NOKIA N8

This was the phone I was waiting for badly. Nokia's N96 proved to be an expensive phone to maintain but it stayed by my side for 2 long years and I wanted to move over a worthy successor. I became the first customer in my city to have Nokia N8.

Nokia N8 Smartphone

Nokia introduced the Nokia N8, the latest smartphone that intuitively connects to people, places and services that matter most. The Nokia N8 enables people to create compelling content, connect to their favourite social networks and enjoy the latest on-demand Web TV programs and Ovi Store apps.

12mb Camera

The Nokia N8 introduces a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and a large sensor that rivals those found in compact digital cameras. People can also make HD-quality videos and edit them with an intuitive built-in editing suite.

Unrivaled entertainment system

The Nokia N8 offers a true home theater experience with HD quality film and Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. You can plug the device to your home theatre system with an HDMI cable.
The Nokia N8 enables access to local and global Web TV services that deliver TV programs, news and entertainment from channels such as CNN, National Geographic, E! Entertainment and Paramount directly on the homescreen.

Social media

People can update their status, share location and photos, and view live feeds from Facebook and Twitter in a single app directly on the home screen. Calendar events from social networks can also be transferred to the device calendar.

Software

The Nokia N8 comes with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation, taking you where you want to be and showing you what want to see in over 70 countries worldwide.

Memory

The Nokia N8 has 16GB of in-built storage space, expandable up to 48GB with a Micro SD card. Large files can be easily transferred to a memory stick with the USB On-the-Go.

Symbian 3 advancements

Multi-touch and customizable home screens

Symbian^3 introduces several major advances, including support for gestures such as multi touch, flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. The Nokia N8 also offers three customizable home screens which can be loaded with apps and widgets.

The new 2D and 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of the Nokia N8’s hardware acceleration to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface.

The Nokia N8 marks the global device debut of the new Symbian^3 software, featuring several major advancements:
• Usability enhancements across the user interface, including single tap, multi-touch and support for gestures such as “pinch-to-zoom.”
•Three personalized home screens on the Nokia N8, easily maneuvered through by a simple flick.
•Faster and more responsive user interface with new 2D and 3D graphics architecture that takes full advantage of hardware acceleration
•More efficient memory management allows more applications to run in parallel for a faster, more complete and efficient multi-tasking experience.

My final verdict is that THUMPS UP to Nokia. I am using this beauty and I just love it and have no plan to switch over soon.

APPLE iPHONE 4

I watched Steve Job's live event which unveiled the iPhone in a whole new avatar. I got this mobile for few months before I can switch on to a new one. So let me just share my experience with what Apple claims to be the best mobile device ever.

It’s likely down to the combination of Apple’s A4 processor and, according to teardown reports, twice as much RAM (512MB) as the 3GS. There’s also 802.11n Wi-Fi, though it only works on 2.4GHz networks with a lower maximum speed than those running on the 5GHz band.

Aside from that, it’s the new design of the iPhone that’s most striking. Beyond the front face, it’s a marked departure from the ergonomics of all three previous generations, as it’s flat on all sides and edges. Only the corners are curved.

iPhone 4's edges aren't sharp, though. The glass front and back are slightly inset from the metal frame. It’s 3mm thinner, but it doesn’t feel like it fills the curve of your hand as well as the older ones, unless, perhaps, you have exceptionally small ones. And there’s the rub: it took mere minutes to appreciate the curved back when it debuted on the iPhone 3G. It’s a shame to see the previous design almost entirely abandoned.

The improved camera is a good thing given that's one of the major new features, FaceTime video calls would fall flat on its backside if the camera quality was awful. So far, we’ve taken part in call, which has to be done over Wi-Fi, and what struck us was the elegance of turning on FaceTime and switching between the front and rear camera mid-call.

Steve Jobs claimed there was no set-up required. He was right. You just tap the FaceTime button on screen and the iPhone tries to establish the video call with the other person. If they’re not using an iPhone 4, it rejects gracefully and your voice call continues uninterrupted.

By now you’ve probably seen reports of issues with the signal indicator when the phone is touched on the left and right sides and the bottom-left corner of its metal frame. It’s easy to reproduce. That’s how we held our 3GS, but so far we haven’t experienced any dropped calls because of it, even when it fell to one bar, nor did call quality appear to suffer.

The sound quality in every call we’ve placed has been remarkably good. It seems the second, noise-canceling mic on the top of the phone does its job well, but we’ll be putting it through more extensive testing in different environments over the next few days.

Beyond hardware changes, the most important update to Apple’s phones could well turn out to be the new operating system.For consolidating your home and work emails, iOS 4’s best feature is the unified inbox, which is standard on iPhone 4 and available on old models once updated via iTunes. It lets you see all of your incoming mail in one folder, no matter which account they’re from.

Being able to gather apps into folders was rapidly becoming a necessity for us. But you can get these features on your 3GS and if you’ve got one of the older ones with plenty of capacity for your needs, you may want to think long and hard before you decide on splashing out or waiting another year to see what Apple pulls out of its hat. We expect you’ll love it if you’re coming from the original iPhone or iPhone 3G, though.

The final verdict is that those who are Apple fans will love it but this isnt a revolutionary product at all. Its just an evolution.