Nokia’s Nseries Blog has an N97 mini to give away as part of the promotion of the N97 Owners Club widget. All you need to do is let the team know (via a comment on the blog or Twitter) the “most unusual use you’ve ever found for your Nokia device.”
Steve and I were in London yesterday to get our first full hands-on with the Nokia N8, the company's first Symbian^3 phone. We'll be bringing you a range of coverage, including our detailed first impressions and some extra analysis, but to kick things off we have a 'first-look' hands-on video. The video offers a quick look through many of the key applications, demonstrating the single tap interaction model and other Symbian^3 UX changes. It is also an opportunity to get a feel for the responsiveness and performance of the device, although it is important to note that the N8 is still running pre-production software.
In this feature, Ewan summarises a variety of ways of using your Symbian smartphone to marshall the ever-growing list of 'things you've got to do' - some apps, some widgets and some cloud-based solutions, so something here should take your fancy?
Marguerite Reardon at Cnet is worried that the upcoming data caps are going to “force developers to be efficient”. Which I raised an eyebrow at, because I’d hope that any decent developer out there is already coding as efficiently as possible. If they can’t make sensible use of data, what else are they not bothering about in application design? Should we be worried that smaller batteries will force developers to stop using tight coding loops next? Read on for more.
Not that anyone here at All About Symbian could ever manage this (no, I don’t want this as a challenge!) but Dan Roberts has written about the potential effects that the information overload is placing on people. “Our data suggests that if you are not giving yourself a break, you are hindering your brain's ability to consolidate memories and experiences," said neuroscientist Lila Davachi. More quotes below.
David Gilson brings the Nokia E72 story right up to date, giving his own review take on the device now that it has received the first two rounds of firmware updates from Nokia. What has been fixed, what's still broken and who can the E72 be recommended for? With links, photos and opinion, this is a definitive summing up of the E72, mid June 2010.
As well as the X5, Nokia also announced a new variant of the X6 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The capacitive screened fifth edition device will now have a model that ships with 8GB of of storage for music and multimedia. Expected price is 225 Euros and should begin shipping in Q3 2010.
At the Nokia Connection event in Singapore Nokia announced the social messaging and music focused Nokia X5-01. It's an S60 3rd Edition handset in a vertical slider, with QWERTY keyboard, form factor, which gives it square shape when the slide is closed. The Nokia X5-01 is currently scheduled to be launched in Indionesia in Q3 at a price of €165 before taxes and subsidies.
In All About Symbian Insight 122, we share the best of the previous week's news: Expedia hotel booking in Ovi Maps, Nokia 5228, Nokia Notifications and Tesco's Clubcard application. Steve shares his thoughts on the visibility of various screen technologies in bright sunlight, including a hands-on with Super AMOLED, and Rafe explains last week's Symbian Baidu tie up. Finally, the team discuss the launch of the iPhone 4 and the high-end device landscape. You can listen to AAS Insight 122 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia Connection is an annual event in Singapore where Nokia showcase their current device and service portfolio and address the SEAP (South East Asia and Pacific) market. This year it is being held on Monday June 14th (tomorrow) at Conrad Centennial Singapore. Asri al-Baker is attending the event on behalf of the Malay language SymbianKu blog, but will also be reporting back for AAS and AAM.
As part of its promotional activities for the N8, Nokia is releasing a series of overview videos presented by Chris Bennetts, a Senior Product Manager at the company. The third video covers the Music application and the N8's HDMI out functionality; rather than just linking to it or embedding it, we've broken this video down in detail to offer you some insight into the N8's music software and HDMI-out feature. Read on for further details.
Video calling on mobiles has been a reality in most of the world for five years now - and it's been a disaster in terms of take-up rate. Yet Apple comes on the scene with their new FaceTime - video calling - 'feature' and seems to have nailed it in terms of making people want it. Read on for my thoughts on what has the rest of the world been doing wrong and for the use case that Apple has, quite correctly, identified and exploited.
In this Ovi Gaming review, Ewan plays through the 50 provided levels in Gears, a new cog-based puzzler in the Ovi Store. Despite the superficial similarity of the levels, he feels that there's enough here for a recommendation for anyone who fancies "a mix of Tetris and a jigsaw puzzle". Ovi Gaming is our gaming-specialist site, here's the full list of Ovi Store game reviews.
The website for Sports Tracker, an application which turns your phone into a GPS sports computer, is now accepting pre-registrations for its online service. The online service will allow you to upload workouts (tracks) from your phone to be visualised, analysed and shared on the website. By registering now you can reserve the username you wish to use, get a notification when the site will goes live, and import your existing Nokia Sports Tracker data.
Thanks to a heads-up, we've learned that TV CatchUp, a free, on-demand all-channels system for UK residents, is now working with Symbian OS and Web. It's a public beta, so expect a few things not to work properly. Point Web at m.tvcatchup.com, sign up for a new account, and away you go. More details below.
