I had reason to glance down at my task bar last night - normally I'm an alt-tab man, but sometimes that little strip of app names is useful. But not this time, because I was running a bundle of applications while testing the X6 and my task bar had just one word. Nokia. Lots of apps on display, with just some tiny icons to attempt to guide me to my goal. Anyone want to fix this rather poor bit of UI in the next releases?
It seems that new ideas and elements of upcoming Symbian incarnations keep getting backported and prototyped into existing products. Well done to Rita el-Khoury for noticing how the new Nokia X6 handles incoming Bluetooth-beamed files - straight to a folder on memory card rather than clogging up the Messaging inbox and disk C:. Very neat, and should save quite a few Symbian newbies from clogging up their internal disk in future....
In another of my periodic hardware head-to-heads, I pitch a variety of full-screen, full-qwerty hybrid smartphones against each other, ranging from the 3 year old Nokia E90, still supported but hard to find for sale now, through to the N97 mini, the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the spanking new Motorola Milestone. Which devices punch the heaviest when the rubber really hits the road?
We're having an embedded video day here at AAS, at seems. Anphase, the guy who did the i8910 HD petition and then met with Samsung, has now done a video showing most of the changes for the upcoming big new firmware update and I've embedded this video below. Summary: similar partial implementation of kinetic scrolling as on the Nokia X6 and 5530, but improvements as well in Camera and Web. Anphase also shows some of the Qt and native OMAP3 demos.
At CES, the huge Las Vegas event happening this week, Nokia has a big stand and you can see some of the setup behind it in a video, embedded below. In addition to the Climate Mission game (see previous news item), Nokia has announced (but not made available yet) Ovi Maps Racing, another homegrown title, integrating the real world streets around your position (or another destination of your choice) with a virtual racetrack - so, effectively, you can race around your own local roads. I've also embedded the trailer for Ovi Maps Racing below, for your interest.
A few brief updates from the world of The Phones Show. Programme 99 is now available, with my nine minute recommendations of smartphones to buy for seven different categories of user (you'll remember that I shortlisted these on AAS?) Plus our very own Tim Salmon and I have finished Phones Show Chat 19 and 20, one hour audio podcasts, both now available for download. Comments welcome on any of this content.
A snow-bound look around the phone world at what's popular and what's hot - and my annoyance that yet again Form is leading Function (e.g. "I just want something that's pretty and with a touchscreen"). Mind you, I'm a self-confessed geek and I don't have any clothes sense, so what do I know? Read on for a Steve rant...
No, not that hell. Michael Hell, previously of Symbian Freak and a geek after my own heart for the last 5 years, and someone whose opinion I respect. And he's just produced an interesting Top 10 phones of 2009, split into numbers 10 to 6 and then numbers 5 to 1. And the top pick will surprise you, but it's entirely defensible.
GPS, like many modern technologies, is often taken for granted. Yet it's quite a bit more fragile, in terms of operation, than you might think. Here are some facts and tips that may help your own smartphone GPS experience.
If you have ever found your LED-illuminated camera phone photos to have a strange colour tint, David Gilson has a video tutorial to show you how to get your friends and family looking more like themselves, using a generic desktop computer with the multi-platform open source editor, The GIMP.
Whenever Ewan mentions that he's 'unboxing' something, we trust him to produce something that's "different". In this case it's the new capacitive-screened, music-focussed Nokia X6 smartphone which gets the treatment in a special video, embedded below. And it seems that a few mm of plastic on the X6's side has really gotten Ewan's goat. More from him on the X6 in due course.
I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
No, not a blatant Phones Show plug (though Phones Show Chat 18 is out), but a serious attempt to provoke thought and discussion. Ahead of a video feature on smartphone recommendations, I've opened up my thought processes to you below, in some detail, breaking down the market into a whopping seven stereotypes(!) Maybe you'd like to chip in with comments, recommendations and disqualifications of your own?
It's all very well listening to advice on ways to cut down the power used by your smartphone, but have you ever seen the power savings quantified? Can you put numbers to the various techniques and settings? You can now, with my handy guide. Although testing was on a Nokia N96, the findings should apply to any Symbian-powered smartphone.
Samsung has officially announced a big new firmware update for its i8910 HD, bringing faster web browsing, faster multimedia access and, most desired of all, full Symbian^2/N97-style kinetic scrolling in all dialogs and screens. See below for the press release text. The bad news? You'll have to wait until next month to get it, via PC Studio update.
