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Author P990 or N93?
Symbiatico
Vivaz Silver
Joined: Mar 10, 2004
Posts: 212
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Posted: 2006-05-15 07:10
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It's all about the touch screen AND the jog-dial! Once you use them, nothing less will do. It's about input and interface, not specs numbers on paper.
kinnth
P990
Joined: Mar 25, 2006
Posts: 49
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Posted: 2006-05-15 14:11
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could someone explain to me exactly what EDGE does and what it is used for.

ta
dotsis
P910
Joined: Jan 03, 2006
Posts: 149
From: here, there and everywhere.
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Posted: 2006-05-15 16:36
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kinthe..edge is the intermediate between 2g and 3g.it's not really hit off much though.better just using 3g as it's widely avalable now.

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jack77777
W810 white
Joined: Apr 11, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: uk/england.
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Posted: 2006-05-15 17:17
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get p990 so much more fun .
15% online - Sony Ericsson - "4 lyf"
Jim-bob
P990
Joined: Mar 09, 2004
Posts: 151
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Posted: 2006-05-16 00:08
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What about Nokia N800 vs P990? Seems to me that the N80 ticks all the right boxes, apart from not having a touch sensitive screen and as much battery life. Am I wrong? I kinda wish I am as I'd like to justify waiting til July
adnhk1
P990
Joined: May 23, 2002
Posts: 447
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Posted: 2006-05-16 15:09
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I believe you are refering to N80 vs P990i? Well, for one, check out the official specs between Nokia and SE:

http://www.nseries.com/nserie[....]_en_R1.html?lang=en&country=R1

http://developer.sonyericsson[....]s/phonegallery/p990/p_p990.jsp

Take note of one very important aspect of NK series of phones, including N80 which NK always fails to inform customer... FREE RAM at boot time! SE has always openly show us how much MEMORY plus RAM its flagship P series of phones have, but Nokia, they never do so until customers purchases their phones, went home only to realise it does not have enough RAM to perform as many tasks simultaneously as one had wished. The N80, from mobile reivew's forum was found to be having only 10MB at boot time. People doing normal zooming of images alone can run of of active memory very very quickly, and imagine if you install more than a few quality apps and wishes to run all simultaneously to make your life more productive, but are unable to do so due to "out or memory" messages popping up... Does one realises that N80 has an equal amount (or even lesser) active RAM than a 2.5 year old P900? :

http://forum2.mobile-review.com/showthread.php?t=44516&page=2

http://forums.mobileburn.com/showthread.php?t=15519

Battery life may be another issue one need to consider when using N80. N80 is selling at about US$600+ today in my country, and this is not cheap... one would expect a smartphone based on Symnbian OS 9.1 to be able to multitask and execute multiple applications, switching between tasks, etc etc to be a painless process. With only 10MB free active RAM at boot time, good luck to those how are serious about using their phone to its full potential...

My main reason for upgrading from P900 to P910i is also due to not enough active RAM. SE knew about this complaint from many business users and within 9 months, they released the P910i that solves this issue. With the P910i, I can have more than 15 apps running simulteneously and with P990i, one will have up to 48MB free active RAM at boot time Hope this helps.

Waka
P900
Joined: Mar 01, 2004
Posts: 74
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Posted: 2006-05-16 21:08
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That's interesting about available memory. According to here:
http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone2=1551&idPhone1=1318
the Nokia has 50MB c/w the SE's 80MB - however the Nokia comes with a 128MB memory card c/w the P990's 64MB. I guess these phones don't have the equivalent of virtual memory?! ;-p

Unless the N93 has an equivalent to the Sonys excelent jog wheel and ezitap software, I'll be staying with the Pxxx series.

W.
Jim-bob
P990
Joined: Mar 09, 2004
Posts: 151
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Posted: 2006-05-17 11:02
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I think I'll be waiting too. Mainly because my contract isn't up for renewal for some time, and therefore the delayed arrival fo the P990i doesn't inconvenience me. More importantly, as a few people have said, let's hope SE get it right first time and the wait has been put to good use.
adnhk1
P990
Joined: May 23, 2002
Posts: 447
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Posted: 2006-05-17 15:40
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Quote:

On 2006-05-16 21:08:55, Waka wrote:
That's interesting about available memory. According to here:
http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone2=1551&idPhone1=1318
the Nokia has 50MB c/w the SE's 80MB - however the Nokia comes with a 128MB memory card c/w the P990's 64MB. I guess these phones don't have the equivalent of virtual memory?! ;-p

Unless the N93 has an equivalent to the Sonys excelent jog wheel and ezitap software, I'll be staying with the Pxxx series.

W.



Hi,

it is common that people are misleaded by manufacturers claims when comes to specs, especially those who do not know in depth about technology. Perhaps I should phrase it this way:

1. Think of N80's 50MB and SE's 80MB as your PC's Hard Disk Drive, those that commonly shows 40GB/60GB/80GB, etc etc, where you would install your Windows XP and all other applications, like anti virus, firewall software, anti spyware, Microsoft Office, Internet browsers, and most imortantly to me, GAMES!, etc.

2. Now, think of the ACTIVE RAM as your PC's DRAM, those that you see DDR/DDR2 512MB, 1GB blah blah blah... These are DIE DIE needed for Windows XP to boot properly, as well as ALL those applications that you "double click" on, to startup properly.

Now think of this, can your Windows XP boot without point no. 2 above? No you can't as the moment the DRAM is plugged out of the system, your PC will not even boot up past the initial POST (the initial black screen with some words for showing system checks etc). It does not matter if I have up to 1 terabyte (i.e., 1000 Gigabyte) of hard disk drive in my PC, cos as long as I do not have the DRAM inside my PC, the PC just will not boot properly.

So, now comes the amount of DRAM a PC should have. We all knew, and I assume normal consumers would also know, that THE MORE THE MERRIER, right? So, if I can afford 2GB of DRAM to stick into my PC, I would stick them into my PC. Same goes to mobile devices, the more the available Active RAM, the merrier. Active RAM is required for applications to launch and store it's data into. This is where the difference between PC and mobile devices comes into play. On a PC, if I only have very little RAM, Windows XP knows how to "cheat" applications by making use of the hard disk drive's available space. Do a search for pagefile.sys in your PC. This is the "cheat" RAM which is actually residing on your hard disk drive that applications can make use of if your RAM is not enough. However, for a mobile device, there is no such pagefile.sys residing on your available 50MB of intermal memory, nor is it being "cleverly" made available on your external memory (You mentioned 128MB comes with N80). Hence once the miserable 10MB of the N80 is used up (and yes, ALL APPLICATIONS NEEDS TO USE THIS RAM and they use it A LOT), "Out of memory" messages will pop up, as what was witnessed on the N80 JUST BY ZOOMING INTO A PICTURE...

I hate to say this, but NK is somewhat "deceiving" their customers, and knowing a lot of these customers are not tech savvy enough to understand the difference between "internal memory (PC's hard disk drive)" and "Active RAM (PC's DDR/DDR2 RAM), they are misleading a lot of customers... SE on their website clearly states the P990i (in fact, since P800 they are already stating clearly) comes with 64MB of RAM memory and 128MB Flash memory with up to 80MB for our applications to be installed. For a quick calculation, Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3.0, plus those built-in apps that gets automatically started at boot time should take up about 20MB at boot time. This still leaves us with about 44MB of FREE ACTIVE RAM everytime the phone is booted, which is a whopping 34MB or more than 300% higher than N80...

Hope this helps.

Admins, can this be made sticky so that potential customers can read it prior to spending their hard earned $$$?
janjanman
W900 black
Joined: Mar 28, 2005
Posts: 102
From: Philippines
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Posted: 2006-05-17 16:29
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hi could anyone confirm about the dynamic memory of the n80? is it really 10mb? and how bwt the P990i?
drgopoos
P990
Joined: Dec 02, 2004
Posts: 307
From: Toronto
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Posted: 2006-05-17 19:48
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hi adnhk1,
you are absolutely right...... this is something very few people know, not only mobile users, even pc users.... i will support this to be made a sticky post...
you need to have plenty of ram to run many programs together and make the system faster and more stable

by the way my vote goes to p990, i cant live without the touch screen and more ram as well...but i doubt about the software availability ...... nokia phones have plenty of software support not seen with SE
adnhk1
P990
Joined: May 23, 2002
Posts: 447
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Posted: 2006-05-18 14:07
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Quote:

On 2006-05-17 16:29:32, janjanman wrote:
hi could anyone confirm about the dynamic memory of the n80? is it really 10mb? and how bwt the P990i?




Please read my posts again...
Menageryl
T68 gold
Joined: Aug 14, 2004
Posts: 18
From: South Africa
PM, WWW
Posted: 2006-05-20 11:05
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' adhnk1 - thanks plenty for bringing the active-RAM issue up - the very vast majority of users seem completely oblivious of this issue!
' Despite all the delays, the P990 is still the Symbian device with the most ever active-RAM... This alone (ignoring all the other highly influential aspects - hardware acceleration for Java, video, and sound - meaning huge boosts to available processing time and power too) is very indicative of the significantly more powerful (and numerous!) applications now possible on / for the device!!!
' Just think back to the most complex and powerful apps available for the P900 - a device with only 16MB active-RAM, of which only 8MB was available after boot... The P910 had a 24MB / 16MB ratio... Now the P990 has 64MB built in... Do the math, work it out, and you'll realise this device has unquestionably the most potential from an applications perspective!!!

' Bring it on! No question - I'm waiting for my P990 - nothing else will do...

' ~Moi
shaliron
K610 red
Joined: Jan 15, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: Melbourne, Australia
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Posted: 2006-05-20 11:19
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The P990 for sure. The N93 doesn't looklike a reliable phone with all those moving parts. The main reason for why you should get the P990 though is the fact that it has been in development for so long. You can trust that by the time it is released (just like all the others) that the firmware WILL be just about bug free. I have heard many reports of the N93's firmware being very buggy and the P990 will be great! The P990, even with its lower specs, is the best 'multimedia computer' that will run well.
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Super G
T68i
Joined: Mar 07, 2002
Posts: > 500
From: France
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Posted: 2006-05-20 11:54
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Quote:

On 2006-05-15 16:36:06, dotsis wrote:
kinthe..edge is the intermediate between 2g and 3g.it's not really hit off much though.better just using 3g as it's widely avalable now.



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@dotsis... I'd recommend you actually check what you're talking about before posting comments like these, because you look ridiculous.

Here is the actual figures (www.gsacom.com):

There is at the moment 151 commercial EDGE networks in 88 countries!
This is to be compared to only 108 WCDMA (3G) networks in only 47 countries...

These figures are increasing as we speak (with a faster pace for EDGE)

Europe is covered by EDGE, with the exception of Spain and Portugal...
Americas are covered by EDGE
Russia is covered by EDGE. So is Belarus, Ukraine, you-name-it
So is China (where 3G WCDMA is *not* going to happen before chicken get teeth...), India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, you-name-it.
EDGE covers Australia, New Zealand.
EDGE is spreading quickly in Africa.

www.gsacom.com

And it is now clear (if it werent earlier) that 3G will be skipped by many.


It is also interesting to note that 3G(WCDMA) operators are nearly all deploying EDGE as well in their networks.
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