Yes, you can turn stats to prove almost anything and goodness knows we've seen enough of that from the tech media in recent years. So time for a shot across the bows with a look at that favourite stat from the 'superphone' brigade: mobile web browsing, sorted by smartphone platform. It'll be iPhone and Android all the way, right? Wrong. Hopelessly wrong.
Remember Nokia Conversations were asking for people to create a new ringtone for Nokia to ship on their handsets? They've announced a winner, Italian DJ Valerio Alessandro Sizzi and his twenty-four second dub-step reimagining of Tarrega's Grande Valse. You can have a listen to it below, or just wait for it to be one of the default ringtones on the new Nokia handsets.
You'll remember my popular feature "There's a Bookmark for that"? The mobile-friendly sites in that feature were all taken from my much larger home-compiled (and slightly UK-biased) directory. Which I just updated, removing sites which no longer worked and adding over a dozen others. The idea is that you bookmark this one page on your small-screened smartphone and then you've got all the mobile versions on tap, without having to remember the 'mobile' syntax for each.
You'll remember that a new Qt-ified version of the Nokia Store client was released in beta form a week ago? There's now an 'important' (i.e. bug fix) update available, v3.16.034, go grab it here. This is for Symbian^3/Anna smartphones only, as before.
Nokia's manufacturing capability is very distributed and very large - but it all got a bit smaller with today's announcement to close the facility in Romania by the end of 2011 and with the possibilty of future changes of focus in plants in Finland, Hungary and Mexico. In addition, there are closures of Nokia offices in Bonn and Malvern. See below for quotes from the press release.
Another week, another camera-toting smartphone comparison, this time from Hannah Bouckley of 'recombu', comparing the Nokia N8 to the Samsung Galaxy S II, the iPhone 4, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and (for some reason) the Samsung Omnia 7. Despite the author seemingly failing to understand how to use the N8 after dark*, the N8 was given the overall verdict of winner across the different test shots.
One of the problems with the Nokia Ovi Store is that the sheer number of (ahem) novelties and other incidental items that get approved means that finding the good stuff isn't easy. What's needed is a storefront that's a hundred times smaller. But has the 1% of content that's really good. This is what I've attempted over on my 3-Lib site in 'The Curated Symbian Application Store'. Hopefully newcomers to Symbian will find it a good time-saver.
According to the official Opera Mini blog, our favourite proxy-based web browser just got a significant update. The version number only changes from 6.1.25380 to 6.1.26266 but, crucially, Opera Mini now works with Symbian Belle phones and also now uses the built-in Symbian Anna portrait keyboard, at least in generic text entry fields (if not URL entry). In a matching move, Opera Mobile, the proxy-less but more capable browser, has also been updated, with the same compatibility changelog. Links and screens from Opera Mini below.
The Ovi Store client for S60 3rd and 5th Edition phones got itself a big update today, to v1.16, complete with Nokia branding through and through - there's no Ovi logo, just a blue store icon, plus a complete Nokia-blue makeover, cosmetically. The Help system has been simplified to a multipage scrolling FAQ, nicely done. Screenshots below. Further transformations, to the Web version of the Store and to the Symbian^3 client, are also rolling out.
SanDisk just announced a new range of microSD cards, starting at a monstrous 64GB. Dubbed 'Mobile Ultra', these cards use the SDXC standard, which is why you shouldn't get too excited yet - no current or announced Symbian smartphones or firmwares support SDXC. Official compatibility will doubtless come in time, through 2012, which will also give time for the card to drop to sensible price levels. But hey, it's the future, so worth bearing in mind.
Here comes the Nokia Gift Machine! As part of Social Media Week, Nokia have installed a "Social Gift Machine" in Glasgow. Hooked up to the internet, with its own hash-tag on the side, all you need to do is check in via Foursquare to the vending machine and you'll be rewarded with a gift. Beyond "It's doesn't just hold candy" we've no idea what you might get, but we know of one Nokia N8 that has been given out!
There's a nice article by Aatif Sumar over on ZOMGit'sCJ looking in detail at Nokia Mobile Money, announced two years ago but now seemingly arrived, at least in India, as a Java application compatible with S60 3rd Edition smartphones (and presumably S40 and other devices too, right up to the latest Symbian handsets).
Dropbox has announced an update to its mobile website, which can be found at dropbox.com/m. Dropbox states that it officially supports iPhone, Android (2.1+) and Windows Phone 7. The browser built-in to pre-Anna Symbian devices will not support this new HTML5 website, but Symbian^3 users can still take advantage either by updating to Anna or using Opera Mobile 11. Read on for screenshots and more.
I was interested to see the starting of the "Near Field Connectivity Blog", under the auspices of Nokia's Developer program, along with some titbits about Nokia's plans for NFC and its devices. Read on for more links and quotes.
NuevaSync is a paid-for Mail for Exchange service tailored to help all kinds of mobile devices synchronise successfully with Google’s PIM services. We reviewed NuevaSync last year, and found it to be a great help with getting Nokia devices to work painlessly with the Google cloud. NuevaSync has now added support for adding events to multiple Google calendars. Read on to find out how well it works and how to set it up.
