In the latest part in my phone camera series, I put the five top camera-equipped smartphones to the test, evaluating their still photo results under a variety of scenarios (landscape, night, dim, macro, etc). Which really is the best? And will the winning phone be made in Finland? I look at the Nokia N82, N95 and N93, plus the Samsung G810 and i8510... [WARNING: Broadband essential, the article includes a fair number of example images]
Perhaps not surprising, but Nokia are really pushing the N96 this week - the really interesting Hello N96 blog has a Bluetooth video that was pushed to his N96(!) while in Charing Cross station, plus photo examples of big screen advertising.
Yes, those clever chaps at Nokia are still trying to confuse us by offering more and more overlapping PC-hosted connectivity applications. :-) Communications Center just hit 2.0, incorporating a lot of feedback from the v1.x release. The software adds to the functionality of four of the standard PC Suite modules, namely Phone Browser, Text Message Editor, Contacts Editor and Multimedia Factory. Here's the download link if you want to give it a whirl.
The UK's Gadget Show remains a respected review source, even if they don't go into quite the tech detail that AAS does... in the latest Web TV episode, Jon Bentley goes into reasonable detail on the Nokia N96, covering the improvements over the N95 while also being disappointed by the slow speed overall, by the poor Wi-Fi reception and by the lack-lustre BBC iPlayer.
Possibly my most link-packed news post ever, but.... The Phones Show 66 is now live, with a video preview of the OLED-equipped Nokia N85 and video of the 5800 XpressMusic in action (Hi-res version RSS feed). It sparked comments on YouTube too, with Paul commenting that in Japan they have phones like the SoftBank 920sc, with OLED screen, 3x optical zoom AND Xenon flash. I'm impressed. And viewer Micky turns out to be making videos of his own, prototyping a wearable N95 body-cam. And I haven't even had breakfast yet...
The upcoming Nokia N79 has now got a support site available at Nokia.com, including the full manuals and user guides in many different languages. As always this may or may not indicate an imminent release, but Nokia devices are usually released within a few weeks of their support sites appearing.
One of the cornerstones of modern social networks is the status message, “what are you doing right now,” and other similar examples. Once you join your second network, keeping these updates current is usually a mess of API accesses, or using third party services such as Ping.FM (the recommended approach). Now you can forget about typing your updates, as voice to text purveyors SpinVox announce a new service with Ping.FM to let up to 30 networks know what you're up to.
Marble Maze, from Cahoona Games, has been updated. The infuriatingly simple ball rolling game (reviewed previously here) now allows you to create your own levels in addition to the 40 that come built in to the game. This game is always one I use when demo'ing my N95 to people – the principle of tilting the phone to roll the marble is disarming, coupled with the highly addictive nature makes it an almost 'must install as soon as possible' application.
Some interesting noises from the music industry over the weekend, and this morning's Guardian ties it in with Nokia's Comes With Music (Discord Over The Phone). In short, musical artists are worried that the labels will not pass on enough of the proceeds from online music back to them. To that end, they have launched the Featured Artists Coalition. But what does this mean to the digital music landscape? Read on for my thoughts...
In an extended edition of the All About Symbian Podcast (Insight #42) we reflect on the announcements out of last week's Nokia Remix Event in London. There's some a general discussion of the tone of the event, but the meat of the podcast focuses on Nokia's first S60 touch handset, the Nokia 5800 MusicXpress, before moving on to Nokia's new Comes with Music service.
...In the UK Mobile Choice Consumer Awards, apparently. It won best phone and best smartphone, although best camera phone was also Symbian OS-powered, the awesome Samsung i8510 - of which more in an editorial tomorrow. 'Reader's choice' went to the iPhone - of course(!) Here's the full list of winners.
It seems that Russian Mobile Review impressario Eldar was also at Thursday evening's launch of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (running S60 5th Edition, etc) and he's put together an amazingly detailed set of photos and well arranged thoughts on the device (in English, thankfully), based solely on his hour or so's hands-on. Kudos. It's certainly the best 5800 preview at the moment, though doubtless Rafe is beavering away, marshalling his own impressions...
Nokia's Italian online shop currently has the SIM-free N85 listed as "in stock" with a price of 439 euros plus taxes, so presumably the handset's Europe-wide release is imminent (or it's just a mistake on the Nokia Italy site?). (Thanks to WhoUnregMe for pointing this out.)
There's a new version of the N-Gage app available for all compatible phones which (amongst other things) fixes the infamous 10,000 points bug. You can download the new version straight onto your device by opening the app, selecting "Options" and then "Check For Updates". Alternatively you can download the new version onto your PC and then install it manually, which you can do from the official website's "Get N-Gage" section. You can read more about the new version over on the official forums. (via the Official N-Gage Blog)
Only two and a half weeks until the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, then. Which promises to be the most interesting one for years, what with the Symbian Foundation and competition from RIM, Apple, Google, etc. Anyway, there's a new Flickr group set up for you to share photos taken at the show, you might want to bookmark it and contribute your own photo-finds. There will also be an official AAS photo stream from the event, as usual, of course. More details to come...
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