Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

A forwarded email and a phone call later, I'm the owner—or rather lendee for about a week—of a Nokia N80. Since June when I lost my 7610 in Seattle, I've been using the Nokia N70, which has a really great camera for both stills and video, and a soft, friendly keypad. (I do a lot of text messaging these days.) Initial impressions of the N80 are:

• the keypad is nice, and the slider protects from accidental phone calls (the phone, when sliding closed, asks whether to lock the keypad), but I'm used to the layout feel of the N70, so I don't like the N80's as much
• S60 3rd edition looks nicer than 2nd edition, which runs on my N70
• the ringtones—I only have two, both of which are MP3s: Aaliyah's "(Outro) Came to Give Love" and Cut Copy's "Future"—sound great, possibly better than my N70, but that may just be the honeymoon one grants when using a new product
• the blue blinking light is annoying when the phone is sitting next to my computer, acting almost like a beacon, reminding me that the phone is still there
• the photos I've taken with the N80 so far aren't as good as I thought they'd be with a 3 megapixel camera, but I like the camera button when holding the phone in "landscape", and maybe I just need to fiddle with some settings

The wifi is pretty neat, as I spent about an hour surfing around while laying in bed, using Opera Mini which this site looks okay in, but the mobile version looks just about right in. Wifi on my phone is pointless other than to upload photos using Shozu, since if I'm at a place that has wifi I probably already have my laptop with me. The ease with which I can upload photos and, potentially, stream live video makes me wish for an inexpensive unlimited mobile data plan even more.

See also: a long review by Zack Smith of the N80 with photos of the phone and photos taken by the phone; who should and shouldn't get an N80.

Couple the N80 I have with an inexpensive Bluetooth GPS device, and I could add an order of magnitude more metadata to my SkyTrain walks (and serve that metadata out using GeoRSS, which I'm already experimenting with). Basically it would enable me to document my world in a way that lets others re-document it as they see it. Rukavina is doing some interesting things mapping withi his Nokia N70, and the only way I can learn about this stuff is by doing it. All theoretical at this point, since I don't have the tools necessary. lets others re-document it as they see it.

(I excised the above paragraph from my brief review of the Nokia N80 because it didn't really seem to fit. Pasting it in here in case I need to point to/elaborate on it later.)