N8PictureADay #17 - My wittle bunny wabbit

This one is too funny not to share. The photo is a bit shaky but the subject is too cool :)

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N8PictureADay #16 - Clouds

Haven't seen so many differently shaped clouds over my city in a while...

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Rant: Apple's censorship - How far will they go?

I had this post on the back of my mind for a few days now, but today I finally decided to do it. You won't see to many rant posts on this blog, but this time I have to let it out.

Apple, the defenders of justice, the protectors of the working class, the geniuses that "innovate" stuff that people invented years ago, struck again.

This time the didn't pick a fight with Samsung or Nokia or Google, but with their own search engine Wolfram. It's one thing to sue a competitor for using your patents or using your god damn design, but to mess with the results of their search, that's stooping to a new low.

After years of pointing the finger at Google and calling them unfair competitors, they mess around with their Siri backend results to keep the Nokia Lumia 900 out of their users mind.

Here is a video recorder by someone about a week ago, when Siri was still telling the truth:



As you can clearly see, Siri shows the Lumia 900 as the response to the question "what's the best smartphone ever".

Now fast forward a few days, and below you'll see today's answer of the same question:



Neat right? Nokia is now accusing Apple, and not in vain, of messing around with their search results. What does Apple have to say about this? Nothing. They are keeping mum, and that's a bad thing.

I think Nokia should be proud that the Lumia 900 caused such a reaction at Apple. It only means that Apple is scared and insecure. They fear the Lumias, and they should. Nokia's entry in the North American market is one hell of a reason for Apple to be scared.

And as if that weren't enough, they decided to censor iTunes for the word "jailbreak". Yes friends, jailbreak has become a curse word as far as Apple is concerned. You can see in the screenshot below the jailbreak word being obscured by asterisks in the search results. It seems that some results are still showing, like Books and TV shows, but not the songs, no sir.



Jobs would have never messed with the Siri results, he would have turned that around into a good thing for Apple, a proof of Siri's objectivity. But it seems Cook is too stupid to do that.

All I can say is that Steve (God rest his soul) is turning in his grave after all these stupidities that Cook and company are doing.

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Asha 302 - Day four of #SmartphoneLiteWeek

To call this last day with the Asha full of surprises would be an understatement. Until now I've used Opera Mini, because I'm used to it and I wanted something familiar. But yesterday I started using the Nokia Browser for S40. To my surprise I discovered that it was faster than Opera. I'm still having a hard time believing it.

I tried to figure out what was happening and I think I managed to do so. Opera uses a very flexible rendering engine, but, since it is a Mini version, some websites have trouble rendering their content. On similar sites, I haven't seen the Nokia Browser acting up. Instead of using a web render engine on the phone I think the Nokia Browser uses the cloud to render a plain HTML file, the file that it actually displays on the phone. There are advantages and disadvantages for both methods. Opera will be able to render pages even if the cloud is down, while the Nokia Browser may be fully dependent of the browser. On the other hand, Nokia Browser will have to get less application updates than Opera because the rendering is done in the cloud. That means that you may find yourself loading pages faster without needing a software update.

I have to say that Nokia's browser approach is suitable for this kind of device, with limited RAM and limited resources. I am using the Nokia Browser now as my main browser for that reason.

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N8PictureADay #15 - Twilight

When the night meets the day, where the light meets the darkness...

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Asha 302 - Day three of #SmartphoneLiteWeek

So far I've been able to steer away from smartphones but it wasn't that hard because it was a busy work week and I had tons of other things to think about. But now it gets tricky... The weekend is here and I see smartphones everywhere. I haven't played Dungeon Hunter or Angry Birds in a while and I miss then. But I have to be strong and resist the temtation to pick up the N8.

On day three I just realized that some features I missed from smartphones were actually there on the Asha 302 too. On day one I said that the shortcuts bar was not configurable, when in fact it was.

Being a Facebook and Twitter only kind of guy, Asha 302's social apps suited my needs and so far I have no complaints about it. The social client looks very similar to the Symbian WRT client, and that's a good thing.

The chat client works perfectly and it's up for the task of keeping you connected to your friends. It supports lots of chat networks, but I use only GTalk and Facebook. Yahoo, Ovi, MSN are there too if you need them. Good to see that FB chat is there as I believe most of you use that as your main chat means.

I started missing the 12MP snapper badly. Every time I think "It's macro time!" I quickly realize that I no longer have the cameraphone queen in my pocket. But the Asha does it's best to help me take a snap with it's 3.2 camera.

What I like about the Asha the most it is the speed the apps open up with. The 1GHz CPU sure makes it's presence felt. Opera Mini opens faster than on some Symbian S60 handsets.

I guess Nokia's strategy to replace Symbian with the Asha/Windows Phone combo is starting to show. Clearly the Asha family is eating it's way up the food chain into the low budget Symbian market, trying to replace the likes of Nokia 5320 or the Nokia 5800 or even the E5. The Asha family has a long and bumpy road ahead, but only time will tell if they're up for the task.

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N8PictureADay #14 - Luna

This Nokia Luna was part of the Nokia Try Something New (NokiaTSN) contest early on this year.

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Asha 302 Unboxing - Day two of #SmartphoneLiteWeek

As you know, the Asha 302 dropped by for a visit, and today we get to see what's in the box.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to say about the Asha 302 package, as it contains only the phone itself, a charger and a wired hands free. I would have liked to see at least a 2GB micro SD card and a data cable. That is are the bare minumum in my opinion.

But I guess it all depends on how you look at the Asha 302. If you buy it as you main phone, you'll most definitely have some change to spare for a SD card and a data cable, or if you're buying it as a backup phone, you'll already have at least a data cable available.

So without further ado, I give you the Asha 302:

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N8PictureADay #13 - Get ready to be baptized

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Asha 302 - Day one of #SmartphoneLiteWeek

First day without a smartphone... Using Asha 302 as my main device made me realize that I'm nor really using my smartphone to it's full potential. Asides from smart dialing, the weather app and Dungeon Hunter 2 HD, I haven't missed much so far.

Here are the pros and cons of the Asha 302 so far. I'll start with the cons.

Cons:

• No smart dialing
• No Nokia account contacts and calendar sync
• Installed apps are not visible in the main menu
• No search app
• Update The widget can be configured [Shortcuts widget cannot be reconfigured]
• APN settings very hard to find
• Materials used for the keyboard look cheap
• No SD card in the box

Pros

• Flawless connectivity management (never did I once have to choose a connection)
• Good mail client
• Good social client
• CPU speed more than makes up for java apps
• Email notification in the system top bar (Symbian Belle still does not have this feature)
• Ability to handle multiple email accounts with ease
• Very good hardware QWERTY
• Solid build with metal cover on the back (despite the cheap looking plastic of the keyboard)
• Threaded SMS view
• Camera UI surprisingly good
• Good loudspeaker volume
• Decent 150+MB free in phone memory on first boot

So far so good. Hopefully I can stay away from smartphones for 6 more days. I wonder how I will survive the weekend, considering I usually play a lot DH2 then.

We'll see how it goes.

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