Ewan's well into his long term Nokia N85 review period now, and here he brings us a chatty overview of his experience with its hardware, looking in particular at the OLED screen, the fingerprint-attracting styling and the slightly hit and miss d-pad. Read his N85 review - part 1. Subsequent parts will take a look at some of the newer (FP2) features in S60, the camera and multimedia capabilities.
In Insight number 50 (woohoo!), Rafe, Steve and Ewan discuss the latest news from the Symbian World. Steve talks about his overall N79 experience, Ewan has been playing with an N85 and Rafe waffles about the state of the open platform market. Plus, we look forward to Nokia World 2008 (tomorrow)....
In the concluding part of his very detailed hands-on (p)review of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, based on almost a month of day-to-day running with Nokia's 'Tube', Rafe Blandford brings us a report on the rest of its applications and on third party software compatibility, plus, of course, he sums up the device. Why is it unique and just how well will it do worldwide?
Nokia's just put out a press release that the 5800 XpressMusic is now shipping in selected countries (with other countries to follow in 2009 apparently). As always, "shipping" can mean the devices are on the way to the shops, so you may not see them actually on sale for a week or two. Full release follows below.
Another of Nokia's latest wave of S60 3rd Edition FP2 phones goes under Steve Litchfield's scrutiny. This time it's the Nokia N79, which, like the N96 before it, though full of 'toys', is ultimately not powerful enough when compared to the older N82 and N95 variants. A lack of graphics acceleration and poor video capture are two aspects which Steve felt disappointed with, but the all-in-one, slim, fashionable form factor will, I feel, ensure mainstream success.
In AAS Insight 49, we have brief news of a new version of Mobile Web Server, and a forthcoming TD-SCDMA S60 phone. The main part of the podcast is divided in to two parts: Rafe discusses his time at a recent Developer Day in Budapest while Steve, from the 17 minute mark, tells us about his visit to Nokia's hardware testing facility. If you want to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Earlier this week (original story below) we wrote a story about the Pantech C630 phone which had been reported as running Symbian OS. We can now confirm that this is not the case. The Pantech C630 is not a Symbian phone. Please accept my apologies for the misleading news story. While we always strive for accuracy on All About Symbian we do have to balance this against keeping you informed in a timely manner.
Tucked away on Nokia's press release page is the announcement of the 6260 Slide, a non-smart phone based on the latest 6th Edition version of their proprietary Series 40 platform. What's remarkable though are the 6260's tech specs: 480x320 screen resolution, WebKit web browser (same engine as S60 and Safari), 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss autofocus camera, built-in GPS, Wi-Fi and tri-band 3.5G HSDPA/HSUPA. Would the average phone buyer really see any difference between this and an S60 device when they're deciding what to buy?
Yes, it's the long awaited part 2 of Rafe's definitive hands-on preview of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, a.k.a. the 'Tube', this time covering all aspects of multimedia, from camera to Web to games. The touchscreen and wide display make for a unique form factor among Nokia's current line-up, and Rafe leaves no stone unturned in his quest to evaluate the device.
See below for the photographic proof. Honestly, you'd have thought that with all the millions of dollars poured into HSM (High School Musical) marketing, they could have afforded a little research into the sort of phone your average 10 year old girl is going to be using. How many female 'tweens' do you know who carry around Nokia's business flagship?
Vaibhav has put together a great summary of Nokia's recent 'Legends' online Q&A concerning Near Field Communication, well worth a read if you want to know what's coming up from Nokia and others. I think NFC has huge potential, even if we are a few years from mass adoption.
For Phones Show completists(!), show 69 just went live, with a much more condensed (3 minute) version of my day at Nokia's Test Centre (in case you haven't got time to watch the full 35 minutes on AAS!), plus a hands-on review of the Sony Ericsson C905 (8mp cam, Xenon flash) and a reminder about firmware updates.
A couple of days ago, I was invited to spend the day at Nokia's Testing Labs at Farnborough, UK, being given a tour of the facilities and numerous demonstrations along the way. The aim was to spread the word about how rigorously Nokia test their handsets' hardware and on that front I was extremely impressed. AAS video podcast 37 is a fairly full 35 minutes of footage from the tour (taken on the N93 and N82, for those that are interested) and will let you see and hear what I saw. Enjoy.
At the Mobia Asia Congress, in Macau, Nokia reaffirmed its commitment to TD-SCDMA (also known as Chinese 3G) and said it was working on an TD-SCDMA enabled S60 handset for release in 2009. This follows on from the news that Digia has integrated TD-SCDMA into S60. China is one of the key emerging markets for mobile and China Mobile is one of the world's biggest operators (by customer numbers).
Every so often you find yourself in a situation where you wish "If only my phone could do this..." because it lacks the necessary hardware for a task. In a slightly tongue-in-cheek editorial, AAS takes a look at hardware features which are not available on modern mobile phones but perhaps should be. As always comments are very welcome in the thread below, especially your own suggestions for potentially useful phone features.
