Programme 73 is now live (and also via iTunes, as usual, in QVGA and VGA formats), mainly featuring a monster video review of a production sample of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. As per my AAS review, it's littered with both pros and cons, but there's no doubting that it'll find its very own market.
As you'll have seen from other Internet news sources, Palm have launched their long-awaited next generation platform and flagship, the 'Pre' [pronounced pree]. Having been propped up again and again by venture capital money, we've all been wondering what was there to keep the investors excited, and now we know. It's non-Symbian but very much of interest, see the details and comment below.
With CES currently in full swing, the future of two of our tech world memory card formats has been announced. First and foremost, SDXC has been launched, the successor to SDHC. The 'XC' stands for 'eXtended Capacity' and allows cards of up to 2 Terabytes (that's roughly 2000 GB) and up to 104MB/s for read/write speeds. Presumably 'micro' versions of SDXC will also appear at some point, for phone use. Secondly, the M2 cards used by some Sony Ericsson UIQ 3 smartphones are set to be superceded by 'Memory Stick HG Micro', also promising up to 2TB and with 60MB/s transfer speeds.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas Nokia has announced that the Nokia E63 will shortly be available in the US. The Nokia E63 is a QWERTY-equipped S60 phone and is effectively a budget version of the Nokia E71. It has a 2.0 megapixel camera, WiFi and 3G connectivity, and runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. It will have an esitmated retail price of $279 (unlocked) and will be available in the 'coming weeks'.
To go alongside the update of Truphone on the iPhone and iPod Touch to include Skype, CEO Geraldine Wilson told the GTD Times that because of the ease of use for the developer, they have no plans to offer future developments to platforms that were not supported by an App Store similar to Apple's endeavour.
Ooh, you all know how much I love Google Maps for Mobile (e.g. for S60, but also for other platforms). It just got itself a 'server-side' upgrade, adding in full directions support for local businesses. You don't need to update your software, just search for a business name (e.g. "Computer Training" or "La Fontana" [a local restaurant]) in 'Get directions'. Some screens below, plus link.
Nokia's first S60 touch device, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, also known colloquially as the 'Tube', will go on sale in the UK on Friday 23rd January for £249 SIM Free (includes VAT). For the first week, it will be available exclusively through the Nokia Flagship Stores in Heathrow Terminal 5 and Regent Street. From Friday 30th January, the Nokia 5800 will then become available through Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile UK, Virgin Mobile, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U. You can now also pre-order the 5800 from Nokia's online store.
Good detective work by Matthew Miller has resulted in this handy little 'how to' on adding Gmail label/subfolder access to your Nokia Email accounts using the magic of IMAP folder settings. It's currently limited to 5 labels/folders, but this is a soft limit that Nokia can raise easily in a future update.
Over on All About N-Gage, we've reviewed the arcade racing game Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, and we've also published the results of our readers poll on the best N-Gage game of 2008, along with the personal picks of the AAN/AAS staff.
In case you missed it during the hectic time between Christmas and New Year, Nokia have announced a competition to design a widget for the N97, specifically for the homescreen. The winning widget will 'go into production' (which we assume means it will be coded by the Nokia development team) and the winning designer will receive a production N97 with their widget ahead of the public release of the device. More details on the Nseries website.
Tomi T Ahonen has penned a very interesting essay on how Nokia is now the world's biggest computer maker with 14% market share, as evidenced by 2008 sales. Tomi takes time to fully justify the inclusion of top end smartphones in the 'computer' category - some great reading here, including nuggets such as the Nokia N82 being as powerful as the Cray 2 supercomputer.
How do you let people know that their mobile phone plays games? Well if you are Nokia and the country is Indonesia, you hire a promotional bus (reports the Mobile Games Blog). As the bus tours the country, staff on board will demonstrate to people how to get the N-Gage client on their phone and download the demos themselves. And of course show them how to purchase the games using pre-pay vouchers.
There's a particularly good Carnival of the Mobilists out today, number 155, hosted at Helen Keegan's TechnoKitten. Good reading, as always. Must remember to submit some AAS articles to it... [mutters]
So how will did Nokia's Comes With Music project do over the festive period? While exact numbers haven't been released by Nokia (or The Carphone Warehouse, who were distributing the phones with the service), an interview in The Financial Times quotes someone familiar with the sales being "OK, but not earth-shattering."
Over on All About N-Gage, we've just started a poll to find people's favourite N-Gage game of 2008. Head on over to the survey thread to vote, and remember this is just a silly bit of fun! :-) You may also want to check out the results of AAN's end-of-year readers poll, where we asked which phone they used for N-Gage, and which announced game they were most anticipating.
