Trailed by Damian Dinning last week, a brand new Camera update for the N8 has been released in 'Beta' form over at Nokia Beta Labs as a 1.7MB .SIS file. This builds on the UI tweaks from the Anna update last week and adds 30fps video recording and continuous auto-focus, albeit with caveats about audio quality. See my test video below. There's a detailed article about the changes and the reasoning behind them over on Nokia Conversations today.
The roll out of the Symbian Anna software update for the Nokia N8, C7, E7 and C6-01 has now started (the editorial N8 now has it, over the air). It is now available in key European and Asian markets including the UK, France, Russia, Indonesia, China and India, with additional markets to follow shortly. Key features of Symbian Anna include virtual QWERTY keypad in portrait mode, split-screen text input, an updated web browser, stronger security, an updated icon set and improved Maps functionality. Plus the Nokia C7 gains activation of its NFC chip. Changelog below.
Nokia's Ovi Store has reached the 9 million downloads a day milestone and is continuing to grow. This follows on from June's announcement that Ovi Store was averaging more than 6 million downloads a day and the 7.62 million mark from last month. The 9 million downloads a day rate annualises to 3.29 billion downloads a year (275 million a month). In addition, AAS' own tracking now shows that Ovi Store has now passed the 2 billion cumulative downloads mark.
Rattling through the versions almost daily is this new Google Reader project. gNewsReader is written in Qt, supports full feed browsing, article starring and, importantly, is wonderfully OLED/battery friendly, being black themed. It uses/syncs the read/unread feed status from the service and, interestingly, has been built around the forthcoming Symbian Belle UI. Screens, links and some comments below.
Mac owners who enjoy bullet-proof syncing from iCal and Address Book with their Nokia/Symbian smartphone(s) should note that upgrading to the latest (and new) OS X Lion operating system will yield at least one unpleasant surprise: Apple has removed all trace of iSync, the phone-sync application that has had wide manufacturer compatibility. Happily there's a workaround.
Nokia has announced that it plans to close web-based access to Ovi Calendar at the end of August. The sync service will continue to be available, but will now only operate as a backup for data. This means it will no longer be possible to view or edit calendar information through the Ovi.com website. Nokia says this was a business decision and that it "will help us to concentrate on our core service offerings". In reality, the decision is likely driven by the low numbers of active users of the web-based portion of the service.
Quickoffice has announced an update to its office suite for Symbian^3. Quickoffice Pro 7, renamed from Quickoffice Premier, adds support for accessing files from cloud storage services (Google Docs, Dropbox, box.net and SugarSync). This means that a file can be downloaded from any of the supported services, edited and saved back to the cloud from within the application.
A minor firmware update for the Nokia E6 and Nokia X7, version 22.014, is now being rolled out. It is a minor firmware update consisting of bug fixes and small performance improvements. These include small updates to the Web and Social applications, USB connectivity and Mail for Exchange configuration fixes and reduced lag when opening Application manager. The update is currently only available via the Nokia Software Updater portion of Ovi Suite.
You may remember me enthusing over CameraPro (written in native Symbian C++) a while back, with only a few caveats? Well, the developer, Harald Meyer, has been hard at work producing a version in Qt, Camera Plus, with the benefits that it will better support the upcoming camera firmware tweaks for the N8, plus other models going forwards. Plus there are other tweaks, see below for details. And yes, a few restrictions too...
Good news for XBMC media centre users, there is now a Symbian^3 remote control application in the works! Despite being at a young version (0.92), “SemperXBMC” packs in most of the features you would expect from a XBMC remote control. It's available directly from the author's website, from which you will also have to install an additional SIS file for Qt Components. SemperXBMC requires Qt 4.7.3 and Qt Quick, which are installed automatically. Read on to find out more!
Nokia have updated the dedicated Foursquare application to version 1.02 (9). You can pick up the update from the Ovi Store either through the updates tab, or going to the Foursquare app page and selecting the update option from there. The major change in this version is to accommodate the new Foursquare API methodology.
Although we haven't seen a new version of Google Maps for Mobile (for Symbian) for an eternity now (it's frozen at v4.1.1), it doesn't mean that we Symbian users aren't benefitting from Google's back-end improvements, not least the ever-growing place and business databases, transit lines, better satellite and street views etc. Shown below is a recent addition, of real time traffic status for a whopping 13 extra countries across the world.
Just noticed this in the Ovi Store, HWKey is a small and free utility to launch any designated application from your phone's camera (hardware) button. For anyone more interested in launching PhoneTorch or Gravity (etc) than Camera, this is a great little addition to your smartphone. Screens below...
Nokia's Ovi Store recently recorded 7.62 million downloads in a single day. This follows on from June's announcement that Ovi Store was averaging more than 6 million downloads a day. The greater than expected jump between June and July is primarily due to the "removal of the registration and log-in requirement for free items in the mobile web channel".
Symbian toting Dropbox users will be glad to hear that one of the best in class apps, cuteBox, has now become free of charge. We reviewed cuteBox back in May, with Rafe concluding that “general performance [was] excellent”. Fortunately, it was only priced at £1.50 / €1.50 / $2.00, so paying users hopefully won't feel too aggrieved at the change. Read on for more details.
