Two Gadgets And A Foreign Country
I am back to Lebanon, after my 4-day trip to Jordan. Four days of psychological rest and physical pain, lack of sleep, sun burns, neck stiffness, feet swelling, coughs and running nose, and sand filled shoes. Yet four days during which I had the time of my life! I am working on a day by day report on Dotsisx but here I will just explain my gadget usage and how the N95-1 and the N93i helped through my short stay in Jordan.
When I first announced to you my trip, I explained how I had prepared myself and what gadgets and accessories I was taking with me. Now that it’s all over, I think I made the right choice with every single item I took. The equipment that I took helped me take 460 pictures (plus 116 that got deleted somehow from the N93i) as well as 53 videos. I am astonished!
Snapping the moment
As I said, I took a grand total of 576 pictures, 385 of which with the N95-1. I had left Beirut with the decision that the N95 would be my main photo device, and it was. It took landscapes that I consider worthy of being postcards, it captured every single thing I threw at it. I don’t think of myself as a good photographer, but I did my best. With a 2GB empty microSD card, I had more than enough place to store all these pics. The N95 also came to good use in the moving bus. The whole trip is not only about the places you are going to, but also about the ways you use to get there. Jordan is a land of landscapes and empty horizons, something I would definitely not like if I lived there, but something I did enjoy for the short time I was there: I like cities! I wanted to capture these horizons, these areas of nothingness, and with the Sports mode on, I was able to snap away like it’s nobody’s business. My friends were all astonished that I was able to pull some great photos from a 100kmph moving bus, I had to show them the Sports mode, and then they all discovered they had it in their digital cameras.
Without a Sports mode, the N93i was pretty much useless in the bus, but it did come useful for times when optical zoom was needed. I also used it from time to time, whenever I felt the N95-1 screaming out of battery agony. Pictures came out pretty decent, and I’m very pleased that I took it with me.
Capturing the real life
When it comes to video, I had previously decided that I was going to use the N93i as my main video recorder. It was a wise decision because it helped me spare battery life as well as storage on the N95. The one thing that really annoyed me about it all was the fact that the N93i doesn’t use the optical zoom when in video mode, correct me if I’m wrong. That feature would’ve been dead useful if it was implemented. I mean what’s the point of having an optical zoom and a good video capturing device if you can’t combine both?
The N95-1 was used for video during the last day, in Jerash, when the 1GB miniSD card on the N93i gave me the “memory full” warning.
Storing & Lasting
The two complaints I heard over and over from every single person on the tour with me were these “oh my camera battery is dead again!” and “I ran out of memory! I need to delete some photos”. I was glad to look at them, smile then continue walking and shooting away with my Nokias.
Storage was never an issue, until the last day, as I previously said, when the 1GB card on the N93i got filled. I guess most of the people on the tour only came with a 512MB or a 1GB card. I had a grand total of 5GB at my disposal, if I needed to, so I was the only one able to make it through the trip without having to haunt down a computer shop to get my pics on a CD, or to delete even one picture (the 116 pics that were deleted from the N93i were by mistake, and I still don’t know when and how that happened).
Concerning battery life, having two devices made the lack of the Proporta charger bearable. Each one of the 4 days was a constant battle against those little bars, but I was proud to come home every day still sporting 1 battery bar on the N95 and a little bit more on the N93i. With an average of more than 140 pictures and 12 videos per day, this is a very good result I think. And most importantly I didn’t have to haunt down the Jordanian shops looking for AA batteries or give up on a nice shot because of the lack of juice.
Demonstrating
The N95 captures were demonstrated on the device itself, each night in the hotel, after a little bit of charging, whereas with a TV-out cable the N93i videos were demonstrated on the TV in the hotel room. It was a personal decision to not take the N95’s tv-out cable, because it would suck up battery and I only had a couple of hours each day to recharge both devices on one charger. With more battery juice on the N93i, I was also able to twist it to video viewing mode, and play the videos on the device itself sometimes, when in the bus.
Connecting with the world
Both the N95 and the N93i have WiFi, and I was fortunate enough that the one club that we went to on Friday and Sunday had a free WiFi spot. I was able to check my email on the N95, I wasted time trying to get Shozu to work (but between setting it to work even while roaming and getting it to recognize my destinations, it didn’t work all that well). I also catched on some RSS, and by some I mean less than 1% of my total. I came back to find more than 2100 items awaiting me. This is due to the fact that I was near a WiFi spot for 2 hours during 4 days, which is hardly enough to check on email. One more thing I did was use Scribe to write down a quick post and update here. It was very easy to use and I was happy with the convenience it provided.
As for the N93i, it spent its online time jumping between my friends, who were checking their mail, doing some instant messaging, as well as getting some Facebook follow-up. My friend was even able to use it to continue her business on the “Friends for sale” application.
Miscellaneous uses
With a 2GB microSD card filled with music to the last byte, the N95 was my main music player during the trip, although I didn’t have much time to make use of it. The N93i with its great reflective cover screen made good use as a mirror. Yup, you read that right, it was always there, hanging from my neck, which made it the mirror I (and a couple of my friends) always used.
Well, this is about it, I’m in the process of uploading some pictures to my Flickr and my Share on Ovi accounts (although with some trouble). Here are some of my favorite pictures amongst the ones I uploaded so far (click on them to enlarge).
Great Rita you r back after the tour,while I’m just checking the sites as a habit n spot the last photo of water,wow its superb!But didn’t read your post yet.Just came home after 400km continues ride(I recorded it on Sports tracker)and I’m damn tired,So will come back to read this tomo.
@Ravindra, to be honest with you, I really like the first one too, with that tree getting out of the rocks in Petra, with no other green leaf around, it was surprising to see it there. Plus the rocks, the sun, the clouds, everything is perfect
send some of your photos to above for posting with comments.
Great post - here are some more tips on using your N95 while traveling - did you use navigation at all? - would be most interested to hear your experiences with A-GPS data tariffs etc.
Chris, I didn’t try the navigation on the N95 since we were on a bus tour, and we pretty much had no need whatsoever to check the roads. Plus there are no Jordan maps available, be it on Google Maps or on Nokia Maps, so it would’ve been basically useless to use the GPS and drain more battery life out of my N95.
Mar 27th, 2008 at 7:24 am
[...] the trip she made great use of her N95 (as well an an N93i) to take plenty of photos and video. She loved that she never ran [...]