Micky’s Neighborhood

Yeah, its here. Finally. It has a terrific feel, it's tactile very pleasing, smooth and silky. Anyway it is here and I love it. Except for its numeric keys. I already have loads of comments to make on this phone, I'll let you know.

update: Recharged the phone at my desk, used the transfer function to transfer almost everything from the N95 to the N82. It sadly does not transfer e-mail, network and sip accounts and other configuration data. Still, pretty nice, I can use the N82 until I get time to configure all settings again. O and clearly a better image quality than the N95.

Update 2: The GPS rocks... compared to the N95. Really rocks. Yihaaah!

NOKIA have still got a lot of ironing out to do to their 6220 Symbian S60 GSM 850/900/1800 WCDMA 900/2100 mobile phone before it becomes usable !

For starters each App uses a different (or multiple keys/menus to Exit) !

• Exit menu, Red key, CANCEL key, Options | Exit etc etc

and I have already accidently disconnected Skype, GPS, Maps dozens of times !

Each App uses a different key to zoom in & out !

• Up/Down, */#, 1/3 etc etc

Have NOKIA heard of usability guidelines ?

It trys to be clever and turn on GPS when you use maps or the camera but the only way to turn GPS off (and the annoying blue light) after it has automatically come on is to go into maps and Options | Exit !

So when's the first service pack due ?

You may now pay the same fixed price (typ 80p/min) on all roaming networks but the features you can access will vary ! For example if you use a UK three mobile in Turkey you'll only get Planet3 if you choose Turkcell.
http://www.three.co.uk/personal/help_support_/abroad_/pay_monthly_country_details.omp?cid=31880

If you have a Series 60 mobile phone with GPS or bluetooth GPS such as a NOKIA 6220 you can help OpenStreetMap by uploading GPX tracks. First you need to upload some Series 60 GPS tracking software to your mobile then you can start posting your tracks to OpenStreetMap.

In the past Nokia has won the Eisa Award of Media Phone since the category was created in 2005. This year, 2008, the category was changed into Smart Phone. After Nokia's winning streak with the N90, the N93 and last year with the N95 the award now goes to the Windows 6.1 Pro running HTC Touch Diamond. Quoting Eisa's statement on the new winner:

Here’s a device that is certain to attract undivided attention from gadget connoisseurs everywhere. The Touch Diamond’s glossy, shiny case contains an operating system based on Windows Mobile v6.1 Pro, enhanced with a new 3D TouchFlo interface. Images on the 2.8-inch VGA touch-screen are very sharp and clear, making the Touch Diamond a refreshing and rewarding device to use. No user will want for anything in terms of functions, since HTC has included a 3.2 Megapixel camera, 4GB of internal memory, an FM radio and GPS navigation. Connectivity options include HSDPA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and USB. By achieving such slick looks and performance, the Touch Diamond is a clear winner.

Though the touchscreen makes for a larger display, I'd rather choose myself the E71 (not in the least because of Symbian) or the HTC Touch Pro, both with a mini-qwerty keyboard. According to the dutch Tweakers site the 3G iPhone did not enter as a contestant since it was not available for testen. Though it is doubtful it would have won anyway.

Also the Samsung G810 running S60 wins the European Photo Phone of the Year award:

Is it a phone, or is it a camera? Only a few years ago the SGH-810’s features would have been unimaginable on anything but a high-spec camera. It offers 5 Megapixel resolution from its CMOS sensor, and protects its optical 3x zoom lens with a sliding cover. Image quality is surprisingly good in bright light, while in low-light conditions the xenon flash is a real bonus. Numerous camera-style photo functions include auto focus with face detection, panoramic mode, macro capabilities, multi-shot mode, digital image stabilization and red-eye reduction. Plus the SGH-810 device also includes Wi-Fi connectivity, GPS Geo-tagging, USB, an earphone socket and a slot for microSD memory cards. Best of all, it manages to look at once both elegant and robust.

Sony Ericsson scores with the W980i as the Music Phone of the Year:

Who could resist this piano-black Walkman-series phone? It’s a quad-band handset loaded with 8 GB of internal memory, a 3.2 Megapixel camera, an FM tuner, Bluetooth stereo, and a music player that operates even with the phone flip-lid closed. Opened out, the handset reveals its 2.2-inch QVGA display with 262k colors and stunning picture quality. One incredibly valuable innovation is the built-in FM radio transmitter. This broadcasts phone-based music playback to a standard car radio, even transferring artist and track details via RDS. The music player handles a wide variety of audio file formats, and automatically sorts tracks according to a range of criteria. Finally, two excellent features are the SenseMe and Shake control. These group tracks by mood, enabling track changes and entire playlist shuffling with just a simple flick of the hand.

The full list of awards can be found here.

(Guest posted on www.darlamack.com). For the summer vacation I planned two weeks of R&R for myself. For my Nokia N95 it became two weeks of very hard work. It was continuously at my beck and call, multitasking to every whim I felt. The perfect electronic slave. On vacation I tend to rove around like a little mars explorer on steroids. Reading books in restaurants, coffee shops while taking a break from cruising the cities and countryside. Besides it was raining a lot during my trip,  a good excuse for not hiking too much ;^)

As a result the N95 worked doubletime. From the early waking call until late night, playing musical lullabies for this weary traveller to playback of converted DVDs to my nodding head. Over 200 pictures demanded to be geotagged, while sportstracker running occasionally in the background for hikes. Maps 2.0 working online and offline while routing me towards food, sights, relaxation, parking places, shops and cosy hotels.

As a result I ran into some big little annoyances. Revealing some of the N95's strong and weak points. I won't mention the obvious things the N95 is famous for. It has been chewed over enough. Thus not a word about the excellent camera quality, the top video quality for a mobile, nor my 8 GB microSD with 3000+ songs on it and 1,5 GB of map 2.0 data storing all of Europe with plenty of room left for recording video and photos. Nor will I complain about it's scrungy battery capacity. I had my car charger, my 220V-travel charger as well as a 3500 MAh Proporta to keep the little fella happy and beeping all day and night. I was prepared, happily so, to go on the road with my trusted e-buddy. After more than two years of ownership not expecting some interesting observations about my N95, an not in the least the ultimate frustration when it broke down the last 3 days of the vacation.

Searching places with Maps

Having maps 2.0 was mostly great.For rainy days it gave me zoo's, cinema's, aquariums and amusementparks to relax. For sunny days it yielded places with terrific views, hilltops, old castles and more. It suggested pubs, restaurants, hotels and car parking spots. It supplied phone numbers to call and check in advance whether or not it was open and make reservations.  In other words pure freedom.

Maps performed well in offline (saving on roaming) as well online mode for searching places. Bothersome is that the content of the offline database and the online search database are very different. Items found in the offline database are not always present in the online database and vice versa. Some kind of merging that search results would be really nice or at least one being a subset of the other. For a complete search, you have to check in both modes. Very annoying.

Routing

Routing works well in larger cities like Bonn, Koblenz etc. However when routing through rural areas maps it shows its shortcomings. It carelessly navigates you over single car wide farmer roads where two cars in opposite direction can not pass. "Hello mr farmer I happily will drive the last kilometer again but now in reverse to let you pass... This suggests that those roads were probably badly digitized from satellite pictures. Particular since some have traffic signs forbidding entrance, or even state being a deadend. Of course this is unlikely to be a purely Nokia Maps problem. In any case I applied some intellect and ignored the satnav when directed into smaller roads when not yet near my destination. Followed those oldfashioned roadsigns if they are available until I was in the right micro-village and could be safely directed to the proper location. Still, why in heaven's name don't they use the road width information from a satellite picture to my advantage?

A typical Nokia maps problem I found with its 'voice directions'. They occasionally are contrary to the routing displayed on the phone screen. The eternally blond, occasional says: "Turn right", actually meaning occasionally: ' turn left'. The road might bends right in front of the T-junction, but you really need to go left as the map on the display of the N95 shows. This is by all means not restricted to rural areas alone, though it shows to be more frequently there. In this, Maps 2.0 can do with some serious improvements. I also heard an interesting warning, never heard before in civilized roadcountry: 'sharp turn ahead'. It is a nice warning but it is inconsistently done and might even give a false feeling of safety and perhaps trick me into an unsafer driving style.

N95 GPS tagging and tracking

 During my trip I continuous swapped between maps, e-mail, music, gallery, n-gage, photocamera, videocamera and my very important webbrower. In the background locatontagger ran. Occasionally suplemented with sportstracker. Here is where the N95 shows it's first 'age'. Despite running V20 firmware with demand paging,  location tagger regularly got kicked out of memory, not tagging this or that picture. I resorted to contineously checking for it's proper working, but that soon became annoying.

On the positive side, I ran the music player through a bluetooth stereo headset (BH-500) simultaneous navigating with Maps 2.0. This worked brilliantly. It nicely reduced music volume and upped the Maps voice. Again, not without some form of a little big irritation. Switching between music and voice is a bit slooow, missing at least the first half second of the Maps girl announcing a turn. This happends using any bluetooth headset  with Maps 2.0 with to listen to voice directions. It regulary eats the first half second of the message making it impossible to distinguish between going left and right (in dutch it is 'left turn' instead of 'turn left'). Very nasty, particulary in difficult traffic conditions where you can't take you eyes from those crazy roadwarriors. It is technically very easy to activate the bluetooth headset half a second before making an announcement. Why not do so?

GPRS/3G Trouble

Well, internet worked nicely and in most places. In one rural area one Begian carrier really frustrated my GPRS connection and befuddled and deadlocked the N95 each time it tried connecting. In the end I had to switch off all the automatic internet connecting settings to prevent the phone from trying to make a internet connection and deadlocking itself. I suppose these were the first signs of impeding doom.

Breakdown

The last 3 days of the vaction it broke down. Refusing reboot, showing occasionally colored noise while booting. It simply refused to work. I guess it could not cope with the workload and a hotspell. No GPS, no photo's, no phone! Yes indeed, no phone. Driving over empty roads, kilometers/miles from civilisation I suddenly felt bereft of my little safety blanket. At risk for out-of-the-blue car trouble, chancing to run out of gas, or other unknown disasters waiting to happen. How hollow now the memory of that feeling of superiority I felt when sliding open my 'trusty' N95 to help that guy and his family who got lost because his PNA (satnav) broke down. O shame on me.

I do have an excellent sense of direction and can read maps like a true ranger. Yet a GPS is a wonderful thing when it is 3 am in the morning and you are tired from Aachen's nightlife. The hotel was more than an hours drive in a microVillage in the middle of nowwhere. While suddenly exiting the highway a heavy cloak of nightfog popped up over unfamiliar roads. You suddenly feel like walking into a horror movie. Without the prescient telltale music. Seeying creepy nightfog turning important roadsigns nearly invisible ones for real does that. I tell you, whole heartedly, a little GPS map on my N95 is on those occasions a perfect warning for unexpected intersections and dangerpoints in the road.

Resurrection

After six days of refusing to reboot, my N95 is now alive again. No clue why. I guess the heat and hard work was to much for it. A year ago my first N95 was replaced with a brand new IMEI number after crashing a similar way. I guess this one is already with one foot in its grave. I wonder if its merely pure coincidence or simply bad design/build quality of the first N95 model.

Now I wonder, would it be really that posh to buy a second, spare smartphone? I need a backup for calling in any case. My N95 got me addicted enough to all its little features and software. Instant e-mail access, satnav and webbrowsing. Topnotch snapshot pictures. To feel connected anywhere any time. Twice my N95 has now been defunctional, leaving marked periods of being 'without' in my life. Letting me feel that I really want one, crave one, cherish one. It sounds silly. Give me a backpack, a decent knife, compass, food for a week, sleeping bag, matras and I happily roam the bush bush by myself. Popping out the forest for more when the food is done. Gadgets? Who needs one. Yet, when roaming civilization I really really crave my little smart gadget(s).

A second smartphone posh? I am in fact waiting for the perfect n-series touch creen model. A Nokia with all the N95 features packed (soft- and hardware), with a 16:9 touchscreen and slider qwerty. Pocket-sized,  100x50x20 mm. Yet they are most likely months away. Between starting and finishing this post, I broke down an ordered a Nokia N82. In ninja black of course. It is currently the best in the N95-ish class. Its better stability, larger memory, xenon-flash, properly oriented lens slider, much better gps-reception and battery life would make my N95 blush in shame. I guess I simply am hooked. Hooked on instant knowledge, information and ability any time any place. I expect my N95 will soon be nothing but a spare. Hopefully an unused spare.

A mobile junky

but does this mean it really geotags your photo's when you take them ?

If so @ £15 / month (for 18 months) I'll be buying one tomorrow !

The Pardus 2008 Turkish GNU/Linux distro is even better than the 2007 version and very different from many other GNU/Linux distros ! This is not just because it is from Turkey and has a Turkish focus but also because it uses ÇOMAR, YALI, PiSi, zorg and comes with (real) Sun Java 1.6.0 pre-installed ! Already there are 100+ (160MB+) of automatic update packages that you can download including a kernel update from 2.6.25.9 to 2.6.25.14 !

And it displays a very cute pussy cat animation while you are downloading updates !

See the official Pardus screenshot page or http://www.flickr.com/groups/pardus/ for more pictures and the Pardus OHLOH Stack.

Air Shows UK - GOG

Soon

• http://www.bournemouthair.co.uk/
• http://www.shorehamairshow.com/
  

Rest of Year

• http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/shows/showdate.htm
• http://www.airsceneuk.org.uk/preview.htm
• http://www.militaryairshows.co.uk/
  

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