AAS's month of trying to destroy Nokia smartphones concludes with me taking an unscheduled fall and hurting myself rather nastily. An N82 helped break my fall, yet still works perfectly. After Rafe's attempts to drown an N95 8GB and an E71, how much more do we have to do to break one of these things? Summing up, I reckon that robustness is a factor often forgotten by other gadget blogs and reviewers.
Programme 70 of The Phones Show just went live and will hopefully be of interest. I do mini video reviews of the Samsung INNOV8 and i7110, deliver some comment on the Nokia N97 and then launch into a six minute critique of the N97, E71 and E90-competing Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 - it's very well built but, like the Samsungs, could do with some fixing up and optimisation.
Yes, the Nokia N95 Classic has had a firmware update, to v31 (from v30), two years after the phone was first available. Impressive. Screen proof and any observations below - a whopping 140MB update. More later (if I can spot any changes!) and the usual cautions over backing up to memory card (blah) and this not applying to network-branded devices (blah) apply....
In an All About Symbian exclusive, I present part 1 of my two part review of Samsung's brand new S60 3rd Edition FP2-powered i7110. An OLED-screened candy bar, it's incredibly well built and spoilt only by a silly video bug and a strange control key design. In this, part 1, I look at its hardware. In part 2, I'll go through its software and present my overall opinion of this latest device.
As a fellow mobile video show host(!), I can appreciate the efforts of others in the field. Stuff.TV's last two shows have some interesting bits for the Symbian world. The very latest show has a feature on the best mobile games, with the N82 shown many times and Reset Generation on the N96 starring as well, plus the last but one has a big head to head between the Samsung INNOV8 and Sony Ericsson C905. I've already slated the INNOV8's reflective display in our video podcast and Stuff.TV agreed - it's the single biggest downside of the Samsung flagship.
While not directly S60 powered, the accessories announced at Nokia World yesterday certainly would sit happily alongside any smartphone. With a focus on 'enhancing the mobile experience,' the Finns presented a Home Music Station, the Internet Stick and the Nokia Extra Power DC-11.
Ewan's well into his long term Nokia N85 review period now, and here he brings us a chatty overview of his experience with its hardware, looking in particular at the OLED screen, the fingerprint-attracting styling and the slightly hit and miss d-pad. Read his N85 review - part 1. Subsequent parts will take a look at some of the newer (FP2) features in S60, the camera and multimedia capabilities.
In Insight number 50 (woohoo!), Rafe, Steve and Ewan discuss the latest news from the Symbian World. Steve talks about his overall N79 experience, Ewan has been playing with an N85 and Rafe waffles about the state of the open platform market. Plus, we look forward to Nokia World 2008 (tomorrow)....
Another of Nokia's latest wave of S60 3rd Edition FP2 phones goes under Steve Litchfield's scrutiny. This time it's the Nokia N79, which, like the N96 before it, though full of 'toys', is ultimately not powerful enough when compared to the older N82 and N95 variants. A lack of graphics acceleration and poor video capture are two aspects which Steve felt disappointed with, but the all-in-one, slim, fashionable form factor will, I feel, ensure mainstream success.
In AAS Insight 49, we have brief news of a new version of Mobile Web Server, and a forthcoming TD-SCDMA S60 phone. The main part of the podcast is divided in to two parts: Rafe discusses his time at a recent Developer Day in Budapest while Steve, from the 17 minute mark, tells us about his visit to Nokia's hardware testing facility. If you want to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
A couple of days ago, I was invited to spend the day at Nokia's Testing Labs at Farnborough, UK, being given a tour of the facilities and numerous demonstrations along the way. The aim was to spread the word about how rigorously Nokia test their handsets' hardware and on that front I was extremely impressed. AAS video podcast 37 is a fairly full 35 minutes of footage from the tour (taken on the N93 and N82, for those that are interested) and will let you see and hear what I saw. Enjoy.
At the Mobia Asia Congress, in Macau, Nokia reaffirmed its commitment to TD-SCDMA (also known as Chinese 3G) and said it was working on an TD-SCDMA enabled S60 handset for release in 2009. This follows on from the news that Digia has integrated TD-SCDMA into S60. China is one of the key emerging markets for mobile and China Mobile is one of the world's biggest operators (by customer numbers).
With the Sony Ericsson C905 arriving for review in The Phones Show, I couldn't resist doing a quick head to head between it and the Samsung INNOV8 - and the Nokia N82, for good measure.], so that I could evaluate the differences between 8mp and 5mp in the real world. The C905 is undoubtedly the phone with the stills camera of highest specification at the moment - but how good is it? Is it worth overlooking the many other factors involved in choosing a camera-phone/smartphone?
In AAS Insight 48, we talk about the launch of the new 'Facebook phone', the INQ1, we chat about the Nokia N96 and the new E63, plus we cover Qt, the cross-platform environment that Nokia bought recently. If you want to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
A lot of news over on All About N-Gage, with updates to the N-Gage app and new phones added to the platform, sales charts released, a new games announcement, and a couple of very interesting videos published. See below for the relevant links.