In a group review Steve rounds up a number of cases and protection solutions for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. He gives scores for protection, style and usability and assesses how well each case does in each scoring category. He concludes by offering an overall opinion, but our prior experience suggests people have strong personal preferences so we would love to hear from you too.
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.
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.)
Released yesterday was my Show 78, with a six minute video version of my Samsung Omnia HD first impressions, published here at the start of the week. A huge thanks to Rafe for helping with the video and you can expect text and video in more detail from him on All About Symbian shortly. Show 78 also includes my March Top 5 Phones. If you want to comment on either, please see the YouTube thread.
Yes, Ewan's heading off (Twitter feed here) 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 fifth of his regular video reports, embedded below, letting us know how he's getting on with S60 5th Edition and the 5800. Ewan talks about PIM apps (Contacts, Calendar, and so on), touching on Sync options and having a good rant about the paucity of Nokia's S60 To-do list functions.
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?
Just a quickie, since this has been reported in many other places, but for the sake of completeness, there's a new firmware for the North AMerican version of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - firmware v20.2.014 is now available, with many improvements, including (allegedly) a resolution to the 3G reception problems seen in some US cities when the device was launched.
Continuing our 5800 tutorial series, we take a look at how to use the Nokia 5800's built-in S60 web browser, and we also check out how to install and use the alternative Opera Mini browser on the 5800. S60 is fully-featured, Opera Mini is super-fast, but which is better? There's only one way to find out... read the articles. Also, don't forget you can see a complete listing of all these guides on our 5800 tutorial index page.
Long-time Arena user Clintonjeff has been one of the first in the world to receive the new business-oriented Nokia E75 smartphone. This is the first Eseries device to be compatible with N-Gage, and CJ has looked at how well it copes with gaming. Apparently not very well. There are quite a few "issues" such as the N-Gage icon being hidden too deeply in the menu system (in the "Media" folder!), restricted gaming key options, and a client that doesn't work in horizontal mode. Check the link out for more details and see below for CJ's E75 N-Gage video. It's a real shame that N-Gage is making such a disastrous debut on Eseries. If anyone from Nokia is reading this, take a look at CJ's article and make note of what needs fixing (the problems would mostly be very easy to fix too).
Continuing our series of guides for beginners, AAS takes an in-depth look at how to use RSS feeds on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and also has a quick mini-tutorial on how to set the home page on the web browser. Don't forget that our entire library of tutorials can be accessed from the AAS 5800 Tutorial Index page.
On Thursday, Rafe Blandford and I were invited to spend a day with a pre-production Samsung Omnia HD, powered by Symbian OS 9.4 and S60 5th Edition (the previous Omnia had been much lower spec and Windows Mobile-powered). Away from trade show crowds and noise, we were able to really explore the Omnia HD in text, photos and video, so watch for this content over the next few weeks. In this feature I look at the device itself, its form factor and obvious interface characteristics.
It seems the E75 fairy missed AAS out (an admin mistake, apparently), but fear not for Clinton Jeff has stepped up to the plate with a nicely opinionated and illustrated look at Nokia's latest Eseries qwerty slider. A man after my own heart, he has torn into the device in his first 24 hours and presents a long list of pluses and minuses.
Yes, Ewan's heading off for a three week tour of the USA (Twitter feed here), 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 third of his regular video reports, letting us know how he's getting on with S60 5th Edition and the 5800. Embedded below is part 3 of this series, in which he chats about connectivity, the touch interface generally, the contact bar homescreen and handwriting and T9 text input.
Yes, Ewan's heading off (Twitter feed here) 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 second of his regular video reports, letting us know how he's getting on with S60 5th Edition and the 5800. Embedded below is part 2 of this series.
The BBC News website is carrying a report about a new way of making lithium batteries which could massively speed up their charging time. It's unclear quite how long the charging would take with the new batteries: the BBC report talks about "20 seconds" in comparison to "6 minutes", so they clearly weren't testing a full capacity battery. However, if we scale that up, a 90 minute charge on current batteries would be reduced to 5 minutes with the new battery type.
