With the advent of the N86, James Burland, host of the N95 Nokia Creative Awards, has just published the very last set of superlative photos taken on the most iconic smartphone of our time. Clever stuff, the winning entry is nothing short of sheer genius...
Slightly off topic, in that the main device covered isn't powered by Symbian OS, but The Phones Show 85, now online, should be required watching for any smartphone fan in that James Burland demonstrates somewhat emphatically the huge graphical processing power inside the Apple iPhone 3GS. Yes, yes, we know that Nokia for one have chosen not to go down this route, so consider this a look at what might have been if the N95 had been a taste of things to come in the S60 world...
What a silly game of Chinese Whispers. The Guardian newspaper in the UK quotes 'industry insiders' as saying that Nokia is going to introduce an Android device, something which I thought made no sense, and then half the Symbian ecosystem blogs jump up and down giving credence to the story. Nokia has stepped in, thankfully, and firmly quoshed the bloggers' fun and games, with a press statement via Reuters. For the record, I think the 'insider' was confused - no doubt they were thinking of the upcoming Maemo tablets and thought that this was in some way linked to Android.
Just a short note to say that, as expected, the E71's cheaper sister, the E63, has also gotten itself a firmware update, this time to v200 firmware update (via Nokia Software Updater), adding in Ovi Contacts. Screens and comment over at The Symbian Blog.
Over on the Lazarus like Mobile Industry Review, the other Ewan in mobile has posted an ambitious yet simple plan to save the Ovi Store from itself. Simply put, Nokia would create three enclaves of coders (in London, San Francisco and Paris) and give them a monthly stipend of £3,500 and as much coca cola and pizza as they can eat. As long as they code one application every eight weeks, the proposed 100 developers per warehouse get to stay. Total cost? Roughly £2.34 per handset. That's quite high, but this is a fascinating idea that should be taken seriously.
Ovi Contacts, originally Nokia Chat, integrates the standard S60 contact list with a proprietary instant messaging and presence/status system. It has just had an update that brings it close to formal release status and includes much wider compatibilty, including support for the Nokia N97 and 5800 XpressMusic. The next step, presumably, is to start building this into more phones (the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic, Nokia 5730 XpressMusic and Nokia 6720 classic) already have it. Data-phobes should note that Ovi Contacts requires an online connection and will consume a small amount of bandwidth. Maps lookups are integrated into Ovi Maps.
It's official. After months of beta testing, Nokia has released Ovi Maps (née Nokia Maps) 3.0 to the world for most (but not all) S60 3rd Edition FP1, FP2 and S60 5th Edition phones. The download is a 20MB Windows installer, so you do have to own a PC, but there's a little note on the Ovi Maps download page saying that Mac support is 'coming soon'. I certainly hope so. See also Rafe's preview of this release, here on AAS.
The Phones Show 84 is now public (embedded below too), with a reprise commentary on the Nokia E75, a hands-on review of the Nokia N86 8MP and a interview with the Symbian Foundation's Executive Director Lee Williams, asking him some of your questions, on the subjects of robot duck overlords, LTE, touchscreens, open source OS and, of course, which phone does he personally use(!)
For many people anyway, e.g. here at N97 enthusiast Gerry Moth's. See also his Twitter feed for his comments through the day. Rafe and Tzer2 both have N97s here at AAS and I'll try to get some comments out of them through the day!
I couldn't resist a link-of-interest to the Serie-N folks over in Italy, who have dug deep to uncover what's coming in the version 11.0.021 firmware for the Nokia N97 tomorrow. Relax, you can skip their first para in Italian - the good stuff's all in English!
Having a busy day, Nokia Beta Labs has formally launched a next-gen Java Runtime for S60 5th Edition and upwards - presumably this will make it into future device firmwares. In addition, version 2.0 is a component which can be maintained in the future independently, through the 'Sw update' system built into each device. The technicalities of the update mean that the installer (a 4MB SIS) includes a routine to modify any already-installed Java MIDlets to work properly with the new runtime. More details below.
Nokia is previewing its upcoming Messaging/IM hybrid application by releasing a Java-hosted test version for just the E75, over on Beta Labs. This is the only S60 phone (so far) with permanent full access to Nokia Messaging as a service, but presumably functionality from this will spread in the coming months, as well as it getting wider compatibility. More details below, if you've got an E75, if use either Yahoo Messanger or Ovi Chat, if you don't mind its Java nature, and if you fancy giving this a whirl.
Nokia Multimedia Transfer just got itself a profile update - ignore the claimed compatibility in their flash widget - if you update your Mac's Nokia Multimedia Transfer now you'll get the new configurations. It definitely now works with the N86 (screenshot proof below) and the N97.
The Nokia N97, N86 and E75, along with the iPhone 3GS are now in my smartphone-choosing Grid, if you'd care to try your luck. After finding what the Grid thinks is your perfect smartphone, try playing the 'fiddle the preferences so that device X wins' game - it'll while away your Friday afternoon, anyway! 8-)
Steve's Friday Buying Tip (SFBT, should maybe be a regular feature?!): I thought you'd like to know that the all-rounder (qwerty) Nokia E75 smartphone, liked by all the All About Symbian team [it's grown a lot on me, incidentally - see the next Phones Show for comment!] is now on sale at Expansys, reduced from the RRP of £379 inc VAT to a much better value £299 inc VAT, SIM free. See also our review of the E75.
