AAS regular Dirk Snoyt experienced the failure of his beloved Nokia N95 a month ago, as you may remember, following a long road trip. Dirk's now put up a long, interesting and fairly convincing article explaining why he's replaced it with... an N82. The change in form factor, plus smaller screen, is compensated for by the extra RAM, better GPS and Xenon flash.
More on StyleTap, for those of you still longing for a way to bring your critical 'vertical market' Palm OS apps into the modern age, over at Symbian Guru, where Rita rejoices in the amount of thought that the StyleTap developers have put into getting Palm OS 'into' S60.
Forum Nokia has published the official tech specs for the upcoming Nokia N79 and Nokia N96-3 (which is a variant of the N96 for the Americas). Oddly they don't list free RAM for either device, but that's possibly because the release firmwares aren't finished yet. You can also see the tech specs for the original Nokia N96 too.
Thanks to Rita for pointing all of us to Wapedia, something I'd totally forgotten about but which seems now to be much better and really useful. It's a low bandwidth, regularly converted version of the full Wikipedia site and it works really well in a mobile browser. Here's the full write-up by Rita over at the Symbian Guru site.
The gradual roll out of Ovi.com and Ovi services continues. Newly available is Ovi Sync which syncs contact, calendar, to-do and notes between your handset and the Ovi.com web site. The front page of Ovi.com is now personalised to show synced information and, optionally, images streams from Flickr and Share on Ovi. Read on for more.
S60.com do like giving away themes occasionally and it's reassuring to know that they'll have been checked exhaustively rather than thrown together in 5 minutes. And in this case, their Windmill theme is available for all S60 handsets, from Nokia 6630 to N95. It's the latest download in their Exclusives section (needs free login first)
Utility developer Warelex has produced Wi-Fi enabled versions of its popular Mobiola Screen Capture, Mobiola Web Camera and Remote Control applications, claiming that the new connection method is "much better for presentation and frame rate". In addition, there are two new applications that I'd not heard of: Mobiola Headset and Mobiola Headset for Skype which (as they sound) make use of a S60 phone as a PC headset. Also worth noting is that Warelex is now part of SHAPE Services, another established Symbian OS developer.
With the influx of a series of new S60 phones from Samsung, there are serious questions to be asked about software compatibility, both intentional and unintentional, from the viewpoint of Nokia, S60, Samsung and the many third party developers. Richard Bloor has taken four of Samsung's latest handsets and tested their compatibility with a typical 'power user' set of applications. The results make interesting reading, especially so for the companies involved. Many challenges ahead, methinks....
S60 followers in virtual world Second Life might want to visit the Nokia Island today as the August edition of the 'Nokia Connected Worlds' virtual meeting is being held at 11am SL time (7pm UK time). Running for three hours this month, with a discussion of various social networks opening the event, followed by the Virtual Business Panel, with music from DJ Ren Diqui for the final hour and after part.
You might recall the discussions over Scott Foe's look at the future of gaming from the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. Well now you can see the whole talk online via the online video service, Vimeo. There's a number of areas that the article glossed over, so here's your chance to see Foe's unfiltered thoughts.
iPhone 3G owner and blogger Tarek Esber has had enough of Apple's device and has gone back to an S60 phone. Here he lists in articulate detail the nine reasons why the S60 device is superior for his needs. An interesting read (via this week's Carnival of the Mobilists)
Popular web broadcast service Qik, which allows users to stream live video from their handset to the internet, picked up a round of funding this morning from business partners Marc Andreessen (Ning) and Ben Horowitz (VP at HP). There's no word on how much was invested beyond the rather bland '[it's] significant.' Andreessen and Horowitz now join the board of the company.
According to their official website, Nokia's firmware update service is currently unavailable for the 6220 Classic, so you can't update that phone's firmware for the moment. Support will apparently be restored ASAP but they haven't said when that will be. (via S60inside)
You've got to love these virtual device launches. Tuesday, 9am BST (11am Finnish time) sees Nokia throwing a virtual event that anyone can get involved in. The devices being premiered have been widely leaked, admittedly, but you'll be able to see the full details, with videos and chat, on Tuesday, right here. And of course on All About Symbian, too.
This is something All About N-Gage has been calling for for a while now, and finally it's happened: Nokia has teamed up with Zeemote to produce a wireless gaming controller compatible with all existing N-Gage and Symbian S60 games and applications. The controller's application can be installed on any S60 3rd Edition handset and lets you map the controller's buttons to any of the phone's buttons. While a separate controller for mobile phones sounds crazy, it actually makes perfect sense for handsets with TV Out, as it effectively turns them into home games consoles.
