Nokia Beta Labs have released a new version of the Ovi Calendar. Ovi Calendar is the online calendar service provided through Ovi.com; users can sync their phone to the calendar and vice versa using Ovi Sync. Calendar 1.6 features support for multiple calendars, and the sharing of these with other Ovi users.
The Nokia 6700s (6700 slide) is one of Nokia's newest smartphones and is one of the best examples of how the line between smartphones and featurephones has become increasingly blurred. It is an S60 3rd Edition device with a slider form factor, aluminium casing and a 5 megapixel camera with Carl-Zeiss optics. Our Nokia 6700s hands-on gallery runs through the major design features and includes a number of comparison shots with other Nokia smartphones.
A few weeks ago, David Gilson wrote up his thoughts on the N97 classic. While there was an awful lot to like about it, he found it to be undermined by an unstable OS, due to insufficient RAM & C: drive space. He was also curious to see if the N97 mini was really everything the N97 classic could have been, so he borrowed one and got to grips with it. What follows is a discussion of the differences between these two phones, and how each one lends itself to different usage scenarios. Hopefully this will help the with the venerable question "which should I buy?"
What has had the biggest effect on my smartphone usage? With all the applications out there, be they built in to the firmware, part of the manufacturer's additional software and services, or even the legion of third party apps, which is the one that makes the smartphone my smartphone? The music player. Read on...
Pizero's Earth theme has been downloaded more than one million times from the Ovi Store. Earth is an artistic and lightweight theme (default icons), with full support for portrait and landscape orientations, and is compatible with both S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition devices. The one million downloads were achieved in 86 days, with an average of 11,600 downloads a day.
The first fruit of the enterprise alliance between Microsoft and Nokia, which was announced in August last year, is now available. Microsoft Communicator Mobile for Nokia, a 'unified communications client', is now available in Nokia's Ovi Store for the Nokia E72 and E52. The application ties in to Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 product; it offers the ability to view a colleague's status and then choose the most appropriate communication method - instant messaging, email, text or voice call. More below.
At every turn in the mobile world, you see online services being launched, and applications that tie into existing services. Examine the top ten things that a typical iPhone or Android phone owner does and I'd bet that over half (if not 7 or 8) involved Internet access. The number's arguably lower in the Symbian world (more built-in/local functionality), but the trend is clear - software and service designers are assuming that mobile Internet access is a given. But what happens when the (signal) bars run out?
An All About Symbian application, which allows you easy access to the site's latest content, is now available in Nokia's Ovi Store. The application was built using Nokia's new Ovi App Wizard (more on that in a future post) and is based on the RSS content feeds. The content is divided into four channels: All About Symbian News, AAS Insight Podcast, AAS YouTube videos and the most recent AAS tweets. The application is free and is compatible with all of Nokia's Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) devices. Read on for further details and screenshots.
Do you want your smartphone to beep you (or play a sound effect) every hour or every 15 minutes? No, it would drive me bonkers as well. But apparently it can be a good organisational tool, or so reckons Ewan in his brief review of Time Chime, by Symbian stalwarts Cellphonesoft. Running on S60 5th Edition, the main blot on Time Chime's scoresheet is its price.
Own Voice for Ovi Maps, an application that lets you record and share your own voice instructions for turn by turn navigation, is now available on the Ovi Store. Once you have recorded your voice pack you are able to share it with other Own Voice for Ovi Maps users by uploading it to Nokia's servers. Alternatively you can browse and download the voice packs contributed by other users; there are already contributions from a Cylon Centurion and the Grim Reaper. Read on for further details.
When Nokia decided to make Ovi Maps free, including the navigation and route planning, there was a lot of discussion about what this would mean for companies like Tom Tom, who make dedicated GPS units. Well now TomTom’s chief, Harold Goodijn, has announced their intention to have an “App Store” on the units, to go along with the new Operating System software powering the device.
HipLogic has been a name that has floated around S60 circles for the last year or so. Ostensibly a Web-aware homescreen replacement, it turns out to be something more ambitious, albeit with a few minor caveats. I set out last week to intercept HipLogic's 'Chief Action Figure', Mark Anderson, and quiz him on the vision behind, and the implementation of, HipLogic on Symbian. Read on for more.
Ewan investigates Moove, a unique music playback utility for S60 5th Edition phones that claims to offer contact-less music control. Does it work and is the solution ready for the real world? It would seem not, but find out for yourself in his brief review.
Forum Nokia has released a tool, Flowella, which allows designers and developers to easily create design prototypes (mock-ups of how an application will look), without using a single line of code. Prototypes are built by using images of screen mock-ups and defining links between them (i.e. what happens when you click of a given area). The information is then used to create a Flash Lite application or WRT widget, which can be run on a Nokia phone or in the included simulator.
Last week NTT DOCOMO, Renesas Electronics, Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Sharp announced a joint agreement to jointly develop a new application platform for mobile phones. The application platform, which will run on both Symbian and Linux and is, effectively, the next generation of the current MOAP platform. However there is a clear intention to offer it to mobile manufacturers world wide; previously MOAP phones have been almost exclusively Japan-only.
