a somewhat extreme experiment I went away for a long weekend. And only took one mobile device with me. One. No laptop, no tablet, just the Nokia E7. OK, it was going to be the E6, but my patience with that only lasted a few hours. The E7 though, famously flawed, hopefully still had enough star quality with that lovely screen and keyboard and promised to at least give me a stab at doing everything I wanted to do. And you know me, Mr Convergence. Here's my report on the lofty highs and the deep lows of owning a Nokia E7.
Eagle eyed observers may have noticed that Nokia has stopped including the N97 (classic) in some of its compatibility lists for various software releases. This is almost certainly because of problems with RAM or flash memory and it has prompted me to prepare a little obituary for this (not so) classic device, I think the time has come even for N97 die-hards to move on.... What were the mistakes Nokia made, how did they happen, is there anything that can still be done and what should N97 (R.I.P.) owners upgrade to?
I've recently got rather fed up with a part of modern smartphone life: every time I want to take a decent photo on any device, it's out with a clean tissue (or a corner of my t-shirt!), I breathe on the camera 'glass' (it's not really glass) and then wipe gently away, removing the inevitable finger smudges, face grease and dust. After all, not doing so means a blurry photo (and with sunlight flares, if the sun's out). But what's the alternative?
In a shockingly unscientific real world experiment, I took an hour out at a busy UK train station to scan what phones and smartphones people were using in summer 2011. Go on, admit it, you do this too when on the move. The biggest surprise was that the most popular mobile form factor didn't involve a fruit logo on the back, a large display or touch control.
An unusual head to head, this, in that the non-Symbian device is much the cheaper of the two and with distinctly budget pretensions. Still, the physical comparison is apt and it gives us another data point as to how Symbian powered smartphones compare to the competition mid 2011. Even if the data point is in this case well away from the flagship/superphone end of the spectrum.
Always having a number of smartphones to hand, usually of the Symbian powered persuasion, I'm used to stepping in with some mobile IT in one way or another in my extended family circle. But it's worth noting that you don't have to have the latest, all-singing all dancing touchscreen mega-phone to become a smartphone superhero, here are a number of brief anecdotes about my trusty 'backup smartphone', the Nokia N86, and how it has saved the day more than once. And, yes, I really do promise to shut up about this phone after this......!
I'm sure a lot of E71 and E72 owners are looking at the Nokia E6 as a possible upgrade, so it's worthwhile spending time highlighting the more important updates, as an addendum to our review series part 1 (hardware), part 2 (software), part 3 (enterprise) and part 4 (multimedia) on the device. What might you gain - and what might you lose - in upgrading to Nokia's latest qwerty slab smartphone?
You've heard me rave in the past about the excellence of the camera in the Nokia N8 - the 12 megapixels, the Xenon flash, the huge sensor. And you've heard me reel off a long list of tech gadgets that are onboard the device. But here I wanted to highlight 10 design points that haven't got the credit they so far deserve. In a nutshell, the N8 is better than you already thought it was.
