As a quick update, I had a few small issues with the Nokia Guide feeds, but in the mean time it has been sorted out. The URL for the feed has been changed to fix the problem, now that everything is up and running, feel free to subscribe to the new feeds and as always, enjoy!
After getting all my devices stolen, it was time to look for a new (main) device, sort of my everyday handset, the workhorse. I had plenty to choose from. Could it be the mighty N96? How about the N85 with the impressive OLED screen? Maybe the N82? Or just wait for the 5800 XpressMusic ? The N96 comes close to the N95 8GB I had, but adds an impressive 16GB of built-in memory and even a card slot for one of those capacious 16GB microSDHC cards, giving me a whopping 32 GB. Off course there’s also the DVB-H that I won’t be using for quite some time as you’d have to travel for thousands of miles to reach a country where it’s being used. The handset’s current price is well north of the $700 mark, making me rethink this decision. If it was going for around the $600+ range it would have stood a chance. The camera with its dual LED would be perfect for videos, but definitely worse than the N82, a device introduced back in 2007. The N85 isn’t quite available yet and while it has an impressive screen and improved battery life, microUSB charging and FP2, to me it seemed like too much of a wait for small upgrades. A solid device indeed, but I needed to buy ASAP. The same story goes for the 5800 XpressMusic, an impressive device, a breath of fresh air at an incredibly low price, but sadly it wasn’t available. My final decision, came down to an all-time favorite, in my opinion one of the best EVER from Nokia, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the N82 Black.
Choosing the N82 was quite an easy decision: it’s available, prices are reasonable and has everything the N95 and N95 8GB have, in a compact, candy bar shaped design. No sliders to worry with, no moving parts to break. The screen is indeed smaller than what I’m used to and I do miss the media keys, but you gain what is essentially the best camera in the Nseries line. For a device that was introduced last, yet not even the lastest can match it when it comes to it’s camera and flash. I could always buy fancy point-and-shoot digital cameras or one of those pro DSLR’s, but this I could always have with me and with quality images at that. It’s also a decent music player with improved audio quality through it’s top-mounted 3.5mm audio jack (very important) instead of the side-placed one on the N95 8GB. But most importantly, like I said, it’s the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Unlike the N95 8GB and N96 that scream “look at me” and sometimes even “rob me”, the N82 is small and looks simple and you’d never guess all the things it does by looking at it. The ultimate wolf in (black) sheep’s clothing.
I know I’ve been a little behind with my post, my apologies for this. I just returned from a trip to Aruba where the local telecom provider Setar invited me for a weeklong event to talk about Nokia’s Nseries and to educate the staff on the many uses of these devices communicating in the local Papiamentu language. Setar on the neighboring island of Aruba is the first Caribbean provider to launch a 3.5G network. It was a fun, action filled week where we covered everything from the Nseries line, S60, Applications, Smartphones and the endless possibilities of these devices. Having clocked 30 hours (total) of lectures, I will need to hit the beaches to get some rest, but in the end the staff was quite impressed and surprised as to what is possible on these powerful devices. I will be making several trips to Aruba on upcoming events. Happy to be back home and let the posting begin! :)
Okay guys, just one week left! Want a quick and easy way to win an 8GB Sandisk microSDHC card? All you need to do is give “The Nokia Guide” logo a fresh update or maybe try something totally new and your in the running to win the Sandisk. Up till now I received some pretty good entries and I’m looking forward to see what’s next. Think you have a shot at winning the prize? If so submit your entries to me and good luck!
Location Tagger has been updated to version 1, Beta 2. Among the improvements we can find: support for more devices and the addition of the “Show on map” feature. This will allow you to select Options, Show on map menu from the Logs tab to show the location of the picture in Nokia Maps. This feature works only on S60 3rd FP1 devices with Nokia Maps installed, such as Nokia N95. They also fixed a bug where in certain situations the device’s battery is drained pretty quickly. But the most notable improvement is how Location Tagger deals with losing or not getting a GPS lock.
If you take a picture and there’s no GPS signal, the picture will be tagged with the last known good position in the last 1 hour. The previous version used a pretty much useless 10 minutes setting. If there isn’t a recorded GPS position within the last 1 hour the picture will be put in a queue until timeout. You can set the timeout value from the Settings menu. If your device is able to lock the position before timeout, all pictures in the queue will be tagged with this new position.
A few days ago I wrote this rant here, about my worries with the whole Geotagging thing and this is a very good step in the right direction. But I still see room for improvements. First of all, how about clearly indicating which pictures got tagged and which didn’t like in Gallery or Share Online. And most importantly we need a backup for those cases where you can only dream of getting a GPS signal. Location Tagger’s way of dealing with the lack of a GPS signal is good and should be ported to the Sports Tracker, as Sports Tracker has a habit of not uploading the pictures that didn’t get tagged. Tagging pictures with the last GPS location could be a temporary relief. But I think Nokia should start looking into the ability to calculate your position based on cellular towers. This is something that Google Mobile Maps for S60 has been doing for some time now on these very same Nokia phones. For this reason I don’t see why Nokia could add this feature to Location Taggger, Sports Tracker and Nokia Maps. This would be perfect for those situation where you will never get a GPS signal yet you want to be able to geotag your images. A good example would be a party in a basement. What do you guys think?
Via: AllAboutSymbian
The Nokia Guide is in for an update: same content in a fresh new look! But to celebrate, I thought it would be fun to hold a small contest with a brand new Sandisk 8GB microSD card as the prize sponsored by Moby Memory. So what do you need to do exactly? Knowing that some of you are a very creative, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to see what you guys could do with the Nokia Guide logo. Give it a fresh update or maybe try something totally new! The only requirements are that it has to have text: “The Nokia Guide.” If I like it and choose it as the winner you’ll get your 8GB microSD card and maybe I’ll use it on the updated site, it’s that easy. The contest oficially starts today, February the 26th and ends on March the 11th. All entries should be submitted to me via email and you can always enter as many times as you like. Good luck!
I really had a bit of trouble with this one and it seemed like I was not going to find a solution, but luckily I did and the feed are up again! My feed file size was apparently way to large and I just didn’t know the reason behind this until I remembered to cut down on the amounts of post to display in the front page. All is working now, just remove the old one and subscribe to the new feed. Big thanks to Rita El Khoury (aka Dotsisx) for informing me about this.
With just a few hours to go, I want take the opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Looking back at 2007 it’s been an incredible year and I wanted to thank my readers for the support for making The Nokia Guide what it has become in just 3 months. Through the Nokia Guide I’ve met many people and made many friends in the mobile community for which I’m very grateful for. I also wanted to say a special thanks to the guys over at WOM World. I’m really looking forward to 2008 as the battle between Nokia and Apple is going to be ferocious and it’s also the year that it seems that we can finally get touch screen, QWERTY keyboard and numeric keyboards all in one device! With the latest S60 devices being so fine tuned to our needs, in part due to the word of the mobile community, it’s going to be interesting to see where things go from here. In the end we can only benefit from it, but as always keep the blogging voice alive. Happy New Year!
Now it’s much easier to access the Nokia Guide as it’s now accessible through the www.thenokiaguide.com URL instead of the previous www.thenokiaguide.typepad.com URL.
I’m also working hard to give the blog a much needed update, so stay tuned!
The Nokia Guide
In order to view the Nokia Nseries Widget you need JavaScript and Flash Player 9+ support
