In All About Symbian Insight 123, the team discuss the news of the Nokia X5-01 and X6 8GB, which were launched at Nokia Connection in Singapore. Ewan gives us an overview of the Nimbuzz application, before Rafe explains that Symbian^3 is now functionally complete. Finally, Rafe and Steve discuss their thoughts on what they learned at the recent Nokia N8 hands-on event. You can listen to AAS Insight 123 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Starting with a throwaway line from a US podcast, Steve Litchfield works up a head of steam over the ever-slipping battery life standard in our smartphones. How long is long enough when it comes to keeping a modern smartphone going on a single charge? Are we destined to need to carry around mobile chargers in our pocket in 2011 or is there a better way to go? Surely making it through the day is a fundamental that should never be compromised?
Zahir Mahmood is, I suspect, a big Phones Show fan, partly because he links to my video podcast, but also not least because he's come up with his own take on the idea of postulating a number of smartphone use cases and then delivering a winner (or, in his case, a winner, a mid-level alternative and a budget suggestion) for each. His use cases are 'Photography and media capture', 'Entertainment and games', 'Office and work' and 'Internet world'. So familiar territory for me then, but his choices are both interesting and very Symbian-relevant.
David Gilson brings the Nokia E72 story right up to date, giving his own review take on the device now that it has received the first two rounds of firmware updates from Nokia. What has been fixed, what's still broken and who can the E72 be recommended for? With links, photos and opinion, this is a definitive summing up of the E72, mid June 2010.
At the Nokia Connection event in Singapore Nokia announced the social messaging and music focused Nokia X5-01. It's an S60 3rd Edition handset in a vertical slider, with QWERTY keyboard, form factor, which gives it square shape when the slide is closed. The Nokia X5-01 is currently scheduled to be launched in Indionesia in Q3 at a price of €165 before taxes and subsidies.
Around 36 hours ago, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone 4 to the world - excellent build materials on it, but I believe that they - and Nokia - and others - are missing an important trick: what happens when you take your oh-so-portable smartphone out into the world. A world where the birds are singing, the people are smiling and the sun is shining. And you can't see a blessed thing on your smartphone's display. Returning to a theme from exactly a year ago, I compare some recent device displays to prove a very, very important point.
It's not everyday that you learn something - I've known for a while that a) OLED displays are supposed to be more power efficient than TFT and that b) the brighter the colours, the more power is actually consumed. But I hadn't realised the scale of the problem until now, with hard evidence from a semi-official Nokia source. Read on for links and comments by me. Summary? On a OLED-screened smartphone, a pure white theme uses 14x as much power as a pure black one!
In All About Symbian Insight 121 we share the best of the previous week's news: SEE 2010 dates, Nokia E73 Mode, Nokia Bike Charger and more. The team then briefly discuss the marketing messages around the Nokia N8, before moving on to some commentary on data rates and the data crunch. Finally Rafe reports back on some of the NRC demos he saw as part of Nokia's recent 'Open for Ideas' event. You can listen to AAS Insight 121 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia and T-Mobile USA have announced the forthcoming availability of the Nokia E73 Mode. It is, effectively, an operator specific variant of the Nokia E72, which was released last year. However, there are a number of cosmetic changes and the 3G bands have been changed to suite T-Mobile's network. Notably, for a operator branded Nokia handset, it will ship with a range of Nokia services, including Ovi Maps and Ovi Store. The E73 Mode will be available from June 16th for $69.99 on a two year contract.
During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course!
Here's the latest in my series about taking older, classic (2008 or before) hardware and finding out how far it can be taken to work to best effect in the modern day. You'll have seen the features on the Nokia E61i and E90 - now here's Pimping the Nokia N82 - a quirkily styled candybar that sat at the top of Nokia's hardware tree for ages - and in some ways still does.
In All About Symbian Insight 120 Rafe reports back on the first part of his trip in Finland to find out about Nokia's approach to innovation. Rafe and Steve then discuss the Nokia-Yahoo partnership announced this week, the release of Nokia Messaging for IM for Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, the game Creebies and an interview with Symbain's Lee Williams that suggested the first Symbian^3 phone will arrive from an Asian manufacturer (rather than Nokia in the form of the N8). You can listen to AAS Insight 120 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
You may remember that, 18 months ago, Christmas 2008, I wrote a feature: Robustness, the Forgotten Factor, in which I gave my estimates of the most (and least) robust of the (then) current crop of smartphones. As we head into summer in the Northern hemisphere, I thought an update to the 'chart' might be in order, just looking within our Symbian-powered world this time. See below for my illustrated listing and then leave your comments!
Earlier this week, as part of Nokia's 'Open for Ideas' event, I spent some time at Nokia's Espoo offices in Finland. At one end of the building there's a Nokia Experience lounge where you can see all of the latest products and get demos of the latest services. Here's a quick visual look at some of the products and services being showcased. We've got much more to come from the 'Open for Ideas' event, which was about understanding Nokia's approach to innovation.
