First time poster in this week's Carnival of the Mobilists, as Symbiano-Tek takes the reins and points towards a number of interesting pieces around the world last week, including... Mobile IM Payments, The UI Difference and why people want change, a look at some Apple discussion, and this week's best post is flagged up as a premier article on mobile software. Congratulations all round!
Y-Browser supremo, Jukka Silvennoinen, just keeps coming up with the freeware goods for S60 3rd Edition users. There's now a proper web site for his utilities, a new version of the popular file manager/viewer Y-Browser (v0.82, with an added Bluetooth send function) and a whole new application, Y-Tasks, an 'internals' utility for the uber-geek(!)
After a hugely detailed and comprehensive beta phase lasting over a year, Python for S60, or 'PyS60' is finally finished, ending up at v1.4. I'm sure there will be further minor updates, but in the meantime, it's stable, signed and complete. I even got spurred on into revisiting my Musician and making it work on far more S60 3rd Edition phones.
Mere hours after I plead in the AAS video podcast with Nokia to release the v12 firmware for the Nokia N95, it appears! On Nokia Software Update now, v12.0.013. Changelist to come below in a mo'. Thanks to WOM World for nudging me ahead of my daily NSU check!
In the interests of science, I thought I'd try out the updated Smart2Go (also known as Nokia Maps) MapLoader, v1.1g, in conjunction with the now fairly old Smart2Go beta on the Nokia E61. I was in for one delight and one huge surprise....
New staff writer Attila Katona has been sitting on this review of Handy Taskman for S60 for a couple of weeks - but I managed to wheedle it out of him! Meanwhile I've been trying the latest (and rival) Best TaskMan and have been equally impressed. Nothing wrong with having two terrific utilities that are both available in trial form...
It's..... AAS video podcast 17, in which I muse on the gulf between opposite ends of the smartphone spectrum, despair over trolling fanboys and look ahead to hardware coming up in the second half of 2007. If you want to get all our podcasts, here's the RSS feed.
Sony Ericsson P990 and W950 users will be pleased to hear that there will be another firmware update for their phones available shortly as mentioned in this SE Developer World Forum thread. The updates will be made available in August. Credit to Sony Ericsson for listening to their users in this matter.
Nokia today released a new version of its PC Suite software. New in version 6.84 is the ability to sync files between a PC and compatible phone, PC Suite will also now notify when you new add-on application become available. There are enhancements to performance and stability. More in the full story.
NTT DoCoMo announced the new 704i Series of FOMA phones; four of these phones run the MOAP on Symbian software platform. The D704i (Mitsubishi), the F704i (Fujitsu), the SH704i (Sharp) and the S0704i (Sony Ericsson) are mid to high range phones with a number of unique features.
It seems that the Nokia E90 Communicator is now 'available' in the USA, thanks to Nokia's deal with Dell. Well, '1 to 2 weeks' to ship, anyway.... (via IntoMobile)
Steve Jobs slammed qwerty smartphones as having 'too much plastic'. While Steve agrees he's got a point, there are plenty of times when a real qwerty keyboard comes in darned useful. Here Steve reviews the Nokia E61i, the Palm Treo 750 and the HTC S620 in another AllAboutSymbian head-to-head. Of the three keyboarded units, which comes out on top?
It's the bit you've all been waiting for. Rafe goes into detail in putting every aspect of the multimedia capability of the UIQ 3-powered Motorola RIZR Z8 to the test: camera, gallery, music, video - and finds plenty that's worthy and a few aspects which were disappointing. And then Rafe discovers two 'extras' which raise the Z8's game another notch.
