Social Messaging Handsets

Today, Nokia announced 3 social messaging phones: C3, E5 and C6, falling in different price range, targeting at different user group. C3 costs less than 100 Euros, looks youngish. Many young people will find it very attractive. E5 cost a little more than 200 Euros, looks business. Small business and individuals who likes E72 but is shy off because of its price tag, would take E5. C6 costs less than 300 Euros, looks like N97 mini but provide good value for money. C6 should be another choice for Touch lovers. Why should people buy more expensive Samsung for the same functionalities?

What's so called social messaging? Blackberry was the first company bringing in emails to mobile phones. Now, Nokia phones brand itself by the factor that they allow user to set up to 10 email boxes and can set up 90% of world's email services. However, social messaging is not limited to emails. Instant chat was another feature, All 3 new phones and Nokia C5 includes chat services, such as live messenger, yahoo, google talk, as well as ovi chat. Your closest friends' contact can be put on the idle screen(Nokia calls it home screen).

By comparing with Blackberry's offering, C3 is positioned to compete Blackberry's Curve series, for example, Blackberry Curve 8320 has only 2.0Mpx camera, 320x240 2.5inches display, email capability.

E5 is to compete against Blackberry's Bold series. Latest Bold 9700 only got 3.15Mpx camera while E5 got 5Mpx camera. Both devices got the same internal storage, but E5 supports 32GB SD card while Bold 9700 supports only half of that. As a good messaging devices, the speed matters. E5 got 3G, HSPDA speed at 10.2Mbps while Bold 9700 got 3.6Mbps for HSPDA. Choice is clear, isn't it?

C6 is to beat Blackberry's Storm2 9520. Both devices got the same HSPDA speed at 7.2 Mbps. Both got office capability: Document viewer for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF. However, C6 has 5Mpx camera, Strom2 9520 not; C6 has full querty keyboard, Storm2 9520 not; C6 has proximity sensor for auto turn off, for example if you put the touch enable phone near your phone, accidentially your face would touch hang up button on the screen, it's very important to have proximity sensor with touch phones nowadays. Storm2 9520 does not have the sensor. C6 is cheaper than Strom2 9520 at the last.

Besides all above comments, it's worthy to add that E5 and C6 has free walk and drive navigation(Nokia Ovi Maps 3.0). So, there is no doubt that Blackberry will be put under extreme pressure in current market situation. It has been great that Blackberry, coming with its special email enabled, full querty key pad equiped Blackberry 6230, spearheaded smart phone market for so long. But now, Blackberry has gone over the challenger's phase because its competitors can make better devices in their own form factor and their product portfolio. It's time for Blackberry to re-invent itself and fight back. A great company should be not only a good challenger but also a fierce fighter in the battle ground.

What's in iPhoneOS 4.0

Following N900's benchmarking capability "Multi-tasking" that enables listening to music while browsing the internet. Now, iPhoneOS finally supports "Multi-tasking" too. Double click the "Home" key to view all applications. No. 2 feature is "Folder", that allows user to categorize applications. Like Ovi mail solution, "Unified" email box was the No.3 feature. "iBooks" will be extended to iPhone by iPhoneOS4.0 too. Enterprise support and game center are added too.

Except "iBooks", aren't all features familiar? With Nokia S60 products:

1) Long press menu key to bring a list of applications running at the same time
2) Nokia had already the "Folder" concept in its menu grid.
3) Ovi mail supports a number of popular email services, such as hotmail, gmail,yahoo, ovi mail. And it also supports at Mail for Exchange by the same application
4) Nokia had already "games" folder for long , as well as game center. Checkout n-gage keyword.

So, the question is : Will iPhoneOS 4.0 make iPhone more like Nokians? Undoubtedly, iPhone was the game changer since 2007. However, how long will the momentum continue? Moto's Razer was, like iPhone, released in 2003 and leading the market's "WOW" factor. Exactly, in 2007, Nokia released N76, Nokia's version of Razer. From 2008, Moto started to experience "the universal gravity". Now looking forward to 2011, will iPhone still lead the smart phone market? iPhoneOS 4.0 does give Apple's device a major boost, but it seems to be fixing the technical gaps, which was ignored by iPhone users. When "Touch" is not the magic word anymore in the smart phone market, iPhone users will naturally demand for more. And when "Touch" is not a differenciating feature anymore, the post-"iPhone" generation will then choose again from Apple, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony-Errison, HTC. What will the smart phone market look like in 2011?

Highlights of Sony Ericssion X10i

Here's short summary of the highlights:

1. Android 1.6 kernel + SE's own timescape and mediascape application
2. Snapdragon 1.0 GHz processor
3. 8.1Mpixel camera with software algorithms for smile detection and scenary detection, as well as touch UI interface
4. 4 inch, 1.6Million color, 854x580, FWVGA, true HD(no cropping needed for HD video) 16:9 display.
5. Dimension: 119×63×13mm.
6. 1500mAh battery.
   

Watch me on qik!

Have you got a smart phone? Yes! But have you tried qik? Not really. Here comes the exciting experience with qik. Qik promised to share your daily life privately with your family using your smart phone. How does it come true?

The blogger went directly to qik download(http://qik.com/m) on N78 over WLAN access. Qik mobile page was quick to navigate me to its own download page. The installable package was 642kb only, quite fit application. It takes less than 1 minute to install.

No account , no previous experience. Qik mobile UI navigate the blogger to create a new account on the fly. With a just registered account, Qik camera application launched. This camera viewfinder has no difference to standard camera's one. However, press record. Then the magic happened. On the viewfinder, a line of text tells that the live broadcast video can be accessed via http://qik.com/your_qik_account_name. The blogger was curious about what would happen if I put the URL in my PC's browser. Wow~! My camera content appeared in my PC. What a genius application!! The broadcasted video can be watched by many people , not just one. On mobile side, it also tells how many people are watching live broadcast and what are the delay between your capture and the live boardcast. Don't forget, voice were recorded and transmitted too.

It definitely has the WOW factor. The blogger could imagine qik in reality that one could show live video of FIFA match in South Africa to their friends or parents in UK, if he/she has fixed payment for the 3G data traffic. To be honest, the live broadcast has major quality issue. The live video was not smooth. The blogger also noticed the delay increases along with the length of the video record. But, after the live video sharing was stopped and uploaded, the stored video on qik web site can be viewed smoothly without delay or jitter effect.

All in all, qik has its own credit. It's a successful demonstration on how best and usable mobile services could be. Any time and any where, you can share your live experience with your next-of-kin. In qik's case, it's what you see, what you hear and what you say.

Discover Vertu

Mysterious Atlantis was found 620 miles off the west cost of Morocco near Cannary Islands in Google Ocean, while Vertu, Nokia’s luxury phone manufacture and sales arm, headquartered in in Church Crookham, Hampshire, United Kingdom, can be easily spotted on Google Satellite pictures. The report that Vertu launched 4 new luxury phones, priced at 20 million yen, in its Tokyo flagship shop draw the attention of the blogger to this unique, high quality brand.

Vertu was officially founded in July, 1998. Frank Nuovo, Vertu's principle designer, was behind Vertu Series, as well as Nokia phones. He proposed the industrial design and full business case for Vertu in 1997 and get Nokia board's approval at 1998. He and his colleagues pioneered in colors, materials and trend design.

Vertu Signature, the first ever model was introduced in Paris, in 2002. Now, Vertu is an established luxury band , with seven series: Constellation (Constellation Edition), Ascent TI (titanium metal track), Ascent (track), Signature (Signed Edition), Signature Diamonds (Crystal Diamond Series), collection of models (with sub - 6 Legend of runway designs and Ferrari 1947 limited edition), Special Edition (strawberry and cream-color series).

In terms of craftsmanship, Vertu went to extreme. It took a fresh person a year to learn to assemble a Vertu phone, while on the contrary Nokia production line assemble a phone in minutes from components to complete package. All details have been taken care of : Swiss watch screws, distinctive “Sandpiper” ringtones, special click sound, laser drilled keypad, plasma ceramic pillow, top illumination of Ascent Ti keypad. All aimed for iconic symbol for the owner.

Special Edition

Ferrari 1947 limited edition

Signature

Constellation Edition

Ascent TI

CJK support for Maemo Platform

It's been five years since the first Maemo device was announced at the LinuxWorld Summit in Network city on 25 March, 2005. Still, there has not been official support for Chinese community, not even for latest N900. CJK fans can not view their favorite web sites and can not communicate using their own languages. Wasn't it bad user experience for this group?

However, there is un-official support, that is from Maemo CJK project, which aimed to bring CJK support to Maemo platform. So far, there are install packages available for OS 2006/2007 and OS 2008. N770, N800 and N810 are supported. The blogger verified in person that Chinese support for N810 is fully functional, although current support was still in beta phase. Please follow the instructions on the website. After the package installation, do a reboot. Chinese webpages were shown vividly in Firefox Mobile.


Before you decide to install it, the blogger noticed some imperfections and learned to work around them. With the package installed, The functionality of "Fn" key changed a bit. You can no longer press "Fn" first and then press 'Q' to get the number '1'. What's more, you can no longer expect to press "Fn" twice to indicate that you want to input the blue symbols on the keypad. Well, you can still get those blue symbols out. What you need to do different is that you press "Fn" and the blue symbol key together. The same applies to "Shift" key. The next thing is that layout of "SCIM Input Method Setup" program needs improvement. It's functional but just does not look good.

The Maemo CJK project seems to be Maemo port of SCIM project, which is the best open source software for CJK IM and font in Linux world. There have been other brilliant CJK projects running in parallel with SCIM, however some of them supports only Chinese, some of them phased out, the others were just not good enough. Comparing with the installation of SCIM to ubuntu, to get Maemo CJK to N810 was painless. It's worthy of open source rating of 4.5 out of 5.