We’ve seen several variants of touchscreen typing mechanisms but BlindType is too good to be true. Watch this video how they use this virtual keyboard, once mastered will not require any keys shown on screen, saving valuable screen space for you. See BlindType in action in this video:
Apple on Friday released the video of their press conference. Steve Jobs has presented his case and made some good point and then demonstrated how other popular phones also loose signal when held tight in the user’s hand.
RIM and Nokia have objected the way their phones have been mentioned in this session. The press conference video shows three different phones that loose signal when held tight in the user’s hand, one of them was BlackBerry Bold 9700. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, founders and co-CEO of RIM have objected by saying that Apple is dragging RIM into their self made debacle.
Jobs also mentioned in the session that you can find pictures all over the internet of Nokia phones saying “Dont touch here”. Nokia has responded to that by saying that Nokia has spent thousands of man hours researching the way people hold their phones and they have been pioneer in making internal antenna featuring phones.
In addition to leg pulling and dragging, there were some concrete announcements in the press conference as well. Apple has announced free bumper cases to solve the antenna problem so that nobody gets to touch the metal border on iPhone 4. Moreover, Apple has also waived the return fees for unsatisfied iPhone 4 customers. These two measures are good enough, why on earth they had to be drag other phones into the scene? They’ve sold all of their phones already, haven’t they?
You can watch the Apple’s press conference video by hitting this link.
This has been a long awaited post and a few of my readers have been requesting for it repeatedly. I’ve finally decided to write on this topic. Some of my readers will call it a redundant post as so many has been said about these two phones and then some of them will call it biased due to Nokia being my all time favorite but I will still not be reluctant writing the post as it is totally based on facts and figures and I have not been unjust.
iPhone 4 by Apple and Nokia N8 have been put into a side by side table below. Thanks to GSM Arena, I did not have to type in all this data. What I’ve done is, I’ve colored this table green wherever I found a superior feature in one of the two phones. Quite interestingly iPhone is a winner in launching the phone first, it is smaller in volume, it’s got a gyro sensor, higher resolution screen, greater internal memory, better CPU clock and a larger battery capacity.
That makes around 8 features better than Nokia’s N8. Am I praising Apple’s marvel too much? Well, let’s look at Nokia’s features where Nokia is a winner against iPhone. The list is endlessly long and Nokia has around 19 features that are significantly better than that of iPhone including a 12 megapixel stunning still camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, Micro SD Slot which will let you plug in upto 32 GB of a memory card, USB on the go that will allow you to plug in your USB flash drives and hard disks as an additional storage space to your phone, 720p HDMI TV out, Flash support in browser, faster class 33 edge and much more. See the table below yourself, I’m not biased 😉
Hence the winner is … Nokia N8 without any doubt.
While my favorite of all the features will be the Nokia logo on the device that looks much better to me as compared to that of a metallic apple 🙂 . Where Nokia has lost it is; the delayed release that is causing additional curiosity and unrest among the fans who cannot take it anymore. Just release it Nokia!
|
Apple iPhone 4 |
Nokia N8 |
||
|
General |
2G Network |
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
|
3G Network |
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 |
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 2100 /1900 |
|
|
Announced |
2010, June |
2010, April |
|
|
Status |
Available. Released 2010, June |
Coming soon. Exp. release 2010, October |
|
|
Size |
Dimensions |
115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm |
113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9 mm, 86 cc |
|
Weight |
137 g |
135 g |
|
|
Display |
Type |
TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M |
|
Size |
640 x 960 pixels, 3.5 inches |
360 x 640 pixels, 3.5 inches |
|
|
– Scratch-resistant surface |
– Scratch-resistant surface |
||
|
– Multi-touch input method |
– Multi-touch input method |
||
|
– Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate |
– Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate |
||
|
– Three-axis gyro sensor |
|||
|
– Proximity sensor for auto turn-off |
– Proximity sensor for auto turn-off |
||
|
Sound |
Alert types |
Vibration, MP3 ringtones |
Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones |
|
Speakerphone |
Yes |
Yes |
|
|
– 3.5 mm headset jack |
– 3.5 mm audio jack |
||
|
Memory |
Phonebook |
Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall |
Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall |
|
Call records |
100 received, dialed and missed calls |
Detailed, max 30 days |
|
|
Internal |
16/32 GB storage, 512 MB RAM |
16 GB storage, 256MB RAM, 512 MB ROM |
|
|
Card slot |
No |
microSD, up to 32GB |
|
|
Data |
GPRS |
Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps |
Class 33 |
|
EDGE |
Class 10, 236.8 kbps |
Class 33 |
|
|
3G |
HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps |
HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2.0 Mbps |
|
|
WLAN |
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n |
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, UPnP technology |
|
|
Bluetooth |
Yes, v2.1 with A2DP |
Yes, v3.0 with A2DP |
|
|
Infrared port |
No |
No |
|
|
USB |
Yes, v2.0 |
Yes, microUSB v2.0, USB On-the-go |
|
|
Camera |
Primary |
5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash |
12 MP, 4000×3000 pixels, Carl Zeiss |
|
Features |
Touch focus, geo-tagging |
1/1.83” sensor size, ND filter, geo-tagging, face and smile |
|
|
Video |
Yes, 720p@30fps, LED video light, geo-tagging |
Yes, 720p@25fps |
|
|
Secondary |
Yes, videocalling over Wi-Fi only |
VGA videocall camera |
|
|
Features |
OS |
iOS 4 |
Symbian ^3 OS |
|
CPU |
1 GHz Apple A4 processor |
ARM 11 680 MHz processor, 3D Graphics HW accelerator |
|
|
Messaging |
SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email |
SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM |
|
|
Browser |
HTML (Safari) |
WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds |
|
|
Radio |
No |
Stereo FM radio with RDS; FM transmitter |
|
|
Games |
Downloadable, incl. motion-based |
Yes + downloadable |
|
|
Colors |
Black, White |
Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue, Orange |
|
|
GPS |
Yes, with A-GPS support |
Yes, with A-GPS support; Ovi Maps 3.0 |
|
|
Java |
No |
Yes, MIDP 2.1 |
|
|
– MicroSIM card support only |
– Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) |
||
|
– Scratch-resistant glass back panel |
– Dolby Digital Plus via HDMI |
||
|
– Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic. |
– Anodized aluminum casing |
||
|
– Digital compass |
– Digital compass |
||
|
– Google Maps |
– Video/photo editor |
||
|
– iBooks application |
– DivX/XviD/MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV |
||
|
– Audio/video player and editor |
– MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+ player |
||
|
– Voice command/dial |
– Voice command/dial |
||
|
– TV-out |
– TV-out (720p video) via HDMI and composite |
||
|
– Flash Lite v4.0 |
|||
|
Battery |
Standard battery, Li-Po 1420mAh |
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh |
|
|
Stand-by |
Up to 300 h (2G) / Up to 300 h (3G) |
Up to 390 h (2G) / Up to 400 h (3G) |
|
|
Talk time |
Up to 14 h (2G) / Up to 7 h (3G) |
Up to 12 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 5 h 30 min (3G) |
|
|
Music play |
Up to 40 h |
Up to 50 h
|
*** Update
While iPhone 4 is not available unlocked without a voice/data contract in US, we can compare UK prices of iPhone 4 and Nokia N8.Right now, the approximate price of unlocked 16GB iPhone 4 in UK is GBP 499 that is around USD 760. Same 16 GB iPhone 4 is available for Eur 629 in France for example.
On the other hand, Nokia N8 is expected to be available for around Eur 450 on launch. Even if it sells for Eur 500, its pretty economical, isn’t it? 🙂