Nokia N8 two weeks hands-on review

Nokia's latest multimedia flagship has been in my hands for almost two weeks now so I've got more thoughts to share about this device in addition to the very first impressions that I posted right on the day when I've got N8.

Firstly, I think any Nokia N8 review has to be split into two parts, describing separately hardware and software aspects of this smartphone. That is because in particular case of N8 it's somewhat difficult to judge it as a whole. Let me explain that further later on.

Nokia's towel has been thrown - sad but true

So it happened. Mr Elop decided to make financial geeks happy (hmm, apparently not) and disappoint all devoted Nokia fans at the same time by announcing "strategic partnership" with Microsoft.

What struck me today in the morning, once such bold announcement has been made, is that no earlier than few months ago Mr Elop has been quite positive about future of Nokia in context of MeeGo in one of the interviews he gave. What had to happen in-between to suddenly make him claim Nokia as "burning platform" and need to "join an ecosystem" remains unclear. Yet I suspect his Microsoft roots had some influence here but we'll never know.

Nonetheless, this is it. We will now have MicroNokia (or better NoSoft) with Windows Phone OS rather than MeeGo.

Nokia N8 is in da hauz!

So I'm lucky! Once again I have been given a brand new mobile phone free! This time thanks to Social Media Week event sponsored by Nokia and related Twitter promo action by folks at @WOMWorldNokia, shiny silver Nokia N8 has landed in my hands. :) Many thanks!

In fact I am double lucky, as I was quite fancy to get N8 in my hands pretty much since it has been released. Not necessarily to have it (as it doesn't have hardware qwerty keyboard, for starters) but to get to know it and see how the latest incarnation of Symbian OS works out. Both N8 and S^3 have been receiving mixed press since the release and I feel it was mostly negative. That alone made me more eager to see it myself. Plus, I am looking very forward to see how N8's famous camera performs.

Joining an ecosystem is like throwing a towel, really

There have been a lot of speculation and rumours since Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop has chipped in his famous line "[Nokia] must build, catalyse or join a competitive ecosystem". One of the latest and apparently "credible" rumour is that Nokia and Microsoft are going to join forces, leading Nokia to start offering Windows Phone 7 powered devices under their brand, possibly ditching their own platform(s) instead.

Let's say that is actually going to happen and Nokia will really "join a competitive ecosystem". Regardless if it will be WP7 or perhaps Android, it would definitely mean that Nokia will simply become a mainstream follower rather than loosing-but-striking-back innovator. This would be extremely disappointing and effectively would be understood as "sorry people, we surrender and adopt whatever is already on the market just to survive".

C'mon Nokia, you have far too much potential and power at hand to become yet another "MeToo" mass maker of WP7/Android devices just like HTC, Samsung, Huawei, ZTE and zillion others. You can do better than that. You have created a smartphone back a decade ago in the first place, for God's sake! Don't become the victim of own success but win that success back by brilliant and genuine smarthphones that would leave people breathless. That's surely nothing easy nowadays, yet everyone knows that you really are capable of doing that, Nokia.

As I'm not an industry expert, nor the financial analyst and that's all only my wishful thinking really, so I am not going to elaborate on that more than necessary, yet the closer we're getting to the magical date of 11th of February when all would suddenly become clear, the more worrying rumours appear all around the net and suggest the recent Nokia's promising push towards brand new mobile OS (MeeGo) and development (Qt) platforms is doomed anyway.

Let's hope all these crazy gossips are simply not true and Mr Elop would not disappoint his old and faithful Nokia fans.

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.

Santa came early this year...

...and brought me a brand new, unlocked, SIM-free HTC Desire Z today. Yay! Seems like Santa was taking very close look to my rant about Android vs. N900/Maemo I wrote less than two months ago - thanks Santa! Anyway, I am going to use Desire Z as a primary phone from now on, yet I'm not letting my beloved N900 anywhere either and let's say I'm putting it in "standby" mode as a secondary phone. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how these two devices directly compare and what I'll specifically miss from Maemo world in Android.

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.