Here comes a month of standby time, with the Nokia E55. Put alongside an incredibly thin profile and Nokia's new compact keyboard, placing two letters on each physical key, the E55 is aiming for those travellers with “a business state of mind.” Expected availability will be in the summer for around 265 Euros Sim free. More thoughts, details and pictures live from MWC after the break.
Someone in Barcelona will be going round all the stands at this years Mobile World Congress (starting on Monday) to see how big the displays are, how much floorspace is being used by each company, how large are the parties... in short, how much money has a company spent on their presence at MWC?
Beginners to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic may not know that Web on S60 phones is based on exactly the same 'Webkit' core code as Safari on the Apple iPhone. With the relative popularity of the iPhone, a lot of direct support for the system has been set up on mainstream web servers. And now that the 5800 XpressMusic has touch as well, this means that you can enjoy the full 'whizzy', interactive iPhone Facebook experience but on an S60 phone for the first time.
"To compare or not to compare? That is the question." Nokia has protested many times that the 5800 XpressMusic is not an iPhone competitor, but rather a lower-priced alternative - and I agree in this detailed editorial over at All About iPhone. There's no doubting that the 5800 was influenced by Apple's flagship, but the differences in functionality and emphasis run pretty deep, as is obvious as I run through each device's strengths and weaknesses.
Tzer2 has been at it again, exploring the Nokia 5800 in great depth and showing beginners how to get the most from it. In two new tutorials featured here, we have How to change the ringtones, vibration alerts, and ringing volumes on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, plus How to download and install applications and games. Enjoy! (You can see a complete listing of our 5800 tutorials by clicking here.)
It's the 14th of February again, and in its honour you might want to download some themes for your S60 device. Pizero has a rather splendid "Valentine 09" available for both S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices (so that includes the 5800), while Babi has a theme simply called "Lovely" available for S60 3rd Edition. Those of you with the N-Gage versions of DChoc Cafe Solitaire or DChoc Cafe Sudoku should pop into your cafes today to see them decked out in Valentine's day decorations. (And if you've recently bought a 5800 and want to know how to install themes, check out our newly-written theme tutorial.)
Google Documents is a wonderful online resource, of course, but up until now spreadsheets have been rather off bounds to mobile users, with just an unfriendly column-by-column view. As long as your phone has a Web-kit-based browser (e.g. iPhone, S60, G1) then there's now a whole new view, with your spreadsheets looking (roughly) as they should and with full editing. Each row can have its elements edited in one go, which is a kludge but also kind of handy. On the downside, the weight of javascript involved does mean that the page isn't that light though, and largish spreadsheets can be slow to open and manipulate. Screens below.
Another in our continuing series of definitive Nokia 5800 XpressMusic tutorials, in this piece I advise on taking better photos with the device, including some example images taken yesterday as proof of what can be achieved. Bonus link: Tzer2 talks a beginner through using silent mode and flight mode on the 5800, explaining the basics and subtleties of profiles.
Tzer2 has been busy - we've got lots more 5800 XpressMusic beginner tutorials online, all centred on getting the very most from Nokia's new touch-screen S60 5th Edition phone: How to change the wallpaper on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, How to use memory cards on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Using the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in other countries.
The webmail component of Mail on Ovi, which was previewed at Nokia World last year, is now live (in beta status, naturally). Along with the webmail component, you can now also use Mail on Ovi on S60 devices by adding the email address to either the built in Messaging application or the Nokia Messaging service. Mail on Ovi had previously only been available via Beta Labs on Nokia's Series 40 handsets. Mail on Ovi gives you a username@ovi.com e-mail account, based on your Ovi username, with a space quota of 1GB. Read on for more details and a short video demo...
Google today launched the beta of its new Google Sync service for mobile phones. The service, which is free, allows you to synchronise data between your phone and Google's web services. This, for example, allows you to synchronise the contacts on your phone with the contacts data used by Google's GMail. All recent S60 and UIQ phones are supported through the use of SyncML. However currently only the synching of contacts is supported. Read on for more details.
Although described as not yet 'optimised' for S60 5th Edition/Touch, the popular file utility Y-Browser at least works at 90% capacity on the Nokia 5800 and N97 now, see version 0.89 at the venerable Dr Jukka's web site, along with new versions of the companion plug-ins. Just thought you'd like to know that. Especially if you're trying to get some S60 miscellany files out of your 5800's Inbox like me...
Regulars to AAS will know that I hate DRM (Digital Rights Management). Not because it stops me getting stuff for free, though that would undoubtedly be some people's reason, but because it gets in the way of how I want to use content that I've paid for. See below for a tale of woe - I was trying to give Nokia Music Store one last chance and it let me down yet again. Oh, and did I mention that I hate DRM?....
I often want to subscribe to a podcast that's not in the official Podcasting directory. At the moment, I have to bring up the RSS feed's address on the screen, write it out by hand on a piece of paper and then type it all in again into the Podcasting application. However, there's a quicker way, involving copy and paste. In this tutorial, I show how to subscribe to podcasts in Nokia's Podcasting system without typing a single podcast URL.
Quite a lot of people think you need a computer to subscribe to podcasts, but you don't. In another in our series of Nokia 5800 beginner's tutorials, Tzer2 explains how to browse, subscribe and download podcasts straight onto the phone, with absolutely no need for any kind of PC or Mac. The tutorial is, of course, equally useful and valid for using Nokia's Podcasting application on any other S60 phone. Also, see our new index page to Tzer's excellent tutorial series for the 5800 XpressMusic.
