I received the S60 Ambassador merchandise today. The kit consisted of a cool T-Shirt, 2 notepads, a nice pen and a tag. Too bad, that T Shirt was a little small for me. Interestingly, I am selected as an ambassador for the Ovi program, which is not yet available for India users on the Share […]
With the inclusion of GPS chip in many of the new Smartphones from Nokia - like the N95, N95 8GB, N82 and the upcoming N78 and N96, the available GPS based applications are on an increase. Here is a list of some of the best applications that I tried on my N95 8GB. This is […]
Being an avid fan of Nokia’s N95, I am now eagerly awaiting for the next flagship, the N96. I am tracking all the news and updates of this device in a separate blog here. If you are interested in this device, you can subscribe to the RSS feed here.
The leaked specifications of Nokia N96 reveal lot of improvements over its predecessor, the N95. The addition of DVB-H, built-in 16 GB memory with an expansion slot (take that, Apple!), WMV9 support and SDTV output are all welcome changes. But the glaring shortcoming is the 320×240 QVGA screen. Why not VGA or atleast 352×416 as […]
Could not resist posting this. Try this theme on your N95 8GB. One of the best themes ever created for S60, IMHO. The beat bubble theme matches the N95 8GB’s aesthetics so very nicely. Didn’t look that impressive on a friend’s classic N95.
If you are a GTD fan and purchased a Nokia N95 (or any S60 phone) you may be regretting your purchase now. That is because of the poor PIM implementation on these phones when compared to platforms like Windows Mobile and Palm. One of the main issues is that categories do not sync when you […]
Here is a really impressive video which shows how can you share media on a N95 8GB onto a Playstation 3 console. In a snap, your N95 8GB becomes a media server to share content with any other UPnP enabled device.
At about 3.00 minutes on the video, you can see the presenter pushing photographs from […]
Though Gmail provides a nice J2ME client for accessing email on your mobile device, some of you may prefer to use the IMAP interface, speed being one of the reason. Here is how I configured Gmail IMPAP on my Nokia N95. This may apply for other S60 v3 devices like N80, N73, N82, N93 etc., […]
The final frontier in mobile web browsing has been conquered. The new firmware update (v15.0.015) that is now available through Nokia Software Update, enables you to play flash video content directly. No need to use the mobile version of YouTube, which has only limited content available. Wherever you see a flash video, you will be able to play it, just like the way you do it on your PC. The following screenshots show how I played one popular remix song from YouTube.
Even though the mini-map view does not show the video as a thumbnail……
…….when you zoom in, you can see the video playing:
If you want to view the video optimally, just switch to fullscreen using the option on the extreme right of any video:
This automatically switches the video to landscape mode and plays fullscreen!
Another notable enhancement to the new firmware is the addition of Nokia Web Runtime, which enables one to write HTML applications. This is very similar to the AJAX applications that are written for desktop based web browsers!
I noticed that they have fixed one annoying bug: Turning on the stereo widening in Music Player used to introduce distortion in the media being played. This bug seems to have gone from the current build. The video editor (a very useful video editing application on the mobile itself) has finally returned!
There is also a noticeable improvement in the speed and responsiveness of the phone.
This is a second major update in the last one month, which is very welcome from Nokia. The best keeps getting better!
One of the advantages of using an N series phone as your portable music player is the support for a wide range of music formats. All modern N series phones support the eAAC+, which is a great format for providing high quality music at very low bitrates. This is in addition to MP3, AAC, WMA and real formats which are also supported by N Series phones. For most people, a 56 kbps Parametric Stereo encoded eAAC+ audio file sounds the same as a 128 kbps mp3 file. That means your 8 GB N95/N91/N81 phone is equivalent to a 16 GB iPod in terms of storage capacity.
Now, how to convert your music library to eAAC+ format? The Nokia provided Music manager can convert music to “mobile optimized” format, which is nothing but eAAC+. But the quality of the codec is not upto the mark. Music files encoded using this tool did not sound very nice and sometimes even had artifacts. In general, it is not a good practice to convert source music files which are encoded at less than 192 Kbps to advanced AAC Plus. Ideally, you should rerip your CDs to eAAC+ at 56 Kbps with Parametric Stereo option. This will give you the best listening experience.
The best conversion tool which provided excellent music quality is Poikosoft’s Easy CD-DA Extractor. Easy CD DA extractor is not free- it will cost you about $32, but there is a trial version available. The following procedure tells you how to convert our MP3 music to eAAC+ format.
Open Easy CD-DA Extractor and select the “Audio File Format Converter” tab. Drag and drop the music you want to convert into the “Drag audio files here” area. In the output tab at the bottom, select the output format as .aac (eAAC+) and the bitrate as 56 Kbps Parametric stereo. It is not advisable to go to a lower bitrate than this, as you will be able to notice the degradation in audio quality. To know more about Parametric Stereo, follow this Wikipedia link. Once you have dropped all the files that need to be converted, click on the big button at the bottom right to start the conversion process. It takes a while depending upon the number of songs you have selected. Once it is done, you can copy the music in USB mode to your phone. Note that N70 and N72 do not support the eAAC+ format. A 4 MB mp3 file converted using this method will usually be about 1.4 to 2 MB in size!! Go ahead and start enjoying more music on your N95 8GB!
Summary
(I am not affiliated to Poikosoft in anyway)
