In the first AAS Insight (54) of the year we look back on 2008 and share our hardware highlights, rant about our lowlights, make a few daring predictions and waffle on our favourite pieces of software from 2008. You can listen to AAS Insight 54 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Not wishing to sound too much like a 'fanboy', but in anecdotal praise of Nokia's build quality and following on from my own brush with death (oh, ok, a pavement), we have a bunch of crazy Russians trying to destroy a 5800 XpressMusic (long text version here) and CJ's 'dad' hammering an N95 for a year. Just rounding off 2008, you know...
In this, part 10 of my (ahem) long running series, I look at the difference sensor and aperture size can make in phone cameras, for both stills and video. As real world examples of both good and bad, I use the Nokia N95 8GB and the 5800 XpressMusic. See below for links to other articles in the series.
I finally found time to take my Smartphone Choosing Grid into 2009, adding devices like the Nokia N96, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, HTC Touch HD, Blackberry Storm and T-Mobile G1 into the mix. As usual, simply tick your preferences and have your perfect smartphone picked for you! How accurate is it now? Feedback welcomed below...
Here's the scenario. You've shot a video (or two) on your Nokia Nseries smartphone, at VGA quality through a Carl Zeiss lens and up to 30 frames per second. And you want to be able to show it to the world in your blog. YouTube is the obvious choice, but how can you ensure that people see your clip to best advantage? Here's my intermediate-level 'How to'.
S60Inside is reporting that v11.0.008 firmware is about to hit the 5800 - Been There Done That, in my case, since this 9th Dec firmware was the one loaded on our review unit 8-) - still, watch NSU if you're still on v10 and avail yourself in a day or so's time to a load of bug fixes!
You'll have already seen Rafe's exhaustive (p)review of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the first S60 5th Edition phone: Intro and Hardware, Multimedia, Software and Compatibility. In today's review feature, Steve Litchfield gives his own pointed slant on the device. Armed with production (9th Dec 2008) firmware, he critiques the 5800 XpressMusic from various standpoints, including text entry, user interface, camera and web browsing.
I just squeezed in a last programme of The Phones Show before Christmas. No 72 includes a video demo of YouTube in Web on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, News, Conclusions from my AAS series on phone cameras, hands-on thoughts on the Samsung Omnia, plus a demo of installing an app from the Android Marketplace.
Now this is good timing for the many people (including us) now in possession of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Although many S60 3rd Edition applications run on the device, the implementation doesn't really fly very nicely with the touch-screen. Epocware have always been quick off the mark and they've now announced that all their S60 applications have been optimised for S60 5th Edition. So that's the usual Handy Safe, Handy Shell, Handy Weather, and so on. Screenshot of Handy Shell running on the 5800 below...
Following on from Rafe's detailed (p)review articles on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (we labelled them 'preview' because the firmware wasn't final), I've been testing a 5800 with production (9th Dec 2008) firmware, specifically looking at video and photo capture. We'll have much more on this first S60 5th Edition handset in the coming weeks, of course, but see the example widescreen footage and embedded photos below.
Having heard many a user refer to 'upgrading' from (for example) a Nokia N95 8GB to an N85, I thought it worth examining an important way in which all is not necessarily positive when going from an older phone to a newer one. With SPMark benchmark figures to back up my arguments, I'm rather disturbed by the hardware inside Nokia's current and upcoming (announced) ranges.
A few days later than usual, but hey, at least you've got some weekend listening - it's AAS podcast 104, a.k.a. Insight 51, in which the usual AAS team discuss all the announcements at Nokia World 2008, including (of course) the Nokia N97.
Thanks to master detective Friedbrains, the world has just discovered a little stash of dedicated touch-designed S60 5th Edition software for the 5800 XpressMusic, courtesy of Nokia Hong Kong, including a virtual piano and a virtual guitar, a dice roller and a card memory game. We'll have a 5800 XpressMusic with full production firmware here early next week and will report back further on dedicated touch-enabled apps then (via Symbian Guru)
No, not my list, I'd have plumped for 10 resons why each is better than the other. But over on (the horribly biased!) Tube5800.com there's an interesting list of 20 reasons why Nokia's touch-screen mid-tier newcomer is better than Cupertino's finest. Don't send any flames to me - go the Tube5800 site itself! (via WoN)
Forum Nokia has released a whole new generation of Carbide C++ software development kits, for creating native Symbian OS applications. V2.0 is now out and, significantly, all editions are now totally free, helping to reduce the barriers to entry to Symbian development.
