If you've ever looked at an aspect of the Symbian or smartphone world and asked 'Why?', then you know exactly how I sometimes feel. This being Friday, here are some of my puzzlers for weekend pontification....
The launch of Nokia's new marketing campaign for the likes of the US-spec N95, "Open to", is also made notable by the availability for sale in consumer electronics shops (well spotted Stefan), independent phone shops and chains (in addition to Nokia's own flagship stores). So far only stores in New York and San Francisco are listed, but you can bet this list will expand...
The Next Gen N-Gage platform is due to go live some time in November, so we still have a fair while to wait until our gaming main course arrives. However, to whet our appetites, All About N-Gage has been serving up some Next Gen hors d'oeuvres, looking at the best S60 games that are compatible with Next Gen N-Gage phones and are available right now.
The UK communications regulator Ofcom has opened a consultation on (amongst other things) easing restrictions on the 900mhz mobile phone frequency in Britain. The most significant effect of this would be to allow 3G on this frequency, at the moment it's only used for 2G. The reforms could also help increase signal coverage. Anyone who lives in Britain can make their own opinions known by visiting Ofcom's website. (via BBC News)
More and more online data storage services are becoming available, letting you access anything from emails to video through the web rather than storing it on any particular device. But will they work if people don't trust these services to keep their data safe? Following up our review of SoonR, Krisse asks if we really want a Ken Dodd Internet?
Want to save up to 80% on the cost of international roaming? That's Cubic Telecom's promise with the MaxRoam Sim. Ewan's over in the USA on a two week trip, but he bumped into Cubic CEO Pat Phelan at the TechCrunch40 event to find out more about the product. Here's the audio podcast (no. 35).
Nokia has added ThinPrint's Content Beamer to their Download! system (I checked on the E90 - comments welcome for other devices). Content Beamer appears to be a trial version but does include (print to) fax functionality, enabling Internet-borne fax sending for the first time on the Eseries. Screenshot below.
So Nokia's Nseries PC Suite 2.0 has finally limped out, a whopping 350MB download, of which 200MB is Microsoft's .NET modules. Has the world gone mad? The core PC Suite modules are around 25MB, plus maybe another 25MB for Lifeblog, the Map Loader and Software Updater. Read on for my rant and some links... [Update: v2.0 beta has now been withdrawn]
Maybe I missed an announcement, but Nokia seems to have just overhauled their already Flashy (pun most definitely intended) Nseries web site. You know the drill, more whizzy animated windows, more music accompaniments, more err.... 'loading' bars. Still, there's quite a bit on the N95 8GB and N81 and I loved browsing the world photo map.
Ho yes. Another year has flown by and we present the All About Symbian As-Official-As-It-Gets 2007 Pub Meet. Prizes, Demos, Speakers, Chit-chat and good beer. In case you haven't been to one before, here's AAS video podcast 21, in which I waffle on about what to expect from the pub meet and some other minor event happening the next day over in Docklands...
