To kick-off our coverage of Nokia's new budget QWERTY slate smartphone, the Nokia E5-00, we have our usual gallery, with commentary, showing off some of the key hardware features. In summary? The E5 has rock solid build quality, good design and a decent hardware specification, but there's are some budget-linked constraints to note. All-in-all though, it is an attractive entry into the mid tier smartphone market.
The saga of continually improving user firmware for the Samsung i8910 HD continues with the release of two new firmware alternatives. From HyperX, featured before on AAS, comes 'HX-V8-32', rolling in faster application icon display, extra keyboard options, numerous small bug fixes and better compatibility with Nokia's Symbian software. From 'faenil' comes 'n2o4', nicknamed 'The Queen'(!), Read on for screens, links, changelogs and more...
Nokia Experts reports that Ovi Files, Nokia's remote file access and cloud-based file mirroring/storage solution, will be discontinued on October 1st. The announcement is a set back to Nokia's Ovi service ambitions, but with relatively few users and low awareness, the long-term impact is likely to be small. A number of third party services, such as SugarSync and DropBox, provide a similar service for those who need to move from Ovi Files.
Swype, an alternative text entry system, is now available, via Nokia Beta Labs, for most Nokia S60 5th Edition devices. Swype works by tracing one continuous finger (or stylus) movement, across an on-screen QWERTY keyboard, when entering a word. It provides, potentially, a much faster and more accurate way of entering text on touchscreen devices, albeit with a small initial learning curve.
The Nokia E72 has received a OTA firmware update from version 031.023 to 051.018, and is an 11MB download. It is a significant update with a wide range of changes. Notably, Web sees an upgrade to v7.2.6. Along with updates, there is the usual statement of "stability and performance improvements", but these come along with a massive 450+ bug fixes. Click through for more details.
David Gilson reviews the free Pixelpipe Send and Share, the new incarnation of the popular uploading service that works independently of Nokia's Share online and thus works more seamlessly, using a wider range of file types and (presumably) on more devices. It's all win, win, win until David points out a few caveats, including less flexible authentication and a greater need to do some of the set up using your desktop's web browser.
You may want to check 'Sw update' on your Nokia S60 3rd Edition or 5th Edition phone, as it seems that there's a pre-Nokia World 2010 update available for all phones, fixing minor bugs (including correcting and enhancing Nokia's Wi-Fi location system) and possibly preparing the way for additional services. It's a full 8 to 10MB update (depending on device) and installs over the air. There's no change in the basic version number (3.4) but the build number is (obviously) higher, now at '278'. More below.
In All About Symbian Insight 133, we start with news of the Nokia 5250, Nokia's cheapest ever smartphone, following which, Steve shares some more detail from his recent reviews of Let's Golf and Mommax's Mains Battery Charger. Rafe talks about Nokia and Intel's new joint laboratory for 3D mobile user experiences. Finally Ewan gives us his commentary on the the re-branding of Nokia Music to Ovi Music. You can listen to AAS Insight 133 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Applications are rarely completely static. Anything with a decent amount of functionality is bound to have either flaws - which then hopefully get fixed - or planned improvements. The big question is how to best to get these new versions out to users. In this news editorial, I look at how application updates work for the three big smartphone platforms of the moment, Symbian, iPhone and Android. What can those in the Symbian world learn or implement?
Released a day or so ago and looking mightily interesting is a detailed promo video for FX Studio on the Nokia N8, embedded below. An add-on through the Ovi Store (similar to the way iMovie is an add-on for the iPhone in its App Store), FX Studio superimposes 3D animated special effects on real world videos, using augmented reality-style black and white markers to control the integration. Watch the video below and you'll see what I mean.
You may remember Rafe talked about SugarSync in the last AAS Insight podcast? Now Rita el-Khoury (whose Symbian blogging death has apparently been exagerated!) has employed a little lateral thinking to combine SugarSync with Dropbox to provide a native client-based way to get at the latter's files. Pretty neat, though it's S60 5th Edition only and limited in terms of capacity (for free).
Self-proclaimed Position Art genius Stavros would have been proud, it seems that his art form is alive and well. At least according to the Ovi Blog's recent Sports Tracker competition, in which people were invited to send in their best captured 'tracks'. Here are the position art winners and, because I know you're wondering, here's Stavros's original Position Art mega-site "The World is my Canvas" - go on, browse around and watch - it's still a hoot, even two years on!
Here on AAS's Ovi Gaming site, Ewan reviews a fresh revamp of an old classic - Minesweeper - that gets turned completely on its head and given a fresh lick of stone age paint into the bargain. An unholy attempt? More a modern classic and it's got Ewan impressed. Here's his review of Dino Detective.
Ewan takes a look at 'a new Internet experience' on his smartphone, in this case Webwag Mobile, from the Nokia Ovi Store. A service aggregator, this experience may well be a new one, but the clunkiness of the user interface and poor use of the information entered means that it's not an experience anyone's likely to enjoy or come back to...
Thanks to my kind editor at Smartphone Essentials magazine, he's let me republish a truck load of my own Q&A mini-articles from 2009's issues right here on All About Symbian. I've been adding these to our Support section (what do you mean, you didn't know we had one?) and a summary of the questions in part 1 of my big update is listed below, with links. All part of keeping AAS a definitive resource!
