The hugely popular Nokia N73 has another new firmware update available. v4.0812.4.x was released released yesterday via Nokia Software Update and includes support for mobile TV (when used with Nokia's SU-33W receiver) and Express Mail clients, plus updates and improvements to Nokia Maps and improved Java support.
Don't you just love these early-bird, pre-order prices? I can't resist mentioning that Expansys now have the Nokia N96 up for pre-order - £697 inc VAT. Gulp. In fact, make that an extra big gulp. Don't panic though, I'm sure the price when available will be more reasonable!
Ferrari World Championship seems to have been a high profile game announcement that was followed by a very low profile release (e.g. it's not even in Nokia's Download! system) - but unnecessarily so, since it turns out to be great fun and one of the best Java games to yet appear. Cross-platform and running on just about any phone or smartphone, here's my full and illustrated Ferrari World Championship review. Highly recommended.
[Update: this is now live, no password needed] Nokia's latest Flash-based novelty site is about to go live. The Mapsters are a small tribe of robots and err... aliens, who specialise in trampling on perfectly good cities and turning them into two-dimensional maps. For a preview go to www.themapsters.com/preview and use username 'mapsters' and password 'preview'. And there we were thinking that Nokia's Maps were created by the Navteq people.... (watch out for the jaw-dropping Flash earthquake effect in the opening sequence)
With version 1.76, out an hour ago, Sports Tracker's name continues to seem a little restrictive - Nokia just added support for user-shot video clips (taken during your walk/run, which then appear on the Sports Tracker web site), plus support for devices like the N78 and N96. Comments welcome on how they've handled video resampling during the scan and upload process - if at all. Comments also welcome on whether videos are compatible with the Sports Tracker widget.
[Updated] Nokia has announced that Maps 2.0 is finally available, after several months in (a very wide) public beta. The press release, with official changelog over v1.2, is below, plus also the less formal changelog for the full v2.0 release over the v2.0 beta. See also my preview of the Nokia Maps v2.0 beta. And here's the all important download link (build 2102 is the one you want). Nokia Maps (as referenced in my recent Location Based Search feature) is a core product for the next five years and has enormous potential, both standalone on devices and as part of (Maps on) Ovi.
Orange and Nokia today announced a three year strategic international partnership on mobile services. The two companies will work together to provider users with an offering of music, games, advertising, maps and location based services. The relationship will see 10 Nokia handsets added to the Orange Signature range with services integrated into the familiar Orange user interface.
In the third part of his review of the Samsung i450, Ewan reckons that devices like this are key to the future of S60 - with the technology becoming both less visible and incumbent in low to mid-tier phones. He also looks at the standard application set and at third party application compatibility.
The eagerly-awaited next gen N-Gage game Snakes Subsonic is now available from the N-Gage application's showroom. However, one of us couldn't see it even after selecting "Update Now", click on the headline to find out how this problem was solved.
The N-Gage platform aims to usher in a new age of high quality connected phone gaming. However if you upgrade to a new phone, you cannot transfer any of your N-Gage games from the old phone. In a special feature article All About N-Gage looks at why this is such a damaging policy for N-Gage, what the unintended consequences are, and a number of potential solutions. Will Nokia change their minds on this issue? Update: Looks like Nokia has indeed now changed their minds, their official blog has announced a game transfer system is on the way! Read the Nokia blog's statement.
According to the Finnish business newspaper Kauppalehti, Nokia's Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones. The article quotes Rick Simonson, Nokia's Chief Financial Officer, as saying "we are definitely moving in the direction (of Linux-based phones)" at a seminar in Boston run by JP Morgan Chase. There was no further detail though, and apparently Simonson refused to be drawn on which kind of Linux would be used. Nokia already makes the Linux-based N800 and N810 internet tablets, which use Nokia's own version of Linux called Maemo, but current tablets have no telephony ability.
A beta version of eReader.com's eBook software is now available for S60 3rd Edition. eReader is a long standing eBook store which provides some of the current best sellers in eBook form, protected via its own form of DRM. They provides a version of their reader for multiple platforms. However a few years ago they seemed to lose interest in support Symbian OS handsets, but under the new ownership of Fictionwise this seems to be changing.
So you've been eyeing up qwerty clamshells from the dark side (Windows Mobile)? So had I - in this case, getting in the Toshiba Portege G910 flagship, with a spec sheet that rivals the Nokia E90 - in theory, at least. Having used both, here's my illustrated head-to-head review: G910 vs E90. The winner? You can probably guess, but let's just say that this Windows Mobile clamshell has got more than a couple of surprises up its sleeve.
Sweden is the latest country to get its own Nokia Music Store. The deal is along the same lines as those in other countries, with 10 krona per track, 100 krona per album, and 100 krona per month for unlimited tracks on your PC.
Konami and Nokia have announced that a number of Konami Mobile titles will be added to the N-Gage platform. The first game will be the award winning Metal Gear Solid Mobile, which a 3D tactical espionage action game that sees the player carrying out solitary infiltration. The game is being developed in conjunction with Ideaworks3D and using its Airplay 3.5 SDK.