In which I review one of Nokia's cheapest ever smartphones - and yet one that's reasonably up to date and with 90% of the functionality of its bigger brethren... At Nokia's RRP of £230, the 5530 XpressMusic isn't a 'must buy'. But at a street price of £140, depending on the deal, the 5530 will bring S60 5th Edition and smartphones to a whole new market. The ultimate cost? No 3G and no GPS. Here's my full, illustrated review of the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic.
OK, I'm mainly jealous because AAS's review Sony Ericsson Satio has singularly failed to arrive, but I would like to present quick links to Rita el-Khoury's excellent series of opinion pieces on this new S60 5th Edition camera super-phone: 7 Things I Love, Unboxing Video & First Impressions, 7 Things I Hate, Software/Interface Video Walkthroughs and Hardware & Design. Good stuff. See also the new Satio blog, run by one of the device's official product managers.
Nokia has released their Q3 2009 results, reporting an operating loss of EUR 426 million, but this was primarily due to a write down in the value of Nokia Siemens Network. Nokia's device and service division's profits were EUR 785 million, up 3% from the previous quarter, but down 50% year on year. Converged devices sales (smartphone) were down slightly (though up year-on-year) at 16.4 million, compared with 15.5 million units in Q3 2008 and 16.9 million units in Q2 2009. As such, converged device volumes were, perhaps, lower than expected.
NAVTEQ would literally like to take you for a ride at SEE. Along with the usual activities, NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) will be giving developers the opportunity to gain an insight into how NAVTEQ gathers mapping and location information.
Symbian OS-related content in Phones Show Chat, programme 8 out this afternoon, includes Tim's view of the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic and on Data Security, plus we chat about syncing the N97 to Google and GooSync. I then mull over firmware version numbers, show Tim how to enter special characters on a non-qwerty phone, and pick BBC iPlayer as my 'app of the week'. All this and more in PSC8!
'furtiv', a startup that creates social media solutions for mobile devices, has released a beta of their technology showcase, which allows you to use Nokia's Share online application to upload to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Picasa. This effectively adds one click upload to each of these services to the Gallery/Photos and Camera applications. The service works with most recent Nokia Symbian devices (Nokia Share online 2.0 or higher required). Read on for further details.
Nokia today released betas for Qt 4.6 and Qt Creator 1.3, both of which include Symbian support. Qt is Nokia's cross platform application and UI framework, which is set to become a key developer offering in the Symbian and Maemo platforms. Qt Creator is a cross platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Qt developers.
From the Nokia N900 to the HTC HD2, I'm seeing a groundswell of opinion turning against smaller, slightly simpler smartphones - but I contend that what you're seeing and reading isn't even close to being representative of the mass market and that, as usual (and I know because I'm one of them) the geeks are skewing all the analysis towards faster, bigger, flashier...
In All About Symbian Insight 90 (AAS Podcast 152), Rafe and Steve briefly touch on the Maemo Summit before moving on to a discussion of the relative roles of Maemo and Symbian and the importance of the cost of devices. Steve gives us a run down on the N97 camera glass 'scratch' issue and how to get things fixed (though note that this was before the Care Point trip). There are also answers to a number of user questions. You can listen to AAS Insight 90 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
You've got to hope that today marks the point at which Nokia started to leave the whole sorry mess of its PC connectivity experiments behind it and moved forward with confidence. Ovi Suite 2.0 is now 'graduated' (from Beta Labs) and will start to be included in phone retail boxes. Here's the full report on Nokia's plans, and don't forget to grab your own copy (.exe link). Does Ovi Suite 2.0 now complete replace what you had before? Comments welcome.
Regular viewers of The Phones Show will know that I periodically run down my 'Top 5' phones in the world. Astute viewers will also have spotted that I haven't done one for a while. The problem is, as indicated by the headline above, that I'm having problems recommending a single phone or smartphone, let alone five of them. Things were simpler a year or so ago, I'd simply pick the Nokia N95 (or one of its cousins, the N95 8GB or N82) and that'd be the number 1 spot sorted. The phone world has moved on though, with greater variety, greater complexity and, yes, greater disappointments. Read on... [updated with extra comments]
It's been some time now since launch, so how well is the Ovi Store doing for Nokia? Is it providing enough applications for end users and a good user experience? Are developers knocking down the web-doors to get listed in the store? Or is it all being hushed up because it's not gaining any mind share at all? I wonder aloud what's going on...
The two big hardware issues which have plagued owners of the first N97 devices off the production line are, of course, the easily-scratched camera glass cover and the very poor GPS reception. Having ordered fixes for both from my local service centre a while ago, I finally had them attend to each and managed to get quite a bit more information for the rest of us in the process. Read on...
Following the success of its UIQ version, DreamSpring has launched DreamConnect, its all-in Contact Manager, for S60 5th Edition. There are quotes from the press release below, but essentially you get hierarchical sub-categories, business card display and 'KeyMatch', which replaces the virtual keyboard on 5th edition smartphones with a finger friendly, compact quick-matching keypad.
Thanks to Micky Aldridge for putting together a great summary of the links you'll need in following up on a badly scratched Nokia N97 camera glass cover. Notable is that he includes an official statement from Nokia on the subject - at least, you'll have something you can now print out and hand over when turning up at the local Service Centre?
