You may remember Nokia Chat, the seemingly aborted Maps-aware extension to S60 contacts? It has just been reborn as... Contacts on Ovi. Supporting more devices, more platforms (including Series 40), more ineroperability (e.g. with Google Talk), and so on. And it's all free, of course. There's also (on FP2, apparently) a new feature, in that will optionally broadcast the music you listen as a part of your personal message. Here's the download page.
There does seem to be a certain swing towards using your smartphone to keep fit in recent weeks, and Ewan shares here some of the ways in which his S60 phone (currently an N85) helps him keep moving in his daily cycle rides around the Edinburgh area. Interested to see the speed clocked in one of the screenshots though. Goodness knows how fast he might go if we gave him a N79 Active...
The sad state of Download! has been a topic of discussion in Symbian S60 circles for quite some time. Other consumer device platforms from Nintendo's Wii to Apple's iPhone have managed to show how successful software and content download shops can be if they're easy to use, so why can't this happen on Nokia's Symbian devices? Tzer2 has taken a look at the latest version of Download! on S60 5th Edition, on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, to see if it's any improvement...
Twitter itself seems to be going from strength to strength, the micro-blogging platform that thinks big. Twim is a brand new Java-hosted but very S60-friendly Twitter client, letting you do everything from the comfort of your phone, and Ewan's been trying it out. Here's his Twim review.
The C64 emulator Frodo for S60 3rd Edition has been updated to version 1.5, and now includes support for accelerometers in selected phones, which lets you tilt the phone to simulate a joystick or steering wheel (you can see a demo video below). There's also an on-screen keyboard and vibration support. Frodo comes in versions available for older Symbian devices too such as S60 1st and 2nd Edition, Series 80 and UIQ, just scroll down the same page. Apparently Frodo for S60 3rd Edition should work in theory on the 5800, though it may run very slowly as the application hasn't been optimised for S60 5th Edition yet. (For more S60 3rd Edition emulators, see AAS's special feature.)
The arcade racing game Asphalt 4: Elite Racing is now available on the next gen N-Gage platform. To see it, go to the Showroom tab on the far right, select "Options", then "Update Now". It should be visible in the "Latest Games" section, or alternatively click on "Available Games". (Also worth noting that the prequel, Asphalt 3, is still available on N-Gage and has been reduced in price to 7 euros.)
If you've been wowed by the 'find things as you type' technology shown off in the forthcoming Palm Pre, note that you've been able to do this for ages on S60 with a third party utility, SkyeQuiKey. But now there's a new challenger, T9Nav, claiming more functions and more speed. Matching contacts, bookmarks, applications, web services and more all by typing in T9-style on the standby screen, and currently free, it sounds too good to be true. I investigate in my review of T9Nav.
In All About Symbian Insight 56 (AAS Podcast 109) Steve, Ewan and Rafe discuss the news of the two N79 variants (Eco and Active), touch on the LGPL license option for Qt before discussing hands-on experience of the Nokia E63. In the second half of the show we talk about the issues around music DRM and consider the perfect mobile user experience.
Nokia and Securitas today announced a collaboration that will bring mobile services for personal security and safety to Nokia's S60 platform. The service bundle, Securitas Safe-2-Go, consists of four components: Assist (security alert), Find (locate person), Zone (SMS boundary alerts) and Friends (general friend locator). Safe-2-Go will launch in Sweden in the first half of 2009, with other European markets following later in the year. Read on for more.
You all know my stance on Symbian OS malware being virtually impossible and a non-story. The same doesn't quite apply to older versions of Symbian OS and S60, i.e. for phones running variants of S60 2nd Edition, up until the N70 and N90. Malware is still very rare and impossible to catch if you don't manually accept it, but it's worth noting that if you know any paranoid S60 2nd Edition owners, you might like to point them towards Exovirusstop, which has given up the fight to sell something that's not really needed and has made its 'Antivirus' software free.
Although not listed on all Nokia support sites, the 5800 XpressMusic seems to have gotten its iSync profile at last, meaning that you can sync it officially to a Mac. Screenshot and links below.
With the sheer number of people now receiving the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic around the world and eager to show off how it all works, note that Warelex have updated their much-respected Screen Capture utility to support S60 5th Edition. Note that this is not just fixed screenshots, you can capture video of what you're doing on the device, for uploading later to your blog or YouTube. Connections between PC and the 5800 can be via cable, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. v3.0.7 is the version you want, currently only available from the Warelex product page.
Nokia India has kindly released a number of free applications for their new 5800 XpressMusic, good to see this getting off to a fast start in most markets. SMS Timer and Smart Guard should work on all 5800s, while Marble Maze, Wave Secure, Touch Card Match and Touch Maneuver are regionally restricted to those with an India SIM card. Some of these applications, along with a few additional ones, are also available for the Hong Kong market.
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is now supported by the Nokia Software Update service. The currently available firmware is v11.0.008, which will not be new for most users. However, if you purchased your 5800 in the first half of December you may be running v10.x firmware. The update is relatively minor, but does fix a number of annoying bugs.
[updated] Nokia PC Suite version 7.1 (v7.1.18.0, to be exact) is now 'official', in that every man and his dog is being reminded of its existence via normal PC Suite update checks. Version 7.1 includes the following extra functionality: arranging the contacts on your phone into contact groups, starting a phone call to a contact, and having full access to your phone's Calendar in a special new view. If the auto-update doesn't work for you, here's the download page.
