Digital Rover

The improved Sony Mylo 2, which we have compared with N810 and iPod Touch earlier, is now available on Amazon.  Available for about $288, it is a nice device for making VoIP calls and browsing the internet. Some of the highlights of the device include:

QWERTY Keyboard
1.3 meg camera
1GB on board memory expandable through memory slot
Integrated […]

HDR photography has become a popular hobby and craze among many digital photography enthusiasts in the recent times. It is not that you need a high end Digital SLR to shoot these kind of pictures. Mobile phones with high quality cameras like the Nokia N95/N82 can help in creating some amazing HDR photographs. TheNokiaBlog has […]

This is indeed a big surprise. Nokia internet tablets have topped the list of Amazon's best selling computers for 2007!! Though the list does not specify which model it is, it could most likely be the N800. The N810 was introduced only last month, so it would not have topped the list in such a short time. I think Nokia got it right with the form factor and usability with the N series tablets. With the vastly improved N810, there is every possibility of the device topping the charts next year too!

Related: Nokia N810 vs iPod Touch vs ASUS EeePC

Now that Nokia has updated its internet tablet to N810, it is time to have a relook at one of the earlier posts in this website. The N810 is a hefty update to the earlier version -  bringing in a redesigned front, a GPS navigation system, a QWERTY keyboard, a faster processor and many other software improvements. The refresh on the front makes the device look much smaller than the N800.

With the inclusion of GPS and QWERTY keyboard, it now becomes very difficult to compare the iPod touch with this new device. The N810 now is not only a PDA and a media player, it is also a PND (Personal Navigation Device) and a very capable UMPC. It now makes more sense to compare this device with the ASUS EeePC than a media player with a browser like the iPod.

The built in Opera browser of N800 has been replaced with a new one which uses the firefox rendering code. (On a side note, this is where Nokia's inconsistencies come to the fore. They chose Safari(webkit) as the base for the s60 browser, but have used Gecko for the N810. It may be because with Gecko, they have a Linux port to start with, but in case of S60, they had to start pretty from scratch). Other improvements include Skype and Gizmo, which come preinstalled.

Anyone looking at buying the ASUS EeePC should give the N810 a very serious look. While much more compact than the eeePC, the N810 packs more with the inclusion of the onboard GPS navigation system. The EeePC has an upperhand interms of software because of the inclusion of an office suite. If you are not going to do much of wordprocessing and use only email, then the N810 becomes your automatic choice.

Gnome 2.20 has been released. This will be picked up by Mandriva and Ubuntu in their upcoming releases. While browsing through the release notes, I found that Evolution has a small but very significant addition: Warning if you forgot to attach something to the mail. This happens to everyone and I had so many instances when I had to send an embarrasing follow-up mail with the attachment! Here comes the savior for many people. Evolution now detects if you have missed any attachments through keywords and provides a nice warning. But careful, never check that box below the message!!

A Tip: One way to ensure that you dont miss the attachment is to start typing the mail only after you have attached the document. If you make this a habit, you will eventually have less no of follow up mails sent.

Motorola announced the RAZR2 revisions this week. The RAZR phones are no longer dumb phones. Sporting an ARM11 500 MHz processor , the new phones should be blazingly fast. Apart from the processor, there is a major change under the hood - all new RAZRs run on Motorola's Linux platform. Even if these new RAZRs are only half successful as the previous generation phone, it will still help Linux capture a huge market share in the smartphone segment. But I still do not understand Motorola's logic of not providing a native SDK. Looks like a pretty dumb move for me.

By providing a phone with all radio options, right from 2.5G to 3G, Motorola has essentially covered 90% of the cellphone market segment. RAZRs are always known for people who are fashion conscious rather than for the do-it-all phone crowd. The new revision is even more thinner, shiny and looks damn sexy. (If only I can get a Windows Mobile phone in this housing. Moto, Are you listening? I don't want the Q9 by the way).

To make the RAZRs more appealing, Moto should make this design exclusive to the RAZRs. An etched keypad in most phones, even the entry level ones make these phones little unappealing as most Motos now look like RAZR. This may put off many potential RAZR2 buyers.

PS: Anyone knows who is the manufacturer of the ARM11 CPU in these phones? I have been trying to get the info, but no luck.

I use Linux as my primary operating system at home. At office it is always Windows. My personal observation in using both operating systems is that the quality of most applications on Windows is slightly better than Linux, though the gap is now narrowing fast. The following is the list of applications that I use in Windows and the corresponding equivalents I use in Linux. This list is by no means exhaustive. Just the ones that I use everyday.