Let’s face it, a work phone at the best of times is more of a pain than an advantage because some companies expects you to be on call 24/7 or at least be looking at your emails all the time. It is not my scene at all to be honest, especially after hours when all I want to do is play Angry Birds on my Nokia N900

Jokes aside, my preference would be to have one phone or device that doubles as a work phone for handling lots of emails, contacts and calendar entries, and a home phone that meets my ‘out of office’ needs which are music, video, not so heavy gaming, social networking, web surfing etc.

So as you can see, I received the Nokia E72 today and I am going to be trialling it for two weeks. Many thanks to WOMWorld/Nokia for sending me the phone. The photo above shows my work phone, the Blackberry Curve 8900 and the Nokia E72 side-by-side. For this first post I am going to compare the two phones visually.

My initial thoughts on looks and design:

• The 8900 is sexier than the E72 and has a smoother, rounded feel.
• Both phones are surrounded by a metal edge. It might be plastic although I am not sure, but it feels tough and gives the phone a strong appearance.
• The E72 is noticeably thinner although only by 3mm (E72 is 10mm thick versus the 8900 at 13mm).
• The 8900 is about the perfect size for a mobile device as it’s not too big and not too small. The E72 feels too long unless one has big hands.
• The weight in hand of each phone feels the same although in reality the E72 is heavier by 18g at 128g (still light overall).
• Both phones have a 2.4″ screen which is okay for the small size. Both screens are bright although the 8900 has a 480 x 360 pixels resolution where as the E72 has a 320 x 240 pixels resolution. More pixels mean a clearer screen, so the 8900 should win but the E72 can display up to 16 million colours where as the 8900 can only show 65000 colours. To be honest I can’t tell the difference. They both look fantastic.
• On the back and at the top of the E72 is a 5MP camera with LED flash where as the 8900 has a 3MP camera and LED flash.
• The 8900′s camera is flush with the back cover so there is no movement when the phone is placed on a table, where as the E72 has a raised cover protecting the camera and flash. The E72 is not as study on a table and when typing and there is a distinct wobble.
• On the right side of the 8900 there is a 3.5mm headphone socket, a double button that acts as volume rocker, a shortcut button and a micro USB port for charging / data transfer, whereas on the E72 there is a separate button for increasing the volume, the middle button is for voice commands, and third button is for decreasing the volume.
• On the left side of the 8900 is another shortcut button which can be assigned to any function. The same goes for the shortcut button on the right. On the E72 there are no buttons, but flush with the edge are two covers hiding the micro USB port and a micro SD card. It is a nice touch to see the covers protecting these ports from dust. The micro USB port doubles as a data transfer port as well as a charge port.
• On the top of the 8900 there are no visible buttons but there are two hidden buttons on either side of the top of the phone, that need a little pressure to activate. Pressing down on the top left side locks / unlocks the device and pressing down on the top right side puts the phone into sleep mode. (Very useful if your phone is on a belt or in a pouch and there is no fiddling around with combination key presses to lock or unlock the device). On the top of the E72 are the power button and a 3.5mm head phone jack. Good to see the location is at the top.
• On the bottom of the E72 is a standard Nokia charging port, but remember it can also charge via the micro USB port on the left.
• Finally my thoughts on the keyboard and mouse wheel/optical pad. It took me ages to get use to the keys on the Blackberry. The keys in my opinion are too small. My poor thumbs struggle at the best of times and I have to resort to holding the phone in one hand and using my left 2nd finger to type with my right thumb. On the Nokia E72 the keys are slightly larger and squarer and bevelled, which feel a lot easier to type on.
  • It almost seems that the E72 has tried to squash too many keys onto the phone (39 keys including the spacebar versus 35 keys on the 8900), plus above the keyboard there are an extra 8 keys along with the D pad. The 8900 only has 4. The E72 certainly feels cluttered against the 8900.
  • The optical pad instantly annoyed me as it was too easy to move away from a menu or icon if your finger moved over it in a certain direction. I turned the sensitivity down but it only made using the optical pad slower. Fortunately there is the D pad with its 4 directional keys and a press to bring up menus or run a command. On the 8900 there is mouse ball, which is simple and effective.

I gave 1 point for a winner and 1/2 a point for a draw, and each phone came out with 9 points.

I was walking towards Bank Station this evening when behind me I heard what sounded like a flute playing. It’s quite an unique sound so I turned around and behind two police horse riders were a squad of men slow marching behind a man that looked a little like the Pied Piper of Hamlin. To his left was a drummer keeping the beat.

The men were dressed in tradional red uniform with armour plates on their chest. Some of the men were holding pikes (a long pole with a spike on the end), while the others at the back of the squad were holding old style Matchlocks.

The matchlock was the first mechanism or “lock” invented to facilitate the firing of a hand-held firearm. This design removed the need to lower by hand a lit match into the weapon’sflash pan and made it possible to have both hands free to keep a firm grip on the weapon at the moment of firing, and, more important, to keep both eyes on the target.

The main disadvantage of the matchlock was the time it took to reload after each shot. To solve this problem, musketeers in the front line fired their matchlocks and then they retired to the back to reload.

The pikeman carried pikes that were between twelve and eighteen feet long. When the enemy employed a cavalry charge, the musketeers sheltered behind and between the pikemen. During the cavalry charge the pikemen aimed their pikes at the chests of the oncoming horses.

Something was definitely going on, because behind the Pikemen & Musketeers were a few fancy cars, a Bentley and one very large black Rolls Royce. Normally the number plate is a give away, but this one had normal letters GCX 342J, so it wasn’t immediately obvious. It turns out that one of the duties of the Pikemen & Musketeers is to escort the Lord Major to civic functions. So there is the answer I think! I didn’t catch a glimpse of the Lord Major, but it was wonderful display of history.

The Company of Pikemen and Musketeers are veteran members of the Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest regiment in the British Army.

The HAC can trace its history as far back as 1296, and received a Royal Charter from Henry VIII on 25 August 1537.

Related Sources and Links:

• Pikemen and Musketeers.
• The Queen laughs as a 17th century military officer clad in armour has trouble sitting next to her.
• The English Civil War.
• Wikipedia – Matchlock.
• City of London – Lord Major.
• The Naseby Battlefield Project.
• THE MONARCHIST.

The 1st, 4th & 5th photos and video were taken using my Nokia N900

The world cup starts today in my homeland South Africa and keeping up to date with all the latest scores over the next few weeks is going to be critical especially if your name is Bowen and you have multiple bets running on the various games that are being played. So I am pleased to report a little football widget / application called Pelota for the Nokia N900 /N97 and Nokia 5800.

Funlabs have realeased the widget called Pelota, which run in a real-time mode. It informs you about the status of the world cup games being played. For every goal that is scored, the widget beeps and vibrates and displays the score on your screen.

Update @ 1703: The widget works brilliantly, beeping loudly when a goal was scored.  What an exciting game that was?

So it now possible to run most applications on the Nokia N900 in portrait mode by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+R together and then closing the keyboard. In the example below you can see Witter working in portrait mode, with an onscreen keyboard that can be turned on or off.

OVI store are currently offering a seven day trial of Sygic Mobile Maps 9 for the Nokia N900, so we thought we would give it a try out. We are driving west to Swindon today to pick up our new family member, a little expensive ball of fluff called Bailey. He is a Tonkinese kitten. So we plan to use the Nokia and Sygic Mobile Maps 9.

It’s a known fact that the OVI Maps application on the N900 is not the greatest or not on par with the OVI Maps on other Nokia devices, so a company called Sygic have brought out their Mobile Maps 9 application which offers a whole plethora of GPS goodies. It is really slick and finger friendly. I just downloaded two maps from the OVI Store, one of the UK /Ireland and the other of France. That is one of the advantages of the application in that the maps are stored locally, therefore there will be no data costs to us while using Mobile Maps 9.

Another feature I can’t wait to test is the real-time traffic feeds, which are based on feeds from local road authorities, police departments and systems that track traffic flow.

While writing this post, I have been fiddling with various settings and I am super impressed already by the simplicity and quickness of the menus. Definitely a good start.

I will update this post tonight when we get back.

Are you getting the following browser screen when clicking on the OVI icon on your N900? Before flashing your device (I took these drastic steps twice with little success although knowing how to flash your device is useful), check out the little application called Browser User Agent if you have it installed.

I must admit it caught me by surprise. I have been on various forums asking for help with little success until I got a reply from “noobmonkey” in the Talk.Maemo.org forums. Noobmonkey questioned whether I was using the application “Browser User Agent“, which installs itself in the Settings area of the N900.

This rang warning bells as I had used the “Browser User Agent” in the past. So I referred back to a backup, and restored Browser User Agent, and what do you know?, I was indeed using a custom setup. I removed it completely and logged into OVI Stores immediately.

Thanks Noobmonkey. You can check out noobmonkey’s website over at Greg-Roberts.com

It is inevitable that there will be some application errors on a device after a firmware upgrade, and below are the ones I am encountering with the latest firmware release PR1.2. I have included screenshots to make it easier. If anyone can help explain why it’s happening and provide a solution, it will be much appreciated.

For starters I have these two applications in my Update screen but I am unable to update them.

And here is the error for the second application:

Related Links:

• NSU showing new Nokia N900 firmware 10.2010.19.1 (PR1.2).
  

Great news!!! Firmware PR1.2 for the Nokia N900 is definitely available via the Nokia Software Updater. Typically on starting my NSU software, I had to upgrade it to the latest version, but afterwards it picked up my N900 just fine.

Before I began I took a back up my Nokia N900 using the software on the device. I then copied off the backup files onto my computer. Always back up if you do not want to lose your  applications, settings, calendar entries and conversations.

I started the Nokia Software Updater via the Nokia PC Suite and it recognized the old version and the new version immediately.

The firmware is 187.9MB in size, which is quite a large file but over broadband it downloads really quickly, which is why I didn’t use the Over The Air update (OTA).

The update took about 2 minutes to download and then started updating the software on the phone.

The update took a little over 2 minutes to complete.

The N900 was automatically restarted and then prompted me for my pin number and then showed me the Nokia Tune Handshake Video (opening video), which means it has wiped out my Nokia N900 swish video. Lucky I have backups.

Screenshots to follow shortly….

It then presented me with a summary of my settings and an option to Save.

• Language: English (United Kingdom)
• Region: United Kingdom
• Time:  9:19am
• Date: 26/05/2010

The Nokia Restore is telling me it’s going to download and install 1.4GB’s worth of software from the Application Manager that I had in my application list, and presented me with a list of software that was in the restore file. (Very clever, but I am starting to think it has wiped out everything ).

40 minutes later: Software is indeed downloading and installing. Thank goodness I didn’t start this procedure outside of my wifi network as I would have already maxed out my data limit.  There are a few prompts for software that cannot be installed (I expect those to be the dodgy applications I hacked onto it. All in all if you have the time, it’s good to see what is happening, how it installs etc. I am playing with the phone as it’s doing its thing and it’s super quick.

Note: I am seeing lots of comments from people saying it didn’t work for them for whatever reason. Guys if you want help, please give a good description of your circumstances, the error you are seeing, the version of your previous N900 firmware, the version of NSU, the version of your OS etc, and then perhaps others can help. Just saying “it’s not working or it’s doing the same as XYZ is useless information and not helpful to anyone.

One thing I noticed was that the Nokia N900 would not connect correctly if you selected PC-Suite on your N900 when you plugged in the USB cable. The only way I got it to work was to plug the USB cable in and not select anything on the phone (as if you are only charging the phone). Then the Nokia PC Suite showed a connection and you are able to click on the NSU option to upgrade the firmware.

Related Links:

• Check out my Nokia N900 page for application links, modding, videos, websites, news and reviews.
• Opera mobile 10 browser on N900 is awesome.
  
• Don’t be a fool avoiding the N900.
  
• An awesome wallpaper manager called Prismic for the N900.
  
• Simply Electronics Service Review – N900 online purchase
  

I just received my first update for Opera mobile 10 browser for the N900 and what a difference it has made? Before I begin to list the advantages, let me just say that browsing the Internet on the Nokia N900 is already an awesome experience, as one is able to open the full website instead of a cut down mobile version. The experience is comparable to using a browser on your PC.

The other main advantage of the N900 is that it runs on Maemo (linux) and it is open source, so you are not tied down to the default browser, instead you can install a whole host of browsers that are available for the N900. I am not saying the default browser is crap, far far from it, but it’s nice to have choice.

Currently I am aware of the following browsers that work perfectly on the N900: Chronium (Google Chrome), Firefox (Mozilla), the default MicroB browser and now there is Opera mobile 10.

So what is so awesome about Opera? For starters it works in Portrait mode and you have all the options and buttons that you see in Horizontal mode. Scrolling and accessing links work really well.

Settings:

This section is top class and really finger friendly. Everything is marked clearly and accessing Bookmarks, History, Start Page, Saved Pages, Downloads are quick and easy. There is also a Find in Page, Help and Exit button (for actually exiting the browser).

Bookmarks:

Again very pleasing on the eye, nice large buttons and it’s very easy to add a website bookmark. When you want to bookmark a page you tap on the Settings button, select Bookmarks, and the very first row is the “Add Bookmark” button. Directly below are the folders where you can add the bookmark too.  The kenetic scrolling seems to be quicker in Opera for some reason. It might be my imagination, but it seemed a lot quicker.

Bookmark Manager:

You can add your own folders too by clicking on the New Folder button and then typing in your folder name. It’s not obvious as there are no buttons, but pressing Enter on the keyboard accepts the folder name.

Start Menu:

Just like on the desktop version, there is a start page with nine little squares representing your favourite bookmarks. Very handy for quick access. You can edit, add or remove with ease by just holding down on the screen.

Multiple Tabs:

It is possible to have multiple websites open under one Opera window. There is a dedicated icon for this, which shows you exactly how many tabs you have open at any given time, and you can see the tab you are currently in because there is a close button on the thumbnail. (very clever indeed). The whole idea of multiple tabs as in the desktop versions of most browsers is a good idea.

That is enough for now, I’ll do another post later when I have mastered Opera 10 on my N900. For now if you would like to down Opera please visit Opera Labs, where you can download the latest version. As mentioned above, no sooner had I downloaded and installed it, there was an update from the repository. I think it was 6MB in size.

Related Links:

• Check out my N900 page – it has lots of goodies for this wonderful device.
• Mozilla Labs Weave ideal for Netbooks and Mobile devices.

There is this post over at The Prodical Guide stating “The seven reasons why you should avoid buying the N900“. I’ve posted an opposing comment and would you believe it, my comment has not being displayed? (The @TheProdigalFool assures me I have not made any comments or they don’t exist – ha ha ha!!! – technical glitch – no insinuation intended ).

So rather than try in vain to get my comments across, I thought I would make it easy for all and just post my comments here on my website. I am not going to re-write the whole post, instead I will just list the seven points and give my explanation.

To: @TheProdigalFool

I think the biggest problem with your negatives are that you did not have the N900 long enough. There is no way you could have judged the device in a short period of time. The N900 needs a month or two for a true decision and I’ll explain against your seven points:

#1 The screen is yesterday’s technology – WRONG!

That is entirely a preference and not a fact. Having had the Nokia 5800, Nokia N97 and now the Nokia N900 this is by far the best lag free resistive screen on the market. It responds perfectly with fingers, gloves, and even the stylus.  The screen is bright and way better than say the iPhone. (that is a personal view like you have made, as I don’t believe the iPhone works with gloves – ha!).

#2 The software isn’t finished yet and may never be – WRONG!

Isn’t that the idea of most smartphones with firmware updates? To improve what is currently available? At what point would it have been a finished product? The software on the Nokia N900 is way beyond anything that is available on any other device or phone. You clearly got the device at the wrong time. How many other devices come with Skype built into the phone module? There are hundreds if not thousands of applications for the N900. Just install the extra repositories and discover the world of linux, and maemo, python, ruby and all the flavors of emulators. Being open source, has meant the device can grow in all areas, as an example, if one taps into the application manager there are 13 areas where you can download applications from. Finally on this point, Meego is going to revolutionize the N900 and even if it doesn’t, there are thousands of developers out there improving the N900 every day.

#3 It doesn’t work properly as a phone – WRONG!

Bear in mind the N900 is not a phone. It’s a tablet or a mini computer first and has a phone function that happens to be in portrait mode as Nokia realized that most people hold phones in a  vertical way. As a phone it works brilliantly. Sound quality is awesome, and if you couple it via A2DP Bluetooth headphones (BH-905) you can have crystal clear voice / sound with noise cancelling. The address book is excellent and contacts can be easily found. One of it’s ‘Ace of Spades’ is the fact that the N900 can make VOIP calls directly from the phone function (name another phone or tablet that can do this???). Google Talk, Skype Calls are possible and any other VOIP set up you may have and this can be done FREE. It’s built into the phone function. Going back to the “only in Portrait Mode”. This can be changed to horizontal mode as well and the speaker can be used. There is a firmware update coming out soon that will address the Portrait mode for other applications on the device.  In the meantime it is possible to hold the N900 in one hand and browse the internet, zoom in and out, scroll up and down. There is a handy hack for this – Press Ctrl+Shift+O and voila, single hand use is possible. With applications from the repository it’s possible to single hand text as well using the standard ABC2 DEF3 touch screen keyboard.

#4 It’s a huge, geeky brick – WRONG!

You are comparing the Nokia N900 with the iPhone and HTC Legend, which do not have a slide out QWERTY keyboard. If those two phones had a keyboard it would be thick and Geeky looking wouldn’t it? The Palm Pre is hardly a phone in the same league as the Nokia N900. You could maybe compare the Palm Pre to the BlackBerry phones in terms of it’s form factor. The iPhone or HTC Legend is no where near the N900 in terms of capabilities (please don’t fool yourself). At one point the iPhone couldn’t even copy and paste. (ha ha!)

#5 There’s very little software for it – WRONG!

See #2 above. There is a lot of software for the N900 and 99% of it is free and there are new applications every day which notify you as well when there is an update (Very clever). The OVI store might not have tons and tons of software like the Apple store or the Droid store, bearing in mind those two stores have been running a lot longer than the OVI store for N900. OVI is in the news most day breaking records with the amount of downloads. Lets wait util the OVI store has been around as long as the Apple or Droid stores to make such comparisons.

#6 It’s cumbersome to use – WRONG!

You are sounding like an iPhone user again. Who needs buttons to get back to the main screen? There are multiple ways of getting back to the desktop (all 4 or 6 or 9 of them), or to the task manager or the application manager or even the application menu. There are long press shortcuts and short taps, double taps and single taps. In the browser one can zoom in with clockwise motion and zoom out with anti-clock wise motion or double tap or using the volume rocker, it’s the one device you can use standard windows shortcut keys on the keyboard (e.g. Ctrl+C = Copy, Ctrl+v = paste, Ctrl+A = Select all etc, there is a whole list of shortcuts). You can bring up a mouse and select text, highlights words, paragraphs etc. You can even load up a terminal window, take root access and run command scripts to do all sorts of OS functions that would be normally not be possible on a device. Cumbersome to someone who doesn’t know how to use the device, most certainly. Cumbersome to the masses that use a single tasking iPhone – Most definitely.

#7 It looks and feels a bit cheap – WRONG AGAIN!

Are you sure you had the N900? The battery cover doesn’t peal off as you have suggested. It clips off and it’s securely clipped on. At least there is an option to remove the cover or to replace the battery, unlike the iPhone. There are no rattles or cheap materials used on the N900. It’s got a good solid body, has an awesome screen and a very good keyboard, which has a very good feel to it. Keys are nicely spaced out  and positioned well and feel good to type on. I have dropped my N900 a number of times and the battery cover has never fallen off or unclipped and the device has not picked up any scratches. The screen didn’t crack or smash like a lot of iPhones do. I don’t have a silly plastic cover or rubbery protector over it either like many iPhone users out there. (why do they have that? Is the iPhone that fragile?).

@TheProdigalFool Your negatives are very personal, especially your “final note”, which I believe clouds your judgement on this wonderful device. Like I said at the top of this post,  you can’t judge a device after only having it for a few weeks. That is not fair on the device and certainly not fair on the people looking for Pros and Cons for a device. You have failed to mention a ton of advantages that no other device could possibly have (7 Pros do not do it justice).

Having had the N900 now for 4 months, here are my list of negatives:

• For a heavy user like myself, the battery lasts 5 hours. (solution – get a DC-11 battery)

I define heavy as  – on a hourly basis I would be surfing the net on about 11 websites, using twitter, facebook / facebrick / listening to music via bluetooth to BH-905 headphones, scrobbling to Last.FM at the same time, SMS via conversation, downloading new apps or updating them via the automatic updater, sending, receiving, reading 5 email accounts for my various websites etc).

• To much emphasis is placed on the touch screen and not enough on the qwerty keyboard.

It would be nice to be able to user the cursor keys or control keys in all applications that have long lists, such as the address book, dedicated applications such as facebrick, tweego, the application manager. The keyboard if used correctly can be a lot quicker than the touch screen, especially if shortcuts are used. Currently I found the keyboard can be used in the browser to scroll left or right, up or down and in the calendar etc. If anyone knows of any other applications that make use of the keyboard (don’t say conversation, twitter, facebook etc, as they are obvious).

• Nokia missed a trick not putting in a Xenon flash on the back.

Photos are great in sunlight, but are poor in low light or night scenes. One needs to do a lot of tweaking in the settings to take a good photo. All settings are via the touch screen again. All those extra keys could be extra functionality.

• The raised camera makes the device wobble if you are typing with the N900 on a table.

This is one thing that annoys me terribly especially since I like using the N900 in front of me when I am sitting at my desk. It is possible to stop it wobbling by holding it firmly down, and I rekon it could have easily being resolved if Nokia had added a small lip on the right side of the battery cover.

• No right shift key.

Man oh man, what were they thinking? Even though I am left handed or left thumbed, using the right shift on a keyboard seems so right! I notice they have introduced the right shift on the Nokia C6.

There you have it and no I am not a tester or on Nokia’s payroll.