As regular readers know I am checking out the Nokia N90 and N70 as part of the Nokia Nseries Blogger Relations program and am discovering how powerful these devices really can be as I dig deeper and deeper into what is available on the device and through 3rd parties. I knew the N90 did an incredible job with photos and videos I took on the device and then finally thought about putting videos I convert from DVDs (I use DVD to Pocket PC/Palm/PSP for easy ripping) onto the N90 or N70. I found that I could take AVI formatted movies and simply use the Nokia PC Suite to get it into .3gp format. I took a 344MB AVI file of Pirates of the Caribbean and the PC Suite software churned out an 81MB .3gp file that plays like a champ on the Nokia N90. While viewing isn’t as great as it is on my PSP, it is nice to know I can do this on the device and save having to take multiple devices on trips.
I was also sent a Nokia Bluetooth GPS accessory to evaluate with the N70 and started using the Wayfinder software and the GPS yesterday in the van ride on the way home. I was very impressed with the ability to track and direct me with voice navigation without having to manually load a single map on the device. I am used to having to preplan all my trips and load maps onto external storage cards in the hope that I have the map for the area I am traveling. It was awesome to just get connected to the GPS and my T-Mobile data plan and have the maps load as needed. This is the way navigation should be on mobile devices and I am really starting to enjoy using these Nokia devices more and more. The only issue I ran into yesterday was the occasional apparent loss of connection between the N70 and the GPS unit where I would have to select to disconnect and then reconnect to get the signal back. I plan on trying my Pharos and CoPilot GPS units with the N70 and Wayfinder to see if the Nokia GPS unit is the issue here.