Gadgetechtoya

Phone 3GS and 4 vs. Samsung Galasy S i9000 video comparison

2011-08-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

Additional to my photo comparison, I also did a short video comparison. Like in the photo comparison, the sharpness of the SGS looks best to me, but the iPhone 4 shows better color and exposure. Overall, I would rate the iPhone 4 slightly ahead of the SGS, the old 3GS is a distant 3rd.

iPhone 3GS and 4 vs. Samsung Galaxy S i9000 camera comparison

2011-08-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

I did a short camera comparison between the iPhone 3GS and 4 vs. the Samsung Galaxy S i9000. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy all days I had the three devices. My conclusion: the SGS made the sharpest pictures, but the iPhone 4 is often - but not always - better regarding exposure and colors. In general, the iPhone 4 is my winner, followed by the SGS. The 3GS' camera is still good, but on the 3rd place in my comparison.

Samsung Galaxy S vs. iPhone 4 photo comparison

2011-06-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick comparison of the photo quality of the Samsung Galaxy S and the iPhone I did today.

left SGS, right iPhone 4

In this case, the picture of the SGS is both, more pleasant and more detailed than the iPhone (which is about as double exepensive as the SGS)

Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and HTC Desire HD photo quality comparison

2011-06-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

With my SGS in the pocket, I just visited a fried with a DHD. As I never compared them head-to-head, we did a test photo with both devices.

DHD test photo

SGS test photo

I knew, the DHD's camera is bad. But I did not think that it is THAT bad. This is probably why I won't buy an HTC device until they change their strategy. HTC makes fine devices, but their cameras (and also speakers) are lousy.

Test Update: Samsung Galaxy S with Android 2.21 Update

2011-05-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

Nearly a year after the release of the Galaxy S, Samsung released two significant updates: Android 2.2.1 and Kies 2.0. The hopes were high already for the Android 2.2 update, but main problems like the nearly not working sync and the heavy laggs. So after all, 2.2 has been only a little update. But despite the little change in the version number, 2.2.1 has been a huge improvement. The laggs and sync problems are history, so it is time to update my rating. In the meantime, Samsung already released Android 2.3.3, but this one is not a big improvement whereas 2.2.1 is a must.

Radios
Samsung seemes to have fixed the WIFI problems, so it gets the same connection quality as my other devices, so one addtional point for the SGS On GSM, Edge and 3G it has been better anyways.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 9 (of 10)

Battery life
The battery problems I had with the SGS must have been software issues. Regarding battery life, the SGS with 2.2.1 feels like a complete different phone. It battery time is not only much better than before, it easily beats the iPhone 3GS's battery life. The charging problem is also gone. Now with 2.2.1, on my 30 minutes drive into the office, the SGS fully charges. With 2.1, I wrote that a fully charged SGS won't make it through my average business day. Now, in the evening I have more than 60% battery left with my average usage. So this is about 3 times of battery life compared to the first Android 2.2.1 firmware. Wow, this must have been a serious bug in power management. And they also fixed the issue of fast uncharging in airplane mode. When in airplane mode, the battery of the SGS will last for 4-5 days.
To make this great battery life even better, Samsung offers a 1650mAH battery as a spare part for some Galaxy phones like the Armani Edition. This one is available at eBay for about € 25,- and will add 10% of battery life to the SGS.
So the SGS, which has been one of the smartphones with the worst battery life is now one with the best. This is why I updated my rating.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 7 (of 10)

Hardware Ecosystem
The iPhone has still the largest hardware ecosystem around it. But the SGS is closing up a little, with add ons by Samsung itself like the desk stand or the external battery case (comparable to the Mophie Juice Pack. But also from 2nd sources there a lots of cases and car mounts, like the ones from Brodit which is my favorite car mount manufacturer. But there are still some hardware accessories, which are only available for the iPhone, like audio sets with iPhone adapter.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 7 (of 10)

Responsiveness
Since Android 2.2.1, all the lags that I criticized in my former test are completely gone. And I had not a single crash since the upgrade. In head-to-head comparision, the iPhone feels slow compared to the SGS. Scrolling, swiping, everything is much quicker and more responsive on the iPhone. So the iPhone is no longer the reference in UI speed and responsiveness, this title goes to the SGS. This is why the SGS now gets 10 out of 10 points and the iPhone gets rated down to 7.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 10 (of 10)

Desktop Software
Samsungs Desktop Software Kies needed a lot of development in the last relase, and Samsung did some of the needed work. Kies 2.x now works without any problems after a simple installation, well done. And it is also available for MacOS now. So the biggest annoyances are fixed now, but iTunes is still way ahead of Kies. But at least this gives Kies an increase from 4 to 6 points.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 6 (of 10)

Costs
Since my test last year, the SGS became cheaper, whereas the iPhone prices kept high. The SGS 8 GB is down to € 320,- and you might add € 20,- for a 16GB SD card, whereas the iPhone 3GS 16GB still comes at € 560,- (which probably noone would buy, because for € 600,- one could get the iPhone 4 16GB). The iPhone 3GS 32GB comes at € 600,- , the SGS with a 32GB SD card costs about € 370,-.
So the price difference grew significant, the SGS even more gives the better value for the money. It is probably the cheapest deal to get a top end smartphone.
3GS: 4 - SGS: 8 (of 10)

Conclusion (again)
Samsung made good use of the last 6 months and erased all flaws of their software. These improvements made a huge difference and the SGS also got a lot cheaper. So if you plan to buy an Android device now, you could get one of the brand new 2011 devices, which might have some new flaws. Or you get the SGS with a very mature software at an unbeatable price. There are not much reasons to get the iPhone instead, as long as you are not an Apple fanboy or completely locked in Apples ecosystem anyway.
But Apple did not sleep, the iPhone 4 is out for about a year and iOS 5 is already annonced for next month. The iPhone 4 alone is not a big improvement over the 3GS, but mine is already waiting for it's iOS 5 update. So the 3rd round in this battle will be SGS with Android 2.3.4 vs. the the iPhone 4 with iOS 5. But for now, the SGS is the clear winner.


	3GS	SGS
Hardware
Display	7	10
Speaker	7	5
Camera	7	5
Radios	7	9
Battery life	5	7
Interfaces & Memory	6	9
Hardware Buttons	5	6
Build Quality	10	5
Hardware Ecosystem	10	7

Hardware Summary	64	63

System
Multitasking	10	8
Storage Support	7	4
User Interface	4	9
Responsiveness	7	10
Ringtones	2	5


Phone Application	5	5

System Summary	35	41

Software
On screen Keyboard	7	9
PIM	6	5
Audio Player	8	9
Video Player	6	10
Web Browser	7	10
Email Client	8	8
Software Ecosystem	7	6
Desktop Software	10	6

Software Summary	59	63

Costs	4	8


Summary


Hardware	64	63
System	35	41
Software	59	63
Costs	4	8
	165	175

Comparing video quality of SX210is, SX230hs and F550EXR

2011-05-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

I am thinking about replacing my Canon Powershot SX210is with either it's successor SX230hs or the Fujifilm Finepix F550EXR. As I don't own a camcorder anymore, one of my cameras has to offer sufficient video quality. Here are my test videos, SX210 first:

This is the same video from the F550

And here the video from the SX230

The SX230 is a great camcorder replacement, whereas the F550 is a mixed bag. The F550's video quality is better then any Fujifilm camera's I had before. And I would consider it's pure video quality higher than the SX210's, but it's autofocus is less reliable after zooming. Anyway, the SX230 is the clear winner here.

Sony Xperia Arc Quick Check

2011-04-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

Looking for an Android phone with a better camera, I bought the brand new SonyEricsson Xperia Arc. It has an overall interesting specification, but mostly I wanted it for the following reasons:

A high quality camera with f/2,4 aperture, BSI-CMOS sensor LED-Flash and a dedicated camera button
A tranreflective Screen with Sony's Bravia Engine.
Hardware Buttons for the typical Android functions
A well designed body

Unfortunately, the Xperia Arc has one major flaw, so I sent it back after a few days. So this is not my usual in depth review, where I used the phone for several weeks as my main phone. That does not mean, that the Arc is a bad choice for anyone, but it does not fit into my usage schema.

For this quick check, I compared the Arc to the iPhone 3GS and the Samsung Galaxy S, which remained my main phone after I sent the Arc back

I start with the Arc's main flaw, so you can decide to read on about the Arc's qualities or whether you also consider this as a showstopper like I do. The Arc's problem is it's available memory. It comes with 1 GB of internal memory, but only a about 320 MB is free after boot. This is significant less than on my Galaxy S, which comes with an internal SD of 8 GB, using 2 GB additional software installations.

As not all Android apps support app2sd, many apps still have to be installed into the small internal memory of the Arc. And not all of the 320 MB can be used. When the free internal memory is falling below about 100 MB, the Arc gets slow and starts to lag. With enough free memory, the Arc is a fast and very responsive phone, but with my usual set of applications it is no fun to use it.

So is this a showstopper for you? The easiest way to answer this question is if you already have an Android smartphone. Look if you need more than 220 MB of internal memory. If not, then you should read on, because the Arc has some unique and great features.

SonyEricsson Arc vs. Samsung Galaxy S i9000 vs. iPhone 3GS

One the Xperia Arc's main advantages is it's great camera. Compared to good old Nokia N-Series, or some SonyEricsson with CyberShot modules, like my wifes K800i, the cameras of the android phones are between crappy and average in best case. So it is really about time for an Android phone with a really good camera. The Arc's camera is the best one in the Android world, period. Unfortunately, the Arc's camera software is a little overacting. The colors sometimes look wrong and the images are sharpened too much. A software update to turn down this 'image-enhancements' would make the Arc an even better camera phone. The Arc also has a separate camera button, a feature I always wish for my phones. When I don't carry a real camera with me, my phone has to be my camera. And ideally, I don't want to fiddle with the software just to take a shot. With the Arc, you just can pull it out of the your pocket, long press the camera button which opens the camera app and take the shot. This is how it should be, though the Arc's camera app took a bit longer to start than I like.

Another important feature of the Arc is it's great Bravia Display. Though it does not offer the extreme contrast and black value like the Galaxy's SuperAMOLED, you won't ever complain about the Arc's display. And in bright sunlight it beats the SuperAMOLED by an order of magnitude. Weighting the pro's and con's, I would say that the Arc's Display is the best one I have seen for now.

The Arc has three hardware buttons below the screen. I always want at least a hardware menu button on a smartphone, because a hardware menu key can also be used to switch the phone on. This works great on phones like the Galaxy S or the iPhone. But the Arc also has hardware buttons for menu and back keys, and this does not work that well. On an Android phone the menu and back buttons are constantly used, so they have to operate fast. But the Arc's hardware buttons are a lot slower than the Galaxy's capacitive touch buttons. Of course, this is a matter of taste, but I personally prefer the Galaxy's combination of a hardware menu key and capacitive menu and back buttons is perfect for me.

displays compared under different lightning conditions

The Arc offers a good battery life, definitely about average for a smartphone. On moderate usage, it will last two days and even on heavy usage it will last a whole work day. And it charges really quick, 30 minutes in the car's charger on my way to the office will charge it for the whole day.

What else is to say about the Arc? Luckily, SonyEricsson did not too much changes to the stock Android UI, and those they did are mostly usefull. The TimeScape UI, which slowed down former Xperia phones, now only a widget which can be removed.
I personally disliked the overall blue look of most parts of the Arc's UI, but this is a matter of taste and one can always install an alternate launcher with more customizable color schemes.

I had another problem with the Arc and my T-mobile SIM. On the Arc, I had no 3G networking with this SIM card, though it worked with other smarthones on the same locations. This card is already a few years old, so exchanging it for a newer card would probably solve this problem.

So in general, the Arc is quite a good Android smartphone, and the one with the best camera for now. But the limitated memory is a showstopper for me and also the hardware menu and back back buttons are too slow to use for me (though I won't miss the hardware home button). This is a shame, because SonyEricsson putted many good things into the Arc and the Android market definitely needs some phones with extra mojo like a well done design and a good camera. But on the good side, the Arc is only one release away from a really great phone. If SonyEricsson can fix the Arc's issues for it's successor, it might be my next smartphone.

Quickcheck: iPhone 3GS vs. HTC Desire HD (Evo 4) vs. Samsung Galaxy S

2011-02-11T01:35:00.000-08:00

After the Samsung Galaxy S (SGS) failed to replace the iPhone 3GS in my comparison, this time I tested the Desire HD (DHD). Many of the problems I had were related to the SGS and the way Samsung handled these issues, not to Android in General so I gave the DHD a try.
Though the 3GS is still some years old, I haven't found any better phone. But the DHD comes with an impressive hardware spec. But in the first minutes of testing, I found found to issues and returned the DHD after the weekend, so that this is not the multi week deep dive testing which I usually publish. But I spent enough time with the DHD to give a quick comparison between the 3GS, the SGS and the DHD. So I will go through my usual categories and describe how the DHD differs from the other two phones. As some of the points apply to all Android 2.2 phones and changes also apply to the SGS, I corrected them accordingly.

Hardware

Display

Most of the front of the DHD is covered by its impressive 4,3'' screen. Due to Samsungs SuperAMOLED shortage, HTC decided to use a SuperLCD instead. A good choice, the DHD's screen is just brilliant. With it's high contrasts, it is closer to SuperAMOLED, than conventional LCD. If you search for head-to-head display comparisons, you will see that SuperAMOLED is still ahead of SuperLCD. But when using the DHD, you will never complain about its screen. It is just gorgeous.
Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to test the DHD in bright sunlight, but in cloudy conditions it works perfect.
After using the DHD, using an iPhone with its minimalistic 3,5'' screen feels like looking through a keyhole. But there is one major drawback by the screensize: one handed operation gets less easy because of the longer ways the hand has to go. Balancing readability and usability, I think that a 4'' screen like the one from the SGS is the sweet spot. So in summary I rate the DHD's screen between the 3GS and the SGS.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 10 - DHD 9 (of 10)

Speaker

The speaker is the absolute opposite of the screen. I have never - I repeat: NEVER! - had a smartphone with such a lousy speaker. I often use the built in speaker of my smartphone for listening podcasts, especially when on a trip. The Nokia 5800 has been good even for background music listening, the iPhone is absolutely OK for podcasts, the SGS is, well not good enough but the speaker of is no deal breaker. The DHD's speaker is not only crappy in quality, it is also too silent. So if you plan to listen to an DHD without headphones, you should bring an external speaker with you
3GS: 7 - SGS: 5 - DHD: 1 (of 10)

Camera

As the lens of the DHD's camera sticks out that much, I expected a better than average image quality. But the quality of the still images is the worst I have seen the last 5 years. This camera is mostly unusable, and even mobile phones from the discounter for about € 100,- offer better image quality.
Video is better and with 720p at a higher resolution than the 3GS, so the DHD won't score zero.

In the linked album are shots from the 3GS and a Canon S95 (out of competition) camera as a reference.
The DHD also has a dual LED flash, which could also be used as a flashlight, giving it one exra point.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 7 - DHD: 4 (of 10)

Radios

The DHD radios are quite comparable to the SGS's. The Wifi signal drops a little more often than I am used to from other devices, but most of my problems have been fixed after I reset my WLAN router. It connected to my car kit within seconds and I had a stable connection all the time, something the SGS could not offer.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 8 - DHD: 9 (of 10)

Battery life

From my short testing, I cannot really judge the battery life of the DHD, so please take this point with a grain of salt. But the battery life seems to be better than the SGS's, but lower than the iPhone's. Especially the battery drain when the phone is in sleep mode, which drove me nuts on the SGS, does not show on the DHD. For example: when the SGS has been fully charged and I forgot to switch it to airplane mode over night, then the SGS has been nearly uncharged at the morning. This is better with the DHD, where the battery drop a bit over night but remains mostly charged.
When leaving the phone on airplane mode, but Wifi enabled over night, it is mostly uncharged in the morning, so no advantage here. The iPhone remains more than 60% loaded under the same conditions, so Android has still a way to go when it comes to power management.
A 1200 mAH battery is quite small for a device with such a large screen. And in this big body, there should be enough space for at least a 1500 mAH battery.
3GS: 5 - SGS 2 - DHD: 3 (of 10)

Interfaces and Memory

The DHD only comes with 1,5 GB internal memory, but no extra mass storage like the SGS which had 2 GB internal memory and additional 6 GB mass storage. But my DHD came with a 8 GB micro SD card to start with. On the other hand, most apps could not handle the way, the SGS organized the internal mass storage and the SD card, which made it less usefull. But at least, storage can be expanded to 32 GB by a micro sd card.
3GS: 6 - SGS: 9 - DHD 5 (of 10)

Hardware Buttons

The DHD has nearly no hardware buttons except for the power switch and the volume rocker, which is one button less than the SGS offers. And this is a real disadvantage in usability. On the iPhone and the SGS, the central menu button can be used to wake up the phone from sleep mode and this one is missing on the DHD. So you always have to use the little power button on the top which is a little recessed and a bit fiddly to press, whereas the menu buttons of the SGS and 3GS cannot be missed even when the phone is in a car mount and you keep your eyes on the road.
Though the DHD has all four Android buttons as touch buttons below the screen, compared to the SGS which has only three, it scores the lowest in this comparison.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 6 - DHD 4 (of 10)

Body & Build Quality

The DHD is a very solid device in your hands, made out a massive block of metal. The screen nicely fits into the body. The only aspect some people dislike about the DHD are the asymmetric pieces of plastic on the back. But they fit well into the metal, though the iPhone is built is even a little nicer.
Interestingly, though the DHD has got an enormous screen size, it's body is only slightly larger than the 3GS. This is because the DHD's screen mostly covers the whole body whereas the 3GS's screen is surrounded by a lot of chrome an plastic.

But there is one drawback of the massive body: it is just too heavy. For my taste, the weight of the 3GS is the maximum I want to carry for an every day working device. I loved the lower weight of the SGS, though it comes for the price of a lower build quality. The iPhone is much heavier than the SGS, but OK for me. But when using the DHD, I always feel it's weight. Nokia shows, that a well built device does not have to be that heavy.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 5 - DHD: 8 (of 10)

Hardware Ecosystem

Just the same as for the SGS, there is no second phone with the same hardware support as the iPhone.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 5 - DHD:5 (of 10)

System

Multitasking

Same as 3GS
3GS: 10 - SGS: 8 - DHD: 8 (of 10)

Storage Support and Backup

Same as SGS, but now Google offers a cloud backup functionality, so the Android devices should recover after system reset and they are at least on par with the 3GS (corrected the rating for the SGS also). None of the systems will score 10 points: the iPhone is missing a cloud backup and the Androids are missing a complete local backup without hacking the phone. I have not had the time to test Google's cloud based backup, so I just assume that it works.
Additionally, HTC offers htcsense.com, a cloud service to locate and remotely wipe your phone. Apple answered this by offering the according mobile Me services also for free.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 7 - DHD 7 (of 10)

User Interface

Mainly, what I wrote about the SGS also applies to the DHD. But the DHD comes with HTC's own UI called Sense whereas the SGS came with Samsungs TouchWiz. Though much criticized, I personally prefer Samsungs TouchWiz over HTC's Sense. TouchWiz is makes better usage of the screen space, whereas Sense sacrifices screen space to it's non-configurable buttons. But these are minimal differences and mostly a matter of taste. Sense for example offers easy customizing features with predefined scenes.
Both UI's are very good, both are a generation ahead of the iPhone. And as the DHD does not have the rotation issue of the SGS, it scores the full 10 points here.
3GS: 4 - SGS: 9 - DHD: 10 (of 10)

Responsiveness

The DHD has the same impressive speed as the SGS, but without the annoying lags. I installed all my apps I have listed on AppBrain and there wasn't the slightest slowdown. So the king is dead, if have to rescale my rating and drop the 3GS down to 8 point, giving the DHD all 10.
3GS: 8 - SGS: 1 - DHD 10 (of 10)

Ringtones

Same as SGS
3GS: 2 - SGS: 5 - DHD: 5 (of 5)

Phone Application

Same as SGS
3GS: 5 - SGS: 5 - DHD: 5 (of 5)

Software

On Screen Keyboard

In general the same as SGS. It does not come with Swype, but the Sense keyboard is also superior to the iPhone's
3GS: 7 - SGS: 9 - DHD: 9 (of 10)

PIM

Same as SGS, but the Androids have evolved in the meantime. There are some ToDo or GTD apps which now offer cloud sync to Android devices, most of them sync with Toodledo.com. But there is also a Toodledo client for iOS, so it is a draw now.
The built in calendar of the iPhone is better than the DHD's for just one, but important reason: in monthly view it shows the agenda for the selected date at the bottom, whereas the DHD's calendar requires to open the daily view.
Apple does not allow calendar apps on iOS whereas there is a good number of calendar alternatives for Android, especially useful for professionals who heavily use their calendars. And though Android still does not natively offer support for CalDAV, there is now an app for that.
So in summary, Android is now ahead of the iPhone.
3GS: 6 - SGS: 7 - DHD 7 (of 10)

Audio Player

Same as SGS
3GS: 8 - SGS: 9 - DHD: 9 (of 10)

Video Player

Same score as SGS
3GS: 6 - SGS: 10 - DHD: 10 (of 10)

Web Browser

dto. same score as SGS
3GS: 7- SGS: 10 - DHD: 10 (of 10)

Email Client

dto. same score as SGS
3GS: 8- SGS: 8 - DHD: 8 (of 10)

Software Ecosystem

Half a year later, the software ecosystem on Android matures, in numbers and also in quality which will give them an additional point since the last comparison. And though I still rate the average software quality on the iPhone higher than on Android, some apps are not available on iOS. Apples latest annoyance is their rejection of the Sony Reader client on iOS. This really made me angry, as I am a Sony Reader user for years and hoped for a client on iOS to read my Sony Reader library also on my iPad. And it also made me more confident, that my next phone won't be an Apple device as long as they don't change their business practices, which already costs the iOS devices a point.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 7 - DHD: 7 (of 10)

Desktop Software

Since my last comparison, the need for a desktop based backup became less important because of Google's cloud based backup. But there is still some need to sync music, movies and photos from and to the phone. Samsungs Kies desktop suite required a lot of witchcraft to make it work, HTC Sync just works, if you want one. But you will probably not need it, because the DHD supports over-the-air (OTA) updates. And to sync your media, you won't need a special desktop suite for Android phones. For example, I can use Adobe Lightroom, which is my favorite desktop photo suite to directly export the pictures I want to the DHD. And I can use Lightrooms import Wizard to import photos and movies shot on the DHD. The only thing that is missing is a tool which transparently sync dynamic playlists of music with the device. There is some 2nd source software available, but you will have to fiddle out how to make them work and these do not work as transparent as iTunes, so this is minus 1 point. And as both Android phones do not offer a Mac desktop client, this will cost a 2nd point.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 4 - DHD: 8 (of 10)

Costs

This is just a simple calculation. The 3GS with 32 GB like mine is down to € 650,-, so it gains a point since the last comparison. If you don't need the memory, you could go for an iPhone 3GS with 8 GB for € 525,-.
The SGS comes at 443,- right now, also with 8 GB. So this is close enough to the 3GS, that the decision should not be made by the price. It becomes different when more memory is needed. A SDHC 32 GB micro SD card is right now down to € 60,-, so about under € 500,- you would get a SGS with 40 GB in summary. The DHD comes at about 500,- with an 8GB SD card at nearly the same price as the iPhone 3GS with 8GB. With a 32 GB SD card, the DHD costs about € 560,-, so it is between the 3GS and the SGS
3GS: 5 - SGS: 7 - DHD: 6 (of 10)

Conclusion

When I tested the SGS last summer, it has been quite a mixed bag. It had a superior display and a super fast CPU. But also a below average camera and speaker as well as low build quality and an lagging OS which felt unfinished and a vendor with no clue how to fix this. It just felt, as if it has not been ready for production. And also Android has not been such mature as iOS

Now half a year later things changed. HTC's Android implementation feels very mature and the DHD is much more a fully production ready device, than the SGS has been. But though HTC is a maker of smartphones for years, they struggled to make this device complete. The heavy body might be a matter of taste, but the lousy camera and speaker don't fit into a high-end, highly priced smartphone. We are all used to certain standards and for it's top-of-the-line device, all components should be at least average. In a cheap, entry level phone, I would accept these components, but not at this price tag.
Unsurprising, in my rating below, the DHD scores highest and this reflects how I feel about this device. But as I need a usable camera and speaker, these issues are deal breakers for me. But if these are not important for you and you won't mind the weight, then the DHD migth already be the perfect smartphone for you.
So I return the DHD and continue to use my 3GS for some more months. But from the SGS to the DHD, it has been a major step in maturity, the Android platform evolves fast and if the vendors will sort out the remaining problems, my next phone will probably be an Android device.

	3GS	SGS	DHD
Hardware
Display	7	10	9
Speaker	7	5	1
Camera	7	5	4
Radios	7	8	9
Battery life	5	2	3
Interfaces & Memory	6	9	5
Hardware Buttons	5	6	4
Build Quality	10	5	8
Hardware Ecosystem	10	5	5

Hardware Summary	64	55	48

System
Multitasking	10	8	8
Storage Support	7	7	7
User Interface	4	9	10
Responsiveness	8	1	10
Ringtones	2	5	5
Phone Application	5	5	5

System Summary	36	35	45

Software
On screen Keyboard	7	9	9
PIM	6	7	7
Audio Player	8	9	9
Video Player	6	10	10
Web Browser	7	10	10
Email Client	8	8	8
Software Ecosystem	7	7	7
Desktop Software	10	4	8

Software Summary	59	64	68

Costs	5	7	6

Summary

Hardware	64	55	48
System	36	35	45
Software	59	64	68
Costs	5	7	6
	164	161	167

Microsoft and Nokia: tying the Titanic to the iceberg

2011-02-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I told Palm to drop their own OS and build Android phones instead. They thought they know better and developed Web OS, failed where bought by hp and we will probably will see Web OS on hp's printer display [update]OK, they just launched some cool devices. But I doubt, that they will attract enough developers to make this a usefull platform. Even Microsofts chances are better with their Xbox base[update].
Now Nokia is about to announce a partnership with Microsoft next week [update]Now they did, see NokiaConversations[update]. They will probably announce Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone. Wow, a hardware producer who struggles to sell his devices because the potential customers dislike their outdated OS might switch to the only OS that customers dislike even more: Windows phone is a flop. This reminds me of a saying: It's like tying the Titanic to the iceberg. It'd keep you from sinking just long enough to freeze to death.
Let us look, what are the smartphone operating systems of choice: according to latest numbers, the Android market share grew some 615%. But according to Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki, using Android would be like the Finnish boys who peed their pants for warmth – it would provide momentary relief but there would be bigger problems down the road.
I could not disagree more. I you like the Android OS, and many do, there is the disaster that no really good hardware is available. Look at all this Asian rubbish: low build quality, crappy cameras, missing camera buttons, if they offer hardware keyboards than the mechanics are mostly jokes. They are exactly bad where Nokia is good at. The N8 is a great piece of hardware: a solid body, great battery life, the best camera of all smartphones and a great display which is only limited by the screen resolutions supported by Symbian OS. And this Symbian OS is the only problem of this great device, it is still an OS of the pre iPhone aera.
I already tried two Android phones, the Samsung Galaxy S and the HTC Desire HD, which are said to be the highend Android devices, and returned them because the could not match the standards I am used to after years of using Nokia and Apple phones. So what I want to say is that

if Nokia would build an N8 running Android, I would buy it immediately!!!

But they won't listen and maybe in 2 years when Lexmark bought them and use Symbian as printer OS, I will start a new Blog posting starting with 'some years ago I told Nokia to use Android, but they won't listen and now ...'

iPhone 3GS vs. Samsung Galaxy S

2010-11-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

NOTE: this test is based on older firmware versions. The new versions give a complete different result, so please also check out my test update.
For my last long time comparisons, it has been iOS vs. Symbian S60 5th Edition, but Symbian looks like a dead horse now. Loosing support from major vendors, namely Sony and Samsung it is mostly Nokia to continue to build Symbian phones and even Nokia made a new approach with Meego for the high level smartphones. As in most of my tests, I take a new smartphone with me during the summer holidays as my only device to see how good it fits my needs. On the iPhone side, Apple released iOS 4.x, which brought significant improvements like multitasking and USB-transfer mode, so even my one and a half year old iPhone became much more competitve again.
This is the longest comparison I have ever made. Starting in August, I was very enthusiastic about the SGS. But after installing a bunch of applications, the SGS became mostly unusable. So I waited for two system updates, one based on Android 2.1 and now the latest based on Android 2.2 for Samsung to fix this.
This is not a fair comparison, as I compare one of the latest Android device with the one year old iPhone 3GS, though it’s successor has just been released in Europe. The reason is, that I won’t buy a new iPhone at this time, for several reasons like the iPhone 4 antenna problems, it’s sensivity to glass brake and most important that it does not give me that much additional value over the iPhone 3GS to judge it’s high price.
So this is an unfair comparison, but it makes sense anyway. For existing iPhone customers, who bought their iPhone when Android has not been an option, it may be the question to decide whether to stay with the iOS platform or to switch to the Android. And for those who did not have either platform before, maybe former Symbian or Windows mobile users who don’t see any future for their platform, might consider iOS or Android as an option.
For my rating, I usually give a maximum of 10 points, but as some aspects are not as important as others (like ringtones), for some aspects I give a maximum of 5 points.

Hardware

Display

The new 4’’ SuperAMOLED with 480*800 pixel is surely one of the major selling points for the Galaxy S. The first time I started the SGS, I just thought WOW. Extreme brilliant colors on a perfect dark black. The iPhone’s Display has been a big deal 3 years ago, but the competition evolved fast and now it is only average. But it is still the only touch phone with a transreflective display, which has been the only technology usable in bright sunlight for years. And this is where Samsung’s SuperAMOLED technology catches up. In every light condition except for bright sunlight, the AMOLED technology beats the LCD, offering much higher contrast and more brightness. Now by leaving out a reflecting layer, SuperAMOLED gives better readability in sunlight than conventional OLED technology.

The iPhone still has a slight advantage when the sun directly reflects from the display to ones eyes. But by just changing the angle by just a few degrees, this advantage is gone. And to be honest: holding a smartphone in an angle, that you could see the sun like in a mirror is not a good idea with whatever display technology. And under every other lightning condition, the SGS’s screen is far superior to the iPhone’s. Of course, the iPhone 4 has got a new IPS LED backlight display, called Retina Display by Apple, which offers even higher resolution than the SGS and at least better contrast than the 3GS, but for the price of less good readability in bright sunlight. And not to forget: the Amoled technology is capable of displaying a larger color space, so even the iPhone 4 can not match the SGS in this area.
After using the SGS a few hours, I got adopted to it’s 4’’ screen size and the iPhone’s screen looked small to me. The extra size and resolution really gives value, especially when browsing or using Google Maps. The 4’’ display size looks like the sweet spot for me, something even the iPhone 4 won’t offer.
So in summary, the display comparison between the iPhone 4 and the SGS will probably be a draw. But compared to the 3GS, the SGS wins hands down.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 10 (of 10)

Speaker

New is not always better. The SGS comes with a just average speaker, which sound a little cheap. The 3GS, though not as good as the Nokia 5800, has a much better sounding speaker. The position of the speakers are not ideal on both. The speaker of the SGS on the back is covered by the phone when laying at the desk. The iPhones speaker at the bottom is easily covered by the hand when playing a game in landscape mode. In comparison, the 5800’s speakers had the ideal position at the right side, which are on top when gaming in landscape.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 5 (of 10)

Camera

Again, the oldie can beat the youngster. Though only equipped with a 3 megapixel camera, the iPhone makes good pictures (for a phone), only beaten by phones with specialized cameras like the Nokia N86, but these are much thicker. Apart from megapixels, the iPhone’s pictures are well exposed and offer good white balance and contrast.
The SGS’ camera has a higher spec with 5 megapixel, but it’s results are not as good as the ones from the 3GS. Under good lightning conditions, it makes average photos. If ligthning gets worse, the images are getting very noisy. And the look of the photos is the same overprocessed look known from Samsung digital cameras.

The camera application on the SGS is way better than on the iPhone with many usefull settings and a really good working panorama mode.
But at least it can record 720p HD videos, whereas the 3GS only takes movies in VGA resolution.
But overall, the iPhone’s camera is good for taking snapshots when no real camera is at hand. When looked on TV, you won’t notice immediately that these shots are made by a phone. The SGS’s are taken by a phone on first sight.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 7 (of 10)

Radios

The 3GS handles HSDPA up to 3600 Mbps, Wifi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1, the SGS up to 7200 Mbps on HSDPA/HSUPA, Wifi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. This is the difference, a year makes. The iPhone 4 catches up on Wifi n and HSUPA with 7200 Mbps, but the SGS will still have an advantage on Bluetooth 3.0. The 802.11n WLAN is less usefull as I expected. As long as one device with 802.11g or less is connected to a WLAN-router, it will WLAN will fall back to this standard, so the 802.11n devices cannot use their potential. So it makes sense to have a dual band WLAN router and set it up eg. with 802.11g in the 2,4 GHz band and with 802.11n in the 5 GHz band, to have both standards in parallel. But the SGS does not use the 5GHz band, so it always falls back to 802.11g and the potential speed advantage is gone, in my network it has not been faster then a convential 802.11g device.
And despite the good paper form, the SGS’s WLAN connection is very weak, compared to other devices, which give it minus two points. On GSM/EDGE performance, both seem quite comparable, on 3G the SGS offers me a connection a little more often than the 3GS did.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 8 (of 10)

Battery life

The SGS has a larger battery with 1500 mAh, but also a larger screen and a faster CPU, which over compensates the additional battery capacity. Under even moderate usage, it won’t make it through a business day and has to be charged not only over night, but also through the day. And there must be something wrong with the SGS. Even on airplane mode and screen switched off, it uses much battery.
The iPhone, on the other hand, will last a whole business day and only needs a power supply on very long days, typically when travelling. But on 99%, it get’s me through the day, on moderate usage 2 days are possible. And opposed to the SGS, the 3GS’s battery lasts for days when switched to airplane mode. On my normal drive to the office, the iPhone’s battery fully charges when it is in my car mount. The SGS takes significant longer to charge, about 2-3 hours. So when I arrive at the office, the SGS is only about half charged.
But at least, the SGS’s battery is exchageable and Samsung offers spare batteries and a charger. To enhance the iPhone’s battery capacity, an external battery like the Mophie Juice Pack is needed, but it nearly doubles the iPhones weight and thickness and is quite expensive, around € 100,-.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 2 (of 10)

Interfaces and Memory

Both phones offer a 3,5’’ audio jack, and for both a TV out cable is available as an option. The iPhone has a proprietary connector on the bottom (-1 point), the SGS has a standard micro USB, which is good, but it is at the top, which is bad (-1 point) for car mount usage. The SGS also has a micro SD slot, which is good because the built in memory can easily expanded. For longer trips one could take all his favorite movies with him just by using a handfull of micro-SD cards.
The iPhone offers nothing to expand the memory (-4 points) but offers huge 32 GB (+1) internal memory. The SGS only has 8GB internal memory, with only 6 GB available to the user. With a 32 GB card, the SGS offers 38 GB memory in summary, which is more than the iPhone, but 32 GB cards are comparably expensive, around € 80,- which will give a penalty in the price chapter.
3GS: 6 - SGS: 9 (of 10)

Hardware Buttons

The iPhone is known for its minimalistic design with just one central hardware button and secondary buttons for volume including a mute button and of course a power switch. Thats it. And this is too limited, as even Apple might have disovered. But instead of adding new buttons, they invented a kind of morse code with single press, double press and even triple press as well as long press. This is far from beeing intuitive. Apple sacrifices functionality for design, which makes the iPhone look good, but smartphones like these from Nokia with at least some extra buttons are more usable.
The SGS looks similar in design, but has two additional buttons for options and go back left and right of the main menu button. The touch sensitive area of the SGS does not end with the screen, but the whole front panel is touch sensitive, using it for the extra buttons which will be lighted when used. The SGS does not have a 4th button for search, which is standard for Android (but the US-model Vibrant does), but a long press of the menu button starts the search. This is also not intuitive, and I only found it by accident, but at least better than this iPhones multiple usage of a single button. The SGS does not have a mute switch (-1 point) like the iPhone but on the other hand the iPhone’s button is more a proposal than a hard cut of the speakers wires (like on my old Palm Treo), so the iPhone sometimes makes sound in a meeting though it’s mute button is active. There dozens of mute widgets for Android and with a long press of the power button, the SGS can also be muted or putted into airplane mode but there is still an advantage for the iPhone here, because I can mute my iPhone while it is in my pocket. The SGS has always to be switched on to check or change the status of the mute button.
There is another drawback for the iPhones lack of hardware buttons. All functions have to be moved to the screen. And the screen of the iPhone is significantly smaller than the SGS’s, in size and also resolution. The iPhone 4 offers an even higher resolution than the SGS, but the screen is still the size of the 3GS’s. So iOS devices need more space of their smaller screen for placing buttons which are hardware buttons on the SGS. Eg. the ‘back’ button is mostly on the top left corner of the iOS apps. The same app could use this space for content on the SGS because of the hardware button for ‘back’, same is for search. But most iPhone apps which need screen space just fade out the buttons when they are not needed.
The Android back-button does even more than on the iPhone. If you walked back all screens in your actual application and press it again, it brings you back to the former application. So if you eg. write an email, then launch the browser to search for something, then you can use the back button to get back to your email and continue writing after you got the information you where looking for. This might be a point where one could see that Android has been build up as a multi-tasking OS, whereas iOS delivered limited multi-tasking as an add-on with version 4.0. But on the other hand, with iOS’s double click on the button bringing up the task manager, it is also very easy to navigate back to the last used applications.
Anyway, on both phones I would like to see a hardware button for the camera.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 6 (of 10)

Build Quality

Though they look very similar, the build quality is completely different. The iPhone is a rock solid block where I could not find the slightest complaints about build quality, 10 out of 10 here. The SGS looks good, but feels cheap with it’s complete plastic case. To change SIM-, SD-card or battery, you have to pull the cheap back cover from the phone and I alway feared that it will break. Pressing the SGS or just using it gives creaking sounds, this is absolutely not what I would expect from a phone which is priced between €400,- and 500,- and not only the iPhone is better here, but also popular Android phones from HTC which offer aluminum unibodies here. And though I took good care of it, the SGS rapidly got a large scratch on the soft plastic back cover.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 5 (of 10)

Hardware Ecosystem

The iPhones are probably the devices with the best support by hardware manufacturers. There is a bunch of sound systems, car mounts, cases and all kinds of funny accessories. For the SGS, there are at least some basic accessories like a desktop stand and also a few cases, as well as car mounts eg. from Brodit. So it is not bad, exept you want some of these crazy iPhone accessories. Personally, I never need other accessories than a car mount, a display protector and maybe a leather case, which are all available for the SGS. But in general, the iPhones hardware ecosystem is by far larger than SGS’s
3GS: 10 - SGS: 5 (of 10)

System

Multitasking

Android offers full preemtive multitasking, iOS has a more limited multitasking model. The Android is more flexible, but this also means that it is easier to trash the system by overloading it. It happened often, that my foreground application became sluggish, because some background app took too much CPU cycles, so I had to kill it manually.
So though the Androids multitasking is more capable in theory, in practical usage, the iPhones multitasking is better, because it does everything you would it expect to do without messing up your systems performance. And you won't need a task manager for iOS.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 8 (of 10)

Storage Support and Backup

The iPhone allows Apps only to store data in their own application space, thus making it nearly impossible to exchange data between applications except for cut, copy & paste. The best way to exchange documents is via the internet. This is resulting in the absurd situation, that almost any document application implements it’s own networking stack, mostly with mobileMe and WebDAV support. But this simple system has one advantage: it is nearly impossible to do something stupid, even for complete tech idiots. But the price is too high, it is really quirky to configure file network file services on every application.
The Android file system is mostly accessible, only system parts are hidden from the user. But even the remaining file structure is to probably too much for beginners and the user has to take care of his file system himself. But all kinds of media could be brought to the SGS just by copying, and are available for all applications on the system. So the Android user needs only one network file transfer application to set up to make use of his files on the network.
Ideally, the file system should be mostly organized by the operating system, like in iOS, but with some space for free user access to a user space and SD-cards like in Android.
At least with iOS 4 came a major enhancement, the USB transfer mode. Unfortunately, this has still to be done via iTunes. I would prefer a direct USB drive connection. But at least, any PC or Mac is fine for this and it does not require syncing. And many apps already support this new transfer mechanism.
With this new mode it is possible to write direkt from iTunes to the private storage of an app, eg. a PDF can be dropped directly from a Finder window to GoodReader on an USB connected iPhone. Though this is a step into the right direction, it is still a bit too short. It is still the private storage of a single application. A single document could not be shared between to apps.

The SGS supports MicroSD-cards as written in the interfaces section, so the easiest way to get all your movies, music, photos and other files from your desktop onto your SGS is just copying it on a micro SD-card and insert this into the SGS. And the SGS, as every Android phone, could optionally be mounted as an external USB drive, which is a big advantage.
In summary, these are different philosophies, both with pro’s and con’s. Apples concept is idiot proof, but a little limited for power users. The Android concept gives everything to the power user, but he needs to become a system administrator on his phone. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Ideally like iOS’s private app storage with and additonal user accessible space where every app could have access to.

And there is one important point too: iTunes automatically backups all your content on the device. For Android, a separate backup solution is needed, or it can be backed up with desktop backup software when mounted as USB drive. The Windows Desktop software Kies from Samsung does at least some backup, but it is incomplete and Kies is a very messy piece of software which even many Samsung fanboys hate. A complete Backup on the SGS could only be done if you would hack your phone to get a root account and buy the right 3rd party software.
So if you don’t hack your phone, and maybe even don’t know what a root account is, and then install a firmware upgrade (which I did twice), you get a clean phone because all data that is not on the SD-card has been deleted, eg. all installed apps and their settings. With some 3rd party backup software you can automate some of backup & restore, but your phone won’t be comletely restored without hacking your phone.
On the iPhone, when you install a new firmware everything is as it was before, exept for the new firmware features. And this works without any human interaction, it just works.
So for the different storage handling philosophies, I see a draw. The iPhone is more limited, but idiot proof, the SGS is more capable but you will have to become an administrator. So I would give 7 points to both of them. But for the lack of a proper backup solution I draw 3 points from the SGS.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 4 (of 10)

User Interface

The iPhone interface is mainly a program launcher, and that’s it. For everything one would want to do, an App has to be launched. This is easy enough for anyone, but it is too simple making all day tasks a little too complicated. Android, like eg. Symbian, has two views to switch between, and with Samsungs enhanced TouchWiz UI, it is even more comfortable than with plain Android. One view is nearly the same application launcher view like in iOS. The other is the home screen, which is completely customizable. Nearly anything can be put on one of the home screens like Apps, contacts or Widgets. And as this is standard on Android, many Apps come with a widget, eg. a podcast client could offer a small widget to play/pause and skip track (and many do). Android is by far better not only compared to iOS, but also in comparison to Symbian^3. So a user can easily configure his home screen so that his most used every day tasks are on his main views, which really saves time. One set up for the own need, you would spend most of your time in the home screen, switching to the application launcher only for seldom used Apps.
Both devices show some status icons on the top, but only on Android these are functional. On the iPhone I often touched the status bar, hoping that I could change something shown there. On Android devices, the status bar transforms into a drawer where some settings could be done, eg. WLAN on/off.
At least, the 3GS gets folders with iOS 4, so there is at least some functionality to structure your apps.
Notifications on iOS are just little popup boxes. When these are closed, they are gone. Often, I got a notification on iOS, but need to put my attention so something else, thus closing the notification. Later, there is no way to get it back. On Android, all notifications are collected in the drawer under the notification bar, which is by far more usable. This is a clear win for Android.
But there is an annoyance with the SGS UI. The SGS easily turns into landscape mode, but when rotated back it won't rotate back that easily. It occurs, that when the SGS is rotated a bit by accident, it immediately turns into landscape mode, but when it is rotated back, it still stays in landscape mode. So I often had to shake the SGS until it returns to portrait mode. I found this behavior really annoying, costing the SGS 1 point.
3GS: 4 - SGS: 9 (of 10)

Responsiveness

The iPhone is, at least from the 3GS on, known for its very responsive UI. I never had any noticeable lags in a year of using. The iOS must be very well designed and programmed, eg. even smartphones with faster CPU’s running Windows Mobile 6.x could not match iOS’s performance. Symbian^1 (formerly known as S60 5th Ed.) is also very responsive, even on CPU’s half as fast as iOS, but Symbian^1 and even the latest Symbian^3 is just a whole generation older.
Android is a modern OS just as iOS, but it is not that responsive as iOS, even on the faster CPU of the SGS compared to the 3GS. OK, the 3GS has a higher display resolution, which costs performance. But the SGS has a problem with lags. With the first firmware FJ3, the SGS was that laggy, that I could not give more than 0 points. In between, Samsung published a firmware update JM1 which fixed some problems, but the lags remain. And in November they have been one of the last manufacturers to release Android 2.2 (Froyo), which I used for my final tests.
For example when you swype left or right in the application launcher. On the old 3GS, this happens immediately, so whatever is on screen follows your finger just as you would move a physical object. On the SGS, it may take a second until the animation starts which is confusing. So you move your finger to swype the screen and after a short pause when your finger has passed half of the way the animation starts. What would you think, if you push an object over your table but it won't move. Then, when your hand has moved on the object will start to move. Strange, wouldn't it be?
But worse than these lags are complete system hangs. These get longer, the more apps are installed (not running) on the SGS. Then the SGS sometimes hangs between some seconds and some minutes. The screen freezes and you look at the last screen you saw, or sometimes it just became black. The reason why most ‘professional’ test do not come to this is, that they mostly do not install a bunch of apps. On a clean SGS, this nearly does not happen. But this is a difference between most synthetical tests and the way I test a device. It is a difference, if you do some standard tests or if you try to use a device as your single computing device for some weeks.
Additional to that, while downloading an app, the whole system is slowed down noticeable. And when this comes together with one of these hangers, the SGS sometimes crashes and reboots. In 1,5 years of iPhone usage, I only had one single crash, and this has been on an older OS version. iOS 4 never crashed here. The SGS crashed several times a week. The overall speed has become better with Froyo, but with that capable hardware it is a shame that Samsung produced such a laggy device.
Just to be fair: when the SGS is not lagging, it is fast. My first thoughts when scrolling Google Maps were: “Wow, this is fast”. But these lags, hangs and crashes just happen way to often.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 1 (of 10)

Ringtones

I can still use my text from the iPone vs. Nokia 5800 comparison: the iPhone comes with some built-in ringtones. Music titles can be bought as ringtones in the iTunes music store for an absurd price. On a Mac, Garage Band can be used to build own ringtones, which could be in fact just titles from the music library cropped. I have never heard of another phone with such arbitrarily limitation. But at least, with iOS 4 and USB transfer mode, it became a little easier. There are apps, taking any soundfile from iTunes and convert them to a ringtone. But to use this ringtone, you need a PC or Mac with iTunes, copy the newly created ringtone from the ringtone apps private storage to the desktops iTunes and sync it back. This is completely nuts, but at least it is possible.
On the SGS, any audio file can be used as a ringtone by using the software RingDroid from the Android market.
3GS: 2 - SGS: 5 (of 5)

Phone Application

In general, there is not much to distinguish between both phone apps. The SGS has some nice little tricks. When the phone rings, I have the option to take or to reject the call on both phones, but only on the SGS I have to option to reject with message, eg. “I’m in a meeting” which will be sent via SMS to the caller.
In the dialer app, the letters on the on screen dialer pad are also used to find a contact. Just by touching these, all matching combinations are shown in a drop down list on the top, similar to what is known from old candy bar phones with mechanical keys. This way of dialing is extremely fast and efficient, only available on the SGS. But the SGS drove me nuts when I got a new number, which I dialed and tried to get it into the address book. This is easy on the 3GS. In general, both phone apps are more than enough to almost anybody.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 5 (of 5)

Software

On Screen Keyboard

The iPhone set the new standard for on screen keyboards when it came out. But it is not perfect, and it has not evolved much over the years. Especially when entering special characters it is unnecessary complicated. The SGS comes optionally with the new Swype keyboard, which offers all the iOS keyboard does and also has special characters on long keypresses and the swiping method which gave it its name. With Swype it is possible to enter text without taking the finger off the keyboard, just swipe from one letter to the next. Optionally, Swype would give tactile feedback via the vibration function.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 9 (of 10)

PIM

Both, Android and iOS come with a useable calendar app and a note taking app. Neither offers a tasks app out-of-the-box, but both app stores are full of 3rd party tasks apps. Both sync with Outlook on the desktop, but I haven’t used this on the iPhone for nearly a year and never with the SGS, because I stopped using Outlook and I am confident, that the decade of direct desktop sync is gone. Now it is important to sync online. And this is where the iPhone is a little better. Both phones connected our corporate Oracle Collaboration Suite with NotifyLink, an ActiveSync server without problems, the SGS at least after the Android 2.2 update. But the SGS cannot sync via CalDAV.
In general, PIM functionality of both, Android and iOS is very limited. But both app stores are full of more capable replacements.
For GTD, there are apps with Mac desktop sync available like Things or OmniFocus or with platform independent sync like Thinking Rock. As a heavy GTD user, this is very important for me.
For Android are also some promising GTD apps available, but none with desktop sync. But at least, my favorite Windows GTD application, My Life Organized, is announced for Android with full desktop sync for the future.
So iOS is a more mature here, but Android will probably close up.
3GS: 6 - SGS: 5 (of 10)

Audio Player

Both Audio Players are more than enough for most people. Apples iPod app is very mature, but most 3rd party replacements are more capable. The SGS’s audio app looks like a copy of the iPod app in many aspects. The coverflow view looks a bit nicer on the 3GS, but in fact this is IMHO only an eye catcher which I never used. The SGS offers an equalizer and some effect settings like concert hall etc. which I also never used. Up to now it is a draw.
The main difference is how to get music onto the device. If you use iTunes on your desktop, getting your music onto the 3GS is a no brainer. On the SGS, you could just copy your music files onto it via USB mount and you are done.
The problem is, that even on a SGS with a 32 GB SD-card, my whole music collection won’t fit onto the device, so I need to sync with dynamic playlists. And this is something, iTunes is good at, so for me it is natural to sync my smartphone with iTunes. As iTunes only supports iOS devices, a 3rd party software is needed like iSyncr. But you have to find the right 3rd party software and figure out how it works. The iPhone with iTunes just works.
If you are not using iTunes, but something else like Windows Media Player or Songbird it is vice versa. Both will sync easily with the SGS, but not with the 3GS. So depending on what is your favorite music library application on your desktop, one of both phones will sync easily and the other one requires more work. But both are very capable audio players, it is a draw until here.
One main thing that is different is, that the only way to sync music onto your iPhone is via a single instance of iTunes. On the SGS, just mount it as an external device and drop the audio files onto it. The SGS’s media scanner will recognize them and the files will be available in the audio player with full cover art and metadata. So when you are at the office or on a trip, got some new music from a different source than iTunes and you don’t have your primary syncing Mac or PC not with you, you don’t have any chance to get it onto your iPhone. This is a problem with Apple’s iDevices for years, back since the days of the first iPod. The new iOS 4 USB transfer mode helps a little, because you now can use a 3rd party media player like OPlayer or YXPlayer and drop your music onto it from any computer with an iTunes. And back home the new music can be moved to the iTunes library. Though this is clumsy, at least with iOS 4 there is now a way do this. On former iOS versions this had been impossible. But this still costs the iOS 1 Point.
But the SGS also has an annoyance here. Though it is easy to drop your media files onto it from any computer, it need to run a background process called Media Scanner to find out if the files have changed. This process generates high load on the system, makes using the phone while it is running a nightmare. And it always runs when you want it least. Directly after starting the phone for example. The SGS takes much longer to start up than the 3GS, and after it is up it starts it’s media scanning process, making the phone unusable for another minute or two. Why on earth couldn’t they run it when the phone is idle? The iPhone also updates it’s media library, but only after syncing and you will only notice if you switch to iPod immediately after syncing. This annoying behaviour is -1 for the SGS
If you are listening to Audible audio books, this is different on both devices. On the iPhone, the iPod app just plays all your synced Audible books. For Android, there is a dedicated Audible app playing all your books. And it has one advantage: it can access your Audible library online and additional books can be downloaded which scores one extra point for the Android.
So in summary, Apple’s iDevice universe is still the easiest way of a portable music library, but Android is slightly more capable.
3GS: 8 - SGS: 9 (of 10)

Video Player

As for the audio player, the video player apps of both systems are everything most users need. The iPhone supports only a very limited number of video formats, all other files have to be converted, at least up to iOS 3. Fortunately, this has also changed with the USB media transfer of iOS 4, so with an app like OPlayer or YXPlayer, most video files can be played on the iPhone.
On the SGS, you can - again - just drop your video files on the SGS when mounted as external drive. The SGS will play most video files from the last few years without any conversion.
But when playing HD videos, the SGS’s more capable hardware comes into play. It play 720p videos without a flaw, whereas the 3GS has dropouts. It only plays seamlessly up to VGA resolution. There a two possible solutions for HD video on iOS: convert your files to a lower resolution or get an iPhone 4.
Overall, the SGS is the better video players of both. It has a bigger screen with superb SuperAMOLED colors, enough power to play 720p video and plays nearly every video format, it even is DivX certified.
For watching your movies on the big screen TV, which I did in my holidays there are video out cables available for both devices.
3GS: 6 - SGS: 10 (of 10)

Web Browser

As with many software categories, both web browsers are that good, both using the same rendering engine WebKit, that it is hard to rate which one is better. But apart from HTML5, Android supports Adobe Flash, but iOS does not. In general, I do not think that flash is a perfect technology for a mobile device, it makes high CPU load and drains the battery fast. So all my desktop PC’s are equipped with Flash blockers. But there are many pages out there which require Flash, e.g. many sites with learning games for the kids, which cannot be accessed on iOS devices.
And in general, I do not want the device manufacturer to decide, which technologies I am allowed to use, -3 points for Apple here.
3GS: 7- SGS: 10(of 10)

Email Client

The iPhone comes with a very good email client, the Androids with two. One for IMAP, POP and MS-Exchange, the other one with support for Gmail using some proprietary protocol. Though the general email client is also capable of connecting to Gmail via IMAP, the Gmail app better supports Gmails tag-based way of organizing and has some advantages when handling large attachments. But why on earth did Google not merge both into a single client app? This is irritating, especially for less technical users.
On the other hand, the android market offers free email clients like K-9 with superior functionality.
3GS: 8- SGS: 8(of 10)

Software Ecosystem

Apart from what is considered as the basic software of a smartphone, there is little additional software on the 3GS. OK, the iPhone has access to the worlds largest App Store, so nearly everything one might need - except those things not wanted by Apple - could be found as an app. But not all of these are free. It has a simple weather and stocks application and the bookreader iBooks is done really well, especially as you will get the nicely done free eBook Winnie the Puh. But with the large AppStore you can go shopping immediate and will find a bunch of usefull apps in a minute
On the other hand, when I first heard of Samsungs extensions and additional software I feared to get a phone like a PC full of bloatware. These bloated PC’s from big makers like Sony are that messed up with useless software, that it is often more efficient to format the drive and start with a fresh Windows install. I had the same fear about the TouchWiz UI, but to my surprise TouchWiz is a really nice extension to the Android UI. And the additional software bundled by Samsung is mostly usefull, someone at Samsung must have really thought about what would make sense. And to not bloat the phone, they took a dual approach. Only a little number of apps are preinstalled on the phone, the others are free to download via the Samsung Apps application. So eg. there is Asphalt 5, a good racing game by GameLoft also available on the iPhone for additional € 3,99. Or you’ll get Layar, a good augmented reality app which is available for free on both platforms. But to make really use of Layar, you’ll have to pay for the layers with POI’s. And Samsung already did this for you and you’ll get some bundled layers like a restaurant guide, nightlife guide or tourist attractions.
So while Apple relies on their AppStore, Samsung equips the users with a quite usefull starter set without bloating the phone.
But after the first few hours with a new Smartphone, it is more important which apps are available for the platform and not what comes with the phone. And this is where the iPhone wins hands down. It is not the fact, that Apple’s AppStore counts more than 300.000 titles vs. over 100.000 titles in the Android Market. I don’t mind how many hundreds of thousand apps are available, as long as the few dozen that I need are there. But overall, the quality of the iOS apps is significant higher than the Android apps. Maybe this will change when the Android platform matures. But many Android apps today look like they are from a single programmer who does all the coding and UI, which results in sometimes crappy UI’s. Maybe it is that the tooling and the styleguides are better on iOS. But for now, the app availability on iOS is superior to the Androids, in quantity and also in quality.
On the other hand, without jailbreak it is only possible to get apps onto the iPhone via Apple’s AppStore. And Apple won’t allow any app you would like to have. Personally, I miss emulators for classic gaming consoles. And in general, when I buy a piece of hardware, I want to do with it whatever I like. It is like the Flash thing: I bought the device and want to put whatever software I like onto it. This is -3 points for the iPhone, otherwise it would score 10 out of ten.
In summary, the software offering for the iPhone is better than for Android, even though there is this annoying AppStore restriction.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 6 (of 10)

Desktop Software

The iPhone comes with iTunes, which is also my primary music library. Though there are critics, it does the job. All media, calendar, contacts and bookmarks syncing is handled by iTunes, as well as backup and update tasks.
The SGS comes with Samsung KIES, which is only available for Windows and does a lousy job. It is an expert job to get it just connected to the SGS, for even the most basic tasks you should plan to spend an evening reading through forums and try to get it running. It looks like this did become better with the latest version, but KIES still needs much development.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 4 (of 10)

Costs

The iPhone is the most expensive smartphone available. A 3GS with 32 GB like mine costs about € 780,-, but no one would buy it since the unlocked iPhone 4 32 GB is available at 739,- at the Apple Store. If you don't need the memory, you could go for an iPhone 3GS with 8 GB for € 519,-.
The SGS comes at 467,- right now, also with 8 GB. So this is close enough to the 3GS, that the decision should not be made by the price. It becomes different when more memory is needed. A SDHC 32 GB micro SD card costs € 73,-, so for under € 600,- you would get a SGS with 40 GB in summary. The closest iOS alternative would be the iPhone 4 with 32 GB at 739,-, which is about 20% more the price for 20% less memory.
Neither of them are cheap, but the SGS gives the better value for the money.
3GS: 4 - SGS: 7 (of 10)

Conclusion

I started using the SGS very enthusiastic and thought it would win hands down. But in the end, though it has some extraordinary features like it’s great SuperAMOLED display, fast CPU and GPU, huge memory and battery, Samsung did not managed to create a well balanced system out of these features. The main issue is, that is often really fast, but it has these hangs and laggs, so the overall speed of the 3GS is higher. The cheap, creaky body of the SGS is not on par with most other phones in this price range. The battery life of the SGS is not good enough for a high end smartphone, especially as AMOLED screens are said to be less power consuming.
And please remind, that this is a comparison of Samsung’s latest and greatest phone versus the last generation iPhone. The iPhone 4 would score even higher with about the same CPU power as the SGS, a longer lasting battery and a better screen then the 3GS.
So which one would I buy? If you already have an 3GS, just keep it and wait for the next generation of Android and iOS devices. If you don’t have one, get an iPhone 4. If you don’t want an Apple device, don’t get the SGS, but look for an Android device from HTC. The build quality of HTC’s devices is much higher, they come with better desktop software and most important, they do not seem to have these extreme laggs and hangers. Would anyone be happy with the SGS? Well, if you do plan to use only the built in software and do not want to install many apps and maybe video is important, then maybe the SGS would be OK. But for most other cases, there are better alternatives out there.


	3GS	SGS
Hardware
Display	7	10
Speaker	7	5
Camera	7	5
Radios	7	8
Battery life	5	2
Interfaces & Memory	6	9
Hardware Buttons	5	6
Build Quality	10	5
Hardware Ecosystem	10	5

Hardware Summary	64	55

System
Multitasking	10	8
Storage Support	7	4
User Interface	4	9
Responsiveness	10	1
Ringtones	2	5


Phone Application	5	5

System Summary	38	32

Software
On screen Keyboard	7	9
PIM	6	5
Audio Player	8	9
Video Player	6	10
Web Browser	7	10
Email Client	8	8
Software Ecosystem	7	6
Desktop Software	10	4

Software Summary	59	61

Costs	4	7


Summary


Hardware	64	55
System	38	32
Software	59	61
Costs	4	7
	165	155

Samsung TouchWiz 3.0 User Interface (Galaxy S & Wave S8500)

2010-07-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

When it comes to great software design, I never thought of Korean developers, but this UI design demo of the coming Android 2.2 update for Samsung Android phones just blew me away.

iPhone4 vs HTC Evo

2010-07-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

As discussed at last weeks 'This week in Tech', thanks to Leo Laporte.

Nokia N8, QT SDK and Ovi App Wizard

2010-05-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

For months, I have been complaining about Nokia beeing to slow, while the Apple and the Android world is evolving fast. But it looks like the giant woke up, at least with a wake up call by mobile-review leaking a pre-release N8.
Nokia reacted in a way, which me and many others thought they could not: they moved forward and moved forward fast. They opened the specs and wrote many blog entries on Nokia conversations. They published demo photo shots and also some videos on YouTube. Within hours, the blogsphere has been full of Nokia news. It looks Nokia has learned how marketing in the Web 2.0 works.

But it is not only Nokias marketing, the N8 is a very promising device. It has the largest camera sensor of any camera phone on the market and with 1/1,83'' this sensor is also large for high end compact cameras, matching the high end cameras like the Canon G11, the Panasonic LX3 or the Fuji F200EXR. With the high end still camera and HD video capture, the N8 will definitely be the #1 phone for everybody looking for a camera phone.

But it is not only the camera. The N8 comes with Bluetooth 3.0 and USB on-the-go, giving eg. the possibility to back up the N8 to an external USB drive. With 256 MB Ram in combination with the memory efficient Symbian^3 and the 680 MHz ARM CPU, the N8 will probably will be a speedy phone.

And Nokia fixed a big problem, although Steve Ballmer told it the world some time ago. It is about "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, yeah, Developers, Developers...". Nokia Released the Qt SDK beta. In the past, it could take you a weekend to figure out all the components needed to create a S60 5th Ed. app and how to get everything set up. One thing that probably make app development for the iPhone popular is the availability of an easy to use SDK. Now with Qt SDK, Nokia seems to be on the same level. A one click installer and I had my "Hello world!" example build and run in the N97 emulator in less than 5 minutes without looking into any documentation. Well done, Nokia!

And for everybody tho whom C++ development is too complicated, Nokia also released the Ovi App Wizard beta. This is a web based development framework to built your own app based on your RSS feed and release it to Ovi Store. This surely will lead to a huge amount of read-my-RSS-feed apps, but at least it is an idea to make the Ovi Store more popular.

The giant woke up, finally. And this is not the work of an old industry giant, this is more the behaviour of a young and hungry start up. Now it is important that Nokia will keep this level of output, be it products or communication. If this is not a one hit wonder, Nokia will be in a good position for competing with Apple and the Androids. Hopefully ...

Stop the megapixel madness

2010-04-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

The specs for Nokia's new flagship Symbian^3 smartphone just leaked out (see mobile-review.com, thanks for the photos). If these are correct, it will have a 12 megapixel camera. The new flagship must have the highest spec components available, right?
But unfortunately, the camera phone makers and buyers have not learned the lesson, which the compact camera folks just have.
But it is so easy:

On a given sensor size, more megapixel means smaller pixel
Smaller pixel mean less light sensitive pixel
Less light sensitive pixel mean more noise

This is just simple physics. As well as

It does not make sense to build a camera with a higher sensor resolution than supported by the optics

This is known to every amateur photograph, but not to every average more-is-always-better buyer. Thus, ambitioned amateur photographs typically buy compact cameras with lower resoltution than the average buyer. And the manufacturers react to it. Panasonic's high end compact camera, the LX3 has the lowest resoltion of all Panasonic compact cameras. And it has the best image quality.
It is getting weird when looking at Canon's latest product lineup. While the entry level compact cameras like the new SX210 getting up from 12 to 14megapixel, their high end compact cameras G11 and S90 are downgraded from 14,7 to 10 megapixel.
Unnecessary to mention, that the SX210 produces noisier images than its 12 megapixel predecessor SX200, whereas the G11 produces much better images than its predecessor under lowlight conditions.
And to compare this to camera phones: even the sensor of Nokia N86, which is the largest sensor of all camera phones, is smaller than the sensor of the cheapest compact cameras. So if 9-10 megapixel is a reasonable resolution for high end compact cameras with the largest sensors in this space, this would mean that the resoltion of camera phones has to be below this margin. Even 8mp should be too much, maybe 5mp would be a reasonable resolution.

This is a lesson, camera phone producers and buyers still have to learn. And one already learned. The Apple iPhone has a 3.2mp camera, the next generation will probably have 5mp. And the iPhone's photos are better than these from most camera phone, exept some photo experts like the N95 or N86.
So hopefully other manufacturers will follow and downgrade their camera resolution for better image quality.

UPDATE

Arrgh! This posting is just one day old and Nokia proved me to be wrong ... at least to some degree. Today, the Nokia N8 has officially been announced and they showed some sample photos on Nokia Conversations. These are quite good, much better than I expected.
In fact, this is no magic. In another posting, they explained the trick: they took "the biggest sensor in a mobile device". The N86 had a 1/2,5'' sensor, which has been the standard for cheap compact cameras some years ago. Now, the compact camera standard is 1/2,33'' and many of these are available with 12mp. So probably the N8 has just gotten a standard compact camera sensor. And with a given aperture speed of f/2,8, it will give the N8 a reasonable low light performance, comparable to standard compact cameras.
I can't wait to see N8 tests from photographic sites. Probably, the little optics won't keep up with the 12mp sensor, so I am curious what the effective resolution of the N8 will be.
But in fact: if these photos are not faked, the N8 will probably become the best camera phone on the market.

UPDATE2
According to allaboutsymbian.com, the sensor is even larger than I assumed. If this is correct, it is a 1/1.83" sensor. To put this into comparison with compact cameras: only a handfull of high end compact cameras have a similar sized sensor, eg. the Canon G11, Panasonic LX3 or Fuji F200EXR.
Back to my initial statement of stopping the megapixel madness: if Nokia had restricted the resolution to 8-10mp, the photos would probably be even better. But the N8 will probably not only make better photos than all other camera phones, but also will successfully compete with digital compact cameras.

Nokia & Symbian: Hurry Up!

2010-04-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

It might look like I am becoming a Nokia basher. But beeing a Nokia and Symbian user for quite some time, I really would like to see Nokia returning to the first line of smartphone producers. But they have to move, or they won't catch up to the rest of the field anymore.
Just one year ago, I have been satisfied with my Nokia 5800 XM. In a direct comparision to the iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 2.x, the 5800 has been a clear winner for me.
What happened until now? Apple brought iPhone OS 3.x and the iPhone 3GS, both reasonable improvements to their predecessors. This was enough for me to switch to the iPhone. Apple already announced iPhone OS 4.0, which will probably arrive around June. This one will further improve the platform, and the next iPhone, rumored to be called iPhone HD, will definitely be a step forward.
But Apple is not the only competitor. Google's Android is doing well, and during the livetime of S60 5th Ed., Android users got Android OS 1.5, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 is coming.
Let's compare to Nokia & Symbian. Nokia came out with the N97. Compared to the 5800, it offered a slide out keyboard, a better camera, a better screen and some other improvements. But it is probably to big for anyone except geeks and came with too little megabytes of RAM, making the system unstable when running out of memory. Read more about this on allaboutsymbian.com. This has not been a phone to compete on the high end with the iPhone, even for someone like me who prefers hardware keyboards.
On the software side, this is still S60 5th Edition, now with a new gadgetable homescreen. I just thought "Wow. Is this all you have done in the meantime?"
To be fair, Nokia had quite some work to do in the background making Symbian OS open source and by the way getting rid of UIQ, thus uniting the Symbian community. Symbian started with a very ambitioned release planning, always working on several releases in parallel so they could release a new version every 6 months. Unfortunately, these plans look like they became a litte over-ambitioned.
The first release delivered by Symbian.org, called Symbian^2, is already some months behind schedule. They needed more time for hardening. The original planning has been to release first handsets with Symbian^2 in the first half of 2010. Now, we might be lucky if we see just the OS in this timeframe. And even if it will come out: Symbian^2 would not offer much, which could close the gap to competitors like the iPhone or Android. It looks like the N97's widgetable homescreen will become standard in Symbian^2 and there will be a bunch of updates on network protocols. But for most users, Symbian^2, which has initially been planned as S60 5.1, it won't offer any visible advantages. According to an article from intomobile, Nokia might also plan to skip Symbian^2 and release the next family of handsets with the coming Symbian^3. But this one is late also.
So while Apple as well as Google and their partners are constantly releasing new OS'es and handsets, Nokia seems to stand still. There is no alternative, Nokia has to execute. No more delays in OS releases, get them out of the door. And this time put them into devices without major flaws.

The power connector belongs to the bottom

2010-04-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

I have never understood why the power connectors are spread all among the bodies of various smartphones, whereas the is only one logical location for it. At the bottom. Why? Because it is the only position where a car mount could be build for it without any ugly extra cables. In fact, there are countries where it is forbidden to use a mobile phone in the card without a hands free set. This might not be an issue for phones targeted at kids, as they usually won't have a car anyway. But for all phones targeted at adults, especially for smartphones aimed at the professional user, a power connector at the bottom is a must in my opinion.
The people at Brodit are very professional in getting almost every phone into almost every car. But look, what quirks they have to make sometimes. When I had a Nokia 5800, I also had the Brodit car mount for it. But when I dropped the 5800 into the mount, I had to connect the power cable to the power connector at the top as shown at brodit.se. This looks even worse on a N97 with a power connector on the left side.
But there is some hope. Nokia just announced the C6, among with other messaging phones. There is no photo from bottom out right now, but I could not find a power connector on the photos of any other side. The C6 can be seen as a 5800 with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, more RAM and a higher spec camera. Or as a low cost alternative to the N97, if you like. And maybe this time they got the location of the power connector right ...

Update
There is a detailed review of the C6 on mobile-review (thanks for the photo), showing that the power jack is definitively on the bottom. But there is a micro USB port at the top. As mobile-review assumed, this could mean that the C6 might not support USB charging. This would definitely be a shame. When I am at business travels, I hate to carry a bunch of power connectors with me and try to charge as much devices as possible via USB. So hopefully, the proprietary connector at the botton is just an option. But at least, there is a power jack at the bottom, making it possible to build drop in car kits for it.

iPhone vs 5800 Update: RSS and ReadItLater

2010-04-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

My RSS newsreader 'Reeder' is one of my busiest iPhone apps. This is how a perfect mobile newsreader should look like. When browsing the news, sometimes I stumble over longer articles which I would like to read with more time and display space when I am back home. This is what ReadItLater is for. From my browser or newsreader, I can mark the URL's and read them later.
This works good on the iPhone. Reeder can mark news for ReadItLater. And ReadItLater offers a great iPhone app to sync my reading list. If I like to, I can sync large articles with images when I am at home via WLAN. And I can read them on the road, even without any network connection. This works perfect for me, 5 points.

Looking at the 5800, things look different. I could not find any S60 newsreaders which a comparable to Reeder (or eg. NetNewsWire) on the iPhone. And none of them offer any integration with ReadItLater (or the comparable Instapaper). When looking for an ReadItLater S60 app, they point to their website, which will run on the 5800's browser. So one could copy an URL from the newsreader of his choice and put it on the reading list via the web interface. This is clumbsy but at least it works, so one point for that. Gravity, one of the only S60 apps that matches the iPhone apps in design and quality adds a second point for allowing to put URL's from Tweets into the reading list.

So my points for RSS and ReadItLater integration:

iPhone: 5, 5800: 2

Summary:

iPhone: 106, 5800: 96

iPhone vs 5800 Update: Audible

2010-04-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Now having switched to the iPhone 3GS for more than half a year, I found some more aspects to compare them. A smartphone has to elimiate the need for a separate iPod, which I use it mostly for Podcasts and Audiobooks.
Though I buy some Audibooks on CD, sometimes I download them from Audible like I did two weeks ago to get Dan Brown's latest Lost Symbol in an unabridged edition. The Audible integration is perfect with the iPhone, 5 points for that. But I found out that there is no officially way to get Audible books on S60 6th Edition devices. OK, one could burn the whole book on CD and re-rip it, but eg. the Lost Symbol contains of more than a dozen CD's, which adds the costs of the CD's and lots of work. At least, there is a way, but I would not want to do that. Only one Point for S60 5th for the option via CD-reripping.

There is an Audible player for S60 3rd Ed. called AudibleAir which offers over-the-air (OTA) downloads. But this is not available for 5th Ed right now, while we are hoping to see Symbian^3 next month. Even on my E51, I did not manage to get AudibleAir to do something useful. The installation is awkward. It is a Windows executable, which installs the software on a SD-Card, so it will be installed when the card is inserted into the device. But this did not work for me. On Audibles help pages, I found the jar-file ... AudibleAir is a Java application. This means, it is constantly asking for permissions several times. At least I manage to login to my Audible Account and browse my library. The app could be switched to German, but failed to display German Umlauts, showing some funny special characters instead. In the End, the application failed to download any of my audio books, but giving me some communication error instead.

So adding to my comparison chart:

iPhone: 5, 5800: 1

Summary:

iPhone: 101, 5800: 94

Ovi Thunderbird Plugin: This is lame!

2010-03-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

I have just finished my Blog post about Nokia's Ovi development is too slow. Then I installed latest Ovi Suite 2.1.1.1 to try out Sync with Thunderbird address book. Trying to sync just gave me an error, but at the last startup I got the reason (see screenshot above). I am running the actual Thunderbird version 3.0.3, but Nokia's Add-on seems to be made for some other versino. Hey Nokia, this is lame! Mozilla users are typically on the latest version, using the built in auto update. And minor updates don't necessarily have to break every plugin. See my Lightning plugin. I have this running for weeks, if not months, through all Tunderbird releases from 3.0.0 to 3.0.3. But Nokia failed, but hey, maybe in six months or so they will have an Add-on for Thunderbird 3.0.3. When everyone moved to 3.1.

I don't want to become a Nokia basher. I would love to see Nokia getting up to speed and fix those annoyances. As I wrote earlier: get some more developers and then just do it, Nokia.

What Ovi.com needs

2010-03-13T23:35:00.000-08:00

Nokia does not get tired to state, that they are in the transition from a device company to a device and services company. But as time goes by, any results won't show up. Look at Ovi.com and the success they made the last two years. What success? Yeah, that is the point. Nokia is blogging about what optimizations they made to their internal structures and blahblah.

But Ovi.com does not move forwards. With all the 1000nds of people working for Nokia, they seemed to forgot to hire some developers. The output is minimal. Beeing a software devlopement project leader and team leader for many years, I am sure I could generate more output with a few handfull of developers.

Nokia started late in the internet services arena. But if you are late, you should hurry. Nokia instead started late and moves slower than the rest of the field, loosing ground every day.
Apple has been late too, but Mobile me became a somewhat service for iPhone users, though also Apple has much room for improvement.

Ovi.com instead is very limited. Using a Mac and an iPhone with Mobile me, I could edit my contacts and appointsments whereever I want. They are completely synced over the air. OK, on Windows, it only syncs to Outlook, ignoring Windows Live Calendar and Contacts which is probably the default for all non-Outlook users on Windows. There is definitely room for improvement here. Mobile me's iDisk can be mounted via WebDAV, giving me access from all my Macs and PC's, at home and at work, as well as from my iPhone.

So what should Nokia do? Make Ovi.com from a 'me too' offering to a first class service. And not only for your own devices. Make it the best service for anyone, even those who don't use a smartphone. Give it great calendar and contact sync services for Windows, Mac and Linux users. Support the most important smartphone platforms, at least Blackberry, Symbian, iPhone Android and now MeeGo. The forums around the world are full of users looking for an appropriate sync service.
If the service will be great, you could even make money on it. Give away basic quantity, say a number of contacts, appointments etc, for free. And give a much higher quota, or a flatrate, to Nokia device owners.

Sun donated their CalDAV code to you. Use it! Make the calendar accessible via CalDAV asap. There are many users out there, looking for an alternative to Google Calendar for whatever reason. A CalDAV server can be used from the Mac Calendar, Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning on any platform. The iPhone supports it natively and Symbian^3 will hopefully too. But this won't be enough. Talk to Microsoft and license ActiveSync protocol, even Google did. Get all the Outlook users out there, and of course all the iPhone, Symbian and Windows mobile clients. And support Windows Live Calendar, this is now the default on Windows 7, as I wrote above.

And for the contacts: if you will support ActiveSync, you will already get a good amount of devices to support. And for the rest, the Ovi sync application will be appropriate. But don't forget Windows Live Contacts. And also support the Mac Contacts application directly, I don't want to sync my contacts on my device first, to get them onto my Mac. Make an Ovi sync client for integrating Mac and Ovi contacts directly.

Regarding email, just give us IMAP and for the push-mail junkies ActiveSync as an option. This could be an option for Nokia for a paid premium service. No problem. But POP mail is lame, when used from more than one device.

In summary, this would be a service, I would pay for. I now give my money to Apple and their Mobile me, but it is a closed shop. No CalDAV, no ActiveSync, the Outlook sync is lousy and it won't work on any other mobile device than the iPhone. We Gadget lovers DO switch our devices from time to time and I don't wan't to change my complete infrastructure behind it every time. So there is an opportunity to leapfrog Apple with their Mobile me and offer the better service even for iPhone users! And many of them pay 69,95 €/$ a year for the Mobile me service.

Nokia was late with Ovi.com and is still behind. But there is an opportunity to make it a first class service. Just hire some additional developers and do it.

The iPhone 3 GS strikes back

2009-07-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

As I already mentioned when comparing the iPhone 3G to the Nokia 5800, there are some changes to come. In the meantime, Nokia launched the Ovi Store and now my brand ne iPhone 3 GS ist here. So it is time to check the ratings, here is what has changed:

Hardware

Display

On my first test, I found the displays quite comparable. But now summer is there and I found that the 5800's display is nearly unreadable in sunlight which will result in 1 point penalty.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 5

Camera

As I presumed, the iPhone's camera did now match the one of the 5800 with 3 megapixel, auto focus and video recording. Both do not match the N95 (which I would rate 4 points) or the N86 (5 points).
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 3

Speakers

The sound of the iPhone's speaker just blew me away. I can't tell, if I have been dumb when I tested them the first time, or Apple did improve them for the 3GS. These speakers a definitely at the same level like the 5800's.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 5

Battery Life

Though still the weak point of the iPhone, Apple has improved it on the 3 GS, so it will gain a second point.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 2

System Software

Operating System

Though the iPhone still does not offer multi tasking, it now has the notification service, which might be enough for many use cases. It still has no user accessible file system, but on the other hand this takes away a huge amount of complexity from the average user. And with the new mobile me iDisk application, Apple has created an easy way of accessing any kind of files with the built in viewers. With 3rd Party software, these files will also be editable. Apple still does not support SD cards, but with 32GB the iPhone offers enough memory on board, even more then the 5800 offers with the largest supported SDHC-card which is 16 GB.
On the other hand, S60 5th Ed. showed up to be more inconsistent then the iPhone OS. This did not come to my eye when I first used it because I was so much used to S60. But for someone who will use a smartphone for the first time, the iPhone is the much easier choice.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 4

Phone Application

Now the iPhone has a fast search application, making it much more easy and faster to call a contact from the home screen. The 3GS is faster, so it is no delay anymore after the phone is taken from the ear, so waiting for the hangup button to arrive is no more an issue. And double clicking the button can be configured to get to the phone (this could also be done on the 3G, I forgot to mention). The iPhone with OS 3 became a very effective phone, so it now gains the full 5 pts.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 5

On Screen Keyboard

The iPhone now got a landscape mode for the keyboard, which has been my main complaint with the 3G. On the other hand, the 5800's keyboard showed up to be slower when turning it into landscape and it is less responsive. But it still has tactile feedback and German Umlats.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 4

UI Navigation

The iPhone OS 3 now comes with Spotlight search when flipping left from the first app launcher screen. And that changes everything. To start an app on the 11th launcher screen, you now could also flip left to Spotlight, type the first 2 or 3 letters and run the app from there. So there is no more need for flipping 10 pages in worst case.
The iPhone also learned cut, copy and paste. And it is built Apple like in a very lovely and usable way. The iPhone still does not allow multi tasking, but working with several apps is now easier than before. And on the other hand, the simple UI of the iPhone is easy to use for everyone, even people who have never used a smartphone before.
S60 5h Ed. has more choices, but also more complexity. I now prefer the iPhone's UI for it's speed and simplicity, but someone who looks for more customization might prefer S60.
It now takes about the same number of steps to get things done on both phones, so it is more a matter of taste. The iPhone lacks multi tasking for user apps, S60 lacks the ease of use and consistency. Overall, it is a draw now.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 4

Customization

The 5800 is still more customizable. But in fact, I really never used it. I never used profiles, exept for the silent profile. The iPhone has a mute button just like my good old Palm Treo. What is a number of different color, font & icon schemes worth, if you don't like any and are just looking for a clean look like the iPhone's.
For me, this is not an issue anymore, so I delete this from my list.

Today/Standby Screen

A standby screen with more information like upcoming dates is still on my wishlist. At least, Apple added the Option to show notifications on the application icon, thus gaining one additional point
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 2

Audio Player

Apple made only sligth, but effective changes to the iPod application in OS 3.0. It is now possible to change the speed of scrolling through a title by moving the finger up or down. When I hear an audio book, which could be some hours long, it has been nearly impossible to scroll back a minute. I often need this, e.g. when I hear an audio book in the car and a traffic situation required my attention so I missed a minute or so. This was easier on a click wheel iPod, which I prefered until OS 3.0 came out. Now an iPhone (or iPod Touch) is a full replacement for a click wheel iPod. The only drawback, that remains, is that music can only be synced from one computer. If you are using a different computer and have some audio files on it, you can't get them onto your iPhone without erasing all songs on it.
On the other hand, I found that the podcasting app on the 5800 is a complete mess. It does not memorize the last position, it does forget which podcast has been heard. If you hear a podcast on the 5800 until the end, it will mark it as heard. But if you delete it afterwards, which is what most people do, it will be shown as a new episode. This will cost a point.
Rating: 5800: 2, iPhone: 4

PIM

In iPhone OS 3.0, Apple seemed to have fixed the sync problems with Outlook. Though still not as fast as Nokia's PC-Sync, and it does not give a detailed report, it works now. And it has learned how to sync notes with Outlook. So the iPhone is on par with the 5800 now. It also has the possibility of Syncing with GTD apps on the Mac, like Things or OmniFocus. There is no GTD app with sync client for any platform.
So the 5800 has still a faster Outlook sync and gives detailed information, but still lacks calendar categories. The iPhone has GTD apps with desktop sync. Overall it is - again - a draw now.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 4

Email client

Nokias new mail client did not become as good as expected, and even ProfiMail is not as good in rendering complex html formatted mails like the iPhone's mail app. And the iPhone now has learned to type mails in landscape. So the iPhone will get the full 5 points now. As the 5800's mail client is not that good and the new Nokia mail is sluggish, I will rate it down to 4 points.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 5

Ecosystem

Application Support

Apple's AppStore just became 1 year old and it is without doubt the best application store in the world. The number of high quality apps for the iPhone is just gigantic. On the other hand, Nokia's Ovi store could not keep up with the expectations at all. It is slow and between all the color schemes, background images and music, the apps are hard to find. There does not seem to be anything like the community of iPhone developers and only a small number of 5800 apps came out in the last month. And most of them could not keep up with the quality of the iPhone apps, though there are some like the Twitter client Gravity.
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 5

Car Integration

As expected, the iPhone now supports turn-by-turn navigation, starting with one of my favorite System from Navigon and TomTom to come later this year. Nokia on the other hand upgraded their Nokia Maps to 3.0, giving a better map display with 3D buildings. But it's main issue, the fiddly usage, has not been improved.

Summary

Hardware	5800	Iphone
Display	4	5
Camera	3	3
Speakers	5	5
Battery	4	2
Build Quality	3	5
∑ Hardware	19	20

System Software
System features	4	4
Phone App	5	5
Ringtones	5	2
On Screen keyboard	4	4
UI Navigation	4	4
Today Screen	4	2
Audio Player	2	4
Video player	5	4
PIM	4	4
Web Browser	4	4
Email	4	5
∑ System Software	45	42

Ecosystem
Application Support	3	5
Development Environment	3	4
Car Integration	3	5
Itunes integration	3	5
Online Services	3	3
Newsreader sync.	4	5
Apple TV integr.	0	5
∑ Ecosystem	19	32

Value for money
Price	5	1
Add On's	5	1
∑ Value for money	10	2

Summary	5800	IPhone
Hardware Total	19	20
Software Total	45	42
Ecosystem Total	19	32
Value Total	10	2
∑	93	96

All other aspects, which I did not mention in this test update did not change, so you could use the old version below. Overall, iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3 GS have many improvements. The first iPhone was just an interesting concept, but could not compete with the established Smartphones. The iPhone 3G and OS 2.x closed up in many aspects, but not all, so the 5800 became the winner of my last comparision. But Nokia has been lazy, all they did was building the N97, which is an improvement in some areas, but a step back in others. And the software is the same in nearly all aspects, exept for the new standby screen. Wow, a new standby screen, useless for anyone not using Facebook, it seems. The iPhone got all these little improvements, which make up a mature platform. For me, it is now the best smartphone in the world.

How To: Fix Corrupted Nokia 5800 Music Player Library

2009-04-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

After syncing my 5800 with my Macintosh's iTunes several times with serveral versions of the firmware and Nokia Multimedia Transfer, the 5800's Music Player library became a complete mess. Here is how to fix it: connect to the computer in USB drive mode and search for the files named [101ffc31]mpxv2_2.db and [101ffc31]pcv6_1.db under /private. Delete both and after disconnecting the phone, the music player builds up a new library, which should fix the problem.

Apple iPhone vs. Nokia 5800: detailed comparison:

2009-04-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

vs.

My Nokia E71 is a very good smartphone. But when I am on a trip and in the need for a desktop computer replacement, I would often like to trade the hardware keyboard for more screen space. When using it as a mobile browser, phone or movie viewer, newsreader or email client (mostly for reading and deleting), more than the half of the front of the device wasted by the keyboard. Though having a full keyboard is great, I never have been a fan of fiddling with T9, the E71's keys are too small for typing more than a few words.
The obvious smartphone for a usage profile like mine is a full screen touch device. As a satisfied Symbian user on the mobile phone and an Apple fanboy on the desktop, the iPhone and the Nokia 5800 eXpress Music are my candidates. I don't like Windows mobile devices. They are slow and the UI never seemed really to be made for smartphones. Instead, WM is giving the user some desktop complexity on the phone. Even Though Blackberry now offers a touch screen device, their focus is mainly on the QUERTY keyboard email phones. And Google's Android is immature, I will maybe take a look at it in one or two years. So it will be a two horse race.
I took both for a week as my only device and rated the functionality from 0 (worst) to 5 (best). As both, Apple and Nokia already announced new features in coming releases, I tried to take them into consideration as far as they are known by now. So the first two columns in the summary are containing the rating as the phones are now. The last two columns consider, how the rating will be when all current announcements are delivered.

Hardware

Display

Both phones are coming with very good displays. The iPhone's is bigger in size, but the 5800 has the higher resolution (640*360 vs. 480*320). The iPhone's capacitive screen is more responsive, the 5800's resistive screen is more precise. Both are among the best touch screens available today, in the end it is a matter of taste.
Rating: 5800=5, iPhone=5

Camera

The Camera is a well known weakness of the iPhone. But it is not that bad as it's specification. On good light condition, the iPhone makes good colored photos. But with 2 megapixel, they are of visible low resolution. The iPhone has no autofocus, no flash and no video recording capabilities. This will probably change with the next iPhone.
The 5800's camera isn't good also, though it has 3.2 megapixel, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, autofocus and video recording capabilities. But in good light conditions, it is a quite reasonable device for snapshots and the movies are usable. The 5800 has a real camera button, pressing it half way enables the auto focus and pressing it completely takes the photo. And it starts the camera from any application.
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 1 (probably 3 with next iPhone release)

Speakers

The iPhone's speakers are OK and good enough to listen to podcasts in silent locations. The 5800's are better, probably the best speakers on any phone. With the 5800, I will definitely leave my external speakers at home on my next business trip.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 3

Battery runtime

The 5800 comes with a 1320 mAh battery which last about 2 days on my average usage, several days on moderate usage and only at heavy usage just one day. So it does not last as long as a battery monster like the E71, but it gives the user a quite reasonable battery life. The iPhones battery is a bit smaller, but it's energy consumption seems to be much higher. The iPhone's battery would last a day only on moderate usage. The 5800's battery can be exchanged, so it could be used as movie player for trans atlantic flights. The iPhone's battery can not be changed.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone 1

Build Quality

The iPhone looks gorgeous. It has a superb build quality, though for the price that it could not be opened, e.g. for battery exchange. The 5800 looks a lot cheaper.
From all other sides, exept for the front with the touch screen, it does not differ from any phone which comes for free with your contract. In fact, it is more solid than it looks and also delivers a good build quality.
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 5

System Software

Operating System

The iPhone runs Mac OS X, which is a BSD Unix based on a Mach Microkernel. So although it is relatively new on the phone, it is basically a very mature OS. It is a stripped down version of the same Mac OS, which is the main reason why people prefer Mac's over Wintel PC's. One big advantage on the Mac is, that it has got a great user interface, but you can always digg down to the OS level and customize in any way you like it. Though probably a major percentage of Mac users never did this, for power users like me it is very relaxing to know that it is possible. On the iPhone, Mac OS is completely different. It comes with a simplified UI with no chance of customizing anything to your needs. Though Mac OS X on the Mac does support multitasking, it is not possible to multi task user applications. According to Apple, this is only because multitasking would drain the battery too fast. Interestingly, every multitasking Symbian Phone offers a better battery life than the iPhone.
Though the iPhone has a real file system, it is not accessible to applications. Every process can only access files in it's own directory. So it is not possible to start working on a file and then do something with them with a different application. The file system is also not available from the outside. It is not possible to copy some files from a connected computer to the iPhone. There are some apps, that allow to copy files via WLAN and a WebDAV server onto the phone. But then, the restriction that a program can only access it's own directory, applies. So if you want to use files in different formats on the iPhone, you need several programs, each implemented it's own WebDAV server and file store.
Symbian OS is the predecessor to the system running on the old Psion PDA's and is also a very mature OS. It offers true multitasking and supports SD and SDHC memory cards. A connected computer can have access to the phones file system and data can be exchanged via a micro SD card. The 5800 comes with a 8GB micro SDHC card, which could be exchanged with a 16 GB model. And as 32 GB cards are out now, it is just a matter of time until the 5800 will support them.
The important thing is: both phones can be used to synchronize photos, movies and audio files onto them and use them. A user does not care about where the files are kept in the file system, he event does not need to know what a file system is. But only on the 5800 it is possible to access them directly if the defaults do not fit your needs.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone:1

Phone Application

Both phones are coming with quite comparable phone applications, but there are differences in detail. The 5800 has dialing shortcuts on the numeric keypad, voice dial. In the phone book, the 5800 offers an incremental search. At the beginning, it shows all keys A-Z. After pressing the first letter key, it shows all matching contacts and removes all letter keys, which would not lead to a match. In my phone book with about 500 entries, it normally takes 2-3 key presses until I got the desired contact. Pressing the green key on the 5800 always leads directly to the phone app. Pressing the red key immediately ends the call. For ending a call on the iPhone, it takes a second after removing the iPhone from the ear, until the proximity sensor recognizes the situation, enables the display so the on screen button for ending the call can be touched.
It is obvious to see, that Nokia has built years of experence into the 5800, making every day tasks quick and easy. The iPhone lacks many of these features, so it requires more UI navigation than the 5800 to get common tasks done.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone 2

Ringtones

The iPhone comes with a built-in ringtone. Music titles can be bought as ringtones in the iTunes music store. On a Mac, Garage Band can be used to build own ringtones, which could be in fact just titles from the music library cropped. I have never heard of another phone with such arbitrarily limitation.
On the 5800, everything that can be played could also be used as a ringtone.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 2

On Screen Keyboard

Touch screen phones need an on screen keyboard. The iPhone only offers a keyboard in non-landscape mode. It only has letters on the main keyboard page. For punctation a different keyboard page has to be used. For special letters like German umlauts, the corresponding base latter has to be pressed for a few seconds and a popup menu with possible special characters appears. For writing with punctation and umlauts, this results in a significant lower writing speed than with the 5800. There is no tactile feedback on the iPhone. But iPhone OS 3.0 will come with a landscape keyboard for all apps from Apple.
The 5800 gives the choice between three different keyboards. There is a classical 12 keys phone keyboard with T9 support, which might be suitable for short text entries. The 5800 also offers a full keyboard for non-landscape mode, though it is a little small. For longer text entries, the landscape mode keyboard is the best choice, with keys for umlauts and punctation. It also has cursor keys for navigation, so typos could easy be corrected. Optional, there is tactile feedback via the vibration alert. In summary, I could type a lot faster on the 5800 than on the iPhone.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone 2 (3 with OS 3.0)

UI Navigation

The UI of the iPhone is absolutely simple. The whole OS Interface consist of a programm launcher with 4*4 icons visible. There is a maximum of 9 pages (probably 11 with OS 3.0), which can be changed by flipping left and right. The bottom 4 program icons are on every page, these are the typically most needed ones. The iPhone UI isn't too complicated for anyone, even unexperienced users who never had a smartphone before, will get it immediately. But on the other hand, this is just an absolute minimum of functionality. There is no concept for distinguish between frequent ore seldom used apps, they are all on the same level except for the four apps on the quicklaunch bar.
For switching between two applications, the only button has to be pressed to get back to the program launcher. Then the user has to flip to the page containing the second application and launch it. At worst case, this would mean if the apps are on page 1 and page 9, the first app is left by pressing the button, then the user has to flip the screen 8 times to the left or right, then start the 2nd app. For tasks, where it is necessary to interact with two applications, this can become quite annoying. But doing tasks with more than one app is nearly impossible on the iPhone anyhow. As every app can only interact with data in it's own memory space and there isn't even cut & paste (but will be in iPhone OS 3.0), I could not see how any task spanning more than one application could be done at the iPhone. This is a serious limitation, which no other smartphone OS has.
The iPhone is also inefficient in navigating from standby. When double-clicking the button for getting to the phone app in standby, the slide-to-unlock screen appears. The user now has to slide a button from left to right to unlock the phone. Now, it does not lead to the phone app as expedted, but to the application launcher. Now, the user has to double click again to finally get to the phone app.
Symbian also comes with a program launcher, which uses a folder concept instead of the pages of the iPhone OS. So the user could structure his applications in any folder structure he likes, giving him fast access to his most used apps on the top level. Seldom used programs could be hidden away in folders and do not distract on daily usage.
The white button in the middle leads to the program launcher, just like the iPhone button. But most of the time, users won't need the 5800's program launcher. The green key on the left directly starts the phone app, even is the 5800 is in standby. There is a media key above the screen, opening a quick start menu for music, photos, online sharing, movies and web browsing. From any application, the media brings you directly to the chosen app.
There is even less need for the program launcher, if the today screen is used. It shows the calendar, now playing, radio information as well as the clock, status of the different networking functions and profiles. Everything on the today screen is touchable and leads to the corresponding app. Touching the next appointments section leads to the calendar. Touching the clock brings up the clock application. Everything is as you would expect. On top of the information area is a quick launch bar for your four favorite apps. But unlike the iPhone, which already uses it's quick launch bar for phone, mail, browser and media player apps, on the 5800 these four slots could be used for individual apps, because everything in the iPhone quick launch can already be accessed by the 5800' UI components.
Switching between running apps is easy, just press and hold the middle white key and a window pops up with the icons of all running tasks where the app can be chosen just by tapping on it. As Symbian supports multitasking, tasks which require more than one app are easy to do, eg. copy & past some data from an email into a web formular.
The 5800 has a lock/unlock key on the right side, which could easily used one handed. This is more usable than the iPhone's key press and then slide-to-unlock functionality.
Due to the size of the iPhone, it is hard hard to use it with one hand, and for the two finger gestures, two handed operation is a must. The 5800 is slim enough to hold it in one hand and operate it with the thumb. As the 5800 does not require two finger gestures, it is good usable with just one hand.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 1 (2 with OS 3.0 and Cut & Paste)

Customzation

The 5800 is very customizable. Like all other S60 phones, it supports profiles for different situations. Profiles take care of the volume level, which ringtone will be used, if there is tactile feedback and other things. For the look, different themes can be applied, and there is a huge number of themes out on the web. Themes do not only control the colors, fonts and background images, but could also contain icon sets for the default applications. I love to have a winter theme on my phone around christmas. The 5800 gives the user the choice of three different main screens. An empty one, one to follow the activities of up to four friends and the classical one with shortcuts to applications, upcoming calendar entries and some other notifications.
On the iPhone, a startup screen image and the four quick launch applications can be configured.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 2

Today Screen

The first screen I want to see on my smartphone should show me relevant information and quick access to my most needed functionality. The 5800 offers me the classical S60 Today screen with upcoming calendar entries, clock, new messages and calls as well as quickstart icons to favorite apps, making it a perfect business smartphone. Additional, the media key gives me quick access to all my media as well as maps and the web. Unfortunately, the today screen of the 5800 is less customizable than the one from the E71. For users who are more Web 2.0 community users, the 5800 offers a different start screen, showing your favorite four contacts with their latest information from Email, SMS and RSS-feeds (which, of course, could post their latest facebook, Twitter etc. news).
The iPhones central screen ist the list of startable apps. The phone and message or mail icons show the numbers of calls and messages, which prevents it from getting zero points.
Rating: 5800=4, iPhone=1

Audio Player

Now this is where the iPhone collects Points, as it is a complete iPod Touch which is close to perfection. But as it is a closed system like the iPod, it is not possible to connect it to any computer, copy some audio files onto it and play them. It is necessary to sync the music via iTunes and this is only possible from just one Computer. Before a music file could be synced from a different computer, iTunes would remove all existing media files from the device. This results in minus one point.
The 5800 has a quite usable media player and with Nokia Media Transfer it is easy to sync iTunes playlist with the device. Alternatively, nearly any audio file could be copied onto the device and just plays. But the player does not show iTunes cover art and does not sync the play counter.
So additional to my 5800, I will keep my old iPod classic for my car. For business trips, the 5800 is a good enough media player to leave the iPod at home. With an iPhone, there is no need for an additional iPod.
Rating: 5800=3, iPhone=4

Video Player

The video players of both phones do a very good job and are probably the best ones on any phones. But while the iPhone is very limited to MPEG4 and h.264 video, the 5800 plays much more formats like flv, wmv. Additional, just like the audio player, videos could be copied from any computer to the 5800 via bluetooth, USB or the memory card whereas the iPhone needs to sync videos via iTunes from just one computer. Syncing from a different computer will erase all video on the iPhone first.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 3

PIM

Every smartphone comes with personal information management (PIM) software. The iPhone comes with a calendar app, which supports multiple calendars and push sync with mobile me and Exchange servers. There is no ToDo management on the iPhone, but there are many ToDo and GTD apps in the App Store and some of these sync to the corresponding desktop app – but only on the Mac. Entering a new calendar entry is a bit fiddly and requires to navigate through two dialogs. The date picker is nearly useless, because it is just finger friedly entry entry of numbers. But if you want to schedule a meeting for Monday in four weeks, you should know what date this is because you won't get a mini-calendar to pick it from. The iPhone comes with a notes taking app, but in iPhone OS 2.x these notes do not sync with the desktop. But this will change in OS 3.0. On the PC, the iPhone syncs with Outlook via iTunes. But this does not work very well. It takes long and it is not possible to see what it is doing. Sometimes the sync just hangs. Sometimes it finshes and some calendar entries are deleted without notice. On the Mac, sync runs perfect with Apple's iSync. In summary, the PIM functionality looks more like an addon, than an essential functionality.
The 5800 comes with a calendar and ToDo as well as a notes taking app. It syncs perfect with Outlook on the PC via Nokia's PC Suite or OVI Suite and always gives detailed feedback as well as a detailed log at the end. It is faster than Apple's solution by an order of magnitude and very reliable. I never had the slightest syncing error on any device for years. Syncing on the Mac works through iSync without any problems. The 5800 syncs over the air via it's embedded sync application. For syncing with other calendars like the Mozilla Lightning, there is a bunch of 3rd party software to solve nearly every sync problem. Like the iPhone, the 5800 does not have a date picker. But the major drawback of all S60 phone calendars is, that there is only one calendar with no categories. Interestingly, Symbian OS does support calendar categories since Rel. 9.1 (the 5800 runs Symbian OS Rel. 9.4) and some 3rd party calendars make use of them. But S60.com ignores this much desired feature wish since years. Hopefully, the Symbian.org will support calendar categories.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 3

Web Browser

When the iPhone came out, it offered the best web browser available. It's only disadvantage is, that it does not support Flash. This is why the iPhone needs a YouTube application.
The 5800's browser is based on the same WebKit rendering engine than the iPhone's. It seems to be a little slower than the iPhone's browser, but it supports Flash so YouTube could be used as on a desktop PC. It is even capable of full screen support for YouTube videos.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 4

Email client

Both phones are very good email devices. The built in email client of the iPhone is better than the 5800's email client, but is has no landscape support for the on screen keyboard. This will be enhanced with iPhone OS 3.0. Nokia is readying it's new email client Nokia Mail, which is our for several devices now and a version for the 5800 will follow soon. Until then, for about € 22,- the enhanced email client ProfiMail could fix this.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 4 (5 with landscape support in OS 3.0)

Ecosystem

Application Support

Apple has just announced 25.000 apps available on the AppStore. With the AppStore app, it is extremely easy to load new applications onto the phone. iPhone apps are cheap, but most of them are very simple. But Apple unfortunately restricts the capabilities: Apps can only be distributed through Apples AppStore, download is only allowed from WLAN but not from 3G networks and not every app is allowed by Apple. When I buy a phone, I own it. I want to install whatever software I like and do not want to ask the manufacturer for allowance. This results in one point penalty.
Without having them counted, there are thousands of applications for Symbian S60 and there are some good application stores like mobile2day and Handango. There is also a huge amount of software available directly from the developers sites. Installation is easy from both, Mac and PC. And Software could also be directly downloaded from the Device. The iPhone way is easier, but the Symbian way is more flexible. In the end, both are rated the same. But Nokia has announced it's own application store, called Ovi Store, for the next months. This would give Symbian users an easy solution like Apple's, and also maximum flexibility for power users.
Rating: 5800: 4 (5 with Ovi Store), iPhone 4

Development Environment

I have never tried it, but the iPhone SDK is said to be close to perfection. One drawback might be, that it is only available for the Mac. This is no problem for me, as the Mac is my preferred platform anyway, but for someone who don't like Macs this could be an issue. Another thing is, that it is build upon ObjectiveC, whereas the rest of the world uses C++.
The Symbian S60 5th Ed. SDK is based on Eclipse, which is definitely the industry standard. There is a huge amount of plugins for Eclipse to enhance developers productivity. It is still work in progress, but very promising. Additional, Nokia bought Trolltech, the makers of Qt toolkit which is the basis of the KDE Linux desktop. There is also a beta of Qt for S60 and some demo movies, showing how easy S60 development will become. When this comes out, it could catch up with the iPhone's SDK, as Trolltech is very experienced with UI development. The S60 SDK is only available for Windows, but Qt is available cross platform for Windows, Linux and the Mac. And it is based on C++
Rating: 5800: 3 (4 with Qt), iPhone: 4

Car integration

In my car, I have a TomTom navigation device, an iPod and a phone. This makes my car cockpit into a zoo of device mounts, which I would like to get rid of. If you are a moderate navigation and audio player user, all you would need is the 5800. Nokia Maps 2.0 is good enough for users, who only need a navigation system from time to time. Target entry is complicated compared to pure navigation devices and it lacks enhanced features like TomTom's MapShare or IQ-Routes. So for my car, I will keep my TomTom, which really saves me time with its perfect IQRoutes routing. But several times on business trips, when the car rental service could not give me a car with built in GPS, Nokia Maps saved my day and brought me to my destination. And Nokia Maps 3.0, the public beta is already out, has some nice enhancements like 3D view. But there is no good car mount for the 5800, and because the headphone jack and power are on the top side of the device, there probably won't be one. There is a Brodit mount for the 5800, but after inserting the device, a power cable has to be connected manually. And if you want it as an audio player, you need additionally connect an audio cable. If Nokia would just have placed the connectors on the bottom of the device, a mount where the 5800 would be just dropped in, could be made.
The iPhone has a connector on the bottom, which has an audio signal and could also be used for charging. So if you just want it as a phone, there are iPhone mounts from many car makers, e.g. my Volkswagen has an iPhone adaptor. If the iPhone should be used as a music player, these, car makers also offer audio systems which connect to the iPhone. If your car does not offer iPhone integration, an additonal 3,5 inch cable could do the connection. A cheap alternative is a simple mount like the Belkin TuneBase, which connects via 3,5 inch or via FM transmitter. But the acutal iPhone does not offer turn-by-turn navigation, so an additional device is needed for navigation. This will probably change with iPhone OS 3.0.
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 4 (5 with OS 3.0 and turn-by-turn navigation)

iTunes Integration

As the iPhone is an iPod with a Phone, the iPhone integration is just perfect. Period. It is clear, that the iPhone is the winner in this section, but the question is, how close the 5800 – positioned by Nokia as a music phone – can get. For the Mac, Nokia offers Nokia Media Transfer, a small application which syncs iTunes playlists with the 5800, both audio and video. It also syncs iPhoto albums with also both, photos and videos. This works seamlessly. Once configured, it syncs the media as soon as it finds the 5800 connected to the Mac. It is nearly as close as one can get, exept for Apple. Of course, the 5800 does play Music with Apple's own DRM, because Apple does not license it to anyone. But as Apple is getting rid of Music DRM, offering its customers to upgrade their music to a DRM free version, this won't be an issue anymore in the near future.
But there are a few other drawbacks. Album cover art does not show up on the 5800 for music synced from iTunes. There are AppleScript's to manually fix this, but this definitely should be a featrue for Nokia Media Transfer. Some iTunes specific fields, like rating or play counter also do make it on the 5800. It should not be too hard for Nokia to implement these on the 5800. So with a little work from Nokia, the 5800 could easily catch up to the iPhones and iPods.
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 5

Online services

Both Nokia and Apple are offering online services supporting their hardware. I prefer the cleaner UI of Apple's mobile me, but Nokia's Ovi.com is faster – at least here in Europe. Basic services like email, calendar, todo, notes, photo and video upload is free on Ovi.com. Apple charges € 69,95 a year, but it comes with 20 GB of online storage. as If you want an online file store on Ovi.com, Nokia will charge € 49,95 for 10GB or 99,95 for 100 GB a year. Both are comparable to Amazon S3 pricing, which would be € 43,20 for 20 GB per year, but with additional costs for data transfer.
But as most of both offerings are available for free on the web anyway, except for file storage, there is the question of what these online services are good for. A combination of Gmail, Google Calendar, Flickr and YouTube will do the job for free. But maybe users with no experience in online services will be happy to have an easy way to share their fotos online and have some email access.
Rating: 5800: 3, iPhone: 3

Newsreader sync

An important aspect of a newsreader on a phone is, that it need's to sync with the desktop news reader, or it needs to be a complete online solution. Google made a special version of Google Reader for the iPhone, which also runs on the 5800. I prefer Newsgator and it's clients NetNewsWire on the Mac and FeedDemon on Windows, which sync with Newsgator.com. There is a NetNewsWire for the iPhone on the App Store. For the 5800, there is only NewsGator Go!, which is a Java app that does not make use of the 5800's screen.
Rating: 5800: 4, iPhone: 5

Apple TV integration

This point probably means nothing to most readers. But I like my Apple TV for getting all my music, pictures and movies to my stereo set and my TV. The iPhone is a perfect remote control for the Apple TV. The music library can be browsed on the iPhone including cover art and it is possible to control the Apple TV without switching on the TV set connected to it.
On the other hand, for the price difference between the iPhone and the 5800, one could easy afford an iPod Touch as Apple TV remote control. The combination of 5800 and iPod Touch is still cheaper than an iPhone. And this seperate iPod could also be used by my family when I am out with my phone.
Rating: 5800: 0, iPhone: 5

Value for money

Price

At about € 590,- for an unlocked iPhone 8 GB (about 690,- for the 16 GB version) it is just expensive, especially when considering the iPhone's low hardware specs. The 5800 comes for about € 330 with 8 GB of memory on an mini SDHC card, for about € 40,- it could be upgraded with a 16 GB card. This is even cheaper than most HTC Windows mobile phones or the Android G1.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone: 1

Inside the box

The iPhone comes just with a set of cables to connect to a computer and a power supply. Oh, and with a cleaning cloth. Especially considering it's price, this is a joke. There is no remote control on the headset, but Apple offers a headset with a remote control knob at an absurd price.
The 5800 also comes with connection cables for a computer and a power supply. It also has a TV out cable, so it can be used as movie player or game console on travels. Additional to that, it comes with a nice horizontal stand, ideal for watching movies in a plane, with a solid case and with a combined headphone adapter and remote control. This makes it possible to use your favorite headset with the 5800 and still have the remote control features. To make the bundle complete, there is a € 25,- coupon for Nokia's music store in the box and the 5800 comes with 9 preinstalled music titles.
Rating: 5800: 5, iPhone 1

Summary

	Actual Releases		Coming Releases
	5800	Iphone	5800	iPhone
Hardware
Display	5	5	5	5
Camera	3	1	3	3
Speakers	5	3	5	3
Battery	4	1	4	1
Build Quality	3	5	3	5
∑ Hardware	20	15	20	17

System Software
System features	5	1	5	1
Phone App	5	2	5	2
Ringtones	5	2	5	2
On Screen keyboard	4	2	4	3
UI Navigation	5	1	5	2
Customization	5	2	5	2
Today Screen	4	1	4	1
Audio Player	3	4	3	4
Video player	5	4	5	4
PIM	4	3	4	3
Web Browser	4	4	4	4
Email	5	4	5	5
∑ System Software	54	30	54	33

Ecosystem
Application Support	4	4	5	4
Development Environment	3	4	4	4
Car Integration	3	3	3	5
Itunes integration	3	4	3	5
Online Services	3	3	3	3
Newsreader sync.	4	5	4	5
Apple TV integr.	0	5	0	5
∑ Ecosystem	20	28	22	31

Value for money
Price	5	1	5	1
Add On's	5	1	5	1
∑ Value for money	10	2	10	2

	Actual Releases		Coming Releases
	5800	IPhone	5800	iPhone
Hardware Total	20	15	20	17
Software Total	54	30	54	33
Ecosystem Total	20	28	22	31
Value Total	10	2	10	2
∑	104	75	106	83

The result is a little surprising. I expected the iPhone to win hands down, especially as this comparison is biased towards an iPhone fanboy like me. But in the end, the 5800 is the clear winner. Even the coming next generation iPhone will only get a very little step closer to the 5800 – at least considering what is known by now.
If you are not using the Apple ecosystem with Macs, iTunes, Apple TV's and mobile me, the iPhone would score even lower. And even if the price is not taken into comparison, the 5800 leads by a large margin. Though both phones are quite comparable in the hardware and ecosystem area, the big difference is the system software. And this is where it pays to be the market leader in the smartphone business for many years. Apart from the newly added touch functionality, Symbian OS and S60 have been fine tuned in many years.
Apple has still a way to go to reach Nokia's level of productivity, but they are learning fast. The preview of iPhone OS 3.0 has shown, that they are already in the same fine tuning process, Nokia has gone through. Nokia, on the other hand, catches up in system experience, adding a music store, an online service and better developer tools.
In the end, the winner is: the customer. In this race, both contenders will deliver even better products in short intervals. Hopefully, this fall I will update this comparison to the iPhone 3.0 vs Nokia N97 shootout.

Nokia 5800 software listing started

2009-04-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

As the Nokia 5800 is now my primary device, and S60 5th Ed. software is hard to find, I collect a list at s60-5th-software.blogspot.com.

I don't want to be pushed be email!

2008-07-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

Nokia stopped the development of Blackberry Connect for the new E-Series devices in favor for their own service. The new Nokia Email is in public beta now for selected N-Series and E-Series devices. It works great. Get an account, connect it to an existing email service you already have, install the client software and that's it. Every time, a mail gets pushed to my device, it makes a sound, which makes me looking up the Active Standby screen where it shows up.

No matter, what I am working on. I am just creating a new project plan ... ping ... I have a new mail. In a meeting ... bzzzt ... I have a new mail. In the car, while listening to a podcast ... ping ... the E51 builds up a connection to my car's radio, while my iPod continues to play the podcast (which I could not hear anymore, because my phone took over the radio) ... but I have new mail.

But wait. As beeing a GTD'ish self management geek, the first thing I do with every email client is disabling the new-email-notification. I recommend this to everyone. This helps me working on whatever, without beeing interrupted so often.

And now push email??? This is even worse than the desktop new-email-notification by a margin. With push email, incoming emails do not only interrupt me while working on my desk. They interrupt me everywhere, where I took my phone with me! Hurray!

I uninstalled it to get rid of the annoying pings, this is not the right thing for me. But this experience brought me to the thought:

Is push email the right thing for anyone?

Or is it just something, technologically possible, so everyone wants it? For those, who now the Hitchhiker's Guide through the galaxy (and probably most people reading blogs do): Is it like something from the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation? I forgot the original wording from the book (please comment, if you know). But if people finally make their products work, they are so happy about it, that they miss that the products are completely useless.

Is push email such a thing? Blackberry built up their company on offering mobile push service. They became one of the largest suppliers for smartphones, just because they made push email working. All other smartphone developers have to catch up with Blackberry, so does Nokia now.

But what for???

I really can't think of a situation, where push email would really make sense to me. In my job, communication is essential. If I would ever be in a situation, where I urgently wait for an email, I could always set my good old "pull" email to refresh within minutes. But in fact, I might have been in this situation not more than a handfull of times in the last few years. If someone needs to contact me urgently, he or she would call me on the phone. And if I can not take this call, then the caller would leave a message on my voice maibox. Email is something, that could wait at least a few hours. Something I will work through in batch. If anyone could explain, why push email is usefull, please drop me a comment.

So no mobile email?

No, don't get me wrong. I am an excessive email user. Waiting some 15 minutes at the customers waiting room, waiting for boarding a plane or other situations like that are great for working through my newly received email. As I work for a very large company, I get many mails which are not so important for me. There are some, which I quickly read and then delete, and some are completely useless for me. Working through all these not-so-important emails has a big point for me: when I am back at my desk, I will only find those emails in my inbox, I really have to work on. This saves me a lot of time and helps me focus on the things which are really important.

So mobile email is great ... I just don't want to be pushed by it!

Good bye Palm ... and get the Android

2008-07-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

I have been a Palm user for many years, starting with a Vx in 2000. But I said good bye to Palm the second time. The first time, I tried to switch to Windows mobile. But this did not work for me, so I switched back to Palm on a Treo 680. Palm devices have always been good 1st generation PDA's and smartphones for me. What I mean with 1st generation is a gadget with contacts-, calendar- and ToDo-management, some photo viewing and Email of course. The Palm did all of this satisfying most of the time.

But is has aged. The last noticeable update has been 5 years or more ago. Palm OS has tricky memory management, requiring much deep diving into systems internals to keep everything running. And it has no multi tasking. Though I don't need heavy multitasking on a phone, sometimes it is nice to have it. And be it only to check my calendar while doing a phone call.

Though old does not always mean bad, Palm devices are now failing on many standard functionalities, which most standard phones offer. But what is worse, is that my Treo 680 often fail on just phone calls. Sometimes, I could not hear the caller, sometimes he could not hear me. I always had to reboot to fix this. And after reboot, the Treo lost it's clock settings. Other things, Palm devices lack:

The cameras are just a joke. The VGA camera of the Treo 680 or the slightly better, but still messy XGA camera of the Centro: Even the worst cameras of all the other phones have at least 2 mega pixels and take way better photos.
The old Bluetooth 1.x stack is crappy.
The Treo is fat and heavy. A modern phone should not be more than half as thick as the Treo. Just take a look at the Nokia E71, to see what is possible today. On on the other hand: if someone builds a phone that is that thick, he should make sure that it is at least as feature packed as the Nokia N95-8GB.
Mobile internet gets more and more important. But there is no useable browser for Palm OS. Though Opera mini is a good one in general, it sucks on Palm OS due to it's crappy Java stack.

Event Palm's newest devices can not fix this. OK, the Centro is slimmer. But it's keyboard and display is too small also and all the other reasons still apply. Even the new Treo 800w just tries to catch up to usual standards. And though it's 2 mega pixel camera will be the best, Palm ever offered it will be - again - behind other business smartphones like the Nokia E71 with it's 3.2 mp camera with LED flash. And even worse, the Treo 800w will be offered with Windows mobile, at least for now. There is no announcement to offer a similar device with Palm OS.

Sorry Palm. It has been a good time, but so many years without innovation brought you to the end of the field.

And what does Palm do now? They try to develop their own mobile Linux! What the hell drove them to this idea? Why on earth would anyone would want another mobile Linux? What is the point in a highly fragmented mobile Linux market? Though old, Palm OS gets much value out of its endless software catalog. But who would develop for a Palm only Linux, which would maybe catch up 5% market share?

The leading mobile systems are now Symbian, Blackberry the iPhone and Windows mobile. These Platforms are, what 99% of mobile developers are developing for. Maybe mobile Linux will gain market share, if there is one major distribution the developers can rely on. If anyone has the power to unite the mobile Linux world, then it is Google with it's Open Handset Alliance.

So here is my advice to Palm: Drop your own Linux distribution and go for the Android. Build great devices with latest features. And if you still have some development resources left, offer some additional software features. There is so much differentiation, that can be done without an own operating system. You failed on Palm OS 6. You failed on the Foleo. I really don't want to see you fail again, because this time it could be the last time.

The S60 Calendar and categories

2008-05-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

I switched from Palm OS and Agendus to Symbian a few weeks ago. As I rely heavily on my GTD like self management, catetorzing all my todo's and dates is a must. To my big surprise, the S60 calendar does not support categories! Already my Palm Vx from 1999 did! I did some research on this. Because of the modular architecture of Nokias Symbian phones, it was not clear who would be responsible for that. Is it a limitation of Symbian OS, of the S60 frontend or is it Nokia, who build my E51? Starting at the ground, I first took a look at the S60 programmer documentation. Using the search on http://developer.symbian.com, I found'Using the new Symbian OS v9 Calendar API'. There you will find the following: "The Calendar API replaces the Agenda API that was present in versions of Symbian OS prior to v9.1, and provides functionality according to the standard RFC 2445, which defines the iCalendar standard, a common format for openly exchanging calendar and scheduling information across the internet. "... "3.3.5.6 Categories One or more category types, defined in TCalCategoryType, can be associated with calendar entries. The predefined types include: ECalAppointment, ECalBusiness, ECalHoliday, ECalMeeting, ECalMiscellaneous, ECalPersonal, ECalPhoneCall, ECalSickDay, ECalSpecialOccasion, ECalTravel and ECalVacation. The type is specified when the category object is created. Categories are used similarly to attendee lists, with a CCalCategory object and AddCategoryL() and CategoryListL() methods. The CCalCategoryManager object can be used to add or delete user-defined categories and to filter calendar entries by category asynchronously." So it looks like that Symbian OS is not the problem.

I just have been in contact with Pockettorch, the makers of AquaCalendar and AquaSync. They confirmed me, that the Symbian OS calendar database already supports calendar categories. They now it, because their AquaCalendar already use these. Because the Nokia sync tool also does not support categories, they made their own AquaSync, which does it.

Nokia, this is a shame. This is absolute basic functionality, if you want to be taken serious in the smartphone market. Sure, on all smartphone platforms, you would better replace the built in calendar with a more functional 3rd party product, if you are a heavy calendar user. But for basic functionality, users should not have to go for 3rd party products. Looking on the S60 website, I found a page where users can vote for their most wanted apps. There is already a wish for Outlook categories sync with S60 calendar, but it has only 25 votes. So if you want categories in the calendar app, here is your chance to make your vote count.

http://www.s60.com/life/wishlist/displayWishDetails.do?wishId=731&activeCat=7

I don't know if it is anything good for, but maybe it is worth trying...

UPDATE: As we now have Symbian.org, use the following link instead:

http://ideas.symbian.org/Idea/View?ideaid=4478

2008-05-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

This is a BLOG about all these toys I love to play, and sometimes work, with. These are gadgets like Smartphones and PDA's, GPS navigation, computers (mostly Mac's), video consoles and what else I found for digital home entertainment. Working in the enterprise software industry, in my freetime I figure out what the funny aspects of tech are. But as I heavily rely on some of these techniques for my work, eg. Smartphones for self management and GPS navigation for business trips, these aspects sometimes get mixed up. Also I do my own way of GTD or ZTD like self management, so I will sometimes drop an article about that.

Language disclaimer: This is my first BLOG in English, trying to reach a broader audience then with the predecessor 'Arnes Tüddelkram'. So please be kind if you will find some wierd English here, just drop me a note.