Buzz seems to be growing in our forums that Samsung are getting their act together in terms of firmware updates for their S60 phones at last. Nothing over the air (yet), but firmware HJ7 (though from mid October) is now being offered via the latest version of their PC Suite. Join in the drama if you're feeling brave!
For completeness, note that The Phones Show 71 is now online, with a video version of my musings on the Nokia N82 and robustness, plus (from the non-Symbian world) a detailed hands-on review of the HTC Touch HD and why TouchFLO needs to take over or die, plus a walkthrough of web browsing on the Android-powered T-Mobile G1.
In which I explain, for beginners, how to get hooked up to a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and dramatically increase the speed of text entry on your phone... It's a very quick and simple solution, once you've gone through the initial two minute setup process...
Buddycloud, a location aware social networking client with a difference, is now available in native S60 3rd Edition form. The difference is that it's built on open standards, so will chat to anything that talks XMPP, as well as automatically updating your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Location is apparently via a mix of cell towers, Wi-Fi and GPS. Some screenshots are shown below. (Thanks to MIR for the heads-up)
So PC Suite's working OK on your PC at the moment? Better not rock the boat. But in case you fancy doing just that, or if things have got rocky and you think a fresh install might do the trick, note that there's a new non-beta version of Nokia's PC Suite now available, v7.1, with the previously beta Communication Center product built-in. If you do install, let us know how it looks! (via Symbian Guru)
Well spotted that man. At Nokia World 2008, jet black and red versions of the E71 were spotted strutting their stuff. And it seems that there's a fighting chance that these will make it to market at some point. Photo proof here, courtesy of the E71 blog.
For the first time, BBC World Service in English and BBC World Service's 24-hour rolling news in English (plus their Arabic news) are now available through Nokia's free Internet Radio application, following an agreement between BBC World Service and Nokia. The stations are available for live streaming 24 hours a day.
According to the BBC, their popular iPlayer service is now available for the Nokia N85 (and not just the N96) - they've quoted the URL www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ for N85 owners to go (on their phones) to get the new widget. Comments welcome if you can try this. It's also worth noting that the BBC are looking into releasing iPlayer for other Nokia Nseries devices in the near future, plus two Windows Mobile smartphones and the uber-camera-phone, the Sony Ericsson C905.
Google Maps, their native client for S60 3rd Edition is now out, taking us up to v2.03(0). It's bigger now, at 1.3MB. The main changes are the addition of StreetView, for selected locations (in the USA, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and Australia), walking directions and expanded search and user review features (e.g. at tourist attractions). I've put up lots of screenshots below. To get Google Maps, go to m.google.com on your favourite S60 phone etc.
With Christmas fast approaching, it's high time for a detailed hands-on head to head between the three smartphone platform flagships: Nokia N96, HTC Touch HD and Apple iPhone 3G. Can I pick a winner? Do I need to? Plenty of opinion, facts and device lowdown here, but your comments most welcome.
A couple of interesting links of interest for you from the N82 Blog - bringing news that Slick IM, a popular free Instant Messaging utility, has been updated with full theme support, plus news of a big update to MyPhone, a commercial iPhone skin/launcher that sits on top of S60 (though its use seems to be mainly novelty value in front of easily-swayed friends...)
... In which I get all picky about the quality of video capture on Nokia's latest devices, the N79, N85 and (here) the N96. Is there a problem, and if so then is it down to changed premises, settings or lack of graphics acceleration hardware? For once, I'm really not sure and would love folk with more technical/photographic expertise than me to help out in the comments, as we try to get to the bottom of the issues.
Yes, so many of us have been playing with the new proxy-based, video-friendly, S60-native browser Skyfire over the last few weeks. It has now gone official though, with links, press release extracts and an official Skyfire FAQ below.
In this, the second part of Ewan Spence's chatty look at the Nokia N85, he carries on from part one's look at the hardware and styling of the device. Running S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, the N85 sees tweaks to the interface and some of the built in applications to help the user experience. How successful have Nokia been?
Released a few minutes ago, the Nokia N96 just got its v12 update, to v12.043. See below for any changes or observations. The update's about 3MB over-the-air (a block-patch process using Red Bend's software, as usual, this seems to work really well) or about 120MB via Nokia's Software Update. Comments welcome if you're tagging along too...