Nokia N900 First Impressions

Nokia’s WOMworld has sent me a Nokia N900 to review. Over the next week or two, I intend to cover this groundbreaking device in depth, focusing first on the N900’s Web browsing capabilities using the built in MicroB browser plus Firefox Mobile and any other third party browsers I can find. I’m not sure how long I get to keep the N900 but if I have time I’ll also highlight Web apps that are particularly useful on the device and … Continue reading

Motorola’s First Android, the “Cliq” With MOTOBLUR

Motorola’s first Android phone was announced today by Motorola CTO Sanjay Jha at GigaOm’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco.  The phone is Motorola Cliq MB200, which looks like the same phone that was widely leaked as the Morrison.  Thankfully the toy-like bright blue trim featured in most of the leaked shots has been replaced by basic black.  Specs include: 3.1-inch HVGA touch-screen display 5 megapixel auto focus camera with geo tagging, video capture and 24 fps playback 3.5mm headset jack … Continue reading

The iPhone 3GS vs. the Rest of the June Tsunami

Left to right: Pre, N97, i8910, Ion I got invited to a “Drinks with Nokia” event for local bloggers here in San Francisco yesterday. Ewan, tnkgrl, Matthew Bennett, folks from Ubergizmo, Mobile Burn and quite a few others were there.  Nokia brought at least three N97s and several E75, E7ix and 5800XM phones for us to try out. And when mobile geeks gather there are always loads of cool phones of all makes around too.  I took a couple of … Continue reading

It’s Palm Pre Day!

No I don’t have one, but the Palm Pre has launched.  @tnkGrl and Matthew Bennet covered the line and launch at San Francisco’s Castro St. Sprint store this morning. Catch their videos of the line on Oik. Close to 100 people lined up for the 20 Pres that were available at that store. They invited me to join them at 6AM but I’m way  too lazy for that and as I don’t plan on buying a Pre it just seemed like … Continue reading

Samsung Instinct – Opera Mini Canada Workarounds

Last year I blogged about the Samsung Instinct, a CDMA touch screen feature phone that superficially resembles the iPhone, and the problems that users where having running Opera Mini and other third party Java applications on it. The issue was that the JVM on the Instinct was missing the Java ME LCDUI package which is the way that Java applications create user interface components like textboxes. This meant that was no way to enter text into any text fields in … Continue reading

Joel Spolsky’s Nokia E71 Rave

E71 image courtesy of Nokia Author and widely read tech blogger (Joel on Software), Joel Spolsky  published a rave review today of Nokia’s newest QWERTY business phone, the E71.  Ever since this phone was announced, I’ve thought it would be a huge success.  Smaller, thinner and lighter than the Blackberry Curve or iPhone; tons of memory; fast, stable, expandable S60 OS and a keyboard that just about every reviewer seems to like in spite of what appear to be minuscule … Continue reading

S60 Dreams – Goodbye N95 8GB

The loaner 8GB N95 went back to WOM World today. I’ll miss it but not too badly as I still have my N95-3 with the upgraded V 20.2.011 firmware that makes it essentially an 8GB with a slightly smaller screen. It was great to be able to play with the 8GB though, thank you WOM. Both N95’s are very nice phones, in my opinion they are the best phones currently available in the US market, particularly for users interested in … Continue reading

New N95-3 Firmware Update is Available.

Nokia released a firmware upgrade, V 20.2.011, for the US model N95 yesterday. I had no problems installing it on my N95. The process took about 30 minutes; 5 minutes to do a backup with PC Suite, about 20 minutes for Nokia Software Update (now part of PC Suite) to flash the new firmware and another 5 minutes to restore the backup. The process was very smooth and confidence inspiring and I had no problems with the actual upgrade. Nokia’s … Continue reading