Though Nokia is the biggest phone manufacturer and its devices are the most sold over the world, but the company yielded its position in mobile market several years ago. Now Nokia and its CEO – Stephen Elop are doing everything to get back to the leading positions. Nokia hopes its newest Nokia N8 flagship will be the phone which can take on it such role, but as the results show the device is going to fail too as its predecessors did. Though the Nokia N8 sports great features and it is undoubtedly a high-end smartphone, but the N8 is still a step back from Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Why? you ask! and The Fool tries complete the answer board for us.

The phone comes with 12MP camera capturing HQ photos and recording HD videos, and probably it’s the main feature with HDMI-OUT port promising great future for the handset. But there are many faster and nicer smartphones in the market with 8MP cameras, which is also a great option for cameraphone lovers. If the phone was launched in time and wasn’t delayed due to the numerous software bugs, perhaps the N8 would encourage a better shape.

But let’s not put all the blame on the camera, because the most vulnerable feature of this phone is its OS – Symbian^3. It is really behind of Microsoft’s Windows Phones 7. Though the developers have talked there are many changes in the newest version of their OS, but if we look at it with wide eyes – the Symbian^3 isn’t changed fundamentally. We can only hope that Symbian^3 is stop-gap solution, as Windows Mobile 6.5 was for Windows Phones 7 its time.

The main reason why Symbian is out from competition in smartphone marathon is its UI, and though it has got many good things, but it is not ready for real “battle”.

It seems Nokia wouldn’t have a problem with such amount of sold phones, as it still controls 41% of smartphones market share; according to Canaccord Genuity Nokia, LG, and Samsung combined sell about 400 million phones getting 32% of the mobile industry’s profits, while Apple selling only 17 million units made 39% of the industry’s profit.

Unlikely, but the main reason is the fact Nokia’s phones average price is $85 in comparison with Apple’s devices average price, which is $600. Although the two companies’ smartphones components have the same value- $187, but the N8 is sold for $549 without any contract.

More important components are powered by Broadcom, Texas Instruments and Synaptics – the last provides the touchscreen controller, Texas Instruments has a long history with Nokia and its name doesn’t make us surprise, Broadcom supplies the Nokia N8’s processor.

Though many analysts criticize N8 and its features, but Nokia announces the presale orders have surpassed expectations. This means the history is repeated; the company will have huge sale volume, but low profit, which is a recurrent headache for Nokia shareholders. The only way to this situation is Symbian^4 or Linux-based MeeGo, but if these two will be like Symbian^3, I really want to know what Nokia is going to do.

Fonarena has set up an online competition allowing the readers to vote and compare two of the best smartphones – Nokia N900 and Palm Pre. Both devices have got enough memory and are equipped with efficient cameras, great screens, GPS and support a wide range of music and video formats.
Many people are sure Nokia N900 will win, and here is some features of the phones to compare and understand why it can become true.

Memory: Palm Pre allows users to save practically unlimited phonebook entries and unlimited call records, its internal memory is 8GB, but you have no chance to expand it. Otherwise Nokia N900 offers unlimited phonebook entries and call records, but its detailed view is saved maximum 30 days. This smartphone offers 32 GB memory and MicroSD cards which can be expanded up to 16 GB.

Camera: Though Nokia N900 captures with a 5Mp camera, which is lower than in other N series smartphones, but Palm Pre offers 3.15 Mp camera. So we can say the cameras are the ”weekest” feature, but there are other useful things in these smartphones.

Video recording: We have already seen that these devices don’t have strong capabilities of capturing and recording photos and videos, and Nokia N900 records videos at 25 frames per second and the palm Pre doesn’t do even that.

Display: The screen sizes are almost the same: Nokia N900 comes with a 3.5 inch screen (65K colors, 800×480 pixels) and Palm Pre comes with a 3.1 inch display (16M colors, 320×480 pixels).

Radio: you can download and listen music on both handsets, but Nokia N900 has Stereo FM radio (via third party software) and FM transmitter which allows you to discover more tunes.

If you give a preference to one of these phones you can vote here .

There is no doubt that the most awaited smartphones of this year are Nokia N8 and Apple Iphone 4. As these two “titans” have already been launched, we can compare their cameras.  So, below we introduce the characteristics of these smartphones’ cameras:

iPhone 4

• 5 megapixel CMOS sensor
• LED flash
• 4:3 aspect ratio
• Focal length: 3.85mm (equivalent to lens of 29.4mm)
• F number/Aperture: F2.8
• Autofocus
• Zoom : Digital 5x

Nokia N8

• 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens
• Xenon flash
• 16:9 aspect ratio (wide screen)
• Focal length: 5.9mm (equivalent to 28mm wide angle lens)
• F number/Aperture: F2.8
• Zoom : Digital 2x

At first sight there must be no doubt of Nokia N8′s privilege, but let’s study deeper.

Differences between cameras:

1. The first difference is the resolution: as we see iPhone 4 has a 5 Mpx camera, while Nokia N8 captures with a 12 Mpx camera. The difference is more than evident.
2. Nokia N8 could take pictures in a wider angle. Below is a picture which clearly explains the advantages of wide angle.
3. The picture clarity is the third significant feature of cameras, which discovers how clear could be the pictures no matter when they have been taken – on the bright sunlight or on a gloomy day.
4. The colors of both cameras are of a very high quality: there is nothing to compare.
5. And finally the flashes, to know what flash is better, we must learn more  about both handsets.

So, take pictures by both smartphones and decide for yourself which of them is more powerful.

Often when we surf on  the internet by Nokia 900 or other phone, we are told that there is no flash player in the phone and we have to get Adobe flash player (for example), This get us tired and angry, but there is some way to skip this problem in Nokia N900:). This trick may work for many sites like Facebook and Youtube.

 For solving the problem, you just need to install Tweak Flash Plugin Version on your Nokia N900. If there is some problem with running the application, you could launch the application via X-Terminal. Below we are introducing the steps, which help you launch the application from X-Terminal:
  1. Search for rootsh in Application Manager and install it.
  2. Open X-Terminal and type sudo /usr/bin/tweakflashver then hit Enter. This command will launch the Tweak Flash Plugin Version application.
  3. Once Tweak Flash Plugin Version application is running, you can start surfing!
And the video about the above
I think this is very useful maneuver to ease watching flashes.
Enjoy your Nokia N900 completely!

Microsoft Office has become one of the most sought-after software products for the word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. It is therefore understandable that the developers of software for mobile phones have long been developed and developing compatible applications for mobile devices. Ones can only read files of MS Office, while the others can also use the edit option. But today I want to invite you to become acquainted with Quickoffice Premier – the best “Office” application for mobile phones based on S60v5.

And so .. Quickoffice Premier allows you to create, view and edit Microsoft Office 2007, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It is difficult to enumerate the entire list of features, it’s much easy to install the application and check whether it suits your needs.

I’ll just note a few possibilities:

Language support in French, Italian, German and Spanish. (A new feature that was formerly only English).
Viewing and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on the phone.
Create and save new documents Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
The files are saved without loss of data.
Easy and intuitive user interface tool.
Support for complex formulas .
Full graphical editor.
Free spell check, dictionaries in multiple languages.
Ability to add images to Word and PowerPoint.
Integration with Mail for Exchange.

Quickoffice Premier is now compatible with smartphones of Symbian S60 5th Edition, for example, Nokia 5530, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, N97, C6, X6, 5230 and Nokia 5233.

Popular cell phone Nokia 5800 has a very good base for the applications, games and themes. Due to the support for SWF format on your desktop of the phone, you can put animated screensaver with a very good quality. One such interesting screen saver Thumbwheel is created by enthusiast with a nick waspbloke.

Below are the installation instructions for the English version:

Install:

Extract ‘gadget.swf’ to ‘E: \’
Extract folder ‘ThumbWheel_HS’ to ‘E: \’
Config:
-10 Editable shortcuts in ‘ThumbWheel_HS \ shortcuts.xml’.
Use any JPG or PNG images you like but remember that it must be 40 × 40 pixels. Place icons in ‘ThumbWheel_HS’ folder. Use PNG files for transparent background. Change ‘icon’ attribute to ‘whatever.png’.
Change ‘uid’ attribute to uid of preferred apps.
-Three options in ‘ThumbWheel_HS \ config.xml’.
Set vibrate off or on (0 / 1).
Display always on or toggle display (0 / 1)
Set click-hold time in seconds.

You can dowload the application following the link:

http://www.ziddu.com/download/11320045/ThumbWheel_HSv101.zip.html

During the conversation with New York Times reporters the head of Nokia Research Center, Henry Tirri shared his thoughts on the development of hardware features in portable devices. In particular, he drew attention to the topic of developing their own chip, which is not surprising. That’s what Apple did – it has created its own SoC-System A4, which they applied to iPhone and iPad 4.Let it not as unique as it is trying to be presented in Cupertino, but due to hardware and software optimization of new gadgets Apple demonstrated outstanding autonomy and excellent performance.

Nevertheless, Tirry is not happy with the practice of creating specialized processors for their own products. According to him – it is too risky and easier to use ready-made solutions, even at the expense of some functionality of the finished product. The risk in this case is that at the slightest mistake can lose a lot of money for one cycle needed to create the chip. It takes a very accurately determination of the functionality of future devices, choosing the right trend. But the thing is that the company has already given it to begin to develop the processor. Error in the predictions can cost all the money that will be invested in creating the chip.

The words of Tirri could’ve not been taken seriously, if not his vast experience in the IT-industry. For 40 years he worked in the field of computer science and is a well known figure not only in Nokia, but also in the “Silicon Valley”. According to the scientist, instead of chips, the Finnish company will focus on the materials used in the production of terminals. For example, in research centers employees are working on advanced materials capable of changing its color, easy to resist liquids and dirt, literally growing keyboard and other interface elements on the touch screen. By the way, it resembles the concept of Nokia Morph.

Nokia traditionally used to equip its S40-based models with Opera Mini. However, apparently, this practice is coming to an end. Nokia Beta Labs has demonstrated Ovi Browser for S40 platforms, which has the same functionality as Opera Mini. Browser itself is still a beta-version and in-store applications of Ovi Store are not available. This program uses a special service for the opening page, compresses it and sends the compressed form on the phone.

In fact Ovi Browser is very similar to Opera Mini 4.2, although the Nokia Beta Labs does not report on the use of Opera code in its product. At the moment this browser denies some services and features, however, is not the final version, and therefore arguing that it will receive, and what will not is too early. So far, the browser can download the compressed pages, URL, and auto filling, supports the integration of search engines (Yahoo!, Google, Bing), and has a bookmark. The test version is available on the site browser.ovi.com for phones from the list of compatible devices.

The official Nokia Conversation blog only recently posted the FAQs about the newest device of the company- Nokia N8. The list includes lots of questions which might be interesting for this or that part of the Nokia users.

But let’s say that there’ s a list of them which are rather popular among the all.

So let’s have a look at some of the interesting facts about the  camera of Nokia N8:

• Sharpening enhancements set to low by default for a more natural look. You can change this setting if you prefer a higher contrast look.
• Shutter lag (delay between pressing the button and actually taking the shot) 0,15 seconds. For comparison the recent 12MP point-and-shoot Canon SD 1300 has a shutter lag of 0,07 seconds.
• You can focus subjects 10cm from the Nokia N8 in close-up scene mode and around 20-30m in auto.
• The Nokia N8′s xenon flash is 30% smaller but has same flash power as  the Nokia N82

After the successful tour of the GreenHeart series from Sony Ericsson, feels like Nokia is also going green. The Easy To Be Green campaign has been going around for already a few months and feels to have rather success. The fact of encouraging to recycle Nokia mobile devices and the recycled packaging in which the phones come in makes us believe in trustiness into the project.

The company representatives are always gathering together to discuss newer technologies and newer ways to get more chances for the promotion of the project and the overall idea of keeping the nature clean. As for now let’s have a look at the video which not only shows the hard work of the company in terms of the recycling, but also talks about how important is that!