iPhone4 / N8 - overview of the cameras

There's not much to say here. The N8's camera is way superior to the iPhone4's. It is not just an image size issue: The iPhone4 is a smartphone with a camera for taking very good "day to day", "close enough" photos. The N8's camera instead has much better optics, a great flash and the camera application is much more complete than the iPhone's.

Still, there's room for both cameras in the market, for different applications, though. I have seen many people with lower machines who really don't care if their photos will be printable, and much less if they'll be able to print it in an A3 sheet or  bigger: Most people I know, which are PC/Windows users won't even notice the quality difference between an 1.2Mpx and a 5Mpx or 12Mpx photo until they decide they need a print, and most of them, the ones with the lower mobiles will never ever want a print.

So here are the facts:

- iPhone4

• generic or otherwise non-branded optics as it looks
• no "shutter" button. You have to press *in* the display to take the photo
• no face recognition
• no control over the camera besides zoom and autofocus AFAIK
• automatic uploading not available. Pixelpipe exists for the iPhone but it's not as seamless as the Symbian^3 version.
• 5Mpx photos. HD video.

- N8

• scene modes
• control over sensitivity, color balance, exposition compensation, etc.
• "shutter button", but you can touch on the screen to take the photo, too
• face recognition
• automatic uploading to a number of photo storage services is not available on Symbian^3 but Pixelpipe seems to work just fine.
• Up to 12Mpx photos, HD video

In short, for taking great quality photos, I'll stay with the N8. The iPhone4's camera is also a very good camera, but is not as controllable as the N8's and so is best suited to more casual situations only.

iPhone4/N8 - social networking readiness

When I first received my N97mini, it came with a facebook widget installed. It was slow, but it always showed me the last statuses from my friends. Then it came the NM for Social Networks and NM for Chat that were available for the N97mini for a while. By that time I was using twitter and facebook in my former iPod Touch and they worked just fine. Nothing too fancy but they both were very responsive applications with enough features to make you of actually using them instead of waiting to get to your laptop or desktop computers.

The thing is, those applications are no longer available for the n97mini. And even if they were, they were slow, and had too little features. I recall having bought the n97mini because it was social-networks-ready. It was, somehow, but not enough to depend on it.

Currently, I'm using

• Twitter's, twitter for iPhone client in my iPhone4
• Facebook's facebook app in my iPhone4
• The N8-provided "Social Networks" client

all three applications provided either by the network itself of the phone manufacturer. I know there are possibly better payed clients in both sides, but I'm talking about the ones I was able to get in  a few minues, not the ones you may spend your life looking for.

The iPhone's twitter client allowed me to register (and use at the same time) all my twitter accounts: mine, my band's, my comic strip project's...  The Facebook client for the iPhone4 wouldn't let me neither register 2 facebook accounts nor manage mi band's artist page, but it allowed me to chat with my friends and update my status including photos.

The N8's social networks client... well, it' just the same I saw before in the n97mini: slow, no chat, no multiple twitter accounts at the same time, and I think that was what made my n97mini run out of battery so quickly when I was using it.

In short, my social networks experience is still much better with the iPhone4. I am using only the official twitter and facebook clients there and they're pretty much enough for all my needs, including reading and posting in japanese, too.  I still feel the N8 can provide something similar, if not better than the iPhone4's experience on that topic, but the correct, Nokia or Twitter/Facebook-provided client doesn't yet exist. I can only hope for it to become available soon enough. The hardware is enough for that (my daughter's old first generation iPod Touch can run the iPhone apps for social networks pretty good, too, and that's less powerful than the N8's), so it's not impossible.

iPhone4 / N8 - what if you lose signal while on the internet?

Since the n95, I started to heavily depend on the ability to check and answer my email while on the go,   so all my mobiles ever since have been smartphones. Once you taste complete mobility, you won't go back. Promise. My wife also switched to smartphone and she won't go back either.

Here in Santiago, while on the subway, it's quite common that if you're not with the mobile company that has monopolized the existence of subway-placed antennas, you're on your own. Your milleage may vary, some will say. The fact is, you may completely lose signal while on the train.

With no signal, and a number of internet-based applications running on your phone, your applications get disconnected while working. That *will* happen, and what I'l compare here what happens when both the iPhone4 and the N8 get disconnected. 

iPhone running applications when signal failed:

• iPod
• Skype
• Twitter
• Skype
• Facebook
• Daily Booth

N8 running applications when the signal failed:

• Skype (trying to log in)
• Ovi Store
• E-Mail (mail for exchange account)

Observed behavior:

• iPhone applications handled the disconnection. Phone keep responsive during the signal loss, even though connected applications wouldn't work.
• N8 became unresponsive. 

While I love the N8, it has exactly the same issues I've reported elsewhere about the n97mini and the 5800xm: The mobile depends too much on the internet connection. The"Ovi Chat" could hang the 5800xm when getting disconnected. NM for Email keeps leaving the n97mini unresponsive for some time when entering the subway because of the signal loss. I admit, though, that skype may not be the best behaved internet-usage application, but still, the iPhone4 won't freeze the way the N8 did. 

That said, if I compare the N8 against the N97mini and the 5800xm, its behavior is already much better, though it still doesn't behave the way the iPhone4 does. There's still room for improvement on the N8's internet-disconnection handling or in how it still lets some processes take over the whole device's CPU queue while trying to connect.

So, which one is better? Well that still depends on what you want to do with your mobile and how good is the signal level in the places you connect to the internet. I love both devices for different reasons, and I think the overall handling of the situation was better with the iPhone4, but that's my take, and the N8 can still fix that.

Comparing the iPhone4 and the Nokia N8 - Why?

Why comparing the iPhone 4 and the Nokia N8? Well there's a number of reasons behind that, starting for the fact that until I moved to the iPhone4, most my phones since 1999, and all my smartphones since there were Nokia ones.

I saw the light with the Nokia 6620, I wondered if there was more beyond the n95, I was just amazed of the sole idea of the 5800xm, and then I came to the n97mini which looked great at a first glance but just didn't meet my expectations. In the meanwhile, I had my iPods... an iPod mini since 2002, I think... then my iPod Touch ones... two first generation ones (one was stolen from my pocket in the subway, the other keeps working until now in the hands of my daughter), one third generation iPod Touch which is still running perfectly...

Well, by the end of last year, I had my n97 mini, and my iPodTouch 3G, and I wasn't very happy with the n97mini. Just that moment, my mobile provider comes with a very good offer for the iPhone4. I was already checking the availability dates for the N8 and its feature set.

I've been studying japanese for the last years, and some of my communications are indeed in japanese. I need to be able to read and write in japanese in a day to day basis and even my twitter and facebook usage contains a fair amount of japanese... That made my decision back then: While the iPhone4 (like the iPod Touch) can display and input many many languages including japanese, the N8 comes with a fixed set of predefined languages, and the one coming to Chile wouldn't have japanese. So there was no possible choice: everything else at home is Apple, so if the N8 wouldn't let me input and display japanese, I just could go with the iPhone4. I read and post on the go so I want to be able to read and write japanese everywhere.

Even as I switched to the iPhone4 --and I'm very happy I did--, I try to be fair enough, and this guy where I work asked me about a new mobile he was about to buy online -some do, yes... ask me before buying technology-. I won't tell the brand but I can tell it was an Android unit. I have a ver bad experience with Android (my brother has an Android mobile and he's been stuck without decent VoIP applications until just recently for example). I didn't tell him not to buy it, but instead I told him to compare it against the Nokia N8 by pointing him to the device page in forum.nokia.com. I thought the N8 was more close to what he really wanted, and it seems I was right, as he asked someone in our asian offices to buy the N8 for him. So far, it seems he's very happy with it. Also, I could confirm that the HK-bought N8 came with Chinese and English only... no Japanese at all... but I also felt again that the n97mini had left me  so disappointed because I expected a lot from it...

Yesterday, I got myself a new mobile line with a Nokia N8. I know it won't work with japanese, but I don't expect to make it my main mobile, so that's fine with me. I still think the only really high-tech players on the field right now are the iPhone4 and the N8 here in Chile (maybe the N900 would if it was easier to get one and there was enough linux geeks ready to pay its value).

I expect a lot from the N8, so why not compare it against the iPhone4?