I was interested to see Fosfor's camera phone shoot-out, featuring the Sony Ericsson K800i and the Nokia N93. They (understandably) picked the K800i as the winner, although there are a few points well worth commenting on. Read on for the link and comments....
The Russian website mforum.ru has done a rather astonishing durability test of the Nokia 5500, and it did rather well. They put the 5500 in a vacuum cleaner, buried it in a garden, bathed it in milk, bathed it in beer, held it under a tap, dropped it from a height of 2 metres, then 4 metres, then 6 metres, and finally ran it over with a car. It survived the lot, and only broke when they ran it over with the car a second time. The site's in Russian but the pictures and videos speak for themselves.
The N93 just got more useful, as its VGA quality videos can now be handled properly at last. Adobe's bundled Premiere Elements is slow and buggy but at least now Ulead's VideoStudio 10 Plus is a viable and efficient option for video editing, thanks to this bug fix which makes it fully N93-compatible.
Neuros very kindly sent over a sample of their MPEG-4 Recorder 2 set-top units, and I've been putting it through its paces. Essentially it's a tiny gadget designed to record video directly onto your smartphone's expansion card, for playback on the move. Here's the full review.
I don't normally revisit reviews unless there's a very good reason. Happily, the new v2.x firmware for the Nokia E70 is one such reason, removing many of the teething problems first reported. Here's the revised E70 review, with 25% new text and a new, higher score.
Just a note to say that Nokia seem to have fixed the problems bedevilling E70 owners with regard to firmware updates and that the Nokia Software Update service seems to work - I updated the editorial E70 successfully! Read on for all the changes I've noticed.
AAS's own 'krisse' has been training hard with just the Nokia 5500 for company. Though not billed as a smartphone, it's extremely capable and a true S60 3rd Edition device. Here's the full, illustrated review.
Thanks to Darla for spotting that Nokia are having a bit of a clearout - the RAM-challenged 6680 and the Linux-powered and utterly niche 770 'Internet tablet' are now available as a bundle for less than £400. A bargain bundle, I guess, but sorry guys, we (he mean I, see comments - Ed) didn't want to buy either of them in the first place...
Nokia and Cingular today announced the the Nokia E62 will be available on Cingular from September 29th at a starting price of $150 (subsidised) which should ensure a competitive total cost of ownership cost compared to its competitors. The Nokia E62 is the US variant of the Nokia E61 and will also be available on the Rogers network in Canada.
Shameless self/site promotion again, but I've been updating my (hopefully definitive) table of S60 smartphones and their attributes, with new models and more mini-reviews. Presenting S60 device history.
Ewan presents his long term thoughts on the N91 music smartphone. It may be big, boxy and shiny, but Ewan rather likes it and would even use it in the absence of any of the core S60 functions. Here's his Nokia N91 long term review.
The Nokia E50, E60, E61 and E70 have now been added to the Nokia Phone Software update service. Thanks to Stefan and Tommi's Blog for the heads up. The service is now also available on the Europe wide site.
GearLog have spotted that Nokia's officially introduced a new variant of the E70. The black-faced E70-2 has 850MHz GSM instead of 3G, effectively making it quad band and thus working properly in the USA. It's initially available only in the 'flagship' stores, though.
Herewith first news of a major firmware update to the E61. V2.0 is now available and is being rolled out to service centres over the next few days and (hopefully) via the PSU service. Full details here. Items that caught my eye: improved performance and better RAM use, plus audio improvements.
