In this video, embedded in the story below, we exclusively preview a new Samsung Omnia HD feature - personal inductive charging. The Samsung Omnia Personal-ORiented Interface For Inductive Charging (SOPORIFIC) uses the electrical field generated by your own body to re-charge the phone's battery. All you have to is hold the phone and it recharges before your eyes. Apparently you get one minute's talk time for ten minutes of skin contact. Obviously there are limits to this technology, but it is great to see the technical barriers being pushed back.
Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic has sold fairly well, but where does Nokia go from there? Well, you're about to find out as All About Symbian takes a look at the latest variant model: the Nokia 5800 Sauna Edition. Coated with a special humidity-resistant plastic and preloaded with a thermometer/hygrometer application, this is aimed squarely at the consumer market.
In All About Symbian Insight 63 (AAS Podcast 120) we briefly cover the N-Gage news out of GDC (1 million profiles, accelerometer Bounce and device support). Steve and Rafe mull over the importance of the underlying changes in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, before chatting about the importance of homescreens, with reference to TouchWiz on the Omnia HD. You can listen to AAS Insight 64 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Another Nokia 5800 tutorial for beginners, this time we're taking a look at the e-mail options currently available on the 5800. We cover the basics of how to set up a POP or IMAP e-mail account on the phone's built-in messaging app, how to make new e-mails alert you just like text messages, how to set up multiple e-mail accounts on the same phone, and more. (We haven't covered the dedicated Nokia Messaging e-mail client or Gmail's Java client because they don't yet have proper 5800 versions.) As always, you can see a complete list of these how-to articles on our 5800 tutorial index page.
In a follow up to my popular series, from August 2008, investigating the practicalities of a S60 smartphone owner switching to an Apple Mac as the desktop counterpart, I report back after a couple of months of living the Mac life for real. What improvements have their been to the software available and does using a Mac and OS X now offer a more seamless smartphone experience than a PC and Windows?
In All About Symbian Insight 63 (AAS Podcast 120) Rafe gives some insight into iPlayer, Steve talks about YouTube's S60 client application and both talk about their views on Samsung's Omnia HD. You can listen to AAS Insight 63 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Virgin Mobile, a UK MVNO (virtual network), is selling the Nokia E63 for £149 PAYG. The news is worthy of note, both because of the low price and its availability on a 'pay as you go' basis (rather than a contact). A similar example is the Nokia 6124 available on Vodafone for £75. Both of these demonstrates how Symbian devices are becoming more affordable as they are further pushed down into the mid tier market, potentially increasing their addressable market.
Yes, Ewan's heading off for a three week tour of the USA, taking in social media and gaming events. To try and add a little Symbian spice to proceedings, we insisted he take the Nokia 5800 with him, to really try it out 'on the road'. This is the sixth of his regular video reports, embedded below, letting us know how he's getting on with S60 5th Edition and the 5800. In this part, Ewan answers some feedback questions and talks more about the PIM apps with regard to touch integration, before describing why Nokia Maps is a better bet than Google Maps for the overseas traveller. Oh, and watch out for the battlestar-sized stylus and the Black Helicopter....
After almost eighteen months of silence, a Nokia forum moderator has finally made an official statement about the status of N-Gage on the N73, N93 and N93i. In short, N-Gage will NOT be coming to those phones. As many predicted, the relatively older OS versions and less powerful hardware on those models apparently weren't up to the job of handling next gen N-Gage games. The low sales of the N93/N93i wouldn't have helped either. Our editorial thoughts on this issue are below. (Click here to see which phones ARE getting N-Gage.)
Much has been made of the Apple iPhone and T-Mobile G1's capacitive touchscreens, with many proclaiming them superior to the humble 'resistive' touchscreens that have been used since the dawn of time (oh, ok, since about 1995). But is it as simple as the one technology being superior? What advantages does 'resistive' tech have and what else do you need to know?
Two weeks on from my initial Top 10, my feature has grown into a veritable Top 20 Freeware for the Nokia 5800 and S60 5th Edition. Four new entries (hey, it's starting to sound like a proper chart...) and some other tweaks and new URLs. Enjoy. It's also worth noting that many S60 3rd Edition apps work fine on the 5800, but this freeware list is specifically for applications that are custom made for touch and the larger screen.
In All About Symbian Insight 62 (AAS Podcast 118) we briefly discuss the recently released S60 5.0 SDK (and consider broader uses), follow up on kinetic scrolling on the N97, get Ewan's view point on Monopoly for the N-Gage. In the last part of the podcast Steve and Ewan relate their experience of video recording on the N85 versus the N95. You can listen to AAS Insight 62 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
