Vodafone UK customers (PAYG and monthly) apparently all get free data from Christmas Day to New Years Day - yes, it's only 50p a day, but still a handy little stocking filler from the big V? And got to be handy for all those people unwrapping Vodafone-branded phones and wanting to try them out for free....
As an experiment, I lent my Nokia N97 mini to All About iPhone's Matt Radford, to see what he thought of the device and its interface, coming from a staunch iPhone background. Embedded below is my ten minute catch-up interview with him, for your interest. A fuller textual report from Matt is in the works over Christmas, pudding and festivities permitting!
As you wind down for Christmas and New Year, a chance to clear some Links of Interest from my inbox. The ever insightful Tomi Ahonen, as part of a rant against smartphones not taking over from PCs, makes some interesting observations about 30 second tasks versus 30 minute ones. Only a short piece and worth reading. And the Bluetooth SIG has formally adopted the new Bluetooth 4 spec, (rolling in Nokia's Wibree work), meaning that ultra low power wireless communications between all our devices is getting ever closer. Quote from the press release below.
Ewan Spence looks back with a practised eye on Ten Things that Nokia could have done with their Regent Street flagship store in order to have made it a success... Can you add to the list? What did the Apple store do right and Nokia do wrong? (and you're not allowed to say 'Sell iPhones'...)
It's all very well having huge screens, tens of thousands of applications and even virtual and physical qwerty keyboards, but there's plenty you can do without typing a single character using Google's humble new Mobile App, using voice recognition on a vanilla, cheap S60 3rd Edition phone. Here are a few ideas - you might be very surprised!
There are plenty of reports of firmware updates for Nokia smartphones over the last few days from various world regions, watch this space for more. New today (screengrab below) is v20.0.080 for the Nokia 5530 Xpress Music (you know, the smallest S60 5th Edition one), weighing in at 140MB via Nokia Software Update and rolling out Over The Air as I write this. All these Nokia devices should preserve all data, apps and settings, but an extra sync/backup might be a good idea, as usual?
With Symbian taking a right royal bashing in the tech industry gossip columns in recent months, I was determined to get Symbian's side of the story. Heading to their HQ in London, I collared Executive Director Lee Williams for a 20 minute interview, putting over my (and your questions). Here's the interview, transcribed in full (grab a coffee first). And, if you prefer, embedded below is a condensed 9 minute video version, forming the lion's share of my Phones Show programme 97.
Just a quick note about the widespread reporting of Nokia's intent to close the three flagship stores (in London, New York and Chicago) - e.g. Chris's analysis here. Rafe is investigating the story behind Nokia's strategy, so watch this space for his report. In the meantime, yes, I agree that the flagship stores were about more than just making a profit and it's a shame to see them go. But, putting them into perspective, Nokia has pointed out that have (ahem) 600,000 other relevant retail outlets around the world.
So what do you do when you're one of the targets of the network operators in France? This week I saw round the technology labs at Orange France to see a few minutes into the future. Under the guidance of Communications Director Eric Barilland, the “Orange Apartment” was my home for a few hours. Read on....
There's a nice rant by Ricky Cadden here, referring to Unohtaneet Sync but meaning Ovi Sync, the SyncML-based system that syncs your Contacts, Calendar and Notes up to Nokia's servers in the cloud. The 'Unohtaneet' bit means 'Forgotten' in Finnish, in case you hadn't twigged, and Ricky handily rants about several aspects of this key Ovi service which seems to have been left trailing by Nokia over the last year or so. Attention needed, Nokia, methinks.
I'm repeatedly called a Nokia 'fanboy' in various comment threads by a small but determined set of Samsung i8910 HD-owning zealots*, and I'd like to respond with my own objective thoughts on the state of this Symbian flagship. Read on for what's good and bad about the i8910 HD (Omnia HD in some markets), along with a number of relevant links for further reading.
Not Symbian, but hopefully of interest to any ex-Psion or ex-Nokia Communicator users, it seems the general form factor has been revived, with a new startup, PsiXpda, with photo below, offering a clamshell high spec, QWERTY-driven part-PDA, part-laptop. And, impressively, far from being vapourware, it's available next week. See below for links and details.
The Sony Ericsson Satio has received its first public firmware update, to version R1CA037 (from R1Bxxxx), which was released via Sony Ericsson Update Service (involving a Windows utility) in the last 24 hours. It's a 106MB update and addresses a litany of stability issues, including non-responsive touchscreen, media playback freezes, sub-par speaker sound and erratic camera. I'll be trying it over the weekend and will report back on the difference it makes. Comments most welcome from others who have applied this update.
Nokia's Ovi Store client just got itself an update, to v1.05 (436), with smoother operation and (doubtless) a few bug fixes. If your 'old' client is recent enough then you should be prompted to auto-update, otherwise zap it and re-download from store.ovi.com or Download! (depending on device).
One of the big selling points about the original Nokia N95, N86 and 5730 XpressMusic (among others) has been that they have hardware music controls. So, while pocketed, or while in another application, or even with eyes closed in bed at night, you can still skip music tracks, pause podcasts, and so on. But with the new breed of touchscreen phones, you're out of luck in this department. Or are you? From (arguably) the "AAS dept of the bleedin' obvious", see my How to: Control music and audio on your touchscreen phone without touching it.
