Nokia N91

Nokia, where is the next N91?
November 7th, 2009 byAndrew Featured, GSMArena.com, Mobile phonesOur audio quality test points out the iPhone 3GS as the contemporary audio quality reference. But that was until we had the chance to test a now elderly Nokia N91, which I accidentally sourced brand new from a local mobile shop. I came upon it by chance as part of a strange series of events that deserve their own blog post altogether. But I digress.

Ever since Day One, the Nokia N91 has been praised with impeccable reputation of the best sounding mobile phone ever produced (the majority of stand alone portable music players can hardly compete with it either). It has nothing to do with loudness (though boy, that thing IS loud!), but it’s the audio reproduction that draws audiophiles (and me as well).
I know, it’s too big a phone to lug around all day and it’s even not that likeable by today’s standards of thin profiles and touchscreens. But I still find it as attractive as I fancied it years ago on all those billboards and magazine ads. Heck, it doesn’t even have a QVGA resolution screen, but who cares about the screen. It’s the music soul that sets it apart.

This post is not about reviewing Nokia N91, but rather about expressing my regret about where Nokia have come to. I simply can’t get my head over why they won’t indulge music fans today the same way they did with N91 back in 2005. Wow, it’s been quite some time.
Well, there’s a lot a graph and a table full of numbers won’t tell you. I can fill in the blanks for you as I’ve gone both through the Apple iPod Touch 2G and iPhone 3GS and I find their perfect audio reproduction as cold and unwelcoming as a beach in winter, if you allow me the metaphor.
Everybody enjoys the vista of the perfect beach landscape, but when you actually go there in winter, it feels cold and uncomfortable – nothing like what it seemed from a distance. Well, it’s petty much how I felt about Apple’s music players and the iPhone 3GS frequency response curve.

Apple iPhone 3GS
Here’s the Nokia N91 frequency response graph, which has another shape. It’s not a perfect flat one, I know, as even though the equalizer enhancement is off, the low range is still pumped up.
Well, personally for me, experiencing that uneven line is like getting back to that same beach, but this time in summer. I know, it’s way too hot to be perfect, but it’s fun and the party never ends.

Nokia N91
I know that’s subjective and it’s not by the books. But that’s my main point exactly – even though the N91 may not be perfect by all those criteria, it still sounds great. And by playing with the custom equalizer presets, you can even tune it even further to match your headphones best (I certainly hope you won’t put up with the mediocre retail headset that comes in the box along with N91).
Well, maybe it was the Toshiba DAC-33 DSP chip built in the Nokia N91, the rest of the hardware, or maybe even the software, or all that put together. But the hard facts are that Nokia N91 has now been discontinued for quite some time, and there’s no multimedia smartphone fit to take its place (acoustically speaking, of course).
It makes you wonder, if for some reason Nokia is refusing to make a second N91, why wouldn’t another manufacturer. Can it be that the tech of times bygone was that better that the current one? Well, I’m not the one to give the answer here, but that’s the question I’ve got on my mind, ever since I got my hands on this old-timer.

Nokia N8

How LARGE is the Nokia N8 large image sensor? Updated!
April 27th, 2010 byChip Featured, Mobile phonesEarlier today Nokia announced their latest multimedia flagship, the N8 and said that it packs a large sensor that rivals those found in compact digital cameras. But they never actually quoted the exact sensor size and since compact cameras sensors go from 1/3″ through 1/2.5″ to 1/1.6″ in diagonal (from smallest to largest) I felt the need to do the math and find out where exactly the Nokia N8 ranks.

After all 1/2.5″ sensors have been around the mobile industry for a while now – Nokia N95 had a sensor about that size some 3 years ago. Yet, it turns out that Nokia did have something to boast about with the Nokia N8.
So let’s do the math ourselves. We know the quoted focal length of the lens, 5.4mm – as printed on the device itself. We also know the effective focal length, 28mm – as flaunted in the marketing materials. So let’s divide the effective focal length over the quoted one and we get something along 5.185. Then it’s easy to look up that number in Wikipedia’s Image sensor format article.
So, it turns out that the Nokia N8 camera sensor stretches over roughly 1/1.9″, which is an impressive number on its own. Even if Nokia N8 was a dedicated digital camera, its sensor would still be considered large.
Update: We stumbled upon this thread, where the Nokia camera guru Damian Dinning makes it clear that the image sensor of the N8 measures exactly 1/1.83″. He also revealed some extra info about the camera specs like maximum ISO speed (1200) and minimal focus distance (10cm). Impressive stuff indeed.
Of course, image quality doesn’t boil down to sensor size exclusively but when you have almost twice the imaging area, chances are you will have more accurate data to process resulting in better dynamic range and lower noise levels.
Just to give you some perspective, I did the same math on some related cameraphones, so here they are:
- Sony Ericsson Satio – 1/2.5″
- Samsung Pixon12 – 1/2.5″
- Nokia N86 8MP – 1/2.5″
- Sony Ericsson Vivaz – 1/3.2″
I just can’t wait to get my hands on a sample unit. The officially published samples look quite good.

samsung phones

HTC Desire HD is in our office too, we take it for a quick spin
November 5th, 2010 byPeter Mobile phonesFrom one Desire on to the next. As the Desire Z review is nearing completion, we got a visit from this guy – the HTC Desire HD. In short, it’s a GSM version of the HTC EVO 4G (sans the WiMAX connectivity). Anyway, here’s what we found inside the box…


The box is pretty much the same as the Desire Z one – we got the compact charger, microUSB cable and one-piece headset. The HTC Desire HD came with an 8GB microSD card preinstalled – a good addition to the 1.5GB internal memory.

As for the software, it’s more or less identical to the other Desire. HTC Hub and HTC Likes are here – great places to get content, apps and wallpapers and such – and HTC Locations, which offers free offline maps and route planning (but voice guided navigation is paid).
And lets not forget the 8MP camera with 720p video recording – that’s the best the Android world has to offer and it’s only matched by Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 and the Motorola MILESTONE XT720.
Another thing that the HTC Desire HD has extra compared to the QWERTY-fied Z is the Reader app – with such a big screen it’s natural to include a proper reading app.
The extra screen real estate would also be great for navigation.
But that’s for the review – and we’re getting back to writing it.