Ewan continues his multipart look at the new Nokia X6 Comes with Music with, appropriately, a look at its music playing prowess - and sometimes the lack of it, with bugs, memory leaks, missing functions and unwanted clicks... See also part 1 of this review, looking at the X6's externals.
We're having an embedded video day here at AAS, at seems. Anphase, the guy who did the i8910 HD petition and then met with Samsung, has now done a video showing most of the changes for the upcoming big new firmware update and I've embedded this video below. Summary: similar partial implementation of kinetic scrolling as on the Nokia X6 and 5530, but improvements as well in Camera and Web. Anphase also shows some of the Qt and native OMAP3 demos.
A few brief updates from the world of The Phones Show. Programme 99 is now available, with my nine minute recommendations of smartphones to buy for seven different categories of user (you'll remember that I shortlisted these on AAS?) Plus our very own Tim Salmon and I have finished Phones Show Chat 19 and 20, one hour audio podcasts, both now available for download. Comments welcome on any of this content.
A snow-bound look around the phone world at what's popular and what's hot - and my annoyance that yet again Form is leading Function (e.g. "I just want something that's pretty and with a touchscreen"). Mind you, I'm a self-confessed geek and I don't have any clothes sense, so what do I know? Read on for a Steve rant...
The first part of Ewan's real world review of the Nokia X6 Comes With Music.... Yes, there's a capacitive screen and decent speakers, but Ewan manages to find several points to complain about, not least the style-over-substance keylock key. More on the X6 from him later this week.
No, not that hell. Michael Hell, previously of Symbian Freak and a geek after my own heart for the last 5 years, and someone whose opinion I respect. And he's just produced an interesting Top 10 phones of 2009, split into numbers 10 to 6 and then numbers 5 to 1. And the top pick will surprise you, but it's entirely defensible.
GPS, like many modern technologies, is often taken for granted. Yet it's quite a bit more fragile, in terms of operation, than you might think. Here are some facts and tips that may help your own smartphone GPS experience.
Following on from the first two Sony Ericsson Satio review parts: One: Form, Design, Build Quality and Two: The Camera, here's my third look at the new Sony Ericsson flagship, rounding up its general applications and interface. Part 4 will address its new media suite and will assess this smartphone's overall worth, with me hoping that Sony Ericsson squeeze in another firmware update before then...
Whenever Ewan mentions that he's 'unboxing' something, we trust him to produce something that's "different". In this case it's the new capacitive-screened, music-focussed Nokia X6 smartphone which gets the treatment in a special video, embedded below. And it seems that a few mm of plastic on the X6's side has really gotten Ewan's goat. More from him on the X6 in due course.
I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
You can usually trust James Whatley to have his head screwed on more or less straight when it comes to assessing the merits of various phones and smartphones - I suspect even more go through his hands than through mine.... Anyway, he's written up his judging process for The Really Mobile Project 'Phone of the year' and.... I think you'll be surprised. And then you'll go "Well, yes, I see his point". Interesting stuff, though my phone of the year is the less mass market Nokia N97 mini - it's just a shame this came in so late in 2009...
No, not a blatant Phones Show plug (though Phones Show Chat 18 is out), but a serious attempt to provoke thought and discussion. Ahead of a video feature on smartphone recommendations, I've opened up my thought processes to you below, in some detail, breaking down the market into a whopping seven stereotypes(!) Maybe you'd like to chip in with comments, recommendations and disqualifications of your own?
While still waiting to complete my own Satio review part 3, I was interested to read Michell Bak of the S-E (Sony Ericsson) Blog, who has produced an impressively long and graphical all-in-one Satio review. This is also interesting because it seems to be Michell's first S60 phone as well, giving a view of vanilla S60 5th Edition from a newcomer's standpoint.
It's all very well listening to advice on ways to cut down the power used by your smartphone, but have you ever seen the power savings quantified? Can you put numbers to the various techniques and settings? You can now, with my handy guide. Although testing was on a Nokia N96, the findings should apply to any Symbian-powered smartphone.
Samsung has officially announced a big new firmware update for its i8910 HD, bringing faster web browsing, faster multimedia access and, most desired of all, full Symbian^2/N97-style kinetic scrolling in all dialogs and screens. See below for the press release text. The bad news? You'll have to wait until next month to get it, via PC Studio update.
