Nokia in conjunction with Sumo Science at Aardman have shot the world's largest stop-motion animation short film. Gulp was shot on an N8 at Pendine Beach in South Wales, with the largest scene in the filmed stretched over 11,000 square feet. Gulp follows on from Dot, the world's smallest stop-motion animation film, which was also shot on a Nokia N8.
When it comes to comparing smartphone cameras, I've got a bit of a reputation. But so has my counterpart in the States, Myriam Joire, and she's just put up her review of the latest and greatest Android phone being marketed over in the USA with the (manufacturer's) tagline "the most advanced camera of any smartphone". I mention all this because, Myriam being Myriam, she naturally did a detailed set of head to heads with other leading smartphone cameras, plus a standalone specialist device. Including our beloved Nokia N8. And she's one tech reviewer whow knows about subtleties like... keeping the phone steady as the shutter comes down! Links, examples and comments below.
You may remember me enthusing over CameraPro (written in native Symbian C++) a while back, with only a few caveats? Well, the developer, Harald Meyer, has been hard at work producing a version in Qt, Camera Plus, with the benefits that it will better support the upcoming camera firmware tweaks for the N8, plus other models going forwards. Plus there are other tweaks, see below for details. And yes, a few restrictions too...
Good news for XBMC media centre users, there is now a Symbian^3 remote control application in the works! Despite being at a young version (0.92), “SemperXBMC” packs in most of the features you would expect from a XBMC remote control. It's available directly from the author's website, from which you will also have to install an additional SIS file for Qt Components. SemperXBMC requires Qt 4.7.3 and Qt Quick, which are installed automatically. Read on to find out more!
Nokia has launched a new Symbian Anna-powered mass market smartphone, the Nokia 500, at 150 Euros (plus taxes) all-in, with 1 GHz processor, interchangeable back covers, 3.2" capacitive nHD touchscreen, pentaband 3G, WiFi, GPS, 5 megapixel camera (EDoF) and 2GB of internal memory plus microSD expansion. Impressively, the Nokia 500 only weighs 93g, making it the lightest Symbian^3 device so far. The device will be available in retail channel within the next 60 days.
Reviewed over a year ago here when they were a surprisingly high £40 a pop, Nokia's portable MD-6 stereo speakers are now being sold off on Amazon for between £5 and £9 (depending on the time of day you look) - in the UK store, at least. I picked up a set and have put my own mini-review thoughts and some new photos below. Rock on!
Nokia has launched NFC Hub, to help businesses begin using Near Field Communications solutions. Businesses (or, indeed, anyone) can buy generic NFC-tagged posters which direct users with NFC-enabled phones to Facebook, Foursquare, etc, as needed. NFC tags start at £3 each, business cards at £11 each, and posters and stickers with tags embedded run from £20 to £25 each, all ordered through the Hub.
Here's another in my series of interviews with some of the top developers and marketeers in the Symbian (and wider mobile) world. In this case, Jake Levant, from Fring, chatting about fring’s creation, its development, the philosophy behind its programming teams – and fring’s future.
Google Plus is the latest addition to the ranks of social networks. Unsurprisingly, Android was the first platform to be catered for with an application, followed recently by iOS. As you might expect, there is no sign of a Symbian application. Just as with other Google services, there are several HTML versions for mobile devices, provided you know the right URL. Asri Al-Baker, our friend from i-Symbian.com, has come to the rescue with a web runtime widget for the HTML5 mobile version of Google Plus. This widget provides an attractive icon which will always launch the correct URL. So now we can at least pretend that Google loves us! Read on for more.
Over at Nokia Conversations, I've been (ahem) moonlighting, in this case interviewing Tom Ojala, CEO and co-founder of Joiku, based in Finland, the makers of JoikuSpot, a software utility that shares your 3G data signal with other devices using WiFi (‘commonly referred to these days as ‘tethering’). See below for a quote and a link to the full article.
The much publicised demotion of the Ovi brand name has started to take effect with maps.ovi.com becoming maps.nokia.com as of now. To accompany the switch, there are some updates to the data set and appearance in its Web incarnation, including 'heat' maps of night life, shopping, eating, etc., plus more cities available in 3D, hotel bookings, a user review facility and a new blue design.
Months after you thought the Samsung i8910 modding scene had finally died, out comes arch-modder 'faenil', curator of 'faenil's pit', with a major new firmware release, 'n2o5', bringing an all-singing, all-dancing graphical interface to a wealth of i8910 system settings (browser user agents, camera tweaks, kinetic UI tweaks, and much more), compatibility certificates, Qt runtimes, and more. See below for warnings and links.
Announced today is Facebook for Every Phone, an application that promises to allow access to the social network for over 2500 different mobile phone devices. Now available as a free download (direct from Facebook, as well as a number of App Stores, including Getjar), it includes your news feed, messaging and photo uploads. A number of international carriers will provide free data for this application for 90 days, making it attractive for people to try it out.
Thanks to Yash for the heads-up that Nokia has added the much-respected Joikuspot Premium to its 'Gift' section in the Ovi Store for some S60 3rd Edition phones, the E52, E55 and E72. Screenshot proof below - essentially, Joikuspot Premium turns your phone into a full Wifi-tethering solution for hooking up your tablet and laptop. The usually free 'Lite' version is restricted to just 'http' traffic (i.e. web browsing), so it's great to see this full solution, also without cost.
Rabble-rouser Tomi has linked to a very salient set of statistics, gathered across 3 million web sites, looking at mobile Internet access, sorted by operating system. The source page can be customised, but I've snapped the last year's worth below, clearly showing that the sheer weight of Symbian OS users, all gradually discovering the mobile Internet, still outshadowing iOS and Android in terms of share.
