Nokia today announced a new addition to its Eseries range. The Nokia E63 is a QWERTY-equipped S60 phone and is effectively a mid-tier version of the Nokia E71, on whose success it will be looking to build. It has a 2.0 megapixel camera, WiFi and 3G connectivity, and runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. The Nokia E63, which is expected to start shipping in the next few weeks, will be available in ruby red or ultramarine blue and will cost €199 before taxes and subsidies. Read on for more.
Opera Mini just went up to v4.2, in beta form at least, with new Skins support, faster servers, compatibility with the mobile version of YouTube and Opera Desktop note syncing. Opera also announced that Opera Mini is being used by 20 million unique monthly users worldwide. Read on for more.
New firmware updates are now available for both the Nokia E71 (110.07.127) and the Nokia E66 (110.07.126). Updated applications include Mail for Exchange and Nokia Maps and there are improvements to the email and settings wizards, performance enhancements for Bluetooth and camera hardware as well as a number of bug fixes.
In part 3 of his Nokia N96 review Steve covers the multimedia capabilities of the phone. After comprehensive testing he delivers his verdict on the still photography, video recording, music playback and video playback capabilities of the N96 before coming to some overall conclusions about the multimedia functionality. Part 3 follows on from the general overview in part 1 and application walk through in part 2.
Very interested to hear about the Bergamot Project. Their Swim tool has just been released for S60 and enable automated synchronisation (at long last) with your chosen sync server (e.g. GooSync, Ovi). Only thing is that it's unsigned and you'll have to used Symbian's online signing tool to sign it for your specific phone. More comments and links by Ricky Cadden here.
Mobile Systems has announced availability of v5.0 of its OfficeSuite, with the headline feature being viewer support for Office 2007's XML file formats. Here's the press release. (Long time readers will know that rival Quickoffice already has full Office 2007 editing, but more competition in this field is always good)
In All About Symbian Podcast 99 (Insight #46) we talk about the N96 which has received mixed reviews from initial users. In the second half the podcast Ewan provides his first impressions of One, the latest N-Gage game, before we move on to discussing manufacturer commitment to the Symbian Foundation and what the future may hold for UIQ.
The application/service Nokia Friend View, which has been made available on Nokia Beta Labs today, is a combined location and micro-blogging application. It allows you to share your location (automatically using GPS or network-based location or manually) with your friends and see where they are, or at least where they were when they last posted a status update/post. Screens, details and thoughts below. Of particular note is that it has both a Web component (for desktop access) and also that it works on any S60 phone and not just Nokia devices.
Nokia's "Share on Ovi" service has announced that the popular live video streaming service Flixwagon will be available on handsets. By linking your Ovi account to your Flixwagon account, whenever you finish a broadcast on your handset via Flixwagon, it will upload the completed video to your Ovi account (as well as your Flixwagon account), giving an immediate benefit of having your archive of live videos alongside the rest of your Ovi hosted media.
DataViz have announced a new version of RoadSyc. RoadSync allows secure, direct push synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 servers (push email, contacts and calendar). The big addition in version 4 is support for full HTML email, but it also adds a number of usability improvements, and support for task and Contact photo synchronisation.
The long-awaited 3D fighting game ONE is out now on the N-Gage platform. Go to the Showroom section of the app and select the Update Now option to see it. For more info see All About N-Gage's ONE game page, and the official trailer is visible below.
WorldMate has announced that they now have over a million S60 users of their free (and optionally paid for) service. I've included the brief press release below, also partly because the company promises that the next generation of their software, WorldMate Live, is 'currently in development'. The 'Live' version incorporates social elements such as itinerary sharing and contact discovery via overlapping travel plans.
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.
