Nokia today announced the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic; it's a S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 phone with a music and multimedia focus. It features a slim design (12mm thick and just 55cc in volume), music-focussed hardware (playback controls, 3.5mm audio jack, 4GB memory card) and software ('Say and Play' enabled music player, Nokia Music Store access and Comes with Music compatibility), an enhanced homescreen (Contacts Bar and Shortcut Bar), rich connectivity options (3.5G and WLAN), US charging and a 3.2 megapixel camera. The 5630 will be available, in selected markets, in the second quarter, at a price of €199 before taxes and subsidies. Read on for more and a video.
In All About Symbian Insight 59 (AAS Podcast 112) we talk about the recent release of Google Maps 3.0 and its inclusion of the Latitude location service. We follow up with a general discussion of 'people location services' and discuss their implementation, utility and surrounding privacy issues. In the last third of the podcast we preview the forthcoming Mobile World Congress event.
Google today launched the beta of its new Google Sync service for mobile phones. The service, which is free, allows you to synchronise data between your phone and Google's web services. This, for example, allows you to synchronise the contacts on your phone with the contacts data used by Google's GMail. All recent S60 and UIQ phones are supported through the use of SyncML. However currently only the synching of contacts is supported. Read on for more details.
Nokia Maps 3.0, currently in beta, has received its second major release. The new beta extends compatibility to popular S60 3.1 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1) devices such as the Nokia N95 and Nokia E71. The new version adds support for map rotation, more shortcut keys, better 3D support, a 'point me' function for saved landmarks and fixes a larger number of bugs. Based on my initial experience, I would add that the performance is improved and the application is much more stable. You are now also able to synchronise routes (in addition to favourites/landmarks) between Nokia Maps and Maps on Ovi. Read on for screens and more detail.
Regulars to AAS will know that I hate DRM (Digital Rights Management). Not because it stops me getting stuff for free, though that would undoubtedly be some people's reason, but because it gets in the way of how I want to use content that I've paid for. See below for a tale of woe - I was trying to give Nokia Music Store one last chance and it let me down yet again. Oh, and did I mention that I hate DRM?....
Last week Betavine, Vodafone's open mobile developer community, launched Widget competition. In addition to a first prize of £20,000 the winner will receive promotion of their widget in a Vodafone market, potentially reaching millions of users. Vodafone is using the Opera Widget Manager as the widget development platform and asks that developers target the N95, N96, N78 and 6210.
I often want to subscribe to a podcast that's not in the official Podcasting directory. At the moment, I have to bring up the RSS feed's address on the screen, write it out by hand on a piece of paper and then type it all in again into the Podcasting application. However, there's a quicker way, involving copy and paste. In this tutorial, I show how to subscribe to podcasts in Nokia's Podcasting system without typing a single podcast URL.
The guys over at Herocraft have been busy for the last couple of weeks. After releasing their long awaited title Travel Genius, they have updated two of their more recent offerings: Hexxagon Labs and 8 in 1 Arcade Park. You will be happy to know that both of these updates are available for existing owners of the games for free, it is definitely worth checking them out. Read on for details.
Yup, Google Maps for Mobile, the native S60 version, just hit v3.00 an hour ago. The main change is the addition of Google Latitude, a way of finding your friends on the map. More details, screenshots and the high-res version of the Latitude launch video below. To grab your own copy of v3.00, go to m.google.com and click on 'More' and then 'Maps'.
Kudos to SymbianpOp and getting there first with a detailed and illustrated look at the new version of Buddycloud. This free software (for Java, S60, etc. and with special emphasis here on touch and S60 5th Edition) lets you interact with friends, with full status and (favourite) location updates, derived from GPS, cell towers and Wi-Fi, plus there's interoperability with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. An interesting read!
