Nokia has completed its acquisition of Plazes, a privately-owned start-up company in Berlin. By acquiring Plazes, Nokia "will be able to extend its context-based service offering with social presence and time-based activity planning features." It's not clear whether this service will be rolled into another service (Nokia Chat?) or developed standalone and rebranded.
With the news that Apple have (unsurprisingly) had 10 million downloads from their on-device AppStore in the first weekend of operation, I can't help but reflect back on the continuing disaster that is Nokia's Download! system - read my rant below and see if you agree!
Reports are coming in (e.g. here and the official page here) that the Nokia N78 has just received another firmware update, to v12.046, available over the air or via Nokia Software Update. v12.046 "includes a number of performance improvements including softkey selection, Bluetooth stability, video playback, email sending and alarm clock functions."
Nokia is going to unify its Ovi and other online services using a single login system called Nokia Account. In theory you can already register your Nokia Account username on the official website, though the registration section seems to be down for maintenance right now so you may want to check back later (it did work yesterday and many have already registered). At the moment Nokia Account is only being used by a few services, most notably Nokia Chat, but eventually it will be used by the entire Ovi suite including Ovi Share, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music, N-Gage etc. We've mentioned this before in other recent AAS items, but a lot of our readers apparently still don't know about this unification, so we thought it deserved a bit more publicity.
With today being another 'iPhone day' and with Apple's new commercial Mobile Me service going live, it's worth noting AAS regular Matt Radford's comparison between Nokia's free My Nokia service and the $100/yr Mobile Me. Matt's notes complete the picture somewhat and his conclusion is spot on, although I suspect that within a few months, Ovi Sync will have rectified the relative lack of integration.
Nokia Chat is a new, GPS-aware software and instant messaging service which is being previewed through Nokia Beta Labs. Nokia Chat is an instant messaging and presence application with added location features. Generic location information can be shared via your presence message, via matching GPS position with selected existing (Nokia Maps) favourite places or you can send an ad-hoc exact location as a chat message. Read on for more information, a brief review and screenshots.
The hoo-ha about a new piece of malware 'for S60 3rd Edition' called 'Isexplayer' should be utterly beneath our contempt - it's a non-story and I'll simply link to Vaibhav, who also dispells any worry very succinctly. Move on, folks, nothing to see.
Part rant, part apologetic, part FAQ, in this article I reply directly to a long and interesting email fired in by a Mac-owning, iPhone fan at my championing of the Nokia N95 (8GB) in Smartphones Show 62. Not your typical troll, Nikolay makes some good points in his missive but hopefully I make some equally good ones in return!
Darla's back on the scene and in good investigative form, as she uncovers Nokia Backup, an official online backup service that may or may not be related to Ovi, plus she announces and demonstrates a brand new beta service, Nokia Email, offering push email from your existing mailboxes. Comments welcome.
PictBridge compatibility is something often forgotten in Nokia's Nseries smartphones - in a real world example, I show how it works. Now you can print photos directly and quickly, wherever you are in the world!
As shown below, the Nokia E71 is now recognised in Nokia Software Update. Latest firmware is v100.07.76, should you want to double-check your new device, not that I've noticed any real bugs - although we can hope for new features at some point.
The first over the air firmware update for Nokia N78 (is this the first one on a S60 device ever?), v11.043, is now available. This new release 'brings more Bluetooth stability, has improved the Music Player refresh time, and includes optimized camera performance and Navi-scroll sensitivity. The update is approximately 2MB and is also available to be downloaded over Wi-Fi. Note that this may not be available for all operators or regions.' More details below. (via kflyer)
As Ewan puts it, it's another madcap show - All About Symbian Insight number 30 right here, in which we talk about Missing Sync for Symbian, the launch of the Nokia E71 and E66, plus first thoughts on the Motorola MOTO Z10. Note that this show was recorded last Thursday and so predates Tuesday's Symbian announcements - we'll bring you audio content to do with this very shortly.
Right on schedule (for a change), Smartphones Show 61 is out, with a video version of my hands-on review of the Nokia E71, plus news of an impending change of a name for the show. It's worth pointing out that show 61 was recorded before yesterday's big news, by the way...
My review of the Nokia E71, after a week with a production device, still left a few questions in the air, apparently. Rounding up everybody's comments so far, I've attempted (below) to try and answer all the questions about the E71, with Rafe (who also has a production device) pitching in to help. [Heavily updated - again]