Slightly different format for the podcast this week as Rafe is in Barcelona. Steve and Ewan pick up the reins to talk about the announcements and products on show at the Mobile World Congress in the AAS Podcast #113. In Monday's recap, they set the scene, talk about the annoncements from Sony Ericsson, and discuss Nokia's Monday morning press conference.
At Mobile World Congress LG has quietly announced their fourth S60 on Symbian device. The KT770 runs on S60 3rd Edition on Symbian OS 9.3 and has a slider form factor with a numeric keypad. The press release indicates it has a 5 megapixel camera, WiFi and HSDPA connectivity, a 2.8 inch touchscreen and dimensions of 111 x 51.5 x 15.8 mm. Read on for more information.
Samsung just made their pitch for the Symbian top-end with the announcement of the Omnia HD (a.k.a. the i8910). This features a full touch interface running S60 5th Edition, a 3.7" AMOLED display, plus a camera unit with 8mp capture and full 720p HD video recording. Photos, comment and specs below.
Sony Ericsson has just unveiled 'Idou', a 'concept' Symbian Foundation Platform phone with a 12.1 megapixel camera, Xenon flash and 16:9 aspect ratio, 3.5" touchscreen. The Idou will go on to become a device, but it is considered a concept because it is at an early stage in its development. Sony Ericsson will release more details, and a launch date in the summer. Read on for more details and our first hands-on impressions.
Beginners to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic may not know that Web on S60 phones is based on exactly the same 'Webkit' core code as Safari on the Apple iPhone. With the relative popularity of the iPhone, a lot of direct support for the system has been set up on mainstream web servers. And now that the 5800 XpressMusic has touch as well, this means that you can enjoy the full 'whizzy', interactive iPhone Facebook experience but on an S60 phone for the first time.
"To compare or not to compare? That is the question." Nokia has protested many times that the 5800 XpressMusic is not an iPhone competitor, but rather a lower-priced alternative - and I agree in this detailed editorial over at All About iPhone. There's no doubting that the 5800 was influenced by Apple's flagship, but the differences in functionality and emphasis run pretty deep, as is obvious as I run through each device's strengths and weaknesses.
Tzer2 has been at it again, exploring the Nokia 5800 in great depth and showing beginners how to get the most from it. In two new tutorials featured here, we have How to change the ringtones, vibration alerts, and ringing volumes on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, plus How to download and install applications and games. Enjoy! (You can see a complete listing of our 5800 tutorials by clicking here.)
It's the 14th of February again, and in its honour you might want to download some themes for your S60 device. Pizero has a rather splendid "Valentine 09" available for both S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices (so that includes the 5800), while Babi has a theme simply called "Lovely" available for S60 3rd Edition. Those of you with the N-Gage versions of DChoc Cafe Solitaire or DChoc Cafe Sudoku should pop into your cafes today to see them decked out in Valentine's day decorations. (And if you've recently bought a 5800 and want to know how to install themes, check out our newly-written theme tutorial.)
On the Nseries Innovation News Desk, an official blog on Nokia's Nseries.com website, there's a teaser post with a photo taken by a Nokia device. Closer examination reveals that the image is 2448 x 3264 pixels, that's around 8 megapixels, suggesting that Nokia will be releasing a new Nseries device at MWC with an 8 megapixel camera. We'll have to wait until Monday to find out more though.
The Nokia 5800 is to make its debut in Singapore soon with Nokia's all-you-can-eat "Comes With Music" service built-in, which allows unlimited downloads from the Nokia Music Store for one year. In related news, the Nokia Music Store has just opened up branches in Switzerland and in Austria. The Nokia Music Store is now available in 15 countries.
Google Documents is a wonderful online resource, of course, but up until now spreadsheets have been rather off bounds to mobile users, with just an unfriendly column-by-column view. As long as your phone has a Web-kit-based browser (e.g. iPhone, S60, G1) then there's now a whole new view, with your spreadsheets looking (roughly) as they should and with full editing. Each row can have its elements edited in one go, which is a kludge but also kind of handy. On the downside, the weight of javascript involved does mean that the page isn't that light though, and largish spreadsheets can be slow to open and manipulate. Screens below.
ZingMagic, creators of slick version of classic board and puzzle games on all platforms, have launched a range of their titles now supporting S60 5th edition devices like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The list is: Backgammon Pro II, Checkers Pro II, Chess Pro II, Chinese Chess Pro II, Four In A Line Pro II, Gomoku Pro II and Reversi Pro II. All have a reworked UI (compared to the original S60 3rd Edition versions) and improved AI. There's also Zingles II, a bigger update, now supporting '4x4', 'thru 16x16', 'Jigsaw', 'Killer Sudokus', plus lots of 'solving aids, helper features'. Links, screens and mini-review of one of the new titles below the break.
Another in our continuing series of definitive Nokia 5800 XpressMusic tutorials, in this piece I advise on taking better photos with the device, including some example images taken yesterday as proof of what can be achieved. Bonus link: Tzer2 talks a beginner through using silent mode and flight mode on the 5800, explaining the basics and subtleties of profiles.
A heads-up for two interesting pieces over here at Ricky Cadden's guru site: firstly, Rita el-Khoury provides a great roundup of the resources and software that help keep her S60 phone fully up to speed in the medical world; and secondly the guru himself breaks news of JBak Pencil, a utility to give 5800 XpressMusic owners a virtual 'pencil' key for selecting multiple items - it's unsigned, but in this rare case the pain of signing something for your specific phone is definitely worth it.
This could be interesting. We (the writing staff) are under strict instructions from Rafe to not mention leaked products or services. It's long been the All About Symbian policy to discuss the official news and not comment on the rumours – after all, beyond reproducing the same spy-cam picture, rumoured specs and “it's shiny”, there's not much you can add in terms of accurate commentary. But the current wave of leaks should be seen as a good thing, in my opinion. Read on for why...
