With Ewan somewhere in America still, Rafe recording an Insight with me and then taking a well deserved long weekend break himself, it's been an odd 24 hours, centred around the big news from Cupertino and smartphone industry reaction to it. Read on for some analysis on this and other interesting weekend reading links.
Mitsubishi is to close its loss making mobile handset business with employees being reassigned to other areas of the company. Mistubishi currently makes phones for Japan's NTT DoCoMo FOMA network; the handsets use the MOAP-S (MOAP on Symbian) software platform. Handset shipments to NTT DoCoMo will halt by September. And so we bid goodbye to another Symbian licensee. Read on for more details.
Following on from our textual preview of the Nokia N78, here's a comprehensive hands-on video preview of the device, covering all the major areas using video and pictures from MWC 2008. The N78, as the entry level Nseries device, looks set to replicate the sales sucess of its immediate predecessor, the Nokia N73. Video (podcast 27) below the break.
Nokia has announced the 6650, an S60 phone which will be available exclusively to T-Mobile International Customers. The 6650 has a 2 megapixel camera (with LED flash), integrated AGPS, a microSD card slot to supplement the 30MB of internal memory, FM radio and HSDPA connectivity. Rather than using Nokia's own Ovi services it will use T-Mobile services. The 6650 will be available in the third quarter on a number of European T-Mobile networks. More details below.
Nokia has announced the launch of a new S60 smartphone, the '6124 classic', in conjunction with Vodafone in most markets, calling it a 'compact multimedia device offering Vodafone customers faster and easier access to all of Vodafone's high speed Internet and entertainment services'. It is good to see this sort of collaboration happening and to see S60 hitting the true mainstream yet again. Read on for more information.
It's Monday and it's time for our new Insight podcast. In number 15 (aka AAS podcast 63), we look at news, geotagging privacy concerns, recent handset designs from Nokia and Ewan reports on truly mobile software. Give it a listen on the way home from work. Here's the RSS feed if you want to subscribe regularly.
In times of inconsistent quality, it's good to reflect back on devices that have oozed quality, charisma or style, and sometimes even all three. In "Top 10 - Classic Smartphones", I count down the significant stars of the Symbian OS world from the last 7 years. Controversial? Biased? Probably. But I'll bet there are four or five of these on everybody's own personal top 10 from the same period! Comments and your own picks are more than welcome!
Vodafone have confirmed, following initial reports that the Samsung i560 would be taken up for the UK as a Vodafone exclusive, that they "won’t be ranging this device. This device was tested with our new Sat Nav software and we weren’t happy with its performance." This was the only one of Samsung's new S60 smartphones that we had a hope of seeing in the UK, although the i450 and i550 are available in Germany and Italy.
Great to see the Nokia N82 getting some professional TV coverage, here on G4 on their Gadget pr0n (sic) show. Despite the American focus(!), the presenters seemed to get the hang of the N82's strengths - well worth a watch. (via Lonely Bob)
Apparently there's a new firmware update out for Nokia 6120 Classic owners, taking you to v4.21, reports Ricky. There's UDP too, so you shouldn't have to worry about backups and restores. Better to back up just in case though?
Rafe also spent a lot of time with the Nokia N78 at Mobile World Congress. Here's his detailed and illustrated preview. A natural evolution of the best-selling N73, despite the hardware improvements, it's the software and services improvements that really caught Rafe's imagination, taking Ovi and a much more rounded package to the mass market.
Now this is interesting. Here's a video tour of the upcoming UIQ 3-powered Sony Ericsson G900 (below the break). Watch it. Then watch it again a few more times, there's a lot to take in that I for one haven't seen before on UIQ 3. And all very iPhone-esque - which I guess is a compliment, looks like S-E and UIQ have been burning the midnight oil - now we just want to see the hardware out in the real world.
To complement his textual preview of Nokia's upcoming N96, Rafe has produced a comprehensive hands-on video about the device, covering each of its major areas with video (and photos) shot at Mobile World Congress. Rafe makes a compelling argument against actually calling the N96 a flagship, but its specs are still mightily impressive.
Nokia in conjunction with Cambridge University today released details of Morph - a concept nanotechnology device. Concepts are, by their nature, somewhat speculative, but nonetheless Morph does offer an intruiging glimpse of possible future technologies. This includes the use of flexible materials allowing for bendable devices, self cleaning materials and greater use of integrated sensors.
In this podcast we cover current developments around Nokia's Ovi strategy including Sync, Share, N-Gage, plus we chat about all aspects of the Nokia N96, following on from our hands-on preview. Finally, we rant and rave a little about Google's new native search 'client'. Here's the link: Insight no. 14, plus the RSS feed to sign up for the future.
