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Single or Multiple Device?

I’m clearly in the two piece camp at this stage of my mobile life.  Andy talks about the Camps of One or Many today  and links to another post written by Alan Reiter on the same topic.  Today I use the N95 with the N800.  I recognize the benefits of each as well as the overlaps but choose to use one of the other to maximize my enjoyment or enhance the experience across the two.  I’ve tried all in one with the iPhone and lasted a few months … A few years ago, I was a heavy Treo user and pushed that to the limits as well.

While I really see the enhanced benefits of browsing, reading and viewing photos and video on a larger screen, I also use my devices so heavily that having a second thing ready to back me up when the battery in one fades is quite helpful.  As we see the release of MIDs with embedded WWAN like the WiMax units shown at CES or the alluded to but not yet seen WiMax N810 from Nokia things will get even more interesting.

My normal day works something like this:

  • Wake up with the N95 alarm, and then check email and Jaiku on the phone right out of bed.
  • On the one hourtrain into NYC, I fire of the N95’s music player and listen to music or podcasts (which I update over the air through the day)
  • The N800 usually then slides out of my pocket and I tether to the N95 to start diving into my feed reading.  I usually also fire up IM, Email and Mauku, a Jaiku client.
  • Depending on which device happens to be capturing my attention at the time, I check in with Jaiku, Gmail, Twitter and Google Reader.
  • During the day I swap the N800 for a work issued blackberry as the second device in my pocket but really only use it for email as it actually sucks (yes sucks) at most other things.
  • My return trip is pretty similar to the morning though I’ve watching a fair bit of video over the past few months instead of feed reading on the N800.  I do multi-task with the N95 and find myself staying connected with Jaiku and email.

I also sporadically snap photos, shoot video (which upload or stream as they are captured).  3G service (ATT) kicks in after about 20 minutes in my ride towards NYC and substantially enhances the overall online experience…

I could probably do all of this on the N95, though it is actually more convenient to have two, in the same way it’s more ideal to work on two monitors.

When I had the N810, I was actually writing posts on the go, not just consuming them and that’s purely a factor of having a built in keyboard and the availability of applications like Maemo WordPy which is offline blog editor for the tablet.

Maybe it’s that I miss my Nokia N810 (still waiting to get a release version swapped with the proto I tested) or maybe it’s the sheer lack of excitement from this year’s CES, but now I really want to get a MID.  The Intel booth showed off all kinds of cool devices and for me this really is a category of interest.  I know MIDs are not likely to become mainstream in the next year (or two) but for the power user, they really fill a beautiful spot in my mobile life.

Typically  a MID is pocketable vs. a UMPC which is something you need a bag to carry.  This distinction is something that makes the experience for a mobile power user like myself.  I can’t see going to a single device anytime soon.  I think the SDK and pending apps for the iPhone are a very interesting thing to watch here, but more interesting to me would actually be a slightly larger connected tablet from Apple …

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Nokia N82 revealed through a Virtual Live Event!

This morning while on the train, I was able to join the Virtual live event for the Nokia N82 launch via my Nokia N810 tablet connected over DUN to the N95. A pretty cool way to experience something like this and I believe I’m the only one who even attempted this.

Nokia virtual event streaming via 3G to the N810!

The event has a pretty massive array of streaming content, downloads and a rather active chat. Initially I thought I’d be missing the actual experience as the page took quite a while to load – even once my 3G service activated while heading south to NYC. Anyway – a very cool way to enable a much broader audience to take part in something only a few would have been able to do otherwise.

Now, the N82 is one hot device! It’s basically everything you get from the N95, in a candybar form, like the N73 before it. You get GPS, Wifi with VOIP capabilities, 100MB of dynamic memory for as you need it power! The addition of the Xenon flash is also killer and sure to improve your image capture — and a real hero feature for the device. I hope this is standard for N-Series moving forward. Reading the spec sheet I see that Nokia is also going to pre-load maps for your region on a memory card which is a great way to enhance your out of the box experience. This is exactly what they are doing on the N810 – which matches the N82 very nicely by the way!

The only bummer on the N82 is that it’s not going to support US 3G which makes it impossible for me to consider for the time being. Regardless though, for the rest of the world, (and the vast majority of Nokia’s market share) this is a killer mobile!

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TruPhone to Launch VoIP for iPhone

Truphone Logo

Oliver Starr rocking some sweet news via Blognation!!

To say the application isn’t yet ready for prime time would be a pretty major understatement as it currently requires the use of terminal on the iPhone to tell the iPhone to use its on-board SIP stack to place the call over WiFi instead of via the SIM card. To use the terminal application, in turn requires that you first Jailbreak the phone using an application like iBrickr or iFuntastic.

This is not an application for the inexperienced or the faint of heart.That will all change however as the company tells me that it intends to finish development on the application which will include simplifying the activation and adding seamless switching back and forth between VoIP when open WiFi is available and the use of the SIM card when out of WiFi range. It is important to note that it is NOT NECESSARY to break the SIM lock to use TruPhone’s iPhone VoIP application. [blognation USA]

I have confidence (yes without seeing it in action) that this will be a very solid solution when it arrives and I welcome the opportunity to test it out. My previous experience with TruPhone on the Nokia N-Series has been excellent. Their software auto-switches easily between networks (not with an active call) but makes sure you can make the lowest cost call wherever you are. International travelers and people with limited cell coverage will rejoice at this. TruPhone just needs to wait out the pending iPhone software update to make sure they can still get apps installed without breaking things.

Andy Abramson has a video of this! Wish I cold figure out how to embed hipcast, but you can just click over to see it in action.

A quick sidenote… If you have a Grandcentral account, you can share that number linked to your Truphone and cell (and others) and be sure to receive a call wherever you happen to be on whatever network your devices happen to know about…