iPhone App Review: The Google Mobile App

 

Google has finally gone ahead and released its Google Mobile App for the iPhone.  All the fuss about Google breaking Apple’s App Store rules with this app notwithstanding, it truly is a remarkable application.

Currently number twenty-one on the free list of apps, the Google Mobile App currently has a rating of 3.5/5 stars.  While it does serve the seemingly mundane and pedestrian purpose of searching the web for information, it simplifies and streamlines the process in a way that it becomes a very useful tool for the iPhone.  Suppose you’re out, and you’d like to find the nearest Indian restaurant.  Normally, you might use the Maps application and search the term “Indian,” but that would only work if the restaurants around you actually had the word “Indian” in their business name, e.g. Taj Indian Cuisine.  Your other option might be to use a restaurant review site, such as Restaurantica, but in finding a restaurant on that particular site, you’d be limited by the restaurant list they have, as well as your knowledge of your immediate surrounding (intersections, zip/postal codes).  

The Google Mobile App allows you to search by simply saying “What is the nearest Indian restaurant?” It uses your GPS to understand your location, and uses a specialized Google search to find the requested information.  Since it uses speech recognition, the time it would take for you to get results versus opening Safari, searching Google and obtaining results is drastically reduced.  In my independent tests, I found it took me 20-25 seconds to get to the search results page via Safari, and only about 14 seconds with the Google Mobile App.  Not only that, your results can find businesses and establishments near you.  The speech recognition program for me, was excellent at its job, and unbelievably fast in recording, uploading and understanding the audio bit.  The caveat here, is that it’s geared towards North American accents, so if you have any other kind of accent, it may not work as well.  North America and especially Canada is quite the melting pot of ethnic backgrounds, so it’d be nice to have more flexibility in this area, but understandably, its quite difficult for an application to understand so many different accents.  The other drawback here is that, like all speech detection applications, its accuracy falls dramatically in the presence of ambient noise.  Unless you’re at home, in a private office or alone in your vehicle, background noise is bound to be present.  A restaurant or something like that won’t bother this app that much, but other people chatting around you will confuse the heck out of it!  During these situations, you can enter your search terms manually, and while this isn’t that different from searching in Safari, you at least have the added benefit of localized results should you need them.

Finding things around you quickly is not the only strong suit of the Google Mobile App.  It can offer up any kind of information you’d use Google or Google Maps for.  It can quickly show you a Wikipedia page on Chuck, the TV show, much faster than you could find it by typing it in yourself.  Like the iPhone itself, the features of the Google Mobile App aren’t exactly revolutionary by themselves, rather, its the method of interaction that is quite unique as well as useful, two things that don’t always go hand in hand.  I think that as a result of what it offers, Google Mobile will probably end up being one of your most used applications, and will probably find its way to your first page of apps.  

Design-wise, this app looks very professional indeed, and adheres to the Google/Apple simplistic method of design.  A row of buttons is found along the bottom, similar to what you’d see in the iPod app.  During my testing period, I found no graphical glitches at all; the Google Mobile app looked and ran just like an app from Apple.

The glue that holds the features of this app together is the speed with which everything happens.  I have seen many an application that offers up a lot in terms of usefulness, but falls short in the end because of slow startup, glitches, freezes or operational speed issues.  Thankfully, this is not the case with Google’s app, and I’m pleased to report that I didn’t encounter any bugs during my testing.  This is an app which I wouldn’t mind paying for, but as with everything Google, it is free. 

I give Google Mobile App a 4.5 out of 5.

iPhone App Review: Aerosoft’s AeroWeather

 

It’s pretty convenient to whip out your iPhone or iPod Touch and have a look at the weather for the next few days.  Along with my home city of Toronto, Ontario, I also have the weather displayed for Honolulu, Hawaii… just to muster up some self-pity when the white stuff falls.  The included Weather app is not the only choice for such information though, as I recently found out while testing Aerosoft’s AeroWeather app.  

So what about AeroWeather is different from Weather?  While Weather provides you with the temperature and a picture depicting the weather (sunshine, clouds, rain, snow etc.) along with a miniaturized version of the same for a few days to follow, AeroWeather provides you with extremely detailed information that is delivered from airport weather stations, such as wind direction and speed, barometric pressure etc.  You can search by city of course, but the program prefers ICAO airport codes (like KLGA for Laguardia, CYYZ for Toronto and KLAX for Los Angeles).  These aren’t codes that the average person would know, and I’m only familiar with them because of my uber-geeky fascination with flight simming.  So while AeroWeather is informative, its more about fulfilling your pilot fetish than having quick, relevant information at a glance.  

The interface in AeroWeather is not what I’d call user-friendly, in that, it’s not designed with the style typical of most apps, especially first-party ones.  Everything presented is textual, and when you tap on an airport/location to get yet more information, you’re presented with METAR data.  If you find this useful, I suppose this app might be something you like, but for the average person, it’s just too detailed, and the presentation format too boring.  

AeroWeather looks like it was programmed by someone very technically adept, but what that means is that there is little to no eye candy.  That itself is not so bad, but the too-common crashes are the final nail on the coffin of everyday usability.  I found that the app crashed frequently when trying to refresh information, and took far longer than it should have to get up and running.

Aerosoft’s AeroWeather costs the can’t-say-no price of zero dollars, but it’s more trouble than its worth for most people.  For others, if you think that it’s important that your iPhone deliver METAR information and want to know the exact speed and direction of wind beyond the look-at-what-my-iPhone-can-do factor, hit the App Store for this unique yet unpolished app that has potential for the future.

I give AeroWeather a 3/5 stars.

Dr. Dre, In-Ear Headphone Designer Extraordinaire

Yes, that dignified expert of all experts, the man that invented sound itself has set out to redefine headphones with new in-ear headphones branded with, of course, his name.  Technically adept and IQ-loaded as Monsieur Dre may (or probably may not) be, much of the credit really goes to overpriced cable manufacturer Monster.  

Someone must have really been high and hooked another someone up in the back of a tinted Hummer on 26″ rims, because not in my wildest hallucinogen-induced dreams would I have pictured the teaming of Dr. Dre, Monster and Apple.  That’s right, these are on sale at the Apple store!  

So what makes these in-ear headphones worth the absurd $150??  Well, come on.  Who doesn’t want what appears to be standard SATA cables coming from their ears?  They make a point of the gold teeth, sorry, my bad.. gold contacts, because gold plating must be pretty expensive, otherwise you wouldn’t find it on $1.99 3.5mm extension cables from China on eBay… oh, wait.  

They also make a point of the isolating design of the triple-layer flanged tips, something Lord Dre has christened “Airlocks.”  They’re made of incredibly exotic, rare material that totally justifies the Benjamin-and-a-half, rubber.  

Should you not be able to resist the very ‘phones that will change sound and music forever, you can pick them up at the Apple store.  I, ever the blasphemous disbeliever, will have to stick to my Sennheisers for now.

Third Iteration of PSP On Its Way

Sony is set to release the PSP-3000, the third version of its Playstation Portable.  It brings with it incremental improvements that do actually add value.  A much improved screen heads the list of features, with twice the colour gamut, five times the contrast ratio and most important for gamers, a faster response time.  I noticed the slow response time the first day I got my PSP, way back in 2005.  I remember being surprised that a game system could have this amount of lag, but I let it go because of the otherwise vibrant colours and not-bad colour shift.  

The PSP-3000 also has a built-in microphone, something it should have had from the start, and something that Sony has no excuses for not including in the PSP-2000. I’m not sure what Sony and Skype were thinking introducing Skype on the PSP-2000, but without a microphone, it’s pretty useless.  

What Sony should have included with the PSP-3000 was a built-in webcam, and perhaps even GPS.  That would really have driven sales up, and from what I can see, the price is going to increase anyway, so at least they would have been able to offer more highly-desired features at the higher price point.  Perhaps Sony is saving these types of features for the PSP2, but I don’t think that will be released for some time yet, because the current platform can still be milked further.  What do you think?

Via PSPFanBoy and Engadget Japan

Treo Pro Palm’s Last Hope, Already Set To Disappoint

Set to debut in 2009, Palm is hoping that the Treo Pro will be the one to save Palm and return it to its glory days.  Unfortunately, analysts are predicting that this will not be the case, and in fact, not only will the Treo Pro be a failure, it may take Palm down with it.  

Let’s take a look at what we know about the device.  We know that it’ll have a 320×320 touchscreen, a QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, a microSDHC memory slot, GPS, a stereo headphone jack and will be running Windows Mobile 6.1.  Looking at these stats, do any of them seem very 2009?  The North American market loves things that are groundbreaking, and it is precise those types of items that will steal market share and garner serious media attention.  The iPhone is exactly that sort of device, going from zero percent market share to being a serious contender in very little time.  The interface is a leap forward, the aesthetics are appealing, the packaging unique and the software more usable than others.  

Palm’s upcoming device has exactly none of these characteristics.  Why is it still using a 320×320 screen, when not only the iPhone, but other phones already on the market have adopted large screens?  It would be stupid not to go with a large multitouch screen at this point, since a 320×320 stylus-input based screen is what Palm has been using for years and years, and those devices have led it into the rut it’s in now.  

Next, a 2-megapixel camera?  The iPhone was widely criticized for using such a camera as well, but at least with it, it has other star attributes.  The Nokia N95 has had a 5-megapixel, Carl-Zeiss lens-equipped, autofocus camera that can shoot TV-quality video for years now.  Lots of pathetic dime-a-dozen phones have cameras in this league, and for a phone that costs, $549, surely, the customer will expect better. Given all the time that they still have, this can still be fixed.

Wi-Fi connectivity is essential in a smartphone, but why not one-up everyone and include Wi-Fi 802.11n capability as well?  In gadgets and technology, one-upmanship is the name of the game.

The microSDHC slot is necessary as well, I don’t even think it needs to be mentioned as a feature.  However, to compete with the latest crop of phones, the Treo Pro should have at least some onboard flash memory, 4, 8 or preferably 16 GB.  This will also allow Palm to better position the device as a media player, and if including the ability to use the phone as a mass storage device, will allow business users to carry around their most important documents everywhere they go.

GPS is a must-have feature for many these days, so kudos to Palm for including it, but we still need to see how good the implementation will be.  At the price Palm wants to charge, it had better have turn-by-turn navigation.

Stereo headphone jack… is this 2004?  Why is this a big deal?  Not only should the phone have this, it should also have A2DP (stereo Bluetooth).  There’s no mention of whether it does or not, but since they’re making a big deal about this jack itself, I can only assume that it is not included.

Palm needs to understand that to capture the market’s heart, they need to not only match the best out there, they need to beat them.  And with the specs of the Treo Pro, it seems that they’ll be a long ways away from even matching the imitators to the best.

Copy and Paste On The iPhone, Finally

Along with multimedia messaging (MMS), one of the most missed features in the iPhone is the ability to copy and paste.  Nokia’s Symbian phones and all the other geekphones have had this ability pretty much from the start, so it seems like a glaring mistake on Apple’s part not to include it.  

 
Cut and Paste for iPhone from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

 

Well, until Apple decides to implement it, and we don’t know when that will be, a developer has come up with a copy-paste app.  It’s called Openclip, and it does what it’s supposed to, with one huge caveat - the application has to support it.  To make it all official, developers have to stick to Apple’s guidelines, and that means that they can’t have it running in the background or make it available as a plugin.  Fortunately, many of the applications that would take advantage of such a feature have stated that they will include support for it in their upcoming releases, such as Wordpress.
Via WebMonkey

Nike Releases Hyperdunk 2015s, Everyone Looks To Mattel For The Hoverboard

The Back To The Future franchise seems to be as popular as ever, seeing as how the Hoverboard from the movie fetched millions recently, and now this. Nike has released a real-life version of those oh-so-cool shoes we saw in Back To The Future 2, the Power Lace model from 2015.

In the movie, Marty McFly slides his feet in, and the shoes automatically lace up to the correct tightness, sporting glowing logos to boot.

You didn’t think you were going to get the glowing logos OR the power lace, did you? Indeed, the Hyperdunk 2015s are just visual memorabilia you’ll wear on your feet, but I’m pretty sure they’ll get more stares and comments than your tired 20-year old Back To The Future t-shirt.

Suffice to say, any real fan will be disappointed, but then again, we still have another 8 years till 2015! Sure, it’d be cool to have the power lace and glowing logos, but what I want is to see the Hoverboard finally make the light of day.  Even better, the Pit Bull version, complete with mini jet-engines that adjust their own angles!!!  

Yes… I’m swimming in the deep end of my imagination now, but that aside, what do you guys think of these shoes?

Via Wired

FCC Approves First Android Variant, Will Curl Up In Fetal Position When Faced With iPhone

Scheduled to arrive soon on a possible return ticket from VaporTown, the first Android phone has been approved by the FCC.  Estimates for availability are ranging from September to November at the moment, though some experts think that even November might not be possible.  

The Android platform was billed as the one for the future, making good on all the shortcomings present in the iPhone, Blackberries, Symbian OS devices, Windows Mobile devices and yes, even Palm-based devices (for a little background on these, check out our introduction to these platforms here).  However, not only has it taken its sweet time to come to market, it doesn’t seem to offer any real advantages over the other platforms.  

Sure, it’ll have Google-branded software to take on your office documents, mapping needs, e-mail requirements and so on, but pretty much all smartphones can already do all that stuff, and fairly well I might add.  Google will probably make better versions of smartphone software for the Android platform, but by how much, remains to be seen.  The Google Maps application for Android has only one noticeable advantage over the other versions at the moment, Street View.  I’m not sure it’s really an advantage, so much as a gimmick.  Street View is nothing more than a panaromic picture taken at a point along a street.  It’s not like you can go down this street and still be in street view, so it doesn’t seem to be that useful in real-life.

It is open-source, which potentially, can have lots of benefits, but how does that affect the average user?  Is that person going to be tinkering with the innards of the OS and using indie software?  Looking at the success of the App Store vs. jailbreaking and using the Installer, I’d so no.  

The fact that Android can run on different hardware is one of its better features.  If you don’t care for HTC’s Android derivative, you (might) have the option of going for a different phone running Android, one whose form factor, looks or usability suit you more.  HTC’s Dream, the first Android phone, is pretty bulky, and I don’t see it appealing to the masses the way the iPhone currently does.  

The iPhone interface is one that has forever changed the way we interact with our digital devices, and surely, it’s to be expected that the style will be adopted by others, since we see even Microsoft borrowing the whole concept for upcoming versions of Windows.  However, I feel a little disappointed that Android borrows heavily from the iPhone interface, yet at the same time, with less visual pizazz.  

As of right now, the Android platform isn’t any better for web surfing than the iPhone is.  It, like the iPhone, will not play friendly with Flash.  Apple doesn’t think that Flash is right for mobile devices at the moment, because of devices not being powerful enough and Flash also not being optimized for them.  This is basically true, and I personally think the next mobile revolution will come from optimized PC-style hardware in mobile devices.  The iPhone is the first baby-step towards this goal, running a version of Mac OS X developed for its ARM CPU, but the next real revolution will have special CPUs, something like what Intel’s Atom is for netbooks, with more RAM, storage and better video/3D capabilities.  The Android platform is better suited to such a revolution than the iPhone, by virtue of it being able to run on different hardware.  A manufacturer could potentially have it running on an much more powerful CPU, with more RAM, and that would open it up to desktop-style apps.  A high-end device could perhaps have a micro-DVI connection for a monitor, and with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, wouldn’t that be interesting?  

I’ve let my imagination get the best of me here, but as you can probably see, there is potential.  Unfortunately, that may not be enough to take on the iPhone, and time will tell how Android will fare.  For the time being, I just don’t foresee HTC’s Dream making a big enough splash for people to notice.  

As always, I welcome your feedback!

Smartphone Comparison - Part One

Part One: Comparison of Current Smartphone Platforms

Windows Mobile vs. Symbian OS vs. Palm OS vs. iPhone OS vs. Blackberry

The time is right to have a smart phone that can do it all. There are a multitude of choices, reasonable data rates and the mobile web is finally useful with high-speed networks and capable browsers. A smart phone will empower you with the ability to check and respond to e-mails anywhere, as well as give you fast access to the Internet. That means checking movie timings, restaurant reviews, maps or almost anything you might need to do from a computer. They also work great on a commute, acting as a media player, or RSS reader to catch up on your favourite blog. But each company and its loyalists claim their platform and phone is better than the rest. Product purchases today have gotten far too complicated for the old adage “you get what you pay for” to apply. That’s where Geekliness comes in! We’ve put together a no-nonsense comparison of what’s out there and what works for you.

The first step in this decision process is for you to decide what you want out of your smartphone. If you want your phone to do no more than music playback, basic picture-taking, e-mail and occasional web browsing, you probably won’t even need a smartphone. Many if not most consumer cell phones are capable of those tasks quite well, and will offer solid functionality without the complicated menus and operation that may come with a smartphone. Many popular websites offer wap or mobile-optimized versions of their websites, which can be viewed on phones even as simple as the Razr.

If your web-browsing needs are more complex, i.e. if you’d like web browsing on your phone to be more or less like on the computer, have a better camera that can take better pictures and video, and/or you’d like additional functionality like synchronization with your computer (calendar, contacts etc.) and the ability to install and run third-party programs, a smartphone is what you’re looking for!

Since you’re reading this article, there’s a good change this may be your first smartphone. If that is indeed the case, consider the drawbacks of using one. You’ll probably be giving up something in battery life (if not because of the features, then because you’ll be using it more than you would your standard cell phone). In most cases it will be bulkier, and you may experience some trouble in regards to the applications crashing, memory running out, and so on. Kind of like how troublesome computers can be sometimes. You would also be putting all your eggs in one basket, so if it gets lost or stolen, then… don’t say we didn’t warn you! When you do find a suitable smartphone though, in the best of scenarios it can replace your old cell phone, iPod, GPS device and laptop.

Currently, the smartphone market is differentiated primarily by operating system. Like computers, smartphones also run operating systems (Windows is an example of an operating system). Unlike computers, you usually cannot choose to install another OS on your smartphone (like you would install Linux on your computer instead of Windows). The current choices out there are the iPhone OS, Windows Mobile OS, Blackberry, Palm OS and Symbian OS.

• iPhone OS: The iPhone OS is the newest of this group and is actually a version of Mac OS X that is repackaged to run on the iPhone hardware. Even though it is the newest on the market, it is probably the most stable in day-to-day use because of the way it treats applications. It does not have true multitasking, but it opens and closes programs with no delay at all, so it is actually as fast, and in some cases faster than the other mobile OSs that do multitask. This is the only mobile OS where the user does not have to worry about what programs are open and how much memory is being used and so forth. This alone makes this platform very praiseworthy, because the others have yet to show such stability for the user. Some degree of multitasking is necessary, and it exists at the OS level, but not for additional programs yet. The kind of scenario where it would be good to have is an application that is signed in to you instant messengers. If it can’t stay open, you won’t get your instant messages. The iPhone OS is by far the most user-friendly though. All the buttons, menus and entire interaction is leaps and bounds beyond the others, and are modeled off the award-winning Mac OS X operating system, itself having roots in UNIX. It has the best browser of any current mobile platform, which is actually very important in a smartphone and changes the game somewhat. It passes nearly ever web test I can throw at it, with one big caveat. It doesn’t do Flash! I can’t believe the developers left this out, but it is rumoured that this will be added at some point. This is perhaps the only thing standing between the current state of the Safari browser, and true desktop-style browing. The iPhone OS offers a lot for the newbie, since application crashes and out-of-memory errors are so few and far between that we can essentially say these things don’t happen. Limitations of the iPhone OS are that it is only available on the iPhone, is a relatively closed OS (you won’t be able to just download applications from anywhere, this has to be done through the App Store), and while the touch interface is revolutionary, it presents some challenges for text entry compared to a true QWERTY thumb board.

• Windows Mobile OS: Windows Mobile OS was originally for PDAs, a long time ago. PDA-phones came out, and Windows Mobile was what was running on them, along with the Palm OS PDA-phones. They had a bit of a rivalry for a little while too. Today, the Windows Mobile interface has been improved quite a bit, more so from hardware manufacturers such as HTC who have designed a front end for the rather dull WM main page. HTC’s Touch Flow is their imitation of the iPhone’s menu system, and is a little half-baked because it is just a front end and the functionality doesn’t extend into the actual operating system itself. However, they’ve done the best they can, and they have some custom apps that allow users to view Youtube easily and include a browser that is much improved over Pocket Internet Explorer. WM is designed to look like Windows (it’s not actually a derivative of Windows in the way that the iPhone OS is of Mac OS X). It is as much as a marketing ploy as it is for the familiarity of the millions of Windows users. Take your pick as to what it is, but it’s fairly simple and is laid out pretty intuitively. The main beef that most people have with WM is the way it deals with closing applications. When you hit the X at the top right corner, applications don’t close the way they do in Windows, they simply minimize. This is bad, for a couple of reasons. WM keeps minimizing programs until there is no memory left, and programs start freezing or at the least slowing down. There is no bar along the bottom or top like in Windows showing you what programs are open. There are third-party programs you can use that will show you running applications, and even some that do truly close the program when you hit the X, but the execution isn’t right. You have to launch these programs in advance, and they don’t always work exactly right. I also don’t like the amount of crashes and slowdowns WM serves up. It’s not what I’d call a smooth experience. The bundled Pocket Internet Explorer sucks, so you can’t really use it. It’s about time Microsoft updated this dinosaur of a program to support Flash and all the latest web technologies. The other browsers are marginally better, such as Opera, and there is one showing more promise, Skyfire, but its still in a closed beta so we have yet to see if it will truly deliver. Web browsing is definitely not WM’s forte. WM is great for synchronizing with your computer (Windows, not too great on Mac), and has excellent compatibility with Office documents, something that is useful to anyone that works in an office environment, or even students. WM also has a great library of software out there that can do all kinds of things, so there is lots of expandability. I’ve even seen home automation and home theater control software that works quite well! The phone bit of the software is something of an afterthought, but many WM phones such as the HTC Diamond have their own phone front end. Windows Mobile is not the latest OS, but it does have its advantages. In the end, the user experience depends quite a bit on the phone that WM is running on, such as the CPU speed, video processor (if available), memory availability and any third-party addons that might be included, so the experience can range from mediocre (as with some of HP’s WM phones) to arguably one of the best (HTC Diamond).

• Palm OS: The Palm OS is one that traces its roots back to the original PDA. At that time, Palm was significantly ahead of Windows Mobile and was exceptionally user-friendly and stable. Palm became a little complacent, and was slow to adopt new technologies and sadly was outpaced by the other platforms. It made quite a comeback in the Treo platform, where it tied in quite well with the phone software, and brought e-mail and some web functionality along with good text entry (thanks to the QWERTY thumb board) to the masses. The Treo, 650 in particular, was quite popular with many different demographics, but mostly had this popularity limited to North American confines. In other parts of the world, Nokia was ruling the smartphone roost with its Symbian OS, partly because of cell phone technology being ahead. As it stands, Palm OS is pretty much obsolete, and even some Palm devices are now using Windows Mobile. For a smartphone buyer today, something running Palm OS would not be a good choice.

• Blackberry OS: Blackberry is a product of Canada’s Research in Motion (Go Canada!). It began life as a glorified pager that could handle incoming and outgoing e-mail, but later matured into one of North America’s most popular smartphone platforms. Blackberry OS is excellent in terms of stability, and rarely experience crashes or errors. In fact, in terms of look and feel, Google’s upcoming Android platform has serious echoes of the Blackberry OS. It is, along with the iPhone’s OS, very user-friendly and easy to jump into for newbie’s. Blackberries now have a unique trackball that allows for easy navigation, and is a plus point for one-handed operation. In fact, Blackberry OS along with Nokia’s Symbian OS are the only platforms here that are truly operational with one hand, a boon for many. Not to say that Blackberry OS doesn’t have its shortcomings though. Not a very open OS, the software library is extremely restrictive, so it’s quite unlikely that you’ll be able to do the things you can with say, your Windows Mobile device. You’re trading day-to-day stability for expandability here. Themes and the like are also minimally expandable, which means you’ll really need to like the basic look and operation of the Blackberry OS. It’s also not progressing far and fast enough to compete with the true next-gen platforms, partially a result of the limited hardware. Blackberry hasn’t opened its OS up to third-party devices like Microsoft has, so that is also a limitation. It’s also not something that is particularly appealing to the mass market (even though they’re trying to change this), so it’s unlikely that more applications and expansion will happen in a significant form. Blackberry itself tries to keep up with current trends, like having a Facebook application, but this is something you’ll have to check out yourself. The lack of a great browser is also holding Blackberry OS back. The new upcoming Blackberry Bold is supposed to have a much improved browser, but it remains to be seen how well it performs, and if it can hold its own against the iPhone-Nokia-WM onslaught.

• Symbian OS: The Symbian OS does not belong to Nokia, but Nokia is the most common purveyor of the OS. The vast majority of Symbian devices are Nokia’s N-series and E-series phones, along with Sony Ericsson’s P-series phones and an upcoming Samsung phone. The Symbian OS from the start was designed to be very well-integrated with a phone, and as such, has excellent phone functionality in addition to the expandable operating system. No other OS has such a good balance, every Nokia Symbian phone is easy to pick up and use as a phone, without any training beforehand. That cannot be said of the other platforms, except the iPhone perhaps. The hardware used on Symbian phones has steadily improved, going from low-res screens to high-res screens with designer lens-equipped multi-megapixel autofocus cameras that can shoot TV-quality video, including popular features like GPS, secondary front-facing cameras for video calls and WiFi. Unfortunately, the software hasn’t quite kept up. The absolute latest version of Symbian OS, 9.2 still has the same tired look that the interface of the Nokia 6600 had, years and years ago. They are still slow to boot, crash fairly frequently, and assume that you, the user will worry about memory handling. While the OS is mature and capable, the software library is stunningly massive, the main issue is smoothness of the user experience. Frequent slowdowns, crashes, hangs and the like really hamper ones use of the product. The Symbian browser is based on the same foundation that Apple’s Safari browser is, but comes in at second, because it doesn’t have the easy pinch/drag interface of the iPhone OS and crashes more (has somewhat frequent out-of-memory errors). Nokia has tried to remedy this by adding more RAM in the latest models, and this does work, but it’s still not enough. At least the latest version of the browser supports flash, and can play embedded video as well! Symbian OS offers easy synchronization with PC or Mac and it’s easy to install third-party software for the most part. Excellent, uninhibited Bluetooth helps as well, you can use this for almost anything that is supported, including easy file browsing and transfer on your computer. Good thing is that the Symbian OS is available on a variety of devices, so you can choose if you want a touchscreen or not, and if you want a QWERTY thumb board or a slider design and so on.

That’s the first part of our smartphone comparison. Stay tuned for part two, where we compare the hardware and specific handsets! As always, comments are welcome!

E71 Now Available In North America

Nokia’s latest Blackberry fighter has landed in North America.  It is already selling in Nokia’s Flagship Store in Chicago, but interestingly, has been available for a week now on Toronto’s Craiglist.  In true Craigslist fashion, people are overcharging by about $100 over the price at the Nokia Store, but judging by the trades and want ads, people are still biting even at the near $600 prices.  

The E71 is the replacement for the E61, a phone that actually became quite popular with some people thanks to its large, wide screen, WiFi and full QWERTY thumb board.  In some ways, the E71 doesn’t really move that far ahead of the E61, given that it has a smaller screen, pretty much the same button layout and the same functionality.  That’s not to say that there aren’t improvements.  There is now a 3.2 megapixel, auto focus camera that can take somewhat decent video.  It’s decent compared to the hordes of phones out there now, but not for a brand new $500 Nokia.  If they can make the N93 and N95 take 30-fps VGA video, why not this one?  Those phones nearly replace a standard def video camera and I found that feature great in my use.  Back to the E71 though, it can manage 640×480 video at 22 fps.  More importantly, it now supports North American 3G standards, so internet surfing on this could be quite useful.  Someone, somewhere summed it up well in a comparison of the E71 vs. iPhone 3G… the iPhone is meant for, and is great at viewing content, whereas the E71 is great at creating content.  

Via Boy Genius

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