With the black Nokia N82 arriving in shops and with the titanium version gaining more and more fans, you'll be hearing quite a bit more about this smartphone in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, Vaibhav Sharma is a pretty well-respected member of the Symbian community - in these two good articles he looks at the N82's build quality and feel and its overall usability and performance.
In which I rant a little about the glaring lack of common sense in today's navigation applications, end up rather late and stressed for a wedding I should have been half an hour early for... and I explain what's happened to the sat-nav group test that we promised six months ago...
You know how you've always told your other half that your smartphone is better than her/his pen and paper? Well, with PiZero' latest - Paper, your smartphone can even ape the paper/highlighter look. While I'm here, if anyone's been eyeing up the latest Macs with a tinge of tech-lust, check out this Leopard theme for S60. And Giambi (don't tell me - yet another Italian theme genius?)'s WARM series of SVG themes for S60 are stunning too.
The recent availability of Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake in Symbian-friendly guises got Ewan wondering how easy or hard it would be to get Quake working, in all its majesty, on a Nokia N95. Here's his Quake for S60 tutorial, with appropriate links and tips. Have a blasting weekend, everybody!
You were right to save your money and not go to CTIA in Las Vegas - everything you need to know about what was shown is represented in Rafe's comprehensive CTIA 2008 image gallery for free, with pertinent analysis and commentary where needed. It's all here, from tweaks to new Symbian OS-powered hardware, to software innovations, from WiMax and LTE to demos in the sky.
Props to Devin for a fabulous guide to improving the quality of your photo results taken with a smartphone's auto-focus and LED-equipped camera. From fill-in flash to partial focussing, I couldn't have written a better guide myself - a must-read.
...Although not by me (sob). I've got my own thoughts and opinions, which will have to wait until the black N82 arrives at AAS towers. Until then, kudos to Daniel from Sweden, who has unboxed (seemingly) the very first black N82 out in real world shops. Some photos below, plus a link.
Forget all the new fangled brain games, Steve has turned to the classics - Chess. Odesys Chess promises a challenging AI opponent, as well as a strong online multi player environment. Steve is impressed, but not enough to tell us his ranking, in our latest review.
Nokia's PC Suite just got a biggish update, with Calendar viewing on your PC screen, plus full Text message handling. And there are cosmetic improvements too. Here's the PC Suite download page. Comments welcome. (via S-F)
As the new N-Gage platform has finally (and properly) launched, All About N-Gage has updated its Frequently Asked Questions section to answer our readers' most common queries. If you can't find the answer you want in the FAQ, post about it in this item's comments thread and we'll try to get back to you.
Got an idea for a game? Then one idea to getting it published could be Nokia's Mobile Games Initiative Challenge. Announced today, it offers a 70,000 Euro prize fund, and a pre-production contract with Nokia publishing. More details on the dedicated web site.
Following on Symbian's announcement last week, Nokia have also published plans to establish a research lab in Lausanne and Zurich, in association with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. This center will start by looking at pervasive communications, using all the human senses, user context and interaction with internet services... which sounds like a mix of Ovi's approach to bringing on board platforms such as Facebook and MySpae, but also extending the S60 sensor platform we're expecting to see later in the year.
In perhaps the biggest and most long-awaited firmware upgrade in the S60 world for many months, the so-far flakey Nokia N82 finally had its uber-upgrade released, to v20.0.062. It's on NSU now for unlocked/unbranded devices. See below for images and details, but the main additions are the addition of Flash Lite 3 (and Flash video) and integrated GPS Location tagging; plus Web runtime (widgets).
I've been comparing the audio quality in recorded videos in a selection of top Nseries smartphones. What differences are introduced by the move from stereo to mono and by re-using the main phone microphone? What about mike component quality? What about differences in automatic gain control?
A second video link for this morning, this time to 'Gadget Show WEB TV', who reviewed Fring, the free VoIP and chat utility over the weekend. Great to see the coverage but the ultimate negative verdict was undoubtedly flavoured by the data speeds and coverage in the single demo area. What about Wi-Fi? What about 3.5G? Comments welcome - how well does Fring work for you?