looks like i need to jailbreak my 3GS as well. backrounder handling sounds easy enough to use. did you notice any drawbacks or incompatibilities when using backgrounder?

its great that you mentioned multitasking seeing my experience this weekend that I wrote about earlier today on the site. Last time I used iphone 3G, safari runs in the background for a short time period, but when you go back after that period, it needs to refresh the page which sucks in case you lose signal or something. I know some sites are optimized for iphone, but I'd always prefer opera mini over a full browser because of the faster experience in the long run. One argument is flash, but how often will you need flash on a browser? That's the only time ill fire up nokia browser or safari. And btw, mail should be standard for always running in the background.

I agree with everything else, seeing that mobile games are much more pleasurable, control and graphics wise on the iphone. Emails load great on the iphone, I too use tweetdeck on mac (tested tweetdeck for iphone a while back and it wasn't working, but I'm excited for it), and its impressive to be able to easily change the focus in photos and videos although I will miss the flash, even if its just a single led light.

I'm still counting down to when I can get my 3GS (9 days) and ill be glad to give my feedback.

Don't forget, the iPhone registers the *release* of your finger, not the tap.

Try this…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesburland/38115…

Low light and as sharp as any Nseries photo in these light conditions. You need some patience and an understanding of what the iPhone firmware in trying to accomplish.

I am not saying the 3gs is not a great device and as for colors, they are darker and not true to life in my comparisons i have a 4month old son and took pics and posted to flickr and my wife asked if i can please stop posting from the 3gs because my son looks like he has dark hair and brown or black eyes while with the n97 u can tell he has light brown hair and grayish blue eyes, 2 pics that you took james that came out nice and u posted dont tell the true story of the comparisons.
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?p=12…
here are 3gs pics.
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?p=12…
here are nseries pics for the most part not comparable really.

6. Games: fair enough. iphone developers have better utilized the platform's abilities. why S60 developers don't is beyond me.

5. built-in html email: yup, again fair enough. lose the word 'built-in' and you still don't have a good solution on S60.

4. tweetdeck: seriously? common. i just dont understand so many ppl's adoration of twitter. maybe i'll go tweet that, “i don't find twitter interesting”.

3. video focusing: yup – that would be nice on the n97. not a deal breaker for me, but one of those “would be nice” features. can't argue against it, but i wouldn't bother arguing for it either.

2. multi-tasking? uhh… what? this is supposed to be a comparison between the 3gs and the n97, right? adding a feature to the 3g, making the 3gs _almost_ able to multitask… makes it better than a phone that _actually_ multitasks? either i'm missing something here, or you are. i don't think it's me.

1. web-browsing: oh great! the microsoft argument! i like windows because my apps were written for it. well, this argument looses steam here because with very few exceptions all iphone webapps run great on the n97. bam. and if you get a site where the developer was really an ass and forces the user-agent to be 'iphone' then, well, use the python user-agent mod to make your n97 claim to be an iphone. or use Ozone [http://o3mobi.com] or @web [http://www.digia.com/browser] or… you get the picture: there are options on S60. With the S60 browser, Ozone, and @Web – you've got 3 full featured browsers based on Webkit (just like Mobile Safari). Of course, each one has it's strengths: S60 browser is fully integrated, Ozone has full database support etc, and @Web (as well as S60 Browser) offers flash support for sites like youtube.

and if you've got a Zeemote [http://zeemote.com] then even the venerable Skyfire [http://get.skyfire.com] is fully usable – allowing the N97 to playback hulu, and any other online video we wish.

iPhone, web-browsing, winner? err… i'd be very disappointed with Apple myself. No alternative browsers are allowed, flash is blatantly missing, and pretty much everything out there that is 'iphone only' online is artificially made that way.

—
my list, would have included these few subtleties:
- N97 is not as stable as the iPhone
- N97 is missing VoIp (truphone is available to iphone users now)
- N97 camera lens cover is self-destroying
- iPhone has no moving parts
- iPhone app store allows reinstallation of apps

and the converse list:
- N97 Openness allows greater variety of apps
- N97 Openness includes extensions to current frameworks
- N97 openness includes access to ALL hardware compnents (gps, sensors, etc)
- iPhone is a walled garden eco-system
- iPhone has a shitty little camera
- iPhone STILL doesn't really multi-task at all
- N97 has a qwerty keyboard

i'll stop now, but both lists could be expanded on quite a bit. essentially i feel like this list of 6 points is really pretty poor.

There are plenty of ways that it competes. Firstly, the video capture on the iPhone 3GS is better than the N97. Autofocus and H.264 make a massive difference in my book.

Secondly, the way the iPhone competes with the Nseries in the photographic department is by being less processed. It just looks more natural to my eyes. I do take your point about the general darkness of a good percentage of iPhone shots, they seem to be optimised for the iPhone screen rather than the computer screen.

I'm planning a massive shoot out soon, hopefully I'll be able to demonstrate some of this issues. ^_^

It can multitask if you jailbreak, obviously still not as fluid as say the Pre. I think multitasking is kind overrated even though quintessential part in the very definition of a smart phone. Given all the 3GS' advantages I can totally live without it. But that's just me.

cant wait to see it as i do admire your post and the photo contest u have,and to be fair James the average user is not going to crop there photos 100% to see the digital artifacts in them, that being said the nseries always suffered from this from the great n82 to the n86 now, but displaying both pics and a high resolution the crispness and colors of the nseries to me wins hands down, im sure u looked at the links i sent u and there is nothing exciting about the 3gs camera there, i saw the photos u took and they look very nice although they seemed pretty saturated also, the colors of the cherries and the flowers almost looked pastelish if thats a word hahaha.
I do agree with the video reording of the iphone but again the lighting is off makes everything darker for whatever reason and another issue i have is that there are no settings unless cydia releases something for it.
I will once again say it is a great device and im not knocking it, but the 6 reasons why Mark prefers the iphone (jailbroken) of course i can post 6 reasons why i dont.
Like i have said many times there is room for the 2 of them in this world hahaha.
P.S. on another note a jailbroken iphone is not the way the average consumer users it so we should also make a notation of that, thats like me having a n97 thats ables to add unsigned files and is hacked to do anything i want(again not the norm).

Thanks for your kind words. Much appreciated.

At the end of the day, we all get excited by features and multi-mega pixel cameras, but nothing beats good natural lighting and being in the right place at the right time.

Well the same here, I am a Nokia fan, but with this n97 I have had 3 in my hand and the All 3 the same bugs… So I decided give a try to iPhone 3gs and let mr tell u I'm happy now, I miss the Carl zeiss too but I prefer all the positive points of iPhone than the good camera and lot bugs of Nokia n97 I'm sorry for Nokia but they messed up with this model….

Mark is not a phone geek, he's a phone user. Why are people surprised he likes the iphone? Also he only used the iphone for 1 week… Let see how he feels after a month, that is when things can really be measured and he'll begin to hate touch only devices like I do… And when winter comes, he'll start complaining the capacitive touch… NYC gets pretty cold. And he's still on honeymoon… Wait til the iphone iBills pile up. Cheers.

@JamesBurland
(for some reason, i can't 'reply' to your post below… odd thing – so i'm replying to the parent of the post i'd LIKE to reply to)

“video capture on all current Nseries devices (N86 included) is H.263″
- looks like we are both mistaken. using the ffmpegX frontend for ffmpeg, i've realized that my N97 (and my old N95, and my wife's N82) are actually recording in MPEG-4 part 10 compliant AVC – h.264 is an extension to this (DivX, for example, is an extension to mpeg-4 part 2 and is a much simpler and less efficient codec). so: h.264? not exactly, but the codec used is that which h.264 is based on and the results are almost identical. h.263? hell no – that's old school and only used in MMS so that the recipient phone is surely able to decode it.

as for h.264 PLAYBACK – i used to rip DVDs into h.264 for playback on my N95 all the time. an example configuration was well defined here (though personally i used Handbrake since i was familiar with it from my old days running BeOS):
http://thenokiablog.com/2007/04/10/how-to-conve…

apple taking credit for the mp4 container format? fair enough, though it was decided upon by the mpeg standardization group, they did base it entirely on apple's mov format (from quicktime).

RAW/TIFF/DNG support on nokia mobiles? you want the long version? this post is already long enough, so i'll give the medium length version, call it a checklist of tractable tasks:
1. use the system API to trap the camera lens open/closed events
2. use the system API to call our new camera app when the lens event occurs
3. use the system API to trap the camera button event for focusing
4. use the imaging API to request camera focusing, block until focus completed
5. use the system API to trap the camera button capture event
6. use the imaging API to request image capture, block until capture is completed
7. pass the image data through a real-time lossless compressor (this is the only tough part so far – though it is certainly tractable)
8. format the image data into whatever filetype you want (RAW, TIFF, DNG – they all have some basic formatting requirements)
9. dump the data into a file on the memory card
10. return to the idle loop, waiting on new camera focus event requests

i dont see a single step in there that leaves me wondering, “is it possible”, or ,”but HOW would i do that”. in fact, the least obvious part to me is the gui work – the rest is just a set of API calls and an implementation of two image processing algorithms (lossless compressor and formatting wrapper).

-bit

I have been a Nokia fan for over 15 yrs now and my N97 was supposed to be the best thing to happen to me since sliced bread. I HATE it!! so many times it has nearly ended up being thrown against the wall. Everyone keeps talking about apps and how good/bad they are, IT'S SUPPOSSED to be a phone, and the PHONE part of it SUCKS. My N95 and N93 had better call features and reliability. It takes forever for you to answer a call when the phone is locked, i end up missing the call and have to call ppl back. IT SUX!!!

I owned all high end Nokia devices since the 2110 from the early 90's. Never had an issue until I started my new job last year and was offered the iPhone. We rely on push email a lot.

I thought my N95 would be up to the task, I was wrong. Not only did it not support HTML, the Exchange client was lacking to say the least.

I tried using RoadSync, but it had no support for HTML on Exchange 2003 SP2 either.

I finally gave the iPhone a shot and although I want to throw it through a wall everyday because of dropped calls….when it comes to the Exchange and HTML support….it works really well.

I had the N97 on pre-order for a long time, bragged about it at work how it was going to replace the iPhone.

Lets just say that it came up short. I was like a kid at X-mas when the box arrived. Loved the design, build and was glad to have my camera back. The iPhone blows @ taking pictures. The UI was a bit clunky, but I would be able to live with it.

The browser was decent, not as snappy or easy to use like the iPhone, but again…I was willing to live with it.

The deal breaker was the Exchange support with HTML. I cant believe in this day and age, a company like Nokia that has a good relationship with MS, does not have a solid Exchange client or email app.

With the iPhone it displays my email perfectly, I can even open up all my docs right there in the email, no need to save.

If an iPhone had a better camera with flash and dropped less calls I could honestly say it would be a perfect phone. Jailbroken of course, without the draconian Apple bs.

This is coming from someone that swore to never purchase an Apple device.

Very disappointing last couple of years from Nokia. First the BS they pulled with the N96 and now the N97.

Wake up Nokia!!!!!!

HERESY!!! Why don't you just call your site the iphone 3gs blog!! And go and join other self masturbating drones.

OK IVE NEVA USED THE N97 BUT I LOVE THE WHITE COLOUR N97.. .. BUT WHAT I WANNA TELL IS THE MAIN PROBLEM ABOUT THE IPHONE TAT EVERYONE IGNORES.. I HAD A IPHONE 3G WHITE.. EVERYHTING WAS FINE APART FROM SMALL PROBLEMS LIKE THE PHONE HANGING AFTER DOWNLOADING APPLICATIONS FROM THE APPLE STORE.. THEN ONE DAY I DROPPED THE IPHONE WHILE TRYING TO REPLY TO A MSG.. STUPID SHIT SLIPPD FROM MY HAND WUD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF IT HAD KEYPAD.. AFTER THE PHONE FELL THE SCREEN CRACKED.. I TOOK MY 2 MONTH OLD IPHONE TO THE APPLE STORE N THEY TOLD ME TAT I HAD TO BUY A NEW ONE.. THE STUPID PHONE IS IRRITATING TO MSG WIT IF UR USED TO PHONES WIT KEYPADS.. IT HANGS IF U DOWNLOAD APPLICATIONS FROM APPLESTORE. THE CAMERA IS BELOW SATISFACTORY FOR A PHONE OF THAT PRICE.. N IT DOESNT MATTER IF U HAVE THE IPHONE OR 3G OR 3GS THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME..ITS AN OVERHYPED CRAPPY PHONE WIT LOTS OF CONS TAT GOES UN NOTICED UNTIL U ACTUALLY USE IT…. N IF THR IS ANY APPLE FANBOY OUT THR WHO THINKS IPHONE IS THE BEST THEN PLZZZZ GO TO EBAY N BUY MY PHONE.. ITS FOR SALE..

please tell me 6 reason y shd i buy n97 n nt i phone 3gs

change the setting to anykey answer, you can then just press the menu hard key

Most if not all of the things you posted are nonsense and I'll bother to explain: (please don't confuse n00bs on this)…

6. Games: Even though I admit my iPhone makes a great gaming platform, I always rather use my PSP or my XBOX 360 for that… Besides nGage platform is more robust than anything else mobile out there… Have you seen nGage games?

5. Built in HTML email: Nokia Messaging it's been out for a good while with HTML support. My Nokia N97 is a great email platform as a matter of fact. A great contender for my iPhone 3G

4. Tweetdeck: Have you tried Gravity? There's simply no substitutes for Gravity on any platform as of yet.

3. Video Autofocus: However true, the lack of autofocus on video is fixable through a firmware upgrade or patch (perhaps even hacks) so that lacking alone it's not worthwhile.

2. Multitasking: What? Since when iPhone has become a multitasking OS? That's not multitasking brother!… That's just some gimmick Apple invented to let the user think he's multitasking… But don't be fooled!

1. Web Browsing: True, iPhone's web browsing experience (since iPhone One) it's been awesome.. Too bad it does not display ActiveX, Javascript and most importantly (for many) Flash content like the N97's browser that can display pretty much everything I throw at it…

So, don't confuse people here okay?

Cheers!
RayanMX

I am using the N97. How ever, it cuts money from my credit by simply going to facebook, news and weahther reports that i dont like. Forget the fact that I removed hose apps. I am a heavy typist and I hate to play with my phone much. So the N97 is not much of a problem if you just call and cut. Never load the memory with apps and files coz be sure the phone will never stop stalling. iphone is much faster,sexier and a stylish phone and N97 has the worst camera I EVER used on a mobile in the history because of its 2 LED lights in the wrong position.

But i seriously hate touch screen phones. coz when I'm at a mosque and the phone accidentally rings coz I forgot to silent the phone, I suddenly become the DEVIL there. People stare at me coz the phone was ringing the whole time and I couldnt silence it like old button phones at the instance. Your phone shouldn't ring at the mosque or a church or anything like that in Asian countries, people seriously claim you to be satan here!

I have been a Nokia fan for a long time and would usually swear by them, but until they can up their game I am afraid to say that I am sticking to my iPhone 3Gs!

I would love to find Nokia winning me back as I have always trusted their brand.