Fed up with announcements about "leveraging the Web 2.0 growth cycle to grow market share in the YouTube generation"? Ewan's a little sceptical about some of the press releases that get issued at this time of the industry year, and I don't blame him. What are we looking for from the hardware and software companies and what are we dreading seeing?
You'll remember James Burland from his Nokia Creative blog? He's also the guy behind the Nokia N95 User Group on Flickr and he picks the very best photos to highlight in the blog. Some of January's award winners are absolutely jaw-dropping and a good testament to what the N95's camera can do.
Nokia has announced a camera-free variant of the Nokia E51. The E51 is impressively small at 61cc, but still has a full feature set including quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE, WCDMA with HSDPA (850 and 2100Mhz), and WiFi. There is also a FM Radio, 2.5mm audio jack and IrDA, USB and Bluetooth for local connectivity. The camera free variant of the E51 will be available in the next few weeks and costs approximately €250 before taxes and subsidies. Read on for more.
Guest writer Noel Kennedy takes us on a tour through JoikuSpot, through installation and deployment. Can you really get full Wi-Fi anywhere you like? What are the catches and does he have any reservations?
While most people have been getting excited about the pre-announcement of Opera Mobile 9.5, the hugely popular (and free) little sister, Opera Mini 4, has just had a big back-end (i.e. the bit that does the work) upgrade, which (among other changes, listed below) should improve browsing speed by (up to) another 20%.
Symbian Signed's Open Signed Online service is now available in limited beta. Open Signed Online allows developers and individuals to sign SIS files via an online service. There are a number of restrictions in place during the beta period, but developers may find it useful to familiarise themselves with the service as it provides a quicker and easier way to sign SIS files during development.
Following his look at the N-Gage client, here's Ewan's preview of each of the four launch '1st Access' games, System Rush:Evolution, Creatures of the Deep, Block Buster Deluxe and Space Impact: Kappa Base. Do each of the demos lead on nicely to a full purchase? And if not, why not?
Opera have announced that version 9.5 of their mobile browser will be officialy launched at 3GSM, with OEM and retail availability soon after. This release marks a big, long-overdue jump for the Opera browser, bringing it back on par with the S60 browser. For UIQ3 users especially, who have been stuck with older, outdated browsers for the last 2 years, this is great news. Read on for the full press release.
Ah yes, I always leap upon new official figures from Canalys - kind of like tuning into radio chart shows to find out which song is 'number 1'. 118 million smartphones were sold across the world in 2007, but who were the winners and losers? Read on to find out.
Stefan's got the scoop on this one: the Nokia N82 is being released in black - over in the USA, at least. If the shiny silver had been putting you off, then here's an option if you're in the States.
Fring, the free VoIP and chat tool, just added a file transfer function to its portfolio, reports Ricky. So far it's just Fring-to-Fring transfers, plus MSN, but we're sure the full range of Fring IM systems will also be opened up soon to file sending (e.g. Skype, which we often use at AAS to send files across our virtual office!).
Twango the media sharing / community site that Nokia acquired last year has now been Ovi-fied. Its been rebranded as Share on Ovi and has a new look and feel to go with the new name. There are also user experience improvements in navigating, sharing and searching for media on the site and a restructured back end to allow it to scale to millions of users. Read on for more.
So AAS forum member 'kflyer' emailed me a few days ago, "wondering whether viruses can really affect a current smartphone. I've read your view on this question, but AAS itself has adverts for AntiVirus clients!" As it's a long, long time since my last rail against the fraudulent anti-virus industry, I thought it high time for an update. Read on.
Following on from today's launch of N-Gage First Access, Ewan, in 30 minutes with the N-Gage First Access client gives us his first impressions of the system and a summary of the user experience of the N-Gage client. In the piece Ewan covers installation, game installation and the community features of the client application.
A pre-release version of Nokia's new N-Gage gaming platform is now available for Nokia N81 users. N-Gage First Access lets N81 owners download the pre-release version of the N-Gage application (through which all N-Gage activity takes place) and try and buy select N-Gage games. Other N-Gage compatible devices will be added to the service in due course. Read on for more.
