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Nokia N9 (Meego) Review and comparison

Nokia N9 is Nokia’s new smartphone, with 3G network of High Speed Uplink Packet Access of 5.7 Mbps and High Speed Downlink Packet Access of 14.4 Mbps, its dimensions are 116.45 * 61.2 * 12.1 mm, with a screen size of 3.9 inches, 16:9 FWVGA (854 * 480) pixels AMOLED display, capacitive touch screen, gorilla glass display, 16.7 million colors, and weighs 135 g. Its OS is MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan with 1 GHz Cortex A8 Processor.

Though much has been talked about the Meego OS, the phone itself is designed to perfection. Probably a Elop let Nokia team take one last gasp for the open source world. But if Meego does become more successful, there is always a chance Meego might appear in some of Nokia’s future devices.

The phone has 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, wide angle lens, dual LED flash, digital shutter, continuous auto focus, 4x digital zoom and video camera with 720 pixels resolution at 30 frames per second, stereo sound recording, and etc., The internal memory is of 16 or 64 GB, 1 GB RAM and no external card slot.The 8 MP camera is comparable to 2011 top notch smartphones and on the lines of Samsung Galaxy S2 and Apple’s soon to be released iPhone 5.

Its other features include NFC (Near Field Communication – for easy pairing and sharing), Wi-Fi WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, GPRS, EDGE, High Speed USB 2.0 with micro USB connector for data transfer and charging, 3.5 mm Audio Video connector, messaging through SMS, MMS, IM, Push, Email, HTML 5 support for web applications and fast video playback, RSS reader, TCP/IP support, Live multitasking view, Java Script support, Share photos online through Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa, Video and photo editor, Document editor’s, MP3 and MP4 player, Key Applications like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Ovi store, Maps, Track and Protect, Nokia Link for easy synchronization of photos, videos, and music, Preloaded games like Angry Birds Magic with NFC support, Galaxy on Fire 2, Real Golf 2011, and etc., The phone has 1450 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 7 h and standby time of 450 h, 4.5 h of video playback time and 50 h of music playback time. It comes in three colors such as Cyan, Black and Magenta

Nokia N9 Specifications :

3G Network :  High Speed Uplink Packet Access of 5.7 Mbps and High Speed Downlink Packet Access of 14.4 Mbps

Dimensions :

When compared to other top phones here is the dimension comparison

Nokia N9 – 116.45 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm
Iphone 4 – 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm
Samsung Galaxy S2 – 125.3 X 66.1 X 8.49 mm
Blackberry Torch – 111 x 62 x 14.6 mm

Display Screen : screen size is of 3.9 inches, 16:9 FWVGA (854 * 480) pixels AMOLED display, capacitive touch screen, gorilla glass display which also adorns iPhone 4 and Galaxy S2, 16.7 million colors

Weight : 135 g
The phone is much lighter than iPhone 4 which is 161 g and comparable to Galaxy S2.

OS and Processor : MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan with 1 GHz Cortex A8 Processor. Nokia might  have missed a trick by not going dual core here, but 1 GHZ is more than enough any of current Generation phone.

Camera : 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, wide angle lens, dual LED flash, digital shutter, continuous auto focus, 4x digital zoom and video camera with 720 pixels resolution at 30 frames per second, stereo sound recording, and etc.,

Memory : 16 or 64 GB, 1 GB RAM and no external card slot

Other Features : NFC (Near Field Communication – for easy pairing and sharing), Wi-Fi WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, GPRS, EDGE, High Speed USB 2.0 with micro USB connector for data transfer and charging, 3.5 mm Audio Video connector, messaging through SMS, MMS, IM, Push, Email, HTML 5 support for web applications and fast video playback, RSS reader, TCP/IP support, Live multitasking view, Java Script support, Share photos online through Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa, Video and photo editor, Document editor’s, MP3 and MP4 player, Key Applications like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Ovi store, Maps, Track and Protect, Nokia Link for easy synchronization of photos, videos, and music, Preloaded games like Angry Birds Magic with NFC support, Galaxy on Fire 2, Real Golf 2011, and etc.,

Battery : 1450 mAh Li-Ion standard battery with talk time power of 7 h and standby time of 450 h, 4.5 h of video playback time and 50 h of music playback time

Colors : Cyan, Black and Magenta. May not be the best choice in terms of colors other than black. But this also makes the phone unique among competition.

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Samsung Galaxy S2 in US by July-August

Samsung Galaxy S2 is the most anticipated device among smartphone fans, even beating the expectations for iPhone 5. With Samsung Galaxy S2 already available in many countries and hitting top of Smartphone sales in UK,   US consumers are wondering when they will get their hands on the ultra fast Android device.

Samsung Galaxy S2 is expected to hit US shores before July end or possibly by Mid August, but not later than that.  Atleast one carrier most likely Sprint is expected to Carry the device ahead of ATT and even Verizon. One of the reasons for delay in Samsung Galaxy S2 is Apple, Apple who has taken up  litigation against Samsung’s devices , appears to be pulling the strings with ATT and Verizon ahead of its own next version of iPhone.

With earlier versions of  iPhones, Apple was always first to market as a trendsetter, but this time around iPhone 5 is under pressure from Galaxy S2. Most of the specs of iPhone 5 are expected to match the Galaxy S2 and any botch up will be bad for Apple. And Samsung is also determined to bring in its Galaxy S2 before the arrival of iPhone 5,  just to rub it on Apple.

Sprint’s version of Galaxy S2 is expected to be called Samsung Within and ATT’s version to be christened Samsung Attain.   Not sure whats with lame naming convention in USA, but we surely expect the dual core powered Galaxy S2 very soon.

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Google anti competitive practices and few examples

With  FTC announcing the probe on Google’s search practices , I was pleasantly surprised. After the panda update Google had irked so many publishers and rendered many out of business.  Though Google might claim whatever the benefits,  the panda update was more targeted on websites causing  loss of Google Revenue. Be it sites which garnered higher ranking high paid keyword sections or the sites  advertising with Microsoft/Yahoo.

Many sites which were either directly competing with Google , using Google products for Ad revenues were the ones who faces the brunt of Google Panda fury. After the update still we get quite a lot of junk in first page results of many keywords and there are hits and certainly several misses.

Behind the scenes Google undertook another step, many adsense publishers were banned and several websites received notices from Adsense that their sites are banned from Adsense due to various reasons and many due to “Abuse of Google Products”. Well abuse of Google products like Youtube, Search etc. Google collected these data through their new search algorithms and started optimizing Adsense. Several publishers were confused as to the Google Product abuse notice, though they haven’t circumvented Google’s policies, their sites were removed from adsense program.  Many involved sites embedding primarily youtube video, for Google if someone watches a video in Youtube, there are several benefits like ad revenue and more time in its sites.

Sites which were mostly relying embedding youtube videos were taking a portion of Google’s revenue, by better titles and descriptions. Google did fix these issues with Panda update.

On the Anti competitive front, Google’s dominant position in turn has helped most of its services, whatever Google might its  services get the top position in any searches. Though Google might claim that it is helping customers, there is a financial benefit  for Google for using their service. For any search from movie timings, or even just cinemas, Google Service appears on top of the theater’s own website.

And one of the key part of Antitrust cases of Past are bundling of products, and using one’s dominant position to kill competitors. Google is doing exactly that with its dominance in search, all of its new services immediately hit top of search results on release and most users will simply click the top link.

With Google Chrome, Android and Chrome OS, Google is positioned to take control of internet traffic and in few years Google might be the internet, by killing of competition  Google can easily charge higher for ads and pay  less to users. Already there are very few good advertising options other than Google and one reason being the power of Google.

Google is already on the defensive in terms of antitrust investigations,  there are clear examples of Google leveraging its position in Search for control in other areas and it will be a tough battle for Google to prove otherwise. At the minimum US will try to put some restrictions on using Search to promote services and data collection for ads.

Lets see how this probe turns out.