In All About Symbian Insight 121 we share the best of the previous week's news: SEE 2010 dates, Nokia E73 Mode, Nokia Bike Charger and more. The team then briefly discuss the marketing messages around the Nokia N8, before moving on to some commentary on data rates and the data crunch. Finally Rafe reports back on some of the NRC demos he saw as part of Nokia's recent 'Open for Ideas' event. You can listen to AAS Insight 121 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia and T-Mobile USA have announced the forthcoming availability of the Nokia E73 Mode. It is, effectively, an operator specific variant of the Nokia E72, which was released last year. However, there are a number of cosmetic changes and the 3G bands have been changed to suite T-Mobile's network. Notably, for a operator branded Nokia handset, it will ship with a range of Nokia services, including Ovi Maps and Ovi Store. The E73 Mode will be available from June 16th for $69.99 on a two year contract.
During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course!
In All About Symbian Insight 120 Rafe reports back on the first part of his trip in Finland to find out about Nokia's approach to innovation. Rafe and Steve then discuss the Nokia-Yahoo partnership announced this week, the release of Nokia Messaging for IM for Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, the game Creebies and an interview with Symbain's Lee Williams that suggested the first Symbian^3 phone will arrive from an Asian manufacturer (rather than Nokia in the form of the N8). You can listen to AAS Insight 120 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia Messaging for IM is now available in beta for Nokia's touch devices including the Nokia N97 and N97 mini. The client has been completely redesigned with a focus on 'an efficient user experience'. The aim of Nokia Messaging for IM is to offer a 'desktop like IM experience on your Nokia device'. Features include support for Ovi, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk, custom status messages, full avatar support and homescreen integration (N97 and N97 mini only).
Nokia and Yahoo have announced a global strategic partnership which looks to enhance the companies' respective services across both the PC and mobile devices. Nokia will become the global, exclusive provider of mapping and navigation services across Yahoo service (powered by Ovi) while Yahoo will become the global, exclusive provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services. Nokia and Yahoo plan to work on ID federation, the first stage of which will be the ability to use Ovi ID to log into select Yahoo services.
In All About Symbian Insight 119 Steve, Ewan and Rafe share their thoughts on NTT DOCOMO's latest MOAP-S (Symbian phones) and Gartner's Q1 figures for mobile phones. The second half of the podcast includes news of Ovi Maps 3.04, Google Latitude API (leading to some thoughts on the future of location services) and Ewan's and Steve's summary thoughts on the Nokia X6. You can listen to AAS Insight 119 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia has released an update, version 3.04, for Ovi Maps. The new version adds formal support for WiFi as a positioning method as part of an overhaul of the positioning functionality, plus significant performance improvements for search, zooming and map panning, a number of consumer-friendly UI tweaks and the addition of Qype information to the places database. Read on for more details.
OpenTable for Nokia, an application which lets you book a restaurant table from you phone, is now available to download from Ovi Store. OpenTable is a well established online restaurant booking service; it covers more than 13,000 restaurants in the US, UK, Canada and Mexico. The key advantage of the service is that it provides a complete 'end-to-end' offering allowing you to browse restaurants, making a booking and receive a confirmation. This saves significant time and effort over the traditional method of telephone booking.
Pizero's Earth theme has been downloaded more than one million times from the Ovi Store. Earth is an artistic and lightweight theme (default icons), with full support for portrait and landscape orientations, and is compatible with both S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition devices. The one million downloads were achieved in 86 days, with an average of 11,600 downloads a day.
Ovi Music Unlimited, which is branded as Comes with Music in some markets, has launched in India. The service, which can only be purchased with a new device, allows unlimited music downloads from the Ovi Music Store for 12 months. Music is DRM protected, but users are able to keep the music after their subscription period has ended. The service has been customised for India with a smaller Ovi Player (desktop client), local content from more than 150 labels and the ability to download music using different PCs.
Offscreen Technologies, who have released a wide portfolio of games, applications and eBooks on Ovi Store, have announced that their content has been downloaded more than 25 million times. Offscreen has focussed on providing content for Nokia's touchscreen devices, including the Nokia 5800, N97, X6 and N900. They currently have around 100 titles in the Ovi Store; some of the applications, including Level Touch, Bright Light Touch and Labyrinth Lite Touch have been downloaded more than a million times each. More below.
A beta version of Nokia Messaging for Social Networks, also known as the Communities application, has been made available, via Nokia Messaging and Nokia Beta Labs, for the Nokia E72, E71 and E63. The application, which provides access to messaging and other features of social networks; currently Facebook and Twitter are supported. Communities is already available for Nokia's Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) devices and is the application that will provide social networking functionality out of the box on the Nokia C6 and E5.
Numo Solutions, the developers of SMS Preview, have announced they have passed the 1 million download mark on Ovi Store. SMS Preview shows a preview of incoming text messages, in a bubble that floats above other screen content, for a user defined period of time. It provides an improvement over the built in 'new message alert', which only tells you that you have received a message. Numo Solutions say that SMS Preview is being used in more than 170 countries on 50 different types of handsets.
In All About Symbian Insight 114 Ewan, Steve and Rafe share their thoughts on Nokia's announcement of the Nokia C6 and Nokia E6. We also shares news of Sony Ericsson's Q1 2010 results, the renewal of Sports Tracker, firmware updates for various phones and Numo Solution's Ovi Store success. You can listen to AAS Insight 114 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
