Design
Now also
in white!
It all comes down to a swipe – introducing a new user interface that's faster and simpler than any other.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Nokia 808
 | |
| Manufacturer | NOKIA |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | nokia n8 |
| Dimensions | 123.9 mm (4.88 in) H 60.2 mm (2.37 in) W 13.9 mm (0.55 in) D |
| Weight | 169 g (6.0 oz) |
| Operating system | nokia belle Feature Pack 1, upgradeable to nokia BelleFeature Pack 2 |
| CPU | 1.3 GHz ARM11 |
| Memory | 512 MB RAM |
| Storage | 16 GB on-board memory |
| Removable storage | microSD up to 64 GB supported w/ microSDXC support |
| Battery | Li-Ion; BV-4D 1400 mAh 3.8 V |
| Display | 4-inch AMOLED 2.5D curved nHD display Gorilla glass with easy-clean coating |
| Rear camera | 41 Mpx (1/1.2") sensor Carl Zeiss Optics F-number: f/2.4 ND filter Xenon Flash LED video light 1080p 30 fps video with Continuous AutoFocus |
| Front camera | 0.3 Mpx; 480p 30 fps |
| Connectivity | BLUE TOOTH 3.0 Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n DLNA Micro HDMI Micro USB USB On-The-Go Secure NFC 3.5 mm audio connector withTV-out FM TRANSMITTER GPS with a-gps |
Pureview Pro camera
PureView Pro is an imaging technology used in the Nokia 808 PureView device. It is the combination of a 1/1.2" large,[7] very high resolution 41Mpix image sensor with high performance Carl Zeiss optics. The large sensor enables pixel oversampling, which means the combination of many sensor pixels into one image pixel. PureView imaging technology delivers high image quality, lossless zoom, and improved low light performance (see below). It dispenses with the usual scaling/interpolation model of digital zoom used in virtually all smartphones, as well as optical zoom used in most digital cameras, where a series of lens elements moves back and forth to vary the magnification and field of view. In both video and stills, this technique provides greater zoom levels as the output picture size reduces, enabling 4x zoom in full HD 1080p video, 6x lossless zoom for 720p HD, and 12x zoom for nHD (640x360) video.
Image sensor
PureView Pro sensor has an active area of 7728 x 5368 pixels, totalling over 41 Mpix. Depending on the aspect ratio chosen by the user, it will use 7728 x 4354 pixels for 16:9 images/videos, or 7152 x 5368 pixels for 4:3 images/videos. What happens next depends on the settings and whether or not zoom is used. But to give an idea, the default still image setting is 5 Mpix at 16:9, and for video, 1080p at 30 FPS. Using these settings, the zoom is around 3x for stills and 4x for video. Conventional digital zoom tends to scale up images from a relatively low resolution, resulting in poor image quality.
The image sensor is capable not only of delivering parts of its pixels, but of down- or oversampling its resolution by having its own on-chip image processor, highly reducing external processing needs and data rates as well as image noise (see noise shaping) when lower resolutions (or HD video) are needed. Additionally this provides very high image resolution. Images up to 38 megapixels can be taken at full resolution at 4:3 aspect ratio and 34 megapixels at 16:9 ratio.
[edit]Lens
The optic is a 1-group lens, which is based on a shiftable fixed-focus lens: similar to the highly regarded prime lenses in most Zeiss Planar or Tessar optics, focus is achieved by varying the distance to the image sensor (unit focusing lens). This construction has the advantage that no movable focus group is needed. Considerable movable (focus-range) lens groups need a minimum of one additional adaptive lens element in both the moved group and the stationary group, increasing the number of elements by at least two. This increases unwanted reflections as well as overall tolerances and therefore decreases sharpness.
The lens consists of only 1 group with molded elements, which gives a highly stable, precise mechanical alignment. The lenses are partly made of plastic, which provides sufficient stability at this size and as a 1-group lens and has the significant advantage of making it possible to use extreme aspheric shaped lens elements.[8]
5 all-aspherical lens elements are used, making it possible to increase border-sharpness and lower distortion and astigmatism. The high refractive index, low-dispersion glass additionally helps reduce chromatic aberrations. A neutral density filter with approximatelyND8 (3 f-stops) is employed for shooting in high light levels where normally a smaller aperture would be set. Although the lens is named a Tessar, it has almost nothing in common with the 4 element in 3 group, non-aspherical original Tessar.
Due to the comparatively large image sensor format of 1/1.2" and the comparatively fast lens with f/2.4, the camera has a quite shallowdepth of field of equivalent to approximately f/7.8 at 26 mm[10] on 35 mm full-frame.
[edit]Zoom
Zoom is digital but retains a high resolution due to the 41Mp sensor. The limit of the zoom is reached when the selected output resolution becomes the same as the input resolution. That means once the area of the sensor reaches 3072 x 1728, the zoom limit is reached. So the zoom always provides the true image resolution the user wants. The level of pixel oversampling is highest when zoom is not used. It gradually decreases until the maximum zoom is hit, where there is no oversampling. At this stage, PureView Pro optics and pixels start behaving in a more conventional way. But because only the centre of the optics is used, the best optical performance is achieved – including low distortion, no vignetting and highest levels of resolved detail. This also means that at full digital zoom, the noise reduction achieved by oversampling (pixel binning) is lost as no oversampling happens at full zoom.
[edit]Autofocus
PureView Pro features continuous auto focus in all shooting modes, close-up (Macro) focus, Face detection, Touch focus with easy manually selected focus point and Hyperfocal distance focus for defined depth of field, for extreme focus speed or when no reliable focus is possible due to darkness.
[edit]Video
The on-chip oversampling image processor of PureView Pro enables oversampling of all 38Mega-pixels even at the high video data rates of 1080p with 30 fps. Full HD 1080p gives 4x zoom; 720p HD video, 6x lossless zoom; and for nHD (640x360) video, 12x zoom. In addition, encoding is up to 25Mbps in 1080p H.264/MPEG-4 HD video format. The PureView Pro sensor integrates a special video processor that handles pixel scaling before sending the required number to the main image processor.
[edit]Audio
The 808 PureView employs Dolby Headphone software to transform stereo content to surround via 3.5mm A/V jack. It also includes Dolby Digital Plus software to provide 5.1 surround sound via HDMI or DLNA. The dual software from Dolby are embedded into the Nokia Belle feature pack 1 OS.
The 808 PureView is the first device to include the Nokia Rich Recording technology and has a frequency range between 25 Hz to around 19 kHz. The 808 PureView can capture sounds at the loudness level of 145 decibels without distortion. The two microphones, located at the top and the bottom enable ambient stereo recording. The audio encoding is done in AAC high profile, 128 kbit/s, 48000 Hz
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
NOKIA N9
Nokia
Over 1000
improvements
Facebook, Twitter and email now even better than before! In addition a lot of small improvements on network and connectivity performance. Check them out now!
Stay tuned for this icon.
It will appear whenever a new update is available.
If you want to check if a N9 software update is available, you can also go to
Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and choose the Updates tab.
The Different Views of Quality
Industry accepted definitions of quality are “conformance to requirements” (from Philip Crosby) and “fit for use” (from Dr. Joseph Juran and Dr. W. Edwards Deming). These two definitions are not inconsistent.
Meeting requirements is a producer’s view of quality. This is the view of the organization responsible for the project and processes, and the products and services acquired, developed, and maintained by those processes. Meeting requirements means that the person building the product does so in accordance with the requirements. Requirements can be very complete or they can be simple, but they must be defined in a measurable format, so it can be determined whether they have been met. The producer’s view of quality has these four characteristics:
- Doing the right thing
- Doing it the right way
- Doing it right the first time
- Doing it on time without exceeding cost
Being fit for use is the customer’s definition. The customer is the end user of the products or services. Fit for use means that the product or service meets the customer’s needs regardless of the product requirements. Of the two definitions of quality, fit for use, is the more important. The customer’s view of quality has these characteristics:
- Receiving the right product for their use
- Being satisfied that their needs have been met
- Meeting their expectations
- Being treated with integrity, courtesy and respect
Most Information Technology (IT) groups have two quality gaps: the producer gap and the customer gap. The producer gap is the difference between what is specified (the documented requirements and internal standards) versus what is delivered (what is actually built). The customer gap is the difference between what the producers actually delivered versus what the customer wanted.
In addition to the producer and customer views of quality, the organizational infrastructure also includes a provider and a supplier view. These views are as follows:
- Provider view – This is the perspective of the organization that delivers the products and services to the customer.
- Supplier view – This is the perspective of the organization (that may be external to the producer’s company, such as an independent vendor) that provides either the producer and/or the provider with products and services needed to meet the requirements of the customer.
IN THE WAKE
IN THE WAKE by Per Petterson. Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2006 (originally published in Norway under the title I KJØLVANNET by Forlaget Oktober A/S, in 2000). Hardcover. 202 pages. Estimated length of the novel: around 60,000 words.
Writing is a difficult job. I think there's even a hint of the self-punishing masochist in most writers. On a bad day, when the right words aren't coming to you, it's actually excruciating to try to put pen to paper, or to sit in front of a computer screen with a blank document staring back at you. True, on better days when the words are coming to you with relative ease and things are going well, writing can bring you satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment. But those not-so-great moments when you're blocked or frustrated make you question whether the good days are really worth the effort. It seems insane to go through so much grief for so little pleasure.
Perhaps this is why there are many books in the global literary canon about the frustrations of writing and the inability to communicate effectively, even just to communicate as one human being to another. Meanings often slip between intentions, words, and the impact that those words have on others. Our very human tendency to have such slippages is probably one of the core reasons that many of us read--to get a little closer to understanding the mystery of communicating with words.
In Per Petterson's novel IN THE WAKE, we are confronted with one such lost soul, named Arvid. He's a published novelist who now can't seem to write much, as well as being an intensely emotional person who can't seem to connect satisfyingly with others or the world around him. He's divorced and lives by himself in an apartment. Apparently he doesn't see a lot of his wife and kids. He seems to traipse through life haunted by memories of the death of his father, mother, and two younger brothers in a tragic ferry accident (the novel is supposed to have been inspired by an actual fatal ferry incident). He has a conflicted relationship with the one other surviving member of his immediate family, an older brother, even though the two of them seem to be in similar psychological stages in their lives. Both Arvid and his surviving brother, age 43 and 46 respectively, are going through midlife crises and adjusting to breakups with their wives.
But Arvid, unlike his more practical older brother, is a dreamer. And, being a dreamy sort of guy, Arvid informs us that he has trouble distinguishing between his dreams and reality and what he reads in books:
"I remember a lot of dreams. Sometimes they are hard to distinguish from what has really happened. That is not so terrible. It is the same with books."
Thus Arvid tells us his tale in a series of desultory reflections on events and people from his past and present. There's a surreal, wandering-without-a-goal quality to much of his narrative.
The seemingly defeated listlessness of the narrator pervades the book, lending it a contemporary feeling of alienation and isolation. There's even Arvid's acquaintance with a Kurdish neighbor, a man who speaks almost no Norwegian, and this mostly nonverbal relationship is symptomatic of Arvid's need to overcome barriers that keep getting in the way of his interactions with other people in his life.
The most warmth that Arvid shows is in his sexual bond with a woman who lives with her son across the street. But even this intimate relationship eventually results in the book's most theatrical anxiety attack, when he wakes up and realizes that she is not in bed next to him:
"I am alone. I slide my arm over the pillow, it is still warm, but she has not left a note. I do not want to be alone. I jump out of bed and run into the hall. In the mirror I see a face, and I stop and without thinking grab the first thing I see, a metal box standing on the chest, and hurl it at the mirror. The glass breaks with an incredibly loud noise, it disintegrates into glittering fragments raining silver on the floor, and I stand there watching them spread all over the hall like the aftermath of an explosion in a film on TV. One of the fragments slices into my arm and blood trickles out, not much but enough to show red against the white skin. I raise my arm and lick the blood up..."
The passage seems reminiscent of the films of Ingmar Bergman--the persona shatters as the mirror shatters, at the moment of the character's contemplation of his image. The blood-sucking is also symbolic of the protagonist's sense of his own enervation and wasting away as "one of the middle-aged forgotten."
But something seems missing from the turmoil of the book. It's not as pungent as it needs to be. As a reader, I felt blocked from Arvid's many ordeals--his ordeals as a writer, a husband, a father, a lover, a brother, and a person haunted by the past. Everything that happens, no matter the various particulars, seemed to be covered in a drab sameness. When the moments of high anxiety finally did occur--such as the crashing of the mirror in the panic of isolation--I didn't feel the visceral impact I might have if the author had explored Arvid's fears and fetishes more fully. And I wonder if any writer down on his luck would keep so relatively quiet about not being able to concentrate on writing much of anything. I yearned for a better understanding of his despair and emotional confusion. I'm not asking for pretentious explanations of why he did this or that or thought this or that, of course. I just would have appreciated more vivid depictions of what was going on with him, and inside him.
And yet the book does succeed in creating an atmosphere of estrangement that suggests multiple states of consciousness, even if none of those states of consciousness are developed to the degree I desired. Although the lead character needs more penetrating development and more of the spontaneous abandon that flows from such development, Per Petterson is an intriguing author who, at his best, artfully combines fleeting impressions to create scenes that are something like collages.
The American edition of IN THE WAKE that I read is nicely packaged, and the book-cover image--of a hand reaching upward through multiple layers of whirling water without grabbing on to anything--is evocative of the protagonist's ineptness in forging connections with others. Regarding the manuscript, the text of the American edition that I read contains a few too many errors and was not proofread carefully enough. I hate to be a pedantic sourpuss about this, but I hope the American publisher will try to correct the errors in future printings and editions of IN THE WAKE.
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