snoyt’s blog

There are so many technological innovations nowadays. I wonder how many of them are really innovation and not mere eyecandy? Consumer lure. How practical are all these fancy options? Do we really want them, do we need them or are there better solutions?

OLED

Why in heavens name would I want OLED in my phone? It sucks in direct sunlight.  I prefere transreflective screens for decent quality everywhere instead of topnotch quality in dark places. My phone should be useful in as many environments as possible.

Capacitive touchscreens

With gloves they do not work, nor with dry fingers. And any screen big enough for a fingertouch menu is big enough to digitize sketches and handwritten notes. Which will not work with out a special pen on capacitive touchscreens. So in fact a GOOD resistive touchscreen seems far more practical!

Screen resolution

At 10" distance the pixel size of a 640x360 pixels screen with a diameter of 3.5" equals the resolution of your eyes. Which is sufficiently good. Though two or three times that resolution will create a crisper image, but also requires more battery power and its price is less economical.

Abolishing real keys

So I could buy a phone with a large screen that technically could be superb for message and document-composition. However because there is no qwerty keyboard I get to use a tiny screenspace for text composition. In fact the practical screenspace during text-entry is much smaller than I would get on a normal T9-phone because the virtual touchscreen qwerty takes nearly all the available screen space. Blimey!

The pragmatics wishlist

- A transflective resistive touchscreen of 640x360 seems a good idea.
- Sliding/folding qwerty and dropping T9 in favour for a larger (touch) screen
- GPS with AGPS support and compas.
- 5+MP camera, 640x480 video
- Wifi, VoIP/SIP, Bluetooth
- Voice control for satnav (gasstation, rout change/break, blocked road) and reading incoming messaging while in the car.
- Decent and secure e-mail features.
- full memory encryption. Remote device locking by SMS.
- fingerprint scanner for easy unlocking.
- Multiple-role syncing (syncing workstuff to work, private stuff to private servers)
- Go anywhere format of 100x55x20mm.
- Scratch resistant, water resistant. My old mechanical watch has it. Why does my phone not have it? It's nice to have GPS with satnav for city cruising, but if it is raining I can't use it to find my car!
- A user-configurable battery reserve level warning. We all forget to check the powerbars when gaming or listening music! Let's make sure I have enough power left to 'phone home', not all of us have a glowing indexfinger as a backup battery ;-)
- Setting recurring tasks! Setting tasks that should happen at some days, but not neccesary at a given time. Very practical, very useful, but missing in lots of smartphones. Place tasks using the GPS would be nice too!

Fashion nerd or functional geekdom?

So? Next time you buy a phone? What do you want to spend you money on? A shiny blinging ringing thing showing you are a painted eggshell? Or form and function showing depth and a toughtful mind? No don't answer that question to me, only to yourself. But do let me know if I missed some non-standard practical/time saving/productive feature anyone could use.

This is article 1 of a short series about mobile illusions.

For many of us a mobile phone has become a very personal device with modern phones having extended communication and media features. They take pictures, video's, send and receive e-mail, sms. There is support for IM, geo-tagging and grand access to your social internet network via Twitter, Facebook, Hyves, YouTube etc. Image loosing such a phone either by theft or forgetfulness. Image it falling into the wrong hands.

A private phone

Your phone contains a full register of all your friends addresses and phone numbers and your intimate SMS's, e-mails, IM logs twits and personal notes. Not to mention buddytracking on google maps and similar? The satnav in YOUR phone can guide any thief quickly and easily to their houses while they are not there. Not to mention stalking, pestering and or simply 'fungames' from social misfits. It often has location-tagged photo's, saying where and when they were taken. Showing exactly where there there are expensive things to nick. None of this information is protected or encrypted on nearly any phones.

A secure PC

There exists a responsibility to keep personal information of your friends and family safe. Which is a reason my laptop and PC run full-disc encryption at home. You can steal my hardware, but that damage is insured. Sure, high-tech hackers may break through my firewall(s) and hack into my PC's. But it takes skill and more effort (read: cash and time) than it is worth to them. Besides my financial administration is runs from a junk free dedicated OS installed on a secure usb-stick. My PC is powered-off and boots directly from the usb-stick. Fat chance that it is hacked during those few minutes a week it is online for bank transactions and I install no unsigned software from unknown sources.

A secure Phone?

But what about my mobile phone? Hardly any of the big phone manufactures makes any noise about security as a feature. Silently, Nokia's latest market E-series introductions (E71, E75, E55 i.e.) now offer standard out-of-the-box support for device locking, remote device locking (also via SMS) and device and memory card encryption. This might even become more important with the introductions of financial transactions technology like NFC. More and more possibilities are introduced to make payments via your mobile phone. Already virusses have been found that send SMS or calls to make some cash of your phone. Luckily little success has been booked so far with these schemes and for now it seems safe. Still Symbian security has already been broken. So it seems only a matter of time until the s^$%t hits the fan. Your smartphone is a MIMD (mobile internet & media device) and as such is often fed all kinds of nasty web pages, scripts and media and software from an unknown origin. Should you really install software from an unknown source (even if signed) on a device meant to store private data and that can do financial transactions?

With mobiles getting pocket computer aspirations, so should mobile security get beefed up. Think about secure and reliable encryption of private data. The ability to run insecure and unsigned software and games in a sandbox, separated en shielded from the part that does the private and financial things. 

Security options

With the increasing technological options to make payments and money transactions via a mobile phone this becomes more and more essential. Some of these issues have been addressed by some features of some mobile phone manufacturers and some mobile OS manufacturers. Software signing and security certificates already exist, though memory encryption as a default option exists only for a few phones. 3rd party developper options exist but hardly useful or accessible for an average Joe intending personal use. Only Java seems to have a some security model for selecting access to different phone data and functions(phonebook, internet, sms, calling etc.).

Phone and future

Most mobile phone related manufacturers simply consider security an issue of "If we don't mention it, it does not exist". In other words, play dumb. This sadly never works. Security is a big issue, and it should be resolved now by the large manufacturers and Mobile OS designers (Symbian.org, Windows Mobile, Android). They should be scoring points from us now instead of loosing them later on. Apple streamlined the graphic user interface putting touch on the consumers map.Time to streamline security features I should say.

Nokia is already taking a step in the right direction but sadly not far enough and only for some devices. Why design a N97 to be the ultimate social connector and then forget about privacy? How important is touchscreen,  and 5 instead of 3.2 MPixels photos compared to reliability and security. How much value do you put on the knowledge that after your phone is lost or stolen the house will not be ransacked while you have an appointment with the dentist or find your kids pictures back on some crazies website.

Think about it the next time you shop for a new phone!

It seems the full crop of new mobiles phones at the MWC '09 is in. While The Symbian-Guru Guru was pretty excited and had big expectations of the MWC `09, I on the other hand did not expect anything really wowable. Merely more megapixels and more/bigger touchscreens. And sadly I was mostly right.

Touchscreen developments

Yep, almost every company came with more touchscreens. Only Nokia introduced no new touchscreen devices, showing contentment with their 5800 ExpressMedia and the yet to be released N97. Note that I am not counting the new Nokia navigator with a touchable area for zooming. An interesting development is that Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 has become more finger oriented, finally. And very promising Samsung used Symbian S60 5th edition for their latest and greatest touchscreen: The Omnia HD.

Samsung Omnia HD

The Omnia is a very promising media phone. OLED screen, 8 MPixel photo's. Video upto 1280x720p@24 fps, even GPS and a compass. Specificationswise it completely blows the competition out of the water and with S60 5th edition being among the more pleasant touch interfaces. it should do well. Sadly there is no Xenon flash, only a single led. However neither the Nokia 5800 nor the N97 can match its hardware specifications. And with all of them running S60 5th edition It seems Nokia's only advantage over this Samsung will lie mostly in OVI's additional internet services additional software and regular firmware updates/improvements. Which BTW are not to be dismissed lightly. All in all the Omnia HD looks very impressive.

Nokia N86

Though SonyEricson presented a 'concept' of 12 MPixels, Nokia's N86 is currently perhaps the most promising cameraphone announced. The multi-aperture and a mechanical shutter will improve the image quality. Expect enhanced image depth and sharper images. Compared to a N82 the N86 lens setup has a similar amount of light per pixel while at the same having 60% more pixels. In comparison The E71's lens collects 30% less light per pixel and 36% less pixels.

The N86's lack of a Xenon flash will no doubt annoy staunch photographers. However if the LED's are of high quality they could still approach the colorspectrum Xenon well enough, that flashed photo's don't look off-color. Though the significant longer flash duration of LED's will cause more motion blurring in your photo's. The latter is less important, particular if as compensation the double LED's can be used as a torch and for filming in the dark.

No phones for social bloggers

No real combinations of a quality media phone (photo and video) with a decent mini-qwerty were expected by me. The announced E75 has a qwerty but only 3.2 MPixels, with a single LED and no mention of a Zeiss Tessar lens. No doubt it will fall in the same quality category as the E71: Only nice for sunny holiday pics. However the E75's video is specified at 640x480@30 fps compared to the E71's 22fps despit the phone's smaller size. On the other hand the E75 design does not even come close to the stylish curves of E71. The E75 looks flat and squared. A shade of polished ugliness, particular in the colors red and yellow.

Acer came with the M900. It main features are a 5 Mpixel camera, GPS, fingerprint scanner  and QWERTY! Making it the sole competitor for the Nokia N97. With Windows Mobile 6.5 as the OS choosen for the Acer M900, it will no doubt do well in buisiness circles. Though wether WM6.5 will be really that more userfriendly than WM6.0, I doubt it. I do hope the Acers'  photo's and video options will compare favorable to what we are used from Nokia's N-series devices as the N97 is in need of decent competition in that aspect. No doubt a qwerty version of Samsung's Omnia HD would give the N97 stiff competition. Indeed I hope they do. For now the N97 seems the only phone suited for a social blogger's appetite.

Conclusion

Samsung's Omnia HD was the most exciting annoucement, I guess. Though without qwerty I doubt I'll go for it. As such my N82 has little fear of being replaced. The N86 would be a nice upgrade to the N82, but the difference is simply not big enough. Which in my eyes sums up the MWC '09. The N97 is still looking to be the best choice in the near future. Though I'd prefere a slightly smaller device. And yes, the E71 is still my most wannahave-because-it-looks-so-very-cool-phone. Still the new E75 is a better choice with the 3,5 mm audio connector and the larger keyboard for big-thumbed geeks like me. I guess I have to be a little more patient for my next dream phone.None seem as much a step forward as the N95 did.

The Mobile World Conference is coming up in 6 more days and I am not feeling any worthwhile amount of anticipation. Why? As a consumer I feel misunderstood. There is no real phone that does it right for me, while could have been in the market for a year. We have touch phones, we have mini-qwerty phones, we have cam phones. But that thing in my pocket that still fits my needs best is already over two years old. In other words, I am saying all the new stuff is wannabe crap. Awake now?

There is quality and there is functionality. But where are the smart combinations? Quality calling, SMS, e-mail, webbrowsing, photos and satellite navigation. These are today's essential phone functions.

- Calling, I want calling with a decent sound quality.
- I want SMS and e-mail with a decent (qwerty) keyboard. So my screen space is used for composing and reviewing my message. No more frustration on a numeric keypad entering mixed language and struggeling with odd lexicographical tokens. No annoyance by tiny touch buttons or having your screen space completely absorbed for touch-qwerty data input.
- webbrowsing. Yeah I want to access the essentials either on a mobile site or the original. We are talking news-websites, RSS-feeds and stuff like youtube and other interesting internet video-feeds.
- I want quality photo's at low light and a decent flash. Image quality please! Not useless high numbers of insensitive MegaPixels.
- Satellite navigation. This means A-GPS support for speed and accuracy and some decent navigation software. Traffic information and more!

There are currently no decent phones on the market that take good pictures, have gps and a qwerty input. Touch or without touch. Even Nokia has been missing the point for more than a year. There is the N-series with 5 MPixels cameras and all the goodies one wishes except a qwerty keyboard. And there is the E-series with the E71 and the upcoming E75 that have decent qwerty but no 5 Mpixel camera. Nokia could have built an S60 3rd edition j71 (between E and N) over a year ago to fill that painfully empty spot in the market. And none of its competitors seemed to be bright enough to do it either. Not that I would go windows mobile.

The N97 seems the only upcoming phone with a sensible mix of quality and functions, though its size and weight tell me it is a bit of a brick and it's touch interface is yet still unproven. At the moment I would still prefer a phone with a decent compact  form factor and a qwerty on my next phone running a reliable S60 3rd edition FP2. Though I would not mind some nifty N97-ish widgets available for on the stand-by screen. But I expect that none of this will pop-up on the MWC '09. No it will be all 8 MPixels and more sub-standard touch-interfaces and lack of qwerty.

And the current phone in my pocket? A N82, in other words, a revamped  version of the two year old N95-model in stylish black. Still the best for now and likely for months to come.

Nokia did well with the announcements of Nokia World. Biggest news in mobile town being the N97. It has all a n-series phone needs: Wopping battery life, 5MPixel photo, 30 fps 640x480 Video and all the trimmings of the N95-class phones. I have only three complaints.

1. No Xenon flash, let's be honest. Dual led for video simply sucks, and it pales completely in comparison with xenon flash for photo's. At least the current dual led models do. And it will be a while until they get that right it seems. 
2. 12 cm's long? Okay to be precise 11,7 cm. Still it's a bit to clumsy. A smartphone that is not pocketable is not a smartphone, its a netbook/laptop/fancy piece of heavy luggage.
3. 150 grams? Another pocketable size complaint. 120 grams please at the most 130 grams.
   

With the new Symbian v5 touchscreen software, Maps, Ngage and the social contact integration on the standby screen it looks like a winner. Early adopters of the N95 like me will pine about this machine until it's available. Still I think it's current size and weight will make people hesitate to buy it. Time will tell wether the N97 will position itself for as a E90 replacement for buisinessmen or as a anytime, anyplace phone for a larger group of smartphone addicts.

Having said all this I would love to test this phone and see if it can cope with one of my 14x16 hours trips of  satnav, e-mail, phototagging and videorecording. It killed the last two N95 I owned, despite being never dropped. All in all it is pretty close to my personal wish list for Christmas, though it seems Santa will be half a year late ;-)

Nokia

The N97 will likely be the most expected phone for the first half of 2009. Supplemented with the new maps and e-mail integration into OVI. Nokia seems more back on track than ever. The new social contact integration on the homescreen of the N97 could very well indicate further developments in the new Symbian OS. Gearing it more towards the social demands an internetconnected junk has. Like multiple internet identities and syncing per identity as well simple things like as being allowed to cloudtag your e-mail. Who has ever properly used the subject line in an e-mail?

• N97 movie 1
• N97 movie 2

I had two N95's that did not outlast a year of heavy usage. So time to ask the community. How many months did/do you own a N95. How many times in that period did it get a new IMEI number? Meaning having it's  inner hardware replaced. Please post a comment below, especially if it did not break down. We all know those that had a breakdown will post :-P

I want to know wether I can sell the phone to a friend or not.

Grtz,

Dirk Snoyt.

Well, I have been skittish about upgrading to 3.0 the last few weeks. The N82 is supposed to have user data preservation, meaning I can upgrade the OS (like in Unix) without loosing any applications or userdata. Painless and troublefree. Still the last weeks have been awfully busy and I could/would not survive without my black ninja. This weekend I finally had a spare hour left in case upgrading the firmware went wrong and a full reinstall was needed or worse at trip to Nokia Care.

Yet it survived, but not without a cliffhanger. Strangely the upgrade program said my phone upgrade went wrong and it needed to redo it. Again and again. I nearly went slightly mad from this deadlocked circle. But then decided to ignore the statement and after a reboot the new firmware was there. I verified it with *#0000# and it looked OK to me.

The phone seemed slightly slower first time after a reboot, and software that was first time accessed after the reboot took a bit more time to start. Yet it seems to work at normal speed now, and all configurations and software is still there and running.

Which is pretty awesome indeed. UDP is really a very nice feature. I can't remember how often I have upgraded the firmware of my N95 and reinstalled, synced and backupped that phone. Hours and hours of work, which are no longer neccesary.

Nokia? Read this carefully! Never ever dare to built a phone without the UDP feature!

I might start billing you for unneccesary lost time ;^)

The T9 inventors developped a new, fast input system for touchscreen typing. Tweakers.net a dutch site has a interesting post about it right here, but it's in dutch. You simple drag your finger from key to key instead of actually typing,more like swiping. Shapewriter for Android, Windows mobile and the iPhone does something similar. The next youtube video give a nice impression about it.

I hear rumors about the coming touchscreen phones of Nokia. Not only there is talk of release dates in october. There is talk about perhaps more than one phone. Well, it's annoying, exciting and my curiousity having its day. Blast...

How big will they be? Will there be a qwerty? Xenon? How many, how terrific and wonderful are they? OLED screens or TFT?  did I buy my N82 to soon? Ahhh, the suspense.