Nokia has unveiled the Nokia 6290, a 'midrange' 3G smartphone based on S60 3rd Edition. The Nokia 6290 is expected to begin shipping in Q1 2007 with an estimated retail price of 325 Euros before subsidies or taxes. New features include multiple alarms and handy 'Quick Cover' access keys, plus an interactive world travel application. Pictures and the full press release below...
Nokia have quietly (soft) launched a blog of their own for the upcoming Nokia World (Wednesday and Thursday this week). The blog brings together both internal (Nokia) and external bloggers to share their views, thoughts and comments on the themes of the Nokia World event. I will also be at the event covering it for All About Symbian. If you have questions or want to say hello please send me an email.
Via m-trends.org comes news that Nokia have created the Nokia Music Mixer as a promotion for its XpressMusic branding. The site allows you to remix your own ringtones via a web based user interface. The custom ringtone, in AAC format, can then be downloaded to your phone using a link sent via SMS to your phone as well shared with other users of the site.
Nokia has commissioned a survey by Nielsen Entertainment which interviewed 1800 users of mobile phone games from China, Germany, India, Spain, Thailand and the United States. The results are available in a press release and suggest that people will enjoy using Nokia's Next Generation gaming platform which is due for launch in the first half of 2007. Perhaps the most interesting is the average gaming session length: 28 minutes, which is far longer than is usually thought the case on phone games, and implies that the average phone gamer plays with as much dedication as they would on a portable console.
Nokia (and other Symbian licensees) naturally tend to keep user knowledge of what goes on under the hood as out of the way as possible, but for power users Jukka Silvennoinen's free Y-Browser utility is a true Swiss Army knife that will aid troubleshooting and give you increased functionality. Here's my review of the version for all S60 3rd Edition devices.
Well, we weren't going to comment on the much-leaked photos of the Nokia N93i, complete with metallic finish and keypad, no cover display and slightly slimmer form factor, but it seems that the device does exist as even Nokia's own PR blog is now linking to the snaps...
There's at least one regular AAS user who has one of the pre-production Nokia N95's, and you can follow his progress with it or ask questions right here in the forums.
Ewan has put his thinking kilt on and ponders whether the problem of the illegal software scene can be solved by a white knight - Symbian Signed. It is a controversial area and amongst the AAS team there are a range of opinions.
Nokia has released a new version of its PC Suite application . The new version, 6.82, adds stability fixes to the backup and restore functionality, improves Nokia Music Manager, adds fluency in information exchange with Microsoft applications (auch as Windows Media Player 11) and integrates Nokia Software Updater, which allows you to update your phone's firmware from home, into PC Suite.
You may know John Holloway as the guy behind ZingMagic (and before that Purple Software), but he actually goes back to the very beginning of the Symbian story, working at Psion. Ewan caught up with him at the Smartphone Show and covered a huge range of issues and anecdotes. Great stuff, catch it all in AAS podcast number 3.
Thanks to the E-series blog for updated versions of two very informative posts (and their comments) detailing the twodifferent ways to listen to Internet radio on your Wi-Fi-enabled S60 3rd Edition smartphone (so the N93, N80 etc are also 'in'). For a more chatty intro to the subject, see Krisse's intro here on AAS.
