As I head out the door, I turn back, unlock the house, and sheepishly pick up my smartphone from the office desk. Probably a scene that we've all done once or twice, but have you ever wondered how much freedom the mobile phone actually takes away from you? In my musings below, I keep my tongue firmly in cheek and paranoia firmly in my brain. Read on...
Just in case you've missed it, Ovi Gaming is now also available as a mobile website at ovigaming.mobi. It contains the same content as ovigaming.com but in a reformatted style which should work on the majority of mobile web browsers and screen resolutions. It should also load a lot more quickly and use much less data, which may be useful for those on a slow connection or with expensive data charges. Have a look and let us know what you think...
I've mentioned the direct lineage between N95 and N86 8MP before here on All About Symbian, so let's break this down - how far HAS Nokia come in the last two years? And how much of this distance is covered by software updates that can also be applied to the N95? In another of my device head-to-heads, I compare the N95 'classic', as it was at launch in early 2007, with the N86 8MP of mid 2009...
The UK's biggest network operator, Vodafone, has announced that it's abolishing the 15MB data limit, set only a few months ago, in favour of a system by which customers can "browse the mobile internet as much as they like" for 50p a day on an ad-hoc basis. It's a system that works well, and one which I use often with a whole brace of PAYG SIM cards. Digging deeper reveals that the new limit is 25MB, not a massive increase, but this is now a 'fair use' figure rather than a hard-coded limit and (thankfully) you won't be charged extra without contact first from Vodafone to warn you about excessive data use (e.g. if you tether to a laptop or similar).
Solving a charging problem chez Litchfield, I was struck by the realisation that all chargers are not made equal. If this seems obvious to you then feel free to skip this chatty tutorial, but otherwise you might like to read how I sped up the charging time on my Nokia N86 by a factor of almost four simply by using the (ahem) right mains charger. Item of trivia: mains charging of a modern smartphone can be up to twelve times faster than microUSB trickle charging - quite a difference.
Never mind its geek-perceived flaws (e.g. pointed out by me!), I was interested to note that Vodafone just published their current top 10 selling phones (presumably for the month of July) and that the Nokia N97 was at no.1, i.e. it's the best selling phone on Vodafone right now. Snapping at its heels was the Nokia 5800, followed by a herd of feature phones. The Blackberry Storm and an Android phone were at the bottom of its top 10 - the full list is below.
Last night a message was posted by hackers to an existing new story on the front page announcing that the site had been hacked and that the databases had been deleted and user information copied. There was some additional damage to the forum database. The issues have now been fixed, but almost all forum posts (including news comments) from yesterday (July 14th) have been lost. I would like to apologise for the data loss and any inconvenience caused. More information will be added to this thread.
For all those with phones running S60 3rd Edition or 3rd Edition FP1, you might want to grab Birdstep's SmartConnect utility, which is now free. This removes the "access complexity" and combines all your Wifi and 3G access points into one access point, effectively mimicking the Destinations feature of S60 3rd Edition FP2 and beyond. The supported phones are listed below, along with a download link.
In their own different ways, the Nokia N86 8MP and the Apple iPhone 3GS represent the pinnacles of their form factor. The one is the classic one-handed 'phone', the other is the classic two-handed 'PDA/tablet. Yes, never mind that over-simplification, in the feature below I look in detail at every aspect of the two devices and try to see where comparisons can be drawn. I'm not looking for an overall winner, but am genuinely interested in the areas in which each device and form factor wins out. [Updated with notes on the N86's 'real' digital zoom and a demo link]
At last, at long last, the popular Twitter client Gravity has gained large fonts, for use by those like me who (ahem) have less than 20:20 vision in our advancing years. You'll need to go online in Gravity, move to the start page and click on the 'alpha' (and 'experimental') version 1.20 build 5570, but don't worry, it works just fine. You also gain, as shown below, the ability to have a different (e.g. a white) theme/backdrop, again greatly aiding visibility. v1.20 works fine on all S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition phones.
