In All About Symbian Insight 62 (AAS Podcast 118) we briefly discuss the recently released S60 5.0 SDK (and consider broader uses), follow up on kinetic scrolling on the N97, get Ewan's view point on Monopoly for the N-Gage. In the last part of the podcast Steve and Ewan relate their experience of video recording on the N85 versus the N95. You can listen to AAS Insight 62 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Read on in the full article.
The iphone does not have kinetic scrolling - ie it doent scroll on forever, it slows down after a flick, which is how it should be. Continual scrolling will be annoying, Nokia please dont make this mistake.
Actually, I disagree, having to repeatedly flick on the iPhone is annoying. Having a page continually scroll is better. IMHO.
Following your discussion on video in the current devices, the lack of the N95's excellent video editor in subsequent devices suddenly becomes clear: if they can't shoot the video in the first place they sure as hell wouldn't be able to edit it. This had been a real puzzle to me; the editor is an excellent app, but the N95 has always struggled for RAM. It seemed obvious to me that it should be included with devices with (supposedly) more resources. Obviously not.
BTW, have you guys seen today's Dilbert (March 10)?
http://www.dilbert.com/
"Even on the very latest firmware for the N82, the frame rate is still inconsistent. How hard can it be to lock this down? If the hardware has trouble keeping up a consistent 30fps then why not go for a rock solid 25fps? Anything is better than the strange stuttering that we have to endure now."
My thoughts on this matter back in Feb 08. I believe that Nokia really think that the current video capture is 'good enough'. But as they say, if you're not moving forward you're standing still and Nokia have been standing still on this issue for almost 3 years now. Not good, not good at all. I don't buy this idea that some seem to have been sold that Nseries video capture is just fine for most people. It's not even good enough for YouTube these days!
Any talk of decent video capture is now going to be about Samsung phones.
Nokia have lost another key advantage of the Nseries, let's hope they don't lose anymore. Fortunately, it does look as if the N86 will fight its way to the top of the camera phone pile this year.
Sorry Jaggz, that's rubbish. Well, sort of rubbish. I've been shooting my semi-pro Phones Show on the N82 and N95 quite routinely, with NO frame drops EVER or other issues.
The usual culprits for video problems are: background apps getting in the way, old operator-specific firmware and slow/fake memory cards.
Steve
Sorry Steve, it's not rubbish it's the truth.
The VGA capture on every single Nseries device I've ever tested (quite a number!) has dropped frames on panning, or fast moving subjects.
I can prove it... I'll open up 5 random Nseries videos from the last 3 years and give you the *actual* frame rates. Here goes...
December 2006 - N93 = 28.56 FPS
March 2007 - N93i = 28.31 FPS
October 2007 - N95 8GB = 27.85 FPS
November 2007 - N82 = 27.46 FPS
February 2008 - N82 = 25.71 FPS
As you can see from the list above I have every reason to make my claim. I look forward to reading your response along with supporting evidence of your perfect video capture. By all means, feel free to send me some samples.
For the record. Most of those videos were made shortly after the device had been fully restarted and with no other apps running and using Nokia supplied memory cards.
No, you're missing the point. I'm not saying that the frame rates aren't variable - they are, and this is 100% allowed in the digital video world.
What I'm saying is that frames aren't *visibly* dropped, at least under static conditions, i.e. without huge pans around a scene. What we were finding on the N85 and what we also see when Ewan jiggles the phone cam around too much(!) is that the encoding simply can't keep up and so we end up with a BATCH of frames that are lost, so you get a brief freeze in the picture.
A single dropped frame would make no visible difference at all in a normal 'headshot' scene.
And for the record, I've asked Ewan to start using a tripod. Or at least a shelf or other still surface to rest the N95 on 8-)
You request experiences of recording video on various smartphones so I thought I'd wade in with my experiences of n96.
I do record a reasonable amount of footage on the phone and generally it comes out well for a phone. Quick actions are a bit blurred but IMHO that is only to be expected given the limitations of the device. I certainly don't get any focusing issues (distances are normally 5-10 foot) although I do get a very occasional stutter in playback on the device (maybe once every 4-5 minutes of playback). The one thing I haven't really experimented with is converting and playing back on the PC. In comparison to my n95 classic the 96 gives a better video experience, but I still feel that some updates to the f/w are necessary to make it better.
In the end though I am not using it for commercial purposes like you guys, I am just using it as Rafe mentioned, for catching the odd moment where the memory is more important than the quality.
ILG