Continuing the ping pong legal battle between Apple and Nokia over patents and IP, Apple have filed with the International Trade Commission asking for a US import ban on Nokia products... mirroring the complaint Nokia made to ITC about Apple. While escalating quickly, this progression of claim and counter-claim is to be expected as both companies legal departments engage in brinkmanship before negotiation.
You may remember that the Nokia E90 shipped with a widescreen, hardware-accelerated 3D driving game, Global Race: Raging Thunder? Somewhat wasted on the 'business' device, many people quickly realised that it also worked after a fashion on the also-accelerated N95. However, the game ran like a turkey on other phones without the vital graphics chip. Until now. Raging Thunder has been reworked by Polarbit and optimised for modern single chip ARM designs - with a few caveats, as you'll see in my review over in our Ovi Gaming sister site.
Today Symbian made available, via its developer website, a number of documents relating to the Orbit and Direct UI proposals that make up a major part of the changes in Symbian^4. These proposals offer a glimpse of what the Symbian^4 UI may look like and explain some of the key UI layout and design changes. Symbian are looking for the community's feedback, comments and questions about the proposals. Read on for more details and illustrations.
OK, so I made the last three words up, but the extensively titled Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Games Edition has been sighted by CJ in the USA, equipped apparently with "20 Full version games (10 from Gameloft, 10 from EA Mobile)". It's a nice idea, is available from Nokia USA and only costs $10 more than the standard phone. Even with a number of Java titles, that can't be bad value.
Nokia's Betalabs have another curious little app available. Gig Finder, for S60 5th Edition phones, allows you to build up a profile of bands, and search for gigs that you should like that based on your location (or wherever you feel like searching). While I'd love to know where the data is coming from, and a little bit more explanation on how to tailor the recommendation engine, this could grow into a nice little tool.
Ewan continues his multipart look at the new Nokia X6 Comes with Music. Part 1 of this review looked at the X6's externals, while part 2 was heavily critical of the core Music player and performance. In this, part 3, he looks at the X6's camera and photography functions - can even the X6 transform Ewan into photographer of the year?
As with the Evernote widget yesterday, I think the time has come to start recommending that you consider removing Nokia PC Suite and consider installing Ovi Suite, provided you have a reasonably recent PC. The latter has just been updated to v2.0.2.42 (according to NokNok) and its resource requirements have been steadily coming down from the stratospherics of the early betas. Comments welcome if you're feeling brave - has Ovi Suite come of age now?
You may remember my own hard hitting multi-part review of the Nokia E72 a couple of weeks ago here on AAS? If you're after yet more E72 discussion in gory detail then I can recommend Clinton Jeff's mammoth one-piece E72 review, which manages to throw up all sorts of delightful details (e.g. did you know the E72's volume keys were backlit?)
A couple of interesting links of interest from the last 24 hours: Samsung has announced the world's first 32GB microSD card, based on 30nm technology (i.e. 0.00000003 metres!), to be in production from next month. Staggering miniaturisation, if you ask me. In other news, Nokia has released a Windows 7-compatible (beta) version of its Nokia Software Update tool, eliminating the need to mess around running the tool in a 'compatibility' mode. About time.
Nokia have released a new firmware for the popular 5800 XpressMusic device. At least on the AAS unit, it's available via the Nokia Software Updater in the PC Suite package, but not yet as an over the air option. Additions to the smartphone's software include kinetic scrolling in menus and a reworked active standby screen to match that found on the 5530.
An Evernote client has been a constant request in the Symbian ecosystem for many months now and, late last year, a Web runtime version turned up, optimised for the Nokia N97 and compatibles. This has been regularly updated and, with version 1.0.70302, released last night in the USA, has reached the point where I can start to recommend it to the wider world. See below for screens, comments and some links.
I had reason to glance down at my task bar last night - normally I'm an alt-tab man, but sometimes that little strip of app names is useful. But not this time, because I was running a bundle of applications while testing the X6 and my task bar had just one word. Nokia. Lots of apps on display, with just some tiny icons to attempt to guide me to my goal. Anyone want to fix this rather poor bit of UI in the next releases?
It seems that new ideas and elements of upcoming Symbian incarnations keep getting backported and prototyped into existing products. Well done to Rita el-Khoury for noticing how the new Nokia X6 handles incoming Bluetooth-beamed files - straight to a folder on memory card rather than clogging up the Messaging inbox and disk C:. Very neat, and should save quite a few Symbian newbies from clogging up their internal disk in future....
Last week at CES Nokia showed of Ovi Racing, but they also showed off another game: Bounce Boing Battle. The game has pong-inspired gameplay, with two players bouncing a ball between themselves. However rather than moving a paddle, the player must draw a line for the ball to bounce off. The game, which includes two player support (presumably over Bluetooth), will be available, for free, from Ovi Store in due course. Read on for more.
Peter-Paul Koch, writing on the QuirksBlog, shares the results of a usability test comparing 10 different phones. What's most interesting is that the user in question might be considered the 'average' user rather than a tech-influencer (as is typical in online media). Consequently many of the observations offer insight into what matters in the real world compared to rarefied atmosphere of the 'media bubble'. Read on for more.
