In All About Symbian Insight #38 (AAS Podcast #91) Rafe and Steve chat about where the Nokia N96 lines up, firmware updates to the Nokia N95 and N95 8GB, look forward to Comes with Music announcements and touch on Symbian's Q2 results. The main part of the insight covers the newly released Samsung I8510 and our first impressions of its 8 megapixel camera.
TapRoot Systems have announced the general availability of WalkingHotSpot. Similar in nature to JoikuSpot, this app will take a Wi-Fi enabled Symbian smartphone and turn it into a 'mobile' Hot Spot for other devices to connect through and get on-line. WalkingHotSpot is available for a seven day free trial, before switching to a monthly subscription of $7 (or $25 for 12 months).
Several sites are reporting that a BBC iPlayer application will soon be available for the Nokia N96. Some N96's will ship with the application preloaded, but it will also be available for download from the BBC website. The application will support both the downloading and streaming of BBC TV and radio programmes. Read on for more.
Some folks are gonna love this. Others will hate it. But Handy Shell is coming, taking over the whole S60 standby/menu/control key schema and making it remeniscent of a Windows Mobile home screenadding new functionality. Ricky Cadden's been playing with the Handy Shell beta and you'll find his thoughts and screenshots right here.
Shazam have been at the music recognition game for a while - and we look here at the native S60 version of their flagship Shazam ID utility, which samples music snatches from the radio and then lets you know where it's from. Ewan's been trying to catch it out but ended up quite impressed.
Ah - you see, Nokia do keep tweaking their apps and compatibility lists after all - the E71 finally has a proper version of Nokia Internet Radio made especially for it. (via the E71 blog)
Nokia have announced that Comes With Music will make its debut in the UK, through an exclusive deal with The Carphone Warehouse. Available with the the S40 based 5310, the deal is an exclusive for Carphone Warehouse pre-pay customers until Dec 31st 2008. As advertised, the service will allow users to download as much music as they can from the Nokia Music Store for a year. Pre-orders can now be made at www.carphonewarehouse.com.
What was once the latest hot feature on our smartphones has become the 'without that I'm not buying it' necessity. Ewan takes a look at the features that were once the hot news but have become little more than requirements in the spec list and why this march of progress isn't going to stop in the near future.
In All About Symbian Insight #37 (AAS Podcast #90) Rafe, Steve and Ewan chat about Nokia's new Nseries devices - the N79 and N85. Also in this Insight: Steve reports back on his Samsung G810 experience, there's discussion of Sync on Ovi and how it points the way for three pronged future of Nokia's service platform.
More on StyleTap, for those of you still longing for a way to bring your critical 'vertical market' Palm OS apps into the modern age, over at Symbian Guru, where Rita rejoices in the amount of thought that the StyleTap developers have put into getting Palm OS 'into' S60.
The gradual roll out of Ovi.com and Ovi services continues. Newly available is Ovi Sync which syncs contact, calendar, to-do and notes between your handset and the Ovi.com web site. The front page of Ovi.com is now personalised to show synced information and, optionally, images streams from Flickr and Share on Ovi. Read on for more.
S60.com do like giving away themes occasionally and it's reassuring to know that they'll have been checked exhaustively rather than thrown together in 5 minutes. And in this case, their Windmill theme is available for all S60 handsets, from Nokia 6630 to N95. It's the latest download in their Exclusives section (needs free login first)
Utility developer Warelex has produced Wi-Fi enabled versions of its popular Mobiola Screen Capture, Mobiola Web Camera and Remote Control applications, claiming that the new connection method is "much better for presentation and frame rate". In addition, there are two new applications that I'd not heard of: Mobiola Headset and Mobiola Headset for Skype which (as they sound) make use of a S60 phone as a PC headset. Also worth noting is that Warelex is now part of SHAPE Services, another established Symbian OS developer.
With the influx of a series of new S60 phones from Samsung, there are serious questions to be asked about software compatibility, both intentional and unintentional, from the viewpoint of Nokia, S60, Samsung and the many third party developers. Richard Bloor has taken four of Samsung's latest handsets and tested their compatibility with a typical 'power user' set of applications. The results make interesting reading, especially so for the companies involved. Many challenges ahead, methinks....
Popular web broadcast service Qik, which allows users to stream live video from their handset to the internet, picked up a round of funding this morning from business partners Marc Andreessen (Ning) and Ben Horowitz (VP at HP). There's no word on how much was invested beyond the rather bland '[it's] significant.' Andreessen and Horowitz now join the board of the company.