A fine upstanding chap he is. In fact, despite the fact I’ve never met the man face to face, I would go so far as to describe him as a ‘friend’. As a long time Vodafone customer and advocate, he has come to demand a certain level of customer service. However, all is not how it should be…

To save me repeating it all, I shall direct you to here. Read it, and understand the mans frustrations.

It pisses him off, it pisses me off. When will networks customer service departments learn?

Rant over.

As part of my recently aquired N81 I’ve been given the chance to use N-gage First Access. Basically, it’s a soft launch by Nokia to test if the service works, and N81 users are the first ones to try it out. Hey, gotta give them something, right?

Now, some of you readers may not be aware but N-gage has hand a rather long and chequered history. To explain, I shall out on my teachers gown, walk over to the blackboard, and we’ll have a little history lesson…

(more…)

I’ve been sent an N81 from the chaps and chapesses at WOMworld so I can have a play about with the Ngage gaming platform, but while I’m researching that review (translation; I’m playing lots of games and don’t have time to do it) I thought I’d pass on my thoughts of the N81.

There’s no interesting goodies in the box, just the standard equipment. Charger, handsfree kit, manuals that you never read and CD for installing PC Suite.

Taking the handset out the box I straight away thought how good looking the phone was. Everything about it appeals to be. I like slider style phones a lot since I had the N95, I always like black glossy colours and the screen takes up a good chunk of the space on the front. The sides are a grey/silver colour which gives the phone a definite sense of style. The rear of the handset is the same glossy black as the front and is very minimalist, with just the words Nokia Nseries and the camera there.

The top of the handset has the 3.5mm jack for your headphones and also has a funky little keylock slider. I’m liking this a lot for such a simple little thing. Just seems a very convenient way to lock the handset. When locked, sliding open unlocks all the keys and it auto-locks when you close it up again.

The sides, as previously mentioned, are a nice silvery finish and on right hand side have the camera key, a volume rocker keys and one of the stereo speakers. The left is bare apart from the the other speaker. No gallery key on this handset, which is really no great loss as it’s possibly the most underused key on the Nseries range.

So far so good!

And then we start using it and it all goes a bit Pete Tong.

The first problem is apparent the second you turn it on. The light leak that comes off the handset is shocking. Light streams from the sides of the front key area when closed and the keypad area underneath. It looks horrible and totally cheapens the look of the handset. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of my pet hates on a handset. That said, the lighting on the handset is very bright and makes usage in the dark very easy. The screen is lovely and bright too, but that’s something really that should be default in this day and age.

The keys have another issue though, and one that’s not easily ignored. I think it was Stefan over at Intomobile who described it best; there’s quite simply a ‘clusterfuck’ of buttons. When the slider is closed, so I’m just counting the keys you use to navigate menus etc, there is 16 buttons, all of which are screaming to have you catch them and do exactly the thing you don’t want to happen. Any idea how many times I’ve wanted to press the red end call key but hit the ‘C’ key and nearly deleted an app? Or caught a music key randomly? Lots, let me tell you.

And mentioning apps brings me onto my next problem. I’m pretty insistent on installing apps to my phone memory. I know this is a debatable point, and people will disagree, but I find that the NSeries handsets are a tonne more stable when you put every app on the phone memory. With the 8gb only being flash memory, and in essence a memory card, I would have liked to have done the same on the N81. But can I? No. Because the damn thing is crippled with a near criminal lack of phone memory. I think there’s about 25mb in there. Now on my N81 I have the Ngage system preinstalled and a bunch of games, which seems to take up a fairly whopping chunk of the 25mb. I have only installed the gmail app and Handy Taskman, and I’m left with a completely pathetic 2mb of free phone memory. Seriously, I can’t even install the Jaiku app because whenever it tries to run, I’m plagued with low memory warnings. It made me so angry, I had to take a picture just to show you how angry I was.

Wow, that pictures crap. Oh yes, that’s another problem. Why Nokia deemed this handset worthy of only being given a 2 megapixel camera is beyond me. Lets look at me angry again, but this time taken with an N95.

Wow, I’m shiny today. But seriously, do people even buy 2 megapixel camera phones anymore? Weren’t they about… 3 years ago? Is the video any better?

Back to the buttons for one second, there’s a big problem with the location and design of the music keys that surround the Navi key (and more on that monstrosity in a second). Thery’re just too close to everything else so half the time you’re pressing the wrong thing, especially if you’re trying to do it blind. I’m slightly worried that this design is returning with the N96 which seems to have a smaller form factor in that area but we’ll see in time if the same issues return.

Now onto the Navi key… This is possibly the most useless thing I’ve come across on a phone in a long time. It’s very rarely active, in fact it only seems to click into use when you’re using the music player. It’s an obvious attempt to copy the style of the wheel on an iPod, but it fails on nearly every level. When it’s responsive it’s too responsive. When it’s unresponsive it just seems to do nothing. I hate it with a passion that I normally reserve for Chelsea FC and Samsung. I could quite happily never see this on a Nokia handset ever again.

I’m not going to mention too much about this as it could be a fault on this handset, but the signal seems to be awful. I can sit there with signal but the second I pick up the phone, it drops to literally nothing. I’ve tried and N95 and the N81 next to each other, both with sims in from the same operator and there is a huge difference in the strength of the signal recieved by the N95.

Anything else I can moan about… let me think…. Oh yes, the slider is wobblier than me after 10 pints. On the other hand, anyone who’s used a Nokia slider recently won’t be suprised by this. How come companies like Samsung can make rock solid sliders, yet Nokia seem totally incapable of this. Confuses the hell out of me.

Still, I’m ignoring one big point here, and it’s the reason this handset exists. Music. I didn’t want to give this a headstart over any other handset, so I used the same Bose earphones I use normally. Could I tell the difference between this and, say, the N82? Well a little, but nowhere near enough to make me think that this is a worthy addition to the Nseries portfolio. I mean think about it, what would you rather do, carry around an N82 with it’s 5 megapixel camera which an 8gb memory card in it (which you can pick up for around £30 now) or carry around a phone with a separate camera because it’s so frigging useless. C’mon, it’s a no-brainer. Even if you’re not a massive camera user, surely there is going to be some point when you’re going to want to use one and lets face it, you’d rather that picture came out good, rather than looking decidedly fuzzy.

On a plus point regarding music, the speakers are really loud and quite good. My car stereo has recently broken and I’ve been using it in my car and it’s performed quite admirably really.

Syncing music to the handset is a painfree process but slow. I use the option of syncing via Windows Media Player and it works without any problems and also syncs any playlists I have. No problems there at all.

So can I recommend this handset? Not really. I can’t find anything seriously redeeming that overlooks it’s obvious problems. I certainly couldn’t tell anyone to go buy it on contract and at just under £300 on Pay As You Go, it’s a price that’s far too steep to comprehend. I know it’s aimed as a music handset, but there’s just not enough of a jump in sound quality to justify the shocking camera. As if you didn’t realise from what I’ve already said, I plainly don’t like this phone. I’ll go as far as to say it’s the most badly thought out handsets I’ve come across.

Nokia, no more like this. Ever.

Link to Sportstracker page

Pre Run video

Post run video
*still uploading*

Hope you all have a nice evening!

Link to Sportstracker

Link to Flixwagon videos

Looks like I’ve lost the first day, Ricky doubled what I ran but I’m using the excuse of I’m busy!

Distance was 1.3km and weight was 11.6 stone which is 73.66 in kilograms.

Also just realised I did it on Monday, instead of Tuesday as I should have. Sorry Ricky! I’ll do it on Thursday like a good boy…

Anyone remember Geek Fitness? That was a good idea wasn’t it? Shame I’m such a useless, lazy, unmotivated drunk that it never actually lasted more than 2 days. Still the thought was there, and it stirred a bit of conversation, and that’s all good.

It’s been in the back of my mind that it was a bit of a wasted oppotunity though. Nokia are starting to really push this application and are pumping out new features all the time. A recent addition is that you can now integrate your activities into Facebook so you can show your friends exactly how much of a fitness guru you’re turning into.

And speaking of gurus, here’s where I explain the title of the post. A few days ago, I got a message from my friend Ricky from Symbian-Guru. He was thinking of doing something along the same lines as Geek Fitness and I told him I was debating starting it up again. The conversation quickly developed when Ricky brought out my competitive streak; Why not make it a competition?

The seeds of the Geek vs. The Guru was born. Over the next few days we thrashed out the details. The contest will run until Rickys wedding, which is some time in March (the exact date escapes me right now). We are allowed two runs per week, on Monday and a Wednesday. After each run we will be upload the data from the run and post up a video telling you all how great we feel (yeah right). After the runs we will weigh ourselves too to see if there’s been any changes to our girth.

As this is a competition, a point system has been put into place. A point will be awarded for the person who ran the furthest distance that night and a point for the person who has lost the most weight against their starting weight. I’ll do a weigh in video on Sunday so I can horrifically mortify myself by broadcasting my weight across the internet. I’m dreading that moment more than any other.

I spoke about my ‘motivation issues’ at the beginning off this post. People I’ve spoke to about doing this have said “Matt, you tired this before and you lasted a whole two days. Why is this going to any better?” Well my motivation came over Christmas when I decided to re-watch some of those great films. I was watching American Beauty, and when Lester Burnham is asked why he wanted to start working out, he came back with one of those immortal lines. “I want to look good naked.” That’s it folks. My whole reason for doing this. I just want to look better when I’ve got my kit off, and for me, there’s no better motivation than that.

I’ll be trying a few new things with my videos. I’ll do the normal embadded one, but I’ll also be using Seesmic and Flixwagon (thanks Ricky and Xen). Both are new sites currently in alpha testing so when I’ll be using them I’ll be testing them at the same time for a review on my blog. I’ll also post a link straight to the Tracker website, or you can add me an Facebook and check it from there. Hit this link to go to my profile.

There is no prize as such with this, it’s simply a case of pride. The winner takes the bragging rights and the loser has to sign a contract stating that they will be the winners slave forever. OK the last part isn’t true, but I’m sure I can get Ricky round to my way of thinking.

All this leaves is a couple of messages. One to you the reader; enjoy the pain, the guts and the glory. And one to Ricky; It’s on my friend, oh it’s on.

I didn’t mention I had one of these, but a few weeks ago WOMworld decided ever so kindly to send me a brand spanking Nokia N810 internet Tablet. Here’s my views on this newly launched device.

I’m going to begin by saying this; I’m reviewing this as a standard, run of the mill consumer. I’m not a massively technical person when it comes to this kind of product, so I am in effect the Joe Bloggs in the street who see’s on in Comet and thinks about picking one up. I remember reading a while ago that Nokia wanted this to be a more ‘consumer driven’ device, rather than one for the tech-heads, so let’s see if they managed it.

We’ll start off with a little background info shall we? The N810 is the sucessor to the N800 which I’ve reviewed previously and found good, if slightly frustrating. The N810 is not intended to replace the N800 at the current time, as both as still being made, it seems to just be a slightly improved model. The device runs an operating system called OS2008, which is also available to users of the N800. If you’ve got one, upgrade. It’s well worth it.

There’s a few crucial differences between the N800 and The N810 which I’ve listed below. I’ll go into these in more detail later on.
* Sliding, backlit keyboard
* Front-facing webcam
* Ambient Light Sensor
* Integrated GPS
* 2GB integrated internal storage and one MiniSDHC card slot
* Sunlight readable transflective display.

Right, now lets break down some things and look at them closer.

Hey there good looking…

For me, a fundamental point of a device is how it looks. No one wants to carry around something that physically repulses them and causes embarassment whenever it’s pulled out in the pub! I know that saying this is a fundamental point will strike some as strange, so let me clarify. I’m not saying it’s more important than the functionality, I’m saying it’s important in it’s own right. To me (as I have a humongous ego) the tech I carry around has to look impressive.

The N810 does not fall down in this respect at all. It’s a gorgeously made piece of kit, and one I was proud to be seen with. The huge screen is so bright it could burn retinas at 30 paces and the clarity is something that has to be seen to be believed. Once you take your eyes off the screen, you’ll notice how beautifully made it is.

The material that surounds the screen is a gorgeous bluey/grey brushed metal. It gives the device a great finish and it feels incredibily classy. You’ll notice a couple of things on left hand side there. On the far edge are two buttons on a rocker switch. Above that is a camera. Don’t get too excited about the camera, it’s pretty poor quality.

In this image you can see the little flip down stand. The is 3 upright positions you can place it into, depending on how you find comfortable. Moving the flip reveals the micro-USB slot for use with the data cable (provided in the box). On the other side we can see the charging port (small pin) and the 3.5mm socket for your headphones. To the right of that is one of the stereo speakers. There’s another on the other side.

Here you can see the top end of the device. On the left hand side is a slider key for locking or unlocking the device. Don’t ask me why, but I love slider keys. Seriously. In the middle is an on/off switch and next to that the volume keys. On the far right is a key which main function seems to be switching whichever app you’re in into full screen mode. I like this a lot, that bit extra real estate makes the difference sometimes.

GPS

It’s pretty official, Nokia is in love with integrating GPS into their top end devices now, and why not? Makes a lot of sense to carry round one device that has multiple functions rather than 3 or 4 seperate ones. The Nokia Maps that comes integrated on the N-Series phones is in my opinion pretty passable for a GPS system. It’s pretty accurate, A-GPS has sped up lock times hugely and best of all… IT’S FREE. Ish. But you get my point.

Oddly, Nokia have totally bypassed their own system and plumped for one provided by Wayfinder. Good news is, it’s quite cracking. Instead of typing about it, I did a short video today while driving so check below for it.

There’s a few bad points though. One the speedometer is well out. I’m talking, 15 miles an hour out. Why include something that obviously doesn’t work right? Also, will the price of the navigation put people off? 99 Euros (about £74) for 3 years doesn’t sounds bad, but how many people will keep the N810 for 3 years? Is the licence transferrable? The type of person who’ll buy an N810, aren’t they the really the type of person who probably own a dedicated Sat Nav anyway? The answer to these isn’t easy to find, and I suspect that’ll put enough people off splashing the cash.

Next problem, and the biggest and baddest is that the GPS chip ain’t all that good. I live up north, where there’s not many high buildings or built up areas. Still I had to park up for a full 20 minutes before I got a lock. Even then, putting the device on my lap while I try to record the video meant I constantly lost the lock. Now admittedly, not many people are going to drive around with the N810 in their crotch, but I’m more thinking does it lose signal all the time when you’re in built up areas?

One thing I love though, and I mentioned this in the video, is the inclusion of a decent car mount in the box. Brilliant move. Seriously, how many times have you bought something, and then realised you’ve got to spunk more cash on a decent holder for it? It bugs the arse off me EVERY time. Bravo Nokia, bravo. Do this more. I want handsfree kits, car chargers and mounts in every box that had GPS included from now on, or I’m coming over there to hold your product managers by the testicles until you do it.

Just watched the video back, and it’s not really that clear. I’m more than happy to answer any questions about the Navigation, and I’ll do more videos if you want too.

Media player

I thought I’d put a bit of media playing info in here because of a comparison my friend made to me the other day. He looked at the N810, then pulled an iPod Touch out his pocket and said, ‘Why’s that better than this?’ Now I’m sure a lot of tablet affictionados will think of 3 trillion reasons why, but you forget, we’re talking about the ‘every man’ here.

Media playing is one of those buzz things for devices right now. Everyone wants to take their music/video/pictures with them at all times. Lets face it, for the every day consumer, and iPod Touch is pretty much a great device for those things. Can the N810 do it to the same level of ease the Touch can?

That’s right kids, that was me annoyed. Why make the damn thing so ugly? You want to make it consumer friendly, and then you make it look like the dullest interface ever? With the installed application at least it looks vaguely pretty. Seriously Nokia, wake up. Sex sells. It sells everything. You can make your devices look as sexy as you want, but unless it works sexy, then how are you supposed to convince the mass market? How are you supposed to get shop salesmen to demo it?

Here’s something I’m raving about though. Media Streaming. I’m using TVersity at home for my streaming needs, and the N810 works with it no probs. Bit slow to start up, but after that it’s seamless. No slowdown, no out of sync, just brilliant. Hit the video to see how it works.

World without wires

Now the N810 is an Internet Tablet, and I’ve not talked about web browsing yet, so I’m going to squeeze it in here but there’s something more important to come yet.

See my favourite thing about the N810 is that I can use it anywhere I’ve got some form of wireless connection, be it my phone or Wi-Fi, and this is the big swinger that should be screamed off the rooftops when it’s compared to the Touch. here’s how the conversation when with my ipod Touch owning friends…

Friend : ‘And it’s great, I can go on the internet anywhere!’
Me : ‘Well, not really.’
Friend : ‘Ok, anywhere with Wi-Fi.’
Me : ‘We live in the back end of nowhere. Exactly how many places have Wi-Fi around here?’
Friend : ‘…Uncomfortable silence… Well that’s all you can do.’
Me : ‘No, i can use my phone as a Bluetooth modem. If I’ve got signal on my phone, I can use the browser. If I’ve got Wi-fi, I can use that. The Touch can’t do that.’
Other friend : ‘Seriously? That’s cool. Would it work with my phone? Or does it have to be a certain phone?’

So I showed him with his SonyEricsson. There were 8 people round a table, totally blown away. And the iPod Touch owner was totally converted. He could see the limitations of what he owned.

Here’s why I think the connectiveity options are so great on the N810. I’ve got various hotspots saved on there and I’ve also got my phones 3G connection too. The N810 scans for connections at regular intervals. If I leave my house and go to my local for example, which is about a 5 minute drive, by the time I’ve ordered a pint and sat down it will have shifted onto the pubs Wi-Fi connection. If it decides to scan while I’m on the drive it’ll realise there’s no Wi-Fi and uses my phones 3G connection. The phone auto accepts this connection so I’m straight back linked onto the world! I’m all over that like a fat kid on cake, seriously.

I know I said this is an ‘everyman’ review but I’ve included the part above because it’s so easy to do. The N810 really spells out what you need to do. It should be that easy to do everything on here.

Thanks for the keys Nokia

Thank you for putting a keyboard on this. As much as I didn’t mind the virtual keyboard of the N800, having a slide down keyboard is a godsend. It’s pretty much prefect for everything you’re going to use it for. Chatting, blog posts, whatever. It’s small enough to be descrete but not uncomfortable to use. The punctionation characters and numbers are all easily accessible using a function key. Also good i that the N810 is weighted well, so when you’re holding it in two hands to use the keys it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be slipping out your hands and toppling over.

Brief bit about the of tonne of applications you can install.

I’m not going to in-depth into this but I will provide you a link later to somewhere where you can find all you would need to know about this. It’s the places I go for my info.

There’s a million and one things you can install on this for just about any purpose you could ever think of. media Streaming, E-mail, Chat clients, Games, blogging tools, emulators… I could go on, but seriously, there’s something for practically everything you need.

I’ll let you into a few I use..

Mauku - a Jaiku client for the N800 and N810. Anyone who knows me knows I love Jaiku. A lot of people use it for a lot of different reasons, but for me it’s beacuse everytime I log on, I can find an interesting conversation to jump in on. I’ve met some great people on there too, such as James Whatley (and you really need to read his posts, head over to his Vox blog here and be sure to read his Whatley Wednesday posts over at SMS Text News).

Gmail Notifier - very simple this. It adds a little mail icon to the top status bar on the N810s home screen. Whwn I get mail, it plays a little sound and lights up. For a man with as much mail as me, that’s damn handy.

Pidgin - Thisn’t everyones cup of tea, but it’s the one I use. It basically link sonto your chat accounts and keeps them all open in one place.

However, this isn’t really my forte, so I’ll direct you over to Internet Tablet Talk. It’s a great source of info, and the forums are very handy for when you have problems or questions.

In conclusion my dear Watson…

God this is hard to sum up. Do I love it? Oh yes. Would I buy one? Yeah, more than likely I will. Will the general consumer? Now that’s a tough one.

But the answer is probably not for a variety of reasons. I went into a certain retail outlet today and asked for something that can use the internet, play music and video etc. he told me ‘You’ve got to get the iPod Touch then. It’s the only thing that’ll really do all three.’ Despite the fact that so many phones can do those three things, he plumped for one device and left it there. When I mentioned the N810, he looked at me with that snotty face that only underpaid salespeople can do and said ‘Can’t do video on that mate.’

And there’s your fundamental problem. How on earth are the comsumers supposed to to understand what a product does when the people who sell it don’t understand either? Lets face it, Nokias marketing isn’t great at the best of times but for a device they wanted to be more ‘consumer friendly’ I feel they’ve really let themselves down. Let people know what it can do. Make sure the shops know what it can do and what possibilities it has. They’re the ones who should be pushing this device. Instead, they’re pushing people Apples way, and you don’t want that right now.

It will tempt new customers though. the tech-savvy, the ones who want the constant connection to their online life, people who want a portable PC may be swung by it’s charms too. It’s certainly not without it’s fans. People couldn’t stop touching it, where ever I took it. However everytime I explained what it did, that blank look appeared on their face!

Here’s the other side of the coin. Will people with the N800 upgrade to the N810? Well some will, some won’t. The ones who will are probably the die hard Nokia or Maemo fans. The ones who can see the limitless potential and can utilize it fully and the ones who just want the latest variant. The ones who won’t will probably not see it as a big enough upgrade over what they have. They’re the ones who don’t need the keyboard or the internal GPS. If the want to use the navigation, they’ll spend a few quid on a Bluetooth GPS module and they’ll be more than happy. At the end of the day OS2008 is available to them, so they get the majority of the benefits. They also get to keep something Nokia took away from the N810, two expanable memory card slots.

To sum up, I kind of feel this is a bit of a dropped ball for Nokia. They had a chance to create a goregous, consumer friendly device here. They tested the waters with the 770 and the N800, and here was the big chance. Instead, they shipped a gorgeous device and said ‘Go on. Now try and use it. We’re not telling you how though unless you’re pretty good on computers and you want to spend time hunting around.’ Big no Nokia.

Am I going to recomend it to you? Yes. Give it time. Hunt for what you want. Ask questions, because without that you won’t get your answers. Your patience will be rewarded and you’ll end up with a better device than the major competitor on the market.

I’m back around now, should get some posts up by tomorrow at the latest.

Hope you all had a good Christmas, and a wish you all a Happy New Year.

Matt

I actually don’t feel nearly as bad as yesterday. Slightly further, 8 seconds less time. That I like. If this continues, I’ll be a happy man. I just need those damn scales now to see if it’s actually working!

The Mp3 player really helped tonight. Some good tunes, really kept me going.

Here’s the link for Day 2. Geek Fitess Day 2

Off to do some Wii Boxing now. This is so the geekiest keep fit routine ever.

Not well then. I’ve not even watched that so I might be rambling about nothing.

Here’s the link for the run. You can see my route, speed, etc.
Geek Fitness - Day 1

1.3 miles. Might not sound like much, but it’s actually 1 mile more than I thought I could manage.