5mpix camera shoot-out: HTC Desire Z vs. Nokia N900 vs. Nokia E72

I've been taking quite a lot of photos with Nokia N900 earlier and even if I didn't regard their quality as the best ever, these shots were just fine and perfectly acceptable for less important occasions to me. However, ever since I've got HTC Desire Z in my hands, I was quite baffled with its camera quality. Main thought was along the lines of is this really that bad or is it just bad impression?

So I went and did totally non-scientific and hugely subjective comparison of camera capabilities of the most modern mobile devices I currently have at hand: HTC Desire Z, Nokia N900 and Nokia E72, all of which have 5 megapixel camera sensors. Results were, frankly, quite surprising to me.

Nokia N900 vs. HTC Desire Z

So it happened - after almost a year spent with Nokia N900 as a default phone, I have now switched to Android in the form of HTC Desire Z. Being long-standing user and fan of Maemo (since N8x0), immediate switch to whole new platform naturally brings incentive for direct comparison, so here it is.

Android makes me cry

I have been using Nokia N900 as a primary mobile phone for nearly a year now and I am quite happy with it. However, quite recently I've also bought the best value-for-money Android 2.1 device you can currenly get, which is Orange San Francisco aka ZTE Blade. I won't go in too much details about the phone itself, as anyone could easily look it up, but if you're after joining Android world cheaply, yet without much (any?) compromise in hardware area, then ZTE Blade is definitely way to go. Anyway, I have never intended new phone to replace my N900 because of lack of hardware qwerty keyboard which I'm very addicted to, nonetheless I gave it a shot and put my main SIM card into it for few days. That experience made me cry and I'm just about to tell you why...

Quick review of cheap, dedicated car holder for N900

When I've got myself a Nokia N810 couple of years ago, I was nicely surprised by very good quality car holder that came inside the retail box as standard. When I've got myself a Nokia N900 last December, there was no car holder inside the box. Even worse - Nokia didn't seem to care providing one as an optional accessory to buy later. They still don't seem to care, anyway.

Getting started with QtWRT

Recently announced Qt Web Runtime (QtWRT) is a perfect opportunity to energize masses of people out there in the wild with at least bare html/css/javascript awareness to become application developers for their Maemo and probably future MeeGo devices. However, since QtWRT is still pretty much in pre-alpha stage, it has been thrown at us with no proper documentation (not counting few external W3C references), so early adopters might scratch their head upon simple "Hello World" tutorial that would kick-start the general idea behind Web Runtime.

Disabling smiley icons in Conversations (PR1.2)

If you're one of those old-school geeks who simply can't stand these quasi-cool, graphical equivalents of good old, ascii-based smileys (aka emoticons like ":-)" or ";)"), this tip is going to make your day. Conversations app which manages all sorts of text and IM messages in your N900 is using graphical smileys by default, yet the new and shiny PR1.2 release brings much anticipated ability to hack those weird icons and bring some old ascii love back to N900 near you.

Saving N900 battery power with simple shell script

It's not a secret that Nokia N900 is a real power sucker and needs quite frequent contact with battery charger, especially when all those fancy always-online features are enabled and in constant use. I keep my N900 in such mode nearly all the time myself, yet there are times (overnight, while at work, hospital etc.) where I'd like to sacrifice being online 24/7 in order to spare battery an extra breath. Offline mode is not an option, as I'd like to preserve ability to actually make voice calls and send text messages. You know, old-school.

PUSH your imagination to the limit

Last night I came back from PUSHN900 event in London. Once I've received an invitation few days ago, frankly I didn't exactly know what to expect, so I went there with pretty much clear mind about this. However, what I've seen there was absolutely amazing and I was stunned by the ideas that people in teams from around the world have put up together.

Playing divx/xvid movies with subtitles on N900

We all know N900's outstanding multimedia capabilities, right? Built-in media player can chew full-blown divx movies without hesitation. However, it doesn't support subtitles useful to foreign-language-impaired people. Fear not, solution is there.

Konfiguracja usługi IPFON w Nokii N900

Jedną z istotniejszych zalet Nokii N900 jest zintegrowany klient VoIP, umożliwiający na wykonywanie i odbieranie połączeń typu VoIP w sposób transparentny dla użytkownika. Oczywiście natychmiast zacząłem kombinować jak zintegrować go z moim kontem IPFON, którego używam z powodzeniem od niemal 3 lat.

Oto krótka instrukcja konfiguracji zintegrowanego klienta VoIP/SIP w Nokii N900 / Maemo 5 pod kątem działania w ramach usługi IPFON.

Polski układ klawiatury dla Nokii N900

Jak podmienić plik zawierający zmodyfikowaną mapę klawiatury sprzętowej, umożliwiający wprowadzanie polskich znaków w Nokii N900 za pomocą kombinacji Fn+Ctrl->litera.

Polish hardware keyboard layout for Nokia N900

Although Nokia N900 has support for Polish UI and input language out-of-the-box, every Polish user of this device would most definitely agree that typing anything that involves specific Polish characters like żażółć gęślą jaźń is a huge pain. For those who don't know - every national char has to be entered via little on-screen virtual keypad that appears after pressing Fn+Ctrl keyboard combination.

Nokia N900 has landed and is ready to depart

After over a month of waiting I have finally received my very own, much anticipated Nokia N900. Yay! But... well, it quickly turned out that initial impression wasn't too much to "yay" about, as my N900 unit is apparently affected with random reboots issue. Despite quite positive contribution of Nokia engineers to Maemo Bugzilla entry regarding this issue, the exact cause wasn't determined (yet) and the most likely explanation is simply a piece of faulty hardware within the unit I have. Having no software-based solution to this yet and knowing there are lots of happy random reboot-less users of N900 out there, I'm planning to arrange a warranty replacement for my N900 next week, so hopefully new unit will work properly.

N900 meetup in London impressions

I've just came back from N900 meetup held in London tonight, 17th of November 2009 that is. There are few things I'd like to point out.

I really can't wait for Nokia N900

Nokia N900 has been finally announced, oh yes! This is the device I am really, really looking forward to get - even more than any new Android device that could possibly get released this Autumn/Winter. Having some previous experience with Nokia Internet Tablets, and now reading the official specs of N900 I can without much hesitation say that N900 is going to be groundbreaking device for Nokia and is quite likely going to lead the path that future handsets from Finland might follow.