Nokia have quietly (soft) launched a blog of their own for the upcoming Nokia World (Wednesday and Thursday this week). The blog brings together both internal (Nokia) and external bloggers to share their views, thoughts and comments on the themes of the Nokia World event. I will also be at the event covering it for All About Symbian. If you have questions or want to say hello please send me an email.
UK DJ Zane Lowe's web site is currently featuring a mix competition, whereby you upload a mix of your own and the best mixes then all win a Sony Ericsson UIQ 3-powered W950i smartphone. Being over 40, of course, I have absolutely no idea what a 'mix' is... something to do with making cakes?
Via m-trends.org comes news that Nokia have created the Nokia Music Mixer as a promotion for its XpressMusic branding. The site allows you to remix your own ringtones via a web based user interface. The custom ringtone, in AAC format, can then be downloaded to your phone using a link sent via SMS to your phone as well shared with other users of the site.
Sony Ericsson has added JSR 226 to its Symbian Java Platfrom version 3 which is used in the P990, M600 and W950. The W950 ships with JSR 26 support while the P990 and W950 can be upgraded via firmware. JSR 226 adds support for the use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG Tiy).
Nokia has commissioned a survey by Nielsen Entertainment which interviewed 1800 users of mobile phone games from China, Germany, India, Spain, Thailand and the United States. The results are available in a press release and suggest that people will enjoy using Nokia's Next Generation gaming platform which is due for launch in the first half of 2007. Perhaps the most interesting is the average gaming session length: 28 minutes, which is far longer than is usually thought the case on phone games, and implies that the average phone gamer plays with as much dedication as they would on a portable console.
Nokia (and other Symbian licensees) naturally tend to keep user knowledge of what goes on under the hood as out of the way as possible, but for power users Jukka Silvennoinen's free Y-Browser utility is a true Swiss Army knife that will aid troubleshooting and give you increased functionality. Here's my review of the version for all S60 3rd Edition devices.
If any of you have watched both my M600i video review and also any of my Smartphones Show video podcasts, can I beg for a minute of your time to answer one question in my poll? Thanks!
Well, we weren't going to comment on the much-leaked photos of the Nokia N93i, complete with metallic finish and keypad, no cover display and slightly slimmer form factor, but it seems that the device does exist as even Nokia's own PR blog is now linking to the snaps...
There's at least one regular AAS user who has one of the pre-production Nokia N95's, and you can follow his progress with it or ask questions right here in the forums.
Long-suffering users of the Sony Ericsson P990i will be watching next week eagerly, being the one Lars promised us the big new firmware update, way back at the AAS pub meet. And it seems there's a bit of a buzz just starting, with a screenshot of new v10 firmware right here. We'll post here as soon as SEUS actually has it online.
