It's the hottest ticket in town and Rafe and I were able to spend a whole afternoon with the Samsung INNOV8, due for availability in September. With slick black styling, 8 megapixel camera, GPS, UPnP, Wi-Fi and every other acronym you can think of, including DivX and WMV compatibility, the INNOV8 is the highest specified phone in the world - and it runs S60 3rd Edition FP2. You'll find thoughts, details, screenshots, photos and a video in our exclusive hands-on INNOV8 (p)review. And as a bonus, there's also more close-up photos of the device in Rafe's INNOV8 gallery.
It's been a while since I updated my (smart)phone-choosing Grid, but I bit the bullet and this now has the iPhone 3G, the Nokia E71, the Nokia N78 and the HTC Touch Diamond, among others. How does it do for you?
Well worth waiting for is Rafe's part 2 of his definitive Nokia N78 review. This time he looks at all the multimedia aspects of the N78, from camera to video to music to UPnP. Including a test of the unique FM transmitter, Rafe leaves no stone unturned. See also Part 1 of the review. Part 3 will feature all the other applications and Rafe's concluding thoughts on the N78.
In AAS podcast 86, a.ka. AAS Insight 33, Rafe and Ewan talk about N-Gage's Brothers in Arms and Reset Generation, Samsung's 8 megapixel Innov8 device, the challenges behind device comparisons and open source in relation to Symbian.
Living near a big city, it's all too easy to think of my phone/smartphone experience as being typical of the norm. During the course of a week away in the country, I made several observations which show that we should never take 'our' mobile environment for granted or assume any level of capability in other mobile users. And, along the way, I managed to crash an 'iPhone' and get a couple of people to go all dizzy while explaining what I was doing with the N95 8GB...
Nokia's N93 seemed to be blazing a trail for a new generation of phones equipped with 3D graphics acceleration, with the N95 and N82 strengthening this assumption. However, this year's flagship device the N96 doesn't have any 3D hardware, so has Nokia changed its mind? In a special editorial, AAS's sister site All About N-Gage takes a look at what Nokia's options are for 3D chips with particular regard to their recently launched N-Gage platform. Will they get together one day, or is this a doomed romance?
Samsung today announced the high-end, feature packed Samsung INNOV8 (model number i8510). It is an S60 slider with a 8 megapixel, autofocus camera with dual LED flash. The phone runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and other key features include a 2.8 inch screen, WiFi, 16GB of on board flash memory, optical sensor, integrated GPS, accelerometer sensor, and DNSe audio technology.
Well, at least they didn't give the E71 to Nokia-hater Andrew O.... Writer Dave Oliver gives the new E71 his seal of approval, concluding that it's "a brilliantly efficient piece of technology that does pretty much everything you might want it to do and it does it all extremely well. Like a technological servant of sorts, it serves up its many excellent facilities and a host of other titbits with a minimum of fuss - and no small amount of style."
Spec-sheet comparisons are all very well, but how good are the Nokia N95 8GB, the Apple iPhone 3G and the HTC Diamond in real life? The AAS team has come up with a dozen things that we all like to do with our phones and Steve was then set to accomplishing all of them on all three devices. Can the sheer usability and likeability of the iPhone triumph over Nokia's N95 design and S60? Is the HTC Touch Diamond a competitor here? Find out in the full usability feature.
Network operator '3' just held a big launch event, showing off what's coming up on contract, and SMS Text News' Ewan (always entertaining) was there. In the absence of any actual releases on the '3' web site, he's our lifeline to news and video from the event, showing off the Nokia N96 (to be available in September) and white E71 (available now), among others. There's also a well-placed rant about the sheer uselessness of mainstream media and some of the freeloaders in that world - worth a read if only to reinforce why you read AAS and SMST!
