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The Nokia AD-54 HS-45

2008-05-29T22:55:52Z

The basic inline remote that comes with the n82 sucks. There's no nice way to say it. You can't skip tracks, and there's no 3.5 mm jack so you can use your own earphones.

The Nokia AD-54 HS-45 remote's a pretty good buy; it's really cheap (20 dollars on ebay). My only complaint is that does a pretty horrible job of fast forwarding and rewinding. Aside from that, you can start the music player from the phone, and have all the basic features of the music player accessible.

Unfortunately I haven't had any luck with third party applications.

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Photography Basics

2008-05-22T03:06:35Z

Since the n82's imaging functions destroy just about any other phone's, I've been trying to figure out what everything means so I can take advantage of it. Here's what the device is capable of.

Resolution: The n82 can take pictures from 0.3 megapixels up to 5 megapixels (2592x1944) at 72 dpi, and the file size at 5mp typically rounds out to about 1 MB; sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

Exposure: How much light your photograph will be exposed to during the actual taking of the photograph. The n82 has nine levels; from -2 (darkest) up to 2 (lightest). This also ties into Shutter Speed, and I've taken images anywhere from 1/50th of a second to 1/500th of a second.

Aperture: The "hole" in which light enters the camera. The n82's is f/2.8 (f is the symbol for aperture sizes). Unchangeable.

Focal Length: The shorter the focal length, the greater the power of the camera. The n82 clocks in at 5.6mm. Also unchangeable.

ISO Speed: ISO speed is the camera's sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO, the better it performs in low-light conditions. The n82 has four settings: Auto, Low (100), medium (untested, but I'd assume 400), and high (800).

Wikipedia goes much more in depth on any of these settings; as well, you can feel free to compare these stats to that of your current point and shoot.

I'll conclude with a few basic photography tips:

-Always take multiple pictures of your subject.
-Avoid having a strong light source behind your subject.
-Don't be afraid to back up and take a wider shot; it's easier to take crop away the space than to add it where you might want it.

There's plenty of good photography ideas floating around the internet, and don't be afraid to experiment. For example, for things like sports or pets, you want to decrease the shutter speed so it doesn't blur the image as much.

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Must Have Software

2008-05-06T07:15:36Z

There's an absolute ton of software available for s60 devices. I've played with a lot of trials, and wound up purchasing some, so here's the benefit of my experience.

Best Profiles: This does away with constantly having to change profiles on your cellphone, reacting on any number of quantifiers. For example, it can changeitub profiles based on which tower it's connecting to. When I'm at home, it's on the General profile, but as soon as I'm in the same area as my gym, it switches to silent. It can even scan your calendar for keywords, enabling the profile to switch on words like "meeting", or any other word you choose. As someone who's missed calls because he forgets to switch back to the General profile when he gets home, I find this very handy.

Handy Clock: I find this clock much more functional than the one that comes with the phone, mainly because it adds a timer and stopwatch feature to it.

Handy Calendar: Goes far beyond the built-in calendar, allowing for more settings and functions than the regular calendar.

Calcium: A fast calculator with a better interface than the one that comes with Nokia phones.

Panoman v3: Most phones come with version 2 of the Panoman panoramic photo software, but version 3 has MUCH better stitching. It's up to you, depending on if you take advantage of panoramic opportunities.

Mobitubia: Out of the other Youtube clients available, I find this one has the best interface and performance. I'm just hoping one with full access to my account and the ability to add favourites comes out soon.

Shozu: Imagine being able to take a photo or video with your device, and being able to upload it via Wifi or your phone's data service to any of your media sharing sites. Youtube, Flickr and Facebook are available, just to name a few.

Coreplayer: One of the better video players on the platform.

Y-Browser: A better file manager than the one that comes with the device.

Fring: Even though it's not perfect, it's probably the best multi-protocol chat client (in my experience at least) for S60. The official MSN Messenger client has a great interface, and great options, but I find it drops a lot of messages.

There's some other handy software depending on what you want to do with your device. Handy Safe is great for keeping track of personal info, passwords, logins, and so on. Moby Explorer has some basic FTP client functionalities. Alon makes a good dictaphone / call recorder. There's plenty of great software, and many companies offer free trials, really showcasing the kind of developer community Symbian has.

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Web Browser Roundup

2008-05-06T06:39:08Z

I'll be talking a little about the three main browsers available: the built in web browser, Opera Mini, and Opera Mobile.

The built in web browser:

Evil Avatar article at 100%

Evil Avatar home at 50%

It doesn't handle pages that are really wide, but if you click on an article, it sorts it into the frame nicely. It handles feeds very well, and if a website has a feed it's really easy to subscribe to it with only a few button presses. The menu's very intuitive, allowing all the basic navigation options, bookmark managers, and even the ability to send web pages via SMS, MMS, email or bluetooth to a different phone / device. All the standard privacy options are here as well, you can easily clear your history, cache, cookies, and form/data passwords.

There's plenty of customization available for the default browsing view; you can set some security settings such as form data saving or allowing cookies, you can block popups, choose what to display (text only, text and images only (no flash), or all), and default font size. A few other notables are being able to disable java, and showing security warnings.

Another feature is the "mini map". If you're navigating a large site, and start scrolling around, a zoomed out view will appear with a slight transparency so you can see where you are, and you can quickly navigate to the desired area. I haven't found much use for this, and thankfully there's an option to disable this feature.

Wikipedia article at 75%

The cursor (for some reason it doesn't appear in my screen caps) is fairly intelligent; allowing you to scroll in the middle third of the page (any higher or lower and the page scrolls), and locks on to links fairly automatically.

Browsing forums is a little awkward; the text is a little cramped, but thankfully the post content fits into one screen width. If someone has their avatar to the left, then you'd have to scroll left to view who posted. It's acceptable, but nothing I'd use for long stretches of time.

The browser also handles Flash Lite. It's okay, but anything too intensive chokes it up. You're still better off with something like Mobitubia if you want to view Youtube videos, for example.

Opera Mini:

Many of the basic features of Opera Mini are identical to the built-in browser, but it is missing some of the extra options, likely because it's Java-based. It doesn't handle Flash Lite, and is missing several of the customization options such as clearing cookies.

What it does have going for it is efficiency. On websites with strange alignments, like the Wikipedia page I used on the Monarchy of England, it arranged the article vertically, so viewing all sidebars and photos requires no scrolling whatsoever.

Viewing other articles looked identical to the basic web browser, for example, the Evil Avatar article on Condemned 2. You can also choose to disable images, or choose their quality. It handles the mouse cursor and scrolling in the exact same manner of the original web browser.

However, viewing web forums with this view is very difficult; it arranges all columns vertically. Thankfully, you can turn this "mobile view" off, making Opera Mini appear exactly like the original web browser.

My main complaint with Opera Mini is that there is either no way to zoom in and out using shortcut keys, or I haven't found it. There's an option for text size in the menu, but the increments aren't as fine as the Symbian browser. It's nice to just click on the * or # keys in the Symbian browser to change the text size instantly, as opposed to having to navigate to the menu to change it.

Opera Mobile:

It works in exactly the same way that Opera Mini does in terms of the browsing experience, however it isn't a Java application, so it's much more powerful. The downside is that it isn't free.

For starters, you can reconfigure the keypad shortcuts to anything you'd like, there are at least 20 options available. There's also all the basic features here; what's viewable (yet still no Flash), security settings, pop up blocker and so on.

Conclusion:

It's difficult to pick an overall winner for web browsing. For general use, Opera Mini/Mobile seems to handle things slightly better, and even scrolls slightly smoother than the Symbian browser, but for reading forums, the Symbian browser is slightly optimal. I prefer the Symbian web browser, just because the increments in text sizes available seem finer. Opera Mobile is a very nice combination of the two, however it costs $24 USD (free trial), and it's hard to swallow when practical equal experiences are available for free.

Lastly, a few minor features that I forgot to mention. It's possible to download files with the Symbian browser and Opera Mobile. As well, Opera Mobile allows you to save images off of a website. The Opera browsers are slightly faster just because of how they're processed (feel free to read the Wikipedia I linked at the top of the article).

For those of you thinking of getting either an iPhone or one of the recent Nokia N-series, I'll add that it's a little difficult to choose between the large screen and touch interface of an iPhone, and something with a smaller screen (in terms of actual size and resolution) and using a d-pad. However, I find that the information fits on the smaller screen in a smarter fashion, and the d-pad on the N82 is fairly adequate for browsing for 20-30 minutes.

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Nokia Maps Overview

2008-05-06T06:16:02Z

Here's a quick little video I made, showcasing the settings, options and capabilities of Nokia Maps. It's a fantastic utility; great for people like me who get lost easily.

Things like pools, schools, parks and museums are already integrated into the app; more details are available if you purchase one of the Nokia city guides which contain things like restaurants.

Overall I found it REALLY easy to use, and it also works without an internet connection. Map sizes vary in size; my province, Manitoba, took up 10 MB, but Ontario, for example, took up 40.

Nokia Maps Demonstration

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The Unboxing.

2008-05-06T06:14:37Z

There's tons of unboxing shots of the N82, and none are really interesting, so here's a little bit of sexy:

The black Nokia N82

The keypad is surprisingly great. Loads better than my SE K790a, and even better than my w810i, which was my favourite up until now. I'm not a huge fan of the d-pad, never was, which is why I loved SE phones, but I'm going to install Nokmote and see how well it works with some of the other applications.

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