A couple of interesting links of interest from the last 24 hours: Samsung has announced the world's first 32GB microSD card, based on 30nm technology (i.e. 0.00000003 metres!), to be in production from next month. Staggering miniaturisation, if you ask me. In other news, Nokia has released a Windows 7-compatible (beta) version of its Nokia Software Update tool, eliminating the need to mess around running the tool in a 'compatibility' mode. About time.
An Evernote client has been a constant request in the Symbian ecosystem for many months now and, late last year, a Web runtime version turned up, optimised for the Nokia N97 and compatibles. This has been regularly updated and, with version 1.0.70302, released last night in the USA, has reached the point where I can start to recommend it to the wider world. See below for screens, comments and some links.
It seems that new ideas and elements of upcoming Symbian incarnations keep getting backported and prototyped into existing products. Well done to Rita el-Khoury for noticing how the new Nokia X6 handles incoming Bluetooth-beamed files - straight to a folder on memory card rather than clogging up the Messaging inbox and disk C:. Very neat, and should save quite a few Symbian newbies from clogging up their internal disk in future....
Thanks to Nokia Users for pointing out that a new firmware for the Nokia E72 is starting to make its way around the world. v22.007 promises 'new features' and 'updated applications', but I don't have a device to check with. Comments welcome if you can spot any of the aforementioned!
The Nokia N86 8MP just got a minor update to v21 firmware. Version 21.006 replaces v20.115 and is, unashamedly, a maintenance release, improving performance further and fixing a number of minor bugs. We might have to wait for an official changelog for this one, but please comment if you can add a specific observation. v21 is 700kb and is now available via Nokia Software Update and over the air on the phone itself in most regions. There's full User Data Preservation, but back up to memory card, just in case? (via CJ)
What happens when you get challenged to break an unbreakable phone on the floor of CES in Las Vegas? Well Dan Simmons from the BBC's Click team managed to do what every one of us has secretly tried to do, and break the phone. The out-take is now online at BBC News.
Kudos to Jon at tehkseven for a couple of beautifully done 'simple' themes. Just White (in 5th Edition, 3rd Edition and Eseries-tailored versions) and Just Black (again in 5th Edition, 3rd Edition and Eseries versions), the latter with full Ovi icons. Recommended if you just want something clean, clear and efficient.
Tomi T Ahonen is about as authoratitive an industry analyst as you can get and has written a lengthy but all-encompassing analysis of the smartphone world going into 2010. Where will the fortunes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, RIM and others lie? Read Tomi's session with his crystal ball to find out!
We're having an embedded video day here at AAS, at seems. Anphase, the guy who did the i8910 HD petition and then met with Samsung, has now done a video showing most of the changes for the upcoming big new firmware update and I've embedded this video below. Summary: similar partial implementation of kinetic scrolling as on the Nokia X6 and 5530, but improvements as well in Camera and Web. Anphase also shows some of the Qt and native OMAP3 demos.
Nokia just launched a free 'eco' game in the Ovi Store, for its S60 5th Edition phones. 'Climate Mission' is based around a series of environmentally aware mini-games, the stated aim being to learn about important ecosystems while having fun. The game trailer is embedded below and you can download the game straight from the on-device Store.
A few brief updates from the world of The Phones Show. Programme 99 is now available, with my nine minute recommendations of smartphones to buy for seven different categories of user (you'll remember that I shortlisted these on AAS?) Plus our very own Tim Salmon and I have finished Phones Show Chat 19 and 20, one hour audio podcasts, both now available for download. Comments welcome on any of this content.
You may remember the guy who did the umpteen page 'report' on all the things that are wrong with the Samsung i8910 HD? This was, I have it on good authority, forwarded around rather widely at Samsung HQ and, it transpires, that the author 'Anphase' was invited to a meeting with the appropriate Samsung product manager. Here's Anphase's report of the meeting, along with Samsung's responses, for your interest.
Coming out of the Symbian Foundation's developer wiki system is a handy Wikipedia widget that installs on any Symbian-powered smartphone with Web runtime (so that's most of them). Search results are all optimised for the small screen and it seems a quick and efficient way to access Wikipedia's content. I've included some screenshots from the widget below.
No, not that hell. Michael Hell, previously of Symbian Freak and a geek after my own heart for the last 5 years, and someone whose opinion I respect. And he's just produced an interesting Top 10 phones of 2009, split into numbers 10 to 6 and then numbers 5 to 1. And the top pick will surprise you, but it's entirely defensible.
Two totally unrelated stories for your interest over a nice hot cup of tea... 1) A look back at Palm's 2009 on Royal Pingdom and how they failed to make the most of their early advantage with WebOS and the Palm Pre; 2) Nokia's Rick Simonson doing a non-denial denial that the Finnish company would be interested in buying Palm. We're certainly living in interesting times, and I wonder what the mobile landscape will look like in a year's time.
