Yesterday was my second day with the N97, I went to the ‘Nieuwstraat’ in Brussels and used the GPS a lot.

In the morning, I had to ask something to a friend on MSN, so I launched Fring. Unfortunately, he wasn’t online. But my granddad was online on skype and I knew he needed some help with his pc. So I called him with the option ‘Skype Video Call’ in Fring. I could see myself in the upper right corner, and when he turned on his webcam I could see him in the middle of the screen. I worked well, but I couldn’t always hear him fine, and the audio wasn’t syncronized with the video, although I think this is caused by the fring servers.

After I’ve been sporting, I launched Nokia Maps and tried to get a fix (no A-GPS fix, because I don’t have an unlimited mobile internet connection), it took 5 minutes to get home, but it still didn’t have a connection, I went to the garden, and after one minute or, my location was found.
I called my friend and he gave the address of his dad. I went upstairs, searched it on Ovi Maps and saved it to my account. After I took a shower, I synced my favorites with my ovi account, and when we finally left, the device got immediately a fix.
When we were in Brussels, the phone got a fix in 30 seconds, something that wasn’t possible with the N85 (or i just had no luck, because sometimes when i took pictures inside with the N85, it was tagged as well).
The only thing that wasn’t always correct was the Digital Compass, but you can turn it of very easily. I noticed that you have to recalibrate the compass a lot.
It’s fantastic that the Turn-by-turn Navigation is free from now on. Doesn’t seem more than normal to me, if you pay a lot for a device with GPS and you notice afterwards that you have to pay extra for the Turn-by-turn feature.. That sucks.

And last, but not least. The video recording.
It had the same camera as the N85, but the N85 had sometimes a stupid bug, that the phones ‘lags’ every 5 seconds. So the video’s were sometimes worthless..

The quality of the video is actually better than it looks like in Vidly. I’ll upload it on youtube as well. Video Geotag

Hardware

Comming soon

Software

Comming soon

Widgets

Comming soon

Music

Comming soon

Pictures

Comming soon

Navigation

Comming soon

Connectivity

Comming soon

Battery

Comming soon

N97 mini vs N85

Upgrades: Compass, newer, big touchscreen, S60 v5 (more ovi applications supported), 2mm thinner, copper backplate and finish, more solid and less rattling stuff.
Downgrades: No FM-transmitter, No camera cover, No OLED

A more detailed comparison will come soon.

N97 mini vs iPod Touch (screen and software)

I can’t talk about the call quality of the iPhone, but I can compare it to some features of the iPod Touch.
First, there is a lot more software available, a second difference is the screen. The screen of the iPod is capacitive. So the device reacts when you touch it with your body and create an electrostatic field. In this case, you don’t have to press on the screen but just make contact with your fingers.

The third big difference is that the software of the iPod is actually made to ‘touch’, and you don’t have to double-click an item to select it in some cases.
I prefer a resistive screen when you have to press on ‘buttons’, but when you have to scroll through items, a capacitive screen is an advantage. As well the kinetic scrolling* (I think it’s integrated afterwards in S60) looks much smoother on the iPod.

* Clearance of some Jargon

Kinetic scrolling: Scrolling through items by sliding the whole menu up or down (just like an iPhone/iPod Touch, to be clear )
Resistive screen: A screen u have to ‘press in’. So you can use any object to operate the phone.
Capacitive screen:  A screen operated by touching it with a conductor (The human body for ex).

Today was my first day with the Nokia N97.

The first thing that strikes is that the widgets are very useful when u have mobile internet.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an unrestricted mobile internet connections (I have 15 free internet sessions a month. Every time it reconnects, it uses a session), so I only update my widgets and E-Mail when I’m at home.

The phone is quite fast and responsive. But even when the phone doesn’t bug or isn’t slow, the animations aren’t always that fluent, especially when u scroll kinetic*.
The screen is resistive*, that means you have to ‘press’ on the screen to select an option.
The device feels very solid (thanks to the bronze backplate and bronze border around the screen), and even the keyboard doesn’t ‘wobble’ or anything like that.

The phone connects perfectly with iSync on Snow Leopard over bluetotth, I was perfectly able to sync my calendar and contacts
But I wasn’t able to connect it trough USB in Windows 7 with the newest OVI suite.. strange. I’ll try to clean windows and try it again.

At school, it got some attention of classmates and friends. Even some girls said the phone looks awesome (I mean girls who don’t care about os, camera, gps, and other features), so I think Nokia did a great job about the design of the phone.

I think the OS isn’t meant to run with a touchscreen from the start of the development (like the iPhone OS or Maemo), like sometimes you have to double-click an item to select it (first you select it, then you confirm your choice).
You can switch the screen from landscape to portrait, and vice versa, anywhere in the os.
The keyboard is really awesome to text, there is enough space between the keys, so you won’t  accidentally press 2 buttons or more.

* Clearance of some Jargon

Kinetic scrolling: Scrolling through items by sliding the whole menu up or down (just like an iPhone/iPod Touch, to be clear )
Resistive screen: A screen u have to ‘press in’. So you can use any object to operate the phone.
Capacitive screen:  A screen operated by touching it with a conductor (The human body for ex).

Pa was niet thuis om 10u10 dus moest ik hem maar zelf gaan halen, na een telefoontje met de medewerkster kreeg ik te horen dat ik het pakketje mocht gaan ophalen in Vorst. *googlegoogle* 15km, 15min met de wagen. Mooi! *telefoneert naar vader* Hij komt pas laat thuis.. En moeder neemt niet op.

Volgens de lijn kon ik in een klein uurtje het toestel in m’n handen hebben en terug vertrekken. 5min stappen naar het station, en hup, met de tram naar Brussel, onderweg merk ik dat Nokia Maps op de N85 niet gekraakt was en dus geen navigatie bood (Phu, alleen maar gratis navigatie voor recente modellen) . Gelukkig geen tekort aan Wifi in Brussel en vond al snel de route tot DHL dankzij m’n iPod. Helaas was deze nergens te vinden..

Opeens oproep van mijn ma die al wat ongerust werd, en schrok toen ze te horen kreeg dat ik in Vorst rondhing. Binnen een kwartiertje was ze in de buurt.
Nergens was de DHL te bespeuren, zowel Google maps, als de GPS in de wagen leidde ons naar dezelfde, verkeerde plaats.
De hoop bijna opgegeven, nog even gevraagd bij Audi. ‘Weet u waar DHL lig?’ ‘- Jazeker, hier de weg volgen’. En inderdaad! Daar was het, 5 minuten voor sluitingstijd stap ik binnen en ga naar huis.

Snel uitpakken, wat foto’s nemen en gaan eten. Na een douche een nieuw blogbericht plaatsen en hem dan eens uittesten.

De komende 2 weken zal ik het toestel uittesten en mijn bevindingen in de vorm van een blogbericht of youtube video uploaden.

Live: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our-latest-creation-tablet-event-coverage/

An unboxing, review and comparison of the N97 mini follows to thank WOMworld.
I had heard that Symbian will become open source in a year or so, and I just found out that the N97 is able to run that OS. The question is whether Nokia will make it possible to upgrade the N97. I even red that there is already an Samsung device available in the US that runs Symbian ^2.

Also I wonder whether many software will be available for the device .. Compared with the software for my iPod Touch is still a bit silly.
If only the useful apps come available to the N97 is fine for me as well. (Facebook(available), Skype(Announced), Belgian internet radio, paypal, wordpress, twitter, …)

Als bedanking volgt er natuurlijk ook een unboxing, review en vergelijking van de N97 mini.
Ik had wel gehoord dat Symbian open source zou komen, en nu blijkt dat de N97 Symbian^2 zou ondersteunen, de vraag blijft echter of nokia een upgrade toestaat?

Ook vraag ik me af of er veel software beschikbaar komt voor het toestel.. In vergelijking met de software voor mijn iPod Touch, is het toch nog wel wat mager.

Morgen even testen op oude pc of op school (hmm.. Struktograaf examen (wtf?) met ICT-coördinator achteraan.. Toch maar niet dan :’) )

Slaapwel

Leuk, leuk, nog niet uitbundig getest bij gebrek aan tijd.

Ik heb nog 7 invites over, laat iets achter bij de commentaren.

Instructies zijn hier te vinden.