Those folks at Vesuvius Software have been busy in the last few weeks, cranking out more useful little Java-powered freeware applications for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and S60 5th Edition. Brand new and screenshotted below, with hyperlinks, are Musician's Swiss Knife, Soft Touch Stopwatch, Karao60 and ScratchMMS.
Kudos to Ricky Cadden and Rita El-Khoury for this awesome and rather definitive guide to Twitter on your S60 phone and similar guide to Facebook. They table, elegantly, all the native, Java and web-based solutions and make it very easy to decide which one(s) to try first.
Readers in Finland may like to know that the unlocked SIM-free 5800 is now on sale on Verkkokauppa at just 269 euros including taxes, which brings it into line with the UK unlocked price. It also makes it one of the cheapest smartphones in the country right now, and places it firmly in the mid-range category. (The same deal is also available in blue.)
Just a few miscellaneous Nokia N97 bits and pieces. Rafe, Ewan and I had the N97 as the core of our recording of AAS Insight 70, which will be up on Monday - we're all in agreement over the great 'N97 clock speed' debate, at least. Then there were yet more example N97 camera photos, looking good. And now there's a near-ten-minute arty video (the high quality version embedded below) from the guys who designed the N97, including some interesting snaps of the Nokia production line and some new screenshots and animations (plus all you ever wanted to know about the N97 hinge).
Thanks to CJ for noticing that a S60 5th Edition Touch version of Nokia’s Friend View application is now available. Friend View is similar to Google Latitude in that it lets you add friends to a custom list and shows you where each is at the moment, along with a status update or message. Do you think Friend View has a future and will it ever make it into a device's firmware? Will it ever get integrated with Nokia Maps in the way that Ovi Contacts has been? Comments welcome!
You've got to love Ricky and Rita at Symbian Guru, here unearthing (and providing a brief tutorial for) another gem - Pixelpipe, a new plug-in for Share online which widens the photo (and video) uploading compatibility to encompass Facebook, Twitpic, Picassa, YouTube and others. If you've used Pixelpipe then your comments welcome.
One of many people's must-have utilities, and like competitor Fring before it, the VoIP and chat client Nimbuzz has been finally ported to make full use of the touchscreen on the Nokia 5800. In fact, not just a straight port, since the developers have produced the most Nokia-like UI of any third party app for the 5800 that I've seen so far. Screenshots and download link below.
With the Nokia N97 getting ever closer, there's now an official Flash site, with the usual feature lists, animated graphics and 'interactive demo'. There's also a 'Pre-order' page, although this only works if you live in the USA, Sweden, Germany or Italy.
Trust CJ to find this little gem - Nokia's Star Trek tie-ins mean that there's now a Star Trek mini-site hosted within nokia.mobi, including a Tricorder application to download. Follow CJ's lead for how to get to the mini-site.
Released as free widgets for the Nokia 5800 and N97, PixelsBeatPaper has released interactive maps of the titled underground systems. Nothing fancy, just clear scrollable maps. If you dig a bit further into their site, you'll see utilities for bill splitting, body-mass-index calculating and a countdown timer, all again only for S60 5th Edition.
Nokia's upcoming launch of the Ovi Store in the US will not, apparently, come with carrier billing – the ability to have any purchases added to your phone bill, as opposed to inputting credit card details into the system. To be fair, no other on-device store has this facility in America, so Nokia aren't being unduly penalised in not having this feature. But it does create another step in the process for the end user, and the seamless experience Nokia were planning on isn't quite in place in that territory. Read on for more.
One of the biggest developers for UIQ, DreamSpring, has followed up its commitment to porting its software to S60 with the announcement of DreamConnect. Think of this as a contact manager on steroids, with with an 'innovative business card layout', plus 'hierarchical categories that let you organise your contacts to accurately reflect your real life relationships'. Sounds interesting - hopefully, given the UIQ heritage, there's a touch version coming for S60 5th Edition.
Symbian World are running an interview piece with Boris Raczynski, founder of Mojo's Studio and the man behind Twittix (reviewed here on AAS). He talks about the Studio, upcoming plans for Symbian OS applications and where he sees Symbian going in the next three years.
According to a report in the Finnish national daily Helsingin Sanomat, the Nokia chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo estimates that the 5800 XpressMusic now accounts for "1 in 5 of all touchscreen phone sales worldwide". This figure was also mentioned in Nokia's Q1 results conference call and was repeated today at Nokia's AGM. It's a pretty good start for S60 5th Edition...
Nokia has launched (via Beta Labs) a new web-based service and Web Runtime widget, entitled Green Explorer, aiming to help you live and travel in more eco-friendly fashion through tie-ins with green organisations and community involvement. See below for some screens, notes and links.