iPhone for Nerds
Remember my rant from January about how Nokia sucks? I was basically really upset about the fact that Apple could enter the phone business with something as cool as iPhone when Nokia and others have been making these really crappy phones for decades. Well, couple a weeks ago I got a new phone; Nokia N95.
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There are not so many real competitors for the iPhone. By real competitor I mean a phone that could be seriously thought as an “iPod-killer”, a multimedia (video, imaging) device and a smartphone with good networking capabilities. Nokia N95 is definitely one of those few devices. While it doesn’t have a pretty UI like the iPhone, it does, however, pack an impressive feature set that outperforms iPhone in many areas.
Much of the criticism against the iPhone is about its price. Compared to N95, iPhone seems almost cheap. Well, almost. The less expensive iPhone is yours for $500 bucks. The high-end model sets you back $600. And Nokia N95? It’s around $750. That’s sevenhundredandfifty dollars — for a phone. So please, iPhone is not the only expensive phone on the market.
(For the record, I’m not that rich. In Finland you can get a N95 with a two year contract for zero euros. I love contracts :)
In addition to rich feature set and high price point, these phones do have at least a one more thing in common: their battery life is ridiculously low. Of course, no one knows exactly how long the battery will last on the iPhone, but it is obvious that during intensive use it’s not going to be days but hours. And when it’s not days, it pretty much means that you must charge it every single day. Which sucks big time.
Nokia N95 In A Nutshell
- 2.6” screen (320x240)
- 160 Mb onboard memory, support for up to 4 Gb microSD card
- Dedicated keys for controlling media playback
- Really Good 5 Mpix camera
- Wlan, 3G (UMTS)
- Built in GPS (with Nokia Maps)
- Runs on Series 60 3rd Edition FeaturePack 1
For a nerd, the most significant differences to iPhone (other than the UI, of course) are N95s better connectivity features, built in GPS and the fact that Series 60 platform is absolutely great for hacking. (And there are lots of free and open source software available. Real software.)
By the way, the Safari browser on iPhone is using the same open source Webkit-engine that is powering Series 60 browser too.
Mobile Hacking
Apple issued a press release earlier this month stating that “evolutionary iPhone™ will run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards”. Yippee! So, for iPhone you can build shitt.. err. shiny interfaces on web applications and link phone numbers from them. (Want to know a Big Secret? href=”tel:+5551234”). Man, that’s so cool! Or at least it was back in 2000.
I really don’t know which puts me off more; Nokia and others making really bad UIs and half-baked software on top of a decent operating system, or Apple making uber cool “runs on OS X” iPhone and crippling it with no SDK.
Series 60 phones have their downsides, but for developers the platform is wide open. In addition of dozens of open source programs that you can learn from, there are things like Python for Series 60 that lower the barrier for mobile development significantly. Furthermore, projects like Apache 2 port for Series 60 have opened amazing possibilities of which almost none have been explored yet.
Nokia alone has many other cool open source projects running and there are lots of people working on all sorts of cool hacks. (For example the RaccoonOnMap, which is a Mobile Web Server and Google Maps mashup that puts your phone on a map).
Getting a developer certificate for Series 60 3rd edition is, albeit free, a bit pain in the butt. But now that I have one (after few hours of installing stupid win-only software on Virtual PC and fighting trough the registration process), I’ll definitely try some Python hacking on my N95. I still think it’s a shame that you cannot do anything like this on an iPhone. Sure, it’s a smartphone “for the rest of us”, but if it really runs OS X, why not open it up for developers?
Until that happens, I guess the N95 is the iPhone for nerds.
5 comments
Yeah, the N95 is the only genuine iPhone competitor I've seen. More features, less UI slickness.
Still, when the iPhone SDK comes along, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts (mmm, doughnuts) that it's much easier to start playing around than the process you described above.
GPS: how well does that work, in practice? I've no experience of it, but having read up a bit, it sounds like getting a fix on your position when there are tall buildings (i.e. in a city) or lots of tree cover (i.e. in a forest) might be a bit tricky, and that it might take 30 seconds or so to get a fix. Sounds like it could be a bit flakier than Apple would like.
While Nokia's S60 web browser is based on WebKit, it is based on a version comparable to that which shipped with Mac OS X 10.4 over two years ago. WebKit has progressed an impressive amount in that time in terms of real-web compatibility and feature support. Keep in mind that "the same engine as in the iPhone" also holds true for Safari 1.x that was released for Mac OS X 10.3 all those years ago.
The multitouch iPhone interface seems like a much better fit for mobile web browsing than the buttons found on Nokia moibles. In my experience trying to click the right hyperlink on web pages using the mini-joystick is a tedious exercise, while the iPhone approach is much more direct.
None of this is to say that the N95 is not a great phone. From the specs you cite it sounds like a great alternative for a more tech-minded buyer. Hopefully Nokia will catch up their web browser to the state-of-the-art one of these days.
@pauldwait: I agree that if Apple decides to make an iPhone SDK, it surely don't involve any win-only shit :)
The GPS is a fun thing to have on a phone. With the current N95 firmware it can take forever to get a location fix. It may be several minutes if you're unlucky (it seems to vary very much also -- sometimes it's only few seconds). Also the GPS is a technology that needs a clear view to the satellites. So in general they don't work well or at all indoors. Luckily Nokia has made a new firmware that adds AGPS feature to the phone which decreases the location fix time significantly and also makes it possible to use GPS indoors. The new firmware is released to public any day now.
@Anony Mous: You do know that the Webkit project is Open Source, right? It's not like Nokia has stopped the development on the Series 60 version or anything :)
I don't find anything tedious in browsing with Series 60 phones. As a matter a fact tha new browser in FP1 is the best browser I've ever used on a phone. And of course on a Series 60 device -- unlike on the iPhone -- you can always install an alternative browser if you want. Take the new free Opera mini for example. Or pay $20 for the Opera for S60 and get much better features than on any browser.
Yes, I'm well aware that the WebKit project is open source. If you were to take more than a cursory glance at the WebKit project you would notice that the S60 WebKit port lives on a completely separate branch from "normal" WebKit development.
This is Nokia's branch based on the WebKit version in Tiger. If you compare that to the latest development version of mainline WebKit you'll see the staggering amount of changes that have happened over the last two years. Yes, Nokia is still working hard on their S60 WebKit port, but unless they rebase their work onto a modern version of WebKit it's simply inaccurate to make the claim that they're using the same engine as is in the iPhone.
@Uninen: thanks, it'll be interesting to see if AGPS makes it more usable. I reckon that mobile devices knowing where they are adds the potential for a whole new dimension of useful software.
But it needs to be as convenient as mobile phone coverage, i.e. works reasonably well indoors, and is available nearly instantly.