It being a slowish news day, I've been updating my (now huge) Grid of mobile devices, taking a selection of current hardware and rating them against each other in gory detail. New devices covered include the Nokia N70, the T-Mobile MDA Pro and the Orange SPV C600. Plus there are two new rating categories, for video recording and software stability.
Monday night's Gadget Show on Channel 5 in the UK (5 Dec 2005) hit viewers with a barrage of Symbian-powered smartphones. Topics covered by the show included getting online using GPRS/3G and TV on your mobile. The Nokia 7710 mediaphone, in particular was given a lot of close-up coverage, playing back video segments and shown streaming live TV. Also spotted were the Nokia 6680, 6630 and even the Series 80-powered Nokia 9300. Plus there was quite a bit of footage of Symbian's 'Smartphone Show'. What else did you spot? Comments?
Just a quick plug for the Symbian Q and A Knowledgebase, which I've doubled in size and categorised so make things easier to find. It covers common support questions for Series 60, UIQ and Series 80 Symbian smartphones. Hopefully worth bookmarking at the very least!
Not quite sure what's up with the name "Nokia Nseries N90 Blogger Relations Blog site" but here it is. Nokia's blog to link back to all the stories and comments the N90 receives has come online in sync with the US launch of the N90 handset.
TomTom have posted a big update (5.20) to their MOBILE 5 navigation system. Main changes are: "Support for more devices; Better support for 3rd party Bluetooth GPS; Increased number of POI categories to 40; Improvements in address search". Full details of how to update to 5.20 are given here
Released today is v4.0 of Fairway, the golf game for Nokia 9300 and 9500. Changes include modern opponent names, improved gameplay and visuals and even more realistic physics. Fully working shareware, details here.
Nokia has just announced the Series 80-based 9300i smartphone in New York. As previously rumoured, the main hardware changes are Wi-Fi (802.11g), a larger battery and predictive text input on the cover phone. There's a huge software bundle, mainly aimed at businesses. Read on....
The S60 Blog brings two interesting quotes regarding Skype, the VoIP king, coming to S60. The prediction is in the first half of next year, which neatly coincides with W-iFi enabled S60 devices such as the E60 and the slew of N-xx phones.
Janne Jalkannen has discovered a bit of a problem with Nokia's WebCore based browser on the E61 - when sites such as Google serve up mobile-optimised sites they've not twigged out that the E61 is a perfectly competent web browser that just has a smaller screen, but in the right aspect ratio. Can you switch over to get the full site? It doesn't appear so...
Ooh! Finally catching up on news from the October Press Briefing is Slashdot's rather negative coverage of Nokia's re-targeting of the N-Gage from a single handset to a brand covering the entire Series 60 portfolio. Worth a read to see just what Nokia's marketing department was up against before they had even launched. And also worth it for the comment that Nokia's so called failure has sold more units than all the Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone devices put together.
Uploaded recently to Sony Ericsson's web site was an animated intro to their upcoming P990i smartphone, together with lists of features and highlights. Looking good, guys!
Thanks to Darla for spotting that Nokia have released their traditional free Christmas game for the N-Gage. And for all Series 60 smartphones, with a snowball-throwing Santa-meets-space invaders arcader. Put up with the cheesy music and N-Gage adverts and you've got a nice, free game to while away a Christmas afternoon.
Tommi, over on S60.com turns his attention to video on your Series 60 smartphone. Last year it was just the power users round these parts playing with mobile video. Now the wider S60 community is catching on. Tomorrow, the man on the street or your mother?
