Compare: Apple iPhone 3GS VS Nokia's N97

What's in a Nokia 5530 XpressMusic?

The EDGE Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, like the aforementioned 5800, comes with a touchscreen display with tactile feedback sporting Contacts Bar (allowing quick access to people you keep in contact the most) as well as 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and microSD card slot (a 4GB microSD card being bundled with the phone).

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Specifications:

• Dimensions: 104 x 49 x 13 mm

• Weight: 107 g

• Display: 2.9 inch widescreen (640 x 360 pixels) with up to 16 million colors

• Camera: 3.2 megapixels with autofocus and LED flash

• Video capture: widescreen 640x 360 px up to 30 frames-per-second

• Memory: Up to 70Mb phone memory with 4GB in-box MicroSD card, supports up to 16GB MicroSD memory

• Connectivity: High speed MicroUSB connector, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, Bluetooth 2.0

• Data connectivity: GPRS/EDGE, WLAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g)

• Talk time: Up to 4.9 hours

• Standby time: Up to 14 days

• Music playback: Up to 27 hours

• Video playback: Up to 7.3 hours

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Key Features:

• Touch-screen responsiveness gives tactile feedback and the fastest, most intuitive access to all the phone, web and multimedia features crammed inside - including music, video, gaming, social networking and messaging.

• Contacts carousel - one-touch access to 20 favorite contacts, each displaying their most recent emails, calls or social media updates and a thumbnail pic chosen by you.

• Media Bar pops-up to give quick access to instant messaging like Windows Live Messenger, on-board videos or YouTube, access to other sharing sites like Ovi Share, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, VOX - or just to browse the web.

• Music features include a world-class quality music player for excellent audio quality, FM radio, stereo speakers with surround sound, dedicated full touch music keys, 4GB built-in storage expandable to 16GB for up to 12,000 songs with album art.

• Listen to music - plug in the superb Nokia Stereo Headset WH-205 that comes in the box, and features a great tangle-free lead, or plug your choice of headphones into the standard 3.5mm headphone jack, or listen over Bluetooth stereo audio.

• Synchronize and manage music with Nokia Music Store, upload and download tracks via WLAN, Bluetooth or MicroUSB. Manage playlists on the go, or via PC with Nokia Ovi Suite

• 2.9-inch brilliant widescreen with up 16 million colors brings videos, album art, photos and phone menus vividly to life.

• Accelerometer automatically switches between landscape and portrait format whether you want use the phone, browse the web, watch a video or play games.

• 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus for snapping good quality photos and videos.

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Why is Nokia's N97 smartphone worth 700 USD?

"The reason the price of the N97 is still so high is that Nokia is not selling it through any particular carrier. Instead it will be sold to U.S. customers in Nokia flagship stores in New York and Chicago as well as online...

For the Apple iPhone 3G S and Palm Pre, however, consumers must sign a two-year contract to get the discounted prices. These phones are exclusive to one carrier. Subscribers are also charged an early cancellation fee if they terminate their contract before it ends..."

To read more on this, click here.

Skyfire Lets Fly With Speedier Mobile Browser

Skyfire stirred up the smartphone world further on Wednesday with the release of a full 1.0 version of its mobile Web browser.

More than 1 million mobile phone users have installed and used the beta version of the browser over the past five months, according to company officials.

The new browser supports Windows Mobile(versions 5 and 6), as well as Symbian with Nokia's platform. A new version that also supports BlackBerry platform may be released in beta form soon.

"We just launched a private closed alpha version of the browser for BlackBerry devices. We are working towards a public beta this summer," Tracy DeMiroz, vice president of marketing for Skyfire, told TechNewsWorld.

Feature Rich

Skyfire's full-function Web browser for mobile phones supports popular Web standards and plug-ins such as Flash 10, Silverlight 2, Ajax and JavaScript, DeMiroz said.

Its ability to provide users with a means to view the rich media on Web sites from their smartphones may give Skyfire an edge. The browser lets users watch any Web video and live event on a small-screen mobile phone.

Skyfire users can customize their start pages with RSS feeds from their favorite Web sites. They can also integrate their Facebook and Twitter accounts to import status updates and tweets and easily publish their status to these networks with a single click.

What's New

The architecture stayed the same from the beta to the full first release version, according to DeMiroz. As they built version 1.0, however, developers focused on two things: user experience and speed.

Power optimization and search functions were also improved from the beta release.

"What is unique is that the complexity of processing the Web page takes place on our servers. That's how we get the faster performance and quicker page loads. That's how we can render the full Web page on the mobile phone," said DeMiroz.

Job One: Speed

Having previously delivered rich media and text readability on a small screen, the focus of the latest release was to help users get to content they want more quickly, added DeMiroz.

For example, users can enter a search term or Web site location while Skyfire is connecting to the network, she noted. After a Web page loads, the user can scroll and zoom; the experience is much like using an iPhone. Also, users can click on links on the first page load without having to zoom first.

"People say that we give an iPhone-like browser experience on other platforms," said DeMiroz. "We actually take that a step further by supporting Flash 10. Many Web sites are built with Flash and Ajax, and the complexity of the Web continues to grow."
Big Deal?

Though Skyfire joins the likes of Opera Software, which has offered a mobile browser for years, and Mozilla, whose Fennec mobile browser is just beginning to get off the ground, it remains to be seen whether an impending mobile browser battle will be anywhere near as fiery as the fight for desktop supremacy.

"My first response is, better than what browser? Especially with handsets, you have multiple browser functionality already," Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist for In-Stat, told TechNewsWorld.

Many applications running on smartphones can access the Internet. While these apps are usually not general browsers that people will use to surf the Web and look at various sites, most people do not use their mobile phones for the same kind of surfing they'd do on a desktop. Instead, they use very specific application functionalities that are tied to the Internet in some way, he explained.

"So it begs the question: OK, is it really that important? I have several browsers on my various mobile phones, including Opera. Surfing on most cellphones still is not a very pleasant experience," he argued.

(by Jack M. Germain of TechNewsWorld)