Watching movies on mobiles, particularly the N93

Having heard repeatedly that the most watchable mobile content is between two to three minutes long and shot specifically for mobile, I was extremely sceptical about watching a full-length film. And let’s not have the Tom Cruise discussion.

Vic Keegan wrote about Slingbox this week and we were comparing notes about our viewing experiences on mobiles. He said the picture quality was better than the reception he gets at home and it did look pretty good on his Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 73. But I have to say the picture quality on that N93 was really quite amazing, and Mi:3 was a well chosen, fast-moving, big explosions kind of film that showed it off well. It’s only a 2.4" screen but don’t underestimate how quickly your mind adjusts to a different screen size once you get involved in something. The picture was super crisp and super slick – a world away from the pixel-heavy clunky graphics we’re used to.

Watching the film on the go was a problem if I had to just break off and look up at the the train times screen, for example, purely because you have to take your eyes off the screen. That’s where audio has the advantage. But I don’t think chapterising the content would have helped particularly; someone had the foresight to allow you to restart the film from where you left off, thankfully. I should add I always watched this with headphones on, before I get an email from Ken.

Source: Organ Grinder

Ding! Idea just popped into my head. Why have an internet tablet? Why not rename it something else and make it literally do everything. I’m sorry you can take your 2.4 inch screen and … yea let me shut my mouth. The 770 is brilliant enough as it is, imagine a version that had a custom media player application. Automatically downloaded podcasts, let you surf the net, throw a 40gb hd in there to store movies and what not. It would be brilliant! I mean if you think about it that’s all we really use our computers for: consuming media, browsing the web, and communicating. A Nokia 770 with a powerful media player application, just port VLC please, would be amazing! Improve the hand writing recognition and write a half way decent PIM and Notes manager and you’ll see this thing selling like mad on college campuses. Oh man I really need to sit down and talk with the guys behind the Nokia Internet Tablet, I have ideas galore! I would love to interview them, dammit!