Guest writer Attila brings us a review of another 'handy' utility. This time, keeping out unwanted calls, it's Handy Blacklist. Summary: works as advertised but could do with even more flexibility.
Rafe'll be along shortly with his own official coverage no doubt, but in the meantime you could do worse than browse through Mobile Review's two photo-filled pages covering the main keynotes and exhibition hall. Memo to self: sell family and get to the Summit 2008...
Nokia music phones sound as good as a CD, says the Advertising Standards Agency (and which is reported by The Register). Responding to a complaint "that the AAC lossy compression used by Nokia is not CD quality." It all hinged on the ISO survey "Report on the MPEG-2 AAC Stereo Verification Tests, [which] found listeners largely unable to distinguish between the two, [so] 128Kbps AAC could be said to be of CD quality." Which will be music to the ears of the PR departments, but be ready for the audiophiles to recoil in horror.
Nokia has announced that the RAZR-like N76 is now shipping.... and those in a selected group of European countries also get vouchers for free Travis music tracks to download, courtesy of a link up with Sony. Press release follows...
Immpressive numbers from Nokia at the S60 summit, with the psychological target of 100 million S60 powered handsets been passed. It's relativly easy to sell a couple of hundred thousand handsets around the world, but as the numbers increase, the potential of the product must be realised. S60 clearly has that in the marketplace, and I suspect that the second 100 million will not take as long to reach as the first.
The Register reports that LG has "rolled out" their new S60 3rd Edition model the KS10 (previously known as Joy). However, the article goes on to state that "LG didn't say when the KS10 will hit the shops". El Reg also reports that the KS10 comes preloaded with various Google bits and bobs including Google Maps, Gmail and Blogger applications.
Samsung have announced a lightweight (92g) S60 powered slider phone. Following on from Nokia's 6120 Classic, the SGH-i400 is another entrant into the mid-range devices - with a 2 megapixel camera, and no 3g, it knows the market that it is aimed at. It's scheduled for a Q3 2007 debut in Russia, with the rest of Europe to follow.
Attila reviews Handy Converter, perhaps the perfect currency conversion utility for smartphones. He was looking at the S60 3rd Edition version, but it's also available for Series 60 and all UIQ platforms...
In a superbly long and detailed review, Krisse reports on a few weeks spent with the very latest Nokia S60 clamshell, the 6290. Marketed as a feature phone, the 6290 shares many of the specs of its Nseries cousins. Are there any gotchas? Krisse also reports on the integration with Nokia Video Manager and on the new features in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1.
Here is a small gallery of hands on photos of the recently announced Nokia 6120 smartphone. Included are some comparison shots with the Nokia E65 and Nokia N70 (Music Edition) that demonstrate the small proportions of this most recent S60 phone.
Podcast 21 is now live, by the way, with the Q&A that followed David Wood's talk at the Future Technologies conference last week. The question about whether smartphones were for the mass market fascinated me though - read on for some relevant photos of the current Nokia N95 marketing in the High Street and some thoughts...