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Nokia N95 and N80 comparison December 30, 2006

Posted by Mads Foli Bjerre in : Mobile, Gadgets , 1 comment so far

Wow, the N95 looks fast! My N73 was a huge step upwards in quickness from my old 6680, but it’s still a bit slow when starting the camera app and such. The N95 really looks like a huge improvement speedwise.

How to take better photos with your cameraphone December 20, 2006

Posted by Mads Foli Bjerre in : Mobile , add a comment

All About Symbian has four great tips for taking better photos with your autofocus-equipped smartphone:

Firstly and most importantly of all, […] light is everything. It’s photons of light that trigger charge in the camera’s sensor, and the more of them the more accurate the reading from each sensor pixel. In good light, there’s more than enough information being gathered and your Nseries camera will produce results comparable to those from standalone cameras. In poor light, either in the evening or under flash conditions or in a dimly lit room, there simply aren’t enough photons hitting each pixel for the sensor to be absolutely sure what value to report, which is why you get ‘noise’, flecks of random colours in your photo.

AAS Feature: How to: Take better photos on your Nokia Nseries smartphone

WTF show previews the Nokia N95 December 18, 2006

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More YouTube videos of the Nokia N95:

From Darla Mack.

Understanding Mobile 2.0 December 12, 2006

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Mobile 2.0 logo

Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org has written a great post on Read/WriteWeb about the emerging mobile web. His enthusiasm correlates with mine:

What we mean by ‘mobile 2.0′ is another (r)evolution, already started, that will dramatically change the web and the mobility landscape that we currently know. The idea is that the mobile web will become the dominant access method in many countries of the world, with devices that become more hybrid and networks that become more powerful - everywhere in the next decade to come.

There are some great quotes in the post by Eric Schmidt of Google and C. Enrique Ortiz (among others). A must read.

Missing a web cam? Use your mobile! December 6, 2006

Posted by Mads Foli Bjerre in : Mobile , 2 comments

This is eerie. David posed a question earlier today: Why not use the camera in your mobile as a webcam? Connect it over Bluetooth and there you go. I responded that I didn’t think the bandwith was high enough.

Well… turns out I was wrong.

When I got home I checked my news feeds, and guess what pops up: a post about Mobiola, a program that turns your mobile into a web cam. I’ll be darned! So of course I had to immediately download and check it out on my Nokia N73.

Turns out it works like a charm:

Mobiola screenshot

The image quality is not the best (neither are the looks of the model on the above picture, but hey — I got a two month old son which at least explains the bags under my eyes), but it works! High Quality setting results in some very low fps, so if you’re going for that 1999 56K modem web cam look, this setting is for you.

It’s probably also a good idea to have your phone charger handy. A constant Bluetooth connection and the camera on (my N73 even turned on the photo light the entire time) will drain the phone battery pretty fast.

The trial version of Mobiola allows you to run the program for 7 days and drops the Bluetooth connection after 5 minutes. The full version is USD $19.95. If you want to try it out, you can download it from Handango here.

Flash Lite - free at last

Posted by Mads Foli Bjerre in : Mobile, Flash Lite , add a comment

Great news - the Flash Lite player is now available for nada/zip/zilch.

Free availability is one of the things that are needed to get traction for Flash on handsets. More and more phones are preinstalled with Flash Lite, which is essential. But like the Flash equivalent on PC’s, people need to be able to install updated versions when they arrive.

What still bugs me, though, is the process of getting the new Flash Lite player onto your handset. First of all, you need to have an Adobe ID. If you don’t have one, you need to create one.

Second, once you get to the download page, they assume you know what specific flavour of the Symbian operating system your phone is running:

Download Flash Lite screenshot

I didn’t. I had to look it up.

After that comes all the usual hassle with downloading, transferring and installing the app on the handset. This HAS to be easier if this “upgrading-the-player-yourself” is ever going to take off.

But if you’re still up for it and your handset supports it, go ahead and get the new, free player: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/

Update: Roger Fischer also notes the annoying install experience.

Nokia N95: El Presidente December 4, 2006

Posted by Mads Foli Bjerre in : Mobile, Gadgets , add a comment

Or: This Time I Really Think They Got It Right

Nokia N95

I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am by Nokias newest phone — or, as Nokia would like to call it, multimedia mobile: the N95. The reason for my excitement is this:

Everytime Nokia or any other phone manufacturer comes out with a new product, something is always missing. Take the Nokia N73 for example. This is the phone I’m using at the moment. Fantastic device. Does almost everything I want it to do. Almost. I’d like WiFi, GPS and an even better camera. There is always something missing, right? Well… not anymore.

Somehow Nokia has managed to squeeze multiple mucho-desirable features into a device that’s actually smaller than my N73 (how do they do it?):

Priced at €550 the N95 will be available in January 2007 in two colors, plum and sand. It isn’t cheap, but rest assured I will get my hands on the N95 when it hits the shelves. And I promise I’ll post my thoughts when I have had some time to play with… err, I mean, use it.

In the meantime, do as I did: Check out some N95 videos on YouTube.

Here’s one more clip with a dude demonstrating the phone (in French, but you get the drift):