It's been some time now since launch, so how well is the Ovi Store doing for Nokia? Is it providing enough applications for end users and a good user experience? Are developers knocking down the web-doors to get listed in the store? Or is it all being hushed up because it's not gaining any mind share at all? I wonder aloud what's going on...
The two big hardware issues which have plagued owners of the first N97 devices off the production line are, of course, the easily-scratched camera glass cover and the very poor GPS reception. Having ordered fixes for both from my local service centre a while ago, I finally had them attend to each and managed to get quite a bit more information for the rest of us in the process. Read on...
If you're a Symbian OS nut but are sorely tempted to take a long hard look at the Nokia N900 and its Maemo 5 operating system, then head on over today to All About Maemo, our new sister site - why not bookmark it or sign up to RSS news updates? There's also the Twitter account @allaboutmaemo to 'follow'. Finally, with the Maemo Summit happening today (Rafe's in attendance), there's live blogging going on throughout the day (also embedded below). Keep up!
Following the success of its UIQ version, DreamSpring has launched DreamConnect, its all-in Contact Manager, for S60 5th Edition. There are quotes from the press release below, but essentially you get hierarchical sub-categories, business card display and 'KeyMatch', which replaces the virtual keyboard on 5th edition smartphones with a finger friendly, compact quick-matching keypad.
Thanks to Micky Aldridge for putting together a great summary of the links you'll need in following up on a badly scratched Nokia N97 camera glass cover. Notable is that he includes an official statement from Nokia on the subject - at least, you'll have something you can now print out and hand over when turning up at the local Service Centre?
You'll remember my original (somewhat lengthy) video tour around Nokia's test centre in Farnborough last year? Well, Engadget Mobile's Chris Ziegler had a similar tour of a similar facility in San Diego this week and his musical four minute summary is embedded below. The tests are the same, the respect is the same, but the fun here is in spotting the different variety of handsets being tortured. Video below.
The single biggest form factor for true smartphones in Western Europe in the last five years has arguably been that of the 'Communicator', a term coined by Nokia for its 9000 series, initially running on GeOS and then on Symbian OS 6 and (later) Symbian OS 7 with the likes of the 9500 and (here) the 9300i. Then came the oddball E90 and a slightly more mainstream E75, while Nokia's Nseries picked up some similar action in the shape of the N97. But how do they compare, head to head? Is there a true modern day successor to the Psions and Nokia 9210s of old?
Just live on the interwebs is Phones Show Chat 7 (the companion audio chat based around my video podcast), in which Tim Salmon and I talk about the Nokia 5730's keypad, the HTC HD2 and the Nokia N900 (and other large screen devices), comments on Symbian's place in world marketshare, plus we specify and design our own ultimate smartphone. Available also as a RSS feed and iTunes podcast.
The rather hotly-anticipated (and now slightly late!) Nokia E72 is now officially available for pre-order from the Nokia online shops. Here in the UK it's £359 including VAT. The E72 improves on the bestselling E71 with a better camera, new software pack (including more Ovi services built-in, plus the full editing version of Quickoffice 6 Premier) and optical trackpad.
And now, a look at two extremes of the modern web and the services that we all use. There are big companies we like, there are small companies we adore. But what can the megacorps lea rn from the internet start-ups? One for me to discuss in more detail, bringing in examples from the likes of Spotify, Last.FM, Dopplr, Ovi, Palm and Twango.
There's a bumper Carnival of the Mobilists over at VoIP Survivor today, well worth scanning over, there's something for everyone in Carnival 194 - your wind-down Tuesday reading?
Available for quite a few S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition phones, Vlingo promises web searching, email, text and Facebook status updates, all with voice-to-text speech recognition. But how well does it work in practice? Not perfectly, it has to be said, but it's close enough to make it worth trying out with your voice and in your own use case. Here's my Vlingo review.
Over at N97 Fanatics, Kyron's put up a lovely tech walkthrough of the improvements in the Nokia N97's firmware for the upcoming v20 release. Though there are a few things he wasn't allowed to mention, he does cover memory, performance and stability issues.
In the best traditions of the swinging 1940's hero with a Fedora, Dirk Dagger is back on the N-Gage in “Dirk Dagger and the Nuclear Zeppelin.” Ewan reviews this over on our OviGaming.com and concludes that, while 'on rails', it still provides quality entertainment for casual gamers.
Nokia's UK Flagship store on Oxford Street has announced on Twitter that they'll be selling the Nokia N97 mini in store from Friday October 23rd... just in time for everyone arriving in the capital for the Symbian Exchange and Exposition on the 27th and 28th! [Update: Not necessarily....]
