Roland Tanglao's Weblog

IF you are a multimedia creator and a north american THEN get an N95 8GB NAM or N95-3 NAM

IF you are a multimedia creator and a european or asian (except japan of course) THEN get an N95 8GB or the original N95, the N95-1

ELSE get an iPhone 3G when it comes out

That's my capsule review of the N78 :-) What can I say? I am spoiled by the iPhone's ease of use and wonderful application environment and the N95's wonderful 5 megapixel camera and video! And with the N95 coming down in price, I can't recommend the N78 (which except for the GPS being faster seems like a downgrade!).

DETAILS:

1. Pricey at $US 500 for the N78 NAM (NAM = North American 3G version), especially when the the N95 North American is $469.97
2. Only 3 megapixel camera on the N78 (but it takes great pictures but not greater than the N95!) unlike 5 megapixel camera on N95
3. Camera is slower to focus (even in fixed focus mode) than N95 which means more blurry photos
4. N78 Keypad is awful, number keys are fine but the Green and Red Keys are very difficult to hit consistently
5. S60 3rd Edition FP2, the OS on the N78, has hardly any real improvements. I'd rather have an simplified, easier to use UI than FP2's eye candy. I'd also rather have a phone that doesn't reboot like the N78 did on me (could be due to the Nokia Sports Tracker beta I was running but all the S60 phones I have used since 2004 randomly reboot). Please make S60 more stable!
6. N78 Lanyard/strap clip is cool.
7. N78 GPS seems faster and better at getting a satellite lock.
8. Video is only 15fps unlike the 30fps on the N95 (and the difference is noticeable!)

Interesting. I still think that S60 needs a drastic UI overhaul and simplification to compete with the iPhone long term and that Nokia would be better off with a Linux core for their mobile phones rather than Symbian and S60 but we'll see. Go Open Source S60 go! Does this mean both S60 and S40 will be 100% open source within 2 years? As the cliché goes, the devil is in the details!

QUOTE

Nokia isn't finished with its acquisition spree just yet. Tonight the Finnish company announced a plan to acquire the 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn't already own and make the platform open source

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From The Symbian Press Release :

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Contributions from Foundation members through open collaboration will be integrated to further enhance the platform. The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.

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So the questions start:

1. Is there a bandwidth cap?
2. Are 3rd party applications like ShoZu and Qik (if ShoZu and Qik don't port to the iPhone others will) allowed?

IF

ShoZu-like and Qik-like applications appear on the iPhone 3G and they work well and Rogers allows them with a reasonable bandwidth cap (reasonable to my multi-media creation needs is 2GB YMMV :-) !!!),

THEN (it's not a r*poff, hurrah!) AND I'll get a 3G iPhone (since net-net, it's only about $10 a month more to pay than my current $50 per month grandfathered EDGE Fido plan).

The only thing that still gives me pause is the 3 year contract but I can live with it if the apps are there!

So I guess I don't buy one on my birthday but wait to see if the 3rd party apps that I want appear and if Rogers allows them.

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$199 + 36months x $90 = $3440 and that’s if you buy the cheap one. Don’t forget the GST/PST.

However, you’ll probably realize you are likely to spend at least that much on cellphone service in the next three years, no matter what your plan.

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My guess for the iPhone in Canada plan from Rogers: $75 a month plus taxes and b*gus system access fee will include 1 GB of data (2GB would be much better but it's Rogers we are talking about and we can't expect them to be innovative :-( ), unlimited incoming and outgoing text and 300 minutes of voice calls to anywhere in Canada and USA. This plan will not include voice, SMS and data roaming to the USA. Roaming will still be billed at the current Rogers r*poff rates.

What's your guess (I am assuming all will be revealed tomorrow at 10a.m. after Jobs keynote!)????

I'll treat the commenter with the closest guess to a tasty beverage the next time they are in Vancouver!

It's about a time! Fingers crossed it's 3G with a decent camera and video!

QUOTE

In a statement released this morning about the iPhone, Rogers has announced that it has reached an agreement with Apple to launch later this year.

Ted Rogers is quoted in the very brief statement, saying:

We're thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can't tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.

As I wrote recently, there appears to be imminent plans to release an upgrade to the current iPhone.

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I love my iPhone (which I paid for with my own money and am still glad I did) because:

• it's beautiful and so is the interface
• the web browser is great, gmail and google reader work well
• the switching between WiFi and EDGE is seamless
• SMS interface is great, so it was great when I was out of Canada and didn't have access to affordable data and wanted to communicate with fellow SXSW attendees
• the voice call interface is great
  

I hate my iPhone because:

• the 2 mega pixel camera s*cks
• no video, i need video!!!!!!
• it's closed at the moment so there's no ShoZu, I need ShoZu! I am addicted to ShoZu's ability to post photos of the kid to my private flickr account and other pictures to my public flickr account

If the iPhone had a 5 megapixel camera and video and ShoZu was available for it, I'd switch in a heartbeat and use it all the time for everything. As it is the phone in my pocket is my N95-1 provided by the Nokia Blogger Relations program (thanks!) and the phone that i would buy with my money if I lost my iPhone and N95-1 would be one of the N95 North American versions.

Having said that I also have a love/hate relationship with my N95-1

I love my N95-1 because:

• It runs ShoZu which has literally changed my life. The ability to "photo-document" my life in real-time has been and continues to be amazing. And if ShoZu ever integrates with Twitter and gets Facebook status updating working, I'll never have to use SMS again when I am in Canada which would be no big loss since I am not a fan of SMS (or paying for messages, I just want to pay for the bandwidth I consume, SMS rates are a ripoff.)
• It runs Qik and similar 'live from the phone videocasting' apps. Qik, flixwagon et al are killer apps over WiFi and 3G!
• It's "open" (since you can only develop 1st class applications using Carbide which only runs on Windows and uses the archaic and silly C/C++ combo, it's not fully open in my book; the whole certificate model and the fact that the amazing hardware on great devices like the N93 is crippled by missing certificates for Python so you can't really access the full power from more modern and dynamic programming environments like Python means Python et al are second class citizens on S60)

I hate my N95-1 because:

1. S60 is not truly open (see the Python problems mentioned above). Hoping for a re-focus around a Linux core e.g. using Maemo from the N770, N800 and N810 Internet tablets.
2. S60 is clunky, hard to use and a maze of twisty little menus and apps are constantly moved around each firmware release. I have taught many people who just got their S60 phones how to use their devices. you don't have to do that with an iPhone which while not perfect is much, much easier to use.
3. It doesn't have enough RAM so ShoZu occasionally hangs and a reboot is required (granted this has become a lot better in the latest N95 firmware updates thank goodness!)
4. The display is too small. As big as the iPhone or VGA please!

My SXSW experience shows that if you aren't a VOIP or gadget guru like Alec Saunders or Andy Abramson and you are a Canadian travelling in the States then as of March 2008, the best thing to do to avoid extremely high Canadian mobile roaming rates is to:

1. Get an unlocked, jailbroken, activated iPhone
2. Buy a GoPhone from AT&T
3. Activate it and slip the SIM into your iPhone. The $10 included with the phone is great if you are just calling folks on AT&T otherwise $50 will do you for a week. Unfortunately GoPhone data rates are a ripoff so using EDGE on your iPhone is prohibitively expensive
4. SMS and phone others on AT&T for free and keep in touch! It worked great (texting and phoning with the iPhone is so much easier than T9 on my N95 or any other handset!) at SXSW. Now if only I could set up Twitter so that I only get SMS from my Twitter friends who are whereever I am travelling too, I could have kept in 24 hours a day sync with my Twitter SXSW crowd! (yes I know you can do this manually but there ought to be a way to do this semi-automatically!)

For the record I used my iPhone for SMS and phone calls with the GoPhone SIM and I used my N95 for video recording and photo uploading over WiFi. It worked great but most people couldn't master the mental S60 gymnastics that I had to do (e.g. frequent rebooting) to get the N95 to work with the flakey SXSW WiFi. And I used Skype to phone home for nearly free over WiFi from the hotel.

From the "I wish I was wrong" department: No Rogers iPhone announcement at Macworld. So RBC Analyst Mike Abramsky was wrong and I was right. Wish Mike was right. 'Nuff said.

Now that my N95 is SIM-less, everytime I try to upload photos with ShoZu or use the WiFi on the phone in general, I get the useless S60 "Create WLAN connection in offline mode?" message. Nokia: this message has got to go please! If I say yes to this once, then remember it forever (cf. the iPhone which does this properly). ShoZu feature request: please work around this useless S60 "feature".

I need 2 Phone numbers and 2 SIM cards, one for the N95 (which is currently SIM-less but I sure do miss 3rd party programs like ShoZu and Qik (e.g. it was alot of fun to Qik the Farmers Market on Dec 22 in real time and have people sending me comments asking about kolrabi and blueberry honey :-) !) happening in real time over the cell network instead of delayed until I get to a WiFi hotspot) and one for the iPhone (which I love for its ease especially for texting and fantastic web browser). My hope is that Rogers introduces a decent all you can eat (well 1-2 GB or less for less than $75 a month) when they give in to the inevitable and introduce the iPhone in Canada.