Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Please read the very thoughtful N800 review that I've quoted below. I can live without YouTube, really (and I am sure this will be fixed!). Easy to make video and audio calls with SIP and soon Skype + open Linux make this the closest thing today to Doc's ophone (anything with a SIM in it will never be truly open!) concept. I definitely want one of these things! Saving my pennies! When Skype comes out for it, I'll be seriously tempted to cross over the border into the USA and pick one up! Go Nokia go!

[BTW still want the N95, N999 and the iPhone :-) Yes I am obsessed or rather I have a compulsive need to create and consume stuff on the go and N95, N999, N800 and the iPhone are (or will be) the best ways to do this!]

FROM My review of the Nokia N800 - when the walkaround web meets the see-me-anywhere call at Internet Tablet Talk:

QUOTE

Take it from me, see-me calls are just … natural. When you don’t have to decide up-front, “I want to pay extra for this, so it better be worth using,” there’s an immediate acceptance of “this is the way it’s meant to be.” And it’s the kind of thing that makes people buy a new device, the way Visicalc (the first spreadsheet) made buying one of those new-fangled Apples worthwhile 20-plus years ago. The step-in price is reasonable, the experience is unique and persuasive immediately, and you don’t worry that “this is going to cost and cost and cost.”

You won’t hear this described as “video conferencing” or “video calls” next year, btw. Those names are so Flash Gordon in their invocation of the future. So don’t trust that any reviewer who uses one of those terms has any idea of what’s coming. Video conferences are what the guy holding a Treo expects to happen, once Verizon offers it as part of a $120-a-month data plan.

Some users wonder about why the N800 jettisons the useful screen cover that the 770 comes with. It’s so you’re always able to get a call. Putting on the 770’s cover doesn’t turn off the WiFi (or Bluetooth), but it breaks the wireless connection. Users make it a physical representation of “I’m putting my device to sleep.” You don’t put your phone to sleep, and the N800 behaves similarly.

And it makes a world of difference between these tablets and laptops that really do sleep. Your tablet is just on. You start using it. No delay, no wakeup, no nothing. I’ve always regarded the 770 as “instant on” because it’s live the moment the screen cover comes down. But the “never off” side of the N800 is better, and I’m more comfortable with keeping it on all day and connected to my network than I have been with the 770.

It’s my contention that the opportunity to hook up with voip giant Skype got tied to the webcam, and Ari Virtanen’s ascension to the VP of convergent products not only put the internet tablet into the mainstream of Nokia’s future thinking (and N-series)**, but also into the CES and consumer electronic marketing timeframes. They weren’t going to launch entry number two on some random day in spring like entry one (May 25, to be precise).

END QUOTE

I've been sick and reading fiction books (I finished The Ash Garden before I slept at 8p.m. last night, recommended!) and not tech stuff but I had a dream last night that Nokia introduced the N999 blogaphone in 2007 with:

• 5 megapixel still camera with GPS and with a real xenon flash with lens and camera provided in partnership with Canon or Nikon and DVD quality video with a dedicated public/private button as I discussed in my blog post about ShoZu everywhere and the shoot-publish-respond workflow
• a full QWERTY keyboard like the E61 or an almost QWERTY keyboard like the Blackberry Pearl
• standard USB including power, standard headphone jacks and video out ports
• quadband GSM, UMTS, HSDPA and WiFi
• built in ShoZu technology that automatically over whatever the cheapest bandwidth the user has configured (which by default is WiFi, but those who are lucky enough to live in an area with affordable 3G could configure that too) uploads videos and photos with suspend and resume via the Atom publishing protocol to any website that supports this including flickr and blip.tv (blip doesn't support this today but I know they would in a heartbeat if they were the default for videos like flickr is with today's Gallery app)
• out of the box support for syncing with Mac OS X and Windows
• enough onboard RAM (which is about double the amount of RAM in the N93 I wager) to surf flickr.com/photos/roland :-) , run the podcasting client, run ShoZu in the background and the other apps mobile content power creators and consumers use
• 4 Gig of built in storage plus a micro SD slot for people like me who would put in even more storage, anything less than 2GB doesn't cut it for 5 Megapixel stills and DVD quality video
• costs less than $US 1000

I know I am dreaming (I have no insider knowledge about Nokia or anybody else in the mobile world's plans for blogaphone-like devices) and the N999 ain't coming soon but it is doable and I'd buy one in a heartbeat with my own money. This certainly ain't the Apple iPhone. Too power user and due to it's 'frankenphone'-like nature too cumbersome and harder to learn but I bet others want it.

Regardless, for me 2007 will be the year of the blogaphone for power users. Why pack a laptop when you can get all your multimedia consumption and creation done with a device like the N95? The N95 + bluetooth keyboard looks to be an early contender for 2007 blogaphone of the year!

[Assuming the pictures are better than an N93 and there's enough RAM to run the Series 60 browser, ShoZu, the wireless keyboard app and the camera app simultaneously which may prove to be an unwarranted assumption!]

This is the final post of my N91 Review series. One sentence summary: The N91 is an awesome music phone if you are a power user who's not in love with Smart Playlists and if you are not looking for a blogaphone.

LIKES:

1. Great iPod phone if you can live without iTunes Smart playlists OR you don't mind drag and drop
2. Great Standard hardware ports - Down with the pop port. Up with headphone jacks and USB jacks!
3. WiFi rocks - I will never pay my own money for a phone without WiFi. The value of having WiFi cannot be underestimated if you live and work in a sea of WiFi which is almost everywhere in Vancouver and elsewhere that I frequent.
4. ShoZu over WiFi rocks

DISLIKES:

1. Symbian Series 60 v3 is not stable enough
2. ShoZu on S60 is not stable enough (not to diss Cognima or Symbian, it's just the way it is, hopefully fixed in firmware upgrades and ShoZu upgrades) - in my opinion ShoZu working stably especially with WiFi phones should be used to test S60 and if it's not stable enough that S60 v3 phone should not ship. But I am biased :-) !

What is a "Blogaphone"?

"Blogaphone" is my name for something that allows bloggers to multimedia blog in a mobile style to wit:

1. Awesome camera (3 megapixel or greater with optional 3x optical zoom)
2. Awesome video (CIF or 640x480 30fps)
3. Awesome text input (for now keyboard, in the future something more compact)
4. Connectivity everywhere which today means cellular plus WiFi

I have painfully :-) learned T9 so I can live without 'awesome text input' for now.

Ideally would be something like a N95 with a keyboard. A franken phone to be sure, but something I would buy and use and I have big pockets!