Smartphones Show 27 is now live, with video reviews of the Nokia E61i and E65, plus a feature on what's new in Windows Mobile 6.0 and S60 3rd Edition Feature Packs 1 and 2.
MyStrands is a new 'community-based' music tool, here demonstrated on a Nokia N95. it's unashamedly Web 2.0 and needs flat rate data (or Wi-Fi), importing cover art for your music, finding other music you might like and friends with similar tastes, directly streaming samples of their music. Cool if you have a good connection. (Via S-F)
There's a new version of Nokia's PC Suite on the streets (thanks Darla). PC Suite v6.82 includes more network operator support, bug fixes, an improved Nokia Music Manager and Nokia Software Updater integration.
In his latest editorial rant Steve has something to say about Twitter and similar services. Do they allow closer connections or are they another unnecessary time-sapping burden?
One of the companies that Rafe caught up with at the recent 3GSM was Abaxia - you might not recognise the name, but they play an interesting role in the S60 ecosystem. Users of the Orange Signature devices will be familiar with their work, as they are the company who programmed Orange's alternative Home. That's not all they do though, as Rafe found out in the All About Symbian Podcast #15 .
Widsets, java-hosted online widgets that bring you news or filtered web lookups, have a steadily growing following. They're also partly funded by Nokia, fully compatible with every Symbian OS smartphone in the last few years and the always excellent E-series blog has just published an eloquent Widsets write-up.
One of THE major launches of the last couple of weeks was Smart2go. The best intro to Nokia's mapping and routing software by far is Ed's write up of the free service at E-series.org. In the meantime, I've clocked up 300 miles driving with the premium voice-guided upgrade and will be doing a proper review and TomTom comparison as soon as Smart2go comes out of beta.
S60 and Vodafone last week announced the release of the first Vodafone specific software package for S60 to all S60 licensees. The customised version includes Vodafone specific applications, services and branding. The first two handsets that will receive this software are the Nokia N95 and the Samsung SGH-i520. S60 and Vodafone first announced their collaboration a year ago at 3GSM in 2006.
Announced over in our forums was that emoze, the popular (for those on flat rate data plans) push email/contacts/calendar system, has just been upgraded to work on S60 3rd Edition devices like the Nokia E61 and N73.
Nokia has apologised officially for the three day delay(!) in availablility of its rather splendid Smart2Go software system, citing higher than expected interest requiring adding extra capacity to its servers. Over 30,000 people have downloaded Smart2Go for S60 3rd Edition or WinMob 5.0 in its first two days. Other versions are planned. Full press release below.
Nokia's free Smart2Go maps and routing service for S60 and Windows Mobile smartphones has finally gone live, only 3 days late and it would be churlish to complain too much. There will be a review along fairly shortly, I'd expect, once any of the AAS team get a chance to draw breath...
The ease of mobile data could be the big talking point from Barcelona, so the announcement of Opera 9 Mobile is very timely. Promising widgets, multiple views of web pages (full screen, smart rendering, or intelligent zoom on a selected area), Java and Ajax support, the Norwegian company will be hoping that their browser is considered by all the major manufacturers. No release date has been given.
In this special feature Steve looks more closely at specific criticisms of the S60 UI and application set. He argues that some of these are answered in S60 3rd Edition's Feature Packs, some are down to user education, but there is still work to be done
