Over at the semi-official Nokia Conversations, there's an interesting post today, responding generally to iPhone mania and talking a lot of sense. It also refers to a pet subject of mind, i.e. whether a user wants to use one or two hands (or thumbs) for their phones.
I see PDA Essentials magazine has renamed itself as "PDA Esssentials, Smartphone & GPS"... Anyway, issue 77 of this UK-based newstand magazine, out today, has full reviews of the Nokia E71 and Motorola MOTO Z10, along with a multi-page feature on '10 things to do with GPS on your smartphone' and the inclusion of the Sony Ericsson W960 and the Nokia N82 in a 'budget' group test.
You walk into a meeting with device X. You ride on the tube with device Y. You stroll around the park with device Z. What impressions will others have - and will these impressions be accurate? In the editorial below I give a few examples but would welcome extra real world anecdotes and data points!
The World War Two action game Brothers In Arms is now available from the N-Gage application's Showroom section. If you're having trouble seeing it, select Options and then Update Now, which should make it appear in the Latest Games section. If you still can't see it, exit N-Gage, open the phone web browser, select Options, then Clear Privacy Data, then Clear Cache, close the browser, start N-Gage up and click on the Available Games section of the Showroom. (Thanks to ccraig for tipping us off about the release)
Owners of smartphones have long looked down on budget phones with the assumption that cheap means nasty. However, budget phones have developed in leaps and bounds lately, and Krisse argues that they may catch up with smartphones sooner than most people realise.
One for the US readers here, as Mark over on the Nokia Blog talks users of the US N95-8GB through the process of turning back on the anti-aliasing after a firmware upgrade. All nicely practically, but you have to wonder why it was turned off in the first place . I expect it'll be turned back on with a few tweaks (perhaps it's just a missing line in a .ini file?) but in the meantime, the instructions are here.
With today being another 'iPhone day' and with Apple's new commercial Mobile Me service going live, it's worth noting AAS regular Matt Radford's comparison between Nokia's free My Nokia service and the $100/yr Mobile Me. Matt's notes complete the picture somewhat and his conclusion is spot on, although I suspect that within a few months, Ovi Sync will have rectified the relative lack of integration.
Never before has cutting edge (5mp/Xenon camera, GPS) S60 hardware reached this price point - the 6220 Classic aims to be all the man in the street will ever need in a phone. What compromises, if any, have had to be made to get to this design? Is this really the poor man's N95? Find out in my detailed review of the Nokia 6220 Classic.
Nokia Chat is a new, GPS-aware software and instant messaging service which is being previewed through Nokia Beta Labs. Nokia Chat is an instant messaging and presence application with added location features. Generic location information can be shared via your presence message, via matching GPS position with selected existing (Nokia Maps) favourite places or you can send an ad-hoc exact location as a chat message. Read on for more information, a brief review and screenshots.
Joiku have announced JoikuSpot Premium is now available, discounted to 15 euros (from 25 Euros) for the launch period. Complementing the freeware variant of JoikuSpot, this version also turns your Wi-Fi enabled phone into a mobile hot-spot, but adds in encrypted browsing, and support for more protocols (the light version is web browsing only, premium offers the full range of network protocols, including email and VPN). It's available now from the aptly named JoikuShop.
Abbyy's Business Card Reader is a classic case of 'does what it says on the tin'. But, as commercial software, albeit with a one day trial version, how well does it do when faced with a sizeable stack of cards? I asked veteran conference goer Ewan to throw a few dozen cards at the utility. How well did Business Card Reader do? - find out in the review.
Following on from the initial Symbian Foundation announcement Nokia today announced that a further 9 companies are endorsing the plans for the Symbian Founation. The comapnies are mobile operators 3, América Móvil and TIM, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell and services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator.
Starting up Nokia Software Update shows a brand new Windows Vista-ified version, v1.4.49, shown below, along with many driver updates to match. The NSU news page also shows an apology for the downtime for Vista users. Comments welcome, although the old version always worked for me in XP-compatibility mode 8-)
Short and sweet. Carnival of the Mobilists 131 is up, with a surprising amount of Symbian-related content, for once! That's your bedtime reading sorted out, anyway.
Continuing his extended test (this is part 3) of the Motorola MOTO Z10, Ewan tries out its Internet applications. In summary, Messaging and Opera are adequate, but there's little else to shout about and the lack of RAM is crippling. Here are parts 1 and 2 of the Z10 review.
