The latest beta version of Ovi Maps, demonstrated at Nokia World this morning, is now available from the Nokia Beta Labs. New additions include a new menu with one touch access to popular features and improved searching. Compatible with S60 v5 devices, including the newly announced N97 Mini, be aware that this is an early release, but you can download it direct from Nokia.
If the Nokia World presentation on lifecasting caught your eye, then you should head over the the Nokia Beta Labs where an early version of this N97 widget is now available. It will allow you to share your current location via Facebook, and allow your friends to see where you are, as well as any pictures or status messages that you upload. It might be a small idea, but it looks well implemented and easy to use.
Nokia's next S60 music device, the X6, has been announced at Nokia World in Stuttgart this morning. It's going to be marketed as a music phone and the 32GB of storage is going to allow a huge amount of music to be downloaded, and is only available in a Comes with Music variant. But the 16:9 ratio capacitive touch-screen (at 3.2 inches in size) is going to be great for video playback and media browsing. More details to follow.
Nokia has now officially announced the N97 mini at Nokia World 2009, with smaller screen and overall form factor, full-width keyboard (no d-pad) and a focus on social media ('life casting'). Significantly, they're also talking about a whole new memory map and kinetic scrolling across the whole interface, all of which is also to come to the N97 itself in October. More details, images and videos below.
Red Bend, the company behind the Firmware Over The Air update system in most of the smartphones covered here (with the notable exception of Samsung, which doesn't appear to have FOTA yet), has just announced that its FOTA software is now used by just over half a billion mobile devices worldwide, over 413 different devices. This represents a 60% share of the FOTA-enabled mobile phone market. See Red Bend's site for more information.
Bah, who need planes, taxis and hotels? You can watch the presentations from Nokia World in the comfort of your own living room or office, thanks to Nokia's events team, with a live page to bookmark and then keep an eye on throughout tomorrow and Thursday. The first keynote kicks off at 8am BST, 9am CET, so you might want to set an alarm if you're in the UK! See also the main AAS Twitter account, which is worth following and which will be feeding you updates straight from Rafe's keyboard....
In Phones Show Chat episode 2, AAS's Tim Salmon and I chat about software issues in the Nokia N97, have a few jibes at the iPhone (always a somewhat easy target, I know, but...) and manage to bring quite a bit of Android to the party as well. See also the RSS feed for this new audio podcast.
It's the final part (7) of Ewan Spence's 'real world' test of the Nokia N97 at the Edinburgh Fringe and it's embedded below. He rounds up his experiences, explaining that he had to overcome his initial lack of excitement but that, once in use, the N97 performed really well when out and about at the Festival and did everything required of it. Ewan's fearful that the N97 will get overlooked now that the N900 has been announced and admits that S60 on the device seemed 'mature' and that backwards compatibility has proven something of a limitation, but overall I think he genuinely liked the Nokia N97 - to the point where he'd buy one if he didn't already own the qwerty-equipped E75. Happy watching - and suggestions welcome on what you'd like to see Ewan tackle next!
In All About Symbian Insight 85 (AAS Podcast 147), Rafe, Steve and Ewan discuss the glut of Nokia news ahead of this week's Nokia World. We cover the Nokia Booklet 3G, Nokia 5230, Nokia Money (an under appreciated announcement) and the Nokia N900. There's also some discussion of Maemo 5, service strategy and the Sony Ericsson Satio. You can listen to AAS Insight 85 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
It seems that when you're trucking along (in the USA, UK, France or China, at least), navigating using Google Maps on your smartphone, you're actually helping crowd source traffic data for Google, i.e. the application is reporting back to Google on your position and speed, a process described here in detail. While there are possible privacy implications in this, it does seem an interesting approach - or at least it would be if there were enough people using the system - so far in the UK, only motorways seem to be tagged for traffic status. Comments welcome.
Credit where credit's due, here I am procrastinating about my full review of the Samsung i8910 HD because of all its current software imperfections, and Jonathan Bruha goes and writes the device up as-is, and very much in my 'style', pulling no punches for either pros or cons, and with many deft turns of phrase. The Symbian device of 2009? Or a desperately flaky orphan? There's plenty in the review to support either argument, fascinatingly.
Nokia today introduced Nokia Money, a mobile financial service, which will offer basic financial management and payments from a mobile phone. It will allow you to send money to another person, using just their mobile phone number, pay for goods, services and bills or recharge pre-pad SIM cards. Financial services are widely considered a very significant market opprtunity for the future: there are 4 billion mobile phones, but only 1.6 billion bank accounts.
The Nokia Music Store India was formally launched today at the Music Connects conference. More than 3 million tracks are available and, as with Nokia Music Stores in other countries, there is a heavy emphasis on including local music. Nokia has signed up India's major independent labels including Tseries, Yashraj Music, Saregama, BIG Music and Venus; it has also partnered with India's leading music body, the Indian Music Industry. Nokia also announced that its Comes with Music service would be arriving in India later this year.
It's part 6 of Ewan Spence's 'real world' test of the Nokia N97 at the Edinburgh Fringe and it's embedded below. In this part he looks at how he uses the N97 (as a tablet), at the positioning of the d-pad (for gaming), at the device's 'tipping point', and at the N97 as a modem, before laying into Ovi Maps for not including gradient information or cycle routes. He also wishes there was a way to import Point Of Interest information for special events (like the Fringe). Happy watching!
We here at All About Symbian have been using Ovi Store for quite a while now, and have noticed a number of things that need to be fixed or could be improved. We don't doubt the effort and resources that Nokia has put into this so far, but we think it's fair to demand that Ovi Store lives up to the same general standards as other online content shops. Here are 23 suggestions for the Ovi Store team's to do list, neatly categorised into 'urgent', 'gripes' and 'suggestions'!
