After Nokia N8 was available for preorder in UAE, I had plans of posting a detailed review with videos and pictures. Days after that,  Micky over Nokiausers did an extensive Video roundup of Nokia N8 and Clinton Jeff from zomgitscj posted a handson report of his first encounter with Nokia N8. Do have a look at these articles.

Coming back to the topic, lets try to find out why you should buy a Nokia N8. Shall we ? .. But wait… first have a look at the Nokia N8 official video, and then the reasons after the jump..

(p.s. : This post contains lots of videos, so visit the blog if they are not visible in rss.)

1. Symbian^3

Yeah, Nokia N8 is first Symbian^3 device and a step ahead of Symbian 5th Edition or S60V5 or the OS which run Nokia’s touchscreens currently available in market. To be frank, I was not such a big fan of S60v5 after owning a Nokia 5800, but things got little better with Nokia N97. Symbian^3 comes with around 250 new features according to Nokia.

2. 12 Megapixel camera with Xenon Flash

We all are aware of the outstanding camera phones made by Nokia. Nokia N8 takes it not one but many steps higher. Check out the untouched image samples taken from Nokia N8. If you want more details you can check out all the FAQs  and part1 of Nokia N8 camera.

3. HD video recording

Nokia N8 allows you to shoot HD videos with amazing clarity. Nokia N8 is also being used to shoot videos for Israeli "American Idol" ( Videos can be found at Mynokiablog ). Below is the sample clip from Nokia ( dont forget to play in HD) + you can also check out part2 of Nokia N8 camera regarding video recording.

4. Video and Photo Editor

Nokia N8 comes with inbuilt video and photo editor. You can edit your videos and photos on the go, add effects and also upload them to various video sharing websites. Check it out in the video below.

5. FM transmitter

Just like Nokia N97, Nokia N8 comes with an inbuilt FM transmitter, which allow you to play audio files on your phone, via your car’s speaker without the need of any wires. Check out this cool feature in the video below demonstrating FM transmitter on Nokia N97.

6. Multiple home screens

Nokia N8 comes with 3 homescreens which are highly customizable with live widgets connected to the internet. Each screen can be customized with upto 6 widgets like shortcuts, email, twitter and facebook notificatons etc. Also, each homescreen can have a separate wallpaper. Multiple homescreen was one feature which I always missed in my Nokia N97.

7. Free Voice Guided Navigation

Ovi maps with Free turn by turn voice guided navigation is one among the many features of Nokia N8. Never get lost anywhere around the world with Nokia Ovi maps. Tripadvisor and bookatable.com  are now integrated into Ovi maps. Ovi maps can be downloaded to your device via a desktop computer and can be used offline for navigation, unlike Google Maps and hence you save data charges from your mobile carrier.

8. TV connectivity via HDMI with Dolby digital 5.1 channel Surround sound

With Nokia N8 you have got a home theatre right in your pocket. Nokia N8 can project videos at 720p along with 5.1 channel surround sound via HDMI cable to a compatible HD television set.

9. USB on the go

A very geeky solution you never knew unless you heard about Nokia N8. Now with small adapter provided by  Nokia, you will be able to connect a USB Pen drive, a Mobile phone , Portable Hard disks etc and transfer or play audio and video directly from the device. Thats right, no more need to connect to a computer to transfer media.

10. Amoled Display with nHD resolution

Nokia N8 comes with amoled display which is the best in any Nokia ever.  The screen is bright and very much readable under the sun and consumes less power. With nHD (640X360) resolution the video and photo viewing on phone is such a pleasure.

11. Capacitive touchscreen with Multitouch

After Nokia X6, Nokia N8 sports a capacitive touch screen. Capacitive touch screens are made up of glass are very sensitive unlike resistive screens and provide the usage of multitouch technology. Nokia N8 supports multitouch, so now you have the gimmicky pinch to zoom capability in Web browser, Ovi maps , emails , photos etc.  

12. Hardened Gorilla glass

Since Nokia N8 sports a glass touch screen, the durability becomes a big issue. To address this, Nokia N8 comes with Hardened Gorilla glass which is the hardest glass available in the market till date and hence prevent your glass screen from getting scratched. Why not check out the Gorilla glass below.

13. Integrated Social Networking with phone book contacts

Nokia N8 comes integrated with all the Social Networking tools. The best thing is that these will be built in your phonebook and you will be able to get instant updates on your live home screen. So now you can be in touch with your friends and family with just one click.

14. Highly improved Email client : Nokia Messaging

Nokia N8 comes with highly improved Nokia Messaging client with MSExchange and push email support. I think this is the first email client which provide you an option to search the server address book. The client support Full HTML and also multitouch capabilities. You can also configure multiple email widgets on your home screen. Check out below how cool it is

15. New Ovi Store

Nokia N8 will launch with a completely redesigned Ovi Store. The whole look and feel of the Ovi Store is changed and searching and installing application is going to be super fast. You can view more details about the Ovi Store at all about Symbian.

16. Web TV

Nokia N8 is also a portable TV in your pocket. You can watch live streaming (around 30 fps) of many popular channels. Channels like CNN , IBN live etc will come bundled with Nokia N8 along with many local channels. More channels support will be provided in future.

17. Availability in different Colors with full aluminum casing

Are you really tried of those regular phone colors and want something different. Nokia heard you and have provided 5 different colors for Nokia N8. You can now choose among Orange , Blue , Black , Grey and Green color for your phone (personally , my favorite is Blue ). Also the colors are built into the anodized aluminum casing which means that if try to scratch your phone, you can just wipe it off without any evident scratches and loss in color.It even survived a 3 meter drop from a balcony. Aluminum build gives it a really premium look in hand. You can check thehandheld blog’s review about it.

18. Completely reworked Music Player with Cover Flow

Nokia N8 comes with a completely reworked music player. Albums are now present in a cover flow which scrolls super smooth ( at 60 fps) , and let you find the song you are looking for very easily. Check out the first 1 minute of the video.

19. DIVX Video support

Nokia N8 supports DivX codec out of the box. That means you no more need to install any DivX player or Smartmovie to play an avi or any divx file. The video will play directly without any need for conversion, and you can project it on a TV using HDMI cable.Check out Nokia N8 playing .mkv 720p file via usb

20. World phone with Bluetooth 3.0 and Wifi n support

Nokia N8 is a penta band world phone, which means that it will work anywhere in the world. It also comes with latest connectivity options like Bluetooth 3.0 which provide super fast transfer of files via bluetooth and wifi n support for super fast wifi speed.

Ok so this was my list of around 20 reasons for buying a N8 . Do you think I missed out something or you would like to add something ? What’s your reason to buy a Nokia N8, let me know in comments.

Do you Know ?

So here are the list of websites. Even though the list might be more than 50 , you can use our Google GOD for the searching the particular website :

• Flickr,
• California Coastline,
• Delicious,
• Metafilter,
• popurls,
• Twitter,
• Skype,
• Boing Boing,
• Academic Earth,
• OpenTable,
• Google,
• YouTube,
• Wolfram|Alpha,
• Hulu,
• Vimeo,
• Fora TV
• Craiglook,
• Shop Goodwill,
• Amazon,
• Kayak,
• Netflix,
• Etsy,
• PropertyShark.com,
• Redfin,
• Wikipedia,
• Internet Archive,
• Kiva, ConsumerSearch,
• Metacritic,
• Pollster,
• Facebook,
• Pandora & Last.fm,
• Musicovery,
• Spotify,
• Supercook,
• Yelp,
• Visuwords,
• CouchSurfing,
• BabyNameWizard.com’s NameVoyager,
• Mint,
• TripIt,
• Aardvark,
• drop.io, Issuu,
• Photosynth,
• OMGPOP,
• WorldWideTelescope,
• Fonolo,
• Get High Now and Know Your Meme

While so many sound familiar, many are like which I have never heard. I think it would be pretty interesting checking out these sites ( perfect stuff to kill time and productivity ), just like top 40 websites for time wastage.

Do you Know ?

However, sitting at the top has not prevented Google from innovating and constantly improving the search engine capabilities in terms of speed . These improvements could be minor and hardly noticeable. With the introduction of AJAX technology to its search page which, despite having been in testing for several months without any official update on its status, Google is sure to beat all the competition.

AJAX is actually a group of standard web technologies designed to allow pages to update data or certain segments of the page without having to be fully re-rendered or reloaded. Google has been using AJAX in a small-scale test since last year but has not extended it beyond its initial scope so far. While Google’s search results page is one of the fastest in the world and speed has always been one of the biggest concerns, with AJAX the company manages to make it even faster by rendering only the parts that need updating when conducting a new search. As such, only the results themselves and the ads get pulled from the servers and are redrawn for the user.

For the moment though Google is staying quiet but users who want to see the new AJAX-powered Google search page in action, can head over to the new Google Caffeine sandbox page where the feature is enabled for all searches.

Try out Google ajax search now on Sandbox page

Do you Know ?

Google promised that these options will be extended to other Google services soon, and hence they have rolled the similar kind of option panel for Google Images too.

With the availability of option panel , you would be able to filter the images with the following options :

Filter the results based on size

However filtering by size was available before, but now include extra options to provide an Exact Size and Size larger than. Now you can search icons too

• Medim
• Large
• Icon
• Larger than..
• Exactly..

Filter the results based on Type

The options included are

• Face
• Photo
• Clip Art
• Line Drawing

Filter then results by Color

The options available are

• Full color
• Black and white
• Specific color

I highly rely on Google image search for my blog posts , and am sure with the inclusion of these options, this service is now become even better. No matter what Microsoft and Yahoo come up with, I am gonna stick to Google .

Do you Know ?

For me , anything which distract your mind or take your eyes off road while driving , let it be Texting or talking over phone, eating , drinking or even listening loud music can be very very dangerous and specially on highways.

The study conducted is as follows :

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute used cameras to continuously observe light vehicle drivers and truckers for more than 6 million miles. It found that when drivers of heavy trucks texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.

Dialing a cell phone and using or reaching for an electronic device increased risk of collision about 6 times in cars and trucks.

Finally , I hope with such studies and trying to prove already proven facts with numbers, people will take some extra care while driving. At this time, I can only request tecfre.com readers to be drive carefully and minimize the use of cellphone to the extent possible while driving. Happy Driving

via : yahoo

Do you Know ?

So without delaying much further here are top 5 sites for time wastage , and jump to the link view the complete list :

1. Stripgenerator
2. FMyLife
3. LivePlasma
4. Cracked
5. BeFunky.com

View the complete list of 40 websites at Yahoo with description about every website. I am surprized, lifehacker is also in the list.

Add your biggest time waster website in comments, and let me know about it

Do you Know ?

After logging in , to send a SMS just enter the mobile number and the country code and then type in an 80-character message and send it to the designated mobile. The remaining 80 characters space in the message will be used by 160by2 to feed in an advertisement , which serve as an income source for 160by2 and help keeping the service free.

Download the mobile application

Previously 160by2 had mobile verison of the website to access the service on a mobile, but now they have launched mobile application which can be installed over your mobile for sending free sms with ease. Using the mobile application, gives you an advantage of sending sms upto 145 character compared to 80 character while using website. Here are the couple of screenshots posted on the blog

DOWNLOAD APP NOW: Visit http://m.160by2.com/app from your mobile phone to start using the application.

Do you Know ?

1. Analyze the programs on which you spent the most of your time.
2. Measure your Active and Idle time
3. Generate a time line based on user created time tags.

So dare yourself and go ahead and download this software as your first activity towards being productive. Uninstall the programs you think you are wasting a lot of time on , and manage your time in a much productive manner.

Download ManicTime for Free .

Via technoworld

Do you Know ?

Nokia today has reached another landmark in providing rich mobile experience to its customers. Nokia’s highly anticipated and much awaited Ovi Store has gone live today.

Ovi (which in Finnish language means door ) , the door to Nokia’s internet services was first announced in aug 29,2007 . However, it was expanded to include an online store for  mobile applications, wallpapers, widgets, games etc and hence dubbed as Ovi store.

Download Ovi Store on your Nokia phone

You can download the Ovi Store mobile app by simply selecting the Ovi Store icon in the Download folder on your device. Or you can get to the Ovi Store by simply visiting store.ovi.com on your phone.

Here’s what Tero Ojanperä, Executive Vice President, Nokia Services, had to say about Ovi Store going live today:

“Ovi Store is open for business and we’ve stocked the shelves with both local and global content for a broad range of Nokia devices. Ovi Store makes shopping for content and applications easy and fun for feature phone and smartphone owners alike.”

Mountain of content

As stated earlier by Nokia,  that OVI store might launch with around 25k+ items which may comprise of widgets, wallpapers, ringtones, games, applications etc. The initial launch itself seems overloaded with content.

I was surprised after visiting OVI online store, as under “Recommendations for your phone” ( Nokia N95 8GB) , there were nearly 900 items.

So guys, what are you waiting for ?? Checkout the OVI store and get your Nokia handset loaded with loads of content.

via : nokia conversations

Do you Know ?

Now, after Giz revealed the real reason why the sms are of 160 character , I found it real hard to digest as according to them

Apparently, it’s because some German dude thought 160 was "perfectly sufficient."

Friedham Hillebrand was a communications researcher who was working with a group on developing a standard for cellphones to send and receive text messages. So he sat down on his typewriter and banged out a bunch of random sentences and questions, counted up the number of characters it took, and decided 160 was the magic number.

I am not sure , whether this is the real reason , but it made me Google a bit, and I found the answer at Mattcopp’s blog. He explained it quite clearly

The issue is that it is a limitation of the GSM system. GSM is the name for the way in which almost all mobile phones communicate. The actual length of a text message is 256 characters or letters (the term characters are more exact because numbers are not letters and neither is % or #).
Now an SMS needs to have contained within itself who sent the message, when it was sent and who it is going too, these are called overheads and take up exactly 96 characters, which is why you end up with 160 characters left. (256-96=160).

On a side note, each character is sent as an 8bit binary number — you know those 1s and 0s everyone is talking about — meaning you have a maximum of 256 types of characters. This gives you just enough room for all upper and lower case letters (2 * 26), numbers (0-9), a range of symbols ({}[]-+£$%) and some control characters (space, return, null). This is an internationally recognized standard specified as the ASCII standard.

Check out his post for more info on why SMS are actually 160 characters , and also some info on MMS size also.

Do you Know ?