My Lumia 800

This week I got my new Nokia Lumia 800, a blue one, this makes it easier to find it, as most phones are black. The Lumia has a new micro SIM card, smaller than the normal card, possibly to get rid of older still functioning phones.

The phone looks very nice, feels lightweight after my N900, lies comfortably in my hand and is easy to operate. However, it is definitely different from Symbian or Maemo phones, For starters, the setup is very easy, and actually there are very few things one can change or should change, it just works fine. This might sound difficult to people who love change things, but for the everyday users it is a great improvement. One small example; it takes tens of different parameters to setup the WLAN of our university to get my N7 Nokia (Symbia) on the net, but I needed only to give my username and password for the Lumia. Crystal clear screen, smoothly moving menus and great telephone reception are standard

The first thing I had to do was to transfer my contacts from the old Nokia N900 to the Lumia, this is done using an special contacts transfer application, using Bluetooth, very simple. After this I needed some apps I am used to, GPS, mapping, clock, flashlight etc, all could be found on the Noka marketplace, some are free, some not, but it works fine.

Now to connect the Lumia to a PC, one needs new software, Zune, which is a bit like iTunes for the iPad. Anyway it works, but I am not really crazy about the combination of backup and update features with music and video. I actually liked Ovi Suite, as it is very easy and straightforward.

Now the thing I do not like, on my Nokia N7 I have Nokia Maps with downloadable maps which can be used offline. One can mark favorite locations and synchronize them with the Ovi service. In the Lumia ther is the same Nokia Maps but has no downloadable maps. Nokia Maps in Lumia is more like Google maps or Bing Maps. It is possible to mark favorite locations, but there is no way to import the old (Symbia) locations from the Ovi service. This is something I am very dissatisfied with, and I just would like to see the same functionality as in Symbia Nokia Maps. The Nokia Drive, car Navigation works fine, no problems with that. Maps can be downloaded easily, although I have noticed that some time ago Nokia started to downgrade (made the size smaller) maps, so many smaller forest tracks and dirt roads have been removed, that was a pity as I often need these, but I do understand it, the maps grew too large and it became very slow to download them.

The camera has eight Megapixels, Zeiss optics, standard in many Nokia phones, the results are a bit blurred, and I think there is a problem with shutter speed It seems that I got better results using a fixed ISO (100) value as compared to the automatic value. I compared the results with a Sony pocket digital camera and there was little difference.

As this phone is now in the Microsoft Windows realm it is easy to sync with SkyDrive, it can actually sync pictures on the go. However, I found out that this automatic SkyDrive upload feature does drain the battery really fast if you are in an area with a slow network. But it works and is simple to set up. The same counts for email, very simple and easy to configure.

ISO value 100

Landscape, ISO 100

Megalomania, pixels, MegaBytes, CPU's and Apps

It seems that mobile technology developers are in an everlasting race to get devices with more pixels, more processors, more memory and bigger screens. The question left often unanswered is what the customer really needs. Or even, do the customers even now what they need, it is clear that perceived needs and real needs are different issues. It is also clear that there are different needs for personal and corporate use.

The combination of camera and phone is extremely useful, the integration of GPS, digital compass, and accelerometer helps navigating from one place to the other. Manufacturers often like to indicate the number of pixels, or the resolution of the camera. This however is only  part of the story, quality of the lens, flash and software are perhaps much more important.  The second camera for video calls is often available, but who really uses this option?

GPS and digital compass, it is great for applications spying on you, but if you do not have good and on board stored maps and navigation software it is of limited use. Mostly one needs navigation abroad, or in places with limited 3G coverage. As far as I know, Nokia is the only company providing downloadable global map coverage and integrated free car and pedestrian navigation software.

Some devices have dual core processors, nice, but do you need this, it will drain the battery even faster than the normal power hungry mobile device would do. Do you remember the old mobile phones which would be up for ten days? I guess not.  In my opinion battery life is one of the most important issues at the moment, for all mobile devices, phones, tablets and laptops.  A huge amount of memory 16 or 64 Mb, it costs a lot of money, but do you need it? This is what one should be able to calculate, especially as cloud storage is often available for free.

The Apps, Apple boasts perhaps a million of apps, but what does this mean, how many are useful, very often there are tens and tens of versions, different languages, some can be just junk, often they are of no use at all. And certainly I do not like to give my credit card details, a fact which became evident when user data and credit card numbers were stolen.

My needs are simple, easy and good quality telephone calls, point to point free downloadable maps and navigation software. Good electronic mail and a fast browser, all together with a battery life of ten hours full time use. Text input should be simple, allowing for male fingers of average size, not the tiny fingers of a child of seven. Touch screens are great, just what I wanted, but since the screen now reacts to my finger and a pencil does not work the screen must be big enough to point to the right spot. Even while driving on a bad road. An issue which came up only recently, my privacy, so I need certainty that my private life stays private, and my contacts, location and other data is not skimmed by some smart app.

In short, all the pixels, Megabytes, Apps and CPU’s will not help you make a phone call if the the battery is empty when you need to make that important call. Also the user interface must make it easy to operate the telephone, even in difficult situations. Also tasks, appointments and email should be up to data and synchronized between all mobile and desk-top devices.

For outdoor use I would prefer a water and dust proof device, also use in extreme cold or hot environments can be a point of importance. It is sometimes necessary to use a telephone using gloves! The compass and GPS are of course a must for outdoor use, but battery life can be a matter of life or death. 

Where is the Eco in the Mobile Ecosystem?

Companies like Microsoft, Nokia and Apple have started marketing what they call “ecosystems”. Now the term ecosystem comes from biology and means for me a system of plants, animals and their environment. For the scientific definition, just Google around, for example Wikipedia gives a good explanation. There are for example rain forest ecosystems, or prairie ecosystems, lake ecosystems, basically an endless number of possible ecosystems. There are also artificial ecosystems, call them man made ecosystems, like aquariums, zoo’s and the like. 

But what would a mobile (smart) phone ecosystem be? Of course for marketing purposes it creates these “green” associations, must be good for the environment to have a smart phone. On the other hand it refers to the network of users, data, applications and devices. In real ecosystems there are flows of matter and energy, in these mobile ecosystems there are flows of information and data. Real ecosystems are made up of organisms which are interrelated, like deer eating grass, wolf eating deer, crows eating dead wolf. In biological systems there are also cycles of matter, carbon being fixed and released, the hydrological cycle of evaporation, rain, flow to the ocean and the process starts again. 

I do not see any relationship between an Android phone and the iPhone, more than the ability to connect to people speaking using these phones as phones. And that could be done already since Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Any mobile telephones can send SMS text messages; SMS was invented in the 1980’s in Finland, and is widely used all over the world. Smarter phones can send and receive electronic mail, which makes it possible to get information send from computers and tablets. Smart phones can also connect to the internet, through WLAN connections or GSM connections. The internet possibility brings the telephone nto contact with other devices and data stored anywhere on the planet. 

So it might be possible to see some resemblances between earth ecosystems and the internet, as the internet connects people (organisms), there are many interconnected devices and there are flows of information and energy (electricity). Dot eco (.eco) has also been proposed for a top-level internet domain, like .org and .com. However to speak of an Android or Microsoft mobile ecosystems goes too far. I have never heard of canine ecosystems, although there are many different dog breeds.