Phone-Rush

Nokia Sports Tracker + GeoTagging + N95-4: A Few Observations

Last week I wasn't liking what I was seeing in the mirror, the bulge of fat around my stomach. From that time I've made a conscience effort to lose some weight. I did try using Nokia Sports Tracker before, but I never really dove into the features it offered, and abandoned it for a while. Since last week in my walks I've had it activated and occasionally set it to live stream my walk which could be followed on the Sports Tracker website. I also had the Location Tagger running in the background, and was taking pictures of any interesting sites or scenes during my walk. These photos being geotagged, it's an easy effort to upload them to the Sports Tracker website with the workout stats at the same time. Of course thanks to Mark he has a tutorial on how to embed this info from Sports Tracker on Google Maps. During the last week I've made a few observations and have some issues with the service which I hope can be ironed out for the next release of Sports Tracker.

1. In the path tracer on the applications, you can only see a trace of where you have walked so far. Where is the map that shows the streets? It can't be hard to put one there, even if it needs a data connection to retrieve it.

2. It would be great if an Auto Upload option is available so that my workouts get uploaded to the service right after I'm finished.

3. Right after the workout is over, I manually try to upload the workout to the service, and half the times it doesn't happen until I reboot the application.

4. When the workouts get uploaded, the pictures don't make it almost half the times. At all. Even when they do at times they aren't position correctly.

5. This might be related to the internal GPS of the N95-4 (or all N95s in general), but the speeds and altitudes have too much fluctuations in the readout on the application and on the website. Does anyone else have a problem with this? Is there more precision with an external bluetooth GPS?

6. It's relatively easy to import the Sportstracker info to Google maps. However in the process the geotagged photos on Sports Tracker don't make it through for some reason in the final map on Google Maps. This could be a glitch in the system or something wrong in the setup.

Still, this is a great application and service combined together, and it's a must have for any S60 and workout junkies.

[Photo: blogs.s60.com]

How To Tether Your Nokia S60 Phone To Your Windows Vista Laptop

In this how to, I want to show you how to connect your Nokia S60 phone and utilize the cellular data that it receives and channel it to your laptop, therefore making you're laptop go online anywhere you get a cellular reception. There are 3 main ways of doing this:

1. Using a Bluetooth Connection
2. Using a USB cable
3. Using an application called JoikoSpot or WalkingHotSpot. (If using this method your phone has to have Wi-Fi as well)

Now that we know the methods, We want to "tether" our phone to the laptop running Windows Vista using the first two methods. For this how to I'll be using a N95 8GB NAM (N95-4), as it supports US 3G  HSDPA and makes practical sense to tether (tethering can be done with other S60 phones with GPRS or EDGE as well). Of course there are multiple ways to set this up, but I'm trying to aim for the most stream-lined way of doing it, by using the Nokia PC Suite (or Nseries Suite).

1. Using a Bluetooth Connection:

Now my laptop has built-in bluetooth, but If your's doesn't, you can head down to any electronic store and pick up a bluetooth dongle for around $20. All you have to do is pop in the installation CD from the dongle and follow the instructions. Once you've installed your bluetooth dongle, install the Nokia PC Suite. Once you're done with that, you go to the Get Connected Wizard (or on the newest version of the PC Suite you can select "Click here to connect a phone).

Next Generation of Nokia Chargers to Use 90% Less "Vampire Power"

Over at Nokia Conversations, Charlie Schick has an update with the development of the next generation of Nokia chargers, that use almost 90% less energy when left plugged into an outlet than the current chargers in the market also known (Going from 150 mA to 15 mA). This power being wasted as a result of leaving chargers plugged in without charging anything is called Vampire Power. He also explains the significance of this, given the fact that there are around 3 billion phones and therefore chargers out there, and therefore if all handset manufacturers would embrace energy-efficient chargers there would be less demand on the power grids.

The newest charger that utilizes this technology is the Nokia High Efficiency Charger AC-8, and you can read some interesting comparisons there between the AC-8 and the power usage of regular Nokia chargers per year. In the article there is a link to new solutions for charging phones without wasting energy as well. I admit I'm one of those people that leave their chargers plugged into the outlet, but it would be a start if we can all unplug those idling chargers. If you have multiple devices that use the same type of charger, it's better to leave one charger idling compared to having all of those chargers plugged in at the same time doing nothing.

Video: Nokia N78's FM Transmitter in Action

    The Nokia N78 was announced back at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and the feature that made it unique was the inclusion of a FM transmitter, which allows the phone to wirelessly stream audio to a FM receiver, most notably a car stereo. Greg over at SymbianFrance has a brief video of the whole setup, which is definitely worth the watch. Having a FM transmitter is great for people who can't utilize a patch cord to connect the phone to an AUX jack. I'm eager to try the FM transmitter feature here in LA, where there is heavy congestion on FM frequencies and see how well it works. The FM transmitter has optimal performance on an empty frequency. I'd like to also figure out if it's possible to potentially use the FM transmitter during calls, effectively using the phone in a handsfree mode and listening to the other side of the line through the car speakers.

N78 FM: fonction transmetteur FM
by symbianfrance

Sony Ericsson Selling Directly...at Fry's?

I was in Fry's yesterday (the mecca of all geeks in the U.S.) and as I was passing by a few aisles, a Sony Ericsson K550i caught my attention. As I went closer, I noticed there is a sub-section devoted to Sony Ericsson handsets, ranging from the low-end Z310a to the P1i. The prices they had there were sim-free prices, but the point is that these phones were unlocked and that Sony Ericsson, even as an experiment at least, is trying to bypass carriers and reach its market directly. The other point is that the customers shopping in Fry's and also the sales associates are usually more technical-orientated than other electronic stores, so they'll be more interested checking out the features of these phones. This is something that Nokia needs to pay attention to if they want to continue their efforts in finding a market here in the U.S. with their high-end smartphones.

Followup: Review of Nokia 6500 Classic

if you haven't been following my experience with the Nokia 6500 Classic, I recommend checking out the preview and start from there. For those of you who did read that, I've followed up and rounded up my take on the OS and overall performance of the phone and will go into detail of some of its strengths and weaknesses.

Active Standby

when active standby is turned on

There are four rows that can be selected and each row is highly customizable, giving you a vast freedom and control over what you want to see on the default page. Also it's relatively simple to customize the feel of this home page directly from there by not more than 2 clicks, which is great in the sense that doesn't require the user to go digging in the menus to try to find the appropriate settings.

Most likely one of the these rows is set to be the shortcut bar, which is equivalent to the s60 active standby apps. The small screen can only fit 5 shortcuts at a time, but this standby is dynamic, meaning that if you keep pressing left or right, they well scroll accordingly and you can select a 6th shortcut in there as well, which is a great feature. This is a significant omission on S60 phones (most notoriously the E90 with its internal screen) that don't utilize the space they have for adding additional shortcuts to the active standby, and yet S40 in general allows you to have scrollable shortcuts for applications in their smaller screens.

When active standby is turned off

Pressing any direction will directly take you to designated operations or applications when the shortcuts are disabled and can be accessed indirectly when the active standby is on. This can be setup in the settings of the phone.

The left and right softkeys are also customizable.

 

Nokia Nseries WOMWorld being transformed to Nokia WOMWorld?

    To most prominent bloggers covering Nokia Nseries devices and avid readers following Nokia Nseries phones on the blogosphere the PR company known as WOMWorld is a familiar one. In the start of the new year they have increased their activities, and they will be promoting the brand more heavily this year. One interesting tidbit is that after they reconstructed their site, the user is now greeted with a new design on the home page. But there is more to it. Once you start reading you'll notice that they are now covering and talking about Nokia Eseries devices. I've longed waited for such an initiative.

    The Eseries devices have always been left behind in major advertising campaigns by Nokia, and now there is a chance for these devices to be talked about more often. Probably since these devices are focused more on enterprise and business use, the people at Nokia thought that Word of Mouth isn't as effective as with the more consumer-oriented Nseries line. Well now that has changed, and apparently the WOMWorld team will be covering these devices in addition to the Nseries devices. With more coverage of Eseries devices, the people at Nokia will be more pressed to develop more devices in this series, which honestly makes me excited as they are for the most part are superior in build quality compared to their Nseries counterparts.

This move seems to be in conjunction of Nokia's Conversations blog going public soon as well, a site that is "not just about phones, but about people, products and services, thoughts, interests, business and more."

New Nokia N95 8GB Commercial - Competitive Eating

If you hit up Youtube searching for Nokia commercials, you'll find dozens of them. I wonder at times why don't these commercials hit radio or TV airwaves so at least people in the US can find out about the capabilities of these phones. Anyways watch the latest commercial of the N95 8GB below, it's humorous in its own way. I'd also like to see commercials that are quick demos of what the phone can do (GPS, music, video, streaming, etc). Enjoy the clip.

Thanks to WOMWorld for sending this.

UPDATE: The site www.opentoanything.com is not live, but it will be soon.

Latest N82 Firmware Upgrade Brings Flash Lite 3, Geotagging, and Web Runtime

The gods of firmware upgrade this time have smiled upon the Nokia N82, upgrading it to V 20.0.62. This release adds Flash Lite 3, so the phone can stream flash content. It also brings integrated geotagging, so that there is no need to use a 3rd party app like Shozu to geotag the pictures taken on the phone. It also finally brings Web Runtime which if I understand correctly, monitors the usage of the web browser, from execution to termination. There are also tweaks to bluetooth and camera settings.

On a relevant note so far in the last few months most of the hi-end Nokia Nseries devices have received a significant firmware upgrade. The only shining exception is the N95-3, the poor child of the Nseries family left alone in front of the door footsteps of the US consumer market. People and users here are already unsatisfied with how warranty issues are handled in the US, and the lack of firmware upgrades is another manifestation of the absence of dedicated support in the US from Nokia.

If only the N82 had US 3G...

Via symbian-guru

Sample Pictures from Nokia N78

Here are a few sample pictures taken from the Nokia N78 from the Nokia Stand at CTIA. The picture below on the left is taken in macro mode, and the next one on the right is taken in auto mode. Here is the FW on the N78:

Software Version: 10.026

Software Version Date: 3/26/2008

Custom Version 10.026.054.1

Custom Version Date: 3/26/2008

Language: 019

Type Designator: RM-342