Infamous tech news site The Register has been taking a look at the new Nokia E75, concluding that "It's a beautifully compact do-it-all smart phone with slimline Qwerty keyboard. Could this be the end of the Communicator?" The Register's closing para on the E75 was: "But with good email and browser services, document creation and viewing, a decent camera and music player, aGPS and N-Gage games, plus access to loads of additional Symbian apps, this all adds up to a very powerful phone both for work and in-between jobs." Rafe and Ewan now both have E75s and our own coverage of this qwerty newcomer is imminent.
Nokia Handwriting Calculator has just been updated for S60 5th Edition, with support for scientific functions like sin, cos, tan, ln, etc., although the symbols can't be written directly and have to be dragged from a toolbar at present. There's also a new help system and support for the maths constants ‘e’ and pi - which you can write directly.
There's now a build of the latest Python for S60 (PyS60) which installs without errors on S60 5th Edition devices like the Nokia 5800. v1.9.3 introduced quite a few enhancements, chief among which was support for touchscreens. Though this build will be of interest mainly to developers, I suspect several professional applications for the 5800 written in Python won't be far behind now. (via Croozeus)
There's been a lot of talk about Gravity, the Twitter client for S60, most of it very positive, and Ewan backs this up with a detailed and lavishly illustrated review, finally awarding it a rare AAS Mega-App award for a score of 90% or over. And yes, it hadn't escaped our notice that a second Twitter client for S60, Twittix, was released yesterday. We'll get Ewan onto that, too, don't worry.
From the Symbian Foundation and Texas Instruments comes the news that the Zoom OMAP34x-II mobile development platform will be the first reference platform for the Symbian Foundation. This is a test device, capable of running various mobile operating systems, that can be used, to test code, by those wishing to contribute to the open source platform. It is also useful for developers wanting to explore and conduct tests on upcoming Symbian platform releases.
Winding up his three week tour of the USA, taking in social media and gaming events, with a loan Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Ewan arrives back in chilly Scotland, dons half a dozen sweaters and sets about summing up his experiences in the last part of his video diary, below. Perhaps tellingly, he says he's tempted to get his own as his main smartphone. If you'd like to see more video diaries, do please comment and let Ewan know!
In this comment piece, 'Should Gravity come down?', James Whatley shares his thoughts on mobile application prices. Have on-device stores, such as iPhone's App Store and Android's Marketplace, changed consumer's perception of the pricing of mobile applications? What constitutes reasonable value? Read our first Whatley Wednesday, then share your thoughts in the comments thread.
Yahoo! may make blunders elsewhere in the computing world, but they've always had their head screwed on when it comes to mobile. Yahoo! has just launched its next-gen mobile home page, which you can find at new.m.yahoo.com in your phone's web browser. Some screens below to give you a flavour, but on first look they seem to have done a good job integrating news sources, weather and traditional mobile information with a new 'Social pulse' panel, in which feeds from the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Friendster can be amalgamated and presented in chronological order.
Just before the deadline we want to point out a few more April exclusives. There's the Symbian Foundation powered toaster (Smart Toaster X, from Hussel & Robbs, the first Symbian^2 appliance) and the TEXT'N'WALK application from Looflirpa (innovative camera usage).
In this video, embedded in the story below, we exclusively preview a new Samsung Omnia HD feature - personal inductive charging. The Samsung Omnia Personal-ORiented Interface For Inductive Charging (SOPORIFIC) uses the electrical field generated by your own body to re-charge the phone's battery. All you have to is hold the phone and it recharges before your eyes. Apparently you get one minute's talk time for ten minutes of skin contact. Obviously there are limits to this technology, but it is great to see the technical barriers being pushed back.
Nokia has released version 1.1 of its next-generation smart email system. Nokia Messaging 1.1 includes much wider language support, Windows Live Hotmail support, support for up to 10 IMAP folders and HTML formatting in emails (at last). To download it, go to email.nokia.com in Web on your S60 phone. Note that support for the 5800 and S60 5th Edition is coming in 'May'.
Nokia's long-demonstrated Point and Find service seems to have appeared in very early beta form, with many known bugs and issues, for most (but not all) S60 3rd Edition phones and for UK and USA regions only. Point and Find uses your device's camera to identify product barcodes and movie posters, linking through to relevant Web URLs. See here to get/try the beta and here for CJ's coverage.
Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic has sold fairly well, but where does Nokia go from there? Well, you're about to find out as All About Symbian takes a look at the latest variant model: the Nokia 5800 Sauna Edition. Coated with a special humidity-resistant plastic and preloaded with a thermometer/hygrometer application, this is aimed squarely at the consumer market.
In All About Symbian Insight 63 (AAS Podcast 120) we briefly cover the N-Gage news out of GDC (1 million profiles, accelerometer Bounce and device support). Steve and Rafe mull over the importance of the underlying changes in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, before chatting about the importance of homescreens, with reference to TouchWiz on the Omnia HD. You can listen to AAS Insight 64 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Gameloft's soccer simulator Real Football 2009 has been released on the N-Gage platform. Just go to the application's Showroom tab, select "Options" and then "Update Now", and it's also available in the "All Games" section. As always, a list of current and upcoming N-Gage compatible phones can be found on the AAN FAQ page.
