Ewan back-fills our review section with a detailed look at the third major product in one of his specialist categories: live video streaming. Kyte.TV Mobile Producer impresses from the start and in some ways is the most polished of the three (Kyte, Qix, Flixwagon). [Gentle warning: viewing this review will require you to get up close and personal with Mr Spence.... :-) ]
Having multiple 'tabs' open in a browser is something we take for granted on a desktop computer. And it's not unknown on other handhelds. But Nokia has traditionally tried to discourage people from using multiple browser windows on S60 phones. Is this justified and what's the easiest way to create and use extra windows in Web?
If you've been following the saga of Nokia's new next-gen email system, note that there's a whole new shiny beta of Nokia Email available, writes the Beta Labs team. There's more localisation, wider compatibility and plenty of minor bug fixes and detailed improvements. There still seem to be some issues regarding Google services though - indeed, the very Email home page doesn't render at all in Chrome, which didn't bode well for me.... In other news, Ovi Share has added a decent Map View so that you can see all your photos in a channel and where they were taken in a single glance.
The BBC have kindly responded to posts about iPlayer for S60, claiming that they only support the N96 because of the better way it handles passing an Internet connection through from browser to RealPlayer - and yet Nick Anstee reports that the N96's RealPlayer setup is the same as on other S60 devices, in that you have to manually pick a streaming access point in RealPlayer's settings. Comments welcome if you can shed any light on this confusing situation.
You may remember my own four part article series looking at connecting an S60 phone to an Apple Mac? Symbian Guru's Dotsisx has written up her own experiences along similar lines and with similar 'Nokia, must do better' conclusions, here (part 1) and here (part 2).
Somewhat annoyingly (for those of us outside the country), Italy seems to be the very earliest recipients of production Nokia N85s - here, p@sco brings us a traditional unboxing and test photos. See also Rafe's N85 hands-on for more on what makes this device special.
Hot off the press, the Nokia E90 has had another big firmware update, to v300.34.84. There's now Maps 2.0 in the firmware, plus many other improvements. Changelog below. [Update: looks like this new release knocks out Blackberry support. If this is important to you then don't upgrade!]
Kudos to neois over on Forum Nokia for producing a layman's illustrated guide to S60 5th Edition, looking at it from the point of view of a S60 3rd Edition user. If a picture's worth 1000 words, then this is a veritable thesis.
Over on All About N-Gage we've had various news items over the past few days, including confirmation from Nokia that game transfers ARE still possible through customer service (despite the misinformed words of a few service reps recently), there's been an updated version of the game Pro Series Golf to fix compatibility problems with the updated N-Gage app (and it also now works on the 5320), and we've had a bit of a nostalgic wallow as it's five years since the original gen N-Gage launched.
The EEE PC portable computer range has received a lot of coverage over the past year partly due to its low price but also partly due to its small size. How does Asus' minilaptop compare to Nokia's microlaptop, the E90 Communicator? All About Symbian's Tzer2 is about to find out, in an article with somewhat predictable outcome but plenty of interesting insights along the way, including Download! being held up as a relatively good example of how to do things - for a change.
While the desktop computers got their 'browser war' in the nineties, it never really took off in the mobile space. Not that we're restricted to one browser - Opera, Skyfire, WebCore/Safari and various proxy powered java browsers are all available to us – it's just that there was never a bloodbath or legal threats. Anyway, Mozilla may be joining the browser party sooner than we think, according to reports in The Mercury News (via MoCoNews).
Although nothing's been officially announced yet, I've noticed that both Google Docs and Google News have had their mobile sites overhauled recently. Some screenshots below, including WYSIWYG views of documents and spreadsheets.
Well done to Ricky Cadden for putting together a nice little 'how to' on using Contact groups over at Symbian Guru, including practical examples of why they're useful.
Nick Anstee reports that there's a new firmware, v11.101, available through Nokia Software Update, for the N96. (Product code 0568238, at least). He's encountered problems though. Nick will comment below on changes and status of his device!
In which I explain perhaps the all round best way to keep your data safe and your disruption to a minimum when it comes to repair, replacement or firmware upgrade time. I also propose it as a possible way to restore operation to a 'broken' phone. Comments welcome if you've lived or died by a variety of backup and restore procedures. Can you add to this feature?
NS-Basic, the Palm OS-sourced BASIC language toolkit which has recently been ported to work under StyleTap on S60 and UIQ, has been significantly reduced in price, apparently to attract hobbyist developers rather than just corporates. The new entry price is $99 (about £50) and the 'Pro' version (which includes things like proper application signing) is down from $700 to $300 (£150). Still quite a lot of money, but hopefully now practical for a lot more people. For examples of what a StyleTap-hosted NS Basic application looks like, see RMR Software's S60 catalog.
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