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Nokia N9 (Meego) Review and comparison

Nokia N9 is Nokia’s new smartphone, with 3G network of High Speed Uplink Packet Access of 5.7 Mbps and High Speed Downlink Packet Access of 14.4 Mbps, its dimensions are 116.45 * 61.2 * 12.1 mm, with a screen size of 3.9 inches, 16:9 FWVGA (854 * 480) pixels AMOLED display, capacitive touch screen, gorilla glass display, 16.7 million colors, and weighs 135 g. Its OS is MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan with 1 GHz Cortex A8 Processor.

Though much has been talked about the Meego OS, the phone itself is designed to perfection. Probably a Elop let Nokia team take one last gasp for the open source world. But if Meego does become more successful, there is always a chance Meego might appear in some of Nokia’s future devices.

The phone has 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, wide angle lens, dual LED flash, digital shutter, continuous auto focus, 4x digital zoom and video camera with 720 pixels resolution at 30 frames per second, stereo sound recording, and etc., The internal memory is of 16 or 64 GB, 1 GB RAM and no external card slot.The 8 MP camera is comparable to 2011 top notch smartphones and on the lines of Samsung Galaxy S2 and Apple’s soon to be released iPhone 5.

Its other features include NFC (Near Field Communication – for easy pairing and sharing), Wi-Fi WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, GPRS, EDGE, High Speed USB 2.0 with micro USB connector for data transfer and charging, 3.5 mm Audio Video connector, messaging through SMS, MMS, IM, Push, Email, HTML 5 support for web applications and fast video playback, RSS reader, TCP/IP support, Live multitasking view, Java Script support, Share photos online through Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa, Video and photo editor, Document editor’s, MP3 and MP4 player, Key Applications like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Ovi store, Maps, Track and Protect, Nokia Link for easy synchronization of photos, videos, and music, Preloaded games like Angry Birds Magic with NFC support, Galaxy on Fire 2, Real Golf 2011, and etc., The phone has 1450 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 7 h and standby time of 450 h, 4.5 h of video playback time and 50 h of music playback time. It comes in three colors such as Cyan, Black and Magenta

Nokia N9 Specifications :

3G Network :  High Speed Uplink Packet Access of 5.7 Mbps and High Speed Downlink Packet Access of 14.4 Mbps

Dimensions :

When compared to other top phones here is the dimension comparison

Nokia N9 – 116.45 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm
Iphone 4 – 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm
Samsung Galaxy S2 – 125.3 X 66.1 X 8.49 mm
Blackberry Torch – 111 x 62 x 14.6 mm

Display Screen : screen size is of 3.9 inches, 16:9 FWVGA (854 * 480) pixels AMOLED display, capacitive touch screen, gorilla glass display which also adorns iPhone 4 and Galaxy S2, 16.7 million colors

Weight : 135 g
The phone is much lighter than iPhone 4 which is 161 g and comparable to Galaxy S2.

OS and Processor : MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan with 1 GHz Cortex A8 Processor. Nokia might  have missed a trick by not going dual core here, but 1 GHZ is more than enough any of current Generation phone.

Camera : 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, wide angle lens, dual LED flash, digital shutter, continuous auto focus, 4x digital zoom and video camera with 720 pixels resolution at 30 frames per second, stereo sound recording, and etc.,

Memory : 16 or 64 GB, 1 GB RAM and no external card slot

Other Features : NFC (Near Field Communication – for easy pairing and sharing), Wi-Fi WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, GPRS, EDGE, High Speed USB 2.0 with micro USB connector for data transfer and charging, 3.5 mm Audio Video connector, messaging through SMS, MMS, IM, Push, Email, HTML 5 support for web applications and fast video playback, RSS reader, TCP/IP support, Live multitasking view, Java Script support, Share photos online through Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa, Video and photo editor, Document editor’s, MP3 and MP4 player, Key Applications like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Ovi store, Maps, Track and Protect, Nokia Link for easy synchronization of photos, videos, and music, Preloaded games like Angry Birds Magic with NFC support, Galaxy on Fire 2, Real Golf 2011, and etc.,

Battery : 1450 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 7 h and standby time of 450 h, 4.5 h of video playback time and 50 h of music playback time

Colors : Cyan, Black and Magenta. May not be the best choice in terms of colors other than black. But this also makes the phone unique among competition.

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Reinventing Nokia – The Mobile Hardware Giant

No one would have expected to see Nokia  struggling by 2011. But then that’s what happened, after a huge drop in profits in the last few quarters and loss of its No1 status in Europe, Nokia is in shambles.

Few days back Nokia sold its Symbian Development to Accenture, and gone with the company are its developers and testers as well. But more importantly few months back Nokia announced an alliance with Microsoft and decided to dump Symbian for Windows Phone Operating System.

Nokia has always been associated with Quality and Performance of its phones. When most phones lasted few years, Nokia devices would last twice longer. And whether it reception, battery performance or ruggedness, Nokia was the Honda  and Toyota  of the Mobile world.  Nokia was also one of the early entrants  into Smartphone business, they have brought some of the popular Smart phones in the last decade be it the 6600 or N70, N93,N95 and E61 etc. But Nokia is a victim of their own success, content with a aging Symbian platform Nokia failed to get on the Post iPhone , touchscreen bandwagon.

Though Nokia released quite a few touchscreen devices, the operating system was clumsy and not user friendly, crashing smartphone OS was ok during the early days of Smartphones, but now  they cant be tolerated.  With highly competitive platforms in Android and iOS, Nokia  had all but failed in High End division. And low end market is populated with copycat chinese phones which perform more functionality than Nokia with half the price.

But aligning with Microsoft and dumping its Symbian OS is a step in the right direction,  Nokia still has the best hardware in cellphones, what it is missing is the software. With Microsoft deal it achieves exactly that, and now Nokia can concentrate on improving and establishing itself the leader in this segment. Microsoft is also reinventing itself in the Mobile space, one of my Gripe was the hardware on the windows phones, it used to be either Motorola or some unknown company. No major hardware player was associated with windows phones, but with Nokia,  Microsoft gets just that.

With Windows 7 phone platform creating so much excitement , definitely this is the best that could have happened to Nokia. With launch of N9 , Nokia did show a Meego (Linux) based device, but for next few years Nokia might just concentrate on Windows Platform and occasionally release Phones for Android as well.  And with a backing from Microsoft , Nokia will be finally able to break into US market, earlier due to carrier control in US  , Nokia never had its best phones in the  US market.

It would be just great for consumers with one more great option in terms of the phone hardware.

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Nokia E73 Mode Specifications, Review and Comparison

Nokia E73 Mode comes with an option of changing the mode of the phone from Work Mode to Personal Mode by touching the single button ie., we can switch between the business features and personal features within the single phone. It has QWERTY keyboard, optical trackpad, five-way scroll key, with dimensions of 4.48 * 2.30 * 0.40 inches/ (113.8 * 58.4 * 10.2 mm), 16 million colors TFT active matrix display screen of size 2.4 inches and 320 * 240 (QVGA) pixels resolution, weighing 4.5 oz. 3G network with High Speed Uplink Packet Access of 2 Mbps and High Speed Downlink Packet Access of 10.2 Mbps.

The phone has 5 MP camera with 2592 * 1944 pixels resolution with autofocus and LED flash, 5x digital zoom, the video mode camera is of VGA with 15 frames per second, 10x video digital zoom, and the front camera is of 2x digital video zoom. It comes with 3.5 mm audio-video jack, Music player, Media player, stereo FM radio with RDS support. Internal memory of the phone is of 250 MB, 4 GB microSD external memory card, extendable upto 16 GB, and the Operating System of the phone is Symbian OS v9.3 S60 3.2.3.

The other features of the phone include GPRS, EDGE, WLAN 802.11 b/g, GPS, Bluetooth v2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate, A2DP, Messaging through Email, Push Email, SMS, MMS, IM, Flash Lite v3.0, PDF viewer, Nokia Office Tools, Digital Compass, Push to Talk,  ZIP manager, Quick Office viewers and editors, voice commands, games and etc., and it comes in only one color Titanium. The battery is of BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 6 hours, standby time power of 22 days, video recording time of 6 1/2 hours, video playback time of 13 hours, music playback time of 38 hours, and video call time of 4 hours

Specifications of Nokia E73 Mode and Comparison with Nokia E72 :

Mode : Work/ Personal Mode

3G : High Speed Uplink Packet Access of 2 Mbps and High Speed Downlink Packet Access of 10.2 Mbps

QWERTY keyboard

Optical trackpad, five-way scroll key

Dimensions : Nokia E73 Mode : 113.8 * 58.4 * 10.2 mm

Nokia E72 : 114 * 58 * 10 mm

Display Screen : Nokia E73 Mode : 16 million colors, TFT active matrix screen of size 2.4 inches, resolution 320 * 240 pixels

Nokia E72 : 16 million colors, TFT screen of size 2.36 inches, resolution 320 * 240 pixels

Weight : Nokia E73 Mode and Nokia E72 : 4.5 oz

Camera : 5 MP camera with 2592 * 1944 pixels resolution with autofocus and LED flash, 5x digital zoom, the video mode camera is of VGA with 15 frames per second, 10x video digital zoom, and the front camera is of 2x digital video zoom

3.5 mm audio-video jack, Music player, Media player, stereo FM radio with RDS support

Memory : Nokia E73 Mode : Internal memory of the phone is of 250 MB, 4 GB microSD external memory card, extendable upto 16 GB

Nokia E72 : Internal memory of the phone is 250 MB, 128 MB RAM, microSD extendable upto 16 GB

OS : Symbian OS v9.3 S60 3.2.3

GPRS

EDGE

WLAN 802.11 b/g

GPS

Bluetooth v2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate, A2DP

Messaging through Email, Push Email, SMS, MMS, IM

Flash Lite v3.0

PDF viewer

Nokia Office Tools

Digital Compass

Push to Talk

ZIP manager

Quick Office viewers and editors

voice commands

games

Color : Titanium

Battery : Nokia E73 Mode : BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 6 hours and standby time power of 22 days

video recording time of 6 1/2 hours, video playback time of 13 hours, music playback time of 38 hours, and video call time of 4 hours

Nokia E72 : BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 6 hours and standby time power of 24 days