Roland Tanglao's Weblog

For those who don't follow the Nokia soap opera, the N96 flagship (with 5 megapixel camera and an incredible 16 GB flash card built in with a micro SD slot so you can expand to 24GB and soon 32GB but with a low res 320x240 screen) introduced today at the Mobile World Congress looks almost exactly like the N81 (major difference: N96 is a dual slider)

Not a big fan of the N81 (it's a great Walkman for those who don't want an iPod and have lots of money but the 2 megapixel camera is b*gus) but it does look a lot better than the N95. I do wish that Nokia had come up with something more radically beautiful when designing its next flagship. Shame the N96 has the same lock switch as the N81. Fingers crossed that the N96 lock switch is less finicky than my N81 (my N81 lockswitch sticks). But oh the possibilities with 24GB of storage! Yum! Go Nokia go! Now just fix S60 and make the screen bigger and you'll finally have one device that does everything!

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In a previous post I expressed by appreciation for the Nokia N81. The simplicity and balance of the design certainly make for a classic look. Hence, I was really pleased to see that the industrial design of The Dark Knight (N96) borrows so heavily from the N81.

There is a real attention to detail here. Is it perfect? No. Is it close to perfect? Yes.

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The above photo shows my "bicyclecast" setup (Gorillapod + N95 + DT-22 Tripod Adapter + my bicycle). It worked for only 6 minutes of my 30 minute commute to work (bug? limited buffering capacity? EDGE too slow?). And was fun. The GorillaPod doesn't keep the camera too snug on the bike but it's low budget, cheap and cheerful. Someday I'll have the money to buy a proper bike tripod camera mount like the pros use for Tour de France videos!

Check it out: qik.com/video/13888 recorded live from my bicycle (the hardest part was fastening the tripod and the phone onto the bike, music courtesy of my N81 Musicphone)

In spite of my whingeing about the not very useful navi wheel and the multimedia key, I am quite happy using the N81 8GB as a walkman for some music while cycling to and from work. The speakers are loud even though they are muffled through my shirt pocket (buttoned for safety) as I cycle in.

Why? Because it doesn't click or move as smoothly as my 2G iPod and it requires you to press hard. Luckily it is set to off by default. I experimented with it on but finally turned it off because it was more annoying than useful.

I kept hearing about the N81 Multimedia key and kept wondering where it was. I think I found it as you can see in the photo above. Hmmm not intuitive and not useful to me because I am used to just hitting the Apps key. Your mileage may vary!

Got an N81 8GB courtesy of the Nokia Blogger Relations Program. The kid and I promptly unpacked and danced around to the mediocre (Maroon 5 is not my cup of tea) music built in. Unlike Stefan and like Alec, I like the build quality; the slide has a very sensual thunk for example and everything feels solid (perhaps Stefan had a creaky prototype?!?!)! The totally unnecessary multimedia key is nowhere to be found thank g*d And everything just works including the web browser which works just as fast as my N95-1. No GPS and only a 2 Megapixel camera so it's not for me but if you are looking for a iPod and don't want Apple (and have lots of money, approximately $CAN 600 according to Alec, unfortunately not available at Dell.ca yet so you have to go through Nokia USA since Nokia.ca is still selling only very old phones) this may be the way to go. More later when I load some good :-) music into this thing. This will probably replace the N800 as my iPod when cycling to work since the speakers are nice and loud!

I hope the increased N81 and N95 RAM (it's doubled) means I can finally run ShoZu, Jaiku (and heck maybe even a VOIP program) simultaneously and have hundreds of pictures and a few videos without S60 crashing with out of memory errors. Fingers crossed.

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Q: How much RAM does the N81 have, and has there been any improvements in sound quality? A: the amount of free RAM will be ~90MB

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