Nokia today announced that it has reached the mile stone of one million activated Ovi Mail accounts in just over six months. Of these accounts 650,000 have been created on a mobile device. Nokia says Ovi Mail 'is quickly establishing itself as the email account for the developing world', underlining that, with Ovi Mail, people can get their first email address, set up and manage email entirely on their phone, without any need for a PC.
It's August and it's the time of year when Ewan Spence disappears into the caverns of Edinburgh to report for his Fringe podcast - and we do like to load him up with something he hasn't seen before and ask him to road test it properly. This year it's the Nokia N97 and embedded below is the second of his reports, covering the N97's keyboard and camera. Comments welcome, as usual, along with any questions for the bearded one!
Where is North? Can your phone tell you? Yes, if it's an N97 with a compass app. But should you bother, asks Ewan, in his review of N97Compass? Predictably something of a luddite, he opts instead for a plastic compass and paper map! Ewan does make some good points about the irritating need for calibration and the bare bones nature of the utility though. And note that the free Ovi Maps 3 also shows directional information if you're zoomed into your current position, etc.
The Nokia E75 has been slowly but surely working its way into the hearts and minds of the All About Symbian team during 2009. Here's my real world, long term Nokia E75 review - what has been outstanding and what has been a problem? Of note is that the E75 was my only device for my recent holiday, i.e. it had to do absolutely everything - how did it cope under pressure?
Over on AAS's sister site Ovi Gaming, we've been continuing our review of Ovi Store games available for Symbian devices. Our latest batch of reviews includes five titles, an incredible three of which have won our Recommended award: slick arcade game Bubble Popper Deluxe, charming puzzler BlockGO, old favourite Tower Bloxx (aka City Bloxx), arcade conversion Ms. Pac-Man and Yahtzee-clone Yacht II. All of these reviews come with long gameplay videos and lots of screenshots. The games were reviewed on a Nokia 5800, but they should also be available for most other S60 5th and 3rd Edition devices too.
YouTube has announced that their mobile web site has received a big facelift, making it more appropriate for access by the smartphones of today and giving access to favourites, friends and comments. It seems to work well with S60 phones, while also offering a link to the dedicated S60 YouTube client, of course. Visit www.youtube.com in Web on your phone to try it out. Some screenshots below... (via @MickyFin)
It's my pleasure to link over to one of the most interesting Carnivals for a long time - and not just because AAS friend Matt Radford is hosting it this week. There's plenty here to mull over, including one article that's actually hosted on the author's phone (if you can reach it - subject to time of day and signal, I suspect), courtesy of Nokia's Mobile Web Server. Good stuff - Carnival of the Mobilists 186 is recommended reading.
In All About Symbian Insight 82 (AAS Podcast 144), Rafe and Steve round up software news from Quickoffice, DataViz and Digia. Steve reprises his Mobidapter review and we discussing some of the forthcoming hardware content on AAS including the Samsung i8190, Nokia 5530, E52 and E55. You can listen to AAS Insight 82 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Check Flights is a small and simple widget from the Nokia Ovi Store that lets you (guess what?) look up flight information, whether you're rushing to catch one or meeting someone off a plane. Ewan takes a quick look at Check Flights and gives it the thumbs up, partly because it's totally free, albeit with on-screen adverts, and partly because of its Calendar integration.
In the last few days there has been considerable comment, in various media channels, on some of the changes that are set to be introduced with the Symbian^4 release, including the breaking of backwards compatibility due to the retirement of AVKON and introduction of Orbit, which we first reported on back in May. With Symbian starting the process of communicating the changes to developers, and with renewed discussion online, it is worth revisiting the subject. Read on for further details.
Now live is The Phones Show 87, also embedded below, featuring (since I've been away on holiday) 24 testimonies from my audience, sharing their current choice of phone/smartphone and why. Plenty of Symbian representation in the choices, with the all-conquering Nokia E71 being most 'picked'.
The Ovi Store application is available on quite a number of Nokia phones, including the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. We've done a brief video (embedded below) which shows how to find and install Ovi Store on the Nokia 5800, either through the "Download!" icon or by visiting the Ovi Store website on the phone's browser. You may also be interested in our videos on how to install Ovi Store on the Nokia N95, and how to use the Ovi Store application.
HanDBase, the database system for S60 and other mobile platforms, just got itself a 4.1.5 'development' upgrade. This is significant because it's the first version to support devices likes the N96, N97 and N86 which have a mass memory disk as well as a memory card. See here for the full details. Also of note is that there's a special offer on whereby you can get 20% off the purchase price before 20th September by using the coupon code 'backtoschool09'. See also our 2006 review of the first release of HanDBase for S60 3rd Edition.
Over on Ovi Gaming, Ewan Spence has been putting Nokia's exclusive music game Dance Fabulous through its paces, and apparently it is rather good... The game was developed for Nokia by Digital Legends, the same people who did the excellent fighting game ONE, and features exclusive new music created by Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics) and Cindy Gomez. You can also use your own music if you prefer.
It's August and it's the time of year when Ewan Spence disappears into the caverns of Edinburgh to report for his Fringe podcast - and we do like to load him up with something he hasn't seen before and ask him to road test it properly. This year it's the Nokia N97 and embedded below is the first of his reports. And yes, it includes an unboxing - of sorts! Comments welcome, as usual, along with any questions for the bearded one!
