Nokia's UK music service, Ovi Music, is now DRM-free in its pay-per-track store. Nokia started switching its music stores last year; while new country launches moved straight to the DRM-free version, existing countries have been switched over only gradually. Ahead of next week's Nokia World and the launch of the N8, Nokia is moving over most of the remaining countries to the new version of the service, where there are no restrictions on how and when you play any of your music downloads.
EchoEcho is a new cross-platform "where are you?" application and service, using SMS as its communications medium, to ensure compatibility with most phones. Reviewing it seemed like a job for Ewan Spence and he dived into with glee. Although he reckons it's "an answer in search of a question", both of us reckon it has potential. Comments welcome, no matter if you think it's a slice of genius or a complete dud!
In All About Symbian Insight 134, we start with news of new, community created Samsung i8910 firmware, which leads to a discussion of Samsung's mobile platform choices. Rafe discusses the Ovi Files closure and talks about how the thinking behind Nokia's Ovi service strategy has evolved. David shares his PixelPipe Send and Share experiences, before bringing news of UK operator Orange's HD Voice service. Ewan talks about Swype, an alternative text input entry system, which is now available in beta. Finally, Steve gives his first opinion on the Nokia E5.
Nokia's mission for the forward-facing, messaging-centric QWERTY market (think Blackberry)? Take the best selling E71/E63/E72 concept, interpret it in 2010 design language, beef up the internals and try to sell it for as low a price as possible while making as few compromises as possible. The result of that tricky challenge is the E5, announced way back in April but, surprisingly, not available until now. Here's my full Nokia E5 review - grab a hot drink and settle down for a (hopefully) good read!
Do you have a monthly, weekly or even daily data limit on your mobile account? I know I do, which is why we leapt at the appearance of Data Monitor as a utility to help keep track of usage. However, with barely more data-gathering functionality than the built-in Log utility and with an intrusive and hard-to-configure, always-on 'ticker', it seems that Data Monitor isn't ready for the prime time just yet, as you can read in David Gilson's review.
To kick-off our coverage of Nokia's new budget QWERTY slate smartphone, the Nokia E5-00, we have our usual gallery, with commentary, showing off some of the key hardware features. In summary? The E5 has rock solid build quality, good design and a decent hardware specification, but there's are some budget-linked constraints to note. All-in-all though, it is an attractive entry into the mid tier smartphone market.
Having been a smartphone owner for longer than most, I suspect, as an All About Symbian reader, you'll be very used to the daily routines of charging and power management. Even with some of Nokia's S60 devices (think 6650, E71, E52, E55, E72) running happily for several days at a time on a charge, the reality is that (especially when talking about large screened touch-driven devices) most of us need to charge every night. Or suffer the consequences. Acceptable for us, this requirement is something of a deal breaker for many 'normobs', those for whom mobile technology is merely a tool and not something they're prepared to nurse maid through the week....
Orange UK have announced a new service called HD Voice, which will give superior audio call quality over its 3G network on selected phones. Available free of charge, the service will initially be available to a small set of phones; Nokia's 5230, X6 and E5, plus the Samsung Omnia Pro. Having listened to test calls, it is a vast improvement, but not quite up to the claimed "Crystal Clear" quality as claimed. Click through to read our commentary.
Nokia Experts reports that Ovi Files, Nokia's remote file access and cloud-based file mirroring/storage solution, will be discontinued on October 1st. The announcement is a set back to Nokia's Ovi service ambitions, but with relatively few users and low awareness, the long-term impact is likely to be small. A number of third party services, such as SugarSync and DropBox, provide a similar service for those who need to move from Ovi Files.
The Nokia E72 has received a OTA firmware update from version 031.023 to 051.018, and is an 11MB download. It is a significant update with a wide range of changes. Notably, Web sees an upgrade to v7.2.6. Along with updates, there is the usual statement of "stability and performance improvements", but these come along with a massive 450+ bug fixes. Click through for more details.
David Gilson reviews the free Pixelpipe Send and Share, the new incarnation of the popular uploading service that works independently of Nokia's Share online and thus works more seamlessly, using a wider range of file types and (presumably) on more devices. It's all win, win, win until David points out a few caveats, including less flexible authentication and a greater need to do some of the set up using your desktop's web browser.
You may want to check 'Sw update' on your Nokia S60 3rd Edition or 5th Edition phone, as it seems that there's a pre-Nokia World 2010 update available for all phones, fixing minor bugs (including correcting and enhancing Nokia's Wi-Fi location system) and possibly preparing the way for additional services. It's a full 8 to 10MB update (depending on device) and installs over the air. There's no change in the basic version number (3.4) but the build number is (obviously) higher, now at '278'. More below.
In All About Symbian Insight 133, we start with news of the Nokia 5250, Nokia's cheapest ever smartphone, following which, Steve shares some more detail from his recent reviews of Let's Golf and Mommax's Mains Battery Charger. Rafe talks about Nokia and Intel's new joint laboratory for 3D mobile user experiences. Finally Ewan gives us his commentary on the the re-branding of Nokia Music to Ovi Music. You can listen to AAS Insight 133 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Applications are rarely completely static. Anything with a decent amount of functionality is bound to have either flaws - which then hopefully get fixed - or planned improvements. The big question is how to best to get these new versions out to users. In this news editorial, I look at how application updates work for the three big smartphone platforms of the moment, Symbian, iPhone and Android. What can those in the Symbian world learn or implement?
