Kudos to Ricky Cadden for scoring a review sample of the LG KT610, the smallest S60 clamshell, here presenting his hands-on photo gallery. What do you think of the form factor? - comments welcome. We're down for reviewing this new messaging-focussed phone in a week or so's time, so look for more AAS coverage then.
Mobitubia developer Sittiphol is a ruddy genius. A genius. Not that his new project NeuScreen is terribly practical - you'll have to watch the video on his Forum Nokia submission to see what I mean. Essentially he turns a humble Nokia N95 into a full-size classroom-style Smart Board, armed with some sticky tape, a film negative, two light pens and a big TV. Jaw droppingly impressive, if incredibly niche!
Google are gradually ramping up access to their iGoogle (think personalised web home page) system from mobile phones. They just added a drag and drop set-up page for you to use on your desktop in order to pick what you want to see when you go to iGoogle on your phone. See below for the legendary picture that's worth a thousand words...
As part of the promotion for the game, Nokia's N-Gage team has designed a dedicated theme for Snakes Subsonic for any S60 3rd Edition device, to remind you of the game. What a good idea - maybe they'll do one for every other N-Gage game? Mine's the Pro Golf one in the corner...
Nokia's Share on Ovi just got prettier, with a new PicLens function (requiring a download and plug-in, mind you) that allows Mac-like fluid photo browsing, plus extra image sizes for viewing, including 'Original'. There's also a new intro tutorial video.
Nokia E90 fans might want to note that the latest Smartphones Show, no. 60, includes a hands-on review with the Toshiba Portege G910, gunning for exactly the same target market with a fairly similar form factor. There's also my thoughts on the iPhone 3G and a mini-rant on phone contracts.
Dennis at WAP Review does a great job this week of bringing us all another installment of the Carnival of the Mobilists, no. 127. Good reading for a spare moment.
Make sure you don't miss Serko Artinian's five part look, over at Symbian Guru, at the North American Nokia N95 8GB versus the (non-3G) Apple iPhone. Lots of good insight here. Links: Part 1 - Form Factor and Build Quality : Part 2 - Its GUI : Part 3 - Syncing And Connecting : Part 4 - Core Apps : Part 5 - Multimedia Computer or Feature phone?
Another one of those Interesting Things Which You Might Not Have Noticed: the Finnish phone network operator Saunalahti has a service called Wippies with the same idea as Fon. You order a free Wippies Wi-Fi router which lets all Wippies members access your home connection wirelessly, and you can access theirs, with the aim of building a free nationwide or worldwide service. It was initially just an experiment in Finland last year, but it's now expanding to cover other countries too, with Sweden, Denmark and most recently Estonia joining the network.
I'm not sure how to respond on this one - after the announcements from Apple, American Technology Research have downgraded their stock recommendation on Nokia from 'Buy' to 'Hold' because of the increasing competition, and they are awaiting a competitive response from Nokia. I suspect that response will be coming at some point next week.
Gartner have released figures for worldwide smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2008 - about as up to date as you and I get to see. There are no real surprises - Nokia top the table with 25% year-on-year growth of its S60 smartphones, with Q1 market share of 45%, healthy by any standards, but the biggest surprise is RIM's Blackberry range posting 107% growth, up to 13.4%. Apple's iPhone is already up to 5.3% of the smartphone market, somewhat ominously given their next-gen launch tomorrow (Monday) evening, UK time. The full stats/table is shown below the break.
Despite being sold off by Nokia at clearance prices, I thought you'd be interested in this detailed and very positive review of the Nokia N93. And, with N-Gage compatibility surely just around the corner, I can't help but feel that Nokia are going to send a little update love in the N93's direction soon...
Thanks to Ed at the Eseries blog for writing up the new version of Mail for Exchange, v2.5 - if your company uses Exchange 2007 then you're in for several brand new features, including handling of 'follow up flags' and control over 'out of the office' notifications.
Well spotted the guys at P@ssioneMobile - S60 have updated their S60 Touch UI demo video with many more examples of the UI in action. Good stuff, although dragging down the web browser screen to make the content move up seems counter-intuitive - is it just me? The video is embedded below the break here.
Don't you just love garage sales? Nokia is having one, selling off its N93 (original and best design) stock at silly prices. It's the golf edition, too, which means it comes with an extra miniSD card that you can wipe and use. At £100 inc VAT it's the bargain of the century. Just don't mention firmware updates...
