Whatley Wednesday – Page 2

MIR: The Mobile Geek of Glastonbury: Gadgets

Evening readers, Whatley here, writing this on my laptop en route to Pilton for the festival that is known as Glastonbury.

As you know from my last post, the multitude of tools available to the modern day, festival going Mobile Geek really is quite something… So here, for your pleasure, is a quick rundown of what I am taking with me, starting with the hardware…

Handsets:

I’ve packed my N95, my N95 8GB and my E61i. The E61i is perfect as an emergency, backup handset as the battery on that baby is HUGE and it lasts FOREVER (well, about 5 days). So if it all goes pear-shaped I can resort to using that. The N95s I’m going to tag-team throughout the day/festival. One to carry with me and one to charge. Speaking of chargers…

Power:

When it comes to keeping the batteries fully topped up, I?ve covered all bases with this one. I’ve got a Nokia DC-8 battery charger, bought this today, Â£25. Steep, but I?m a sucker for the branded stuff (and it’s worked OK so far).

I’ve also got a Free Loader Solar Charger (see below). This thing gets kudos just for the fact that out of all of the chargers, this was the only one that came with one for the Nintendo DS. Which has made my friends very happy indeed; Mario Kart for them while I type this passing Stone Henge, (fact).

Finally, I have this ‘GoHello’ wind-up charger and, as Ben Smith so rightly said in a recent Mobile Industry Review podcast – “…they ain’t called wind-ups for nothing”.

Seriously, I’ve got nothing out of this thing yet. Nothing. Boo.

On top of all that lot, I’ve got four (count ’em), N95 batteries. All fully charged before departure so let’s see how long they last shall we?! 🙂

Software:

Well stuff like Qik, Google Maps, VOX, SpinVox, Moblog etc… I kinda covered this last time round. I want to talk about the new stuff. Since writing that original piece I?’ve acquired two pieces of software; both of which have – so far – impressed me much.
First up is ViewRanger. I downloaded this earlier in the week and my thought was: What a load of rubbish!
However…
THEN I downloaded the Glastonbury specific maps – aka Worthy Farm etc, and WOW! Impressed!
Check out this screenshot:

You can see that they’ve pre-loaded the app with the relative points of interest. Which is so awesome; things like cash machines, toilets, stages etc… And on top of that if I hit ‘Lock to GPS’ it’ll tell me where I am.
Rock on. I cannot wait to use this properly 🙂

The other piece of software is from Orange. It’s called GlastoNav and at first I really couldn’t get this to work..

Eek!

A few days after this, once they had ironed out the gremlins and suchlike, this little app has turned out to be very handy indeed. Not only can I look at the (much richer interpretation) of the map, but also I can plan my schedule for the event… and THEN I can share that schedule with my fellow festival-goers!

So far (again), this has really impressed me 🙂

For actual mobile stuff, that’s all.

But, I have also been given some other cool pieces of gadgetry to use/play with. One of which is the Flip video camera. This is something that I think Ewan has spoken about a fair amount – my only problem with it however is that once my hour of recording is up, I can’t upload it until I get to a USB connection.
Bah! We’ll see how I get on with that one…

The other piece of REALLY COOL stuff I’ve been given is this Loc8tor device which, hand on heart, is the best thing yet (in theory anyway).

I attach the small part to something I might lose – i.e. my friends – and then, if I lose them, I switch the big part on and it beeps to tell me how close I am etc…
I had a play before I left the house and it rocked my socks.

So… again, we’ll see how we get on.

That’s it from me, I’m nearly at Glastonbury and my laptop is about to die. Thanks to Ben Smith for editing this for me and putting the media in etc…

You can keep up with my exploits at http://www.glastonblog.co.uk

See you soon!

MIR: Nokia open up about Symbian

Morning readers, Whatley here, just got this over MSN from a friend of mine at Nokia;

“Hey Whatley, we are buying Symbian and will donate it + S60 to an open source foundation!”

To which my response was a resounding – “Eh?”

You can read the official Nokia press releases here and here

Now, I’m not a developer. I’m ready to admit my knowledge in this area isn’t great. Ewan’s in the Maldives, the rest of the SMSTN Team are (still) sleeping so it’s down to me to make something of this.

Looking around online there is little opinion up yet – however, unsurprisingly, All About Symbian has the news too and Steve Litchfield says that ‘This is officially HUGE‘.

I dropped the news into Twitter just over an hour ago (at the time of publishing) and got few responses back.

One of my followers and all round smart chap, Jof Arnold, emailed over his thoughts, which he’s kindly given me permission to publish here – I for one am interested to find out what this actually means for the industry as a whole and, more importantly, what’s your opinion on this latest Nokia acquistion?

_________________

Over to Jof:

In practice well, that all depends on Nokia and I couldn’t possibly comment on their track history of OSS projects – cos I have no idea.

In theory? Potentially an awful lot. Compare to the iPhone and you’ll see why. Remember all those people trying to jail-break the iPhone? Those projects were successful because fundamentally the operating system pissed off many people; cut and paste; closed apps; no file explorer. Now, had apple open-sourced it fully you’d have a situation where the masses would be contributing huge amounts of their time into making the iPhone just how they wanted it all under Apple’s approval of course.

But, Apple won’t do that and developers are annoyed. Which is why any system that allows developed to tinker with the core operating system is going to be attractive to them. All of a sudden, developers have a conundrum;

Develop for a locked-down system that is only on 10m handsets yet has a cool app-distribution and revenue-sharing system. Apple)
Develop for an open system that has 200m handsets (nokia)
Develop for some google vapour-ware (android)

Impossible to say what will happen, but developers have always had a soft-spot for Symbian. This is potentially game-changing, but Nokia/Symbian’s got their work cut out; despite all this, Apple is a marketing monster and is hard to resist.

Jof Arnold
http://www.brainbakery.com
http://twitter.com/jofarnold

_________________

Thanks for those thoughts Jof. There’s a live webcast scheduled in for 11am today.

We’ll have more news, as it breaks.

Thoughts?

MIR: The Mobile Geek of Glastonbury: Intro

Greetings readers, your friendly neighbourhood Whatley here;

While some of us are off gallivanting around the Maldives – sorry, ahem – A DESERT ISLAND, other bloggers, like myself, have to make do with the festival season to amuse themselves here back in the UK.

And what better festival other than the Mother of all festivals: Glastonbury!

Yes, it really IS that muddy. I took that photo myself.

Last year, I think I’m pretty safe in saying;

I was the ONLY person to live blog Glastonbury from a mobile phone.

Yes. That’s right, I blogged the whole darn thing (well as much as my battery would allow) from my Nokia N95-1 (the original silver one, the one with the REALLY poor battery, y’know?).

In fact the only reason my current blog exists is because of my then(?) obsession with Mobile Blogging.

You can go back and read some of my exploits here, here and here if you’d like.
But really, all you need to know is, at the time, the only way I could do this (AFAIK) was through VOX.

VOX has a neat little application that sits on some/most Nseries phones that you can download and is also available as one of the upload options in the Share Online app, also found on most Nseries phones.

Power wise, again only for last year, I had three N95 batteries (BL-5Fs for the true geeks among you) and these two things below:

That on the left is an independent battery charge-base and that on the right, a portable double AA battery powered phone charger.

The former proved itself to be extremely useful, then and indeed over the past year of ownership too. With that handy little device I can always have one battery in my phone, while another charges. This, of course, is all well and good until you go and lose the damn thing; which is what I did a matter of days ago.

I digress.

The thing on the right, I bought that from Amazon, thing is mind.

It . Was. Rubbish.

In fact I think it actually USED more battery power than it actually gave back. I ended up passing it onto some fellow festival-ite in our circle of tents. It conveniently came with a bunch of other adaptors – not just Nokia; covered SE, Motorola, Blackberry… the lot. You name it. So at least that much was handy about it.

However, for me, it was no good.

And don’t even start me on the quite frankly RIDICULOUS ‘Orange Charge Tent‘.
I mean, who wants to QUEUE for an hour to charge their handset, only to discover that when they get to the front, they then have to wait around for a further two hours to watch their phone charge at an unsecured bar.
Joined up thinking really not their specialty it would seem.

So, how did I stay charged?

Well, while the Orange monkeys were missing out on potentially 3hrs of great music, I managed to find a little store amongst the clothes stalls and falafel vendors, which specialised in phone charging.
You paid a fiver a go and it was kept under lock and key and all was fine. The system the guy had running behind him reminded me a little of chargebox and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were one and the same, I’ll ask them this year and see. Anyway, this little store became a daily haunt for my good self.

In the morning I’d get up, review any content from the night before, write a quick post or two and then upload as much as I could before my battery died. After that I’d mosey on down to aforementioned phone charging establishment, pay my fiver, and then go off and meet friends who I’d arranged to meet at a later time (do you remember when we did that?!).

Later that afternoon I would pick up my phone, liaise with all the folk that had been trying to reach me for God knows how long, and then get off to another stage where upon I’d take more photos/videos that I would later, no doubt upload.

Lovely stuff.
So aside from the not-so-brilliant portable phone charger, last year was a reasonable success.

But what about this year?

Well, my VOX blog is still up and running.
So I’ve got that working just fine, but now look at all the other things I can do!

I can upload via SMS, MMS or Email via Moblog.
I can simply make a phone call and speak a blog post through SpinVox.
I can boot up Qik and stream LIVE content direct to the internet. Not only direct to my QIK page, but if I hit ’55’ while I’m streaming, my 500-odd followers on Twitter will get told about it too!

The plethora of Social Tools now available to the modern, festival-going geek, really, truly, is a spectacle to behold.

I shall be using ALL of those services/apps/tools I’ve listed above, and probably more.

The question is Dear Readers, which ones do YOU think I should be using?

What should your Mobile Geek of Glastonbury be packing in his rucksack to ensure a complete all round mobile performance?

Leave your suggestions below or, if you have anything you want showcased/tested over the coming festival season, email james@whatleydude.com

Cheers! 🙂

MIR: Whatley on the iPhone – â€œMeh. Next!â€

I’ve actually been working my ass off all day and haven’t really been paying that much attention – I’m sick of all the tweets TBH. I got the vibe that others were too.

I did take a look though. I wasn’t amazed. And I think, as our mate Jon said “the difficult 2nd album” as it were.

There was scope to do better.

*shrug*

And as for new pricing? As I said above – I’ve not seen it, not bothered, not paying attention.

What is Apple’s ‘Mobile Me’? Not bothered. Really. Not. Fussed.

Not upgrading. I told you that I am a content creator. I told you that my phone does everything for me. That iPhone? Nah. Nothin.

THEY HAVENT EVEN UPGRADED THE CAMERA.

*sigh*

NEXT.

MIR: Mobile Web 2.0 – What?!

Whatley here, reporting in.

Founder of Moblog.co.uk and all round friend of SMS Text News, Alfie Dennen, has set up a new blog in lieu of the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit which takes place in London next week.

The weird thing for me (for a start anyway) is the name “Mobile Web 2.0” – so weirded out was I by this in fact that I had ended up dropping a note to Alfie explaining my thoughts.

Well he went ahead and published it:

“When did we have Mobile Web 1.0?

What the hell just happened?
First up: If you ask ANY consumer on the street: Are you using Mobile Web 2.0?
They’ll probably look at you like you’re from Mars.

Second: These naming conventions genuinely drive me nuts. WAP. Mobile Internet. Mobile Web. Internet, made Mobile. Mobile 2.0. Mobile Web 2.0. ENOUGH ALREADY!

We may as well ask: Is this the year of the Mobile?

Just so we can tick every box (and seriously, that question is now, officially, a joke, you know it’s a joke because whenever anyone asks it these days the response is LAUGHTER).

It’s like when people carp on about Web 2.0. More often than not I find myself chiming in with something like: You know people just call it the web now right?”

And so on. You can read the full post here. There’s a whole bunch of great content up actually (not including my post ), so yeah – head over and check it out!

MIR: Welcome to Three-Fail

Afternoon readers, Whatley reporting in.

My post quota has been a bit low lately, (sorry Ewan), I’ve been working hard on a top secret SpinVox project, (more on this next week – promise), in the meantime however allow me to share with you something that appeared on my radar earlier today care of my friend Roger.

Roger, aside from being a girl, is a good blog-buddy of mine.
She and I write and maintain:

Why Don’t Grownups Get it? – conversations we have had with growdups, by Roger and James.

We tend to take it in turns to post up stuff and normally it’s quite non-techy and it tends to lean towards the ridiculous.

But, as I said, this afternoon Roger posted up something that I felt I just had to share:

Roger – Over to you:

I don’t know if it is just me, with my seemingly magnetic ability to attract idiots, but I don’t have much luck with customer service types.

See my post on Dell. I rest my case.

Or I would rest my case, but I’m afraid I have to shake it into wakefulness for another round, this time concerning those ever-helpful bods at 3 Mobile.

Don’t worry, it’s not a longwinded rant. I’m really not cross about this one. Like Ron Burgundy when Baxter eats the cheese, I’m not angry. I’m impressed. With the sheer level of idiocy.

It’s a quickie. And here it is:

My phone broke. This happens. I took it to the 3 shop (one of those ones in a Superdrug, where you can’t tell if they are shop assistants or muggers, you know the ones). They sent it off on a three day repair on Monday. And credit to them, it came back into the shop, all shiny and fixed, today.

Of course, when I switched it on it went mental beeping away with hundreds of voicemails and texts from lots of terribly important people trying to get hold of me (it’s a social whirl being me, it really is).

And here’s the thing.

One of the messages was from 3.

Telling me my phone was ready for collection.

Let’s see if we can spot the flaw in their logic, shall we?

*sigh*

Roger.

MIR: Doing things in ‘Sequence’ – the hidden Nokia feature!

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited along to take part in a new food-based event rather amusingly entitled: ‘Nom Nom Nom‘.

The brainchild of London Underground blogger, Annie Mole – Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom (to give it its full title), was a LOT of fun.
I was there in two capacities. First as a representative of SpinVox (lead sponsors of the event), and second, as a competitor.

The event you see was the online/digital version if you will, of Masterchef.

As one half of GO TEAM SIX (the other half being my good friend Ribot, foodie, photographer and a mobile UI designer to boot), the challenge was twofold.

First to create three dishes (one of which had to be cold) for four people in just under two and a half hours. The second to create ‘output’ for the Nom Nom Nom blog pages.

Ribot and I, being the mobile geeks of the group, Qik’d and photographed EVERYTHING. I went armed with my trusty N95 8GB, my spare N95-1 (packing an 8GB Micro SD), and also my rather snazzy Nokia Tripod.

Tripod

After reading a blog post by a fellow contestant – one Russell Davies – I had an idea for the day’s content. As well as Qikking left, right and centre and of course, snapping anything that moved I decided to set my N95-1 to SEQUENCE MODE.

What is this crazy mode of which I speak? Well, at first I had no idea. I even put a call out to try and find some software for my phone that would allow me to do this… One email conflab with Mr Davies later and it turns out that this mode is right there!
And what’s more – it’s been there the whole time!
Look!

sequence 1

I never knew it was there. I had to be told about it. That’s right. The first Mobile Geek of London didn’t know about sodding sequence mode!
(but it’s OK I did my research and not many other folk knew about it either)

Moving swiftly onward I popped my N95-1 into the tripod (as shown above), and set sequence mode to go off at 1 minute intervals…

sequence 2

sequence 3

Over the course of the afternoon, while Ribot and I put our chosen dishes together, my cheeky little handset took 154 different photos, and to what end?

Well, with the content that came out of it, I was able to create the following video:

Shot on a Nokia N95-1, standing on a Nokia Tripod and edited together using Windows Movie Maker, (who needs a Mac anyway?)

I know this ain’t ‘news’ per se. But it’s a feature I didn’t know about and it’s made me look at my N95 in a completely different light.

I thought I’d share it and show you just what’s possible.
The original N95 still manages to surprise even me.

Brilliant.

MIR: Walking with Normobs – A Response from our man Whatley

Been a bit busy of late folk, hence the absence of my regular Whatley on Wednesday slot.

Trying to get down for the weekly podcast mind…

But yes. Reading the site with interest as I often do, I really enjoyed Tuesday’s ‘Walking with Normobs‘ piece.

So much so that I stirred from my blogging slumber and decided to join the debate…

First off, I totally agree with where you’re coming from. I do. Terry. I do.
But you need to look ahead.

The Normobs of the future will be at the early adopter stage we’re at now.
Underestimate them at your peril.

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited along to a Nokia End User group test thing wotsit.

On the N81 8GB.

Yes – the same device that I reviewed way back when and the same device that my esteemed colleague Ben Smith lavished hatred upon recently also.

This is no strange thing. I often find myself in these kinds of focus groups.
Why?

Well I’m one of those people. One of those people that when asked:

“Would it be ok to contact you in the future?”

I say “Yes”

If I’m not busy, and if I have the time, then I’ll gladly offer assistance. From big companies like Vodafone and Nokia after some customer insight or for a friend’s friend whose N95 keeps breaking because her firmware is ‘stuck on v10’.

I like to help.

Anyway – off I went to this group gathering – just off Carnaby Street, and lo, as is the norm with these things, I entered a room full of folk from all different walks of life/areas of London.

In fact – one guy had such thick urban ‘accent’ that the gentleman running the session actually found it difficult to understand at times. Love it.

I digress.

The point is, Terry, these kids – I was, it seemed, the oldest chap in the room, (quite refreshingly so too). These kids knew their stuff. We had a mechanic, a trainee IT bod, a couple of students and an accountant… and me, obviously.

As I said – these kids knew their stuff.

They knew about firmware updates, they knew about downloading games (N-GAGE or otherwise), they knew about all sorts of stuff.

I was genuinely impressed.

They referenced other devices in their analogies. They reminisced over handsets of yesteryear when articulating their complaints.

They. Knew. Their. Stuff.

You and me, Terry? We’re the old men of tomorrow.
Our kids? What handsets will they be concerned about getting us?
We’re early adopters now. Our kids will be too. Their kids. And so on.

The normal mobile users of tomorrow will be using the products you and I use today.
You make valid points about Skype as a service. Skype is a different way of making a phone call, branded. Tell your Dad to make a phone call by pushing the Skype button, and he will. Tell him to make a call over Skype? He’ll look at you like you’re from Mars.

Similarly with other naming conventions/terminologies: Podcasts vs Radio Shows. Blogs vs Diaries.
And so on…

Of course we’re not expecting our folks to go out and start making VoIP calls tomorrow.
But that’s not the point.

I’m pretty damn sure that the big guns aren’t really concerned about the Daily Mail reading, Marmalade eating Normobs taking up their services. Of course, it’d be lovely if they did! But I doubt very much they EVER will. The Daily Mail will die out as new generations come forward with new ideas and thoughts. Challenging the way we think and the way we view the world.

I read recently ~~on a blog~~ in Clay Shirky’s Book “Here Comes Everybody” about a little girl who, on a recent trip to see some family members had, on arrival, taken one look at the television, screamed and then run behind it suddenly looking for something…
The reason?

She was looking for the mouse.
The girl in question had never seen a screen without one before.

These small changes in behaviour and expectancies of ‘the norm’ take generations to change. Sometimes things go faster, but often things move a lot slower.

There is a particularly fond day dream of mine, where all of us geeks are sitting round at dinner late into our 70s and there we are still moaning about the lack of X and how Y never really did turn up etc etc…

And our kids?

Well they’ll be doing their equivalent of blogging and moaning about the lack of parent-friendly services/devices on the Market I’m sure.

Cheers.

And as an afterthought, going back to that focus group for a second, maybe those kids in the room weren’t that savvy after all.

Maybe it was just that bloody device that made them get online and learn something.

Heh.

Man’s Best Friend – The iPhone

James Whatley just put this up over on his personal blog and while it’s not exactly Whatley Wednesday material, (nor is it, in fact, Wednesday), I still thought I’d publish this piece of comedy for your viewing pleasure:

Over to you Whatley:

____________________________________

That up there ^ is my friend’s iPhone, last week after his dog had got hold of it. Ouch.
Cue much laughter, finger pointing and merriment at his expense.
The iPhone’s screen is strong. But it seems it isn’t that strong…

‘Dave’ is a bit upset about this (I’ve changed his name to save him further embarrassment)

*giggle*

Anyway – after snapping that pic I asked ‘Dave’ if I could blog it, “Sure..” he said, “…and I’ll update you too.”

“Update?”

“Yep. Get this…”

Turns out, after the aforementioned mauling, Dave tried to claim on his home contents insurance. Note: ‘Tried’.
He has since discovered that he can’t actually claim ‘accidental damage’ as the dog did it deliberately.

(clearly a Nokia fan then)

After that Dave tried to claim it on his business insurance. Still no dice. Thing is, this policy doesn’t cover ‘phones‘.
It covers PDAs. Dave is trying to claim the iPhone is a PDA –

“…which it is!” Dave tells me…

However, the insurance company have never had a claim for an iPhone before and what with it having the word ‘Phone’ in its name, Dave’s hitting another brick wall.

Double Ouch.

Insurance companies can be tough little beggars at the best of times (trust me – I know) but are they in the right in this instance?

Is the iPhone a PDA? Or is it a Phone?

‘Dave’ sold his dog over the weekend.. and I am really, REALLY not kidding.
He was that upset.

So much for man’s best friend…

____________________________________

Looks like the SMS Text News Curse is contagious!

MIR: Bored bored bored bored

Mr Uber Mobile, James Whatley, is uninspired by the mobile industry this week. I get this now and again. It happens, it’s strange, but there you go. You’d think that the launch of two new Nokias would have got him moving? Not really. How about the brand new Nokia N95 8GB he’s brandishing? Not really. Things are so back to front that, traditionally a loyal Jaiku user, Whatley has even been playing round more on Twitter.

Over to him:

– – –

I’ve been scratching my head for some time about what to write; I’ve had such bad writer’s block lately that Ewan actually gave me the week off last week.

To be honest – I’m still kind of stuck.

So here’s a roundup of the stuff I’ve been kicking around in my head lately:

Microblogs:

I’m hooked on Twitter.

I haven’t left Jaiku, not by any stretch. But do have a strange addiction to all things Twiterry at the moment. Don’t shoot me. It’s just the scope of the damn thing.

Put it this way:

On Jaiku I have a community. In twitter I have an audience.

Nokia:

Two new music phones announced yesterday, anyone notice? No? Yes? Meh.
I tuned in for the webcast when I nipped out for a latte yesterday and well, kinda wished I hadn’t.

*yawn* – Don’t just take my word for it, read what other people thought too.

Digs aside, (music phones ain’t my thing), but keeping the theme:

I’m really loving my new Nokia BH-501 Bluetooth earphones; a gift from a good friend at CTIA. Cheers for those, you know who you are.

Those earphones, combined with my new found love of Mobbler (Last.fm scrobbling S60 client) has made my music experience/sharing/social experience complete.

Earphones on, Mobbler on, Music on; Mobbler scrobbles my tracks on the move, uploads them to Last.fm, the feed from that goes into my Jaiku and my lifestream is complete!

Well the music part of it anyway. It all makes me very happy. Good times.

Unfortunately: Earphones on, (Bluetooth Connection), Mobbler on, (Internet Connection), Music on also equates to the battery life of about 3-4hrs.

“She needs more power Cap’n!”

When will the handset manufacturers realise that us power users, as well as numerous functions also require uber batteries to support them! The N96 battery sent a few shivers across the blogosphere when it was announced (weighing in at 950mh only) but the Product Manger assured us that the applications had been optimised to use as little power as possible. We shall see…

What else?

Networks.

First up – Newsflash – Nokia N78 confirmed expected to arrive on Vodafone within 6wks. Nice.

Sticking with Voda – Thanks for the N95 8GB guys!

I really felt a bit icky when I first received it (special treatment and all that) but I’ve grown to like it; the screen is the big sell for me.

Shame you guys don’t do the N95-1 (original, silver flavour) anymore. I prefer being able to remove my memory and just dump music, images etc onto it over a card reader. Putting 6gigs of tunes on my phone when I first received it was an overnight process…. and I really wish I was kidding.

And – this is a phone fault, not a network fault – the onboard Mass Memory is SO SLOW it’s ridiculous. I often keep my SMS/MMS/Emails off of the phone memory, just to keep it free etc; I recommend NOT doing this with the 8GB. Makes using the messaging functions virtually impossible.
The S-L-O-W memory access also makes the recording of any video (straight to mass memory) equally futile. The image jerks continually and freezes and and and… well it’s just rubbish.

So if I want to make any kind of recording I have to change the camera memory from mass to phone, record the video, then change the memory back, then transfer the file over.
Seriously, it’s PAINFUL.

Just a shame Vodafone don’t stock the N82.

I’ve touched upon this phone in the past and, having trialled the device at length (thank you WOM World) I can tell you that it is arguably one of the best handsets on the market today. 5MP camera, GPS, auto-screen rotation etc etc… Something that makes it standout from the crowd in particular however is the Xenon Flash. Wow. Just WOW. I never thought the introduction of just one feature would change the way I feel about a device.

Two examples of picture quality:

The only reason I haven’t actually jumped ship and got one is that it’s on o2, and you all know how I feel about them. However if you’re not in the UK, you really should find out from your carrier where you can purchase the N82. Seriously it is that good.

The good news is for UK readers is that the N82 (as well as the N81 meh) have both just been confirmed for release on 3UK next month.

So if you’re looking at upgrading or simply getting a new device/contract, then make sure you check this baby out.

Bad points? There are two that I personally know of.

The screen size. Now this one is arguable. I’ve recommended the N82 to four different people already (all of whom have gone on to purchase one) and they’ve reported no problems. But, having been an N95 user for the best part of 18mths now, getting used to something smaller took a little while. N95 users take note.

The buttons. Now these buttons suffer from ‘Marmite-Syndrome’. You either love them or you hate them. I *thought* I would hate them. I really did. They put me off. All I can say is: Try it. I found that actually they weren’t that bad at all. Depends how dexterous you are really, but don’t judge a book by its cover as it were.

But aside from that? Solid phone.

And that’s about it from me this week. Don’t know why it’s a bit hotch-potch, or as Ewan would say ‘all over the shop’, but it is.

I’m off to go play with an Archos this afternoon. Should be fun. Will report back next week.

Been playing around with ShoZu vs Location Tagger vs Flickr vs OVI etc as well.

Got a few other things percolating around upstairs but I guess I’m a bit bored really. Nothing new/exciting going on.

Someone send me something cool to play with huh? Get my brain working.

Cheers.

– – – – – –