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(*) sub-title: “Connected Holidays (with the N91)”

Back from a 2-week holiday… time flies… just realizing it’s the end of the week… and I haven’t blogged yet (!) … while there are so many interesting things happening to write about…

Before I left with my family and some friends to enjoy The Emporada Triangle I managed to buy the Nokia N91, the phone David Williams from Nokia demonstrated to me in November last year in London and which has been described in the blogosphere as the iPod killer.

Regulars of m-trends know about my passion for music-on-the-move and I had the pleasure to experience the Apple iPod 40Gb for over a year until it crashed unluckily and unreparable, too bad for such a solid music device. I decided to wait for the first real music-phone, it came later then expected but it has been worth the wait.

Apart from some adress book sync problems I managed to counter quickly thanks to Justin’s post and some Mac hacks here, my whole experience with the N91 has been just brilliant!

The first thing that impressed me was the quality of the sound watching a Real Player video… impressive. I added some 500 of my favourite tunes to the 4Gb harddrive, synchronised from my iTunes library and created new playlists on the fly while I connected the device to a hi-fi stereo… this is the first phone I know of with whom you can create instant parties everywhere, anytime I have been writing before on my doubts how to scroll big music libraries without a scroll wheel (as the ipod) but this doubt vanished completely after the first use.

The rest of the HD space I used mainly to download some podcasts with the Nokia Podcasting Application, I also installed Shozu (probably one of the best mobile apps around!) to upload some holiday pics with a click to Flickr.

Our host had a wi-fi connection in the house so I could browse the mobile web the first time for free (!) The latest Nokia Web Browser for S60 is probably the best I have experienced on a phone, with it’s zooming capabilities you can ‘browse’ a webpage the way you want it. The same browser lets you subscribe and store your favourite feeds; I can tell you I haven’t missed a thing on the news side though I had planned to disconnect completely for at least a couple of days

I could perfectly browse my MyStrands Mobile account, I had some problems though listening to the Real Player audio previews due to some tough operator proxy settings. I read Justin Oberman selected my Connecting Cultures through Music article as Post of the Week of his Carnival of the Mobilists #41 hosting. I’ll accept the invitation for the brownies, Paula! I also installed the Free Mobilists’ Mobile RSS Reader package so I stayed tuned on my mobilists friends’ feeds, nicely bundled.

I wouldn’t type loads of email with that phone – there are other models for that, like the BlackBerry killer, but I could easily configure my regular email account and check my mails once in a while. I read Caroline launched the Wireless Industry Partnership and she informed me the 2nd CTIA Gathering of the Mobilists was fully booked for the 2nd time, great!

Well, this is basically a sum-up of the apps I used the most upto now, there’s still lots to discover – oh that SIP Client – and Visual Radio, no stations avilable yet in Catalonia… but too much to mention in one post, so I will have to update you on more experiences I guess…

So, what has this article to do with my title? Simply, it looks much more obvious that Nokia can add now easily more music features and storage to it’s phones than seeing Apple creating all those phone features to the iPod…

And oh btw: one of the features I appreciate the most is the ‘one touch button’ to switch from music listening to an incoming call and the ability to create a ringtone from any song in my library. You won’t get bored with this phone, Nokia is listening to it’s users… Mobile 2.0 is definately here… Driewerf hoera!

… Then he came home and did a Phone Software Update… better get used to it!