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Loading ...All in one devices - they’re here! Or are they?
combatus
I’ve been blabbing on about these for years and must have bored people silly on the Custom PC forums. I think I even did a poll at one point - didn’t go to well! Basically I’m after an all in one device. No it doesn’t transform from a Aston Martin into Jessica Alba and then into a £3k PC depending on what mood I’m in (that’s no particular order by the way but of course the PC would win every time!……yeah right!) Anyway, what I’m really after is something that can meet my digital needs. These are of course a multimedia phone, MP3 player, digital camera and Sat-Nav device.
Now before you all start jabbering on about seperates winning everytime, I’m not talking about replacing a digital SLR camera, I mean simply having something in your pocket that can take a good snap at 3MP or above which could happily sit on your widescreen desktop. Likewise it might not replace your MP3 player for long journeys but Sony’s Walkman phones and indeed the iPhone have sound quality pretty much the same as an iPod so this isn’t impossible.
It is essentially a device that will allow you to leave all these separate bits at home, or maybe not buy them at all in the first place. Now isn’t that sounding at least a bit tempting in terms of convenience? How about ditching your TomTom too and there is of course no need for a separate phone. You have everything you need in a single device that can fit into your pocket.
Well these devices are here - just! I got my Nokia N95 about 6 months ago and while it has the dream spec of 5MP camera, inbuilt GPS, music player and is of course a fully featured media mobile, it doesn’t do any of these things particularly well.
The camera is grainy and when looking at full size pics they appear smudged. Indoor or low light scenes are a nightmare as with most camera phones. Image quality is well below what I could produce on my 5 year old 3MP Canon Powershot. Video is good however and blown up it can nearly be compared to a propper camcorder. Presuming you have a decent sized MicroSD card then all is peachy, well nearly. This brings me on to the next below par feature which is battery life. I can sum this up using various four letter words but being polite it’s pretty damn effing bleeding sodding useless to be honest. How does 1 day standby and 2 hours talk time sound? And thats without using any features like GPS or video - if you even look at these the phone will be dead in an hour, or less, usually less.
Needless to say music isn’t much better even with high bit-rate MP3s and the default player can’t read anything over 300kbps anyway. GPS - well. It just about works in that if you have 5-10 mins to spare you can find out where you are using the inbuilt Nokia Maps system but unfortunately it’s sat nav feature leaves a lot to be desired. If travelling from Bristol to London via Inverness sounds like fun then THIS IS THE PHONE FOR YOU! If not, like me then it’s a crying shame TomTom don’t support integrated GPS units with their Mobile version of the famous SatNav program otherwise the Nokia Maps software would have been deleted quicker than you can say “i’ll get you there but twice the time”.
That said, the Maps software is pretty useful for local navigation. By that I mean you can search for a location or an address and get an immediate picture of it’s surroundings and the phone’s screen is just about big enough for this to be effective. When my TFT died a few weeks ago and Viewsonic mucked me around with the warranty and I had a weekend of BF2 and writing the “How to clean a watercooling system” article in CPC issue 51 planned, I used the phone to find www.yoyotech.co.uk who are based in London off the Tottenham Court Road to pick up a new one the same day. I also used it to give directions to one of our engineers at work who was new to the area. Pretty useful in that respect. However the drawbacks prevent me from recommending this phone to anyone who is away from a charging source for more than 24 Hours which I am as you’ll be carrying a brick around with you most of the time.
There is another device however that fits the bill and is much more substancial, quite literally as well as very promissing in being able to function more fully as an all in one device. The HTC TyTN II, otherwise known as the MDA Vario III.
What this offers over the N95 is much better battery life due to the larger battery (duh) far less fiddly, the GPS actually works well and uses third party software like Copilot but can actually use TomTom while the N95 can’t. A 3MP camera is also in the mix and from samples I’ve found online they are easily as good as the Nokia. What’s more, the phone uses Windows Mobile 6 Pro which is very versatile and has a full suit of office applications just for starters.
This is just one phone out of many that will undoubtedly come over the next few months and years and I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the “all-in-one device” especially if it actually works. Cameras will get better as will other functionalities which are already knocking on the doors of cheap cameras and MP3 players in terms of quality. Expect one in a pocket near you in the not too distant future!
I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION!!
Duct tape.
I hadn’t actually thought of that one!!!!
Verizon is about the only place you can get the authentic RIM product and matching door. Most other sites are out of stock and even when they are in stock they have the black battery door which looks like crap.http://www.batteryfast.co.uk
I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The LCD, however, had a few dead pixels - never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this? http://www.batteryfast.co.uk