Guest contributor Nick Anstee signed up to be one of the first to get a Nokia N96, as part of a limited 'wildlife' run. Read on for his first impressions of the N96 [text updated heavily], after almost a week of intensive playing, plus photos of the device and some really nice photo samples taken on the device.
Pre-order information on Expansys suggests that Nokia's Comes with Music handsets may have a premium of around £70-£85. Comes with Music gives you unlimited music downloads for a year (and the right to keep that music at the end of the year). However it is must be noted that these prices should be considered speculative and subject to change. Read on for more details.
Theme supremo PiZero just launched what he calls his 'Premium' theme pack. All gorgeously understated and 100% SVG, so as to scale onto any device, I set Ewan to try them all out and deliver a verdict as to whether they're worth paying for. Although he sits on the fence slightly, he's sorely tempted and ends up recommending them. And at only ten Euros, for many of us is it not also a good way of saying thanks to PiZero for all the free themes over the last 2 years?
Salling software has announced the release of Salling Media Sync. The software allows you to sync playlists, songs and podcasts from iTunes to Nokia and Sony Ericsson mobile phones. Salling Media Sync is available for both Mac OS X and Windows PC. The basic version is free, the premium version, which costs 15 EUR, adds sequential intelligent sync (only new or changed files after first sync).
In All About Symbian Insight #38 (AAS Podcast #91) Rafe and Steve chat about where the Nokia N96 lines up, firmware updates to the Nokia N95 and N95 8GB, look forward to Comes with Music announcements and touch on Symbian's Q2 results. The main part of the insight covers the newly released Samsung I8510 and our first impressions of its 8 megapixel camera.
Over at S60.com, the team have recommended a number of freeware and trial applications for S60 owners.. More from Saara on the See Into S60 blog, but it's worth highlighting their link to Dr. Jukka Silvennoinen's Profile Scheduler, a utility that will switch between profiles at designated time. I see no reason why this shouldn't be on everyone's device, or even in the S60 firmware.
Samsung has now launched, in beta, its new developer website, Samsung Mobile Innovator, which aims to help software developers create applications for Samsung S60 phones. The site provides technical and marketing support as well as a number of developer tools. An early highlight is the provision of an API to access the touchwheel of the i450 phone and similar custom APIs, for other Samsung devices, are on the way.
v30 firmware is now online in Nokia Software Update for the N95 8GB too. This follows the update for the N95 classic on Friday. Changelog below. The usual caveats about backing up/syncing and insuring your house apply. Contents may settle in transit, and so forth....
TapRoot Systems have announced the general availability of WalkingHotSpot. Similar in nature to JoikuSpot, this app will take a Wi-Fi enabled Symbian smartphone and turn it into a 'mobile' Hot Spot for other devices to connect through and get on-line. WalkingHotSpot is available for a seven day free trial, before switching to a monthly subscription of $7 (or $25 for 12 months).
You can't fault posts like this, listing some of the top recent Python applications written for S60-powered phones. Whether you're after some very useful example code for your own Python masterpiece or just some ideas for cool freebies to install and use, from a GPS tracker to game controller to equation solver, this is a good starting point, as will be the hosting Croozeus PyS60 Applications section, as it accumulates the results of similar choices and postings. In each case, there's full source code.
Nokia's 70,000 euro game concept competition closes tomorrow (8th of September) so you'd better get your skates on if you want to take part. They're not looking for any actual code, all they want are detailed ideas for Symbian, Java or N-Gage games optionally including mockup images and/or video too. Note that the competition is only open to professional development companies, private individuals cannot enter.
Steve and I have had the Samsung i8510 (a.k.a. the INNOV8, in some markets) for the best part of a week, putting it through its paces. In all honesty, it's too early for a full review because there are some things needing to be attended to by Samsung, but what Steve was really interested in was how well the screen, 8 mp camera, focussing camcorder and DSP-powered music playback performed. I hope you'll be interested too. [Monday morning: We've updated the sections on playing videos, on music playback and application compatibility]
Several sites are reporting that a BBC iPlayer application will soon be available for the Nokia N96. Some N96's will ship with the application preloaded, but it will also be available for download from the BBC website. The application will support both the downloading and streaming of BBC TV and radio programmes. Read on for more.
Some folks are gonna love this. Others will hate it. But Handy Shell is coming, taking over the whole S60 standby/menu/control key schema and making it remeniscent of a Windows Mobile home screenadding new functionality. Ricky Cadden's been playing with the Handy Shell beta and you'll find his thoughts and screenshots right here.
Shazam have been at the music recognition game for a while - and we look here at the native S60 version of their flagship Shazam ID utility, which samples music snatches from the radio and then lets you know where it's from. Ewan's been trying to catch it out but ended up quite impressed.