The version 031.012 firmware for the Nokia E55 has just been released. This brings the E55 up to date with with E52, which had the same version firmware released earlier this month. See below for notes and links. The E55 has UDP, but, as noted below, do a backup of your data to card first - just in case.
With the mobile industry gathered in Barcelona, MWC Day 1 is underway. In this post, we'll be bringing you live coverage from Nokia's event. The event kicks off at 10:30am GMT and we'll be covering both the press conferences and some of the follow up events and interviews.
We don't link to every other blog's hardware reviews, but we do link to the best: those that are well written and insightful, rather than just being a mass of specs and photos. In this case, here's the Prodigal Fool summing up the Nokia E72 very well, both good points and bad points. In other E72 news, people are reporting a firmware update to v23.002 - comments welcome if you spot anything new. Wonder if this addresses any of the Prodigal's points?
At a pre-MWC press event, Sony Ericsson has announced the Vivaz Pro, essentially a slightly chunkier Vivaz with sliding qwerty keyboard. Other specs remain the same, with 3.2" resistive touchscreen and it runs vanilla S60 5th Edition with Sony Ericsson panelled homescreen and Media browser/player (same as Satio). Sony Ericsson are emphasising, amidst the simultaneous launch of other smartphones on two other OS platforms, that they're aiming their user experience to be 'OS agnostic', a similar strategy to Samsung's. You'll find specs, photos and promo below. Rafe's at the event and we're hoping to get more details and photos in due course.
Wild Ducks is a Symbian Foundation project that aims to demonstrate how the recently open sourced Symbian platform can run on open hardware. The project uses the popular Beagle Board as the main board which, together with a modem and few other components, gives you everything you need to make a phone. This allows anyone to build their own Symbian based phones with off the shelf hardware. Over two videos we talk to Arunabh Ankur to get the details on the project and take a look at the project's hardware running Symbian^2. Read on for more.
Following on from my review (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4) of the Nokia X6 32GB Comes with Music, I have received the new v12 firmware with open arms and report back here on the transformation it makes to my intensive use of this music-focussed smartphone. There are still issues that need attention, but at least I can trust the X6 - for the first time.
Samsung's long (oh so long) awaited i8910 HD firmware update has just been released. Firmware JB1 is now online via PC Studio 7, as the screenshot below shows. Improvements include kinetic scrolling in most (but not all) parts of the interface, major improvements to Web, faster operation and many bug fixes. Comments welcome if you notice something else new.
Canalys stats are another important data point for the smartphone industry, they usually bring out something of interest. Here, in their 2009 summary, (mirroring Tomi's numbers and our analysis), they give Symbian-powered smartphones 47% world marketshare for the year, with RIM in second place on 20%. With their press release focussing on touchscreen numbers, Canalys points out that 55% of all smartphones sold in Q4, 2009 had touchscreens, with Nokia being the leading touchscreen smartphone manufacturer.
In All About Symbian Insight 104 (AAS Podcast 168), Rafe and Steve start with a quick look ahead to Mobile World Congress and then round up a number of small news items, including multiple firmware updates (N97 mini, X6, 5730, E52), details of a new version of the Ovi Store client, information on Greystripe and the Ovi Store and the lowdown on 1.4 million Ovi Maps downloads. In the second half of the podcast we discuss the big news that the the open sourcing (EPL) of the Symbian platform (40 million lines of code) has been completed four months ahead of schedule. You can listen to AAS Insight 104 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
It’s been making its way around the various territories in the last few days, and now we’re happy to say that we have the updated firmware running on the Nokia X6 here at AAS (link to our review). The update to v12.0.091 can be installed (once available) either Over the Air or via the Nokia Software Updater on your PC. Even though your data should be preserved during the update, we would always recommend backing up any phone before an update is started.
Following on from Strategy Analytics and Tomi's stats for smartphone sales in the whole of 2009, summarised here by me last week, we now have confirmation, courtesy of the USA-based IDC, of the very latest Q4 2009 smartphone world unit sales: again, Nokia lead the market with 38% for its S60-based smartphones, while RIM's Blackberrys are in second place with 20%. Q1 2010 results will be even more interesting, expect these in the first week of April.
With the release of the new (v21 or v11, depending on the device) firmware for the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, both smartphones suddenly got distinctly more appealing, running more applications at once and with their software finally becoming 'fit for purpose'. So you like the unique, patented, hybrid form factor? So do I. But the big question is: which one should you buy? In this feature I look at every single difference between the two phones, commenting where needed and.... I try to pick an overall winner.
Thanks to Norman John for the heads-up on a big v200 firmware update to the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic. v200.12.87 is available both over the air and via NSU for unbranded phones in most parts of the world. As ever, network-branded phones may take a lot longer. Changes from the old v101 firmware include the Next-Gen version of Web and a multitude of performance tweaks.
Steve Litchfield explores the world of RAM on the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, demonstrates that you can still multitask well over a dozen applications at once, discusses what Nokia got wrong and gives some pointers as to what you can do to keep things on the rails...
A new firmware update, version 31.012, is now available for the Nokia E52. The update is currently only available via Nokia Software Updater (PC). We've not noticed any major changes, but a number of bug fixes and small version updates to built in applications (Web, Email, Music Store, Maps) are included. The phone's noise cancellation parameters have also been updated, which should improve audio quality of calls.
