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The previous article in this series looked at the N810 and E90 hardware and their communications features. This time we look at GPS, applications, browsing the web and multimedia.

Just to recap, the E90 is of course a Symbian S60 3rd Edition smartphone, while the N810 is an internet tablet which runs Maemo, a Linux-based software platform. They’re both made by Nokia and share some similar features like QWERTY keyboards, large screens and built-in GPS receivers, but there are also fundamental differences in the philosophies behind their design.

GPS & Satellite Navigation

The E90’s GPS receiver finds satellites much much more quickly than the N810’s. The E90’s assisted GPS (which uses the phone network) probably helps, but even without a network connection the E90 is significantly faster. It could be that the N810’s performance will improve as new firmware updates are issued, and to be fair this is the first-ever Maemo device with GPS, but at the moment the E90 is a more practical device for navigation purposes.One thing perhaps mitigating this is the N810’s touch-based navigation interface that has on-screen buttons, which some may find easier to operate while on the move. There’s a dashboard holder included in the N810 sales package, so Nokia is clearly hoping people will fit this device in their cars.

If you’re unhappy with the built-in GPS receivers, both the N810 and E90 can use external Bluetooth GPS units instead, including unofficial units made by third party companies.The E90 features free maps through the Nokia Maps/Smart2Go service, which can be downloaded on the fly directly onto the E90 itself, or onto your PC and transferred. The N810 uses a different map service, Wayfinder, which also has free maps but distributed as separate chunks for each part of the world. You have to download the entire relevant map pack for your current area (for example Scandinavia) while you have a network connection, but you don’t need a network connection while actually using the map.As for the maps themselves, they both worked in that they tracked movement and displayed roads without a problem, but they also both had significant gaps and mistakes in their Points Of Interest data. To give a couple of glaring examples:The E90’s Nokia Maps insists that there are no cash machines at all in Finland, and the ATM category only mentions those hundreds of kilometres away in Russia.

Applications & Games
As far as bundled applications go, the E90 has far more PIM functionality, with a decent built-in calendar and appointments system which is integrated into the active standby screen. The N810 has no bundled calendar at all.Moving on to apps you install yourself, the situation gets a bit more interesting as the two devices take completely different approaches to application development.The E90 uses S60 3rd Edition applications, and S60 is generally based on the same model that all computing devices have traditionally used. The S60 platform has formed a commercial software ecosystem, where companies and individuals are encouraged to make and sell closed source software in the hope of profit. In short, people pay developers for S60 stuff, so the developers make more S60 stuff. There are some open source freeware S60 apps too, but the majority are closed source commercial releases.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/