Owners of smartphones have long looked down on budget phones with the assumption that cheap means nasty. However, budget phones have developed in leaps and bounds lately, and Krisse argues that they may catch up with smartphones sooner than most people realise.
One for the US readers here, as Mark over on the Nokia Blog talks users of the US N95-8GB through the process of turning back on the anti-aliasing after a firmware upgrade. All nicely practically, but you have to wonder why it was turned off in the first place . I expect it'll be turned back on with a few tweaks (perhaps it's just a missing line in a .ini file?) but in the meantime, the instructions are here.
With today being another 'iPhone day' and with Apple's new commercial Mobile Me service going live, it's worth noting AAS regular Matt Radford's comparison between Nokia's free My Nokia service and the $100/yr Mobile Me. Matt's notes complete the picture somewhat and his conclusion is spot on, although I suspect that within a few months, Ovi Sync will have rectified the relative lack of integration.
Never before has cutting edge (5mp/Xenon camera, GPS) S60 hardware reached this price point - the 6220 Classic aims to be all the man in the street will ever need in a phone. What compromises, if any, have had to be made to get to this design? Is this really the poor man's N95? Find out in my detailed review of the Nokia 6220 Classic.
Nokia Chat is a new, GPS-aware software and instant messaging service which is being previewed through Nokia Beta Labs. Nokia Chat is an instant messaging and presence application with added location features. Generic location information can be shared via your presence message, via matching GPS position with selected existing (Nokia Maps) favourite places or you can send an ad-hoc exact location as a chat message. Read on for more information, a brief review and screenshots.
Joiku have announced JoikuSpot Premium is now available, discounted to 15 euros (from 25 Euros) for the launch period. Complementing the freeware variant of JoikuSpot, this version also turns your Wi-Fi enabled phone into a mobile hot-spot, but adds in encrypted browsing, and support for more protocols (the light version is web browsing only, premium offers the full range of network protocols, including email and VPN). It's available now from the aptly named JoikuShop.
Abbyy's Business Card Reader is a classic case of 'does what it says on the tin'. But, as commercial software, albeit with a one day trial version, how well does it do when faced with a sizeable stack of cards? I asked veteran conference goer Ewan to throw a few dozen cards at the utility. How well did Business Card Reader do? - find out in the review.
Following on from the initial Symbian Foundation announcement Nokia today announced that a further 9 companies are endorsing the plans for the Symbian Founation. The comapnies are mobile operators 3, América Móvil and TIM, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell and services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator.
Starting up Nokia Software Update shows a brand new Windows Vista-ified version, v1.4.49, shown below, along with many driver updates to match. The NSU news page also shows an apology for the downtime for Vista users. Comments welcome, although the old version always worked for me in XP-compatibility mode 8-)
The hoo-ha about a new piece of malware 'for S60 3rd Edition' called 'Isexplayer' should be utterly beneath our contempt - it's a non-story and I'll simply link to Vaibhav, who also dispells any worry very succinctly. Move on, folks, nothing to see.
It looks like the promo season for the upcoming Nokia N96 is starting in earnest. "Face The Task" is an ultra-high-bandwidth Flash site promoting all the things you can do with the N96. In addition, it's announcing a limited edition ('96' will be made) N96 supplied in an Ash Tree box and with a supplied 8GB microSD card. Plus, view all the videos and answer a question to win one...
Nokia's Widsets have now opened up a number of tools for developers to get their hands on (writes the Mobile Games Blog). Where previously third party widsets were limited to RSS, the new SDK (v3) provides more tools, libraries and options.
Part rant, part apologetic, part FAQ, in this article I reply directly to a long and interesting email fired in by a Mac-owning, iPhone fan at my championing of the Nokia N95 (8GB) in Smartphones Show 62. Not your typical troll, Nikolay makes some good points in his missive but hopefully I make some equally good ones in return!
S60 Python Programmers should head on over to Croozeus, a new website and resource centre for developers using the scripting langauge. Pankaj Nathani, an active participant in the Forum Nokia community, and Bogdan Galiceanu are the team behind the site. Now to dig out my text editor and start tinkering with their tutorials...
There's a timely tips reminder over on 'My Nokia E65', presenting its 'Five Things You Didn't Know about S60 Web', well worth a glance over or printing out. It's surprisingly easy to forget some of these shortcuts, especially how useful the ones for Zoom in and Out are...