Here comes a month of standby time, with the Nokia E55. Put alongside an incredibly thin profile and Nokia's new compact keyboard, placing two letters on each physical key, the E55 is aiming for those travellers with “a business state of mind.” Expected availability will be in the summer for around 265 Euros Sim free. More thoughts, details and pictures live from MWC after the break.
Sony Ericsson has just unveiled 'Idou', a 'concept' Symbian Foundation Platform phone with a 12.1 megapixel camera, Xenon flash and 16:9 aspect ratio, 3.5" touchscreen. The Idou will go on to become a device, but it is considered a concept because it is at an early stage in its development. Sony Ericsson will release more details, and a launch date in the summer. Read on for more details and our first hands-on impressions.
The Chinese MMORPG Anrufen is now available in an English-language beta version for Symbian S60 3rd Edition phones, which can be downloaded from the official Anrufen website. There's also an official forum for reporting problems with the beta.
We-Fi, the free software networking system that helps you find free and open Wi-Fi hotspots, has now been sanctioned by Nokia and is included in many device's Download! catalogs. We-Fi's a great idea - if it doesn't appear in your S60 phone's Download! then you can also grab it from here. It's also available for Window Mobile, Windows and Mac, by the way, and it's truly international. Can you get involved and help expand We-Fi's hotspot knowledge in your area?
It's the 14th of February again, and in its honour you might want to download some themes for your S60 device. Pizero has a rather splendid "Valentine 09" available for both S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices (so that includes the 5800), while Babi has a theme simply called "Lovely" available for S60 3rd Edition. Those of you with the N-Gage versions of DChoc Cafe Solitaire or DChoc Cafe Sudoku should pop into your cafes today to see them decked out in Valentine's day decorations. (And if you've recently bought a 5800 and want to know how to install themes, check out our newly-written theme tutorial.)
On the Nseries Innovation News Desk, an official blog on Nokia's Nseries.com website, there's a teaser post with a photo taken by a Nokia device. Closer examination reveals that the image is 2448 x 3264 pixels, that's around 8 megapixels, suggesting that Nokia will be releasing a new Nseries device at MWC with an 8 megapixel camera. We'll have to wait until Monday to find out more though.
The next gen N-Gage shoot-em-up Space Impact Kappa Base has been updated to add support for online clans and instant messaging in the game's "World Battle" section. Current owners can update to the new version for free, and people who haven't bought SI:KB yet may like to know the game's price has been dropped to 5 euros. Current owners can find full instructions for updating to the new version below.
Google Documents is a wonderful online resource, of course, but up until now spreadsheets have been rather off bounds to mobile users, with just an unfriendly column-by-column view. As long as your phone has a Web-kit-based browser (e.g. iPhone, S60, G1) then there's now a whole new view, with your spreadsheets looking (roughly) as they should and with full editing. Each row can have its elements edited in one go, which is a kludge but also kind of handy. On the downside, the weight of javascript involved does mean that the page isn't that light though, and largish spreadsheets can be slow to open and manipulate. Screens below.
ZingMagic, creators of slick version of classic board and puzzle games on all platforms, have launched a range of their titles now supporting S60 5th edition devices like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The list is: Backgammon Pro II, Checkers Pro II, Chess Pro II, Chinese Chess Pro II, Four In A Line Pro II, Gomoku Pro II and Reversi Pro II. All have a reworked UI (compared to the original S60 3rd Edition versions) and improved AI. There's also Zingles II, a bigger update, now supporting '4x4', 'thru 16x16', 'Jigsaw', 'Killer Sudokus', plus lots of 'solving aids, helper features'. Links, screens and mini-review of one of the new titles below the break.
Ewan heads out onto the course with the golfing legend.... but this, curiously, isn't an N-Gage game - it's Java. Surprisingly, this fact doesn't affect playability and, despite somewhat rudimentary graphics, he finds that it ranks with the best golf games on the mobile platform. Here's the review of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09.
Congratulations to Kristian at the Nokia Beta Labs for the blog post this morning. Not for the failure of the Contacts on Ovi database (because we wouldn't want to cheer on that sort of thing), but for coming clean and laying out a full explanation online to the problem. One of the lessons of the modern web is that news travels very fast, and hedging explanations is never a good thing. Looks like The Cluetrain Manifesto is in full operation at Beta Labs.
A heads-up for two interesting pieces over here at Ricky Cadden's guru site: firstly, Rita el-Khoury provides a great roundup of the resources and software that help keep her S60 phone fully up to speed in the medical world; and secondly the guru himself breaks news of JBak Pencil, a utility to give 5800 XpressMusic owners a virtual 'pencil' key for selecting multiple items - it's unsigned, but in this rare case the pain of signing something for your specific phone is definitely worth it.
This could be interesting. We (the writing staff) are under strict instructions from Rafe to not mention leaked products or services. It's long been the All About Symbian policy to discuss the official news and not comment on the rumours – after all, beyond reproducing the same spy-cam picture, rumoured specs and “it's shiny”, there's not much you can add in terms of accurate commentary. But the current wave of leaks should be seen as a good thing, in my opinion. Read on for why...
You'll remember our review of T9Nav from a week or two ago, along with comments that noone really knew what would happen when the beta period expired. Now we know, as T9Nav has appeared on the Nokia Software Market at 17 Euros. Not cheap for a little utility, but if the beta transformed your phone's interface and saved you time each day then it's still a recommended buy from our end.
The recently announced Nokia 5630 might be a cut price S60 model, but by packing in a huge feature list for regular users at an affordable price for them (and the networks), it's a perfect smartphone for the recession, no matter what power users may think of it.