With the iPhone4S, Apple is now the leader in cameraphones. The only advantage left to Nokia is the Zeiss lens. They have fallen behind in everything else! Sad but true! I hope Damian Dinning and his fab team at Nokia have an even better Nokia cameraphone waiting to be introduced before the end of the year. Fingers crossed!
The iPhone4S has a camera processing chip, the so-called image signal processor aka "ISP" and it has over 6000 cameraphone apps and a f2.4 lens and HD video. The N8 and the N9 lose in all areas except when it comes to raw megapixel count (the N8 has 12 megapixels) and perhaps in the lens quality: the N9 has 8MP and f2.2; the N8 has 82MP and f2.8; both are Zeiss optics which are better lens (methinks) than the iPhone4S 5 element "no-name" design.
Time will tell if Nokia can regain its cameraphone crown but back in 2007 (the time of the "laughable" iPhone 2G; I didn't laugh; I had an iPhone 2G as well as my Nokia N95 and N82 which combined I used to take tens of thousands of photos and I loved the original iPhone web browser and knew back then the iPhone wouidn't be a toy cameraphone in 2011) nobody in the land of Nokia watchers and enthusiasts would have thought that that Apple would produce the iPhone4S that overall beats Nokia cameraphones and not only that will ship in volumes that dwarf the N95 and N82 sales: Every single deficiency that the original iPhone had compared to Nokia cameraphones in 2007 has been corrected and surpassed by the iPhone4S in 2011
most of them were with the N95 (7643) and N82 (20, 554 as of this writing)
Combine the 35000 public plus over 10000 on my private kid flickr account plus the ones that I didn't download and I have over 50000
Needless to say I love my N82 :-) and its "triumph of the lofi" sensor
I also love the non blurriness of my digital SLR and Lightroom but hate the fact that WiFi and GPS are not built into DSLRs (they both should be! All cameras including cameraphones and SLRs and point and shoots will be social cameras in 10 years or less!!!!)
And like Jen I have tried the N8 under NDA and it's fantastic
Therefore even though (like Jen), Symbian is not my fav operating system anymore:
N8 + ShoZu + gravity = a winner so I am getting one (and an iPhone 4 as previously blogged; it would be silly for me not to use the awesome cameraphone power of the iPhone 4)
And Jen, I assume when you write:
" I will be purchasing a Nokia N8 and then tracking down a QT developer to help me flesh out the code of my mobile app idea. Here's to 2,045 more days of camera phone photography. ;o)"
that python is ok? Right Jen :-) ? If so I'll help you write a prototype. I don't do C++ :-)
It appears nobody in Vancouver uses Nokia phones and ShoZu even though it's FANTASTIC because nobody has taken me up on my free ShoZu help in exchange for coffee offer. Bloodied :-) (ok, not really!) I am but undaunted as well, here's another offer: Free photo GPS tagging tutorials using Nokia ViNe and Nokia Sports Tracker and Nokia phones in exchange for coffee. Interested? Email roland AT rolandtanglao.com or text me: 604 729 7924 or twitter rtanglao
An avid cyclist, Tanglao takes photos during his rides and has more
than 44,000 photos on Flickr, a great many of them geotagged. Recently,
he’s been taking pictures with a Nokia N95, a smartphone with a
five-megapixel camera whose image quality rivals that of some basic
stand-alone digital cameras. With a built-in global-positioning-system
receiver, the N95 automatically tags photos with geographic data
The Nokia Software Updater won't let me update my European N95-1 and N82-1 to the latest firmware even with my valid Fido SIM installed and even though the Nokia Canada site says there are updates for these two phones. This used to work with my Fido SIM with prior versions of the Nokia Software update and prior N95-1 and N82-1 updates. I also tried using my Belgian, Finnish and AT&T SIMs and that didn't work either. Any ideas? Is this Canada specific? I can't believe NSU would be updated to block these firmware updates but anything's possible with Rogers and Fido I suppose !
Nokia has to do something soon. Don't think it's quite as urgent as "must introduce something this week" as Scoble describes but the window is closing for Nokia to re-capture the "high-end today but quickly becoming profitable mainstream" mind share that they have lost.
What do I want? Here's my N999 "multimedia-creator phone" vision updated for Dec 2008 (not in order of priority):
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)
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)
Built in ShoZu (with 10MB limit removed for 3G and WiFi, make the limit 50MB for 3G and WiFi) - killer app for photographers and videobloggers
Bult-in Qik (killer app for videobloggers!)
Awesome web browser (Nokia's Web Kit browser was great in 2006, it is now far behind Apple's)
Lots of available RAM (as much as the N95 8GB please!), 8GB storage on built-in card
Built in Nokia viNes to take advantage of Nokia's great GPS hardware (killer GPS app!)
Here's what I don't need:
QWERTY keyboard
Email (Email is dead to me; I continue to use it reluctantly for work)
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.)
Micro SD card slot
Calendar (would be nice but that's what my laptop is for :-) !)
IM (Twitter is IM enough for me and I am fine with using it in the browser)
VOIP is dead to me except for Skype
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)
Would be nice:
Built in S60 Python so I can hack around and do some Geo hacks (and with reasonable security model to let mash up creators create some insanely great mashups) - Sorry widsets, Nokia WRT and flash lite don't cut it for me, but I am willing to be convinced of course!
Built-in Skype (the one on the N800 is fab and yes I know it's on a different operating system but Nokia has some awesome developers, c'mon and get with it :-) )
Translation: this is the week that Nokia either shines or moves to the B list of the cell phone market. Yeah, you won’t know how this week turned out for a year or two, but there is no bigger week for Nokia.
Now, can you count Nokia out yet? No way. It has the biggest slice of the cell phone marketshare pie. Its devices are much better engineered than Apple’s are (GPS on Nokia is better, so are the antennas, the cameras, and bluetooth radios that Nokia uses). But engineering does NOT equal a great experience. Yeah, my Nokia does not drop phone calls in places in Silicon Valley that my iPhone does, but generally I reach for the iPhone when I want to make a call or surf the web. Why?
Nokia is behind in experience. The executives here from Nokia that I’ve talked to know that. They know this is Nokia’s touchiest week and one where they either deliver a much better device or they are going to face a very tough 2009 globally.
Hey Vancouverites! Got an N95, N82 or other Nokia cameraphone and a data plan (or a Wifi phone)? If so, I'll show you how to install ShoZu and configure it to send photos to any email address, flickr, facebook, twitter, Now Public, any arbitrary email address, etc. (ShoZu supports an incredible number of photo and video services in fact over 90% of the popular ones!). All I ask is we do this over coffee in downtown or Gastown before work or at lunch and that you buy me a $2.25 macchiato :-) in return. Text me at 604 729 7924 if interested! iPhone ShoZu users, the offer applies to you too but I doubt you need any help :-) !
Some little known cool ShoZu features:
Did you know you can use ShoZu to send to multiple flickr accounts (e.g. one for work and one for family)?
Did you know ShoZu supports videos? Who needs 12seconds.tv when you can send 20 second videos from your Nokia to flickr (or anywhere else! e.g. facebook)?
And here we are: My Campaign! I want to raise awareness of ShoZu amongst the Mobile Industry Review audience and beyond. My hope is that you, dear reader, will take it upon yourself to educate at least five normobs about ShoZu. Further, I hope you will help them get the app installed on their handset and setup to send to Facebook or Flickr or the like.
It’s my firm belief that ShoZu is a ‘gateway application’ — like a gateway drug — that converts a normob to a mobile data user (a ‘promob’).
ONCE you’ve tasted and started using ShoZu, you ‘get’ mobile data. You can start to look at other applications and uses. You might like to check out Jaiku. Or try and get your head around Twitter.
But the key is photos. Photos OFF your handset, on to the internet. That’s the magic that converts the normob.
Too often, nobody cares. We’re all busy. Normobs just get on with their lives. Take 10 seconds out to explain the concept though — and you spread a little joy with your technical experience.
Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it would freeze or stop tracking my movements in the middle of a bicycle ride when I first tried it (using the built in GPS on the N95-1 and the built-in GPS on the N82 (North American version). And I tried to make it work about 70 times (yes I have 70 routes on Sports Tracker and far too many are incomplete because the GPS froze) which I think constitutes a fair trial!
So I bought an LD-4W GPS when I was in Finland for Nokia Open Lab 2008, thinking that would improve the reliability. Well it did for ShoZu but for Sports Tracker it was no more or less reliable
I want to believe :-) ! Maybe it's the fact that I have an N95-1 so maybe I run out of memory? Maybe the N82 NAM doesn't work because it doesn't have the latest normal N82 firmware updates. Maybe it's because I don't use 3G (I'd love to use 3G but none of the devices Nokia has sent me to date has North American 3G)
And yes I know it's beta, I hope the next version called Nokia viNe is less flakey. Maybe both Sports Tracker and viNe are more reliable on newer phones like the N95 8GB NAM, N96, N85 etc! ShoZu has dramatically improved in reliability in recent versions for fanatical 30 pictures or more per day users like myself (pretty reliable for normal folks all along methinks)! Fingers crossed that the same thing will happen for Sports Tracker and viNe.
Postscript: just tried logging into my sports tracker account with my Nokia Account and it failed, in fact I can't login into my Nokia account at all. Here's the error message: "Servlet error: An exception occurred. The current application deployment descriptors do not allow for including it in this response. Please consult the application log for details." - Weekend maintainence? Regardless, a very unfriendly error message.
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:
Pricey at $US 500 for the N78 NAM (NAM = North American 3G version), especially when the the N95 North American is $469.97
Only 3 megapixel camera on the N78 (but it takes greatpictures but not greater than the N95!) unlike 5 megapixel camera on N95
Camera is slower to focus (even in fixed focus mode) than N95 which means more blurry photos
N78 Keypad is awful, number keys are fine but the Green and Red Keys are very difficult to hit consistently
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!
N78 Lanyard/strap clip is cool.
N78 GPS seems faster and better at getting a satellite lock.
Video is only 15fps unlike the 30fps on the N95 (and the difference is noticeable!)
In preparation for a "car versus bicycle" streaming video showdown on Car Free Vancouver next Sunday June 15, 2008, Jean (Jean's blog post has the background and lots of useful info, read it!) and I did a dry run early this morning.
A question: Anybody know of software to stream in real-time GPS coordinates in RSS, KML or Atom over WiFi or 3G or Edge from a Nokia phone?
Some observations and comments:
Helmet mounted video is more stable BUT on the whole not great because everytime we check our blind spots, the camera moves which is more disconcerting than the jitter from a handlebar mounted phone. I think as Jean noted, we'll move to a handle bar mounted solution like a Gorillopod for the real Car Free Vancouver on Sunday June 15, 2008
A bluetooth microphone with wind reduction like a the Jawbone would probably result in better sound
Rogers charges extra per kilobyte for the bult-in email app? This is really bad. I hope Howard got that wrong. Otherwise a lot of email junkies (if they can figure out how to configure their S60 email client, it's not easy) will be unpleasantly surprised by VERY VERY large data bills!
Is the "deep packet inspection" guy a Rogers employee? I can think of other techniques to detect third party apps, like hacking the S60 3G and EDGE communications software stack to check if the app is built in and if so to send some sort of "validation packet" which the Rogers gateway detects and removes (thanks to JeffG's friend for that idea!), many ways to skin this cat, all futile, innovation sapping and time consuming in the end, better to spend the energy on innovation than bogus packet inspection and billing software IMHO!
Anyways, compared to the rest of the world, as I said in my previous post, these plans are a r*poff and the N95 Browser while awesome compared to the pathetic browser in the rest of Rogers' phones (cf. any Motorola phone browser) is really inferior to the iPhone browser.
Again, my recommendation: Just say no to "browser only" data plans and "3rd party application bandwidth" taxes! Buy a 3rd party unlocked phone and get the $65 PC Card plan and enjoy your freedom!
One of the data plans available for it is 20 bucks a month, unlimited on device browsing (using Nokia’s terrific s60 browser), 2500SMS, “100’s” of MMS (the Rogers guy’s words) and unlimited web email. If you sign up on a 3 year then you also get unlimited Vision. The $7 unlimited on device browsing plan is also available.
If you add your own apps or use the Nokia email client (for POP or iMAP) then data is billed per kb (so don’t use your Slingbox unless you have WiFi). I asked how they can differentiate between the different types of data. One guy said they use deep packet inspection (the same thing Rogers uses to throttle bittorrent).
There are the typical Rogers customizations; separate Vision app, Music store that doesn’t work with the built-in music player, that sort of thing. It also appears to come with Telenav (which you have to pay to use) - Nokia’s mapping program is also available.
While I’m not thrilled with the customizations, I’m lukewarm about the plans. The data plans are incredibly limiting but the n95 has a pretty good browser so that makes things a little easier to bear.
Yay! The N95 8GB North American is available from Rogers starting May 6th. Looks like the N95 8GB has WiFi (just paranoid that Rogers would ask Nokia to disable it so I checked the site) according to Nokia.ca! No sign of the N95 on the Rogers site (c'mon get with the 21st century Rogers and update your website with new products at the same time you issue a press release!) but I found the following worrisome fine print about the$25/month Rogers Vision dataplan that the N95 will be using as its data plan on the Rogers site:
QUOTE:
Rogers Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan includes unlimited on-device mobile browsing only. Plan is available on Rogers Vision handsets only (PDAs such as Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible devices, incurred while tethering (using device as wireless modem for laptop) or incurred using non-Rogers (3rd party) applications downloaded to your device will be subject to pay-per-use charges of 5 cents/KB
END QUOTE
Does this mean if I use ShoZu to upload 400MB / month over HSDPA that I'll have to pay 5cents per Kilobyte? Fingers crossed that this isn't true (it wouldn't make sense but carriers don't make sense (and for what it's worth i don't get dinged for using ShoZu over my Fido unlimited data plan). Could somebody please confirm?
Well, it looks like Nokia isn't satisfied with taking the rest of the world by storm as the North American continent rests safely in ignorance. Nokia has launched the Nokia N95 8GB in Canada on Rogers Wireless. As expected, the Canadian Nokia N95 8GB is basically the same a the Nokia N95 8GB NAM (Nokia N95-4), and gives Rogers the pleasure of beating US wireless carrier-giant to the punch in rolling out the N95 8GB in North America.
The presentation was a lot of fun to put together and present. Next year, I hope to present a followup with my musings on the actual real Bug and any OSGI Java components that I manage to get working.
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'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:
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.
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.
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!)
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:
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
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.
So far so good. The only bug I can see is that I can't seem to update my Facebook status from ShoZu 4.0. Everything else works (e.g. I can see the last few status updates from my 341 ShoZu "friends"). I am sure the ShoZu folks will make it work pretty quickly; it'll be cool to use my unlimited EDGE for updating my Facebook status for free (rather than SMS which would cost me $).
Broke my GorillaPod last week bicycling up Clark Park, aaargh. What should I do ? Buy the SLR sized GorillaPod (and use it with my N95 and N93, I wouldn't tempt fate and use with my Canon 20D) or buy a proper bicycle mount? Or hack my own mounting system (e.g. from MAKE and Mark Boyd)
Don't have much spare $ and not much mechanical aptitude so leaning towards the former!
Could somebody tell me how durable the SLR GorillaPod is?
Set Nokia's camera app on my N95 to take a photo every 10 seconds
Took over 200 photos on my bike ride in today
Deleted about 50
Selected the remaining 150 and tried to upload them with ShoZu to flickr
Here's what happened:
Phone started repeatedly complaining about low memory
ShoZu "crashes" every time (by crash I mean doesn't display the ShoZu main screen and just sits there, rest of phone is functional)
Here's the software that was installed on my N95 (all installed on my main memory):
A funky theme I got from SiMo
YBrowser
ShoZu
Bambuser
Flixwagon
Qik
Google Maps
I guess uploading 150 photos at a time is not a normal :-) use case for ShoZu. Or maybe it's a bug. Or maybe I have too many apps installed. Looks like I'll have to hard reset my N95 and start over again, aaargh (how many times have I done this? about a dozen! oh the joys of early adoption)!!!
Today I tried out flixwagon, "a stream live from cellphone" competitor to Qik. I did a "Carcast" direct from my N95 (mounted on the empty passenger seat with my Gorillapod) as I drove from Gastown to the Viaduct (12 minutes). Impressive!
What Flixwagon seems better at then Qik:
Better buffering
More "Ajax-y" website
What Qik seems better at then Flixwagon:
Non Cheesy look and feel. I could live without the little flixwagon icon moving about before the video is shown and the "too cute" flixwagon smiley icons.
Higher Resolution. Qik seems to be higher resolution the flixwagon. Qik is 320x240, Flixwagon seems to be lower resolution
Better URLs. There seems to be no flixwagon equivalent of qik.com/roland. If it's there I couldn't find it.UPDATE: it's there! found it by URL hacking, no obvious link when logged in, my page is indeed flixwagon.com/roland
Anyways the proof is in the video and both Qik and Flixwagon are evolving at a rapid rate, so let the competition continue!
Check out my flixwagon "CarCast":
The above photo shows my "bicyclecast" setup (Gorillapod + N95 + DT-22 Tripod Adapter + my bicycle). It worked for only 6 minutes of my 30 minute commute to work (bug? limited buffering capacity? EDGE too slow?). And was fun. The GorillaPod doesn't keep the camera too snug on the bike but it's low budget, cheap and cheerful. Someday I'll have the money to buy a proper bike tripod camera mount like the pros use for Tour de France videos!
Check it out: qik.com/video/13888 recorded live from my bicycle (the hardest part was fastening the tripod and the phone onto the bike, music courtesy of my N81 Musicphone)
