No, not that hell. Michael Hell, previously of Symbian Freak and a geek after my own heart for the last 5 years, and someone whose opinion I respect. And he's just produced an interesting Top 10 phones of 2009, split into numbers 10 to 6 and then numbers 5 to 1. And the top pick will surprise you, but it's entirely defensible.
Just in case you're huddling at home, in front of AAS or your RSS feed rather than being out at some party this New Year's Eve, you might like to see in the New Year with this crafted '2010' theme from master designer PiZero. Get it installed before the big moment for maximum effect!
The prolific Guru, Ricky Cadden, has done an interesting piece here, part rant, part tutorial, documenting his frustrations with Nokia Messaging and his switch to Email/Contacts/Calendar syncing direct to Google services. It's a little bit geeky, to be sure, but you just know you're interested in how it all works...
I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
You can usually trust James Whatley to have his head screwed on more or less straight when it comes to assessing the merits of various phones and smartphones - I suspect even more go through his hands than through mine.... Anyway, he's written up his judging process for The Really Mobile Project 'Phone of the year' and.... I think you'll be surprised. And then you'll go "Well, yes, I see his point". Interesting stuff, though my phone of the year is the less mass market Nokia N97 mini - it's just a shame this came in so late in 2009...
As part of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in two weeks time, 20 mobile apps have been selected to compete in the Mobile App Showdown. Perennial Symbian favourite Gravity (here's the AAS Review of the Twitter client) is currently running fifth in the public vote, which continues until Friday 8th January.
No, not a blatant Phones Show plug (though Phones Show Chat 18 is out), but a serious attempt to provoke thought and discussion. Ahead of a video feature on smartphone recommendations, I've opened up my thought processes to you below, in some detail, breaking down the market into a whopping seven stereotypes(!) Maybe you'd like to chip in with comments, recommendations and disqualifications of your own?
It's all very well listening to advice on ways to cut down the power used by your smartphone, but have you ever seen the power savings quantified? Can you put numbers to the various techniques and settings? You can now, with my handy guide. Although testing was on a Nokia N96, the findings should apply to any Symbian-powered smartphone.
In a remarkable turn of events, Nokia's Ovi Store (e.g. see the client on your phone) has beaten another official outlet to the punch, with new versions of the free S60 YouTube client available - v2.2.21 for S60 3rd Edition phones and v2.2.29 for S60 5th Edition phones. No major feature changes, I'm afraid, and the menu is somewhat screwy on the latter version, but hey, it's free and it's new, right? Photo proof below.
In All About Symbian Insight 99 (AAS Podcast 163), we discuss recent news including Nokia's presence at MWC, Ewan's Le Web trip and recent Apple legal activity. Then there's discussion of the Nokia Booklet 3G and the future direction of such mobile devices and software platforms. Finally there some special Christmas related content making for a longer-then-usual podcast. You can listen to AAS Insight 99 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Guest author Julian Grail takes on a review of the alliterative Magic Message Manager, claiming to filter your emails and SMS in powerful ways. Unfortunately, it suffers at the end of the day from not being integrated tightly enough into Symbian OS/S60. Comments welcomed if you've had a chance to try Magic Message Manager yet.
Track and Protect, now available in beta, is a personal remote security tool for Symbian phones. It brings easy-to-use remote management and security features, such as remote locking and wiping, to a consumer audience and also includes a location tracking module. We've taken a closer look at the beta version in this in-depth review and conclude that Track and Protect should 'significantly improve the chance of having your phone returned to you', if it is lost or stolen. Read on for more.
How about that for an early Christmas present? Aimed at the Nokia N95 (which must be drawing its pension by now), Nokia have released a new firmware for the device. We're off to dust down the older phones (they must be in here somewhere) to find out what delights are in v35.0.001. Be aware that user data is not preserved in a firmware update on the N95 range, so you must back up your data first if you want to keep it. The N82 also gets v35, though this does have User Data Preservation, making the upgrade a little easier.
A couple of Phones Show-related links for you: show 98 is now live, with my video review of the Nokia E72 and a walkthrough of Nimbuzz with Twitter on the Nokia N97. And if you're anywhere near Berkshire in the UK on the 6th of January 2010, there's an informal Phones Show pub meet - anyone welcome, though my offer of 'free beer' might need a caveat if too many people want to attend... 8-)
One would assume that with the Nokia N95, N96 and N97 having sequential product numbers, there would be a common aim for their use in the minds of Nokia's design team, along with a clear technical evolution. To be fair, you can see the former, in their focus on multimedia in conjunction with a decent camera. However, the latter isn't that easy to demonstrate, as I found when comparing the three Nokia flagships (from 2007, 2008 and 2009) head to head - it seems there are plenty of attributes for which the N95 wins and still more for which the N96 wins....