The Russian website mforum.ru has done a rather astonishing durability test of the Nokia 5500, and it did rather well. They put the 5500 in a vacuum cleaner, buried it in a garden, bathed it in milk, bathed it in beer, held it under a tap, dropped it from a height of 2 metres, then 4 metres, then 6 metres, and finally ran it over with a car. It survived the lot, and only broke when they ran it over with the car a second time. The site's in Russian but the pictures and videos speak for themselves.
The N93 just got more useful, as its VGA quality videos can now be handled properly at last. Adobe's bundled Premiere Elements is slow and buggy but at least now Ulead's VideoStudio 10 Plus is a viable and efficient option for video editing, thanks to this bug fix which makes it fully N93-compatible.
Neuros very kindly sent over a sample of their MPEG-4 Recorder 2 set-top units, and I've been putting it through its paces. Essentially it's a tiny gadget designed to record video directly onto your smartphone's expansion card, for playback on the move. Here's the full review.
Thanks to this week's Carnival for pointing me towards one of the best articles on smartphone convergence I've read for ages, posted by Tomi in "The year the i-Pod died". Highly recommended reading.
In support of the international 'talk like a pirate day' (no, really), AAS's own krisse explores the world of ScummVM, the emulator that makes classic games like Monkey Island possible on any Symbian OS device, and reviews a couple of the most legal games.
There's a good how-to here, with example file links, on listening to streaming Internet radio using your Nokia E61 or any other S60 3rd Edition smartphone or communicator. Maybe you can help build the database of radio stations?
I don't normally revisit reviews unless there's a very good reason. Happily, the new v2.x firmware for the Nokia E70 is one such reason, removing many of the teething problems first reported. Here's the revised E70 review, with 25% new text and a new, higher score.
Techmundo's E61 shortcuts page seems to have grown nicely and is well worth perusing; and note that almost all the shortcuts actually work on all other S60 3rd Edition devices.
Just a note to say that Nokia seem to have fixed the problems bedevilling E70 owners with regard to firmware updates and that the Nokia Software Update service seems to work - I updated the editorial E70 successfully! Read on for all the changes I've noticed.
AAS's own 'krisse' has been training hard with just the Nokia 5500 for company. Though not billed as a smartphone, it's extremely capable and a true S60 3rd Edition device. Here's the full, illustrated review.
Ewan reviews the classic strategy puzzle, Super Miners, here in its latest S60 3rd Edition incarnation (but applicable to all other Symbian OS platforms). Summary: classic puzzle, superbly implemented.
Thanks to all the people who emailed us about this: Nokia has released a free 'SMS Accelerator' for the E61 (only), presumably a system patch to fix a known bug and one which will make its way into future firmwares?
Anyone wondering how to set up Voice over Internet (voIP) on the E61 (or other Eseries device with Wi-Fi) should make a beeline for this Eseries blog article and bookmark it or print it. Very informative, well illustrated and with helpful links.
