Nearing the end of its current TV Out series, All About Symbian takes a look at the world of text-based communications using a Nokia N95 that has been connected to a television set and full size Bluetooth keyboard. What are the ups and downs of text messaging, instant messaging, emailing and web browsing through your television?
Read on in the full article.
These have been really fascinating articles - thanks.
TV Out or some derivative thereof must surely be a key part of the mobile's future - phones already do everything that the vast majority of people want from a PC (word processing, web, email). What's needed is more thoughtful integration of the TV Out functionality and, of course, MUCH higher resolutions.
It also needs better applications. One of the real oddities of phones is that the quality of application you get doesn't change depending on the price you pay for the device (e.g. same Office suite on an m600 as on an E90). What's needed are apps that offer desktop functionality when in TV Out mode.
If apps can be scaled according to the target audience of the device and TV Out can be made really, really simple then phones could eventually become a PC-killer (with households havign a media centre as a storage/backup hub).
--It also needs better applications. One of the real oddities of phones is that the quality of application you get doesn't change depending on the price you pay for the device (e.g. same Office suite on an m600 as on an E90). What's needed are apps that offer desktop functionality when in TV Out mode.--
I agree it would be nice to bundle some classy applications with more expensive models, and you're right that the built-in software ought to work better with TV Out.
I can offer an explanation of why the price doesn't necessarily reflect the computing ability of the phone:
The computing side of smartphones doesn't actually affect the price that much any more. Thanks to some cost-saving miniaturisation techniques, S60 smartphones can be made with fewer chips and are easier to make too, so you get the situation where the Nokia 6120 has the same computing power as the Nokia N95, but costs less than half the price.
The bulk of the price of a smartphone actually goes on the extra non-standard hardware: in the case of the N95, that would be things like the built-in GPS, 5mp camera, VGA camcorder and 3D graphics chip (and it's this chip which provides the TV Out too), all of which have to be extra small so they can fit into one package.
As I tried to emphasise in these articles though, you don't have to just accept what you're given, the whole point of the S60 platform is that you can buy third party software (for example, the email application in this particular article is the truly excellent Profimail). Smartphone software can make full use of the system it runs on, so it can run as fast (or even faster!) than the built-in applications.
"(with households havign a media centre as a storage/backup hub)."
One recent comments thread did actually bring up the idea of a phone directly accessing a HDD, and that might make for a very interesting setup: if you stored all your media stuff on a central HDD or server which your phone (or any number of devices) could dip in and out of wirelessly or with a cable. It could also be accessed remotely using Slingbox-style technology which already exists for S60 devices.
The N95 can already output video and photos at VGA resolution, enough for standard definition television, so the necessary playback hardware already exists too.
You know, five years ago I would have said that, by now, most computing would be done on handheld/UMPC type equipment that would connect to a little HDD box under the family's main TV serving as games console, satellite/cable decoder, stereo, radio and centralised secure storage system.
Odd that even now that sort of set-up seems several years away (but getting closer with the likes of Windows Home Server, Sky+, AppleTV, the DVD/HDD capabilities of consoles etc etc).
Anyway, as someone who travels a lot and gets through (almost literally) half a dozen bluetooth keyboards a year but has never considered plugging into the hotel TV, these have been really interesting articles. Thanks, Krisse.
Now, does the E90 have TV Out?
I think the problem with these various "home media centre" boxes, which have been promoted for over five years now, is that people don't really want them. At the height of the mania for the Playstation 2, Sony released the now-forgotten PSX in Japan which was a home media centre with a PS2 built into it. It flopped so badly that the whole PSX line was cancelled and swept under the carpet.
Now, that doesn't mean they have no future, it simply means that people won't buy media centres purely as media centres.
What I think will happen is that over time more and more phones will have TV Out compatibility, and as people are buying a billion of these things every year anyway, this kind of box-for-everything will enter people's lives by accident.
This is what happened with text messaging: very very few people ever bought pagers, yet almost everyone now sends and receives texts because this feature became a standard part of all phones.
Many people, especially in the developing world, have a phone and a TV but no PC or internet connection. If cheap phones of the future have N95-like capabilities, then they would effectively allow every television to be turned into an internet-connected PC.
"Now, does the E90 have TV Out?"
If it did, I would have asked Nokia to loan me one of those instead of an N95! 😊
The device I really really wish did have TV Out is the N800: it has a proper smooth browser (quicker and more accurate than S60), and a touchscreen, and its own native resolution is identical to a standard widescreen TV so it would be able to make full use of any widescreen telly.
"as someone who travels a lot and gets through (almost literally) half a dozen bluetooth keyboards a year"
Good grief, what do you do them? 😉 Are they really that fragile? I've only had mine for a month or two so far...