Nokia N79

Putting the Nokia N79 (metaphorically) next to the original N73 is instructive – not only has the specification dramatically improved in the intervening three years, it’s smaller, sleeker and lighter and is a testament to the onward march of technology.  Putting the N79 next to the N78, it’s closest living relative, is also instructive, in that the N79 is smaller and higher specification again, and with a more normal design to boot. Rafe’s commented at length on the positioning of the N79 and N78 in the article linked above, so I won’t repeat it.

Another interesting comparison is putting the new N79 up against the year old N82 – as two of Nokia’s leading ‘candy bar’ form factor smartphones, both still in production, it makes for an obvious ‘which one to buy’ moment. However, referring back to Rafe’s comments again, the N79 is pitched much more at the mass market, with its XpressOn covers, white iPod-like front and NaviWheel, and with its diminutive size. While the N82 was pitched fairly squarely at photo-and-video-centric power users, a market which it continues to serve well. So I won’t go into more depth in terms of an N79-N82 comparison, apart from the little spec table added as ‘Appendix A’ at the bottom of this review, which will give you a quick overview of the N79’s relative specification plus points compared to the (now very well known) N82.

In fact, despite the lack of heavyweight features like the hardware graphics acceleration, the list of Nokia ‘toys’ (FM transmitter, NaviWheel, keylock, dual LED flash) that’s now integrated and taken for granted in such a mid-tier smartphone is really rather impressive. But how well have they been integrated in the N79 and how well do they all perform as part of a whole?

 N79 – The hardware

At only 15mm thick for most of its length, at 97g in weight and at only 74cc in volume, the N79 is commendably small, considering what’s packed inside. Whereas the N82 always seems a little over-sized compared to the average High Street candy bar, the N79 slips into the hand or pocket just perfectly and, if this is where monoblock phones will end up, it’s a pretty good ‘sweet spot’ in terms of compromise between screen/key size and overall bulk.

As witnessed by my tour of Nokia’s test centre at Farnborough, responsible for testing N78 and N79s (in particular) to destruction, the N79’s hardware is pretty robust. Any creaking of the case when pressed is minimal and, given what Nokia put it through, there’s just about zero chance this thing will break, short of dropping it from a great height or running it over in something very heavy. 

The display’s 2.4″, as on the N82 and N78, but very clear in all light conditions, including bright sunlight, an area where some modern devices [FX: Steve looks at HTC…] fall down horribly.

The much-hyped Xpress-On covers are a bit of a gimmick, to be honest – yes, it’s cool that the phone’s theme changes automatically to match, but a) you won’t spend much time looking at the back of your phone and b) the theme change may override a favourite theme you’ve set manually. In fact, even sticking with just the one cover, it’s annoying enough that even a simple removal of the back cover (to change a SIM card, for example) is enough to revert the N79 back to its ‘matching’ theme. Thankfully, this behaviour can be turned off in ‘Settings’.

The control and numeric keys are a bit of an acquired taste – Nokia continue to experiment. Here, the function, call and hang-up keys are all raised, N82-style, with the S60 menu and ‘c’ keys recessed in between and with the infamously useless ‘multimedia carousel’ key offset to the left.

The numeric keys don’t have much separation between them, in terms of feel and I didn’t like the way the critical bottom row has been squeezed in at the very bottom – pressing ‘*’ or ‘#’ is almost enough to fire the phone from your hand in response to the necessary pinching action. In common with the N79 and N82, the N79 has an approach to key backlighting that means that under certain conditions (here it’s half/dim light) the key legends effectively become invisible, with the backlight just counteracting the darkness of the legend in such a way to render them unreadable:

All of which I can live with though – the strangest thing about the N79 design is the d-pad. After getting used to phone d-pads in which the outer ‘ring’ is raised, it’s a big shock to use the N79’s ‘inverted’ arrangement, with a central dimple that’s raised a good 1mm above a flush (to the control surface) outer ring. It certainly makes the design point about the d-pad centre being the ‘third/central function key’, but it will take some getting used to. The outer ring is a full ‘NaviWheel’ here, interestingly, so you can cycle round applications or photos by circling your finger around the central dimple, a system that works well enough without really being as convincing as the original iPod control wheel, the device that started the craze.

Around the N79’s perimeter are:

• a 2mm charging port (not a huge problem, although clearly USB charging will be used more in future devices)
   
• a wonderfully elegant combined hatch (with retained flap) for microSD (a 4GB card is included with each device) and microUSB connectivity
   
  
   
• a keylock ley (a trend first started on the Palm Treo, I think, and one which I heartily approve of – it’s so much quicker to flick one key than fiddle around manually activating an S60 keylock with left function + ‘*’ or using the power key shortcut)
   
  
   
• a 3.5mm audio jack (also enabled for TV out, although there’s no cable for this in the box, and in practice a bug in the early firmware means that photos aren’t passed through the TV out system correctly – Nokia, work needed here!)
   
• the power key
   
• up/down rocker (for call volume changes, for photo zooming, for music volume changes, and so on)
   
• camera shutter key
   
• stereo speakers (positioned as on the N82, at either end of the right hand side, for use when the phone is in ‘video mode’, and as loud as those on the N95 and N82 and of quite decent quality)

 

The exterior keys on the N79 are very well made, again backing up what I saw at Farnborough. The back cover is plastic, of course, complete with theme-changing microchip, and is something of a fingerprint magnet, though thankfully you won’t be looking at the N79’s rear too often, so this isn’t really a problem.

The 5 megapixel camera is well protected with a manual sliding shutter. Opening this starts the Camera application, closing it closes the app, etc. Very convenient and quick when you’ve simply got to grab an important snap. Camera is much the same as in all other recent S60 phones, with the addition that you can now ‘Customise toolbar’, taking off adjustments that you find yourself not using or just re-jigging the order of the toolbar functions, a tweak which is very useful indeed.

 

The dual LED flash works well, as documented here, although clearly not up to Xenon levels. Photos taken in daylight come out well and are comparable to those from the flagship N95 8GB and N82. Here are some samples, click each to download or open full-size:

 
In good sunlight, close-up mode; trying out the LED flash in pitch dark conditions

 
Weak winter sunshine, the grass came out too dark, but good detail; an evening, low light shot

Taking real close-ups is always a good test of a phone camera. This is cropped from a ‘Close-up’ mode shot of my hand…!

Video capture is not so satisfactory. Detail in this mode isn’t as good as on previous devices like the N95 and N82. Here’s a comparison of frame grabs from video of the same scene (weak winter sunshine by the duck pond), with the N79 first and the N82 below:

A noticeable difference. The effect is more dramatic if you try and film something closer, such as a person in front of you. Again, the N79’s video frame grab is on top, the N82 below:

Now, we know that there’s no focussing in video mode in any of Nokia’s S60 smartphones. A shame, but there you go. Instead, on the N82/N95/N93 Nokia preset a sensible focus that, in good enough light, means that the depth of field is from about 1 metre to infinity. For some reason, the focus seems messed up on the N79 (and N96, if you remember) – I’m really hoping that this glitch can be fixed in firmware, otherwise I simply can’t recommend the N79 to anyone hoping to capture video on the go.

Being able to flick on the dual LED unit as a ‘video light’, for evening videos doesn’t work well. If your subject is close enough to be lit then they’ll complain strongly about the ‘dazzling’ light into which they’re forced to look – I know, I’ve tried it. And then there’s the aforementioned focussing problem, meaning that if the subject is close enough to be lit then they’re also close enough to be out of focus.

The presence of a biggish (1200mAh) battery is very welcome and should mean that no new user gets caught unawares by a failing battery, as was the case with the N95 Classic. A 4GB card in the side means that there’s plenty of space for getting someone started on the data front too. Particularly interesting was the decision to pre-download SIS files for a dozen or so of the most popular N-Gage games onto the card, ready for installation without the user having to find and download them. With flash memory so cheap, this makes a lot of sense, though letting the user install them to ‘C’, i.e. the internal disk, makes less sense – with some N-Gage games being tens of Megabytes, a new user could quickly get themselves into trouble. So why not force all games to install to any disk other than ‘C’?

 

Once powered up and running, the N79 is as familiar as any other S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 phone. The fade-in, fade-out, swirl things all around transitions are fun for the first hour but then it’s good to turn them off to speed things up – unfortunately, Nokia has rather buried the setting for this – it’s in ‘Tools|Settings|General|Personalisation|Themes|General|Options|Theme effects’ – whoever decided that this was the place to stick this toggle should be shot at dawn. 

The other thing that you may want to change quickly is automatic overriding of the theme system – just change it to ‘Ask’. The built-in, back-cover-matching themes are decent enough, but it’s annoying when you’ve set up something else and the theme reverts simply because the back cover slipped off and had to be put back on. With the display at only 2.4″, I found visibility the main problem, just as on the N82, and so I plumped for my old favourite ‘White revisited’, shown here (just to be boring) in the screenshots. 

  

There are no surprises in the basic S60 application set. Nokia Photos and Video Centre have taken over from Gallery – largely a positive change, though there are still a few bits of functionality that need to be ported over from the old pre-FP2 system. Some web sites have reported that zooming into a photo takes an eternity, but with the latest (v10.046) firmware I had no problems at all. It was my first experience with the new FP2 ‘smooth zooming’ functionality, but that aside there’s little to report.

Nokia Maps is v2.0, of course, there’s the Music store widget. Music player itself is unchanged, producing great quality output from files of decent bit rate. The headphones supplied are broken into the ‘phones themselves, plus a wired remote, also with a 3.5mm jack, a flexible system that means you can work your audio in any of several different ways. There’s A2DP if you want to go wireless and, following in the N78’s footsteps, an FM transmitter, offering a second way to ditch your wires.

  

Designed for use in a car, this works extremely well (in my tests, up to 2 metres) to get your music from phone to car stereo (which even displays ‘Nokia’ as the RDS station!) without any messing around with adapters or standalone transmitters – a very cool addition and with surprisingly good sound quality.

A ‘SW checker’ icon in the ‘Applications’ group turned out to do the same job as the old ‘*#0000#’ from the standby screen, with the addition that, this being one of Nokia’s new devices with Red Bend’s Over The Air upgrading system built-in, you can check for updates automatically on a schedule of your choice and install any updates seamlessly without loss of data. UDP (User Data Preservation) also seems to be present for Nokia Software Update installs (from a PC) – I tested this and my data and installed applications weren’t touched.

  

Rather confusingly, ‘App update’ is also present and it’s not at all clear which applications are covered by this separate over-the-air system – perhaps there will be a list of approved applications which are kept up to date. Time will tell.

Although video playback was comprehensive (even down to handling WMV and FLV files, for example), proving that there’s some decent video decoders in the N79, there’s no 3D Graphics Accelerator, as on the more expensive N95 and N82. This isn’t a problem for all the N-Gage games, none of which expect acceleration, and it’s not a problem for most third party games, but the N79 does come a cropper where you try running just a little too ambitious on it. For example, the racing game Oval Racer runs like treacle on the N79, and the YouTube client Mobitubia stutters along in a way that makes it almost unuseable. I’m presuming that these two applications make use of graphics acceleration.

The status of TV out on the N79 is up for debate – it’s advertised as having it but there’s no composite AV cable in the box (unlike on other Nseries TV-out-compatible handsets) and, when you do plug it into a TV, photos aren’t shown at VGA resolution – rather, the QVGA screen of the device is simply echoed. I’m assuming that this is a firmware bug and that this will be fixed.

Two things which are built-in and fully working are Wi-Fi (always good to see this on a mid-tier phone) and GPS. Contrary to other ill-informed reviews from around the Web, the GPS in the N79 is very fast and as sensitive as on any other Nokia S60 phone. Where casual reviewers talk about slow lock-on times, they almost certainly haven’t set up Assisted GPS properly – it’s vital to assign this a working data connection for grabbing its satellite data from. Nokia must share some of the blame here – a first-run wizard asking the right question would help avoid similar misunderstandings in future. In practice, I was getting lock times of under ten seconds from a warm start.

Nokia Maps comes with 3 months trial of turn by turn voice instructions, so that’s an extra £20 or so value built-into the N79 purchase price. Maps 2.0 may not be the best satellite navigation system for S60 but it’s very flexible and does the job most of the time. Most importantly, perhaps, its maps and data are free all the time you’re not using the application for road navigation.

Connectivity is, as you would expect, excellent, with 3.5G data, Wi-fi (not always a given in mid-tier phones) and subtleties like UPnP, should you need it. Nokia’s implementation of Wi-fi is rarely the best performing, but then the aerial has to be very small to fit the device, so a compromise clearly has to be made. Overall performance is good once you’ve turned the theme transitions off. Free RAM is 72MB, plenty for even the very hardest of uses. There’s 76MB of free flash memory on the internal (C) disk, enough for most of your non-game third party applications.

N78 versus N79 versus N82

   

Nokia N82, N78, N79 on their sides; N78, N79, N82 face down

Looking at the N79 at launch price (over £300, SIM-free) and then at the N82 (for example), currently at less than £300, makes the N79 seem over-priced, but I’d expect its SIM-free price to come down to the £250 mark within the first three months, once the early adopters have had their fill. Looking at Nokia’s Nseries candy bars, the N79 is a lot better than its predecessor, the N78, but it’s arguably quite a bit worse than the N82, making the N79’s price look incongruous. But, as I say, this will come down quickly and won’t make much difference when buying the N79 on a modest (£25 a month) contract.

Despite its current failings (poor video capture, fiddly keypad bottom row, lack of graphics oomph), the Nokia N79 is packed with toys and will be a good introduction to S60 3rd Edition FP2 for new users. Moreover, it’s extremely robust, rather fashionable (with the cover gimmick) and will provide an awful lot of people with a reliable day to day gadget-packed phone.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 27 Nov 2008

 Appendix A: Nokia N79 vs Nokia N82

 

N79 ‘wins’ over the N82	N82  ‘wins’ over the N79
FM transmitter Fashion covers Keylock key Dual LED flash/video light NaviWheel S60 3rd Ed Feature Pack 2 (new Photos app, transitions,  Destinations, Over-the-air firmware updates, etc.) Hi speed USB transfers High capacity 1200mAh battery	Xenon flash for stills Hardware graphics acceleration Fully mature firmware (v30) Dedicated Gallery key Better video capture quality

 

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N791.php

Nokia N96 (4)

The Nokia N96 is all about multimedia, it seems. Yes, beneath the exterior lies a very capable (if slightly buggy) S60 3rd Edition FP2 smartphone, but look at the advertising for it, examine the specs and unique selling points and you quickly arrive at the conclusion that this is something of an ultimate extension of the Nseries ‘multimedia’ concept:

• hardware decoders for video and audio
• kick stand for video watching
• extra front panel media controls
• side-mounted loud stereo speakers

Plus the usual Nseries top photo specs, of course. But how does it fare in real life? I’m going to look at each multimedia area and try to assess any N96’s superiority over its predecessors and contemporaries.

 Stills photography

The N96 has, on the face of it, the same Carl Zeiss-lensed camera as the N95 and N82, I suspect, but the software algorithms do vary between the different devices, resulting in subtle variations in photo file size, digital noise and colour variation. Below are a couple of sample photos, click on each to download it or view it full-size.

As you perhaps might expect, the N96 has the very latest camera software in it and as a result the balance between file size, noise, edge enhancement, light sensitivity, and so on, is almost perfect. 

What’s not perfect, of course, is the exposed nature of the camera lens glass. As on the N95 8GB, this exposure to scratches results in an ugly look after a while and slight flaring when filming in sunlight, even though I proved that most photos aren’t significantly affected.

Evening shots are helped by the presence of dual LED flash rather than single, although it’s still a way short of the excellent results from the N82’s flash. See here for my direct testing of dual LED flash versus its rivals.

It’s also worth mentioning (again) the odd shutter key on the N96 – you have to press it a fair way before focussing takes place and you have to press it in a long way and with significant pressure in order to take a shot. Maybe this was an attempt to prevent accidental camera activation in the pocket or in a car holder? 

Image viewing and organisation is handled by Photos, a new application for Nseries under S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 – see Rafe’s multimedia look at the N78 for more detail on this, plus screenshots. And Share online is also present and correct, for firing your snaps off to Flickr or Ovi.

 Video recording

Prepare yourself for a disappointment. I was expecting similar video recording quality to the N95 8GB, but what I found was hazy, defocussed footage, as you can see for yourself below. Under controlled conditions, I shot the same clip with N96, N93 and N82. Click to download or open up the combined MP4 file (40MB) in your chosen media player.

In case you don’t want to grab the video, there are three problems here. The most trivial is the unprotected camera glass, which will have a slight detrimental effect on video quality as time goes on and the glass gets smudged or scratched. Next is the dramatic audio gain control. The default seems to be very ‘high’, so each recording starts with a bucket load of hiss. The aim here was presumably to catch both whisper quiet people and loud rock concerts without really messing up either, but I think there are still some software tweaks to be made by Nokia here.

Most serious though is video picture quality. Here are comparable sections from screen grabs from the N96, N93 and N82 sections of the video:

As you can see, the N82 footage is crystal clear, and really quite remarkable considering none of these phone cameras focusses in video mode. The N93 footage has more colour and contrast but isn’t quite as clear, while the N96 footage (on the left, above) appears blurry and indistinct. I’m hoping that video picture quality is fixable in firmware, otherwise this will end up being a huge black mark against the N96.

Annoyingly, as some commentators have observed, the move to Video Centre (and Photos) for handling multimedia has meant that some functions have gone missing – chief among them is that you can’t edit your new videos anymore, you can’t even them trim them to length. This is a huge come down from the sophisticated video editing in the N95 and I’d dearly love to see Nokia put some of this goodness back in.

 Music playback

With the dedicated audio decoding hardware, I was expecting something special from the N96 – and I got it. After booting, I left Music Player working through my Gigabytes of music, playing rock music into my third party over-sized headphones. It managed 15 hours non-stop playback, which I’d be quite happy with – interestingly, Nokia only quote 14 hours, and in offline mode, whereas I had the device on 3G the whole time. It certainly seems as if the extra electronics help eke out the battery life.

I loaded up about 10GB of music tracks and quick matching of search text in the music library was fast enough – not instant, but good enough for that volume of music. Audio quality was excellent, but then it’s also excellent on most other recent smartphones… Audiophiles won’t be disappointed here anyway, provided their music is encoded at a decent bit rate.

The external playback controls work well, although as previously noted they’re often illuminated when music or media isn’t playing or loaded, which is a tad confusing. I was also put out when Music player found something it didn’t like in my 16GB Mass Memory disk and refused to load any music whatsoever, being stuck on ‘Opening’… – I had to reformat the entire thing and reload my music from my desktop.

 

Both these issues are firmware-related, I suspect, and we’ll see many future ‘easy’ over-the-air or NSU firmware updates from Nokia for this, their new flagship.

Also of note on the music front are that Internet Radio is built-in: you get a choice of whether to fire up the internal FM receiver or the Shoutcast-based Nokia utility when you click on ‘Radio’. Internet Radio is available for almost all other S60 phones, so I won’t go into detail here, suffice to say that it’s slick, works well and only produces a handful of broken stations (of the 100s listed).

  

There is also, of course, Nokia’s Podcasting utility and Music Store, as featured on all other recent S60 phones. Plus UPnP functionality – see Rafe’s write-up of this in his N78 review (again) if you want to know more about UPnP.

 Video playback

I’ve talked a lot in part 1 about how BBC iPlayer came along at just the right time for the N96 and makes the difference between a disappointing handset and something interesting. It’s hard to overstate this, especially since much of Nokia’s advertising is based around its iPlayer compatibility.

I’ve covered iPlayer itself in the Applications section, suffice it to say that playback of downloaded (encrypted) programmes from the BBC works quite well. Once or twice, I had crackles on the soundtrack, but these went away after a reboot. Stopping and starting a programme had the N96 in trouble as well – if you interlace general phone use with catching up with something.

iPlayer is a Web Runtime widget and doesn’t come in the N96’s firmware, interestingly. So if you hard reset it for any reason (coping with buggy firmware glitches springs to mind) then you’ll have to pop back to the BBC’s iPlayer page manually. Installation is thankfully painless and the device is recognised first time.

   

Also of note is that if for any reason (cough…. buggy firmware….. cough) you decide to wipe your N96’s ‘Mass memory’ then your licenses also get zapped, as shown below. No big deal when they’re just iPlayer downloads – hey, it’s only TV at the end of the day – but it’s yet another example of all that’s wrong with media and DRM… see other rants from me on this over at http://www.i-hate-drm-no-really.com…. If these had been purchased videos from a Nokia Video store then I’d have been really cross…

   

Playback of general video files was also a little worrying with the current v11 firmware. Compatibility is good, with WMV and MP4 and 3GP files of all varieties being recognised and played properly. Unfortunately, the general stability of the firmware means that videos tend to crash the phone every now and then, seemingly randomly, which is more than a little disconcerting.

Still, crashes not withstanding, the N96 managed to play WMV and iPlayer videos for just under 5 hours continuously, on default screen brightness, roughly what Nokia quote in the N96’s specs, and well over three hours on maximum brightness, which was quite impressive for something with this small a battery. (Imagine what the N96 could have done with the 6650’s 1500mAh unit!)

One major annoyance is that while skipping through videos, the key to use is the (light up) ‘next track’ one. What Nokia would like you to do is give this a long press to fast forward through footage. Unfortunately, if you absent mindedly just give it a short press, perhaps intending to only nudge the playback point forwards a few seconds, you end up being thrust into the next video clip. Ditto for rewind and the previous clip. Yes, my fault for not using the keys properly, but it quickly started to get annoying. How often are people going to want to jump to the next video from halfway through the current one? Surely the key behaviour should be modified here?

 Verdict

The Nokia N96 sees itself as the pinnacle of the traditional Nseries line, but like all the other devices in the series it’s going to take a lot of work by Nokia if it’s to reach anything like its potential. The video capture and playback problems are all relatively major in my view, seeing as these are primary functions of the N96, and it’s going to take at least a couple of updates to fix them.

The potential is there though: if everything on the N96 worked as advertised, with no random freezes, glitches or crashes, then (despite the battery size) we’d have a winner on our hands – the hardware media decoders are a significant help and, one day, maybe the DVB-H TV receiver will come in handy, too (in the UK). Who knows? Until then, the N96 is one to watch, but only actually to buy if you enjoy being something of a beta tester for Nokia.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N96-part_3-Multimedia.php

Nokia N96 (3)

The Nokia N96 is all about multimedia, it seems. Yes, beneath the exterior lies a very capable (if slightly buggy) S60 3rd Edition FP2 smartphone, but look at the advertising for it, examine the specs and unique selling points and you quickly arrive at the conclusion that this is something of an ultimate extension of the Nseries ‘multimedia’ concept:

• hardware decoders for video and audio
• kick stand for video watching
• extra front panel media controls
• side-mounted loud stereo speakers

Plus the usual Nseries top photo specs, of course. But how does it fare in real life? I’m going to look at each multimedia area and try to assess any N96’s superiority over its predecessors and contemporaries.

 Stills photography

The N96 has, on the face of it, the same Carl Zeiss-lensed camera as the N95 and N82, I suspect, but the software algorithms do vary between the different devices, resulting in subtle variations in photo file size, digital noise and colour variation. Below are a couple of sample photos, click on each to download it or view it full-size.

As you perhaps might expect, the N96 has the very latest camera software in it and as a result the balance between file size, noise, edge enhancement, light sensitivity, and so on, is almost perfect. 

What’s not perfect, of course, is the exposed nature of the camera lens glass. As on the N95 8GB, this exposure to scratches results in an ugly look after a while and slight flaring when filming in sunlight, even though I proved that most photos aren’t significantly affected.

Evening shots are helped by the presence of dual LED flash rather than single, although it’s still a way short of the excellent results from the N82’s flash. See here for my direct testing of dual LED flash versus its rivals.

It’s also worth mentioning (again) the odd shutter key on the N96 – you have to press it a fair way before focussing takes place and you have to press it in a long way and with significant pressure in order to take a shot. Maybe this was an attempt to prevent accidental camera activation in the pocket or in a car holder? 

Image viewing and organisation is handled by Photos, a new application for Nseries under S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 – see Rafe’s multimedia look at the N78 for more detail on this, plus screenshots. And Share online is also present and correct, for firing your snaps off to Flickr or Ovi.

 Video recording

Prepare yourself for a disappointment. I was expecting similar video recording quality to the N95 8GB, but what I found was hazy, defocussed footage, as you can see for yourself below. Under controlled conditions, I shot the same clip with N96, N93 and N82. Click to download or open up the combined MP4 file (40MB) in your chosen media player.

In case you don’t want to grab the video, there are three problems here. The most trivial is the unprotected camera glass, which will have a slight detrimental effect on video quality as time goes on and the glass gets smudged or scratched. Next is the dramatic audio gain control. The default seems to be very ‘high’, so each recording starts with a bucket load of hiss. The aim here was presumably to catch both whisper quiet people and loud rock concerts without really messing up either, but I think there are still some software tweaks to be made by Nokia here.

Most serious though is video picture quality. Here are comparable sections from screen grabs from the N96, N93 and N82 sections of the video:

As you can see, the N82 footage is crystal clear, and really quite remarkable considering none of these phone cameras focusses in video mode. The N93 footage has more colour and contrast but isn’t quite as clear, while the N96 footage (on the left, above) appears blurry and indistinct. I’m hoping that video picture quality is fixable in firmware, otherwise this will end up being a huge black mark against the N96.

Annoyingly, as some commentators have observed, the move to Video Centre (and Photos) for handling multimedia has meant that some functions have gone missing – chief among them is that you can’t edit your new videos anymore, you can’t even them trim them to length. This is a huge come down from the sophisticated video editing in the N95 and I’d dearly love to see Nokia put some of this goodness back in.

 Music playback

With the dedicated audio decoding hardware, I was expecting something special from the N96 – and I got it. After booting, I left Music Player working through my Gigabytes of music, playing rock music into my third party over-sized headphones. It managed 15 hours non-stop playback, which I’d be quite happy with – interestingly, Nokia only quote 14 hours, and in offline mode, whereas I had the device on 3G the whole time. It certainly seems as if the extra electronics help eke out the battery life.

I loaded up about 10GB of music tracks and quick matching of search text in the music library was fast enough – not instant, but good enough for that volume of music. Audio quality was excellent, but then it’s also excellent on most other recent smartphones… Audiophiles won’t be disappointed here anyway, provided their music is encoded at a decent bit rate.

The external playback controls work well, although as previously noted they’re often illuminated when music or media isn’t playing or loaded, which is a tad confusing. I was also put out when Music player found something it didn’t like in my 16GB Mass Memory disk and refused to load any music whatsoever, being stuck on ‘Opening’… – I had to reformat the entire thing and reload my music from my desktop.

 

Both these issues are firmware-related, I suspect, and we’ll see many future ‘easy’ over-the-air or NSU firmware updates from Nokia for this, their new flagship.

Also of note on the music front are that Internet Radio is built-in: you get a choice of whether to fire up the internal FM receiver or the Shoutcast-based Nokia utility when you click on ‘Radio’. Internet Radio is available for almost all other S60 phones, so I won’t go into detail here, suffice to say that it’s slick, works well and only produces a handful of broken stations (of the 100s listed).

  

There is also, of course, Nokia’s Podcasting utility and Music Store, as featured on all other recent S60 phones. Plus UPnP functionality – see Rafe’s write-up of this in his N78 review (again) if you want to know more about UPnP.

 Video playback

I’ve talked a lot in part 1 about how BBC iPlayer came along at just the right time for the N96 and makes the difference between a disappointing handset and something interesting. It’s hard to overstate this, especially since much of Nokia’s advertising is based around its iPlayer compatibility.

I’ve covered iPlayer itself in the Applications section, suffice it to say that playback of downloaded (encrypted) programmes from the BBC works quite well. Once or twice, I had crackles on the soundtrack, but these went away after a reboot. Stopping and starting a programme had the N96 in trouble as well – if you interlace general phone use with catching up with something.

iPlayer is a Web Runtime widget and doesn’t come in the N96’s firmware, interestingly. So if you hard reset it for any reason (coping with buggy firmware glitches springs to mind) then you’ll have to pop back to the BBC’s iPlayer page manually. Installation is thankfully painless and the device is recognised first time.

   

Also of note is that if for any reason (cough…. buggy firmware….. cough) you decide to wipe your N96’s ‘Mass memory’ then your licenses also get zapped, as shown below. No big deal when they’re just iPlayer downloads – hey, it’s only TV at the end of the day – but it’s yet another example of all that’s wrong with media and DRM… see other rants from me on this over at http://www.i-hate-drm-no-really.com…. If these had been purchased videos from a Nokia Video store then I’d have been really cross…

   

Playback of general video files was also a little worrying with the current v11 firmware. Compatibility is good, with WMV and MP4 and 3GP files of all varieties being recognised and played properly. Unfortunately, the general stability of the firmware means that videos tend to crash the phone every now and then, seemingly randomly, which is more than a little disconcerting.

Still, crashes not withstanding, the N96 managed to play WMV and iPlayer videos for just under 5 hours continuously, on default screen brightness, roughly what Nokia quote in the N96’s specs, and well over three hours on maximum brightness, which was quite impressive for something with this small a battery. (Imagine what the N96 could have done with the 6650’s 1500mAh unit!)

One major annoyance is that while skipping through videos, the key to use is the (light up) ‘next track’ one. What Nokia would like you to do is give this a long press to fast forward through footage. Unfortunately, if you absent mindedly just give it a short press, perhaps intending to only nudge the playback point forwards a few seconds, you end up being thrust into the next video clip. Ditto for rewind and the previous clip. Yes, my fault for not using the keys properly, but it quickly started to get annoying. How often are people going to want to jump to the next video from halfway through the current one? Surely the key behaviour should be modified here?

 Verdict

The Nokia N96 sees itself as the pinnacle of the traditional Nseries line, but like all the other devices in the series it’s going to take a lot of work by Nokia if it’s to reach anything like its potential. The video capture and playback problems are all relatively major in my view, seeing as these are primary functions of the N96, and it’s going to take at least a couple of updates to fix them.

The potential is there though: if everything on the N96 worked as advertised, with no random freezes, glitches or crashes, then (despite the battery size) we’d have a winner on our hands – the hardware media decoders are a significant help and, one day, maybe the DVB-H TV receiver will come in handy, too (in the UK). Who knows? Until then, the N96 is one to watch, but only actually to buy if you enjoy being something of a beta tester for Nokia.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N96-part_3-Multimedia.php

Nokia N96 (2)

Nokia N96 review: King’s new clothes

 

Every time Nokia Nseries numbering goes up a notch geeks are holding their breath. Well, geeks – including us – are no ordinary human beings, but in the case of Nokia N96 they’d been holding their breath since February. The time this multimedia monster picked to actually hit the shelves must have made quite a few people fear it being already outdated.

Nokia N96 official images

Being a successor of the Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N96 has some king-size spec sheet to top and it can’t be accused of not trying. There’s FP2, double the built-in storage and DVB-H. The bloodline is strong but the crown is heavy and ancestral sins will be held against the heir twofold. The modest battery capacity and the downgraded CPU do raise some questions that need their answers. Join us for an out-and-out review of Nokia’s latest top-of-the-shelf offer. Let’s see if it has got the performance to walk in them shoes size N95.

Key features:

• 2.8″ 16M-color TFT LCD display of QVGA resolution
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and AF assist light
• Built-in DVB-H TV tuner
• Symbian OS 9.3 with S60 3.2 UI
• Dual ARM 9 264 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM
• 3G with HSDPA support
• Quad-band GSM support
• Wi-Fi with UPnP technology
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality and 3 months of free voice-guided navigation
• Dual slide design with dedicated gaming/audio keys
• Massive 16GB onboard storage
• microSD card slot with microSDHC support
• Built-in accelerometer for UI auto-rotation
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• TV out
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Car charger in the retail package
• VGA video recording at 30fps
• USB and Bluetooth v2.0
• One free N-gage game and Transformers movie preloaded
• Keypad locking slide key

Main disadvantages:

• Inadequate battery life
• No camera lens protection
• The @$$#% N81-inspired design
• No office document editing out of the box
• Doesn’t charge via the USB port
• Dreadful camera key
• Cheap looking keypad
• Unreasonably hefty price tag

Nokia N96 comes to top the Nokia multimedia portfolio, packing almost every single feature you can think of. It extends the functionality of its predecessor – Nokia N95 8GB with 16GB of internal memory, DVB-H TV receiver, and the latest version of the Symbian OS. There are also some more minor upgrades including music keys on the front panel, a kickstand (we love that one) for more comfortable video watching and dual-LED flash. On the negative side, the CPU has been tripped up but we are yet to see how this affects the performance.

Nokia N96 all over

Probably the most obvious alternative to Nokia N96 is Samsung i8510 INNOV8. It trades the DVB-H receiver for an 8 megapixel camera with lens cover, DivX support, DNSe audio technology, and a juicier battery. It also sports an optical joystick, which rocks for browsing. The Innov8 however is slightly more expensive than N96 and it lacks the complimentary stuff (Nokia Maps, 3 months of voice navigation, a free N-gage game and the Transformers movie).

Samsung i8510 INNOV8

For people on a tighter budget the Nokia N95 8GB might seem an option. It comes with all the features of N96, save for the DVB-H tuner and the FP2 but packs in a larger battery and faster CPU. The dual-LED flash isn’t exactly the major upgrade to go on about. In addition, the looks of Nokia N95 8GB are way more our type. You know, we do believe something has went terribly wrong with the N81 design – and even worse, it’s now reproducing itself ready to take on the world.

Nokia N95 8GB

If you aren’t a die-hard Symbian fan you might be lured away to Windows Mobile. Samsung i900 Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond are true all-in-one devices and the HTC Touch HD is just around the corner. Those who swear by QWERTY might also have a look at the HTC Touch Pro and the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. We doubt it there will be many to convert to WinMo but all those all-rounders are still worth mentioning.

The Windows Mobile lot

Finally, if DVB-H is your main reason to go for Nokia N96, there are a few phones that support it without costing an arm and a leg. LG HB620T and KB770 are now really close to being released and neither is likely to be priced anywhere near the N96. In addition, the KB770 features a larger 3-inch screen, which – even if not exactly widescreen telly – still counts. Nokia N77 has also been around for quite a while, but hardly got really noticed.

LG HB620T • LG KB770 • Nokia N77

As much as we enjoy this roll-call of all-but-the-kitchen-sink gadgets, there’s quite a lot to do, so let’s get going. Take the jump for unboxing and checkup.

Ships with a car charger

Nokia N96 comes in a huge box that can even compare to the one of the recently reviewed Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte. Contents are also quite on par with the high price tag of the new Nseries flagship and there’s even a pleasant surprise in stock.

Nokia N96 comes in quite a large box

N96 is in fact the first Nokia handset that ships with a car charger and it’s a neat accessory we appreciate. The prebundled handsfree is a two-piece combo, which means you can easily swap the provided headset without sacrificing the remote control.

The car charger is the nice surprise among its content

There are two connectivity cables provided too – a microUSB one for data transfers and the CA-75U TV-out wire. The last items in this big retail package are the DC charger, a bunch of manuals and a CD with PC sync software. Somewhere among those is the activation code for the Tetris game on the N-gage platform – honestly, we didn’t even bother looking for it.

Nokia N96 360-degree spin

Nokia N96 stands at 103 x 55 x 18 mm, totaling a volume of 92 cc. This is slightly longer and a tad slimmer than Nokia N95 8GB. Samsung i8510 INNOV8 has similar size but is the heaviest of the three. It takes quite a big pocket to stash Nokia N96 and the weight of 125g won’t let you forget it’s there.

Truth be told, size never seemed a turn-off with Nokia N95 8GB and we don’t think it will be the deal-breaker for N96. Sadly, there are better reasons to be put off by this handset.

//

 

Design and construction

Before we begin, we should make one thing clear. Right from the very start we knew that designwise Nokia N96 is just a bigger version of the N81. We also know there are many of you out there who really like this design concept. We will just say this – our spite against this latest N-series styling is probably the only thing that our editorial team is unanimous about. We’ve seen better from Nokia and we’d be the first to cheer their decision to ditch it in the backyard. But until then, we’ll have to continue the hardware part of this review, with gritting teeth.

The N81-inspired design isn’t our cup ot tea

The Nokia N96 packs a large 2.8-inch display, which takes up almost the whole front panel. Above it are the earpiece and video-call camera, there’s no ambient light sensor this time.

There is no light sensor on Nokia N96

The tightly-squeezed controls on the front panel are an ergonomic challenge and the fact that it’s all a flimsy flat membrane doesn’t make it any easier. On top of that, the plastic used looks appallingly cheap. We can’t help but note that by no means does the front of Nokia N96 suggest a $700 price tag.

As far as the layout of controls is concerned, Nokia N96 kind of reminds of its predecessor – the N95 8GB. The front panel keeps the well known arrangement of a huge screen cramming a narrow navigation deck all the way down. But this time there are as many as 11 keys crowding the D-pad.

The number of keys on this kind of space should speak for itself – those are all rather small and not really easy to use. Music fans will probably appreciate the dedicated keys but we kind of miss the point of the dual slide design. If the two gaming keys are its sole purpose then the N81 solution seems much more convenient.

The controls on the front panel are way too small, not to mention poorly looking

The Call and End keys are part of the flat membrane but are well defined and amply sized, which is better than the N81 and N78. We have to admit the flat controls provide sufficient press feedback (the dedicated music keys less so, but still passable).

The Symbian and C key placement is not the most convenient though. Placed at the very bottom of the navigation deck those are perfectly usable with the slider up, but reaching to them in closed position runs the risk of toppling the heavy handset off your hand.

The D-pad is the size of that in N95 8GB but this time you have a huge confirm button and quite a thin navigating frame. The design was obviously dictated by the Navi wheel functionality. However that functionality was dropped just before the N96 hit the shelves leaving only the inconvenient D-pad behid. The N95 8GB D-pad styling is way more user friendly for normal navigation.

The left side of Nokia N96 hosts the microSD card slot and the lanyard eyelet. The phone handles an 8GB memory card problem-free. Furthermore, various sources confirm that it works with the newly released 16GB microSD cards (not that we expected any different). That adds up to potential memory capacity of up to 32GB, which sounds well impressive.

The left side hosts the microSD card slot and the lanayard eyelet

The right side of Nokia N96 features the volume rocker and the dedicated camera key. Those controls are a blatant attempt to defy user-friendliness. While the rigidity of the volume key is almost forgivable, the camera key is beyond belief. It’s so uncomfortable that it renders taking any kind of decent photos with the N96 almost impossible.

The volume rocker and the loathsome camera key are on the right

The camera knob scrapes against the sides of its cleft and the distinct clack is our least concern. With this shutter key there’s almost no distinct half press. It is quite a challenge to lock focus and then take a photo without shaking or even dropping the phone. We can’t even imagine what went wrong with this particular button.

The other two elements on the right side are the two speakerphone grills, placed symmetrically at the very top and bottom corners of the casing. That seems very proper given the kickstand that props the phone up for desktop use.

On top of Nokia N96 we see the keypad lock slider, the 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power key. The only concern here is the On/Off knob: it is too small and flush with the surrounding surface.

There’s a 3.5mm standard audio jack and a power key on the top of the phone

The bottom of Nokia N96 features the microUSB port, mouthpiece and the charger plug. No cap over the USB slot means it can fill up with dirt – we’ve been there already with both N95 and N95 8GB.

The bottom features quite a few apertures: microUSB port, mouthpiece and a chager plug

The 5 megapixel camera lens at the back is complemented by dual-LED flash and the kickstand we already mentioned. The latter has nothing to do with photography but allows the phone to be placed on a desk at the best angle for TV/video watching. It is quite a nice solution indeed though the fragile piece of plastic should probably be handled with care.

The 5 megapixel camera is accompanied by a dual-LED flash • The kickstand is quite handy

The rear, much like the front, is all plastic but definitely looks better. Subdued gloss and neat wave-like patterns do give the handset some of the conservative style its price tag deserves. It is still quite easy for the surface to get greased and messy. There’s no protection for the camera lens, either. It is not even sunk a millimeter as on Nokia N95 8GB.

Opening the battery cover is done by pressing the latch at the top and gently lifting – this time Nokia have done well. Under the hood lies the 950 mAh Li-Ion BL-5F battery.

Battery life was one of the most troublesome aspects of the original Nokia N95 and, after the 1200 mAh BL-6F upgrade in the 8GB version, we almost cannot believe Nokia went back to it.

The current 950 mAh battery can hardly provide a day of extensive usage, even with the downgraded CPU. In fact, our guess is that the main reason for planting the slower CPU is its reduced power consumption. All you get as a result is at least the extra time to go home and plug the charger. We are yet to see how that CPU affects UI response.

The battery is really inadequate

By this point you should probably guess our opinion of the Nokia N96 build quality. It is all the way inconsistent with the price of the device. One thing should be given though – it seems more durable and not so easy to wear as the Nokia N95 8GB’s rubberized back for example.

Nokia N96 and Nokia N95 8GB head-to-head

However, our experience with Nokia N81 shows this type of plastic is really easy to get scratched. We still can’t make up our mind about which is worse to look at.

Nokia N96 is quite a hefty piece of gear but size is the least imposing obstacle to handling. There are a lot of design modifications from N95 8GB and we can’t say they are a boost to user-friendliness. The flatbed controls are perfectly usable but hardly stand comparison to N95 8GB for both looks and tactility.

Nokia N96 held in hand

The nicely shaped tactile D-pad of N95 8GB is more user-friendly and could be quite valuable to some. The added music keys may be an enhancement but they question the dual slide design and complicate the navigation pad.

Display – a winner

The 2.8″ treat of a screen is probably the best way for Nokia N96 to salvage some pride. Excellent picture is a perfect complement to its generous size. In all fairness, brightness has been slightly reduced compared to Nokia N95 8GB but still keeps a very high level. The contrast is also commendable.

Nokia N95 8GB has a tad brighter display than the N96

Sunlight legibility has always been the Nokia element. Nokia N96 makes no exception remaining perfectly legible even on the brightest of days. Colors do get a bit washed away in the strong sun but this doesn’t greatly affect usability.

The picture quality is still commendable

Keypad does the job

Remember that “frightfully ugly fellow, but he does have his uses!” line? Well, we cannot possibly think of any better way of describing the alphanumeric keypad of Nokia N96 (could’ve said the same about the navigation pad).

The cheap plastic looks (6220 classic, anyone?) aside, the keypad of Nokia N96 is OK to type on. Size is adequate even though the rows are a little narrow. There are no distinct borders between keys and the key stroke isn’t the best we’ve seen but that’s nothing you can’t live with. With some time getting used, you may as well get to enjoy typing.

The keypad is a pain to look at but does the job

The keys reveled on top of the phone are quite nice to use with their size making them very comfortable even for people with larger hands. They have two modes – “music keys” where all four are usable and “gaming”, where only the middle two are actually active.

The keys on top are large and easy to use

The backlighting of Nokia N96 is strong enough but somewhat uneven. It also has a distinct yellow tint, which we don’t really like. The white backlighting of Nokia N95 8GB looked a whole lot better.

Nokia N96 looks cheap in the dark, too

User interface: Latest Symbian

Nokia N96 runs on the Symbian 9.3 OS with Series60 3rd Edition user interface. Feature Pack 2 comes preinstalled, bringing both visual and performance improvements that we first saw in Nokia N78. In all fairness, the performance updates are also available to some FP1 devices through firmware updates, but there are still some goodies exclusive to FP2.

The heart of Nokia N96: Symbian 9.3 OS with S60 3.2 UI

One of the most important benefits of the new UI is the new Active standby layout, which now allows quick access to a lot more features. The standby screen is organized in vertical tabs with the D-pad used for scrolling them. Other than that, its functionality basically remains the same.

The three available active stand-by modes

The active stand-by screen is a nice and convenient way of bringing shortcuts to all favorite applications to your home screen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.

Active standby or not, you can always change the shortcuts assigned to the two soft keys to best suit your needs.

The Navi wheel functionality is also extended as compared to N81 and it reveals its full potential. Among some of the other FP2 upgrades are a new picture gallery and picture geotagging. They will get their the due attention later on in this review.

The task manager is a well known Symbian application, which has improved in terms of looks with the new FP. It is also now appearing on top of every pop-up menu. The shortcut used in previous versions of the OS by pressing and holding the menu key still works.

The task manager looks better with FP

Finally, the S60 UI Feature Pack 2 brings some nice menu transition effects. The Symbian OS has been all too well known for offering little eye-candy but now it seems to be trying to catch up. It is still far from, say Apple iPhone standards, but those are too different devices for such a comparison to be fair.

The CPU and the built-in RAM are probably the two most important factors concerning smartphone performance. The 128MB of RAM are a feat in Symbian terms and is almost impossible to deplete. The things with the CPU are however somewhat different.

The dual ARM9 264 MHz CPU used in Nokia N96 is still faster than most other devices out there but is a downgrade from the dual ARM 11 332 MHz that we saw on both Nokia N95 versions. Truth to be told, only heavy apps (N-gage for example) can make the difference as far as we can tell. We still can’t help but wonder why downgrade one of most important parts of what’s supposed to be the new Nseries flagship.

The Nokia N96 user-available memory extends to a little less than 15GB (it’s an old trick rounding off every 1000 bytes to a kilobyte, plus there’s system-reserved capacity). It still is an impressive space to fill up but even if you do there’s a microSD card slot to help you. Accessing content on the card or the phone memory is done at about the same speed.

The multimedia menu is among the Nseries highlights and the Nokia N96 is hardly an exception here. It is launched by pressing the dedicated key and provides quick access to the multimedia features of the handset. It is identical to the ones found on Nokia N81 and Nokia N82 with icons sorted thematically. They appear as drop-down lists when the respective tab is selected. Those can also be freely reordered if the layout isn’t to your liking.

The Multimedia menu is in the focus with the Nseries phones

As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It’s doing a very good job actually, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a high percentage of the spoken commands. You don’t need to prerecord the commands nor the contact names from your phonebook, which is really convenient.

Customizations

The Nokia N96 main menu offers four different view modes. Two of them are the well known 4 x 3 grid and a simple list. In addition, you can choose whether you prefer your icons animated or not.

The standard grid and list menu view modes

The other two available modes are the 3D V-shape and Horseshoe layouts. They have a charm of they own but, if we were to be asked, they aren’t as user-friendly and do take their time getting used to. The font sizes throughout the menus are also configurable depending on your preferences.

The more extravagant horseshoe and V-shape layouts

Finally, you can change the currently active theme. There are only three preinstalled themes on Nokia N96, but you are by no means limited to them only. Downloading additional ones from the internet and installing them on your N96 is quick and easy and the choices offered are endless.

The three preisntalled themes are quite similar

Telephony has no issues

As far as the in-call performance of Nokia N96 is concerned, the chubby fellow is doing pretty well. It doesn’t have any problems with neither low signal, nor interferences.

There is no preinstalled smart-dialing feature on the Nokia N96, unlike e71 or some competing brands. However the aforementioned voice recognition system is just as convenient – you only have to hold the right soft key in standby and speak after the tone. If you have more than one number assigned to the name you should set one as default or otherwise the first entered number will be dialed.

We had no problem contacting Dexter on Nokia N96

Here are the results from our loudspeaker test. Nokia N96 did manage to impress us here producing an excellent score. It seems that there is a quite powerful voice hidden in the large body. Here is the table comparing the N96 to some of the other handsets we’ve put to the same test. In case you want to find out more about the test itself or a complete list of tested devices, hit the link.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Nokia N82	70.2	61.2	65.9	Below average
Nokia E70	69.0	66.3	70.0	Average
Nokia N95 8GB	75.7	66.2	70.2	Good
Nokia N95	77.3	66.6	78.0	Very Good
Nokia N96	73.7	76.0	78.1	Excellent

Superb phonebook

The Symbian style phonebook of Nokia N96 has practically unlimited capabilities. The storage space can possibly stretch out to fill the whole phone memory, which is impossible to deplete even if you tried intentionally.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names. You can set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

The contacts can be ordered by either first or last name • searching by gradual typing of the desired name is also available

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. Personal ringtones and videos are also available for assigning. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

An endless list of fields is available when editing a contact

Nokia N96 also sports the Call log application to keep track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included). The period can be shortened to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space. And Nokia N96 is surely not the phone to have you fussed over storage.

Messaging is great too

Nokia N96 is surely going to be appreciated by the people who text a lot. The keypad does reasonably well and the software support is completely up to the Symbian high standard.

Not really surprising, Nokia N96 supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. The first two share the all too familiar intuitive editor. It has a counter of characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

The SMS and MMS share a really intuitive editor

Switching from SMS to MMS is as simple as inserting some multimedia content. A nice feature allows automatic resizing of pictures that are too large for sending via MMS.

Nokia N96 also features the dedicated audio message editor. You can either record the message on the spot or use a sound clip from the phone memory.

Delivery reports pop up on the standby screen and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts saving it to the Drafts folder or discarding it.

The email client is really nice, able to match almost any emailing needs of the user. The best part is that Nokia N96 sports the ultra easy email setup we came to know in recent Nokia phones. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time.

The email client is doing a great job

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mailbox (be it POP or IMAP) is set to run on the N96.

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. There is also support for attachments, signatures and you can hardly think of something important that the Nokia N96 is missing.

Music player flying high

The music player is another noteworthy Nokia N96 application. With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won’t play. Album art is also supported but unluckily there are no alternative visualizations.

Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available. You can also create your own playlists in no time. The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You can avoid that if you upload the music via Nokia’s proprietary PC Suite application.

The music player automatically sorts your tracks by artist, album, genre e.t.c.

The player comes with five equalizer presets and if they seem insufficient you can create new ones in a matter of seconds. Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track.

The dedicated music keys do help the sonic experience but, like we said, having two sets of them is too much.

Finally the A2DP Bluetooth profile means that you can enjoy your favorite tracks on a stereo wireless headset.

Audio quality has improved, still not too impressive

The audio quality of Nokia N96 has improved over its predecessors. The phone now has commendable noise and dynamic range levels, comparable to the best examples on the market. The frequency response has also been improved although it is still not perfect. However it is much better than it was on the Nokia N95 so the steps seem to be in the right direction.

The problems about the audio quality of Nokia N96 are the comparatively high distortion levels and the relatively bad stereo crosstalk (this is not really disturbing). And here go the results so you can see for yourselves if Nokia N96 is good enough for you.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia N96	+0.52, -2.14	-90.6	90.7	0.016	0.364	-73.5
Nokia N95 8GB	+1.14, -1.68	-77.1	76.9	0.0066	0.148	-68.5
Nokia N95	+1.17, -2.68	-74.9	74.9	0.019	0.186	-75.3
Nokia N81	+0.39, -1.13	-86.6	85.8	0.041	0.040	-69.9
LG KU990 Viewty	+0.29, -2.07	-86.8	83.8	0.020	0.0124	-86.6
Apple iPhone 3G	+0.52, -1.05	-89.9	90.1	0.0033	0.016	-93.1

Nokia N96 frequency response graph

You can find more information about our audio quality test here.

Video player

Nokia N96 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode and can be switched to fullscreen. When in full screen, the soft key labels are hidden so that they don’t spoil the viewing experience and only pop up when a key is pressed.

As you might have guessed, watching a video clip on a screen with this kind of picture quality is really enjoyable. The generous size is also a welcome benefit.

This is where the kickstand comes in really useful. You can easily prop your Nokia N96 on a desk and watch without having to hold it. The stereo speakers come on top, which also improves the video watching experience.

Once again the dedicated keys are rather convenient for managing your video files.

DVB-H

Nokia N96 also comes complete with a DVB-H tuner, which enables it to receive digital TV broadcasts. Through the Live TV application you can access mobile television and radio services and watch and listen to digital programmes. The interface of the application is quite simple and easy to work with but have in mind that this feature isn’t available without a SIM card inserted.

The mobile TV application has quite simple interface

Currently DVB-H is only available is a handful of cities around the world, which makes the Nokia N96 even more of a niche product. Here is the list of lucky places, where you can enjoy digital TV on handheld devices. As far as the rest of the world is concerned – the key selling feature of Nokia N96 doesn’t look that tempting now, does it?

FM radio

The FM radio on Nokia N96 has a neat and simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and Visual radio. The latter requires internet connection and WLAN won’t do.

This time Nokia got is perfectly right with the FM radio

With RDS and automatic scanning however you’re less likely to resort to network data transfers with Visual Radio.

In addition Nokia N96 offers a direct shortcut to the online radio directory where hundreds of stations are available.

The image gallery got even better

The gallery of Nokia N96 is simply great with the 3D rotating view. The Navi wheel is in its prime here, making image browsing quite fun.

Feature Pack 2 also brings some really cool improvements to the gallery application. The browsing system is now letting you speed up photo browsing if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This allows quick skipping of tons of files if you’re not in the habit of cleaning up your memory every now and then. Besides, the gallery has a much more conveniently placed shortcut for accessing picture details.

The gallery has seen some improvement

Otherwise, no changes are to be seen here in terms of features – pictures can be viewed in both portrait and landscape mode and zoomed in up to 8x (not that anyone would actually need that much). The zooming is now in much smaller steps, which makes it quite a lot slower than it used to be on Nokia N95 8GB. Still the general performance is on the better side of phones we have tested.

Browsing the gallery in portrait and landscape modes • zooming in

The gallery also offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow – forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with. The music can also be switched off if you prefer.

The slide show can be easily customized

The gallery also has a nice picture tagging system. In addition to the geotagging which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters.

If the gallery file-management functionality (which even includes sending multiple files at a time) is insufficient you can use the file manager. It allows you to do almost anything you can think of with your files. Copying, moving, creating new folders – you name it and it’s a safe bet that Nokia N96 can do it.

The file manager can do almost anything with your files

There is also an application manager to take care of the installed applications on Nokia N96. Not much to talk about here, as it is identical to the one in any other Symbian device. Its functionality boils down to providing details about installed applications, removing them and keeping a log of movements in either direction.

A new version of the useful “Search” application is also aboard Nokia N96. It has a reserved line in the active standby menu, which is hardly a surprise given how useful it is. The application itself finds almost every item in your handset containing a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and then all results are displayed on the screen.

The search application

Read my lens

Nokia N96 is equipped with a 5 megapixel camera with a maximum image resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. It sports autofocus and a dual-LED flash but unluckily no lens protection whatsoever. This means the glass protecting the lens is quite vulnerable to scratches and finger smudges.

Just a quick glance at the text on Nokia N96 lens is enough to tell us that its sensor has been downgraded. It shows a focal length of 5.2, while Nokia N95 8GB has a focal length of 5.6. Having in mind that both handsets have the same angle of view this clearly indicates that a smaller sensor has been used in Nokia N96. The photos also come to confirm this.

Autofocus is surely the best thing about the Nokia N96 camera. The software bit of it, that is. The atrocious shutter key is doing its best to ruin things big time. Anyway, autofocus is almost instant in broad daylight and quite quick in low light too. The dedicated AF assist light also helps here. N96 sure is the first cameraphone we see to achieve focus lock as quickly.

Another nice camera feature is geotagging, which by the way, works with videos too. GPS locks are quite fast, so you won’t have to wait too much for your first geotagged shot.

However, it’s not all bed of roses for the camera in N96. The camera key deserves every ounce of our indignation and we just won’t leave it be. The button is almost impossible to use and makes taking a decently focused photo a real challenge even with the great AF system.

The camera UI of Nokia N96 is the same as in N95 8GB. Using our favorite tab layout, it offers extensive settings – starting from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity and including exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings. Various effects are also at hand, labeled color tones. However, we are disappointed to find the option of customizing icons on the toolbar we saw on the low-key Nokia 6220 classic missing in N96.

The camera UI is really convenient

The picture quality of Nokia N96 is decent but, much to our surprise, not as good as any of the Nokia N95 versions. It is quite obvious that a smaller sensor have been used in Nokia N96 resulting in a reduced dynamic range. The handset also has a strong tendency to overexpose photos which brings in quite prominent highlight clipping. The clipping of a single color channel, resulting in loss of detail is also quite common.

At least the colors are rather precise and the noise is kept to a decent level. In favorable weather there is more than enough detail and even foliage seems to come out pretty well. Sharpness levels are also very good with no traces of excessive sharpening.

Have a look at the sample photos made with the camera of Nokia N96.

Nokia N96 camera sample photos

Here is also an impromptu little shootout we made between Nokia N96 and Nokia N95 8GB. At this point, it seems the N96 will be struggling to motivate cameraphone admirers.

Nokia N95 8GB • Nokia N96 • Nokia N95 8GB • Nokia N96

Nokia N95 8GB • Nokia N96 • Nokia N95 8GB • Nokia N96

Nokia N95 8GB • Nokia N96

Impressive video recording

As for video recording, the N96 camera shoots in VGA resolution at the sweet 30fps. Sounds like really good quality and it very well is.

Videos are captured in MPEG-4 format and can have automatic or manual white balance. The other available settings are night mode and color effects.

Connecting people

Nokia Nseries are all about connectivity and it is hardly a surprise that the flagship supports all popular means of data transferring. USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 are a nice start of the lengthy list. All kinds of network connectivity are also on board – from ageing GPRS, through EDGE to 3G with HSDPA – Nokia N96 has it all.

By the way if you are interested where you can find UMTS 2100Mhz or you are not sure whether it’s supported in your country, you should definitely check out our Worldwide Network Bands distribution database.

To complete the wireless communication tally, Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand. A nice improvement coming with the FP 2 now allows for quick locating of hidden wireless networks with the sharpish WLAN scanner right on the stand-by screen. This was also possible with the previous Nokia handsets but took a lot more time, as the WLAN wizard had to be used.

Even the memory card slot is here and makes good value if you have a card reader at hand. The missing thing with Nokia N96 is the Infrared port but we are not going to pretend that we are even slightly missing it.

Web browser good as always

Browsing the internet with Nokia N96 is at typical smartphone heights. Even the most complex and elaborate of web pages are rendered problem-free and fit the screen perfectly.

The virtual mouse cursor earns the browser another point. It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help finding your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level and font size are also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses.

The web browser has portrait and landscape mode

The large display is one of the best things about browsing the web on Nokia N96. Even the smallest font is readable on the 2.8″ unit and that allows you to fit more content and save some scrolling effort. The large amount of RAM makes sure you will never get memory full warnings even if you load several quite heavy web pages.

Splendid organizer

The organizing skills of Nokia N96 are really top-notch. The handset comes with a huge number of time-managing applications and they all have nice functionality and user-friendly interface.

The calendar has the typical three different view modes – monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The calendar view modes and events available for setting up

The mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word and Excel, PDF and PowerPoint files seamlessly. Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included version of the Quickoffice. If you would like editing enabled you will have to purchase the complete application from the Nokia Download center for a rather hefty fee.

Nokia N96 can open .doc, .xls, .ppt and .pdf files out of the box

The final file managing application is the ZIP manager, which allows extracting archived files straight on your phone.

Some of the other included organizing and time-management applications are a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

Some of the other time-management applications

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

The alarm application has an unlimited number of slots

N-gaging the games section

Nokia N96 comes in with quite a number of N-gage games preloaded. The new Nokia gaming platform is really great and with the dedicated gaming key you are up for an exciting time with this phone. Or so it seems at first sight, as only one of the games is actually a full version and the rest need to be purchased separately.

It is also kinda strange that the title picked to include in our package was no other than Tetris. With all due respect to this timeless classic, something with more action and impressive graphics would have suited the N96 much better.

In addition, you can download some free games from Nokia download center but those aren’t as good as the N-gage titles. There are also plenty of third-party games out there, so Nokia N96 users can easily download both native and java titles.

GPS navigation: improvement all over

Nokia N96 has a built-in GPS chip that can be considered a serious upgrade to the one found in either Nokia N95 version. With a far more sensitive receiver, Nokia N96 is coming close to some of the best examples in the business.

It took the phone a little more than a minute to get satellite lock upon cold start and that sounds rather good. There are hardly many cases where this type of speed will let you down. Furthermore, A-GPS is bound to reduce this time even further. Have in mind though that data transfer charges apply in this case.

The built-in GPS receiver works with the Nokia Maps application, which is one of the software navigation applications to offer the most detailed maps. Furthermore, it is free and relatively easy to use, as far as the most basic functionality is concerned. What’s even better, with Nokia N96 it comes complete with 3 months worth of free voice-guided navigation. This basically means Nokia N96 is good to serve as an in-car navigation unit straight out of the box.

Nokia maps has four different view modes

The Nokia Maps application itself is doing pretty well in terms of features too. It has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning algorithm. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. The route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. The app is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map.

The route planning algorithm can be easily customized

Additional features like traffic information and city guides can also be activated but they come for a fee.

Finally, in case you are still unhappy with Nokia Maps you can go for a third-party application and there are quite a lot of those available. User reports suggest the internal GPS has no problem working with any of the more popular 3rd party navigation apps.

The overall impression of the Nokia N96 GPS functionality is very positive, comparative to our favorite among Nokia GPS phones – Nokia N78. The latter trades the larger screen for an even more sensitive GPS receiver. Any of those phones is highly unlikely to leave even the most demanding users disappointed.

Final words: Too little, too late

Maybe Nokia N96 wasn’t really intended to take the market by storm and turn the world around. Maybe it was meant to quietly update the top multimedia gadget of the house and continue to cash in.

It just seems Nokia won’t put all eggs in the same basket. And that makes us wondering. More high-end stuff will be available in affordable handsets, Arte will continue to define exquisite splendor, Eseries will go on blending exceptional skill with refined elegance and Touch UI will slowly be conquering the company portfolio. If all those assumptions are true, shall we fear the Nseries packed with features beyond belief but only getting uglier?

Tempted though we are to say that failure is looming over Nokia N96, we know better than that. There will be quite a lot of diehard Symbian fans (and even a few individuals that do actually need DVB-H support) that will go against their aesthetic sense and get the N96. And no, we don’t think they will be disappointed or eager to agree with most of the things we said in this review.

As for the rest of the potential buyers – Nokia N96 is a great software package that comes in an utterly user-unfriendly shell. The ergonomics of the device are so poor (except for video watching) that operating it is a chore, rather than fun. Not to mention looks that are….oh well, controversial will have to do. It’s just that when you dish out a healthy sum it’s only fair to expect style and finesse. For all we know, style and finesse may have different meaning in the geek world and that’s where the name of Nokia N96 sure rings a special bell.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n96-review-286p8.php

Nokia N96

Here’s a walkthrough of the pertinent screenshots….

 BBC iPlayer

  

As already said, the carrying through of an existing Internet connection through to RealPlayer without having to manually tweak the latter’s settings every time (gah – how did it take Nokia so long to fix this??) makes a big difference. For UK residents at least, iPlayer is a huge boon on the N96 – yes, it can be made to work on other S60 phones, but it’s a pain to hack, the experience is not as smooth and the Download system (the best bit, in my opinion) doesn’t work at all. Above is shown a typical selection of recent TV programmes available.

  

The BBC wouldn’t be the BBC without a little bit of coddling, of course. Warnings are shown on screen and a dialog (actually a Web runtime form) has to be ticked and submitted before access to some programmes. A good idea, but when nearly every programme you want to watch has some sort of PG form, it does start to become something of a pain. Perhaps a daily cookie could be set, BBC?

  

From the BBC iPlayer ‘widget’ you click ‘Download’ and then a whole new blank screen comes to the foreground, with an extra Download popup. You click on ‘Hide’ and then panic, as there’s absolutely no apparent way to find your ongoing download again. So you assume that it didn’t start properly and try again. And then the popup reappears, showing two identical downloads. What’s actually happening is that the downloads are handled by Web’s Downloads pane, not surprising, since iPlayer is a Web runtime app. But this behaviour is going to catch a lot of less knowledgeable users out. As it did me briefly, see above!

 

Also confusing is that the download pane says that the iPlayer videos are being saved to ‘Gallery’, an application (shell) that’s buried two levels deep in the S60 structure, where no user will ever find it. What it should say is ‘saved to Video Centre’…. Something else for Nokia to fix.

  

Once found in Video Centre though, it’s plain sailing, with the handy option to play videos from the last watched point, more or less essential when you’re working your way through a 90 minute documentary over a 2 day period!

 Video feeds

   

I was expecting ‘Video feeds’ to be the same as on previous S60 phones, but in addition to the usual feeds (Reuters, etc.) there were mobisode-like feeds for BBC, ITV and Sky – presumably different video partners would be involved in different countries. The videos themselves are short but are at least quite current, though it’s a long way from live TV.

   

Videos are neatly categorised on the main ‘My videos’ screen, although it’s a bit confusing for all your iPlayer downloads to not appear under ‘TV recordings’, which I think would have made sense. Video playback on the N96 is, as I say, exemplary, with all flavours (and resolutions and bitrates) of MP4 and WMV files fully supported. I’ll be delving more into the device’s multimedia capabilities in part 3 of this review.

  

Video feeds can be subscribed to, as you’d expect and specific programmes downloaded, as shown here. The video feed directory is reasonably up to date and certainly a good place to start.

   

 Photos too

 

Photos is effectively a superset of the old Nseries Gallery, with items categorised and tagged in the hopefully now standard FP2 way. It’s quite handy being able to filter by month, particularly, although I’m not sure how many people are going to have time to sit tagging their photos and using this filter. 

  

Confusingly, the ‘Downloads’ filter in Photos actually shows downloaded videos, and with broken icons. Hmm…. Er…… Nokia….??

 Games

  

The N-Gage application is preinstalled, of course, and with its own pane in Nokia’s quirky ‘multimedia menu’. I still can’t get my head around this and see it as an unnecessary and inelegant addition to the platform. Once into N-Gage, a handful of trial games are preinstalled, a nice touch, plus there’s the Tetris activation code and leaflet in the box, as previously mentioned.

 Music

 

Filling 16GB, even at USB 2 speeds, takes a while, but I gave it half an hour or so and put on 5GB of my music, about half of my WMA track collection, mainly ripped off my CD collection at 96kbps or 128kbps. I was aiming to stress test Music player, but I needn’t have worried, since the application coped fine with over 600 tracks. The ‘Mass memory’ chip used in the N96 certainly seems faster than that in the N95 8GB.

 Files

   

Part of Feature Pack 2, but new to me, was this addition to File manager, with ‘Backup’ giving users at least some clue/prompting to back up their main memory to a microSD card. Delving into the ‘C’ disk, i.e. ‘Phone memory’, instantly hits the user with this forbidding list of files. Not a good start, I’m hoping these are only here because of the early firmware and that this also gets tidied up ASAP.

 Navi wheel

  

As already reported, the Navi wheel, working in the first N96 prototypes, has been disabled for production hardware. And I’ve absolutely no idea why. I’m guessing it didn’t work that well, or that the electronics were too expensive, or some other hardware reason, since if it was a user experience thing then I’d have expected it to be a setting in this dialog.

 PIM applications

   

The S60 PIM applications haven’t changed that much in the last year or two, ditto the standby screen and main menu. I opted to transfer in my contacts and bookmarks via the standard S60 Switch application and had no problems whatsoever.

   

Business as usual in Contacts. Ditto Calendar, Messaging and so on. Although perhaps by the time the next Nseries device comes out, there will be Nokia Email, out of beta, to liven things up?

 Updates

    

Typing ‘*#0000#’ into the standby screen gives this detailed dialog, with an option to check for over-the-air firmware updates. I had a few problems connecting from here, but got through eventually. It’s odd that v10 is still showing up as the latest when there are many people with v11, but maybe we had a review unit with a unique product code that hadn’t been checked yet. Maybe…..

 Onto multimedia

Of course, it’s the N96’s handling of video, audio and photography which is crucial – after all, these are the unique selling points of the device.

Source :  http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N96-part_2-Walking_through_the_applications.php

LG KT610 (2)

 LG KT610 review: Communicator wannabe

KT610 is LG’s way of saying the communicator class isn’t reserved for insanely expensive high end devices. Packing a large full-QWERTY keyboard and neat and simple looks, the S60 Symbian handset spells business. It might have a few features missing but a frown at the spec sheet may as well melt into a smile at the price tag. Economy class is good enough as long as it gets you there. One particularly exciting thing about LG KT610 is the stark contrast between the touchingly old-school front and the serious stuff inside. So let’s open it up and see what we say.

LG KT610 official photos

Key features:

• Full QWERTY keyboard
• 2.4″ 262K-color QVGA display inside
• 1.45″ 262K-color secondary display
• Symbian OS v9.2 with S60 rel. 3.1 UI
• 3G with HSDPA
• Compact dimensions for a communicator
• 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera
• Built-in GPS receiver with excellent sensitivity
• More affordable than other communicators
• Bluetooth and USB v2.0
• 64MB of internal memory and microSD card slot

Main disadvantages:

• No Wi-Fi
• Mediocre camera
• No image geotagging
• Tiny external display of little usability
• Unimpressive battery life
• No A-GPS
• No document editor out-of-the-box
• No PDF reader or ZIP manager preinstalled

LG KT610 is a blessing for heavy texters who do appreciate the Symbian way of handling messaging. The dream texting skills however come at a price – the multimedia handling has suffered. In addition, cutting corners on cost has affected the preloaded content, which is rather scarce.

LG KT610 in our office

As this stage it should have become obvious that the KT610 is a niche model. It still makes a nice alternative in the full QWERTY Symbian segment, where supply isn’t exactly profuse. LG KT610 is rubbing shoulders with a few Eseries handsets and Communicators, and a couple of Sony Ericsson P-line phones. All right, a fact’s a fact: the Nokia E90 secondary display is almost the size of the KT610 main screen and the difference in price is hard to swallow. But still, plunging head first in the shark pond sure takes some cojones.

Another tough question is how the lack of Wi-Fi would affect a communicator, no matter how affordable. Well, we are to see about that when the phone spends some more time on the market. As for now let’s cut to the chase and start inspecting the LG KT610 exterior.

Before we jump to the next page though, a fair warning is due. We are reviewing a beta unit, so improvements and bug-fixes are quite likely.

LG KT610 360-degree spin

The LG KT610 dimensions of 108.9 x 53.9 x 17.2mm are desperately short of compact in regular phone terms. However, it’s the most pocketable communicator-style handset around. The same holds true for the weight of 125.5 grams – a good achievement for the class but far from spectacular in common mobile terms.

//

 

Design and construction

The LG KT610 was never meant to be a hot looker, so don’t count on the exquisite finish of the LG KF750 Secret. The form factor isn’t exactly the kind to expect design miracles but the LG approach is interesting enough. The KT610 is simply not a foldable eye-sore: the neat and simple exterior, the smaller dimensions and, above all, that vintage look give it a charm of its own.

When closed, LG KT610 looks so 1998 with its tiny screen and giant keypad and controls. Looks on the inside are way more conventional, simplicity and ease prevailing again. One still can’t help but wish the screen was bigger. The 4:3 aspect ratio is probably just as important for compatibility but it looks like a lot of space was simply wasted.

LG KT610 resembles a retro phone when closed

The folding top of LG KT610 locks in two positions. The first is at about 120 degrees, which is very comfortable for desktop use. In this position the KT610 is best used sitting on your desk. The other position is full flat and it’s more convenient for holding the phone in your hands.

The two positions of the folding top

The earpiece of LG KT610 is located at the top of the folding front, the mouthpiece is at the very bottom, while the stereo speakers are on either side of the internal display.

There is a loudspeaker on either side of the internal display

The microSD card slot is on the right side of the handset. LG KT610 will ship with a 1GB card included but if that seems insufficient you can go for a bigger one. The handset had no trouble handling an 8GB memory card, which is the largest capacity currently available on the market. In our pre-release unit however inserting a memory card, regardless of its size or used/free space ratio, slows down the file manager on the device. We really hope they fix that in the final retail product.

The right side hosts the microSD card slot

The volume rocker is on its left side, right between the hinges, and the LG proprietary USB slot is at the top. A standard miniUSB or microUSB slot might have been more welcome but it’s not that much of a bother.

The volume rocker is right between the hinges • The USB slot is on top

The backside hosts the 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera lens and the self-portrait mirror. Communicator or else, the KT610 sure ain’t a cameraphone, but we’ll discuss that later on in the dedicated camera chapter.

The 2 megapixel snapper is complimented by a self-portrait mirror

Sliding down the latch at the base of the battery cover makes the 960 mAh Li-Ion Polymer battery pop out. Its capacity isn’t spectacular by any means but you can still count on up to 2 days of rather extensive usage.

The 960 mAh battery is a decent performer

The build quality of LG KT610 is very good, and that’s one aspect where it comes close to communicators. There are no special or rare materials used, but the plastic casing is quite solid and there are no creaks or other disturbing noises during operation. The metallic framing of the folding top is a nice accent, and the rubbery texture at the rear ensures a nice grip.

Even though you only get full access to all phone features in QWERTY desktop use, single-handed operation of the KT610 is still quite sensible.

The LG KT610 held in hand

Display – improvement all over

LG KT610 packs a 1.45″ external and a 2.4″ internal screen, both handling 262K colors. The external display has very poor picture quality but still does a decent job for answering calls and checking the device status. It does give access to some more basic features, including texting and music player.

The 2.4″ external display

We have already mentioned that there is more than enough space to fit a larger internal display. Putting size aside, the unit fitted on the KT610 is really nice with very pleasant picture quality and good brightness. It is probably the best display on an LG handset, even though the KT610 is not among the company’s high-enders.

Sunlight legibility is praiseworthy. LG handsets have so far been virtually useless when exposed to direct sunlight. The LG KF750 Secret is almost impossible to work with outside in the bright sun and the KU990 Viewty isn’t doing much better either. However the KT610 is a whole different story: it remains perfectly legible even in the brightest of days and the vivid picture doesn’t suffer as much as we expected.

Keypad fantastic: external and QWERTY alike

All the keys and controls on LG KT610 are simply great. The keypad on the outside has superb large keys on terraced rows that are rather tactile and pleasingly solid to press. There’re no borders between keys within the same row but that’s hardly an issue with the plenty of space the keypad enjoys. The D-pad and the adjacent controls are also a pleasure to use. An important side note: the main control up front is not a D-pad per se, for it only allows scrolling up and down. Nevertheless, it’s perfectly comfortable and responsive.

The external keypad is praiseworthy

The inside full QWERTY keyboard is just as good with the well-sized and spaced knobs. The only minor problem is the D-pad confirmation center, which might feel too small to first-time users. However getting used to it is rather quick and you’ll be speeding through menus and selections in no time.

The QWERTY keyboard is great too

The typing experience the KT610 delivers is awesome. It falls behind the Nokia E90 larger keyboard of course but let’s be honest – the Nokia Communicator is huge.

The backlighting deserves a decent mark too: it is strong enough and fairly even, save for the control and space keys on the inside.

Backlighting is strong and fairly even

Telephony is excellent

LG KT610 might be a few things short of being the ultimate communicator but reception and call clarity sure ain’t among them: we experienced no issues for the time of testing. You can dial right on the external screen or on the inside but it feels much more natural to use the phone closed for conversations. Video calls are another story – you have to open the phone, as the video-call camera is next to the internal display. It feels the right way to have a video call and we consider this more of an advantage actually.

Calling Dexter on the KT610

The vibration is also strong enough to make sure you never miss an incoming call or message when the phone is in a pocket. The results from our loudspeaker test are at your disposal – LG KT610 turned out a decent performer in this respect too, though far from the spectacular achievements of some other LG handsets. Check out the table for how it stacks against some of the handsets we’ve measured. In case you want to find out more about the test itself or a complete list of tested devices, hit the link.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Apple iPhone	67.2	60.2	66.6	Below Average
Samsung U800 Soul b	65.9	65.9	75.8	Average
LG KT610	66.7	68.8	81.6	Good
Sony Ericsson W890	69.6	78.2	72.7	Very Good
HTC TyTN II	76.0	75.7	82.7	Excellent

Dual-face user interface – worth the shot

LG KT610 runs on the Symbian 9.2 OS with Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It didn’t stick around long enough to get the Feature Pack 2 treatment, so users will have to settle for FP1.

The external screen handles six basic features: contacts, new message, message inbox, music player, camera and calls log. Those are all pretty trimmed down when launched from here due to the specifics of the display. What you get on the inside of LG KT610 is little different from the other Symbian devices with FP1.

External screen UI: home screen • contacts list

If you open any of these applications through the small external display and then flip the KT610 open, they get opened on the main screen too, which is rather handy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around, as closing the flip always minimizes all open applications.

Typing a new message and checking the call logs

Now let’s open up the main screen. For starters, LG KT610 features an active standby mode. You have a bar of shortcut icons for instant access to pre-selected functions at the top of the display, while scheduled events from the calendar, along with the currently playing track or radio station (if any), get displayed underneath.

Active standby mode is available

When assigning Active Standby shortcuts, you can choose any application or even a website. The functionality of the two soft keys is configurable too. Another standby screen feature that we really like is the Google search bar giving instant access to the search engine.

The phone has 5 profiles plus an offline mode that switches off all transceivers. If the phone gets started without a SIM card the offline mode get activated automatically allowing full access to the functions of the phone that do not require cellular network coverage. All the profiles can easily be edited to best suit the user needs.

As with any other S60 smartphone, the task manager of LG KT610 pops up upon a press-and-hold on the Menu key. It allows switching between applications or turning off any running application by pressing the backspace key.

Holding the menu key starts the task manager

There are only two menu views for the KT610 but they are basically all you need. The options are a 4 x 3 grid of icons, and a standard list.

There are two main menu view modes

Finally, LG KT610 has a voice recognition feature that (supposedly) allows you to control the whole user interface without even having to touch the phone. It does all right but still not as well as we hoped. Although speaker independent, the application has trouble recognizing some user commands, especially the longer ones. It’s still a good help on some occasions and, given the beta status of our unit, it may get even better in the retail version of LG KT610.

Rich customization options

If you get bored with the phone’s looks, you can always change the theme. There’s a single preinstalled theme on LG KT610 but downloading additional ones is a piece of cake. Those are all around the internet so sky is the limit here. Unfortunately the looks of the external screen cannot be altered in any way (not even the wallpaper).

You can easily change the wallpaper of your KT610

Symbian phonebooks – no reason to grumble

Symbian phonebooks are a real treat – they are easy to use and have practically unlimited capabilities. The number of entries is only limited by the available memory, which means that you will have no problems even with thousands of contacts.

Depending on your liking, contacts can be ordered by either first or last name. You can then search by scrolling through names or by gradual typing of any of the names of a contact. The phone will search in both first and last name fields, as well as additional names in those fields. This means that even if a contact has a really complicated name, you will have no problem finding it provided you remember at least a part of it.

The contacts can be arranged by either first or last name and can be searched by gradual typing of the desired name

While editing a contact, you can select from a huge number of preset fields, which you can repeat as many times as you like. There is virtually no way any information about the contact will have to be left out. You can attach as many numbers as you like to each contact as well. Finally, if by some very rare chance, you happen to need a field that doesn’t exist, you can always duplicate one of the already existing and simply rename it.

You can add a huge number of fields when editing a contact gives you

The Call log department has always been a Symbian strength too. The LG KT610 is no exception, offering a detailed record of all your communications for the past 30 days. It stores all the calls, messages and even data transfers for that period. You can also reduce the amount of saved data but it doesn’t use up that much space so such a choice is unlikely.

The call log application is among the S60 phones’ elements

There is also a more convenient way to access your latest calls. Pressing the call key in standby brings up three tabs on the screen. Each of them holds up to 20 missed or received calls, or dialed numbers.

Messaging: communicators rule

With the large and comfortable full QWERTY keyboard and the great software support of the S60 UI, LG KT610 is one of the best texting devices around. The software layout is almost perfect and completely on par with the great ergonomics of the keyboard.

The SMS editor is a very intuitive and easy to use application. It has a counter of the characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending should that limit be exceeded. If you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor offers to either save it to the drafts folder or delete it.

Typing an SMS to Dexter is as easy as it gets with the LG KT610

Naturally, a delivery report can be activated if the user prefers. The reports pop up on the screen, and are consequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. This is surely one of the most convenient ways of dealing with delivery reports.

The MMS editor is almost identical to the one just described. The only noticeable difference is the added subject line and the option of inserting multimedia content.

Finally, there is also an audio message editor. It can either record the message on the fly or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The great email client won’t surprise anyone who has ever used a Symbian powered phone. It supports POP3 and IMAP protocols and can download headers only, as well as entire messages. There is also support for attachments and SSL/TLS communication protocols, so with LG KT610 you will have no trouble meeting almost any emailing requirement.

The emails are typed in a similar manner

The email client can be set to automatically check mail at a preset interval and the number of maximum retrieved messages can also be configured. All this adds up to a great messaging experience on the LG KT610 – the handset has passed the dream texting device exam with flying colors.
The email client is very convenient

Music player does the job

Except for the landscape screen orientation, the LG KT610 music player looks exactly like on any other S60 3rd edition device. It is surely not the most attractive of applications but its functionality is more than OK offering most of the features you can think of.

All the essentials are duly covered – LG KT610 supports a huge number of audio formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. Files are automatically added to the music library once you choose the refresh option in the music player. Track-sorting based on artist, album, genre and composer is also available.

The music player “Now playing” interface

There are four equalizer presets, plus auto option. You can also create new equalizer patterns if the preinstalled seem insufficient.

Four equalizer presets and an auto mode is available

The external display has a very basic interface for the music player but it also does the job. This means that you can listen to your music without even having to open the phone.

Accessing the music player through the external screen

Audio quality is remarkable

Even though the KT610 was never meant to be a music phone, its audio quality easily makes some dedicated music handsets blush with embarrassment. It’s probably the best performing LG device in this aspect that we’ve ever got to test.

We are pleased that LG didn’t compromise the audio capabilities of the KT610, never mind its business mindset. Here are the results so you can see for yourselves. If you would like to learn more about the test itself you can follow the link.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
LG KT610	+0.49, -1.63	-86.0	85.8	0.0066	0.028	-85.8
LG KF750 Secret	+0.53, -1.02	-87.1	87.3	0.0099	0.023	-85.8
LG KU990 Viewty	+0.29, -2.07	-86.8	83.8	0.020	0.124	-86.6
Nokia E71	+0.74, -1.26	-74.5	74.7	0.016	0.097	-75.8
Samsung i550	+0.74, -0.76	-90.8	86.9	0.0024	0.033	-89.1
Sony Ericsson W980	+0.31, -1.25	-86.0	89.4	0.037	0.828	-86.3

LG KT610 frequency response graph

You can find more info about the testing process here.

Video player

LG KT610 comes with Real player preinstalled for watching video. The videos can be displayed in fullscreen to make better use of the display. In fullscreen, the softkey labels are hidden, so they don’t stand in the way, and only pop up when a key is pressed. The great picture quality is also a boost to video watching experience. The fact that the phone can easily be used in desktop mode makes it even more suitable for watching video.

Picture gallery is OK

The LG KT610 image gallery is accessed from the My Stuff icon in the main menu. It doesn’t look as good as the 3D rotating gallery on the Nokia N-series devices but functionality is good enough.

The gallery allows viewing pictures in both normal and full screen mode. Once you pick a picture you can zoom on it for greater detail. The actual zooming is very fast for the first step and somewhat slower, but still acceptable, for the next steps. Panning is quite fast and isn’t going to bother anyone.

Looking at a picture in normall and fullscreen modes • zooming in on a photo

The LG KT610 gallery also offers adequate file-management allowing selection and sending of multiple files. In addition to that, the smartphone has the usual file manager that does a very good job itself. It allows filtering files according to the memory used as well as marking, moving, copying single or multiple files at a time.

Regretfully, the LG KT610 has no feature similar to the “Search” application we found on Nokia Symbian phones. This means you have to spend a little extra time organizing your files and applications, unless you want to end up in a mess. Anyways, there are a bunch of third-party applications available for download that are up to the task.

2 megapixel snapper

The camera of the LG KT610 is one of things indicating that it is supposed to be a business device before anything else. 2 megapixel snappers are nowadays considered rather low-end but, given that even the omnipresent E90 only pulls off 3 megapixels, we shouldn’t be too particular.

The camera on KT610 however is really hard to operate. The outside screen is comfortable to use when shooting like you would with a regular bar phone. However the small external display shows only a part of the frame to be captured. It cuts about 2/3 of the frame and only displays its central area. Also worth pointing out is that you can’t capture videos using the external display as a viewfinder.

When using the inside screen as a viewfinder you’re facing other problems. For one, your finger tends to cover the lens when you hold the phone. You have to risk dropping it or hold it vertically and shoot in a really unnatural and awkward way.

On the positive side, the camera interface is rather nice and easy to work with. In fact it is the same as the one on Nokia 5320 and Nokia 6210 Navigator. It doesn’t offer too many features but with a snapper like this they are more than enough.

LG KT610 camera UI

The sequence and scene modes are all there and there is a really nice panorama mode where the handset can easily make panos with excellent stitching. However, this panorama mode produces photos of too low resolution, which are suitable for viewing on the phone screen only.

Unfortunately, much like on the Nokia 6210 Navigator, despite the built-in GPS receiver, the camera of the KT610 is not able to geotag your shapshots. Pity, indeed!

The picture quality is about average for a two megapixel camera. Color rendering is rarely on the spot but the amount of captured detail is decent. Noise levels are acceptable for the class. The image processing algorithm is good enough and there isn’t much detail loss due to noise reduction or oversharpening.

Check out the sample pics to get an idea of how LG KT610 fares in imaging.

LG KT610 sample camera photos

As far as video recoding is concerned, the LG KT610 is able to manage CIF resolution. Videos have a frame rate of 10fps and are saved in 3gp format. This makes them rather useless on most occasions but capturing videos isn’t the selling point of KT610 anyway.

Connectivity: no Wi-Fi is a no-go

LG KT610 fares decently in terms of connectivity. The biggest absence is of course WLAN. Frankly, we would have proffered Wi-Fi support over GPS big time. After all, Wi-Fi is among the make-or-break smartphone features.

But first thing first – let’s start with the wired connectivity capabilities of LG KT610. USB pairing is truly seamless, as with any other Symbian device. You can set a default connectivity mode when a cable is connected or you’ll be prompted every time. The card slot is also an option with the good transfer rates card readers can offer.

In the wireless department you get Bluetooth v2.0. The network connectivity is also at the expected high level with GPRS, EDGE and 3G all covered. HSDPA is also on board to take network data transfers to top speed. We doubt it the lack of an Infrared port is going to make anyone change their mind.

Web browser is worth the praise

As you probably know, we do fancy Symbian web browsers. The LG KT610 makes no exception, plus on the landscape display pages look really great.

Browsing the internet with LG KT610 is a pleasure. No matter how elaborate the web page, it fits perfectly on the screen and is very easy to read and navigate. The virtual mouse cursor earns the handset another point. It is easy to control and generally works great.

The web browser is very good

A mini-map can be activated to help finding your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level and font size are also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. This is where the landscape 2.4″ screen gets much appreciated, as it makes the font readable even when downsized to only a few pixels height.

LG KT610 gets you organized

Organizing applications come by the dozen in Symbian handsets. Those are also very practical and usually quite user-friendly.

The LG KT610 calendar has three different types of view – monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for scheduling – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has its own unique fields and some allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The calendar application

The mobile office applications are reasonably well covered. The preinstalled applications are able to open Word and Excel and PowerPoint documents. However, the PowerPoint files took ages to load and managed to get on our nerves.

LG KT610 can open .doc .xls and .ppt files out of the box

Unluckily our unit of LG KT610 lacked the PDF reader and the ZIP manager we are used to seeing in most other Symbian handsets. Furthermore, the KT610 lacks support for editing documents. If you are to need this feature you will have to purchase the full version of the office application for a fee.

There was neither PDF reader nor ZIP manager preinstalled on our unit

Here are some of the other included organizing and time-management applications: a very capable unit converter and a decent calculator, as well as a Notes application. There is of course also a convenient voice recorder. As we’ve mentioned repeatedly, recording length is now up to an hour.

The calculator and the unit converter are well familiar

Finally, we come to the LG KT610 alarm application. You can set up a virtually unlimited number of alarms on your handset. Furthermore, each of these can have its own name, activation day and repeat pattern. You can also adjust the snooze time. In addition the clock offers to show you the time in any time zone of the world.

Thumbs up for the GPS

The final noteworthy feature of Samsung LG KT610 is the built-in GPS receiver. Its performance did manage to impress us with remarkable sensitivity. Even though A-GPS is nowhere in sight, the KT610 just nailed down that satellite lock in less than two minutes in cold start. The hot start time is only a few seconds.

The handset ships with Google Maps preinstalled which sadly doesn’t offer turn-by-turn voice guided navigation. This means that a third party navigation software is your only option for using the KT610 as a GPS navigation system. Luckily there are plenty of those available on the market. Of course, you will have to give it some serious thought of how you are going to position the phone on your dashboard to use as an in-car navigation unit.

Google maps comes preinstalled on the KT610 but a third party application is needed for voice guided navigation

Games

The LG KT610 comes with two game trials – the official Shrek III game and Bubble Breaker. The demos run for a minute and a half and then automatically exit. The availability of demo versions only is quite in line with the business orientation of the device. Anyway, you are free to download more games to your LG KT610 or go on and purchase the full versions of those already available.

Only two game trials are to be found on the KT610

Final words

As a whole LG KT610 is a no-nonsense, neat performer. It has its shortfalls here and there but, having in mind the price gap to the next best thing in the class, those are understandable. Still the handset is simply ticking quick and neat, plus ergonomics are commendable.

The KT610 is a somewhat eccentric attempt by LG to enter the relatively small communicator niche. We can see the point of throwing in an unpredictable and rather low-key contender, instead of trying to beat the giants in their own game. We find LG KT610 quite well equipped for the campaign, save for one key absence: Wi-Fi. We would’ve gladly swapped it for the fishy GPS (brilliant chip, but questionable in-car usability).

So at this stage, we hope LG KT610 puts up a good fight for the favor of the almighty user. It’s not about communicator top dogs feeling threatened but a neat performer finding a hard-earned spot of its own.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_kt610-review-276p7.php

LG KT610

In a sea of ostensibly similar S60 phones, at least you can’t deny that the LG KT-610 sticks out. Even more curious than the hardware design is the question of who it’s aimed at – but I think I’ve worked it out. It’s just not who LG would say it’s aimed at.

On the face of it, the KT-610 is a mini-communicator, with superficial similarities to the much larger Nokia E90, but there’s no way a professional would settle for something this small and limited, despite the qwerty keyboard. No Wi-Fi, tiny external screen and, let’s be honest, retro looks, aren’t going to win hearts and minds around the office.

What about the traditional S60 market, power phone users? They’ll be let down by the disappointingly small internal screen, the very poor multimedia performance. And, again, by the looks.

What about High Street phone buyers? However much LG claim that the KT-610 is aimed at heavy texters, I cannot believe that this will attract sales in any High Street I’ve walked down. And heavy texters will already be faster at predictive text on a keypad than most people will be on the quirky qwerty keyboard here.

So who’s left to buy this? I think I have the answer – the older generation. This… THIS is the S60 phone to give your mum or dad. With less than perfect eyesight and less dextrous fingers, they’ll be able to make calls and send texts using the huge external keypad, while the limited outside screen does it’s best not to confuse them with unnecessary information. And, when you do want to introduce them to some S60 staples, or if they decide that predictive text isn’t for them, there’s the full and obvious keyboard waiting inside, with S60 as you know and love it (you just know they’re going to be giving you a slew of ‘how do I?’ calls).

A very simple but very limited external UI…

The purple grille seems to be purely cosmetic

So, not a huge market, but still a market, I’d argue.

Regular readers here will be curious as to the technical aspects of this unusual S60 phone though, even though you’re probably not actually going to rush out and buy it. So here goes – there are certainly enough unique features of interest.

Although the clamshell’s all plastic, the bottom half has a textured finish that makes the KT-610 easy to grip (yet another plus factor for the older generation?) The number pad is sumptuous by modern phone standards and is useable by even the clumsiest fingers. Although there’s no d-pad on the outside, it’s not needed, since the external screen is a dumb-phone-like vertical menu, and so up/down arrow keys suffice, together with a ‘back’ button. 

There’s a dedicated camera button on the front – as you’d expect, a long press starts the camera and a further press takes a photo, although we’re only talking 2 megapixels and no focussing here, so strictly fun snaps only. And, with that slim external display, only the central stripe of the current frame is shown, which is just plain wierd. Trying to take photos with the KT-610 open works slightly better but you’re then hampered by the lens location and avoiding covering it with your fingers. In short, photography is a bit of an afterthought here.

No focussing, no flash, no frills

The external display copes with 3 lines of normal-fonted text, but this is enough for the limited outside UI. This seems to have been added to a subset of the main S60 applications, with Contacts presenting its list for persusal of phone numbers, Messaging allowing for new outgoing messages and browsing of received SMS, Music player allowing for control of the currently playing track and Log presenting your call logs. As you’d expect, with an application ‘running’ on the external screen, opening the KT-610 shows the same application in the same screen on the internal UI.

And it is, of course, by opening the KT-610 that you get access to most of its functions. The clamshell doesn’t attempt to rival the likes of the E90 in any way, despite the superficial similarities. The screen’s a bog-standard 2.4″ QVGA affair, with small stereo speakers either side (fairly loud, though not close to N95-levels or quality), and the keyboard is a restricted-travel, clicky calculator-style affair. Not that it’s unusable, it’s just obviously built on the cheap. 

The d-pad’s surprisingly useable, with a prominent central ‘OK’ button and there are even ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Chr’ modifiers that work exactly as on the likes of the Nokia E61i and E71. The biggest problem by far is that the space bar has been drastically shortened and moved to one side – although you would, I suspect, get used to this, it doesn’t make for an intuitive typing experience coming from other qwerty computers and handhelds. Even more annoying is that full stop and comma both need ‘Chr’ – these should be single keypresses on any keyboarded device, in my opinion. Not good.

The smallest space bar in the world?

There are two locking positions, as shown, for the screen, although it will just about sit at any other angle as long as you’re gentle with it.

‘Flat’ mode works well when standing up, typing with two thumbs

Brightness and colour are good, although the display’s not transflective and suffers in bright sunlight, becoming invisible, unlike many Nokia S60 designs. The left/right function keys are well positioned beneath the main landscape display.

…and yes, the screen IS on…

Although the main S60 menu doesn’t hold many surprises, a dedicated Google launcher is certainly new to me, even though it doesn’t really add anything over simply having an S60 application folder of the same name. ‘Search’, ‘Mail’ and ‘You Tube’ are merely bookmarks to the appropriate mobile web sites, while ‘Maps’ is the native S60 version but not the latest. Attempting to install the very latest Google Maps for Mobile results in an error message ‘Component is already built-in’ – not a huge problem now, but something that will be annoying once Google Maps hits v2.3, v2.4 and so on. At least LG didn’t go down the same route for Google Mail!

 

The link through to YouTube reveals another potential showstopper in the KT-610: even trying to play back the 174 by 144 pixel low-res videos is a struggle and in this respect the device is the antithesis of phones like the N95 and Apple iPhone – multimedia is very weak and underpowered here. Loading on something ‘modern’ (I tried a QVGA programme from my Phones Show) showed just how bad the media rendering is – the clip would play at less than a frame per second and with stuttering audio and resets. Hmmm….

 

If a phone can’t copy with QCIF (176 by 144) videos then there’s something seriously lacking under the hood!

Yuk. That’s not anything ‘-USB’…

Connection to a desktop is via supplied USB cable, although the connector itself is LG proprietary (headphones and mains charger also come in via this route). Data transfer speed was appallingly slow, the slowest I’ve seen since the days of Psion – 100K/s was typical, again reinforcing the KT-610’s huge bias against multimedia (and the large files needed). Although LG has rebranded Nokia’s PC Suite, it’s not directly compatible – a beef of mine, why on earth can’t manufacturers recognise that people often have more than one phone and don’t want to have to keep messing around with multiple, 99% similar, PC Suites?

Also of note on the main menu are that Gallery has been renamed ‘My stuff’, an interesting idea which may catch on, and that ‘Installations’ (where third party apps end up by default) is now buried in ‘Tools’. The latter organisation again reflects the way LG are aiming this at people who don’t know a lot about S60 and indeed may not ever get round to installing extra applications.

           

A smattering of KT-610 screens, all pretty familiar to hardened S60 users

The S60 menus do look a little bare, but then this isn’t a Nokia and most of Nokia’s add-ons don’t work, so there’s no Podcasting, no Share online, no Sports Tracker, and so on – LG haven’t put any serious effort into adding extra software to take up the slack. One glimmer of light is that there’s a version of Nokia Maps, here dubbed ‘Maps on Ovi’, that’s supported and available for official download. The S60 regulars are all here and work well, but you’ll be very familiar with these and there are no other surprises.

At every turn the central question of who the KT-610 is aimed at rears its ugly head. Music fans will like the decent audio quality but will be frustrated by the limited functionality of the external screen and also by the way they’ll have to put up with the proprietary headset or seek out an LG-to-3.5mm adapter. One advantage of the common in/out port is that the device can charge over USB, so it’s not all bad news, I suppose.

Very limited music functions on the external screen

In use, the KT-610 is a functional S60 3rd Edition FP1 phone, although I missed the ability to change profiles from the external interface – pressing the power button didn’t have the usual effect because it has to double as call hangup – a problem shared by some other S60 handsets. At least ‘#’ worked to toggle ‘Silent’ profile on and off.

Web proved troublesome at first, with Vodafone’s default pages coming up with streams of image URLs rather than actual images. Not really the KT-610’s fault, although the lack of Wi-Fi was what forced me to try using Vodafone for data in the first place. Once I stopped Vodafone trying to transcode everything, browsing was fine and typical for S60 Web, subject to the RAM caveat below.

Navigation is possible using Google Maps, as usual, with the built-in GPS doing quite well in terms of sensitivity, thanks to an Assisted GPS utility simply dubbed ‘XTRA’, which updates its GPS almanac over the Internet each day. There’s no reason why third party navigation software shouldn’t work, other than to perhaps worry over rendering performance for the maps.

 

There’s another aspect of the KT-610 which takes me back a year or two: RAM. Back in 2004, 5 and 6, we were all used to the fact that most S60 smartphones were always chronically short of free RAM and thus had to jump through hoops to keep things running smoothly. Then the likes of the E90 arrived and most phones since then have had sensible (between 40MB and 90MB) amounts of free RAM, meaning that you don’t really have to worry about it anymore. The LG KT-610 has only around 17MB of free RAM after booting, a cripplingly small amount in 2008 and a real showstopper when trying to look at heavy web sites. 

In reality, I doubt anyone will notice though. The KT-610 isn’t going to be used by anyone wanting to really give S60 a workout, this is perhaps one device for which the RAM quotient has been correctly calculated. This device can’t even play videos properly, let alone play Flash videos within heavyweight web sites – so even 17MB might be enough.

Pricing for the KT-610 is tricky as it doesn’t seem to be very widely on sale. Selling prices seem to average around the £200 mark, though our review sample was picked up from eBay for around £100. At £200 I’d argue that it’s probably overpriced, given some of the device’s limitations – at £100 it’s a bit of a bargain – if you’ve got someone sensible in mind as a recipient.

Returning to my opening theme, the KT-610 works best as a ‘smartphone for the older generation’, with the large keypad and simple external UI, but with more S60 ‘power’ under the hood for when you want to help the owner out with an application or two. Am I being too harsh?

One thing’s for sure – this is no Nokia E90 competitor – and LG have managed to mess up the qwerty keyboard, which is the one really unique selling point here. Would I like to see more from LG in this vein though? Absolutely, the idea’s great. Rework the keyboard layout, optimise the media handling and (pretty please), add Wi-Fi and I’d be more inclined to recommend this quirky slice of S60 to a wider audience.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/LG_KT-610.php

Nokia MD-7W Bluetooth Speakers

It’s What Hifi Has Become!

Being both a gadget freak and music lover and having recently purchased a set of Nokia Stereo Bluetooth Headphones BH-503 and being suitably impressed, I was keen to try Nokia’s compact stereo Bluetooth speakers (MD-7W) to see what they would offer.

The Nokia MD-7W Bluetooth speakers come with a compact carry sleeve, Nokia charger, 3.5mm connection lead and a set of batteries, giving the
user options with respect to connection type and power source. I opted for the wire-free option of good old fashioned AA batteries and connection via Stereo Bluetooth A2DP to my new Nokia N96.

I paired the speakers to my Nokia N96, thereafter connections take place automatically, and I fired them up half expecting them to emit a harsh,
tinny noise as a poor excuse for music. I was astonished and pleasantly surprised at the rich, clear room filling sound that they produced. OK,
they don’t have earth shattering bass and are not the last word in detailed music retrieval but they make for a very pleasant listen, even next to a
high end Hifi system. There is another button for stereo widening but I preferred this switched off.

 

 

 

 

 

The MD-7W were also particularly good with voices, listening to Steve’s and Rafe’s dulcet tones on the latest AAS podcast, from the comfort on my
sofa, while the speakers were on the mantlepiece across the other side of the room was a weird experience, the same was also true for Reuters
Video news downloads.

When not in use, one speaker has a concave grille and the other a convex grille so that they snap together magnetically and pop into the carry
case.

All in all, a superb hassle-free accessory from Nokia and definitely a worthwhile puchase.

Source : https://gsm2indonesia.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=496&action=edit

Samsung Innov8 (3)

Reading back

Before going any further, it’s important to state that devices as complex as this do take a while to shake down – the Nokia N95 8GB, its most direct competitor, wasn’t really satisfactory until 3 months after initial availability, during which time it had gone through three major firmware updates. After using the i8510 with initial (vI8510XXHH6 – 13/08/2008) firmware for a few days, it has become apparent that things haven’t settled down yet. At least the use of S60 3rd Edition FP2 means that updates can be found and applied ‘over the air’ – at least, in theory – Samsung hint that the first update won’t be ready for a few weeks yet at the earliest.

With this in mind, we’re going to concentrate less on bugs and niggles here (though I’ll list them briefly later on) and more on whether the device itself is any good.

Impressions

As noted in the preview, the i8510 feels a million dollars, with good choice of materials – solid plastics mainly, but with metal battery cover that feels nicely cool in the hand. The phone is very similar in size, form factor and function to the N95 8GB, with which I’m intimately familiar, with the key focus (pun intended) being the camera, the main improvement over the N95 8GB’s feature set.

Other plus points over Nokia’s offering (camera aside) are:

• the i8510’s thinner by a couple of mm
• it supports USB charging
• USB connections are full v2.0, i.e. high speed
• it has both built-in flash memory (16GB) and a microSD card slot

Each of these is very worthwhile, but is balanced out by a single, rather notable disadvantage. As shown below, the i8510’s screen turns into something of a mirror in direct sunlight, an unfortunate defect for a camera-centric device. Nokia’s N95 (and N82 and E61i and E71 and 6630 and 6680 and N70, etc) devices work rather well in direct sunlight, proving that the technlogy does exist to make a camera phone work well under optimum (for good photos) shooting conditions – it’s just a shame Samsung have used a different display technology.

The i8510 on the right, with display on full brightness – these are worst case, 100% direct sun conditions, mind you….

It’s true that Nokia has goofed in the past – the N76 and N93i both had the same appallingly reflective screens outdoors, unforgiveably in the N93i’s case, since it too was camera-centric. But that’s still not an excuse for Samsung having got this one wrong. With the sun hardly ever coming out in the UK these days(!), it’s easy to be tempted to laugh off the screen defect, but the fact is that most great photos are taken outdoors and in sunlight (to some degree) – if I were a camera-phone maker I’d make choosing a screen that was sure to work really well under these conditions.

It’s still possible to use the i8510 in sunlight for filming, you just have to take care not to have the sun directly behind you – otherwise you can’t really see what’s being framed. If I sound a bit over the top here then please understand that I’m coming to the device from the perspective of trying to make best use of its USP – general, all weather, all scenario smartphone use isn’t really affected.

The Camera

So – that’s the (potentially) bad news out the way – from here on in the (still) camera experience is really very good. The camera itself is recessed and protected by spring-loaded plastic shutters – these open automatically when the camera application is active – it’s a good system and much better than that on the Nokia N95 8GB, though the shutters themselves are quite fragile. Care will still be needed to case the i8510 as I don’t fancy the shutters’ chances against regular poking with a set of keys, for example.

The flash is a single LED and a bit disappointing – I’d have used a Xenon or dual-LED flash in the i8510, given its target market. See the test photo below, taken in an almost pitch dark room.

(not hyperlinked to full image, note, for privacy reasons!)

Taking the above shot with the Nokia N95 8GB as well, and then blowing up the centre to compare lighting and detail:

You can see that the Nokia N95 8GB shot on the left has significantly more ‘low light’ digital noise and is less colourful. Interestingly, seen on the phone screens themselves, the Nokia version looked better, but closer inspection here on the desktop tells a different story.

The camera application is split into three modes, each with an interface lifted from other Samsung cameras or phones. Pressing ‘Options’ brings up a horizontal menu system that’s quite intuitive and quick to use – my only complaints are that ‘contrast’, ‘sharpness’ and ‘saturation’ are all hidden away within ‘Options>Settings>General’, which takes a while to find, and that an early firmware bug means that the chosen setting for ‘Wide Dynamic Range’ keeps getting forgotten.

It’s a measure of the ambition of the i8510 as a camera-toting phone that such settings exist, of course, and it makes taking test photos quite tricky as what pleases my eyes might not be what you’d like to see. In the event, for most photos on this page I turned the ‘sharpness’ down a little and the ‘saturation’ up a little. But it’s a very subjective area and at least there’s plenty for the photography enthusiast to tinker with.

 

 

Click to download the original JPG/open it etc.
 

The Camcorder

As noted in our initial preview, video recording on the i8510 is distinguished by offering an initial focus – we’ve seen this only on one other production smartphone, the UIQ 3-powered Motorola Z10 – but here it’s available (in normal or macro ranges) in conjunction with full VGA/30fps resolution and frame rate. The combination will make it a dream phone for me – just look at the picture quality in the video frame grab shown below – but only once they’ve fixed the firmware. You see, digital video remains a black art, at least in terms of integrating it into a phone. The i8510 currently produces MP4 files that have audio/video sync problems (a fraction of a second lag) and which won’t (by default) play at all in the standard (if such a thing exists) of the MP4 world, Quicktime Pro – you have to manually rename the files to end in ‘.3gp’ to get it to work. No doubt the software fixes required are minor, but until they’re in place then I can’t recommend the phone for serious video work. Here’s a sample of its output, click the image to download the MP4 and try playing it/fiddling for yourself.

Interestingly, the default resolution is ‘QVGA’, ostensibly because the built-in video editing suite (bought in from ArcSoft) can’t cope with VGA videos, and that would confuse new users. It’s not a huge problem though, since any serious video editing of VGA clips would take place on the desktop.

On the Samsung i8510’s back cover sits a ‘DivX’ logo, proudly. I tried side-loading on some old QVGA DivX movie trailers, but RealPlayer refused to play them. Rafe had more luck with his random selection (300 MB, VGA ish resolution), but it’s clear that the variation in DivX codec versions may be an issue for some people. I also tried loading on a WMV clip, at QVGA and 15fps, another low bandwidth ‘easy’ file – and this too wouldn’t play. The issue’s not (in theory) a big one, since more and more video content on the Internet is being encoded in H.264 in MP4 containers these days – though the pre-release firmware seemed picky about even this and pronounced my downloaded MP4 trailers ‘corrupt’. Gah. Rafe again had fewer problems managing to play back both WMV and H.264 files without any problems.

More positively, Windows Vista Sync Center leaps into action when the i8510 is connected in ‘Mass storage’ mode, offering to sync my music and video library to the new disk.

This works quickly to copy over music files seemingly as-is and to transcode all video clips to a low bandwidth QVGA version in WMV format that plays well on the device. In essence, after a couple of hours plugged into my PC, all my music and collected ‘My videos’ were sitting in useable form on my 16GB internal disk (they just fitted!).

Music

The final part of the Samsung i8510’s multimedia bundle is, of course, its Music player. There’s a (4-way) 3.5mm audio jack on the side and this works with the supplied stereo hands-free or any third party headphones such as my Ultimate Ears. The supplied ‘phones are of good quality, actually, with little in-ear extenders that snuggle in neatly, plus half a dozen spares are provided in case you lose the originals or want to swap for reasons of hygiene. But listening to the i8510 with Ultimate Ears plugged was even more impressive – audio quality’s up with any music player on the market.

And so it should be, with a built-in dedicated DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chip. There’s a good range of built-in equaliser presets, including esoterics like ‘3D wide’, ‘Soft rock’, ‘Dance’ and ‘Classic’, all implemented in hardware so as not to drain the phone processor too much when in operation. By default, Music player is assigned to the left-multimedia key on the keypad slide, it can’t be reassigned to the control pad multimedia key – the latter is always set to Gallery, but at least there’s a ‘Songs’ shortcut within this, which serves the same purpose – fast access to music control once it’s already playing in the background. There’s also direct access via the default Samsung standby menu system.

Loading music on will be via Windows Media Player, via Samsung’s PC Studio (when available – we haven’t seen the final shipping CD yet) or via simply copying across folders of music onto the cavernous 16GB mass storage flash disk (E:). This latter is what I did initially, with my WMA-format music collection, before discovering the Sync Center trick for Vista users, and was pleased to see that High speed USB is used, with each music track transferring in significantly less than a second and with each CD/folder copying in about 7 or 8 seconds. Very welcome after the sluggish nature of the N95 8GB’s mass storage disk.

With a large, 16GB collection of music tracks in place – in my case almost 4000 – Music Player became quite sluggish, with two seconds refresh needed for each ‘drill down’ operation into my library. Presumably this will be speeded up as the firmware improves.

Compatibility

There are triple problems when considering extra software to run on the i8510. For starters, it’s running S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, which is still incompatible to some degree with a fair number of S60 staples (e.g. Python, Mobitubia) – although these teething troubles will be fixed by developers in short order. Then there’s the fact that Nokia apply restrictions to some of their add-ons (e.g. Sports Tracker) so that they can’t be installed on a non-Nokia handset. Spoilsports. Finally, anything relying on Nokia’s PC Suite to be ‘in the chain’ for installation or operation won’t work either (e.g. Handy Safe). The end result, at the moment, is that add-on software for this phone is harder to come by than you’d think.

Many S60 regulars did work fine though. For example, Bible Reader, Screenshot and Oval Racer – this last was especially interesting as it’s a good test of how much graphics power is available under the hood. The i8510 passed the test with flying colours, with silky smooth, high frame rates – and no compatibility glitches.

SyncML compatibility with online systems was good – I told My Nokia Backup that I still had an N95 and the settings worked fine first time for getting my data onto the i8510.

Other Bugs

Just for completeness, other than the bugs already mentioned or hinted at, and recognising again that most of these will be sorted out shortly (so it’s not worth labouring them; some have already been fixed in the firmware that comes with the first retail devices [20/8/08]):

• Display timeouts were wrong
• Bluetooth was buggy, the phone wouldn’t receive files from other devices
• Wi-Fi access points intermittently not available when they should have been
• Keypad lock came in at 30 seconds, even with the keypad open, and there seemed no way to change this 

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e51-review-193p5.php

Samsung G810 (2)

Samsung G810 review: Zoom on Symbian

The announcement of Samsung G810 must have had many a geek’s heart skip a few beats. The handset has all but the kitchen sink and there’s Symbian under the hood. Now, we just had to test it, right? So, get your pulse back to normal and stay with us as we check if the Samsung G810 has the performance to back up those marvelous specs.

Samsung G810 camera phone

Key features

• 5 megapixel camera with auto focus and 3x optical zoom
• Symbian OS with S60 user interface
• 2.6″ 256K-color TFT LCD display with QVGA resolution
• Wi-Fi
• Built-in GPS receiver
• 3G capabilities with HSDPA support
• Xenon flash
• 330MHz TI OMAP processor
• 130MB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot
• 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
• Bluetooth and USB v2.0
• TV-out functionality
• Great metallic design

Main disadvantages

• Large size
• Awkward keypad
• Tri-band only
• Poor sunlight legibility
• Xenon flash is disappointing
• Optical zoom reduces picture quality noticeably

It’s pretty obvious Samsung G810 is having a go at Nokia N95 8GB. We’re yet to see about how timely an attempt it is and if the top dog is to fear dethronement. G810 tops the Nokia feature pack with xenon flash, lens cover and face detection. Let’s not forget the 3x optical zoom, which is still enough of a rarity. All this comes at the expense of a tad smaller screen: Samsung G810 features a 2.6-inch display, while Nokia N95 8GB has a 2.8-inch one.

Samsung G810 review photos

Other potential market rivals of the best-equipped Samsung to date are the Nokia N95 classic and Nokia N82. Sony Ericsson G900 could also sneak into the bunch of contenders. With a few other interesting names yet to hit the shelves, users are in for some exciting high-end hustle-and-bustle.

Another color version of Samsung G810, which we saw in Barcelona

Samsung G810 360-degree spin

//

 

Design and construction

Samsung G810 owners should know better than to expect to leave onlookers in awe. A looker it is, full metal casing and all, but size is really unsettling. Its dimensions of 103 x 52.9 x 17.9 mm do fail to tell the whole story. And even if it’s the Nokia N95 story, the Samsung looks much bulkier. Anyway, squeezing any of those heavy-weighters into a pocket is quite a feat.

The video call camera is located in the upper right corner of the front panel. The earpiece/loudspeaker grill is placed dead center. The ample 2.6″ display is next, along with the D-pad and the surrounding controls will get their due attention later in our review.

The video-call camera in the top right corner on the front

The left side of Samsung G810 is rather crowded. The list starts with the lanyard eyelet right under the top edge. Under it is the Power key, which is also used for changing the currently active profile. The 3.5 mm audio jack under a protection cap is next in line. We would have preferred it at the top. The last thing on the left of Samsung G810 is the microUSB slot – the same one as used in some latest Nokia phones.

It’s strange that Samsung have chosen a universal port of the microUSB variety for their flagship smartphone as this type is still quite rare. If you want to buy a spare charger, say for your car, you will have much more trouble finding one of those. This however may change in the near future as more and more phones are using such slots.

The left side of Samsung G810

The volume rocker is placed on the right side of Samsung G810. It is just above the microSD card slot. The last control here is the dedicated camera key, which this time is much more comfortable than the one on its predecessor Samsung G800.

The right side hosts the volume rocker, microSD card slot and the camera key

The top and the bottom of the phone are almost completely plain, save for the microphone pinhole on the lower end of the handset.

The microphone pinhole is the only thing to notice at the bottom

The back panel is naturally dominated by the 5 megapixel camera. Complete with auto focus and xenon flash, the camera is hidden under a nice metallic cover. It’s an active lens cover and sliding it turns the camera on.

The 5 megapixel camera is dominating the rear

Opening the battery cover of Samsung G810 reveals the 1200 mAh battery. We didn’t spend enough time with the handset to be of help on battery life. There are no official standby and talk time estimates either. All we can say at this stage is that the battery of Samsung G810 has the same capacity as the one of Nokia N95 8GB.

G810 inside out • The 1200 mAh battery seems promising

 

 “…A looker it is, full metal casing and all, but size is really unsettling. Its dimensions of 103 x 52.9 x 17.9 mm do fail to tell the whole story. And even if it’s the Nokia N95 story, the Samsung looks much bulkier…”

 

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// ]]>// // As far as the build quality of Samsung G810 is concerned, we have every reason to cheer. The phone looks sturdy and has a nice solid feel in hand. Besides, weight is not always a disadvantage when it goes with high-quality materials.

The phone feels great in hand

Display is good… when the weather isn’t

The display of Samsung G810 can hardly be called anything but typical Samsung. It has great picture quality indoors with good contrast and brightness levels.

The display has very good picture quality

However in brightly sunlit environments the legibility is severely reduced. It is still better than Samsung G800 with its glossy front panel but not by a large margin. It’s very hard to find a proper angle for working with the phone in those conditions.

Keypad is a disaster (at this point)

The keypad is probably the most disappointing element in Samsung G810. It looks good at first, with large keys and distinguishable borders. However every nice impression is gone the very moment you start typing.

The keys are overly rigid, the problem being most obvious with the two keys inside the metal frame – 5 and 8. Almost impossible to press and offering absolutely inadequate feedback, using them is quite a pain. The totally flat keypad has poor overall tactility, making typos very probable.

The keypad was a real downer in our unit

The four controls around the D-pad are another story. The key under the left softkey is the menu key but the customary Symbian symbol is nowhere to be seen. The key on the opposite side is used for accessing the audio and video players and the FM radio. We can’t help missing pictograms on those keys, even if it would have somewhat spoiled the looks.

The red and green receiver keys are well hidden: they were dismissed to the lower deck and share beds with the alphanumeric keys. That’s an understandable solution, which however doesn’t prove that convenient. In fact, we couldn’t help getting annoyed with it during the time we had with the device.

The only ray of light in the otherwise dismal picture is the D-pad. Its ample size and commendable tactility greatly benefit usability. In addition, the confirming center is also large enough and quite responsive.

The backlighting is strong, although not the most even we’ve seen. It is still usable enough in the dark, causing no problems whatsoever.

Backlighting is strong enough, but not perfectly even

We should once again warn you here that ours was a beta unit so the keypad might be altered in the retail version. The keypads of the units we tested at the MWC in Barcelona were different, so we sincerely hope a much needed change will be made to get a usable result.

Telephony

Symbian muscle and multimedia riches aside, the top end G810 will still be used for calling. As you may have guessed Samsung G810 didn’t let us down. Signal strength is good and voice quality is fine on both ends of a call.

Dialed digits are large and easy to see

User interface

Samsung G810 is running on the Symbian 9.2 OS and uses the well known S60 3rd edition graphic user interface. The Feature Pack 1 also comes pre-installed. In fact, the OS is probably the most obvious difference from Samsung G800.

It’s worked out well here – Samsung G810 is really quick and responsive. The icons are also quite nice. They are the same as in Samsung i450 and we happen to like them a bit better than those of Nokia phones using the same UI. However, the Feature Pack 2 that we saw in the newly announced Nokia handsets in Barcelona was really promising.

The S60 UI is very snappy

As a Symbian device, Samsung G810 naturally features an active stand-by mode. You have a bar of shortcut icons for instant access to pre-selected functions at the top of the display, and scheduled events from the calendar together with the currently playing track or radio station (if there is any) underneath.

When choosing items for the Active Standby, you can choose any application or even a website. The functionality of the two soft keys is configurable too. Another standby screen feature that we really like is the Google search bar which gives you instant access to the search engine.

 

 “…The display of Samsung G810 can hardly be called anything but typical Samsung. It has great picture quality indoors with good contrast and brightness levels. However in brightly sunlit environments the legibility is severely reduced…”

 

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The phone has 5 profiles plus an offline mode that switches off all transceivers. It is also the default profile if you start the handset without a SIM card. The offline mode allows full access to the functions of the phone that do not require cellular network coverage. The other profiles can easily be edited to best suite your needs.

The five profiles and the offline mode can be fully customized

As with any other S60 smartphone, the task manager of Samsung G810 pops up upon a press-and-hold on the Menu key. It allows switching between applications or turning off any running application by pressing the Clear key. That leads us to another peculiar design decision: the C key is keeping company to the Call and End keys under the slider.

There are only two different menu views for the G810 but they are practically what the majority is using. Whether the icons will appear as a 4 x 3 grid of icons, or as a list, is completely up to the user.

The grid and list menu views

Finally, Samsung G810 has a voice recognition feature to supposedly allow using almost every phone feature handsfree. This is however easier said than done as, despite being speaker independent, the systems doesn’t even come close to recognizing every user command. It’s still at a decent level though and, given the beta status of our unit, this may as well be not its last word.

Customization

If you get bored with the phone looks, you can always change the theme. There isn’t a great variety of preinstalled themes on Samsung G810 but all three we found are good enough.

The other two available themes

What’s best about the customization options is that there is nothing easier than downloading additional themes. There is hardly anything in greater number on the internet than themes for S60 3rd edition phones of QVGA resolution displays.
 

The phonebook is great

Typical Symbian device, Samsung G810 offers a phonebook with practically unlimited capabilities. The number of entries is only limited by the available memory, which means that you will have no problems even with thousands of contacts.

The contacts can be ordered by first or last name, depending on the user preferences. Naturally, they can also be searched by gradual typing of the desired name. The phone will search in both first and last name fields, as well as additional names in those fields. This means that even if a contact has a really complicated name, you will have no problem finding it provided you remember at least a part of it.

Symbian phonebooks know no boundaries

While editing a contact, you can select from a huge number of preset fields, which you can repeat as many times as you like. There is no way any information about the contact will have to be left out. You can attach as many numbers as you like to each contact as well. Finally, if by some very rare coincidence, you happen to need a field that doesn’t exist, you can always use one of the existing ones and simply rename it.

Viewing and editing a contact

The Call log department has always been a strong side of Symbian smartphones too. The Samsung G810 makes no exception, offering detailed information of all your communications for the past 30 days. It stores all the calls, messages and even data transfers for that period. You can also reduce the amount of saved data but it doesn’t use up that much space so such a choice is unlikely.

The Call log application is simply great, offering information for all your communications for the past 30 days

There is also a more convenient way to access your latest calls. In standby you can press the call key and three tabs appear on the screen. Each of them holds up to 20 missed or received calls or dialed numbers.

Messaging: all but the keypad

If you are a heavy texter, the S60 user interface might just be your best friend. The messaging menu is really well organized and generally a pleasure to work with. However, with a keypad like the one on Samsung G810, texting is hardly something to look forward to.

The SMS editor is a very intuitive and easy to use application. It has a counter of the characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending if that limit is exceeded. If you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor offers to either save it to the drafts folder or delete it.

SMS editor shows the number of characters remaining to the 160 limit

Naturally, a delivery report can be activated if the user prefers. The reports pop up on the standby screen, and are consequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. This is one of the best ways to deal with the reports we have come to know.

The MMS editor is almost identical to the one just described. It has an added line for subject and of course the option for inserting multimedia content in it.

Finally, there is also an audio message editor. If, by any rare chance, you want to create an audio message you might find this editor interesting. The editor can either record the message right away or use a previously recorded sound clip. Still, the last time we checked audio messages were simply a type of MMS so it isn’t actually that much of a help.

 

 “…Typical Symbian device, Samsung G810 offers a phonebook with practically unlimited capabilities. The number of entries is only limited by the available memory, which means that you will have no problems even with thousands of contacts…”

 

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The great email client won’t surprise anyone who has ever used a Symbian-powered phone. It has support for POP3 and IMAP protocols and can download headers only, as well as the whole messages. There is also support for attachments, so with Samsung G810 you will have no trouble meeting almost any emailing requirement.

The email client looks and functionality are among the niceties of Symbian-powered devices

Our overall impression is that despite the good software part, the Samsung G810 isn’t fit to be a texting-friendly device at this stage. We may only hope that the keypad will be somewhat improved but the revolutionary change that is needed seems unlikely. So all in all, future owners better not put their trust in Samsung G810 for the quickest typo-free messages.

Music player lacks the looks but does the job

Samsung G810’s music player looks exactly like on other Symbian 3rd edition devices. It can either be accessed from the menu or from the dedicated key on the right of the D-pad.

It is surely not the most attractive application in terms of looks but it is as capable as any other music player out there. As usual, there is support for a huge number of audio formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed flawlessly and files are automatically added to the music library once downloaded to the phone.

Music player looks rather basic, but is definitely up to the task

Tracks can easily be transferred to the phone via Bluetooth, USB or by simply downloading them from the internet. Upon completing a USB transfer, the phone automatically prompts scanning for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library. You can sort tracks based on their artist, album, genre and composer.

Another thing to mention is that Samsung G810 also supports the A2DP Bluetooth profile. Not that we can remember the last phone reviewed here that doesn’t. This means that you are able to play your favorite tracks on stereo Bluetooth headphones. We had no problem pairing Samsung G810 with a third party headset.

Samsung G810 comes with Real player and Flash player preinstalled. The videos can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode according to the user’s preferences. You can also switch to full screen to make better use of the ample display. In fullscreen, the Softkey labels are hidden, so they don’t stand in the way, and only pop up when a key is pressed. The great picture quality is also benefiting the video watching experience greatly.

As for the Flash player – there is nothing special to note. It plays them flash files, no bangs and whistles.

If you get bored with the preinstalled content on your Samsung G810 you can always turn the radio on. The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. If it wasn’t for the missing RDS, it might have just been as good as it gets.

FM radio user interface

Audio quality

Being able to listen to your favorite tracks is one thing but playing them properly is something completely different. It is therefore important that a high-end device such as Samsung G810 have good audio output quality. Besides, its main rival – the Nokia N95 8GB is really failing to deliver in that department, so it’s a welcome opportunity to earn some points.

We were surprised to see that the G810 results weren’t the best Samsung can pull off. In fact it is completely identical to what Samsung G800 was capable of. Now, don’t get us wrong: they are still very good and outdoing most handsets. However, we have seen a few Samsung phones perform better than that and we are wondering why the top-of-the-shelf G810 isn’t as gifted. This of course may change in the final version of the handset.

Anyway, the results are here to see for yourselves that even at these early stages Samsung G810 is a talented enough musician. In case you want to learn more about the test itself, click here.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung G810	+0.37, -1.19	-86.7	86.0	0.017	0.050	-83.2
Samsung G800	+0.37, -1.19	-86.7	86.0	0.017	0.050	-83.2
Samsung U600	+0.41, -1.12	-89.2	86.5	0.0040	0.019	-86.9
Nokia N95 8GB	+0.39, -1.13	-86.6	95.8	0.041	0.040	-69.9
LG KU990 Viewty	+0.29, -2.07	-86.8	83.8	0.020	0.0124	-86.6

Samsung G810 has a tad worse frequency response than Samsung U600

Picture gallery is good, but not impressive

Samsung G810 lacks the 3D rotating gallery of Nokia N-series smartphones and we find this somewhat disappointing. With the G810 we were only left with the list view for displaying images and videos. Not that it makes any improvements to functionality but sometimes it’s the interface that makes the difference.

The gallery lacks the 3D rotating view of the N-series but is otherwise equally functional

Other than that the gallery is good. It allows viewing pictures in both normal and full screen mode. Once you pick a picture you can zoom on it for greater detail. The actual zooming and panning thing is quite fast, as should be in a multimedia handset.

Picture in normal and fullscreen mode • zooming in on a picture

The gallery offers good file-managing capabilities allowing selection and sending of multiple files. In addition to that, the smartphone has the usual file manager that does a very good job. It allows filtering files according to the memory used as well as marking, moving, copying single or multiple files at a time.

There is also an Application manager to take care of the installed applications on Samsung G810. It is very familiar, consistent across Symbian S60 3rd edition devices. Its purpose is to keep track of the installed and removed programs on you phone and facilitate uninstalling of unwanted programs. It does that job pretty well too.

Regretfully, the Samsung handsets have no feature similar to the “Search” application we found on Nokia phones. This means you have to spend a little extra time organizing your files and applications, unless you want to end up in a mess. Anyways, there are a bunch of third-party applications, available for download that can do this job.

Another thing we are missing is the WLAN wizard plug in which greatly facilitates using the Wi-Fi. It makes connecting to nearby hotspots a piece of cake. Instead with Samsung G810 you have to do a bit more work, navigating through a couple more menus. This application is also available for download but its compatibility with Samsung G810 is not guaranteed.

 

 “…It is important that a high-end device such as Samsung G810 have good audio output quality. Besides, its main rival – the Nokia N95 8GB is really failing to deliver in that department, so it’s a welcome opportunity to earn some points…”

 

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Splendid camera

The camera is one of the key elements of Samsung G810. It brings xenon flash and 3x optical zoom, which are both rare enough features, reserved exclusively for high-end gadgets. Add auto focus and face detection, and you get camera performance at its present best.

The camera interface isn’t the same as in other Symbian Samsung phones. Instead it is almost identical to the one of Samsung G800. The toolbar layout is the best solution here and we are more than pleased with it.

Camera UI is identical to the one of Samsung G800

Some of the more important settings are picture size, shooting mode (single shot, multi-shot, mosaic, and frame), effects (black and white, sepia, negative etc.), white balance and face detection.

The face detection feature itself works pretty well and is even capable of recognizing several faces simultaneously.

The submenu for general camera settings includes wide dynamic range, anti-shake, picture quality and ISO settings. Exposure metering is also configurable and auto focus can be switched off if necessary.

Some of the other available options: face detection, anti-shake, WDR etc.

The picture quality is admirable. We were able to verify that in Barcelona last month, which was our first rendezvous with Samsung G810. The colors are quite precise and the detail levels are very good. At those early stages, noise levels are a bit high but that will probably be fixed later through fine-tuning of the image processing algorithm. Our guess is that the final result will be a camera producing images, very similar to those of Samsung G800. On the other hand we will be perfectly pleased if the final image processing is the same as in Samsung U900 Soul. As we found out it is almost perfect and produces (one of) the best images we have seen among cameraphones.

Our unit yelling Beta out loud, we are going to show you the photos we took in Barcelona. Here are the sample images so you can see how Samsung G810 is performing in the early stages of development.

Samsung G810 camera samples

As far as video recoding is concerned, the Samsung G810 is able to manage even VGA resolution. Video at this resolution has a frame rate of 22fps. Not too bad we would say, but still not the best in its class, as both Nokia N95 8GB and LG KU990 Viewty are capable of VGA at 30fps. However, the frame rate is another thing that is very likely to change.
 

Connectivity is at its best

Regarding connectivity, Samsung G810 is among the most tempting offers around. USB connectivity is truly seamless, as with any other Symbian device. In addition you also get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which should take care of all your wireless data transfer needs. The card slot is also an option with the good data transfer rate they offer.

The network connectivity is also at the expected high level with GPRS, EDGE and 3G all covered. HSDPA is also in the package. The only thing missing is the Infrared port, but we doubt it anyone is using that anymore.

Web browser worth the praise

As you probably know, we do appreciate Symbian web browsing. No wonder we find the Samsung G810 great at that.

Symbian web browsing is second to Apple iPhone’s Safari only

Browsing the internet with Samsung G810 is a pleasure. No matter how elaborate the web page, it fits perfectly on the screen and looks almost exactly like on a PC. The virtual mouse cursor earns the handset another point. It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help finding your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses.

Getting organized is easy with Samsung G810

The calendar in Samsung G810 has three different types of view – monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for scheduling – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields and some allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The month and week calendar view • scheduling an event

The mobile office applications are also duly covered. The preinstalled applications are able to open Word and Excel files trouble-free. There is also a PDF reader in the package. However, as with the other Symbian devices, Samsung G810 has no support for editing documents out-of-the-box. You will need to purchase the full version of the office application if you are to do that.

Word, Excel and PDF files are handled easily by Samsung G810

The other included organizing and time-management applications are: a state of the art unit converter and calculator, as well as a Notes application. There is of course also a convenient voice recorder. (recording length is up to an hour).

Calculator and voice recorder are among the organizing applications

Finally come alarms. You can set up a virtually unlimited number of alarms on your Samsung G810. Furthermore, each of these can have its own name, activation day and repeat pattern. You can also adjust the snooze time.

Symbian S60 FP1 devices have a truly elaborate alarm application

No games were found on our Samsung G810 but this may not hold true for the retail version of the handset. Besides, there is a huge number of games for the Symbian phones all over the internet.

Beta GPS

The final interesting feature of Samsung G810 is the built-in GPS. The chip is not the most sensitive we have seen and needs quite a lot of time to get a satellite lock. Tall buildings around are making the situation even worse. We are only hoping that the built-in receiver will be improved, although frankly, we are not expecting miracles of it.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test the Navigon software that is supposed to come prebundled in the final version of Samsung G810. It wasn’t available in our unit but, as far as we know, Navigon will be worth it. The company has enough experience in navigation software development, so we are quite sure that the mobile application will be at a decent level. Besides, with the smartphone capabilities you can always go for a third party alternative if you prefer.

Final words

To begin with, it is quite obvious that Samsung are a bit late releasing the G810. It has been six months since Nokia N95 8GB hit the shelves and the N82 has been around for about five. It’s quite likely that most geeks that are after a loaded handset have already sealed a deal. Another problem with the Samsung G810 is that its estimated retail price of 560 euro is by a good 110 euro more than what you would pay for a Nokia N95 8GB. We somehow cannot see how it deserves that extra pocket digging.

 

 “…Samsung G810 has a unique optical zoom feature and is probably the sleekest looking among them all-but-the-kitchen-sink devices out there. It has the performance and snappy user interface, which is probably what’s most important in such a phone…”

 

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// ]]>// // On the other hand, Samsung G810 has a unique optical zoom feature and is probably the sleekest looking among them all-but-the-kitchen-sink devices out there. It has the performance and snappy user interface, which is probably what’s most important in such a phone. If it wasn’t for the awkward keypad, we would totally call it better than its market rivals. With this issue in mind though, we’ll refrain from such a statement. There is however nothing to stop us from admitting that we did like the handset. So if value-for-money is not high on your agenda, Samsung G810 is definitely a tempting offer.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_g810-review-231p6.php