In Smartphones Show 26, I pitch the Nokia N73 against the Qtek 8500, a.k.a. the HTC STRTrK. Both are of similar age, price, size and are aimed at similar buyers. But which is the better 'smartphone for everyman'? If you want to grab the show on your smartphone, iPod or PSP, here's the RSS feed to copy and paste.
Announced around six months ago, the Nokia N73 Music Edition is finally becoming available. What's new for this revamp of the popular high street best seller and is the whole Music Edition thing worthwhile? Read my review of the N73 Music Edition to find out.
Rudy at m-trends.org is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists this week, focussing on the wider, general world of mobile. Have a read if you're looking for thought-provoking reading matter....
A new developer, a new game concept. Relative newcomers CrazySoft enter the world of Symbian OS 9 with a bang with PaintBall 2 - Krisse reviews this puzzle game for S60 3rd Edition (also available for UIQ 3) and finds plenty of extras and game modes to keep it interesting for hour after hour.
Ikona, one of the big cheeses over at the N-Gage Arena, posted to the N-Gage Blog recently about an unannounced (first party?) game codenamed Project White Rock for Nokia's next gen gaming platform. Details were scarce, but it's being produced by Scott Foe, who produced the N-Gage's biggest hit Pocket Kingdom (which was the world's first mobile MMO). White Rock also appears to involve RedLynx, the Finnish developers who produced the N-Gage's most critically acclaimed game, Pathway To Glory, and another acclaimed title called High Seize. Ikona hinted that White Rock might be released for the PC as well as N-Gage.
Hmmm..... methinks the HTC P5500 is looking awfully familiar - the screen size, the slider, the built-in GPS, the 3 megapixel stills camera, the Wi-Fi, etc. I doubt there are copyright issues at stake here, but you know what they say about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery... Nokia must be doing something right with the N95! I can't wait to review the two devices head to head in the summer.
Nokia's Maemo user interface (which runs on the Linux operating system) was designed for their pocket-sized internet tablets, the Nokia 770 and N800. However, the latest version of the UI for upcoming tablets "will be also runnable on desktop Linux", according to one of Nokia's Maemo team. You can see some photos of Maemo in action on an apparently standard Linux PC here and here. This is how it looks on the N800.
Danish website Mobilsiden.dk has a video interview (in English) with the designers of the Nokia 5500, Rachel Sleight and Marja-Leena Nurmela. Product designers rarely explain their decisions in public, and it's interesting to hear the philosophies behind the 5500's design and materials. The interview is split into short chunks for some reason, but they're all on the same page one below the other.
Attempting to analyse the smartphone market, from HTC's diminutive Star Trek design to Nokia's all-embracing E90 communicator, was never going to be easy. I've had a crack at it, with the help of a few coloured pens - are we getting enough smartphone bang for our buck?
My Opera, one of the first proto-blogging systems, has now been extended to work well with both Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, enabling text and photo blogging directly from your mobile browser. Extra support includes chat groups and widget management. Opera's press release is below.
