Two OMAP 3430 Phones: Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid
by Brian Klug on June 10, 2010 9:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- N900
- Maemo
- Motorola Droid
- Droid
- MeeGo
- Android
- Mobile
Speakerphones: A New Test
A huge contributing factor for a lot of smartphone shoppers is how loud the smartphone's speaker goes. Rather than subject you to objective cricisms that really are just a measure of how well my hearing is, we're going to report speakerphone volume.
To do this, I place a call to the local ASOS automated weather service (which plays a continual report of the weather in an emotionless computerized voice) on the speakerphone at maximum volume. I then use an Extech USB sound level datalogger connected to my computer and collect data until the call hangs up automatically, usually one to two minutes, and take the average. Unfortunately I lack an anechoic chamber, so ambient noise level was a somewhat loud 51.8 dBA.
The microphone is 6 inches above the smartphone, display side up.
We can see that the N900 is the loudest of the bunch, likely thanks in part to the dual speakerphone setup which is along the sides of the phone. It's an excellent design that means volume is the same face up and face down. Both the HTC Droid Incredible and Motorola Droid put the speakerphone on the bottom of the device, though they're equally loud here.
The iPhone 3GS puts the speakerphone at the bottom of the device, giving it good face up and face down performance, but it's still measureably quieter than the bunch. I'm going to have another article soon with some other interesting iPhone specific findings...
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tarunactivity - Thursday, June 10, 2010 - link
a notable omission:The FM receiver on the N900 requires Bluetooth to be switched on. So if you want FM, you need to plugin your earphones + enable bluetooth.
Kind of counter productive , if you ask me,and surely a waste of power.
Brian Klug - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Ahh, you're totally right. I think I glossed over that because I already had Bluetooth on, but it makes sense now since the FM radio is on that same piece of silicon.I wonder how much of a difference it makes on battery - had it disabled for those other tests of course.
-Brian Klug
asdasd246246 - Thursday, June 10, 2010 - link
I'm sure the Nokia has sweet hardware, but it's still all plastic..Plastic screen that will scratch the first 10 minutes you own it, and a friend has a similar model without a keyboard, and the plasticness is so horrible I shudder.. -_-
legoman666 - Thursday, June 10, 2010 - link
I've had the N900 since last November. No screen protector, no case. Not 1 scratch. So speak for yourself, maybe you ought to put your phone in a separate pocket as your keys.legoman666 - Thursday, June 10, 2010 - link
back: http://imgur.com/tf6RE.jpgfront: http://imgur.com/XDsyI.jpg
akse - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
The case is somewhat plastic yeah.. but it hasn't really bothered me so much. I have only a few tiny tiny scratches on the screen, you can only spot them by mirroring a clean screen against bright light.At the back I have a few bigger scratches because the phone fell on concrete..
Calin - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
I have a 1200-series Nokia phone, which I keep in the same pocket as the keys, and the display is in a serviceable condition after more than two years of abusearnavvdesai - Thursday, June 10, 2010 - link
Actually, the Symbian OS- Nokia's No.1 Smartphone OS is more open with entire OS(including the core APIs) being Open Source. Symbian is more open than Android.Talcite - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
That's only true for symbian^3 and newer OSes. Only the Nokia N8 is currently shipping S^3 I believe.You should also mention that the Maemo 5 OS has many binary packages to get all the cellular hardware and PowerVR GPU working.
Anyways, it definitely has more support for the FOSS community than android though as far as I know. You're free to flash your own ROMs without needing to root it and you don't need to do weird stuff with java VMs. Just a simple recompile for ARM and support for Qt I think.
teohhanhui - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Nokia N8 is still far from "currently shipping"...