Nokia recently introduced their new N-series of mobile phones, consisting of 3 models. The first, the N70 has a multimedia orientation. The N90 is more of an imaging phone. And lastly, the N91 strives to be a music phone. 
The N70 is a multi-purpose phone – its a smart phone with two cameras that also plays music. Nokia touts the photography aspect of the phone and notes both the 2 Megapixel camera for both stills and videos, as well as the front VGA camera for video conferencing. The phone comes with 35MB of memory, and has a RS-MMC card slot. Nokia also mentions the phone’s Series 60 / smartphone features including email support, web browsing and 3G features like EDGE. On the entertainment front, the N70 includes a MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player in stereo, with FM reception and Visual Radio. The N70 is relatively smallish at 109×53x22 mm and 126 grams. 
The N91 is Nokia’s new music phone. The defining feature is the on-board four Gigabyte hard disk, which can hold an impressive 3000 songs. The N91 supports the MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA file formats, and lasts for up to 12.5 hours of music playback. The device includes stereo headphones and a remote control. Interestingly, the N91 has Wi-Fi (802.11b/g!), 3G and Bluetooth connectivity. The parade of features continues with Opera-based web browsing, and all of the smartphone / productivity-type features of the N70. The N91 sizes out at 113×55x22 mm and 160g. 
And then there’s the Nokia N90. A cameraphone meant for somewhat less-than-serious photographers. The 2 Megapixel camera, the flash, the autofocus, the macro mode and the Carl Zeiss optics are all great features, but the lack of an optical zoom puts a bit of a damper on things. Photos & videos are saved with the generous 31 MB internal memory or the 64 MB RS-MMC flash card. There’s no MP3 player on the N90, but otherwise it shares most of the features on the N70 and the N91 noted above. Slide and Shoot with the Nokia N70 - Nokia press release. Nokia introduces the Nokia N91 - Nokia press release. Twist and Shoot: Nokia N90 makes its premi�re - Nokia press release.
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Appearing at #1 for the first time is Apple Computer. Wired offers its kudos for Apple’s talent and pusuit of excellence, as evidenced by the 8.2 Million iPods sold in 2004. Sales from iTunes and of all those iPods and contributed mightily to Apple’s outstanding financial performance last year. 
Dropping a point to #2 we find last year’s top dog, Google. I guess the frenetic pace of innovation as shown by Google’s desktop search, maps, movie times, and searchable TV listings, was not enough to sway the judges at Wired and save Google from this demotion. 
And moving up smartly from 6th to 3rd is Samsung Electronics. Wired makes note of the fact that Samsung’s 2004 profit was more than Sony and Panasonic and Nokia and Motorola put together. Indeed, a recent article in the New York Times states that “
Considering Samsung’s $10B profit, and its torrid pace of new product introductions in 2004, we here at Gadgetmaniac respectfully suggest that Samsung have its ranking upgraded by a notch or two. The 37 also-rans include the following companies : Amazon, Yahoo!, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Toyota, Infosys Technologies, eBay, SAP, Pixar, Cisco, IBM, Netflix, Dell, GE, Medtronic, Intel, Salesforce.com, Vodafone, Flextronics, EMC, Nvidia, Jetblue, FedEx, Monsanto, Microsoft, Nokia, Costco, Comcast, Pfizer, Li &Fung, Taiwan Semiconductor, Gen-probe, Citigroup, L-3 Communications, Ameritrade, Exelon, and, rounding out the list at number 40: BP. Gadgetmaniac commentary : this year’s Wired 40 is an interesting list. We like Genentech, Toyota, GE and Exelon; we prefer Wipro and/or Tata instead of Infosys, and ATI in place of Nvidia, and, lastly, we question IBM’s presence on the list .. despite its horde of about 40K patents. 
Of the many new features being introduced, the best is one called Spotlight .. at least according to the reviewer. Spotlight is a kind of super-search function that indexes both content and metadata in a seemingly seamless manner. Another worthy feature is Widgets (as shown in the preceding screenshot), which offers pop-up utilities for things like a flight tracker, those yellow stickies, share price monitor, calendar, language translation and a weather display. The article in the WSJ makes note of the many other nice features in Tiger, and includes the memorable phrase : “It leaves Windows XP in the dust”. I guess that makes Tiger the best OS that most of us will never use. 
Other features include a one-half inch CMOS image sensor and an SD memory card slot. 
Forbes Magazine has just reviewed the F10. They really liked the fast operation of the camera. Forbes cites the short power-up time of just 1.3 seconds .. some cameras require 5 seconds or more before the first picture can be taken. They also liked the fact that shots can be captured every 2-3 seconds, whereas many other cameras can take up to 5 seconds between shots. Another strong point is the device’s efficient power management, which yields up to 500 shots from its Li-on battery. On the flip side, they dissed the measly 16 MB card that comes with the camera, and they felt that at $500, the F10 is overpriced by a C-note. 
The Q002 is a 10.70 Megapixel 3CCD digital video camera with 12x optical zoom, supporting the HDV 1080i specification. Works with HD DVC tape cassettes, which can record at 1080i for about an hour. Price is expected to be about $5,300USD . 
The recently announced Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 digital camera has just been reviewed by Digital Photography Review, and seems to have made it to the top of their ‘Highly Recommended’ list. DPR praises the camera with the words : “There is so much to like here – and so little to complain about “. The Lumix DMC-FZ5 is a 5 Megapixel camera with a 12x optical zoom and optical image stabilisation. The review itself goes into details of the body, design, operation, timing and compares the DMC-FZ5 to various similarly-spec’d cameras. The good points of the FZ5 include :
Computerworld calls SGH-i300 the coolest of the new offerings from Samsung, and praises the generous capacity, describing it as “offering more storage space than any other phone on the market”. Computerworld also likes the fact the the i300 delivers generous video support (in the form of MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media file formats) as well as good audio support (viz. MP3, Windows Media Audio, AAC, AACplus and Ogg file). Samsung introduced their SGH-i300 cell phone at CeBIT 2005, and they describe it as the world’s first 3GB HDD embedded music smartphone. Other features of the i300 include GSM /GPRS, 1.3 Megapixel Camera with flash, QVGA display, stereo speakers plus Bluetooth / IrDA / USB … all in all, a good set of specs. 
Panasonic’s new SV-SD100V is an MP3 player with a four-line OLED display; has an FM tuner; plays MP3, AAC, WMA formats from an SD card. The device weighs 40 grams with dimensions of 43×43x18 mm. 
We made note of Samsung’s 5 Megapixel camera phone, the SCH-S250, 
However, indoors, or in cloudy and dull lighting, some images from the SCH-S250 looked greenish or drab. MobileBurn attributes this quality problem to the inadequate white balance system, and concludes by suggesting that Samsung update the firmware in the camera. 
