Possibly my most link-packed news post ever, but.... The Phones Show 66 is now live, with a video preview of the OLED-equipped Nokia N85 and video of the 5800 XpressMusic in action (Hi-res version RSS feed). It sparked comments on YouTube too, with Paul commenting that in Japan they have phones like the SoftBank 920sc, with OLED screen, 3x optical zoom AND Xenon flash. I'm impressed. And viewer Micky turns out to be making videos of his own, prototyping a wearable N95 body-cam. And I haven't even had breakfast yet...
The upcoming Nokia N79 has now got a support site available at Nokia.com, including the full manuals and user guides in many different languages. As always this may or may not indicate an imminent release, but Nokia devices are usually released within a few weeks of their support sites appearing.
One of the cornerstones of modern social networks is the status message, “what are you doing right now,” and other similar examples. Once you join your second network, keeping these updates current is usually a mess of API accesses, or using third party services such as Ping.FM (the recommended approach). Now you can forget about typing your updates, as voice to text purveyors SpinVox announce a new service with Ping.FM to let up to 30 networks know what you're up to.
Marble Maze, from Cahoona Games, has been updated. The infuriatingly simple ball rolling game (reviewed previously here) now allows you to create your own levels in addition to the 40 that come built in to the game. This game is always one I use when demo'ing my N95 to people – the principle of tilting the phone to roll the marble is disarming, coupled with the highly addictive nature makes it an almost 'must install as soon as possible' application.
Some interesting noises from the music industry over the weekend, and this morning's Guardian ties it in with Nokia's Comes With Music (Discord Over The Phone). In short, musical artists are worried that the labels will not pass on enough of the proceeds from online music back to them. To that end, they have launched the Featured Artists Coalition. But what does this mean to the digital music landscape? Read on for my thoughts...
It seems that Russian Mobile Review impressario Eldar was also at Thursday evening's launch of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (running S60 5th Edition, etc) and he's put together an amazingly detailed set of photos and well arranged thoughts on the device (in English, thankfully), based solely on his hour or so's hands-on. Kudos. It's certainly the best 5800 preview at the moment, though doubtless Rafe is beavering away, marshalling his own impressions...
There's a new version of the N-Gage app available for all compatible phones which (amongst other things) fixes the infamous 10,000 points bug. You can download the new version straight onto your device by opening the app, selecting "Options" and then "Check For Updates". Alternatively you can download the new version onto your PC and then install it manually, which you can do from the official website's "Get N-Gage" section. You can read more about the new version over on the official forums. (via the Official N-Gage Blog)
You can't help thinking that some people are going to be disappointed by the Nokia N96. First they hear it's got built-in digital TV. "Oh, no, that's not available in most countries yet". Then they latch onto the prominent marketing blurb about it 'coming with BBC iPlayer'. "Oh, no, that doesn't work with 'normal' data, you have to use 'Wi-Fi'. And so on. If I may say so, a bit of a product pitching mess all round...
Google has soft-launched Picasa Web Albums for S60, making available an optimised version of the service via their usual m.google.com starting page. There are some screenshots below. You can play slideshows, comment on other peoples' media and, of course, organise your photos into albums. Note that not all the functions seemed to work as I wrote this - maybe some switches have yet to be thrown!
Nokia's support site has just added a section for the upcoming N85 which (amongst other things) lets you read its manual in dozens of different languages. Devices are usually released within a few weeks of their support page appearing, though they may sometimes take longer.
In case you hadn't gathered, Nokia's big launch (device? new service? We're sworn to secrecy...) is tonight, at 5.00pm BST (4.00pm GMT), entitled 'Nokia Remix London' and, as usual, there's a virtual event page where you can follow all the happenings, releases and chat. If there's a video stream, look out for Rafe, who'll be there to capture video and images for All About Symbian.
Nokia Chat, the instant messaging/Contacts-integrated/GPS-using/Maps-linked(!) utility, has just received a significant bug fixing upgrade, though Nokia Beta Labs promise us that more is on the way. They've also broken the news that Nokia Music for PC has graduated from Beta Labs and is now formally released, though don't download it if you've been testing the beta - you'll need a special upgrade file that's coming later this week by email.
Nokia have opened up their Nokia Pilots program, which will allow members to get involved in the development and testing of new products and services. More details on the program can be found here, while you can join the program via Nokia's Beta Labs.
Digia have today announced the immediate shipping of @Web, their Webkit based UIQ 3 browser. This application, which has been in fairly open beta testing for the last few months, brings full S60, iPhone & Google Android style browsing to the UIQ 3 platform.
