Nokia N8 announced

Nokia today announced the N8, the first Symbian^3 (skipping ^2 altogether) smartphone and the first Symbian touchscreen N-series phone that does not have a slide out keyboard. It features a monoblock design with a 3.5" capacitive screen dominating the front.

The big news here obviously is the 12MP camera with larger sensor. Personally I feel that no matter how big Nokia claims the sensor to be, 12MP is just too much. The law of physics dictate that. 8MP with the same sensor size would have been better, and you probably wouldn't have to rely on a puny flash (xenon or otherwise) for low light photography. Oh well numbers and buzz words do sell.

Fortunately the numbers elsewhere are more useful - it has 16GB of built-in storage and is expandable via the microSDHC card slot. The camera also supports 720p HD video capturing.

It weighs 135g, so it isn't too heavy. The rest of the specs are pretty standard: WiFi 802.11b/g/n, GPS with A-GPS, HSDPA, 3.5mm headphone socket with TV-out, FM radio with RDS and FM transmitter and micro USB. Also new to a Nokia phone is the HDMI out port, allowing users to view HD video on a HD ready telly, as well as the newest Bluetooth 3.0 revision. The processor isn't the same slow one as the one in the N97/N97 Mini, instead it has been bumped up to 680Mhz. Not what I was hoping for, but still a decent enough speed. It has 256MB RAM.

There's the same widget based homescreen that made its debut on the N97 - this I hope can be turned off, but I highly doubt so. Sadly widgets are all the rage now despite being resource killers.

So all in all, the N8 looks good on paper and has a rather lovely design (particularly the orange version). €370/£320 is pretty darn decent too, undercutting plenty of lesser phones. But I may not be getting one. Why you ask? First it feels like a stop-gap phone before the real flagship hits next year running Symbian^4. Second, I want to see what sort of high-end E-series Nokia has plans for (they really are better built). Finally, I want a slider version with 4/5 row keyboard instead.

Make it happen Nokia.

Update: You'll find untouched sample photo shots from the N8's camera here and a HD video recording here. The image quality is certainly impressive.

Palm m515

I was clearing up some boxes and found this old Palm m515 PDA. Remember those? I myself prefer the Sony Clie devices (I had various, the T615C and NR70 being my favourite) but this was one sexy looking device and is easily the last solidly built Palm device (the Tungsten T3 was a great device, but had plenty of issues with the slider). They don't build them like they used to... Next to this, the Pre feels like a cheap toy!

If I can just find the charger cradle, I may actually use it as a desk clock.

Off to the Isle of Skye... next month

Will be going on a walking camping break in the Isle of Skye next month for about a week. Very excited. Bought a new Vango Tempest 300 tent, which we just couldn't wait to use. The extra space would certainly come in handy.

We are planning to summit one or two Munros/Corbetts on the Cuillin, do the Storr and maybe one or two circuits. Obviously it will depend on how the weather goes, though I am not going to count on it. It isn't called the Misty Isle for nothing! Planning on camping at Sligachan for a couple of nights before moving on to Portree. Any tips or suggestions would certainly be helpful! You can e-mail me direct using the e-mail address posted on the right ->

Now look what I did there, a post that isn't a review or a rant!

Bite Me: A Love Story review

Bite Me: A Love Story is the third book in Christopher Moore's 'Vampire' trilogy which chronicles the love life of a C. Thomas (Tommy) Flood and his vampire girlfriend Jody. Fear not as this isn't like those silly crapfest that has recently been turned into films. Instead it is filled with generous amount of action and dry humour that you would expect from the author of A Dirty Job and Lamb. If you've read all of Christopher Moore's books (and I have, about ten times each), Bite Me will sound oddly familiar. It gathers a couple of characters from previous books, blends them and churns them into one comedy mess, and when I mean mess, I mean a book you simply can't put down.

This is a love story, though not your typical one. Tommy and Jody are lovers, who so happened to be vampires, except they aren't the elder kind who sleeps in coffins and can turn into bats. Jody has only been a vampire a couple of months longer than Tommy, and Tommy has only been one for like a week. Biggest issue of all is Tommy wants out. And then there's them being bronzed into statues by their perky underage goth girl minion Abby Normal.

Abby, whose daywalker name is Allison Green, lives with her genius scientist undergrad boyfriend Steve. Steve, also known as Foo, has hair that is very manga (Abby's words, not mine) and perform experiments on vampire things, finding ways to turn them back though the fact that they can turn into mists irritates him more. There's also this fat shaved cat, Chet, who has somehow turned himself into a vampire and is stalking the city turning hobos into dusts with his gang of smaller but equally deadly minion of undead cats.

To make matter worse, the elder vampires has set sail for the city. Their mission: to clean up the mess left by Elijah, the original vampire who turn Jody (and Chet), and that is to kill all the vampire cats, vampire humans and anyone who has seen or knows about the vampires. Soon enough Tommy, Jody, emergency backup mistress of the Greater Bay area Abby, Steve, the Emperor of San Francisco and his lieutenant dogs, the Animals aka Safeway night crew (with the help of a Chinese grandmother's anti vampire cat remedy) and two incompetent cops have to join forces to save the city, and more importantly, themselves.

I am gong to be honest here. Bite Me was kinda disappointing by Christopher Moore's standard. It is a far improvement over his previous book Fool (which I am pretending never happened), but falls behind his greats like the original vampire love book Bloodsucking Fiend, the missing gospel that became Lamb, and A Dirty Job (easily one of the greatest comedy book written). Abby, whose diary posts were pretty amusing in You Suck, came off as being a tad more annoying than usual. It doesn't help that her blog posts read like an older person trying to be young (which is exactly what it was). And then there's that other annoying character from Fluke, but I'll leave that as a surprise. Bloodsucking Fiend had just the right balance between humour, and isn't as over the top as this. The final quarter of this book also felt rushed. There are also plenty of unanswered questions and lose ends not tied up, like what is up with that old short Japanese man?

Still, any disappointing book by Christopher Moore is considered great in the literal world and I would not hesitate to recommend his to anyone who has a liking for books with plenty of humour. Just read Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck first if you can help it (you don't have to, as the first few chapters does good in catching you up). Personally I am still reeling at the unexpected ending, but perhaps a fourth book to fix that? Please...!

Bite Me: A Love Story is available as a hardcover from Amazon UK and Amazon.com

HTC Legend review

I've been playing with a HTC Legend review unit for more than a week now, and while I've been more than pleased with the hardware design I was less impressed by the software or some of its hardware quirks. Still if you are in the market for an Android phone or a new touchscreen smartphone you could do a lot worse so do check out my review at FoneArena for my thoughts. Questions welcomed, as I still have the unit with me.

David Cameron met a black man, wants to nuke China

At yesterday's TV election debate (which I did not watch - why should I?), David 'I've spoken with a black man' Cameron appeared to have given indication that he is willing to declare war on China and nuking them, the country with the largest army in the world, thus inviting doom on the British Isle. Good luck with that.

Vote the Tories at your own peril.

Volcano

I love how this Iceland volcano is causing hysteria in the mainstream media and havoc at airports all over Europe. More of this and more airlines will start going bust and Iceland will get its revenge on Europe and Britain. Loving it!

T-Mobile CallerSend

So I received a text by T-Mobile announcing that I've been selected for their CallerSend trial. CallerSend, according to T-Mobile, is an application that you can use to send out your contact information as a text message to a friend you've just called.

Stupid isn't it?

CallerSend actually costs 10p for each message you send and these texts won't come out of any allowance or bundle you may have. So even if you have unlimited text bundle (like I do), you will get charged 10p to send a message to someone who more than likely would have your contact details anyway. You may as well send it manually and save that 10p. On a plus side the 10p cost also applies to international numbers, so it may work in your favour (most text bundles do not include international texts).

Fortunately there's any easy way to disable this 'feature'. If the simcard and phone supports T-Mobile's Interactive application, just go through it to disable the service. On my E55 it can be found under Control Panel, though it may be in different locations on other phones.

I wish T-Mobile would work to improve their HSDPA service rather than waste time with such nonsense.