Nokia has announced their new high-end model, the N8. This smartphone puts a great accent on multimedia and social networking. It has pushing capabilities to various services such as Twitter, RenRen and Facebook, and you can even view Web TV directly on the phone (CNN and National Geographic for example). Plus, you'll have free GPS navigation (+maps), forever.
A 12 mega-pixel camera has been implemented, with HD video recording capability. The N8 brings the new Symbian 3 operating system (how about Maemo, Nokia?). What it has inside isn't that impressive as the camera is, and we are talking about a modest 680 MHz ARM 11 processor and 256 MB RAM memory. It has 16 GB internal memory, which can be expanded with another additional 32 GB (microSD). There is a 3,5" capacitive touch screen, with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels.
The quantity of internal memory is too much, in my opinion. Nokia is far away from being an important "player" in the domain of smartphones. Their previous high-end model (N97) was a disaster, and this happened mainly because of really slack performance especially when more data is present on storage memory. Because the improvements at processor and RAM are not that important, a great pressure is being put on Symbian 3.
In my point of view, this smartphone doesn't bring enough change compared to previous models so it won't reach the success. Moreover, it could be a disaster, like his "smaller brother", the N97. The phone will be available in more colors, at a price of 370 euros without any taxes. Shipping starts from the third quarter of 2010.
A few days ago I had the opportunity of testing the product which Apple says that it's a revolutionary one, the iPad (they said the same when they launched any other product).
Firstly, I'll tell you its specifications. It has an Apple A4 1 GHz processor, based on ARM technology. The storage memory varies between 16, 32 and 64 GB, and, related to RAM memory, this is a complete mystery (yet). It is known that physically it seems to be having 512 MB of RAM, but in practice, it reveals only 256 MB of RAM (showed by different tests). It is certain only that the RAM is integrated into the chip of the processor.
It also has a 10 inch capacitive multi-touch screen, perfect for almost anything. On the connectivity side, we have the Wi-Fi model, which starts at $499 with 16 GB of storage, and the Wi-Fi + 3G model which is going to be available soon, this month. The battery offers 1 month for stand-by, and about 10 hours when surfing web on Wi-Fi and stuff like that.
On the Apple Store I've waited for a few minutes after I got one to play with (everybody was running to get one to test when somebody finished testing one). I think that there were about 15-20 iPads available (it is a quite big store, in Dadeland Mall, Miami).
The first sensation was that it was fast. But not as fast as I was expecting, but it was pretty good. The applications are launching like on the iPhone (slowly, showing who made them or things like that), and some of them really looked very well. But several were made especially for the iPhone, and looked very bad because they were running at a low resolution (I'm sure that this will be a problem for a long time).
I found it difficult to play with it using its accelerometer, considering that I used an iPhone for about 1 year and a half, and now I have the Nexus One. It is an updated version of iPhone OS, so the menus are updated in many basic applications (they look really good).
Many fans of Apple said that the iPad is very fast, faster than even the Nexus One. I don't agree with this. They probably said this even without ever touching a Nexus. It is clearly faster than the iPad.
There have been reported several problems with the iPad after only a few hours after it was launched, many users complaining that on their Windows machines and especially when connected to USB hubs the iPad refuses to charge. Apple says that when it gets into sleep, it starts charging automatically, but they can't actually prove that this happens at all times, because there is no icon indicating if it charges or not. And there are also problems with weak Wi-Fi signal and connection problems on LAN configurations.
And if you want one, if need to know that it has no camera and no GPS. You can buy additional accessories, and even if the iPad starts a $499, you can easily pass $1000, considering that Apple has only quite expensive accessories.
Apple has reached again, a great success with the iPad. In the first day of selling, the sells with the pre-orders passed 300 000 units. This is completely astonishing. To compare, Google sold only 135 000 Nexus One units after 74 days, while there were about 1 million iPhones (first generation) sold after the same period of days. I don't know how Apple does this, but it is known that Steve Jobs has currently the most profitable company in the domain of mobile devices.
Below is a video taken with my Nexus One, while I was testing some of iPad's functionalities:
Nexus One has been recently launched, being already very popular. The phone is very performant, having inside a "monster" Qualcomm QSD 8250 Snapdragon ARM processor which runs at 1 GHz, assisted by 510 MB of RAM, which makes the device one of the most powerful available on market. It has 512 MB storage memory, and a 4GB microSD card included, with the possibility to insert storage cards up to 32 GB.
The screen (capacitive one, of course) has 3,7 inches, and a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, with 100,000:1 contrast ratio and 1 ms response rate. It has a battery which a capacity of 1400 mAh, which offers up to 290 hours on standby, 10 hours while talking, and 5 hours while browsing. The camera has 5.0 megapixels, with recording possibility, geotagging, auto focus, and flash LED.
What I don't like about it is the plastic it is made of, which gives a sensation of cheap phone. Users complained, so far, about problems with connection through 3G networks. The phone runs on 2.1 version of Android, and it is available without any contract (network free) for 529 dollars.
What do you think about the Nexus One? Do you like it or not? Do you have plans about buying one, or you have already got one?
