14 Jul 2010

The Nokia N900 saves the day

I recently attended European Conference of the Association for Consumer Research 2010 which was held at Royal Holloway, Egham from the 30th June to the 3rd July, 2010. My presentation was on the 2nd of July and I intended to go through my paper on the train from London to Egham. However, in my hurry, I forgot to print out a copy and I had not brought along my laptop either.

I had a copy in my email and tried to access it using my Samsung Galaxy Portal. Unfortunately the Samsung could not read the Word document. Moreover, the battery was dangerously low and I didn't want to drain it searching for an app on the Android market.

I suddenly remembered that I had the Nokia N900 and that it had the "Documents to go" app which could be used to read Microsoft word documents. Found out that I would have to download the app which I promptly did - I signed up for the 30 day trial version and was set to go. You can't imagine the relief I felt when I was finally able to go through my paper.

I have been testing the Nokia N900 for a few weeks now (thanks to WOM World/ Nokia)and I only realised how useful the phone was on that day.
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The conference venue had free Wifi access and the connection to the net over the N900 was surprisingly fast. I also found out that there were a few Twitterers attending the conference and we came up with a tag for the conference - #eacr2010. I did ultimately get to meet some of the Twitterers in person. It's interesting how social connections over the net can crossover to real life.

I had forgotten to pack my camera as well and again the N900 came to my rescue. I have to admit I am really impressed, as the results were really good. Just take a look at some of the pictures I took at Royal Holloway and I am sure you will agree as well:

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Really good pictures even in low lighting and I like the fact that it has a lens cover to protect it from scratches. Open the cover automatically puts it in camera mode.
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(BTW, The pictures of the phone were taken by another N900 as well.)

As I went home after the conference, I was thinking to myself how this wonderful device had truly saved the day.

On the downside. I hated that fact that the phone came pre-loaded with only the bare minimum software and I had to search and download apps which is standard in other phones. For example, to my annoyance I found out that it doesn't come with a voice recorder. However, I later found out about the Recaller app on the Mameo site which can also be used to record phone conversations. I would have loved to have an app that would enable us to edit documents on the N900. Documents To Go is only a document viewer and doesn't allow editing. A friend pointed out that there was another free viewer called KOffice which is totally free.

Overall, the Nokia N900 is an amazing mobile phone. I did have to do a bit of searching around and there are some great apps out there for free. I am just thinking about the full potential of this phone and I have barely scratched the surface.

2 comments:

wanluqman said...

Your photos are almost crispy clear. Are they taken using the said mobile phone? I'm going to get one but splitting mind ..

Dilip Mutum said...

Hi Wan, Yes the pics were taken using the N900. It's a great camera phone.