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Earlier this year, my company phone got upgraded. I used to have a Nokia N95 8gn, and it was really, really good. After a couple of firmware updates the GPS worked as it should – achieving a quick and reliable lock, the Symbian OS whilst not as flashy as some was stable and the few bits of software that I installed – primarily Viewranger – were useful and did the job.
The only thing that let it down in the ‘smart phone’ stakes was the fact that I had to rely on the standard phone-type keypad for typing.
So, to the replacement. A Nokia N97 mini. You may recall that the N97 bombed at launch due to a series of well-documented problems. Nokia then rushed out the mini. It was, as it’s name suggests, a little smaller. Still had the full qwerty keyboard, has 8 gig of standard memory (more available via card), runs Symbian 5th Edition and boasts a touch screen. All very nice on the box.
For sure, the keyboard is a gem. I can now write things properly – blogs, emails, Twitter etc – without feeling that I’m about to waste the best part of a day. It lights up nicely so that I can see where the keys are and they symbols etc are all easily and intuitively accessible. All this despite the fact that I have large hands.
The touch screen, however, is a total bag of nails. It may be that I’m so used to the capacitive touch screen on my iPod Touch, but the resistive screen on the Nokia is a hugely poor cousin. Not only is the interface not consistent through applications (even core parts of the phone itself), but the response is vague, false presses are registered all over the place and the flick to scroll is purely and simply piss-poor.
As an example, go to the “Applications” screen and try to swipe to scroll through the apps. All that happens is that the icon that happens to be nearest your finger is fired. Trying to use the scroll bars is even harder – requiring half your finger tip to be off the edge of the screen and lagging with each touch so that you end up having to scroll back up to get to where you want to be.
In fact, the response in general is poor. The potentially great Facebook widget often doesn’t respond, I find myself “clicking” several times on icons to persuade them to do anything and lock-ups occur all over the place.
Calls are pretty crisp and clear, and txting is much easier courtesy of the keyboard. Access to Exchange works well and the screen – as long as it isn’t sunny – is good. The phone is also a decent size, without making you look like you’re suffering from a hernia when you put it in your pocket. Battery life too, is acceptable….I can go a whole day on a single charge, and just about last a trip from home to Cary without needing to switch loads of functions off.
Apart from the shocking “touch” screen, the biggest shocker of them all is the abomination known as the Ovi Store. The total, complete, utter, one-hundred percent, sack of shiate that is Ovi Store.
Nokia, in their wisdom, decided to emulate the Apple iStore. A noble move. They have an open OS, gazillions of handset owners and a stable development base. Should be a winner right?
Should, yes. Is, no. First off, the jumping through hoops that requires your userid and password for every silo of non-connected online information that is Nokia. Second, the “known” bug that has Ovi Suite on your desktop unable to sync with the Ovi cloud. Next, the useless Ovi app on the phone that is usually unable to actually connect to the store. Followed closely by the woeful offerings in the store – should you be lucky enough to actually get there. All this bad enough but, assuming that you have the patience of a saint and manage to finally find a rare nugget in the inaccessible store, that is something less than totally useless you will find that you have to pay four time the iStore value for an identical app in Ovi. Way to go Nokia! Way to bloody go.
So. Would I go out and buy an N97 mini with my own money? No way. Am I happy with the phone bearing in mind it’s free? I can tolerate it. Would I swap it for an iPhone or Android? I’d probably rip your arm off.
Nokia. Get a bloody clue. Please.
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It was free, so why not. Whilst I’m not quite at the stage of drinking the kool-aid, I have some respect for Apple products and was pretty keen to get my hands on iBooks. I’ve been umming and ahhing about splashing out for an iPad (I know, I know. I slated them earlier) or an iPhone 4 for some time. So could IOS4 on the Touch negate the need for the expenditure?
In a word. No.
So what does IOS4 bring me on my second gen iPod TOuch? Quite simnply, six things. Five of which are reasonably fun. One of which is a total deal breaker.
One:
Folders. Actually pretty useful. I’ve had the Touch for a while now and, subsequently, have quite a few apps installed on it. I’d got to the point of having to wander through six screens of apps to find the one I wanted – which was getting a little tiresome.
The folders feature allows me to group apps into folders meaning, in my case, that I can now get all my apps onto one screen. The downside is that each folder is limited to twelve apps (you can see “games” and “games2” on my screen) which is slightly annoying. 
The way that the folders are portrayed though is very good. I can see (if I peer closely) the app icons in the folder and, when updating an app, the status bar appears underneath the folder – cumulative if there are several apps in one folder being updated.
So folders, all in all, a pretty good result.
Two:
Unified email. I’m a little more sceptical about this one. As you can see, I have three email accounts set up on my Touch. IOS4 gives me the first option of “All Inboxes” which unifies all emails into a single inbox. I can still access the accounts separately I suppose, but I’m not altogether sure of the benefit of the unified box.
I also have the option to thread messages within the inbox – which is slightly more useful. 
Here you can see the options within the mail settings.
One groovy feature of IOS4 is that any dates or contacts within the body of the emails will automatically launch their respective apps. So I can tap on a date in an email and instantly create a calendar entry.
Three:
Eye-candy. I can apply wallpapers all over the place if I want to. Great. Very reminiscent of OS/2 and totally pointless. Thank you Apple.
Four:
Different Album view. See above. It looks nice enough, but I won’t be running naked down the street singing it’s praises.
Five:
iBooks. Well, yes, I’ve now got iBooks on the Touch – that much I’ll admit. As you can see from this screen capture though 
, it’s slightly less than totally useless.
The app itself is veeeeerrrrrryyyyyy slow with a significant lag in performing any actions.
More show-stopping though, is the fact that you’d need to turn over about three thousand pages of iBook text just to read a copy of the Beano.
Six:
Saving the most critical and significant change that IOS4 brings to last;
IOS4 will absolutely hose your battery on a 2nd Gen iPod Touch. I’m a pretty heavy user of my little pocket-friendly, slim and funky friend. I can generally go a couple of days without any need for a significant re-charge, unless I’m on a plane – where I leave it plugged in to the underseat charger.
Since installing IOS4, I can’t even get a single days charge out of the thing. I will turn it off in the evening with 80% charge left (after an evening re-charge) and, seven or eight hours later when I wake up, it’s drained to ten percent.
Before anyone writes in trying to help – yes, I do purge the battery every couple of weeks. So that isn’t going to help.
It’s infuriating. Bearing in mind the 2nd Gen doesn’t support IOS4’s multi-tasking, just what in the hell is it doing – whilst locked and inactive – that is plundering the battery?
Verdict:
RagingAardvark says don’t bother. I’m going to back my Touch out to version three. You can get hold of the firmware from here (http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=757) if you’re in the same boat as me.
My birthday is coming up soon. And I’m going to surprise myself with a 64Gig iPad. I run Joikuspot premium on my N97 mini – so I won’t need the 3G version.
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I’ve had this tablet for a few weeks now – I’d dithered between keeping the XPSM1330 and getting an iPad, or going all out and replacing the Dell with a tablet.
After much uming and errring I decided upon the tablet and thank god I did.
The tech specs are pretty impressive;
- Dual Core Intel SU4100 13.ghz, 2mb Level 2 cache
- 4Gig of DDR3 memory
- 320 gig SATA 7200 HDD
- Integrated 10/100/1000 gigabit ethernet and 802.11 b/g/n WLAN
- 12.1” WXGA LED touchscreen
- ATI Radeon HD 4550 512Mb graphics AND integrated Intel graphics
- Altec Lansing Dolby Advanced Audio speakers
- Fingerprint reader
- 5-in-1 card reader
- Bluetooth
- Webcam
- Multi-touch click pad
- 3*USB 2.0, 1*HDMI, 1*VGA, 1*RJ45 ethernet and combined mic/headphone jack
The whole thing also comes complete with a USB DVD+-RW drive with lightscribe, a lovely aluminium shell and weighs in at a very not portly 2.15KG. It also scores a respectable 4 on the Windows Experience Index.
The blurb boasts eight hours of battery life – I’ve managed six myself but haven’t just sat there watching videos or anything simple like that.
So, to the tablet part of it …..
Never having owned a tablet before, I was a little sceptical as to just how well it would perform. The machine comes with a Wacom pen tucked into a slot at the left of the keyboard and, after a cursory couple of minutes spent “training” the thing to recognise my frankly appalling handwriting …
…. I wasn’t really expecting miracles. Except, miracles did occur! Other than the above example, this is all being written by hand, in that same frustrated doctor scrawl, and the tablet is having no issues in recognising it. Not only that, but it continues to “learn” your handwriting the more you use it.
Pretty much every application is tablet (and hand writing) friendly which entirely satisfies the main point of owning the thing – namely attending meetings with just the tablet – not laptop, charger, notepad and pen.
In terms of typing, things are good too. The keyboard is “chicklet” style and smaller than that of the XPS. Despite all that, the tactile impression is really good and much huge hands have no problem with hitting the wrong key. Some functions – PgUp, PgDn, Home, End etc – are accessed via alt+something, and a few of the keys have groovy leds behind them to indicate certain functions.
When it comes to hands, the screen too operates superbly. I can lean my hand on the screen whilst writing with no issues of false readings on the screen. The screen too can rotate through the cardinal points to aid writing comfort.
If I had to be really picky, the only gripes I could come up with are ;
- The screen picks up fingerprints. Well duh – I’m using my fingers all over it.
- The high reflectivity of the screen can prove a little annoying at times.
- The neoprene sleeve that the tablet came with is teh ghey.
Aside from the hardware, the suite of applications that came pre-installed and, after overwriting the OS with Windows 7 Enterprise remained in an install folder on the root drive, is absolutely superb. All touch enabled, all very pretty and all supremely functional.
I am so glad that I went with this rather than the iPad; Battery performance is comparable. When on mains, it switches automatically from Intel to the ATI video mode. I’ve got the pen input and touch too. I’ve got a full OS under the hood and, despite being thicker than the iPad, I still have the incredibly responsive touch screen or, at the twist of the screen, a full on laptop with keyboard rather than having to lug a separate bluetooth keyboard around.
HP Touchsmart tm2. R0x0r!
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Well that’s what you get for trying to upgrade to IOS4 before work. I’ve now got to do the school-run and drive to work with the lap-top and Touch next to me on the passenger seat so that I don’t interrupt the back-up.
Isn’t technology wonderful.
Still, at least I know with the new tablet that the battery isn’t going to run out with ten minutes to go.
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Ξ June 21st, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Me |
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The Jenster has now got a “Reading Bookmark” that she designed where us and school can write comments about her reading activities. All very good and all very sensible.
We noticed that she’s not reading as much recently so quizzed her as to whether she had forgotten her reading homework.
“Nope.” Was the reply.
So it was with a huge amount of humour that I spotted this entry in her Reading Bookmark yesterday;
“Relly good werk Jenny 
Mum”
I have to say that the “Mum” was a perfect copy. Must have a word with Jules about her spelling though.
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I’m sure that there are gazillions of other posts like this out there on t’internet but ……..
Just where in the hell do American border guards get off?
I’m pretty sure that getting into the Soviet Union pre the downfall of the Iron Curtain was easier than crossing from Canada to Buffalo.
Firstly, there’s the attitude. Every other country I’ve been to – even Gatwick at five in the morning – the security folks, whilst trying to look shrewd, are armed with “How can I help you?” The in-bred halfwit that we encountered at the border gate though was 100% “Why the fark should I do anything for you?” He was actively pissed off that we weren’t Muslims, smugglers or toting AK-47s – anything to give him a chance to start pumping lead in our general direction.
Secondly, the brains. Or the total lack of. This was clearly an individual who had failed the “this is how you flip a burger” test. After exhausting his list of reasons of why we might be Al-ky-hee-dar, he had to radio over to Duane II to come up with a reason to pull us in. Duane II was clearly slightly brighter and managed to come up with a reason – wait for it – Dad crosses the border reasonably frequently.
Yes, that was why we got pulled over and had to start filling in forms. Because they have no issue with Dad going into the States, they’ve got an issue. That’s persecution of the right.
Lastly, what are they actually trying to protect? Forgive me the denizens of the place but – to be brutally frank- Buffalo is a bloody armpit. It’s a gentle vista of rotting heavy industry and depression. They even have the cheek to show posters of Niagra Falls – and you’d need a bloody long neck to see the images that they show.
So Duane. This post is for you. It’s for you portraying an entire country as a bunch of w@nkers and for slowly driving the entire tourism industry elsewhere.
I kept my green “you’re allowed into America” card. Not because I’m going to frame it, but because it’s meant to be valid for three months – meaning I won’t have to jump through hoops again to get into North Carolina. At least, that’s what it says on the card. Reality? Let’s wait until May to find out.
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… sue me. I’ve started twittering – these posts should appear on twitter, and my tweets should appear on the site. Makes it easier for Jules and kids to follow me in Canada.
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My oh my, I wish I could have been at the post-launch party of the iPad. It must have been like attending a wedding reception where the bride has been jilted at the altar; “You look absolutely lovely darling. So where are you going on your hon ……. ah …… ummmm …… errrr ….. more tea vicar?”
In fact, Stevo’s speech must have been just as good. I imagine it to have been a little like the opening scene of The Party – with Peter Sellers.
After all the hype and speculation, Apple have launched ……….. a big iPod Touch. Absolutely inspired! No multi-tasking, no video-conferencing, no 3G (unless you pay extra), no physical keyboard (unless you pay extra). All that, and a hefty price-tag for a staggering 16Gig of storage. It’s got a ten-inch screen – which doesn’t fold. So, if you’d like to try the experience of an iPad and only spend twenty quid doing it, visit your local home store, buy a twelve-inch mirror, chuck it in your back-pack and see how long it lasts.
Even the normally vociferous fan-bois are strangely mute – and that must be saying something.
Maybe I was being naive, but I was looking forward to a true road-warrior piece of kit. All I can do on my Touch, with web-cam chatting, multi-tasking, 3G/Wifi – always connected and proper MS Office integration. I could have lived without the keyboard, and I would have gladly paid the Apple premium for the product. I mean, how hard can it be?
We’ve had the Nokia N97 (close, but no cigar), the Nokia N900 (a “computer” with some phone functionality), Sony Ericsson’s latest attempts (piss-poor OS and battery life). Someone, somewhere out there must be able to produce this “Netbook killer”.
We got our youngest a Netbook for Christmas; OK, it’s got Windows XP home on it at the moment, but it multi-tasks, runs flash in the browser (and any other plugin you’d like), has Office 2007, integrated web-cam, key board that even my lumbering fingers can use, folds in half to protect it when not in use, has a five-hour battery life and only cost two-hundred quid.
There’s a football (soccer to you Americans) chant, the second line of which is “and you know you are”, and this – sadly – applies to Stevo here. Yes, I know that Apple have a reputation of launching a hobbled product and then “upgrading” it a year later to what it should have been in the first place (iPhone. I’m looking at you), but even the most die-hard fan-boi would struggle to justify this one. With previous products, when whipped out in public we derided them but secretly yearned for one. With this baby though, it will just be “Oh. You’re one of the dicks who lobbed out for a big iPod Touch”.
This could go on – and is all over the internet – but I have to go. I’ve got some fan-bois to bait.
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