Hi guys, CJ here,  It has been a while but we are back now so you can look forward to lots of posts, news and reviews in the coming weeks but for today i have good news – What if i told you that you can download and play a cool game for free on your nokia s60 device (i know that’s something that you already doing everyday) but what if you could play and win and not just any old virtual trophy but something that you can actually use, something like…..i don’t know….. 20% off all proporta products!! yes!! that’s right all you have to do is download that game and play can you can win!  you can download this great game here

Tonite I’m bringing Nokia’s lastest flagship handsets face to face and yes, I’m talking about the N900 and the N97 mini. Both phones are on the top of nokia’s portafolio, yet they are completely different  devices, so join me and see which one suits you the best in different testings.

To begin with, the N900 is the multimedia heavyweight running Maemo 5 a magnificent OS that is simple, flashy, powerful and intelligent(based off linux, which is open source, just like symbian) and has everything hardware wise you can ask for in a phone. On the other hand we have the flyweight called N97 mini. The mini is a revised version of the slightly bigger N97 classic. By getting the mini you trade off the 3.5″ screen, 32GB mass memory, the big 1,500maH battery, camera cover and the FM trasmitter, while winning a smaller, lighter, more stable and fashionable device.

Size and materials

To start off, the N900 is a very big and heavy phone, making it a bit unconfortable to carry around in your pocket, maybe a belt clip could do it, but I’m not fan of it. It just looks like a big black and heavy brick. The N97 mini is very light and while there’s no much difference in size with the N97 classic, it feels surprisingly good inside the hand, it just fits, not too big, not too small, perfect size

chic vs geek

range comparison, the N900 is the thickest, heaviest and the widest of all

The materials used on both devices is plastic with a metal bezel around the screen. But the N97 has some metal parts on the backside: the battery cover and the camera face giving it some fashionable look to it, while the N900 stays at full plastic giving it a somewhat cheap look and feel.

Both devices do very good at build quality, making the wobble and creakings unexisting.

Software

The N900 runs Maemo 5, which is a computer OS based off linux, while the N97 mini has symbian^1 (also known as s60 5th edition) which pales awfully compared to Maemo. It’s just enough to see both home screens to understand the difference between these two operative systems.

Just for example the Maemo has 4 different widget-based  homescreens  which can be arranged at will, making possible to have a homescreen for the social networks, another for meetings and notes, the third one for media, and the last one for contacts, which is exactly what I did. The N97 mini homescreen is very basic. You are only bound to one homescreen and some widgets, which arent always very reliable.

There is a world of difference between Maemo and Symbian. And if you ask me, I prefer Maemo over Symbian

Features and power

The N900 has everything you can dream of. This includes: 32GB memory with SD expandable slot,  ARM cortex-8 running processor at 600mhz, 1GB RAM between physical and virtual, 3.5″ display, resistive touchscreen,  GPU with OpenGL ES 2.0, 5.0MPX camera with dual LED flash, 3G, IR port, wifi, qwerty keyboard and GPS. Everything, which explains the gargantuan size.

The N97 mini has Symbian^1, resistive touschscreen with 3.2″ display, 5.0 mpx camera with dual LED flash, sliding qwerty keyboard, ARM11 CPU running at 434MHz, with 128 RAM, and 8GB of capacity with expandable sd card slot,  3g, wifi, GPS and bluetooth,

While both devices are quite similar in hardware, the N900 is faster, more capable and more stable than the N97. Also Maemo opens a new world of posibilites inside the N900, since it is open source, it can be hacked from within and make the most use of it.

I want to mention the battery life of both devices. The N900 has a 1320mah battery and the N97 mini has a 1200 mah. While the N900 has a bigger battery, the life is so short, having such hardware inside means less juice, so making medium use of it while browsing, using GPS and the music player gives around 8 hours of battery, which is too short and unreliable as a primary phone, its unacceptable  having to charge it twice a day!

The N97 mini has also poor battery life, giving at most 16 hours of battery life having the same use as the N900. Meaning that you have to charge every night for the next day.

The conclusion

The N900 and the N97 mini are both nokia’s flagship phones, yet very different. The N900 is the geek’s dream, it is the handset you want to carry to the computer class, hack it all around, and use it for the wildest ideas ever imagined. However, it has very poor battery life so you won’t be using it as a primary phone, or rely on it for important communication, such as business or emergencies. Please bear in mind that the N900 is a tablet computer with cellphone capablities, so the GSM radio is considered as an extra feature waiting to be developed even more. For now, maybe they could include a red and green key along with a menu key

The N97 mini is the regular smartphone having everything the common user expects from it without hacking. It’s the pretty phone, the one that flashes when you pull it ou of your pocker, the fun to use, and fairly compact. While it doesnt have an ultra fast processor or a GPU, it will do everything else pretty well. Just unlike the N900, the N97 mini is an phone trying to be a computer.

In my personal opinion I really prefer using the N97 mini as my main phone, while I can see the N900 replacing my laptop, I cannot see it replacing my phone, things like short battery life, big size or poor phone app restrain it from the mainstream success.

But, I do really want to see a mix of both. The size, sliding keyboard and materials of the N97 mini mixed with Maemo OS and the ultra fast processor of the N900. That’s a dream of both mine, and Nokia’s, to make a real mainstream phone that will not only appeal to the geeks, but to the high end masses.

David Castro

After a big come back into the mobile web browser game with the first opera mobile 10 beta, opera continues its onslaught with the release opera mobile 10 beta 2, the new look with visual bookmarks and tabbed browsing comes together nicely to create one of the most visually beautiful and useful mobile web browser.

noticeable chances*

• Faster Webpage Load Times
• Easier Too  Use Virtual Keyboard
• Two New Tabs “downloads” and “Start Page”
• Opera Link (a service that sync your bookmarks, speed dial and search engine between all your computers and phones)

all the chances and fixes listed above are very much welcomed but there is still isn’t any flash support (so youtube is a no go) that being said we here at CJsNB are looking forward to see what opera pulls out of their little magic hat next.

more screenshots Here: Link

Matt from the Nokia Daily News recently interviewed Julien Fourgeaud of the Symbian Foundation, in this interview they touched on present and future of the Symbian Foundation and they also covered the migration from S60 to SF2 to SF3, upcoming hardware, QT, and new manufacturers on board with Symbian. Enjoy!

Do you Remember Emoze?  that great little email client that we review a few month back? well My good friend Jeb Brilliant and his Emoze friends has just opened a new blog to help you keep up to date with all the latest emoze  news, everything from new features, clients and supported devices to worldwide activities and a lot more, will be covered on the new emoze blog, and to welcome the new emoze blog we will be  giving away not one but two emoze Pro account codes!! and the best part is how easy it is to win one of these codes, all you have to do is leave a comment saying “why do you like/need push email?” that’s it!  just do that and i will pick a random winner and send you the code via email! Good Luck!

you can also get the free version of emoze from: this website but you can only receive emails from one email account but with the Pro version can get from multiple accounts!

Here I come reviewing a new software that every music lover should have! It’s called Playlist DJ and does something we all have been wishing to have our devices to do.  When competing on the Nokia Widget Competition I can remember lots and lots of music widgets that were designed to play the music depending on your mood. The idea is simple, and at the same time amazing. How else could you device pamper you? Yes, by being sympathetic with you and play the music you want to listen at that right moment.

Playlist Dj is a playlist creator that will “listen” to your emotions and select the music from your mp3 library, that easy. You may save the resulting playlist to listen at it anytime after. Also you may choose a song and let Playlist DJ select more songs that are alike the one you chose. This app runs only on S60 5th edition at this time, and its planned to be included on the Nokia’s upcoming music phone the Nokia X6.

So let’s start. After installing and running it you will be asked to let the phone connect to the Playlist DJ server in order to profile your music so it can identify them in the different emotions that you  may adjust later. This profiling has two phases, the first one is the shallow profiling and here, the app will put the known tracks in their mood levels. Then there is the deep profiling, here the tracks that were not recognized at the shallow profiling will be examined and after recognizing some music charateristics it will put them on different mood levels. This whole process might take some time and also needs data transfer to the server, so I highly recommend to profile the music at night, when sleeping and connected to the wifi, so when waking up you will surely find the music completely profiled. Also do not worry if your tracks aren’t properly tagged by genres (or titles Im guessing), there is no need for these tags, the app will get the info from its own server and scan the music by its own.

The next thing you might want to do is let the phone to find the music you want depending on the mood you have/look for. So there are this 4 sliders that refer to different emotions: joy, passion, anger and tempo. You can mix the emotions and get different playlists depending on the mix. You can add a lot of joy, a small bit of passion, with or without anger, and finally choose the tempo you are looking for, it coul be fast or slow music, you choose.

After mixing the emotions you will instantly get a new playlist that might be listened instantly or saved for later. One of the things that I miss here is the lack of the equalizer, I am not sure, but I do feel that the app doesnt share the saved equalizer settings from the default music player. Could be just my imagination, but anyways, if you do feel like me, you can save the playlist and play it from the music player.

Sometimes, when creating a new playlist, you may find tracks that have nothing to do with the mixing you were looking for, in example, when looking for passion songs I get Run to the Hills from Iron Maiden, so unless I’m missing the passion part of it, I guess that the profiling process is not without flaw. Still most of the songs (90%) do fit to the mix and if you feel that a song should not be there you can use the option “Remove song from playlist” before saving or playing the list.

Another feature from the Playlist Dj is that you can build up your own playlist by comparing it to another song. As easy as the first step, you may select any song you like and choose the option “Playlist of similar songs” . Instantly you will get a new playlist that contain songs that are very alike to the first one. This playlist can also be manipulated by removing songs you dont like or find apropiated and also might be saved to be listened later.

The interface is very simple with half of the screen with the mixing bars and the other half  for the playlist and options, the mixing bars are big and can be touched without problems. Something that I find curious is that there is no landscape view (yet).  Also I would love to see this app on other non touch screen phones, since there are lots of music lovers that will thank for this wonderful app.

In conclusion, with Playlist DJ you can let the phone play the music you want to listen at that moment, or set up the mood at parties, romantic dinners, roadtrips, or study sessions (if you have classic music). Anyways, its a great app for all the music lovers, who usually have thousands of tracks and cannot always handle them all. They will be so happy to have an app that will choose the music for them, which is sometimes a tiresome task. I find it way better than using the shuffle option, because I feel better control of my music.

So what are you waiting for? Rush to the Ovi Store and download this wonderfull app. Free until october 31st 2009, so get it while you can.

David Castro

Having to sign an application every time you want to install something that’s not Symbian Signed is a bit of a pain, yes it can be done on the phone but if you want to completely rid yourself of this hassle then hacking your device is the best way forward. Unfortunately, Nokia had blocked this procedure via a new firmware for devices such as the E71, N96 and devices like the N97 were previously unhackable.

However, the Symbian community has once again managed a breakthrough in the from of the spanking newHelloOX2 application and you can hack almost any S60 3rd or 5th Edition device, Samsung i8910 HD included. This simple app will help you hack your device in under 5 minutes, all from the comfort of your bed without needing a computer. Difficulty level- Noob. Here’s how:

• Download HelloOX2 from here.

• Extract the contents. I used X-plore to do so, but you can use any application of your choosing or even extract it on the computer and then send the file to your phone.

• Sign the application with a 17 capability developer certificate which you can easily get by following this post. Next sign the application on the phone itself, using the Free Signer application.

• Next run the application, you will see quite a few screens like the following appear:

• Now you will be asked if you want to install Modo, a file manager with the capability of seeing all files, including the ones in the ‘Sys’ folder. Installing it or not will not affect the hack, I chose to install it. The application will then quit and your phone would be ‘hacked’.

• But before you can install any unsigned application, you will need to open ‘ROM Patcher’ from the ‘Applications’ folder and activate the ‘Installserver_FP2′ patch.

• Hit Options and then ‘Apply’. That’s it. You can now forget about signing files.

• Lastly, a word of caution. Please be very careful in what unsigned files you install. Wares and applications from untrusted sources can damage your device. Also, please do this at your own risk.

Via: The Symbian Blog

Hi everybody, I have been playing with my N97 the whole weekend and I can now come to a nice review about this piece of gadget. You have seen now the unboxing in my previous post. The N97 comes in a black/grey minimalistic box, with only few info in the box, very different from what we are used to see in Nokia retail boxes. However it is a nice box and it comes with a embossed N97 on the front, very nice detail.

What happens when you open the box? You are greeted by your device sitting in there along with the battery and the stylus. You can lift the tray and you will find the other accessories. These include:

-cleaning cloth
-charger adapter (for previous chargers)
-headset with control
-OVI suit
-user manual
-usb data cable.

So there you go, you take the battery and proceed to install it. This part is kind of tricky. It is not very clear at first time but the battery door kinds of pops in/out. You have to apply enough pressure to open it. I was afraid of breaking the cover, but after trying it, finally the battery door opened. Poped in the SIM card, micro SD and the battery. I turned it on and there it was. Nokia in all of its brightness.

The screen is giant, it is a pleasure to watch movies or see pictures in there, the pressure to make it work is perfect, not too sensitive and not too hard. The user interface has been improved at the homescreen, now it has widgets that you may edit at your own will. The rest of the operative system is almost the same, but has been improved for touch interface, making buttons biggers along with other items.
The materials used are plastic mostly, with a chrome bezel around the screen. The back cover is matte and the front is glossy.

The plastic used are of great quality and wont break or scratch easily. Overall the build quality is very good, I don’t get any cracking or wobble. Despite I have the white version it does not get dirty easily, even if it gets stained is very easy to clean it up with some humid cloth. The phone sits very comfortly in ones hand, and you may manipulate easily enough.
They keyboard is spaced enough and soon you will be writing long texts with no problem. The hinge mechanism is good, but I have the fear that it might break some day. On the front face there is no other button than the menu key, everything else is touch screen.

The system is pretty fast, some people had the fear that the processor was not going to be enough, but that’s not the case. The phone flies and rarely hangs up or lags. Even when multitasking, the phone is very responsive, so don’t have that fear, symbian has been improved for this phone.
I have tried the facebook widget and it is good enough, but is missing some other functions that real facebook has. Not that I miss them. To upload pictures from the N97 is very easy, it is easier to upload it to facebook than to send it to the computer. There are some bugs here, sometimes when you type on the qwerty, the arrow key works as if it was pressed even if it is not, so instead of writing letters you will be typing symbols.

The browser is one of the strong points on this phone. Opening it up you will see the bookmark list and a recently visited sites along with a space to type any url you want to visit. The websites render very fast. You can swipe the screen and the screen will flow and you will see the kinetic scrolling. Very usefull to navigate trough the websites. I find this feature very helpful. This along the qwerty makes the browsing experience very satisfying.

As far as I have tried, there are not many apps out there for this particular model. I visited the OVI store to download some apps that where for the 5800 but some aren’t entirely compatible, besides they are missing the widget view. On the other side, some apps that I was using on my N85 will work on my new phone. Even so, some themes I had been using on my previous phones work with the N97, that was kind of a surprise. About the OVI store I gotta say that it is pretty forward to install applications, I cant wait to see the apps released for the N97!

The input methods: qwerty, screen T9 and handwriting recognition. The qwerty is fast and easy, the T9 works as any regular dictionary we have seen before and it is quite easy to type. The hand recognition is great, it is fast enough, as If I was writing on a paper. So any input method is good, so you have the choice.

So to round it up. I can dare to say that the N97 will be a success for Nokia, easy to use, fast to use, very appealing to the consumers and very useful. Lets wait and see.
The good:

- Big screen with touchscreen
- Very fast system
- Touchscreen with perfect touch
- QWERTY with keys at perfect size
- Browser with kinetic scrolling
- Homescreen with customizable widgets.

The bad
- The widgets and the browsing drains the battery so fast, and it will take up to 2 hours to completely charge it. Might get 1 day and half with moderated use and browsing.
- The connection manager needs improvement. When I get ouside the Wifi range, the widgets will go crazy trying to connect again.
- NGAGE is missing, and the home media server manager is also missing.

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As most of you who follow me on twitter know, i have been testing emoze for the last few weeks, and now after weeks of testing, here is my review of emoze.

What is it*

Emoze is an email client but it’s not just a email client, it’s the  ultimate push email client, emoze allows you to get email from several types of email accounts which includes gmail, yahoo,outlook & hotmail just to name a few,  you can also get social network massages from facebook.

One of the things i like most about emoze is that it works with wi-fi, yes! so if you’re like me and you don’t have a data plan, emoze will still work

Setting up emoze took  longer then i expected, that being said it was also a lot easy-er then i expected, thing i liked most about emoze were the customization options, this is by far the most customizable software that i have ever reviewed.

there is nothing easy er then using emoze, i tried using  nokia’s mail for exchange and i got it up and running but the time i spent on it, lets just say i could have installed and setup emoze 12 times. “yes! it took that long”

What i liked*

• power saving mode

Power saving mode is one of the best things in this app, it allows you to pick how offing emoze will check for a new email, i found this very useful when using wi-fi, this lets you get your mail with out killing your battery.

• Customization options

From picking the folders at the mail comes from, to  picking a notification tone, emoze is yours to control.

I would’t list out everthing i liked because….  ”lets just say i liked everthing”

What i didn’t like*

I llike ever thing about this software and this one thing that i didn’t like is a not a big deal but i still have to tell you what it is, as i said before you get email from “gmail, yahoo,outlook & hotmail” that is ture but to get email from more then one of your accounts,you will have to upgarde to Pro,

The bottom line and Score*

all and all emoze is a great app with a world of customization options. it’s by far one of the best push email client out there. and i think that you should give it a try.

Links*

• Try now

• Emoze website

• Emoze on twitter

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