Milestones passing and arriving on the Smartphones Show. It passed the half a million viewings mark a few weeks ago, and is approaching its own half century, with Show 49 going live today, in the last show of 2007. This programme has a look at some smartphone bargains, an overview of the HTC Touch and Touch Dual, plus a review of all the add-on keyboard utilities, a demo of using a S60 smartphone as a wireless modem for your laptop and a brief look ahead to N-Gage.
The hands-down best S60 theme ever created, PiZero's 'Gold' has had a big upgrade, to v2.0 ! How can you have an upgrade, with bug fixes and version numbers, all for a simple theme? Because this is no ordinary theme and, like most of PiZero's other creations, it's implemented in meticulous detail. Oh, and if you like Gold 2.0, drop him a few PayPal dollars - I did.
Well done to Rafe and the team out in Amsterdam for winning WOM World's special Nokia quiz (against Symbian Freak and Mobile Burn) in handsome style. Best of all, the prize is a clutch of Nokia N82s for trialling. Congratulations all!
PDA Essentials magazine issue 69 is on the streets now in the UK, with a head-to-head of 'Smartphones under £250'. The Nokia 6120 Classic stole the show (and no, I didn't write the review) with the top score of 9/10 and with the editor declaring that it "is a great smartphone that simply works well and has the features to match".
Apologies for linking to an AAS comment thread already half-linked below, but an AAS user has been doing battery benchmarks for two N95's, one with old v12 firmware and one with the new v20 with DVFS (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling), it seems that for low-CPU tasks like music playback, the battery is used more efficiently, with the underclocking resulting in 20% longer battery life from the BL-5F.
We reported that this didn't work at first when we tried with the new v20 firmware for the Nokia N95 Classic. They've flicked the switch at the Nokia Music Store (UK beta) now and N95 owners can join in the browsing and downloading fun. Even if I did spot far too many 'N81' references flashing through the URL popups 8-)
Rafe and I look at Nokia's 'Refresh' of the Nokia E61i, in both text form and in AAS video podcast form - take your pick! The additional box contents will significantly help SMEs, as we explain in detail, although home users won't benefit significantly. Let's hope that 2008 brings a faster, FP1 E61-alike with much more RAM.
