In AAS video podcast 35, I met up with Lori Sylvia and Richard Kinder of Red Bend at the Smartphone Show 2008, talking about their FOTA (Firmware Over The Air) software that's included in the latest Nokia S60 phones and having a hands-on demo.
The latest in my continuing voyage of discovery in the world of camera-toting smartphones, I look at the difference optical zoom makes and ask the question "Is it better to have optical zoom or can you get away with just much higher resolution?" I illustrate my points with test shots from the Samsung G810 and INNOV8, plus a guest appearance by the Nokia N93, which also has an optical zoom lens.
As evidenced by Rafe's Gallery yesterday, we've got a LG KT-610 at AAS Towers, and I've been trying it over the last week. Cheaply put together in almost every respect, the price is sadly the only impressive thing about this qwerty clamshell. Nice idea, but shame about the implementation - here's my full KT-610 review.
As a trailer for Steve's forthcoming LG KT610 review, which will be available later this week, here is an image gallery featuring LG's second S60 phone (following on from the KS10). The KT610 has a rather unusual clamshell form factor with full QWERTY keyboard which does makes it stand out a little from the S60 crowd. If you have any specific questions about the phone then leave a message in the comment thread and we'll do our best to answer it in the review.
In All About Symbian Podcast 98 (Insight #45) we are back from last weeks Symbian Smartphone Show at Earl's Court. There some discussion on the feel and size of the show, Symbian Foundation related announcements, and the start of our run through of some of the devices and demos we saw.
My Phones Show 67 just went live, with a hands-on preview and thoughts on the S60 5th Edition-powered Nokia 5800 XpressMusic ('Tube'), plus a cross-platform feature analysing 'Which phone should you buy?'. Note also the RSS feeds for the standard and hi-res versions of the show, for your feedreader, browser or iTunes. And yes, Rafe's official AAS preview of the 5800 is coming soon, don't worry....
The N79 seems to be now making its way to shops across Europe, as Nokia's official site in Italy lists it as available now, and Expansys UK also has it in stock. You can find out more about the N79 from All About Symbian's extensive hands-on preview article.
Announced first for Russia and then the rest of the world, Samsung have launched the I7110, with an OLED screen, similar to that in the Nokia N85, but is in a candy bar form factor and with familiar 5mp/GPS/Wi-Fi specs. More details below.
It's always interesting seeing long term tests of phones, i.e. from people who have lived with a device intensively for a while. In this case, Symbian Smashpop has lived with the Nokia N96 for a month (and no, I still haven't even seen one - go figure) and here presents a list of loves and hates. In other news, Vaibhav has been trying out the DVB-H TV in the N96 and comes away very impressed.
It's all very well standing there smugly with your new Nokia N or Eseries phone, knowing that it's functionally superior to your friend's Apple iPhone. But when you both turn on your devices, it's the iPhone that people gather round, partly because of the larger screen, but also partly to watch its party tricks. Watching these tricks, you might well ask: 'Why can't my S60 phone do that?' Chances are, it can, with a few software caveats...
The much-awaited Nokia N85 is now available in Finland, and it also seems to have now gone on sale in France too. It's already been available in Italy for a short while now, and presumably should get a continent-wide rollout as the month goes on. The package deal of the SIM-free model varies from country to country, but most people seem to get a voucher for some free Nokia Music Store tracks, a free Nokia Maps subscription and a free N-Gage game.
In part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 of this series, Steve Litchfield looked at specifics of camera performance in the phone world. Now AAS guest writer Dirk Snoyt takes up the theme of camera phone flash research and gets all technical on the theme of colours. If you'd like to suggest a topic for us to cover next in the series, please comment!
Somewhat annoyingly (for those of us outside the country), Italy seems to be the very earliest recipients of production Nokia N85s - here, p@sco brings us a traditional unboxing and test photos. See also Rafe's N85 hands-on for more on what makes this device special.
Hot off the press, the Nokia E90 has had another big firmware update, to v300.34.84. There's now Maps 2.0 in the firmware, plus many other improvements. Changelog below. [Update:although it was first thought that Blackberry support was no longer possible, this has now changed: see here]
The EEE PC portable computer range has received a lot of coverage over the past year partly due to its low price but also partly due to its small size. How does Asus' minilaptop compare to Nokia's microlaptop, the E90 Communicator? All About Symbian's Tzer2 is about to find out, in an article with somewhat predictable outcome but plenty of interesting insights along the way, including Download! being held up as a relatively good example of how to do things - for a change.