n93

On the night before I receive my N97 from Nokia WOM World for a brief trial, just for fun I looked back at my N999 concept/vision from December 1, 2008. And what the heck here's the N999 concept updated for July 2009 (notable updates are in bold):

1. screen with as many pixels as the 5800 Tube or iPhone (sorry but QVGA doesn't cut it in 2009!)
2. S60 simplified and fixed as Rui describes
3. 5 megapixel camera with cover and Xenon flash with 3x optical zoom and 640x480 30fps video (basically re-use the awesome N82 camera hardware and software and combine with the N93 optical zoom)
4. Quad band GSM and 3G (i.e. works on Rogers and AT&T in North America AND European 3G out of the box just like the N85, no funky North American model)
5. Built in ShoZu (with 10MB limit removed for 3G and WiFi, make the limit 50-200MB for 3G and WiFi) - killer app for photographers and videobloggers - Qik is built  into the N97 why not ShoZu? (I can't stand Share Online's limit of 6 photos at a time since I take over 50 a day; hope it's removed on the N97)
6. Bult-in Qik (killer app for videobloggers!) - Qik is built  into the N97 can't wait to try it!
   
7. Awesome web browser (Nokia's Web Kit browser was great in 2006, it is now far behind Apple's)
8. Lots of available RAM (as much as the N95 8GB please!), 8GB storage on built-in card - Reviews are mixed on the N97, sounds like it has a lot of RAM (more than the N95 8GB)  but with widgets it takes up a lot more. - I doubt I will use widgets!
9. Built in Nokia viNes to take advantage of Nokia's great GPS hardware (killer GPS app!) - viNes apears to be dead. Nokia Sports Tracker appears to be alive, so I'd rather have that built-in
   
10. Built in Twitter App i.e. built in Gravity

Now I know the above list is not possible given today's processors and batteries but in that case I can live without optical zoom! Everything else is doable as far as I can tell.

I still don't need:

1. QWERTY keyboard - I'd rather have an awesome camera and flash than a touch or QWERTY keyboard. And for me touch keyboards are just as good as QWERTY.
2. Email (Email is dead to me (ok email isn't dead but my resolution is to take any email thread  that I need to keep that has more than 2 replies to a wiki or blog); I continue to use it  for work and to communicate with "normal" folks!) - If the browser is as good as the iPhone's, then webmail clients work just fine.
3. Touch (would be nice, but not convinced Nokia has the software chops for this; I am not interested in S60 transmogrified with touch, I would prefer touch to be part of a totally revamped user interface that's NOT S60.) - Unfortunately it appears that Nokia's current touch interface s*cks. I hope I am proven wrong by my N97 trial.
4. Micro SD card slot
5. Calendar (would be nice but that's what my laptop is for :-) !) - Again with a good enough browser a web client would be good enough)
6. IM (Twitter is IM enough for me and I am fine with using it in the browser)
7. VOIP is dead to me except for Skype
8. MMS - I am not convinced I need it, I can always use ShoZu email photos :-) but I was wrong about SMS (so maybe I am wrong about MMS) - I am pretty sure I am wrong about MMS and I am pretty sure (unfortunately) I will be MMSing my relatives with pictures since they all finally seem to have MMS plans and devices and none of my luddite :-) relatives still use flickr or any of the other public or private photosharing sites!
   

I tried to record a video using the new video APIs in S60 Python 1.4.1 but I can't get it to work. My code (inspired by instaflickr code from the S60 Python Book Sample code) runs but the red light doesn't come on on my N93 and nothing is recorded. I am guessing (Forum Nokia post, SourceForge Bug Report) I have an error in camera.start_record() in the following code (which is also attached):

import appuifw

import e32, key_codes, os, os.path, camera, graphics

def cb(im):

  try:

    canvas.blit(im)

  except:

    appuifw.note(u'cb')

def cb2(im, blah):

  try:

    x = 1

  except:

    appuifw.note(u'cb2')

def start_viewfinder():

  camera.start_finder(cb)

  camera.start_record('E:\\Python\\whatever.mp4', cb2 )

  canvas = appuifw.Canvas()

  appuifw.app.body = canvas

  start_viewfinder()

  e32.ao_sleep(30) # record video for 30 seconds

  camera.stop_record()

  camera.stop_finder()

If anybody can help, please email roland AT rolandtanglao.com, call +1 604 729 7924, skype: rtanglao or Jabber: roland@bryght.com

Yay! Go my hello world program to work and finally got the OS X Bluetooth console to work. The trick is to:

ls -l /dev

and use the last tty for the screen command

e.g. if the last modified tty is tty.bt_console6

then you have to do screen /dev/tty.bt_console6

Now on to to create a program to create video in ego blogging mode (i.e. with screen facing you) using the high res camera.

I can't get the following code to work:

and I can't get the Nokia camera.py from Nokia's python sample code wiki page to work, help!

More N95-1 observations:

1. shutter lag is less, still too much lag in general (sensor turn on lag, focus lag and shutter lag)
2. I seem to get more out of memory errors on the web browser than the N93 browser
3. Video stabilization like the video stabilization on the N93 doesn't seem to do much
4. I prefer the larger keys on the N93, but love the N95 compact form factor
5. Assuming the doubled free RAM on the N95-3 allows you to run ShoZu, Twitter in the web browser and the Jaiku mobile client simultaneously without crashing, the N95-3 looks to be a killer device. for mobile multi-media creators like myself. I can't recommend the N95-1 but based on the early reviews for the N95-3, I can definitely recommend the N95-3; too bad Nokia isn't giving N95-1 North American owners a rebate like Apple did for iPhone early adopters

More N95-1 observations:

1. Had my first spontaneous power off of the N95-1 3/4 of the way through my commute to work this morning. ShoZu bug? S60 bug? N95-1 firmware bug? Who knows. Very annoying
2. Webkit browser still doesn't work properly with Twitter i.e. you don't see your twitter immediately like you do if you twitter from Firefox
3. Video looks great. Indistinguishable to my not very discerning eyes: Check out 5:21 of my morning commute video
4. N95 is not as conducive to videoing on a bicycle as the N93. Not a surprise since there is no pistol grip so you have to hold the phone upright which means you can accidentally turn off your recording which is what I did!
5. ShoZu still hasn't crashed on me yet, yay! But after about 30 or so photos, the camera app (I think it's the camera app, maybe it's the gallery process doing the thumbnails?) slows the phone down which looks like a crash but really isn't!

Day 2 thoughts:

1. Seems faster shot to shot than the N93
2. Photos seem more vivid (more sharpening)
3. EDGE s*cks but just like on the N73 less s*cky than GPRS
4. Video seems just as good as the N93
5. Got my first out of memory errors from the browser (at this point I only have ShoZu installed and a few videos and a few photos :-) )
6. ShoZu owes me lots of beer :-P for the number of people I have taught how to configure ShoZu over WiFi and how to config ShoZu in general (it's not that bad but it could be improved, the flickr authorize screen could be more obvious and that "chess piece" capcha has to go)
7. Just like using a Tom Tom GPS puck with a N93 and N80, the GPS lock is problematic and works erratically

I am doing a mobile study with Simon Fraser University and have the original N95 for a week.

"Blink" :-) reactions after 12 hours with an N95-1:

1. The double slide *does* appear flimsy as reported by many others
2. It is much lighter than the N93
3. Limited battery life reported by others hasn't affected me yet
4. Not sure I like the multi-media key menu - after over 6 months with the N93, I am used to invoking ShoZu by hitting the multimedia key and then up; the N95 way (multi-media key and then use arrow keys to scroll to ShoZu) is slower and takes more keystrokes
5. ShoZu hasn't crashed on me yet ! Yay! But I have only taken about 20 or so pictures. I'll stress ShoZu more during my commute tomorrow morning by taking 40 or so photos during my 40 minute door to  door commute
6. Love the hardware volume keys (which I believe the N91 had)! Wish the N93 had that.
7. Love the smaller form factor. Don't miss the optical zoom of the N93 yet.
8. Menus changed yet again on the N95 versus the N93. It's a bit disconcerting but not hard to find where things are!
9. Screen seems sharper
10. Photos seem better. Need to compare with N93. Haven't tried a video yet

cool! Shozu slideshow - another viral attractor for ShoZu. Now if only Cognima and the ShoZu team would fix the crashing bugs that I experience when there are over 200 or so photos on my Nokia N93 (which I think is an S60 problem but what do I know? As always willing to run debug versions to help fix this and to act as a tester for S60 and ShoZu teams)

From markbole: ShoZu Slideshow Beta for Consumers - about to launch:

QUOTE

ShoZu is soon to launch a web widget that runs on all major social networking sites as well as other online services such as blogs. ShoZu Slideshow creates a virtual photo frame for camera phone pictures and videos, that anyone can create and anyone can post to any web page on the internet. The content can be updated at any time directly from the mobile phone and updates will be seen immediately by anyone who has a copy of your Slideshow.

END QUOTE

Here's my ShoZu slideshow widget:

Here’s how I made the VancityBike Share 502 movie (a video of 10 bike rides in Vancouver using stills taken with a N93)

1. Took 502 photos from my Vancity Bike Share bike over 10 one way journeys to Gastown from East Van and back using my Nokia N93. Uploaded them to flickr with ShoZu. Got lots of memory errors and other random crashes while taking pictures which I worked around by rebooting the phone. Hopefully I’ll get an N95 North American version from Nokia Blogger Relations and its doubled RAM will cure the crashes and out of memory problems. Anecdotally the problems *seem* to be related to running out of memory and an inefficient Nokia Gallery app that slows down the entire phone when you have more than 200 pictures on a card (even though in my case there was over a Gig of memory left on my memory card). Could also be a ShoZu bug.
2. Downloaded them to my Mac using FlickrBackup
3. Changed the modification times to the EXIF date using CocoViewX’s “EXIF - Tools” -> Set Modification Date to EXIF date and then “Rename Series…” using New File Name of “VancityBikeShare###
4. Using QuickTime Pro’s “Open Image Sequence command made a movie with 502 pictures using 2 frames (i.e. 2 of my pictures) per second
5. Found some Creative Commons music using ccMixtr.org and pasted it into the movie
6. Exported the movie using QuickTime Pro

Easy eh :-)? I know there are other ways to do this (Keynote, PhotoToMovie, etc!) but this is cheap and cheerful. Highly recommended as a fun way to make fun movies out of your photos!

Here’s the finished product:

This movie (4:11) was made from 502 photos taken from my Vancity Bike Share bicycle from June 27 to July 11 2007 from my Nokia N93. Music from teru used under a Creative Commons license: Technology (ft. MTGakaCaraMelG) and Start a Digital Revolution (ft. tacet, KCentric), http://terumusic.blogspot.com/

I've asked for this before from ShoZu but nobody is listening :-) ! In the wrap up meeting today of the mobile rich media research study at SFU at that I was part of the last two months, I expressed my frustration at not being able to fluidly upload videos (sorry but email, FTP or Bluetooth or USB just don't cut it from a mobile device) to my favourite video sites like I can easily do with photos. I know videos are much much bigger but we have phones that support WiFi. so LazyWeb let's do it. And I'll pay! The USB / Bluetooth chain of pain doesn't work if you take as many videos as I do and if you use a phone like the N93 which takes gorgeous videos that have huge files which easily exceed the limits of today's mobile uploaders (the biggest I know is Vox which supports video uploads up to 50MB; unfortunately this doesn't work since the N93 videos can easily be well over 100MB).

I need to also write up a long term Nokia N93 review. Read the whole thing if you are in the mood for a longish review; I pretty much agree with what Jon wrote. My quick summary: the N93 is a great mobile computer with a great camera (well as good as my beloved first digicam from 1996 - the Olympus D500) that's hampered by lack of EDGE, RAM and only 2GB memory card support. Add EDGE (and north american 3G maybe), double the RAM and support 8GB cards and you will truly have a great multi media computer. Not as great from a user experience point of view as the iPhone but a functional, versatile device for mobile power users and geeks!

FROM Jon Arnold's Blog: Nokia N93 Review:

QUOTE

Another feature with mixed utility is the zoom. You can certainly zoom in closer than with earlier models, but there’s not much point since the photos never turn out. For taking photos at conferences, I find you can only zoom in just a touch and still get passable results. Things go out of focus in a hurry as soon as you starting getting a closer look at your subject.

I love the video capabilities too – it’s really what I enjoy most about these Nokia phones. As long as you have sufficient memory, you can have a lot of fun taking short videos – zooming is easy, and the sound quality is quite good.

END QUOTE

I haven't done the exhaustive testing that Alec has but am very impressed with my 1st TalkPlus call tonight to my sister's 416 area code cellphone using the TalkPlus beta. More later.

FROM TalkPlus: first look. -- Alec Saunders .LOG:

QUOTE

1. Allows you to attach more than one phone line to your mobile phone. There's no need to have multiple SIMs or accounts. Rather, TalkPlus lets you simply add phone lines — like your office line, your personal mobile phone, and your home phone — to your handset. You can also add virtual lines, which simply terminate on the cellular handset. From that point forward, any calls you make can be made presenting the caller ID that you choose.
2. Allows you to save money on your phone bill by making every cellular call into a local call. That means I can call friends on the west coast, or in Europe, but only pay for local Ottawa minutes (plus a few pennies per minute to TalkPlus). With the confusing array of cellular options available, this means a radical simplification for many of us.
3. Host conference calls from the handset. Simply select the people you wish to have join the call, and it will call them and bring them into the call, using the same low TalkPlus rates.

END QUOTE

The Nokia Media Transfer setup app crashed when I was setting up my N93 but it seems to have set things up properly. Hooray seamless syncing from iTunes to my N93. Long overdue. Go Nokia go! Things to fix: the kludgy invocation of iTunes and iPhoto (asking people not to move the mouse or use the keyboard while Nokia Media Transfer setup is running is lame and error prone). This could be Apple's fault but it should be fixed in future releases!

I like Zurfer and it works great on my N93 over WiFi. Over GPRS however it times out in downtown Vancouver :-( I'm guessing it works fine over EDGE which the N93 doesn't support. Anybody tried zurfer in Canada with EDGE?

Without the N93's optical zoom, this shot would not have been possible since I had no other camera on me. Without the N93's GPRS connectivity (too bad it doesn't support 850 MHz EDGE which is not 3G but much faster), I wouldn't have been able to upload it to flickr while I was still at the beach and get reactions to it via the N93's WebKit web browser again while still at the beach!

The combination of an optical zoom with always on connectivity is unbeatable (in spite of the imperfections of the memory management in S60v3 and the random shutoff bug that happens with the latest firmware). I am jealous of the N95's GPS but when I get an N95, I am sure that I will miss the zoom. In the meantime, I continue to groove on my awesome but flawed N93!

My apologies to Oren and the Contec crew; they gave me an early BUZmob heads up and for no good reason I didn't get around to trying it. Tried it tonight and it rocks on my N93 (both WAP and normal WebKit browser). Fast, sleek and useful river of news RSS aggregator. Now if only we had affordable mobile internet in Canada, sigh !

Question for Oren et al: will it work on any WiFi device? It works great on my Nokia N800. Will it work on other mobile devices like a Sony Playstation PSP or Nintento DS? My guess is yes!

And a feature request: please have an automatic 'mark as read' (don't need checkboxes but why show me something that I've already read?).

If you have a mobile device with WiFi or some sort of connectivity built in, you'll have fun with BUZmob. It's a great way to browse the web (since anything important on the web is linked to from an RSS feed!) Check it out! Go Contec go!

FROM BUZme mobile feed publishing service is now in open beta « The Mobile Net - From Useless to Useful:

QUOTE

Wow, it’s been a busy few months here at Contec Innovations. Today we announced the immediate availability of our mobile feed publishing service, BUZmob.

BUZmob is a web-based service which allows content publishers - bloggers, media sites, social networks, business websites - to instantly make their RSS/Atom based content available to all of their mobile readers. Mobile users need not download anything to their phones, and don’t even have to subscribe to a web-based service in order to access mobile content. The service combines text messaging, on-the-fly content adaptation, personalization, automatic bookmark generation and universal access to go beyond technophiles, and to enable even first time mobile-Internet users to easily interact with the content they regularly consume on the web.

END QUOTE

No disrespect but don't believe the hype from Tech Crunch and Read/Write web; kyte.tv isn't (yet) as great as The Skyte :-) the Java applet is cool; it allows me to upload photos very quickly in real time over WiFi, GPRS or 3G from my N93 (check out my RolandTV channel) and chat about those photos but it would be cooler if you could do video. Looking forward to video support (i'd settle for 3GPP but love if it supported the N93's glorious 640x480 video).

Suggestions:

• Don't call it kyte.tv if it doesn't do live video!!!! I am sure that is coming.
• Fix the chat to allow cut and paste
• Fix those URLs please: http://www.kyte.tv/channels/browse.html;
• jsessionid=na3urj9uqokh.as02?first=0&mode=LATEST#uri,channels/1114 belongs to 1999 no disrespect intended!

For me, ShoZu is still the best way to flickr photos. I can't imagine not using it in spite of the bugs that Ken, Alec and others have observed. When it works, it is fast and easy and requires 0 clicks (or 2 if you don't automagically upload the photos as they are taken).

I have tried LifeBlog (hate the Windows and PC centric world view (it's about the cloud not the PC!) and the fact that you can only upload 6 photos at a time and the many clicks and how it's quite easy to upload the same photo twice since there's no UI cues for which photos have been uploaded) and the Gallery App on the N93 (again only 6 photos at at time and way too many clicks!)

ShoZu worked much better for me on the Nokia N70 (2237 photos uploaded to flickr via ShoZu) and 7610 (814 photos dating back to October 2005) i.e. S60v2 I think! I have had the same issues as Ken and Alec on all my S60v3 phones i.e. N80i (701 photos; which unfortunately seems to have memory issues in general even with the latest firmware), N73 (178 photos) and N93 (152). The N93 with the latest firmware runs ShoZu better I think.

As a former software developer who currently tests software (Drupal), who as well writes software documentation for Drupal, it annoys me that I can't seem to definitively pin down the reason for the instability of ShoZu on S60v3 nor can I reproduce it a will.

Some guesses (I would call them theories but I am unencumbered by S60 developer knowledge!):

1. Symbian memory allocation/deallocation/leaks
2. S60 memory allocation/deallocation/leaks
3. ShoZu memory allocation/deallocation/leaks
4. Clash with the phone's thumbnail creation code (I have noticed that if you go into the gallery, the thumbnails can take many many seconds to appear and when they don't appear ShoZu doesn't work. Coincidence? Maybe!)
5. The auto upload code hogs the CPU?!?

I am trying to test #5 by turning off auto upload. Currently have 98 photos on my N93. We'll see if the instability starts up again after 120 or so photos as seems to be the pattern. Any help or clues would be appreciated

FROM ShoZu. Not ready for prime-time. -- Alec Saunders .LOG:

QUOTE

Ken Camp has a love / hate relationship with Shozu. I have to say that I concur. It's unbelievably promising, and purports to solve a problem that I have — that Nokia's LifeBlog software doesn't target Wordpress. However, it took hours last night to remove it from the phone. Once installed, it takes over the phone entirely. Hopefully they can solve the problems quickly.

END QUOTE

A lot of conferences have free WiFi these days and I have used my N Series phones with WiFi that I received free from Nokia (thanks! In particular the N80i, N91 and N93) to live photoblog over WiFi to ShoZu and then to flickr at these conferences.

So, don't forget to set up your wireless Access point with ShoZu if you have an N series phone with WiFi:

First set up the access point (this assumes that it's an open access point, if not you have to add the password in by hand in the Tools->Settings App->Connections which is cumbersome but doable):

1. App Key -> Connectivity -> Connection Mgr -> Available WLAN - > Scroll down to the free WiFi for the conference -> Options -> Define Access Point
2. Define the Conference WiFi access point as usual

In ShoZu, add the access point:

1. Options->Transfer Status->Options->Advanced->Click on Access Points-> Add the Conference WiFi access point you just added

Finally, follow the excellent How To I quoted below.

I most recently did this at Saskatchewan Interactive and and it worked really well,

FROM How To: Automatic Upload Photos With Your Nseries Phone at the Nokia blog:

QUOTE

I’ll show you how you can take pictures and skip the steps of uploading. Your Nokia Nseries phone will do all the uploading in the background while you do what’s more important: taking pictures. This will be very useful if you are going to conventions or events, but I wrote this because of the upcoming Evening with the S60 that I will be attending. I will be using this “live photoblogging

I was wrong on my previous post. All you need is the magical URL:
http://m.youtube.com/?client=ytdemo

This URL and YouTube mobile video works great on my N93. On my N80i, Real Player says "unable to use network. Phone is currently in offline mode. I have no SIM in my N80i but it should work over WiFi methinks. Bug I guess!

FROM Ring Nokia: Youtube's mobile site is live!:

QUOTE

Summary: Point you're browser to http://m.youtube.com/?client=ytdemo

END QUOTE