Every month I tell myself that I'm not going to add the N8 photo awards as a link of interest and then every month one of the winning entries blows me away so much that I simply have to write about it. The '1st' pick this month is quite simply staggering - I've included a cut down version below so that you can nod your head and agree with me. This was captured on a phone? Here are the rest of the winners and other info.
Nokia Beta Labs has announced yet another experimental project, called Nokia Drop. This project sets out to push content from your desktop browser to your phone. Pushed content comes in the forum of URL's, files, images as files, or images as wallpapers. The desktop end requires a browser plugin; Firefox and Chrome are currently the only supported browsers. The phone application is available for S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3. Read on for more.
There's a fascinating look, from Laptop magazine in the USA, embedded below, at a new solar charging technology from Wysips. Using an ultra-thin (less than 100 microns) photo-voltaic layer on top of the usual smartphone touchscreen, it can deliver up to 250mW of power. Although it's unlikely that such a layer could eliminate the need for traditional charging, the extra top-up factor could well double effective battery life. The technology will be launched officially in 2012 and may be in devices within a couple of years.
A definite link of interest of for all Nokia users is the Nokia Support Videos channel on YouTube. We’ve posted before about support videos having been posted for individual phones. Now though, Nokia have compiled all of these into a well presented, cover flow-like, custom YouTube page. Digging further into the standard YouTube video listings reveals support videos for other Nokia devices such as the E72 and N900.
You'll remember that over the last year or so, I've helped champion the HX series of custom firmwares for the Samsung i8910 HD, stepping into the shoes of Samsung, who effectively abandoned their own device. All good things come to an end though and HyperX himself, the guy who assembled these firmware has announced that he's moving on and that there definitely won't be another release. Of note here is that the final HX-V11 firmware (which had been 'temporarily' withdrawn) is now back up for download, along with all its associated goodies. Download 'em while you can, folks!
Nokia has officially 'graduated' Ovi Maps 3.6 (the version with Social check-ins, live traffic services and on-device country map loading) from Beta Labs and into the Ovi Store. This doesn't preclude further updates of course, but the application is stable and complete for now. If you want to check what version you have installed, tap on the "?" icon, then "About Maps" and then "Versions". The version of Ovi Maps now in the Ovi Store is v3.06 11wk10 b01.
“Rafe!” I asked, “can I look at the flying French Quadricopter for Friday?” A subdued nod over Skype was forthcoming, and I headed to the Ovi Store to grab the free Qt download for the AR.Drone. This is Parrot’s Wi-fi enabled, live webcam streaming, computer stabilised, helicopter-esque, flying peripheral – and it’s time for a brief video review. Did I forget to mention that the actual AR.Drone isn’t a free download...
Nokia has just posted that it has completed putting the Symbian source code online at symbian.nokia.com. This means that both company-supported and independent developers can now access the Symbian source code again, after the effective closure of the Symbian Foundation. This follow’s the interim measure of FTP access to Symbian Foundation hosted content being given out on request. Read on for more details.
From the team that brought us Nokia Bubbles comes Nokia Sleeping Screen, amping up the current OLED time and date display to include animations, better notification displays, night clock mode and even total screen blackness when the phone is covered (e.g. in a pocket). Video and details below, though you'll want to note that this currently doesn't work with the LED torch mode on the C6-01, C7-00 and E7-00, sadly. Still, it's in beta and I'm sure they'll fix that in time.
We do like to highlight bargains every now and then and, thanks to a tip off from reader Gary Moncrieff, it seems that most of the Smartphoneware titles in the Ovi Store have been reduced from their usual $10 (or so) tickets to just 1 pound (or local equivalent). If you've been eyeing up any of the following: Best Safe, Best Reminder, Best Crypto, Best TaskMan, Best SpamKiller, Best Jotter, Best Converter, Best Blacklist or Best Full Screen Message (among others), then grab them now rather than later. A few titles remain at higher prices, so do please check, etc.
As a hardened (and probably wizened) AAS reader, you've been with us through the ups and downs of the last decade, of course. And I was interested to read Alvin Wong's 'Symbian Story', taking him through many of the devices that we too have loved and hated over the years - it's a good read. And yet, here's the kicker, Alvin is still only 17. Which means that he started his Symbian Story when he was only 12, incredibly.
Nokia is continuing to push the photo capture abilities of the Nokia N8. In the HD Horizons project, sponsored by Nokia, Jason Hawkes, who has specialised in taking aerial photographs for twenty years, has been capturing UK landscapes and landmarks from the air. We've got access to some of the early images, which offer a remarkable demonstration of the N8's capabilities.
Purnima Kochikar, Nokia Vice President with responsibility for Forum Nokia, has released an open letter to Nokia's developers, which looks to reinforce Nokia's recent messages about the continued importance of Symbian and Qt. The letter offers some details on upcoming updates that will aim to make the Symbian platform more competitive and notes that Symbian devices will continue to be sold long after Nokia's Windows Phone device shipments start.
In the last few days, a new email client has appeared in Sw_update on the Nokia E72 and E5, labelled Nokia Email 3.9. The description refers to 'See your emails the way they are meant to be seen', implying HTML 'rich' views of all emails by default, plus there's (in theory) better Gmail and Yahoo! integration. Screens and some cautionary comments below.
The story so far. The N8 and other Symbian^3 phones came with Nokia Social networking 1.1, which was limited and slow. Version 1.2 was auto-detected and added limited social media sharing, but it was up to the 1.3 update to improve performance, insert status updates in Contacts, and extend sharing to full resolution uploads. Sadly, 1.3 was pulled after 3 days by Nokia for unspecified stability reasons, but the good news is that it's now available again, improved, fixed and facelifted, for all Symbian^3 phones over at Nokia Beta Labs and, presumably, available to a wider public on-device or in firmware at some point thereafter. Read on for new screenshots, comments and links.
