Nokia Beta Labs has today introduced an 'Ovi Mail Setup” application', allowing anyone to sign-up for an Ovi Mail account directly from a S60 device. The same utility is being built into the upcoming E72 and into the new N97 firmware. If you already have an Ovi account then it will provision Ovi Mail and configure the email client already on the device.
The latest Chinese i8910UZCII1 firmware for the Samsung i8910 (Omnia HD) adds kinetic scrolling to the built-in S60 web browser and takes the browser build number up to 7.2.13841. However, the Chinese firmware contains some other issues which break compatibility with European languages, Samsung's PC Suite and some other application. So how can this help you? ... read on to find out.
In All About Symbian Insight 88 (AAS Podcast 150), Rafe and Steve talk about the release dates for some upcoming devices and preview the Nokia 5730. Rafe reports back from the Ovi Developer Day and Steve shares news of the latest Nokia 5800 firmware and upcoming firmware for the N86. There's also discussion about the Ovi Store and Vodafone 360. You can listen to AAS Insight 88 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Are there times when you don't want to keep picking which music to play? Wouldn't it be nice if a utility picked up on your mood and automatically chose music to fit it? Playlist DJ, reviewed here by Rafe, does just that, picking tunes from the music library in your S60 5th Edition smartphone and generally helping you through the day. Best of all, it's free for the next month or so while the developers build up their song databases, so why not give it a try?
The Ovi Store team have just started to roll out the ability to re-download purchased content. Content is tightly linked to your Ovi account, which means you can re-download content either to the same device it was purchased on, or a different device (e.g. when you upgrade). Previously Ovi Store content could only be downloaded once, on original purchase, to a single device. Currently the re-download functionality is only available for selected content and there are some caveats. Read on in the full story for more details.
Back in July I reviewed Mobile Task Manager, a Java powered To-Do list and was pleasantly surprised at the flexibility it offered. I also hoped it would continue to improve. Well developer Tommi Laukkanen has released v1.2 with plenty of updates and a handful of bug fixes, mostly focused on prioritising your to-do's to make the best use of your time. You can download the free app here.
If you're a camera geek like me and wish there was a way to view the EXIF information for photos on your S60 5th Edition phone, well now there is. XpressEXIF does need a little fiddling around, plus Python, and there are a few caveats, but SymbianWorld brings us a walkthrough showing that viewing EXIF data is possible with this utility.
A little bit of lateral thinking by the Nokia Beta Labs team sees Braille Reader coming to touchscreen S60 5th Edition phones, making the most of both touch and haptic feedback. I'm not qualified to comment on its usefulness, but see below for the launch video.
It's coming close to the one year anniversary of Nokia's all you can eat music service, “Comes With Music”, and that birthday is pretty important to those who picked up the first wave of devices from The Carphone Warehouse. Because the 'all you can download' part was only ever going to last a year... so the flow of bits and musical bytes is about to run out for the early adopters. Or is it? Read on for my thoughts.
A new release of the Java-hosted Opera Mini is always a big event. This is a beta launch, but still extremely interesting, with Opera Mini 5.0 adding smooth font aliasing, multiple browser windows, a password manager and much better support for touchscreen phones. On the downside, the application is larger, at 220kb (still small in the overall scheme of things, though), and custom form and editing fields mean that you can't now copy and paste text in and out of the application. I was going to produce a walkthrough of the new features, but there's absolutely no point because our good friend Stefan has already done this in good detail. You can get Opera Mini 5.0 by going to mini.opera.com/beta in Web on your phone.
It was an early Series 60 legend - the file manager utility that also cooked the tea and did the laundry. And today FExplorer has surfaced into the modern Symbian age, fully updated for all S60 3rd and 5th Edition phones, courtesy of SBSH. The bad news: it's now commercial software, as Ricky Cadden reports, along with a selection of screenshots. However, if you don't think you can rise to the purchase price, there's also a launch competition to win 5 license keys.
Are bulging App Stores overrated? Whichever Symbian-powered phone you own (or even if you have an iPhone, Blackberry, etc), could you manage with only three third party (i.e. add-on) applications? And if so, which ones would they be? Steve Litchfield conducts a spot survey and ponders a few personal theories...
After the morning keynotes and interviews at Nokia World 2009, I decided to take a quick look round the 'experience lounge' at Nokia World. Following on from part 1 of the video, the tour of the show floor continues in part 2. You'll see the Nokia X6, Nokia X3, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5230, Bounce Evolution running on the N900 and more software and services. There's also a quick look at some of the show floor features including a Twitter screen and side theatres.
Top theme maker Tehk is branching out into the burgeoning market for 'premium' themes - with the complexity of modern Symbian devices, it's becoming harder and harder to create themes which contain icons and elements for every nook and cranny, and I don't think it's unreasonable for theme makers to charge a small amount for their time and effort. Tehk here introduces the first of a seven part design series, branded 'Evolution', with a variety of versions at various prices, from 1 Euro up to 6 Euros. Read on for a screenshot and some of Tehk's comments.
After the morning keynotes and interviews at Nokia World 2009, I decided to take a quick look round the 'experience lounge' at Nokia World. In the video below you can join me on my first tour round the show floor, where I share my first impressions and analysis. You'll get a feel of the atmosphere on the show floor and there's a quick overview of some of Nokia's new service solutions, the Nokia Booklet 3G, Nokia Internet Stick (CS-18) and some third party software.