Playing movies and navigating with a GPS on the Nokia Nseries

As regular readers know I am checking out the Nokia N90 and N70 as part of the Nokia Nseries Blogger Relations program and am discovering how powerful these devices really can be as I dig deeper and deeper into what is available on the device and through 3rd parties. I knew the N90 did an incredible job with photos and videos I took on the device and then finally thought about putting videos I convert from DVDs (I use DVD to Pocket PC/Palm/PSP for easy ripping) onto the N90 or N70. I found that I could take AVI formatted movies and simply use the Nokia PC Suite to get it into .3gp format. I took a 344MB AVI file of Pirates of the Caribbean and the PC Suite software churned out an 81MB .3gp file that plays like a champ on the Nokia N90. While viewing isn't as great as it is on my PSP, it is nice to know I can do this on the device and save having to take multiple devices on trips.

I was also sent a Nokia Bluetooth GPS accessory to evaluate with the N70 and started using the Wayfinder software and the GPS yesterday in the van ride on the way home. I was very impressed with the ability to track and direct me with voice navigation without having to manually load a single map on the device. I am used to having to preplan all my trips and load maps onto external storage cards in the hope that I have the map for the area I am traveling. It was awesome to just get connected to the GPS and my T-Mobile data plan and have the maps load as needed. This is the way navigation should be on mobile devices and I am really starting to enjoy using these Nokia devices more and more. The only issue I ran into yesterday was the occasional apparent loss of connection between the N70 and the GPS unit where I would have to select to disconnect and then reconnect to get the signal back. I plan on trying my Pharos and CoPilot GPS units with the N70 and Wayfinder to see if the Nokia GPS unit is the issue here.

T-Mobile customer service continues to impress me

I have been with T-Mobile now for about 4 years and last year when my contract was up I considered switching to Cingular due to their rollover minute policy. However, I decided to stick with T-Mobile since their unlimited data plan was cheap ($20/month) and I have always had great reliability and quality customer service. They have expanded their network and I now get good signals at my home with quality devices.

My wife is one of those people that is always on the go and never sits in one place for too long and along with this she is doing a hundred things at once. She often misplaces her keys, cellphone, the kids (just kidding), and other items. She recently lost her cellphone again, but this time we just have not been able to hunt it down so she was using one of my daughters phones. Since she is going on a short trip I wanted to get her another T-Mobile SIM card and pop that into one of the many available GSM phones we have in the house. I called T-Mobile and was told it would cost $20 for a replacement SIM so I then went to my local T-Mobile retail store. Within a couple of minutes the representative had a new SIM reprogrammed with my wife's cell number and handed it to me. He then said there was no charge for the new SIM and sent me on my way. I know I spend lots of money for T-Mobile service each month, but it was still nice to see them give me a SIM without any charges and not try to pressure me to buy a phone in the store or anything. It is no wonder that T-Mobile keeps winning customer service awards and has a growing network and I just wanted to pass along my personal experience with them.

Visual Radio on the N70

OK, so after Googling around a bit I found out that the N70 includes FM radio functionality, but it only works with the Nokia headset plug and earphones inserted into the POP-Port on the bottom of the device. I then found out a bit more about Visual Radio. I launched the application and found some of my favorite stations here in the Seattle/Tacoma area, including my favorite Christian station, Spirit 105.3. However, it seems that none of these stations actually supports Visual Radio since I keep getting a Visual service ID error. I need to find at least one Visual Radio supported channel to see what this service offers so I can comment on it in my review. If you know of a channel, please send it my way so i can check it out please.

I am able to listen to the stations in standard FM radio mode, which I personally am very happy about because I do not have a huge music collection and enjoy the radio. I use my XM Satellite MyFi in my truck at the moment and may find having a FM radio in this N70 quite handy while I am out and about.

While I like having the FM radio capability, I would really prefer to be able to listen to music via Bluetooth stereo headphones with the A2DP profile. I wonder if the N91 with 4GB hard drive supports A2DP or if it too requires the Nokia headset? I don't mind the Nokia headset, but again I would prefer to be able to use any headset that I already own to listen to music. I think the best option would be to have a 2.5mm or 3.5mm jack so I could use the Bluetake stereo Bluetooth dongle if A2DP is not going to be provided by Nokia.

Nokia N70 arrives!

While I was away on vacation, the Nokia NSeries Blogger Relations program coordinators shipped me a sample Nokia N70 to evaluate and review. Like the N90 Blogger Relations Blog site there is a N70 Blogger Relations Blog site for you to check out the latest news and reviews on the device from all over the world.

The device I received was used by Nokia employees as a demo and came with a Cingular SIM card and a fully charged battery. I popped in my own T-Mobile SIM since I want to check out the reception for my own service and like my unlimited T-Mobile EDGE data.

I have only spent about 10 minutes with the device so far, but a couple of initial observations I have are that it looks very classy with a brushed steel faceplate and cool rear sliding camera cover. I like the fact that the common Nokia BL-5C battery is used because I have two others from my Nokia 3650 and 7610 so spare batteries are readily available. The MMCmobile card is also externally accessible, which is a great feature on the N90 as well, so you can pop in new cards as you take photos or video with the device. The N70 doesn't have that great high resolution display found on the N90, but it is still bright and quite readable. There is a 2nd camera on the front (VGA resolution) that may be for video calls. The button placement is a bit different than the N90 so I'll have to get used to that a bit. There is an application called Visual Radio on the device that I have no idea about that I will have to research and learn about. It looks like all the other traditional S60 and NSeries applications are preloaded on the device as well.

The NSeries Blogger program coordinators also sent along a Nokia Bluetooth GPS device to try out that I will include in my full Geek.com review. It will be interesting to see how GPS navigation stacks up with what I use on Palm and Windows Mobile devices.

Back from Disney World

My family and I all made it back to Washington safely and boy are we exhausted. It was a very enjoyable week vacation and there are lots of photos on my Flickr site as I mentioned in my earlier post. I'll try to get the final photos up on my Flickr site tonight when I get home.

I still have very small bruises on my left bicep where my youngest 6-year old daughter dug into me during some of the more thrilling rides. She exceeds the 44-inch height requirement of most of the larger rides and wasn't scared to try them all. She made it through all of them without crying and was actually excited to go on some again. My oldest two love the fast coasters and rides like I do so we had a blast while my wife isn't so keen on some of those rides.

It was in the upper 70s most of the week and now I return to the rainy Northwest that I love so much. It was nice to feel cool air again though.

GO SEAHAWKS!!!

RSS feed issues

It seems that after I made the import from Blogger into Wordpress my RSS settings somehow were messed up. I am trying to fix it now, but it still doesn't seem to be working. I'll try to flip the switch to Wordpress tonight and get my RSS up and running again. Sorry about the problems.

UPDATE: It seems to be working again. The import utility changed one of my paths on Blogger and I had to find where the problem was.