Hmmm..... methinks the HTC P5500 is looking awfully familiar - the screen size, the slider, the built-in GPS, the 3 megapixel stills camera, the Wi-Fi, etc. I doubt there are copyright issues at stake here, but you know what they say about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery... Nokia must be doing something right with the N95! I can't wait to review the two devices head to head in the summer.
Danish website Mobilsiden.dk has a video interview (in English) with the designers of the Nokia 5500, Rachel Sleight and Marja-Leena Nurmela. Product designers rarely explain their decisions in public, and it's interesting to hear the philosophies behind the 5500's design and materials. The interview is split into short chunks for some reason, but they're all on the same page one below the other.
My Opera, one of the first proto-blogging systems, has now been extended to work well with both Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, enabling text and photo blogging directly from your mobile browser. Extra support includes chat groups and widget management. Opera's press release is below.
Nokia has announced that Nokia Software Update is now available from many Nokia local support web pages and that it's also now available in almost 40 languages. So far, over three quarters of a million people have updated their Nokia smartphone using the service. Kudos to their NSU team. Read on for the Nokia press release.
Announcing the inaugural ForumOxford: Future Technologies Conference to be held on 13 April 2007 at Rewley House, Oxford, UK. Sponsored by Google, Alpheus, Admob, Horizon Channel and Mi-Pay, this one-day conference includes speakers from Symbian, Google and AdMob. More details below.
Thanks to Darla for spotting that the long awaited N93/N93i tripod (Nokia code DT-22) is finally available if you know where to look. Expansys, for example, are offering it with only a 6 day wait and at only £15.
Widsets, java-hosted online widgets that bring you news or filtered web lookups, have a steadily growing following. They're also partly funded by Nokia, fully compatible with every Symbian OS smartphone in the last few years and the always excellent E-series blog has just published an eloquent Widsets write-up.
Rather (ahem) delayed, the Carnival of the Mobilists is now back on track, this week at Software Everywhere. Read it for the usual mix of mobile musings!
UIQ Technology has released the sixth and last of their official themes for all UIQ 3 smartphones: Amazonia is 'inspired by the mighty Amazon rainforest'. Unfortunately, the link is to a Flash widget, so you'll have to click through to find it, and see the note on the UIQ page about the .utz download.
Thanks to Darla for pointing out that most N80 smartphone owners can now officially upgrade their devices to 'Internet Edition' using Nokia Software Update.
For anybody still with a S60 2nd Edition smartphone (e.g. Nokia 6630, 6680, N70, N90), note that there's a new beta of FExplorer out. v1.16 (22 Feb 2007), adding better selection of multiple files, a rewritten file editor with copy/paste/select functions and some bug fixes. Note that we're still waiting for a proper public beta for S60 3rd Edition.
