Cant say Good bye to my N82

Posted by BA on May 2, 2010 in Nokia, Smartphones | 2 comments

Nokia n82

N82 by Nokia, just a little over two years I was so excited to receive my new handset. An amazing dual processor phone with dedicated graphics processing unit, an amazing five mega pixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash…… Series 60 3rd edition and a mono block, unlike N95.

It happens that after six months, you start feeling that your phone is too old for some of the features that you’d love to use but after a couple of years in case of N82, I don’t tend let go my phone. I have always been a Nokia fan but Nokia has unfortunately been slightly quiet in past couple of years. They have not released a phone that could make me thing of switching my handset. Just as a convention, I thought I’d rather change my handset now anyways.

My eyes got glittered and deceived by the Blackberries and Androids and I decided to say farewell to my beloved Nokia N82. Now I have an android based HTC G1 as well as the top of the line BlackBerry Bold 9700. No offense with these amazing handsets, but two weeks away from my N82, I am actually handicapped due to  two main reasons.

My very ordinary looking Nokia N82 has a set of features that are still unmatched by the latest smartphones today. In addition, the wide range of software that I keep using, well at least so far, has not been available on other platforms. The problem of the software can be solved gradually as the software becomes available for the new handsets, but the feature set has no match.

The Xenon flash, that usually comes in point and shoot digital cameras only has kept me enjoying night time photography with an accompanying Carl Zeiss lens, five mega pixel camera and a great camera software to support. Even the most recent phones don’t have such flash and all of them only depend on LED based flash, if a flash at all is there.

Unmatched multi-tasking all the time on N82, chatting on favorite IM services, surfing the web using at least 4 different browsers, downloading a few torrents over wifi, listening to Mp3 music all at the same time and a few more software standing by is a normal way how I use this phone. And this doesn’t happen that great on other handsets.

Showing off the photos and videos I took over the weekend to friends and family on the TV is another great feature I miss in my beloved N82. Dont BlackBerry owners need a presentation mechanism in their business phones? Come on, you could give a TV out for heaven’s sake.

I have a feeling, I may have to come back to my Nokia N82 till another phone comes out with such great features. Thank God I haven’t sold it out yet

Nokia Photo Browser on N82

Posted by BA on Apr 19, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Thanks to Nokia Beta Labs, now Photo-Browser runs on N82 as well. Yes, the zoom feature is gone because of no touch-screen, but still, its a treat to use the software. This little video shows how it runs on the lovely N82 including a sample of face detection.

I’ve written more about the software in my earlier post here. You can download the software from Nokia Beta Labs.

Nokia Photo Browser is available for non-touchscreen versions

Posted by BA on Apr 18, 2009 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Nokia Photo Browser is a fun photo viewer more commonly known to be associated with Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It allows you to fly over a plethora of 3d arrangement of photos in your phone, that are mostly taken by you, yourself. Its a product of Nokia beta labs and they’re not sure what to do with it as yet but I’m sure it can easily replace the basic gallery of upcoming S60 nokias. You can view photos, fly over to browse thumbnails, open them up and the photo rotation is very quick when you rotate your phone (obviously utilizing accelerometer) and most interesting of all, it has face detection too. You can detect faces within a group photo and auto-jump face to face. Well, it works pretty well on my N82.

Limitations as discussed on Darla’s blog , it was initially targeted only for Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic edition, but now its a good news for me. It is available for several other S60 phones. Obviously the touch-zoom functionality is not available with non-touchscreen phones. So simply go to Nokia beta labs site and download it on your Nokia. (Compatibility list is available on the same linke.)

How to increase Nokia N82′s battery life

Posted by BA on Apr 8, 2009 in Uncategorized | 43 comments

Stuffing Nokia N95-8GB’s battery into N82

I have this Nokia N-82 black which usually dies down early in the evening due to a poor battery life. I’m sick of carrying an extra battery in my pocket. I’ve been desperate to find a solution.

I remember the days when I bought a Nokia 6300 with similar battery life issues. In stock, it has a poor BL-4c (720 mah capacity) battery. I was able to find a solution of 6300′s poor battery life. Initially I stuffed in my N72′s BL-5C (850 mah) in it, and later my brother gave me his BL-6C from his old N-Gage QD that I had to scrub off a little and that did fit too. A bump up from 720 to 1070 mah. My phone was like running forever on one battery.

Thinking on the same lines for N82, I decided to look around for similar sized batteries from different devices. Unfortunately I did not find a perfect match. E-51 had exactly the similar battery as N82, that is BP-6MT (1050 mah). That was really depressing for me. E-51 with a smaller screen, no xenon flash, no GPS, 2 mega-pixel camera has the same battery? Come on Nokia, that’s not fair at all!

Then I grabbed that N-95 8GB, pulled off the battery cover and there it is, BL-6F. My observations? Both of them have same voltage as expected, 3.7 volts.

Interestingly, the connectors of both batteries are the same.

I know the size of both batteries is quite different, BL-6F being large enough not to fit inside N-82, but i still decided to give it a shot! I stuffed in the bigger battery into my N82. Well it did not fit in there, so I had to hold it to keep it connected to the power connectors. I simply booted it up and walla! it boots up great. This video shows the process:

That sure boots up N82 on a 1200 mah battery but using it with this battery is virtually impossible. You can tape it, glue it and an Ugly phone may end up running with this battery, but its not going to be a proper solution.

For normal use, I carry an extra battery but that’s really a pain. If you have any solution to the problem, do let me know.

Youtube mobile, some serious improvements!

Posted by BA on Mar 23, 2009 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Just a few days ago I wrote about vtap. Here comes youtube to snatch limelight from it. I’m happy to see the new version of Youtube mobile application.

First of all, the reason of my happiness is the support for my Nokia N82. My handset was not recognized by Youtube earlier. I think it was too new for it :p . My N82 had no straight way of installing Youtube app. What I did earlier was, to download an app for N95 to my PC and installing it onto my N82.

Remember, I talked about some port blocking in my vtap post? Well, youtube had the same problem in the earlier version. Youtube could search and browse on my cellular network using GPRS/EDGE but when played a video, it used to fail. Same was the case with m.youtube.com. It used to launch the Real-Player which never played the video. Reason? The default media streaming on a mobile requires incoming data connections on a few ports. Many mobile networks block such ports (I dont know why, at least my network did).

I even tried running earlier version of youtube on wifi, and it failed due to the same incoming connection problem. But after a few tweaks to the router, I could get it running on wifi. All above sounds too complicated? Well, for most of us, it is.

New version of youtube application has fixed all these issues. Now I can play videos on my same old network without any problem. If you can surf the web, read the blogs or news and check your email on mobile, you can also enjoy mobile youtube. Search is simple, fast and results are displayed in a great scrolling manner that is readable enough. Recent searches are also stored and if typed in again, similar links drop down in a list, a real convenience!

Video qauality is good, its not as good as you see on the PC but the compression is reasonably lossless. Comparing to vtap, things are much better.

The application is very simple to use and has a great feature set. Simply press 7 and you’ll get the related videos searched for the selected one. Pressing 3 takes you to the home screen with the standard search box, top rated, most viewed and most recent link. All these links, search or related video result in a video list horizontally scrollable that caters to the small screen issue in a great manner.

Another great feature is the ability of changing the connection. In most applications, switching from wifi to EDGE/3G and back is not possible. Youtube has a menu option to select a different network if your currently selected network is not available anymore. No need to restart the app.

I believe a few features are missing at the price of the simplicity? Following are the features I was expecting in this release

• A login option that allows me to view my private videos, rate them, add to favorite etc.
• My customized searches (recommended by youtube) and videos that interest me mots, I love that on the web version
• Capability of uploading my mobile videos
• Sharing capability

vtap is a winner in the case of sharing. Youtube app is not letting me sms the url even. No email, no web and no text sharing of videos from the application. Its a big turn-off.

I was able to test it on a few series 60 nokias and it works like a charm. Moreover, it is not supported on my blackberry curve 8310. Do let me know what handset you are using and if the application is supported on your set or not. Simply go to http://m.google.com/youtube/download from your mobile browser. If you see a download link on the homepage, your handset is supported.
If you don’t see that link, your handset may still be supported but you will have to find it out the hard way. Please do share your experiences.

Start enjoying the mobile youtube today.

Download Link: http://m.google.com/youtube/download