I despair of the irresponsibility of the mainstream bloggers around the world who have gone into meltdown today over this announcement of an obscure bug in old versions of Symbian OS Messaging. Some comment and a link below. Short version. Move on, nothing to see. And no, you still don't need to pay money to a security firm...
Not wishing to sound too much like a 'fanboy', but in anecdotal praise of Nokia's build quality and following on from my own brush with death (oh, ok, a pavement), we have a bunch of crazy Russians trying to destroy a 5800 XpressMusic (long text version here) and CJ's 'dad' hammering an N95 for a year. Just rounding off 2008, you know...
Engadget has been reporting that Nokia and fellow Finnish company Polar, a 'leading brand in sports instruments and heart rate monitoring', are planning to get together to integrate phones and Bluetooth aids such as heart monitors. Sounds good to me and a match made in heavenFinland.
I finally found time to take my Smartphone Choosing Grid into 2009, adding devices like the Nokia N96, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, HTC Touch HD, Blackberry Storm and T-Mobile G1 into the mix. As usual, simply tick your preferences and have your perfect smartphone picked for you! How accurate is it now? Feedback welcomed below...
News of the FCC's approval of Samsung's S60 flagship for official use with North American networks is quite significant, or so reckons our friend Ricky Cadden - I'll let him discuss its appearance over 'there'. Mind you, the big question is, when will Samsung get its bug-fixing, firmware-updating act together so that sites like AAS can actually finish their detailed device reviews? Watch this space...
Over on All About N-Gage, we're asking readers to take part in an end-of-year survey to find out which phone they use for N-Gage, and which announced N-Gage games they're most looking forward to in 2009. Click on the link to find out more...
Nokia has often given away a 3-day trial of voice-guided, real time navigation in Nokia Maps, but it seems that this has now become a full week's free trial, courtesy of an official page here. Just enter your details and get a license code etc. Good move, Nokia - let's hope this page stays up permanently. (via Jay and others)
Just a quickie - Nokia's prolific Beta Labs has just launched itself in Beta - that's right, a whole new site layout for you to... errr..... test drive. Go on, give 'em some feedback, after all the freebies they've plumped our way this year.
I just squeezed in a last programme of The Phones Show before Christmas. No 72 includes a video demo of YouTube in Web on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, News, Conclusions from my AAS series on phone cameras, hands-on thoughts on the Samsung Omnia, plus a demo of installing an app from the Android Marketplace.
Now this is good timing for the many people (including us) now in possession of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Although many S60 3rd Edition applications run on the device, the implementation doesn't really fly very nicely with the touch-screen. Epocware have always been quick off the mark and they've now announced that all their S60 applications have been optimised for S60 5th Edition. So that's the usual Handy Safe, Handy Shell, Handy Weather, and so on. Screenshot of Handy Shell running on the 5800 below...
The N79, which Rafe and I have played with at length (though admittedly not day to day), has received a truly huge firmware update to v11.049, with hundreds (I kid you not) of tweaks and bug fixes. Kudos to S60 Inside for getting the first detailed changelog online. As usual, if this isn't on Nokia Software Update yet, it soon will be, for non-network-crippled N79s, at least.
I've never known Nokia's programmers to get so productive. In addition to the news items below, we also now have a brand new version of their threaded SMS Contacts add-on, Conversation, plus a big new version their exercise-tracking tool Step Counter and a new technology demo, Handwriting Calculator, which runs on (among other platforms) S60 5th Edition and demonstrates symbol recognition and interpretation (video embedded below). Follow the links for the explanatory Beta Labs changelogs.
Congratulations to Mark from The Nokia Blog for his engagement, live blogged via Ping.fm, which now has a mobile client (ping.fm/m/login/). What this gives us is a way of updating a mountain of social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc) by filling out one mobile form, which is pretty cool and worth bookmarking.
After a little downtime and turnaround, Share on Ovi seems to have had its login system well and truly integrated with the generic Nokia Account system used in some other parts of Ovi. There have been some glitches of course - at least one reader emailed in with a story of woe and I've had some Apache server errors - but things generally seem to be working. Interestingly, on the Account page, there's a section on 'Subscribed Services' (screenshotted below), showing the integration between Ovi (Maps, Contacts, Calendar, Files), Share on Ovi, Friend View, Nokia Chat and My Nokia.
Vodafone has release their own Last.FM client (in conjunction with their Vodafone Music product no doubt). Available directly from Last.FM (and thanks to CJ for the heads-up), the application is geared towards the scrobbling side of Last.FM, ie letting the web server know what you are listening to, and to recommend other artists you might like. It doesn't have an option to stream music, perhaps that's coming in a later version.
