Although Rafe and I have had the Nokia N8 for close to a month now, neither of us has got round to disassembling the bottom to test removal/exchange of the BL-4D battery. Partly because there's a question mark over whether this does in fact void the warranty, but mainly because the battery life is so good that neither of us has missed not being able to swap cells. In any case, Micky Aldridge has gone where we feared to tread and I've embedded his video below, showing removal and replacement. Looks like a 5 minute job at most, should your N8 battery ever degrade or fail.
If you're a Nimbuzz user, from Oct 31st you’ll no longer be able to access Skype via the orange tinged multiplatform IM client, as Skype have asked Nimbuzz to remove support for their platform. Nimbuzz are naturally upset about this, as it does diminish their offering to customers. Let’s be clear, Skype are within their legal rights to do this, so I’m expecting a lot of noise from Nimbuzz to try and put some public pressure on Skype. Are Skype right to take away their ball to preserve the user experience (and potentially their business reputation) ahead of an expected IPO?
While the previous Ovi Calendar (version 1.6) that was in the Nokia Beta Labs is now in general use, it’s time for the next version to be subject to public test. So Ovi Calendar 2.0 is now available for public testing at the Beta Labs. Adding in new facilities to invite people to meetings and events, attendance at events, manage public calendars, and a raft of user interface tweaks.
I'd been meaning to write up the Socially app for S60 and Symbian for a while, but now I don't have to because Vaibhav beat me to it. In this case he's showing how to automatically sync Facebook photos and birthdays into your Symbian Contacts application on the N8, but compatibility is surprisingly wide. With Nokia Social on the new Symbian^3 devices being somewhat limited in its Facebook integration, Socially promises to help extend the concept, plus it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, as Vaibhav reveals.
Symbian utility specialists Cellphonesoft have come up with another possible touchscreen front-end, this time based around a single touch in the top left corner of your screen, which brings up their new 'Instant Menu', with application shortcuts and some utility functions. Some more details below.
Now this is the sort of marketing I'd like to see Nokia do more of. Working with a band to both enhance their life on the road and also show off what the smartphone can do. In this case the band 'Kill It Kid' and the Nokia N8 - the introductory video is embedded below. A dozen of these, all with different popular bands in different countries, all going viral among the youth, and there'd be no need to mess around with 'X factor' apps, I reckon....
One novel promotional idea the Ovi guys and gals had a few months back was to produce a promotional magazine in the Issuu 'virtual' format - here's issue 1 of the 'Ovi Guide', from the Spring. Issue 2 has just been released at a whopping 44 pages and, though biased towards marketing Nokia's products, does have plenty of app mini-reviews, plus some useful tips and pointers in it. Moreover, it's glossily implemented, embedded below on this page (if your browser window is wide enough!) and well worth a detailed look.
There are more than enough news sites and commentary around for you to read on your phone. What I need is a snack sized piece of fiction to get me thinking, make me smile, have my heart fly, and entertain me on a daily basis. If you do as well, www.cellstories.net is for you, providing a new short story every day, laid out to work on your smartphone's small screen.
While the location based information provided by Google’s Latitude system has always been available on Google Maps for Mobile, hooking in to the system from a desktop computer has always needed you to go through a clumsy route using iGoogle. Well, no more, as you can now see where your friends are on this standalone web page.
Now that didn’t take as long as the N8! Nokia’s Conversations Blog is reporting that the Nokia C7, announced last month at Nokia World, is now shipping to customers. Making it the second Symbian^3 device to hit retail, the C7 matches the majority of specs of the N8, missing out the HDMI port, 12 megapixel camera, and of course has a reduced price tag.
Definitely not recommended for anyone reading this, but fascinating reading nevertheless is iFixit's teardown of the Nokia N8, with numerous valuable insights into how the N8 was made, including titbits like the AMOLED display not being fused to the outside glass so that, in theory, you don't have to replace both if you break the latter. Details of the various chips inside are also of interest, though I'd warn again - do not try this at home. Leave N8 dismantling to your local Nokia Care Point!
There's a great post here by Ari Partinen with tips on taking better portrait photos with the N8, specifically looking at how he achieved the professional shot reproduced below, with nothing more than the Nokia N8 and some white material (as a reflector). Well worth a read and, if nothing else, shows what Xenon-lit fill-in flash can do to improve smartphone photos - even in broad daylight.
Forgive the blatant plug, but this is one Phones Show programme that you might want to catch. Inside show 122 there's my video review of the Nokia N8 - trying to summarise this device in 1500 spoken words over 10 screen minutes wasn't easy - you can judge my efforts below, as the show is embedded for your convenience. There's also a mini review of the Motorola Flipout, a diminutive but capable qwerty smartphone.
A couple of interesting links of interest in the last 24 hours over on Nokia's official blog. Nokia’s new devices and the environment looks at some facts behind progress at keeping phones and their packaging as 'green' as possible. I guess when you're selling over a million phones a day then you have to really worry about the impact you're having on the planet! Also of interest was this drum-thumping post on entitled Nokia ranks number one as mobile Web platform, referring to new stats from Opera that show that in the top 20 tech-capable countries, in 16 of them a Nokia device was the leading phone used to browse the web. Some quotes below from each.
Symbian have announced the line up of the Application Developer Track at the upcoming Exchange and Exposium in Amsterdam next month. With notable contributions from Nokia and Orange, the event is well on course to its goals of sharing experience and knowledge throughout the community.
