Over on Guy Goma Kewney site, James Sherwood has pictures of a lovely mobile phone battery solution from MWC - the Philips 9@9j mobile phone takes not only a custom Lithium Ion battery, but also has a slot to take a regular AAA battery to top up the main battery for another three hours of talk time. If I was travelling, and I had the option to strap in a standard cell to my Symbian phone, I would be right there.
Knuckle down for the real thing, guys and gals, AAS proudly presents Rafe's definitive hands-on preview of the recently-announced Nokia N96. From the DVB-H TV receiver to the new codecs to the music controls to the auto-geotagging of photos, it's all covered. Rafe spent quite a time with the N96 and it shows. Read the feature to find out how the N96 compares to the N95 variants and to the N82 - is there a definite flagship?
Nseries video supremo James Burland echoes many of my own sentiments in chewing Nokia out over the VGA capture in its Nseries devices - the resolution ticks the right box but fails miserably for frame rate and focus. A justified rant? I think so.
After the brace of S60 devices announced at MWC, I've done an update to my comprehensive S60 comparison table. Still a few 'Unknown's, so comment if you can help fill any in. Also of note is that Forum Nokia now has the official specs of the new Nokia devices online.
I couldn't resist passing on Nokia's Nseries team's latest marketing skit, showing off the inner workings (ahem) of the Nokia N78. Funny stuff, see below!
3D graphics benchmarks aren't the 'be all and end all' when it comes to games playing performance, but they're a good clue as to how capable a device is. So it was interesting to find out about a regularly updated and bookmarkable table of OpenGL ES benchmarked smartphones. It's topped by the 'if you believe Nokia' obsolete N93 and the N-Gage 1st access smartphone, the N81, comes in a lowly 22nd. Read on for comment.
It seems that some firmwares for the Nokia 6110 Navigator have a major issue with the core navigation function and that Nokia are recalling some handsets (those that are branded) and fixing others with firmware updates. See the comments below for more info, it's a licensing screwup... (via IntoMobile)
Ahead of our device previews here are a number of image galleries, with the usual commentary, of the 8 Symbian OS powered devices which were announced last week at Mobile World Congress 2008. The Nokia N96 (high end Nseries), Nokia N78 (entry level Nseries), Nokia 6210 (navigation focused), Nokia 6220 (mid tier all rounder), Sony Ericsson G700 and G900 (the first mid tier UIQ 3 phones), Samsung G810 (camera focused high end slider) and LG KT610 (mid tier QWERTY clamshell).
In All About Symbian Insight #13 Rafe, Ewan and Steve discuss their first impressions of Mobile World Congress 2008. Rafe gives his impressions from the show floor while Steve and Ewan pick out their highlights from the various announcements and cover a variety of news from last week.
After his recent thesis of battery threshold, Steve's now asking why the battery life of a smartphone is getting worse. The recent announcements at 3GSM have only confirmed this to him, and now he's ready to present his evidence. Is your smartphone above or below the thin red line of battery capacity?
While Rafe's still emboiled in the hustle and bustle of MWC, many others have managed to get out their thoughts on Nokia's two top end Nseries smartphones. The best of these is Vaibhav Sharma's, well photographed and plenty of insights for both the N78 and the N96.
Also just announced at MWC was the 6210 Navigator, bringing the older 6110 Navigator up to date with 3.2 megapixel camera and latest styling. Maps 2.0 will be built-in and there's an N95-style accelerometer to help out, in addition to the full S60 application package/platform. Photos and more details below the break.
The Nokia 6220 Classic has also debuted, and this is going to be the 'regular' device that surprises everybody. It's got an impressive spec for a mid range phone, including a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss-lensed camera with Xenon flash (yes, really), HSPDA connectivity and an assisted GPS for location aware services. It also hooks into the Ovi services as well.
While the N96 takes the plaudits, Nokia's N78 is probably going to be the bigger seller. With all the high spec features of the Nseries range (including assisted GPS; Carl Zeiss 3.2 megapixel lens with LED flash; and a 2GB ‘pre-fitted' memory card), but in a more traditional candy bar shape, along with an integrated FM transmitter, to pass out your music and video to a nearby radio (eg in a car).
Nokia has announced the N96, its new flagship in the Nseries, with quad band reception, DVB-H (digital TV), 16GB of internal flash memory and microSD expansion. It runs S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2. Plus all the top end specs from the existing N95 8GB. For thoughts, photos and specs, read on.
