Nokia and Skype have announced plans to fully integrate Skype into selected Nokia devices. Kicking off with the Nokia N97, Skype will be part of Contacts, enabling users to easily see when their Skype contacts are online, to call and to chat using a data connection. Other selected Nseries devices are also likely to come with integrated Skype functionality, through initial inclusion and through firmware upgrades.
While the Symbian ecosystem has been making a lot of noise at the Mobile World Congress, most of the rest of the mobile industry has also been making its own wave. Ewan takes a little look around the other highlights coming out of Barcelona. Read on...
Slightly different format for the podcast this week as Rafe is in Barcelona. Steve and Ewan pick up the reins to talk about the announcements and products on show at the Mobile World Congress in the AAS Podcast #113. In Monday's recap, they set the scene, talk about the annoncements from Sony Ericsson, and discuss Nokia's Monday morning press conference.
The Chinese MMORPG Anrufen is now available in an English-language beta version for Symbian S60 3rd Edition phones, which can be downloaded from the official Anrufen website. There's also an official forum for reporting problems with the beta.
We-Fi, the free software networking system that helps you find free and open Wi-Fi hotspots, has now been sanctioned by Nokia and is included in many device's Download! catalogs. We-Fi's a great idea - if it doesn't appear in your S60 phone's Download! then you can also grab it from here. It's also available for Window Mobile, Windows and Mac, by the way, and it's truly international. Can you get involved and help expand We-Fi's hotspot knowledge in your area?
The next gen N-Gage shoot-em-up Space Impact Kappa Base has been updated to add support for online clans and instant messaging in the game's "World Battle" section. Current owners can update to the new version for free, and people who haven't bought SI:KB yet may like to know the game's price has been dropped to 5 euros. Current owners can find full instructions for updating to the new version below.
A heads-up for two interesting pieces over here at Ricky Cadden's guru site: firstly, Rita el-Khoury provides a great roundup of the resources and software that help keep her S60 phone fully up to speed in the medical world; and secondly the guru himself breaks news of JBak Pencil, a utility to give 5800 XpressMusic owners a virtual 'pencil' key for selecting multiple items - it's unsigned, but in this rare case the pain of signing something for your specific phone is definitely worth it.
You'll remember our review of T9Nav from a week or two ago, along with comments that noone really knew what would happen when the beta period expired. Now we know, as T9Nav has appeared on the Nokia Software Market at 17 Euros. Not cheap for a little utility, but if the beta transformed your phone's interface and saved you time each day then it's still a recommended buy from our end.
The BBC have just released a full, standalone (i.e. not Web-hosted) version of their hugely popular iPlayer for S60 5th Edition, specifically for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This runs slickly and includes the 'Download' feature first seen on the likes of the N96, where you can grab DRM-ed programmes for watching in the next month or so, offline. To get the new version of iPlayer you need to go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/iplayer.wgz in Web on your phone. Read on for screenshots and extra comment.
In All About Symbian Insight 59 (AAS Podcast 112) we talk about the recent release of Google Maps 3.0 and its inclusion of the Latitude location service. We follow up with a general discussion of 'people location services' and discuss their implementation, utility and surrounding privacy issues. In the last third of the podcast we preview the forthcoming Mobile World Congress event.
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.
Nokia Maps 3.0, currently in beta, has received its second major release. The new beta extends compatibility to popular S60 3.1 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1) devices such as the Nokia N95 and Nokia E71. The new version adds support for map rotation, more shortcut keys, better 3D support, a 'point me' function for saved landmarks and fixes a larger number of bugs. Based on my initial experience, I would add that the performance is improved and the application is much more stable. You are now also able to synchronise routes (in addition to favourites/landmarks) between Nokia Maps and Maps on Ovi. Read on for screens and more detail.
The first major firmware update for the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, version 20.0.0.12, is now available, adding camera photo geotagging, full device search and (slightly) faster operation. You can update either using PC Suite or over-the-air (OTA). The 5800 does have user data preservation, which means your data should be retained during the update, but it is still advisable to do a back up before carrying out the update. Read on for more, including a special reset code that you might need...
With its 3.2 inch screen, which has a 360 x 640 wide screen resolution, the Nokia 5800 has all the hardware it needs to be a great video playback device, but what about video content? In the latest in our series of Nokia 5800 beginner tutorials Tzer2 explains how to convert and watch video files and DVDs on the 5800 Xpress Music.
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...
