Nokia inside

LG Optimus Pro. QWERTY with Gingerbread

2011-07-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

LG preparing to introduce mobile phone with a different form from their previous row Android smartphone. South Korean manufacturer LG will present Optimus Pro C660.

Optimus Pro has a screen width of 2.8 inch touch-portrait and a full physical qwerty keyboard underneath. The shape is something like the Droid Pro or Samsung Replenish.

As quoted from UnwiredView, Tuesday (07/12/2011), Optimus Pro running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Supporting features such as Wi Fi, GPS, 3 megapixel camera and 1500 mAh battery.

Currently, the phone is said to already be booked in Italy with a price around 179 Euros. If dirupiahkan be in the range of Rp 2 million.

With the price, the Optimus Pro targeting the middle class market. In addition to Italy, not yet clear in which countries Optimus Pro will be marketed. However, predicted would soon be visited various parts of the world.

Nintendo Project Cafe using 8GB HDD

2011-05-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

Successor of Nintendo Wii game console is rumored to not have a hard drive for media penyimpannya, but only use flash memory capacity of 8GB. Really?

Generation Wii codenamed 'Project Cafe' is scheduled to begin show up on the arena Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 7 to 9 June 2011.

Despite offering a number of brand-new features, but the problem of media storage this console seems a little behind when compared to the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

Quoted from Kotaku, on Wednesday (05/04/2011), a source who did not want to be named claimed that the 'Project Cafe' will only use flash memory to 8GB.

Very little indeed, when compared with other consoles that have been mencapi hundreds GigaByte. And if true demikia, then the predicted Nintento will not provide much content that can be downloaded.

But the Industry was launched Gamers, 'Project Cafe' will also use pieces of disc rival Sony Blu-Ray. It is said to reach 25GB per disc capacity.

Source: Nokiainside.com

We are moving to dot Com ^_^

2011-03-12T01:58:00.000-08:00

We are Happy to announced you that we move to new hosting :D

Just click nokiainside.com and happy hunting new article every day ^_^

Nokia 5730 express music exploded

2011-02-22T17:51:00.000-08:00

This is the scheme of the Nokia 5730 express music. The disassemble tips is on progress. So stay tune guys

N8 and C7 Defective screens

2011-02-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

Since at least, the beginning of this year, there have been a growing number of reports about 'defective' screens with some models of the Nokia N8-00 and C7-00. Reports vary, but the key theme has been an errant (mainly red-purple) colour tint, which is more apparent in dim, or black areas of the screen, under specific circumstances. This fault is certainly not universal. Furthermore, as far as we can tell from our own research, there doesn't appear to be a correlation to any particular firmware version either. Read on for links and examples of the the fault.

We've seen a number of forum threads reporting the same broad set of problems. A wealth of user anecdotes can be found on the NokiaUsers.net forum in a thread entitled "I think Nokia are using two screens on [the] N8". Also on the DailyMobile.de forum, there is a similar thread, "Nokia N8 AMOLED Display Colour Problem". There are also numerous threads to be found on Nokia's own support forum; see here, here, here, and here.

The most common complaint is that screens tend to display a purple tint over progressively darker areas of the screen. This would suggest that as the software, operating system and electronics (see what we did there? - whatever it turns out to be, we can say we were right!) instruct pixels to reduce their brightness (i.e. go toward black), the blue and red pixels are not reducing their output as much as they should. There is some variation in these reports, as other examples (including photographed examples) have a more red or brown coloured tint. Other users have also reported poor colour gradients, but this problem appears to be less common.

There are test images that users can download (gradient and tone) to determine how well their screen is performing. Below are example photographics published by blogger Michael322, please see his post for more details.

Based on the following test image ...

The difference across several N8's is clear to see:

When it comes to the gradient test:

The colour tints are clear to see again:

Here at All About Symbian, our own N8 and C7 review units were made early in Nokia's Finnish production centres, and so were made (presumably) with the highest quality components and highest attention to detail. However, our own Steve Litchfield has seen an affected C7-00 first hand with this same purple tint for dark areas (courtesy of our friend Tim Salmon), and was able to compare it against his N8-00 review unit which does not suffer this problem.

There hasn't been an official statement from Nokia about this, to date. However, it would be safe to assume it is indeed aware of it and looking into the problem. If indeed the issue is due to inferior screen components, it's highly likely that rectifying the problem will involve sending your phone away for a warrenty 'repair'. Theoretically, a firmware update could perhaps recalibrate the colour space on these devices or perhaps fix a badly behaved driver, but I can't really comment on this.

If you have any experience of this issue with your own handset, please let us know in the comments. Information like model number, firmware version, when you bought the phone, and where it was made (should be printed under the battery or printed on the end cap) would be of particular interest.

The more data points we all have, the better....

LCG Jukebox. Play FLAC on Symbian

2011-01-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

LCG Jukebox is music player for mobile devices, that is designed to suit all your music listening desires. It has excellent sound quality, comfortable playlist management, easy music selection, equalizer, Internet streaming, and more. Additionally it can find album image and song lyrics on the Internet, to enhance your listening experience. Simply everything to perfectly enjoy your music collection. Version 2.17 include unspecified updates.

Want to play FLAC? use LCG Jukebox

Download here

N8 Xenon Flash

2010-11-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

Flash photography

One of the reasons the N82 was venerated for so long in the Nokia canon was its Xenon flash. See my feature on this, but essentially almost every standalone camera has a Xenon flash, while almost every camera phone has LED flash (or none at all). LED flashes are almost useless for everything but the most amateurish of shots - which is why some manufacturers haven't even bothered to fit one. In contrast, a Xenon flash is up to 10x brighter (in terms of light energy output) and also lasts for a thousandth the duration, meaning that people and objects get frozen in time and don't become a blurry, fuzzy mess.

It's a bit of a mystery (other than build cost) why more smartphones haven't appeared with Xenon flash over the years. Here's a typical example, taken in dimly lit room on the N8 (click through etc etc.), raising my glass to toast - note the extreme detail and 'frozen' action:

To compare the N8's Xenon-lit photos with the best of the competition, I tried the same action and pose on the N82 and on the Xenon-flash-equipped Motorola XT720, the only serious current smartphone competitor to Nokia with a Xenon flash:

From left to right, N82, XT720, N8. I was stunned at the difference, once zoomed in like this. The 5-megapixel N82's shot (which we'd have named the best of the bunch in any other flash photo roundup, I suspect) looks over-exposed and the detail is all fuzzed out by the noise reduction and sharpening. The XT720 does better (at its 'kludged' 8 megapixels), with better exposure and clearer detail - but it didn't quite look in focus. On the right, the N8 nails the shot, with stunning detail - look at the weave of the cloth on the right and at the buttons, plus perfect exposure.

If I had a criticism of the N8's Xenon capabilities, they would be that the flash is very centre-focussed, i.e. whatever you're focussing on will be lit perfectly, but that items at the edge of the frame don't receive enough light. But this is a very minor point.

There's a slight degree of red-eye removal in 'auto' mode, in that there's a small pre-flash, around a tenth of second before the big one - interestingly, if you explicitly set the flash mode as 'red eye reduction', the delay is raised to a second or so, but you get a brighter flash (around 10 to 20% brighter), since the flash unit has had longer to recharge. Thus your tip for the day, if trying to Xenon-shoot an subject that's more than a few metres away and wanting all the lumens you can get - turn red eye reduction on - even if your subject is a car!

Not tested here but worth noting is an extraordinary degree of intelligence in the N8's camera algorithms: if the N8 detects a face which is backlit and within the flash range then it will automatically fire the flash as a fill-in. It balances the exposure so you get an extra kick from filling in the shadows and adding a sparkle to the eyes but deliberately doesn't 'overcook' it (making it look like it was obviously shot with flash).

Nokia latest phones will use components that can be recycled

2010-07-30T19:29:00.001-07:00

NOKIA mobile phone company recently announced plans to release 40 new models that have used materials that are recyclable and not harmful to the environment.

One of them is the Nokia 3110 which has been using 65% of existing components with a material that can be recycled (recyclable).
For information, most mobile phones currently available are not much use of materials can be recycled and also dangerous (toxic) such as a lithium battery that can be dangerous for the environment if not disposed of properly.

To further support the "campaign" or environmentally conscious, even NOKIA will set up bins for recycling (green bins) in each office or service center where customers can dispose of or part of a mobile phone which is not used anymore.
It seems to serve as an example for other phone companies and may be also reduced for those of you who like to cover mutually phone.

List of All Mp3 Players Available for Symbian

2010-07-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

====================================

Mp3 Players for S60 v1.x and v2.x
====================================

PowerMP3 by MobiFactor

PowerMP3 will turn your S60 smartphone into powerful MP3, OGG, AAC and MA4 player. PowerMP3 includes a lot of features: Play music in MP3,OGG, AAC and MA4 audio file formats Create custom Playlists to organize your music

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1546&faq=4

ALON MP3 Player by ALONsoftware

An audio player which supports MP3, OGG and WAV - the most popular audio formats with built-in 3-Band Parametric Equalizer. Main features: Supports MP3, OGG and WAV Audio formats Built-in Equalizer for all supported audio formats

Code: Select all
http://www.alonsoftware.com/products/product10.htm

CubiX MP3 Player by Cube Multimedia

High quality MP3 player which lets you create your own playlist, displays amazing 3D visualizations, provides a 10-Band Graphical Equalizer, skinning and much more. CubiX MP3 Player is compatible with all Series 60 smartphones.

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1484&faq=4

MP3 Base Stereo EQ by Mobile Vault

MP3 Base Stereo EQ is a cool music player for your phone. 10-band equalizer is included for optimized music output. Music can be listened through phone speaker or headset. Playlist view lets user manage playlist and delete songs. Playback, pause, stop, next and previous functions are available to control the player. Total play time, elapsed time and audio information is visible on the screen. MP3 Base pauses playback upon incoming call and continues when call is hanged. The program is Symbian Signed.

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1465&faq=4

MP3 Base by Mobile Vault

MP3 Base is a music player for your Series 60 phone. Music can be listened through phone speaker or headset. Playlist view lets users manage playlist and delete songs. Playback, pause, stop, next and previous functions are available to control the player. Total play time, elapsed and audio information time is visible on the screen. MP3 Base pauses playback upon incoming call and continues when call is hanged. The program is Symbian Signed.

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1386&faq=4

MP3 Gravity by Free Gravity Oy

MP3Gravity is an MP3 music player for NOKIA 3600, 3650, 3660 and N-Gage. You can play MP3 songs stored in the main memory or MMC memory card (recommended) in the phone. Load more skins from web or create your own. Features: Support of MP3 music in 24K/32K/64k/128k/256k/320k bitrates.

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=771&faq=4

Code: Select all
http://www.lonelycatgames.com/index.php?chapter=ultramp3

Mp3Player by Viking Informatics

Mp3Player is an MPEG Layer 3 audio player for Nokia 7650 and 3650. Supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-2.5 files, from 8kHz to 44.1kHz, from 8kbps to 420kpbs. Features: plays MP3 files (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-2.5); displays bitrate, frequency and mono...

Code: Select all
http://www.viking.tm/product.php?id=1

MP3Go by m-internet.com

MP3Go for Nokia Series 60 is a MP3 music player running on Nokia Series 60 phone such as Nokia 7650/3650, so you can play MP3 songs stored in the main memory or MMC memory card (recommended) Features: Support MPEG-1 layer 3 file in 24K/32K/64k/128..

Code: Select all
http://m-internet.com/mp3gons60/

OggPlay by Leif H. Wilden

OggPlay is an Ogg vorbis audio player for smartphones. Ogg Vorbis is an audio compression format similar to mp3

Code: Select all
http://symbianoggplay.sourceforge.net/

FIVN Player by Loc Nguyen

FIVN Player is created for easy and simple multimedia playback. It has a lot of functions, settings and it supports many sound formats. FIVN Player uses phone plug-ins to play sound files. Formats that the player tries to check if they can be played are: ...

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http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?faq=4&fldAuto=1348

AACPlayer by Viking Informatics

Features: plays AAC audio encoded files (in .AAC files or in .MP4/.MPA container), supporting Low Complexity (LC) profile; stereo, 44.1kHz playback (if phone supports it); playlist shows all AAC/MP4 files on phone; displays author, title, bitrate, frequency and mono/stereo

Code: Select all
http://www.viking.tm/product.php?id=37

MultiMedia Player by PSI NT (Psiloc)

MMP is an advanced audio player for Nokia 7650. It supports playlists and recognizes all default file formats: MIDI, WAV, AMR, AU etc. MMP is also going to support MP3 files via external plug-in (available soon).

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=91&faq=2

WMAPlus! by Filamoon Workshop

Finally, here comes a WMA player for symbian phones. WMAPlus! is an advanced music player for Symbian OS 7.0 or higher. It is the first Symbian music player that can support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format except the Nokia N91.

Code: Select all
http://shop.my-symbian.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=695&jid=4X42A9XXA746XC94AFA7A6C88E2XXX4E&platformId=4&productType=2&catalog=0&sectionId=0&productId=175507

SymbPlayer by CoolTel

SymbPlayer is an MP3 player with nice and graphical user interface. You can customize the screen with skins and images from your device. With Playlist Editor you can rearrange the list of songs, and listen in the order you wish. Features: Plays MP...

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1638&faq=4

EzPlay by S-One Telecom

EzPlay is a music player application that supports AMR, WAV, MP3 formats on Series 60 phones. Selectable skins and multiple play lists are also suppoted. ...

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http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1318&faq=2

XSound by SymbCode

XSound is an mp3 song player with nice and clear graphical user interface. You can customize how to look like the screen with skins and images from your device. With Playlist Editor you can rearrange the list of the songs, and listen in the order you wish.
XSound has the best sound quality ever heard on cellphones. With trial version you can listen 15 minutes music. After it the application is asking for the registration code....

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software/applications.php?fldAuto=86&faq=14

Moremedia by Omniaway

Audio and video contents can coexist into a playlist : Moremedia switches automatically to the correct graphic user interface. Player commands are displayed on the fullscreen custom user interface and rapidly accessible through the joystick avoiding menu and softkeys interaction. This brings the user to a real one-hand experience.
Videos can be appreciated at full screen size and the player is skinnable loading the images straight from the mobile device's gallery.

Code: Select all
http://my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1695&faq=4

Muzee Music Player by Thobee

Streams: mp3, ogg, aac, aac+ streams broadcasted by SHOUTcast and Icecast2 media servers are now supported, so it brings you almost all internet radios to your ears... (di.fm, soma fm, Virgin Radio, Club 977, HBR1 and many many more ...)

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1744&faq=4

MusicBox by FoxStudio

MusicBox is a music player for Series 60 phones supporting MP3, AMR, MID, and WAV. Play music in MP3, AMR, MID, WAV audio file formats. Support for MPEG-1 layer 3 with 24k/32k/64k/128k/192k/256k/320k bitrate. Smart interface: manage all functions using simply the joystick button

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http://www.my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1352&faq=4

QuodRings by QuodSoftware

QuodRings is a practical music player application for your smart phone, you can use it to conveniently carry and listen to your music files everywhere you go. But QuodRings is more than a common music player as it allows you to use your music files as rin...

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s60/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1163&faq=4

==================================
Mp3 Players for S60 3rd Edition
==================================

Pocket Ogg for S60 3rd Edition by WildPalm

Pocket Ogg by WildPalm is the ultimate OGG Vorbis music player for your S60 3rd Edition smartphone with easy to use playback controls (and also support for Nokia 3250 hardware music controls), high quality gapless playback and full telephone integration - music automatically pauses for incoming ca.. ..

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http://shop.my-symbian.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=695&jid=4X42A9XXA746XC94AFA7A6C88E2XXX4E&platformId=4&productType=2&catalog=0&sectionId=0&productId=193933

Muzee Music Player by Thobee

Muzee is a music player for S60 3rd Edition phones. Features: files: mp3, ogg, aac, mp4, m4a audio files ID3 tags: artist, album, title, genre,... next info: volume, played time streams: mp3, ogg, aac, aac+ streams broadcasted by SHOUTcast an...

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s60v3/software/applications.php?fldAuto=103&faq=14

===========================
Mp3 Players for S80
===========================

Mp3Player Viking Informatics

Mp3Player is an MPEG Layer 3 audio player for Nokia 9300/9500. Supports MPEG-1/2/2.5 files, from 8kHz to 44.1kHz, from 8kbps to 420kpbs. Features: English, German, Spanish, Hungarian; plays MP3 files (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-2.5, ABR, VBR);

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s80/software/applications.php?fldAuto=776&faq=4

OggPlay by Leif H. Wilden

OggPlay is an audio player for Series 80 devices. Oggplay is able to use standard Symbian MMF plugins. MMF (Multimedia Framework) is a feature of Symbian Operating System (SOS) that allows (among other things) 3rd parties to use audio decoder plugins.

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s80/software/applications.php?fldAuto=646&faq=4

UltraMP3 by Lonely Cat Games

UltraMP3 is a music player for your mobile phone. It is a handy application with cool graphical user interface, allowing you to listen to your favorite music on your Symbian mobile device. UltraMP3 loads and plays music in MP3 format, as well as MOD, XM, IT, S3M. The player has built-in playlist editor, which allows you to arrange music files on your phone, and play them in any order you wish. High degree of customization allows you to choose from one of more available skins, and skin editor ships with application -- in a few simple steps you may create your own skin. Handful of nice skins is shipped already with the application.

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s80/software/applications.php?fldAuto=630&faq=4

MultiMedia Player by PSI NT (Psiloc)

MultiMedia Player (MMP) is an audio player for Nokia 9210 Communicator. It supports a wide range of audio formats: MP3, WAV, RA, AU, SND etc. MutiMedia Player has many advantages over the default system player

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s80/software/applications.php?fldAuto=242&faq=4

===========================
Mp3 Players for S90
===========================

UltraMP3 by Lonely Cat Games

UltraMP3 is a music player for your mobile phone. It is a handy application with cool graphical user interface, allowing you to listen to your favorite music on your Symbian mobile device. UltraMP3 loads and plays music in MP3 format, as well as MOD, XM, IT, S3M. The player has built-in playlist editor, which allows you to arrange music files on your phone, and play them in any order you wish. High degree of customization allows you to choose from one of more available skins, and skin editor ships with application -- in a few simple steps you may create your own skin. Handful of nice skins is shipped already with the application.

Code: Select all
http://www.my-symbian.com/s90/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1024&faq=51[size=12][/size]

Nokia N97 Full Screen Game Tips

2010-05-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Tips how to make your game running in Full Screen :D

Install the game
Open / launch the game
Make sure your game is fully touch screen support or not
If your game not support touch you must use keypad to play it (game using virtual key : badmanga, party campus, night fight, etc
Way of converting into Full Screen : MENU>SETTINGS>APPLICATION MGR.>INSTALLED APPS.>Choose the game you want to set to Full Screen>OPTIONS>SUITE SETTINGS>ON-SCREEN KEYBOARD turn to OFF ( there are some caw yg jg game can be altered by its suite)
Try again the game guys! enjoy the Full Screen game :D

Nokia N97 Virtual Keyboard

2010-05-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

Virtual Keyboard for Nokia N97

Download Files Here
http://rapidshare.com/files/299837290/DayHand.zip

Nokia Man

2010-05-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

When Nokia was founded in the year 1865, it had nothing to do with phones, and it was a pulp mill established on the banks of Nokia rapids in Finland. Its founder was Knut Fredrik Idesram.

The Finnish Rubber Works started using the Nokia brand in the beginning of 20th century. After the World War I, two companies Nokia Wood Mills and Finnish Cable Works, which was in the business of producing telephone and telegraph cables, were acquired by Finnish Rubber Works and these three companies amalgamated to form Nokia Corporation in the year 1967.

The current era of Nokia has its roots in the year 1960 when the electronic section was founded by the cable division and with its amalgamation in the year 1967, that section started making telecom equipments.

In the year 1972, Nokia got its first order from Finnish Defense Services for mobile phones for field radios.

N900

2010-05-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

RiceGF says:

Most people I know don't make phone calls by launching a phone application and punching numbers, but by selecting an existing contact. On the N900, this is accomplished in the most obvious way I can imagine - slide open the keyboard and type the first couple of letters of the name of the person you wish to call or text; matching names appear, and you tap the one you want, followed by the medium ("cell", "SMS", whatever).

The still and video camera are just as intuitive - open the lens cover, and the camera app opens. Then point and push the shutter button on top (like a "normal" camera). Pretty intuitive to me. And gorgeous photos and flix.

Your other observations are spot on, although my phone app does automatically switch between portrait and landscape. I only use it in landscape, though - the N900 is clearly a *tablet* (you say the volume, power and shutter are on the right - but as a tablet, they are on the *top*, where I'd expect them ;-).

And yes, the web browser *is* as good as they say. Brilliant!

Zak Sloan says:

I have been waiting for your review on this, and glad to see you have had the chance to test the N900.

Just a couple of points:

The N900 was designed and released as an 'internet tablet with phone capabilities', so although it falls into the smartphone category, it wasn't designed as a phone.

Recent updates have enabled portrait mode, which can be activated using Ctrl-Shift-O.

Also, as much as I love the N900 and all of its features, I would not recommend it for the average user. I would see them getting very frustrated with it.

You are right about the "potential" of the N900. I have had mine for over three months and also feel I have only scratched the surface!

It's a tinkerer's dream, and the features and capabilities run rings around other devices.

Skype does not need to be downloaded as an app, as it is integrated into the phone, so you can choose to make a regular, VoIP, or Skype call(or send an email) to a contact in your address book.

Ovi store for apps is still looking very poor, but there are lots of free apps available in the repositories.

@M0les,

The current information is that the N900 WILL be upgradable to Meego. There were a lot of worried users thinking they would be left behind, so this is very good news for them. We do not yet know when this will happen.

No carriers have announced that they will provide the phones, but some retail stores have said they will be selling it.

Lost Series Finale

2010-05-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

Season 6 premiered on February 2, 2010, at its new timeslot of Tuesdays at 9:00 EST pm in the US and Canada and features 18 episodes. The sixth season follows two timelines, each an outcome of the detonation of a hydrogen bomb in the previous season finale. In the first timeline, referred to as "flash sideways", Oceanic Flight 815 never crashes. In the second, the survivors return to the present day and must deal with the demise of Jacob, whose death has been orchestrated by the mysterious Man in Black, the Smoke Monster. According to show producer Damon Lindelof, the term "flash-sideways" was deliberately used instead of "alternate reality" because it might then "infer that one of them isn't real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real."

Downloading applications on Nokia N900 Maemo

2010-05-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

Downloading applications

Internet Tablets use the concept of software repositories, a concept carried over from Linux. You can tell your N900 where these repositories are via the Application Manager. The Application Manager automatically then presents you a list of available applications that can be installed on your device, and takes care of any dependancies that may be required.

There are multiple repositories available for the N900:

1. Nokia's Ovi Store
2. Commercial Application Vendors
3. Community Applications

The Application Manager also allows you to uninstall applications as well as keep you notified of updates to your installed applications.

You will also find One Click Install Applications on the web for instance in the Downloads section of this web site. You may also want to ]install applications which are not available through maemo.org, but which you download from third party sites.

If you can't find what you want, sign up to Maemo Talk and ask. If a few people are interested, or if a particular developer sees value in your idea, it's likely someone will write you an application to do what you want. And yes, that really does work.

Or you can learn to program in Maemo or Qt yourself.

There's a good set of tutorials here, with a Hello world app too... and there's a separate Developer FAQ on this site.

Application manager

Application manager is a preinstalled graphical user interface to APT.

Application manager shows contents of configured repositories. It is a tool to search and install software. The basic repository list has approximately same content as maemo.org Downloads.

Application manager also handles software updates automaticly.

Managing Repositories

In this example, we will be enabling the 'maemo.org' repository. (Which should already exist, but this is simply an example.)

Open Application Manager (Dashboard > Menu > More... > App. manager)

Go to Application catalogs (Press the menu bar at the top, where it says application manager)

Press New

Enter the Catalog Details

You can also disable catalogs for future use (Useful for maemo.org extras-testing and maemo.org extras-devel catalogs.)

Save.

Other ways

It is recommended to use the application manager since it this is the easiest way to install software. If it doesn't suit your needs please see the following solutions:

* Maemo Select - showcase for the best community and commercial apps
* maemo.org Maemo Downloads - for community-developed apps
* Ovi Store - for commercially-developed apps

Enhancing List Application Able To Install with Maemo

2010-05-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

We know that Nokia N900 apps can be download in OVI store or in application manager. But we cannot find all application only in OVI store. So we can download from application manager by enhancing some new catalogue.

To add new catalogue, we need to step into Menu -> Application Manager.

Continue click of Application Manager exist in topmost shares. And afterwards this choice will emerge .

Continue click in Application catalogs, continue catalogue choice will emerge.

Then click again in New to add new catalogue, later will emerge form we which must fill.

This is the catalogue:

1. Maemo Extras Catalog Details :
Catalog name: Maemo Extras
Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras/
Distribution: fremantle
Components: free non-free

2. Maemo Testing Applications Catalog Details :
Catalog name: Maemo Extras-Testing
Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing/
Distribution: fremantle
Components: free non-free

3. Maemo Developer Testing Applications Catalog Details
Catalog name: Maemo Extras-Devel
Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/
Distribution: fremantle
Components: free non-free

N900 keyboard shortcut - Potrait Mode on Web Browser

2010-05-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

In the reality we can peep out Potrait Mode on Nokia N900. But only in WEB BROWSER.

To activate Potrait Mode just press "Ctrl+Shift+O" in Nokia N900 default browser web (Is not Mozilla etc). And tadaaaa... Nokia N900 Web Browser now turn into Potrait Mode.

Hope this tips can help improve your Web Browsing experience.

N900 keyboard shortcut

2010-05-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

General :
* Ctrl + Backspace: From within an application this will take you back out to the visual task manager
* Ctrl + C: Copy text
* Ctrl + V: Paste text
* Ctrl + X: Cut text
* Ctrl + A: Select all
* Ctrl + O: Open (if available)
* Ctrl + N: Create a new item (if available)
* Ctrl + S: Save (if available)
* Ctrl + Z: Undo (if available)
* Ctrl + Y: Redo (if available)
* Ctrl + F: Open search bar (if available)
* Ctrl + Right arrow: Move the insertion point to the end of the word
* Ctrl + Left arrow: Move the insertion point to the beginning of the word

Web Browser :
* Ctrl + N: Open a new window
* Ctrl + R: Reload the current page
* Ctrl + B: Open a bookmark
* Ctrl + D: Add a bookmark

Email :
* Ctrl + Enter: Send a message
* Ctrl + R: Reply to a message

RSS Reader :
* Ctrl + R: Refresh the feed

Screenshots :
* Ctrl + Shift + P: Capture a screenshot

Nokia E71 and E66 get Ovi Maps free navigation

2010-04-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

Nokia today announced the availability of Ovi Maps 3.3 (3.03) for the Nokia E71 and E66. The updated version brings the free worldwide pedestrian and car navigation edition of Ovi Maps to these devices. Nokia says the release is a result of listening to consumer feedback: 'you spoke, we listened', says the press release. The E71 and E66 versions do not include the Lonely Planet guides due to technical constraints, but the core navigation offering is the same as that found on more recent devices.

The process of making the latest version of Ovi Maps available for existing devices is quite involved, but the team managed to include complete navigation functionality. Due to technical constraints in back porting the app to existing devices, unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to offer further premium content such as the Michelin and Lonely Planet guides.

The announcement is a follow on from January 21st, when Nokia announced that Ovi Maps was going free.

In the press release, Nokia note that the E71 and E66 will be "the last of our S60 3.1 and older devices to sport this version of Ovi Maps". This means we will not be seeing free navigation support for the Nokia N95 and other S60 3.1 devices. However, as we noted in an earlier story Nokia have reduced the licenses prices significantly for pre-3.3 versions of Ovi Maps, which means navigation is available for older devices at a very low cost.

Ovi Maps 3.3 (3.03) on the E71 and E66

Ovi Maps is a relatively large install and will be placed on the C: drive, so you will need to ensure that you have enough free disk space (recommended 10MB or more) before installing the new version. It will replace any existing version of Ovi Maps or Nokia Maps that is installed on the device.

In usage there are occasions, as with earlier version on the Nokia E71, when Ovi Maps can feel somewhat sluggish compared to more recent devices. However the streamlined user interface is a significant improvement and the new version is a recommended install for all E71 and E66 users, not least for the availability of free car and pedestrian navigation.

Ovi Maps for the Nokia E71 and E66 will be made available via the maps.nokia.com website. It will also likely appear in the Ovi Store shortly.

Nokia X6 Review

2010-01-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

So here comes the X6. As the de facto sequel to the surprise hit of the 5800 XpressMusic, the X6 has a lot to live up to in the eyes of the media and the consumers. Actually, being honest, a touch screen device, with music support, operator backing and a stylish black look such as the 5800 had all the indications of being a successful device even before launch. Shall I cut a long review short and simply say that the X6 doesn't (yet) manage this, but if Nokia apply themselves, it could do so in the future?

And now, the longer version, over multiple parts.

The X6 doesn't have the first mover advantage of being Nokia's first touch screen S60 device, but you can't help but fail to notice the biggest change in Nokia's touch screen devices with the X6, and this is the switch from a resistive touch screen to a capacitive touch screen. No more stylus needed (or in fact, able to be used), the X6 screen will only pick up on the touch of human skin on the screen (normally your finger).

This has an impact on the S60 UI, and I'll come onto that in a subsequent part, but in general this change to the interface has made the X6 a much more tactile and gorgeous device to handle. You don't need to struggle with a stylus, aim a fingernail at the screen, or even be pixel perfect accurate – a glancing stroke with a finger or a thumb swiping across the screen is more than enough to have your touch picked up and acted on.

Just to give you a heads up that the S60 5th Edition changes in the X6 lack one word – consistency – but this is nothing to do with the physical hardware of the screen. Not only is it excellent and responsive, but the colours and sharpness give the X6 a wonderful clarity; I'd go so far as to say that it demands to be held and touched.

Also on the front of the machine are the call/end call/app buttons. Unlike on the 5800, which had these as three raised buttons, a strip of plastic that takes up all the space at the bottom of the screen carries the three buttons here. Rather than being touch sensitive, this is a physical set of buttons where the whole strip pivots slightly depending on which button you press. It suddenly takes away from the glorious screen and dumps a cheap plastic phone back in your hand. Not good mojo.

This bendy and cheap plastic feel also applies to the back cover. It's a single sheet of moulded plastic, and instead of slides, catches and runners to hold it in place, you just bend it up at the bottom edge and pop it off. It makes for a smooth construction (and lower production cost) but again, adds to the tacky feel of the phone.

And then you have a SIM card slot cover which is little more than a plastic wedge over a push in slot – there's nothing seamless or tactile about these buttons and covers. Okay the SIM slot is a thing that the average user might only use once, but it has an impact on perceptions of the machine.

Which is a shame because the X6 is more stylish than the 5800. With the two long edges nicely curved, it sits comfortably in your hand, while the slight off-vertical surfaces at the short edges give an almost trapezoidal shape. The curve fits my hand, it's easily picked up from a table,and perhaps my only complaint is that with no lip around the screen (as the 5800 has) it's very easy in this thin candybar format to have your fingers stray into the touch screen area.

Right then, let's address the biggest issue I'm having with the X6 – and it's a physical problem. The key-lock slider on the side of the unit, which unlocks the touch screen has two problems. It's far too stiff and the sliding key needs far too much pressure when pulled towards the base of the unit to be at all comfortable. Also, unlike the similarly functioning key on the 5800 which was heavily ridged, there's a tiny raised padlock symbol which gives almost no purchase on the key. This is a backwards step from the 5800 and one that seems to be more a lack of oversight than anything else.

Yes, there should be some style, but this is a step too far.

The top edge of the X6 carries all the connectivity and power options. There's a microUSB connector hiding under a plastic grommet that seems securely fixed to the X6 body, the 3.5mm headphone/headset socket, an charging socket and the power/profile button. That button seems to have a huge amount of play before it actually does anything, which isn't particularly reassuring; and the inclusion of the charging socket is required as the X6, amazingly, does not charge over USB.

The volume buttons and camera buttons are in the expected place, on the right side with volume at the top and the two stage camera shutter button at the bottom. This is Nokia's design language and not something you would expect to see changed. What's interesting is that these two buttons are a different style to the key lock and power buttons. Much like the software of the X6, the outside seems to be two different ideals running into each other and compromising as best they can.

On the opposite long edge to the volume buttons are the speakers – one at the top and one at the bottom. I like this positioning, both of them are on the left long spine of the X6. This makes little difference when the phone is thrown on the kitchen worktop as I bake another masterpiece (really? - Vikki Spence), but the benefit becomes clear when you watch video on the 16:9 ratio screen, you've got yourself some stereo separation for the latest feature film (or in my case Question Time on the BBC iPlayer). They're also a substantial set of speakers for such a small unit. You won't get high fidelity from them, but you will get enough noise to fill a hotel room as you get ready in the morning. That'll do for me.

One problem with the diagonal styling on the top of the unit is around the 3.5mm headphone socket. Because the socket is at right angles to the screen, but the plastic moulding around it carries the angle. With certain cables that need to fit flush, they're pushed very slightly out of the socket, which is just enough in some cases to cause connection problems, especially for audio playback.

Plugging in a generic peripheral to the socket and you're asked to confirm what you've just put in... every time. A default setting here would be nice. What would also be nice is if the Music Player paused when something is removed from the headphone socket, or at least have another option to set this, because it's really useful. Of course a certain company already does this – and if Nokia were to add this usability feature would they be hit with another patent/copying lawsuit? Who knows, but I wish they would take the chance.

The X6, once it gets into the supply chai,n either on a hugely subsidised contract or in a version which removes the Comes with Music addition and brings the SIM free price into the 'disposable' range, should be a popular phone. And anything that makes the X6 punch above its RRP is to be welcomed. That's why some of these styling faults are going to be disproportionately punishing on the fortunes of the X6. People don't want to be seen with a 'cheap' phone; and the little niggles in the construction detailed above move the X6 away from 'stylish' to 'tacky.' It's not insurmountable – the screen and front style is lush and modern, but someone needs to get a grip in the factory and break some knuckles before the X6 breaks too many hearts on the High Street.

Source: allaboutsymbian

How to Hard reset your Nokia N97

2009-12-03T22:03:00.001-08:00

If you’re unfortunate enough to encounter a problem on your Nokia N97, a hard reset maybe what you need to do. This wipes the entire phone memory and settings fresh to how it was (or should be) when you bought it. It’s also useful if you’re also unfortunate enough to have to send away your Nokia N97 for repair or exchange, or maybe in future you maybe selling it and don’t want your information/details/media stored onto your device for someone else to access.

The traditional method won’t work as the N97 doesn’t have the old keypad. After you’ve backed up your data onto memory card/pc/ovi, turn your phone off and simultaneously press these four buttons circled in red.

* Caps shift * Space bar * Delete button * On button

You’ll know it’s worked when you see the initial set up screen, asking country of origin. I haven’t actually tried this, but I’ll be doing so when I return the trial N97.

* wiped phone memory but did not touch the mass memory (you’ll have to format that separately via File Manager) – got 61 MB back
* Applications installed onto the memory card are still present
* Fixed voice dialling, but after restoration from memory card, voice dialling was disabled again
* Hasn’t Fixed broken GPS. Refuses to get a GPS fix
* Restoring from memory card doesn’t put back widget/applications from phone memory you would have hoped to have been backed up on memory card – e.g. facebook/Nokia Messaging/N-Gage is gone
* Restoring from memory card does not restore the menu to how you may have reconfigured it (extremely annoying)

Press the Red Button at once

How do I reset the Nokia N97 phone

2009-12-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

There has been a number of people having problems with their N97’s and having to totally reset the phone to fix different issues, so I’ve decided to put together this guide on the best way to go about the task and have the N97 back to full optimum usability.

Prepare for Reset
1. Phone contacts is the only thing I really backup, best way I use is to copy all contacts to mass memory for quick reinstall later:.

Within Contacts application:
a) Options \ Mark/Unmark \ Mark all
b) Options \ Copy business card \ To other memory
c) Select ‘E: Mass memory’ and ‘Yes’ to remove existing contacts from selected memory.

NOTE: You could use Backup in File Manager to copy Contacts, Calendar and Bookmarks to a memory card?

2. Other Application Data depends on what applications you have installed, have a look yourself and save on mass memory. I have Profimail & SplashID which I export the settings/data and save on Mass memory for importing later.

3. Goto Menu\Settings\Application mgr.\Installed apps. and uninstall all applications installed on the Mass Memory.

4. Hard Reset the phone my dialing *#7370# from the homescreen and entering Lock Code 12345

Phone with now hard reset to the original firmware and factory settings. Once finished it will restart and ask you to enter region, date, time, etc. as if you just took the phone out the box when you first purchased it.

Installing from Fresh

You now have a clean phone ready to load your data and install your applications back on, so this is the time you need to be careful what you do, where you install things and what you install. Personally I’ve got a list of the best application I like for Nokia phones and will only install these on a non-test phone, i.e. personal phone.

5. Reclaim back phone memory before installing by uninstalling any firmware pre-installed applications you don’t use. I removed Facebook, weather apps, most of the widgets. etc.. If you’re never going to use them, then get rid of them, you can always reinstall from OVI Store or the nokiAAddict downloads page later :)

6. Reinstall Phone contacts.

Within Contacts application:
a) Options \ Copy business card \ From other memory
b) Select ‘E: Mass memory’.

7. Install all new applications to the Mass Memory, there might be a few apps which can only be installed on phone (Python & Wordmobi), but most should work okay installed on the Mass Memory. What applications to install is up to yourself, but I’ve found the main memory hugger is email. For Email the best application I’ve found is LCG Profimail which installs and works great on Mass Memory, unlike Nokia Messaging which only installs to phone memory. Although Profimail isn’t FREE its well worth the money for heavy email users.

How do I hard reset/format the n81 8GB or N95 phone?

2009-12-03T21:54:00.000-08:00

Note:
Format phone restores phone to as if it was out of the box. Retains firmware version and operator Variant changes but wipes all applications you have installed. Does not format the memory card so any apps on there may reinstall once powered back up again.

Factory Reset resets all settings to defaults but keeps any applications you have installed and photos etc. Both need the Security code, which, by default, is 12345.

Another way to format some symbian phones: Power off phone. Press and hold Green, * and 3 and keep them held whilst powering on and for a few seconds after, if kept pressed this formats without asking for Security Code confirmation.

Shortcuts
N95 picture viewer:
2 – Scroll up (when zoomed)
4 – Scroll left (when zoomed)
5 – Zoom in (12.5%/25%/50%)
6 – Scroll right (when zoomed)
8 – Scroll down (when zoomed)
0 – Zoom out

Press the Power button briefly to bring up the list of profiles to select one.

Press and hold (in Standby):
Right selection key: Voice commands
Multimedia Key: Now Playing
1: Voicemail
2-9: shortcuts to address book (you need to set these up first)
0: Web
#: Switches between General and Silent modes - not supported by all Operator Variants (when composing messages will switch between character and number input when held down)

Tips
If your operator does not support normal SMS delivery receipts (like UK O2) put *0# at the beginning of a text message to get a receipt (the recipient will not see it)

12# (etc) in standby will dial the number held in location 12 on your SIM card address book.

When texting using T9 predictive text you can generate smileys by pressing the 1 key twice or three times and modify the smiley using the * key:

Pressing 1 twice :) then * > > :* > .. > ., and so on
Pressing 1 three times :-) > :-( > ;-) > :-* > ... and so on.

The 0 key gives you a space, then 0, then a carriage return.

the factory codes: *#XXX# definitely do work on the n81--these are codes that work on all nokia devices (and i did have to use the *#RES0# to fix the mess that Mail For Exchange created )

The short cuts for picture viewing are different, as now you have the gaming keys which are used to zoom in and out. also don't forget the navi-wheel. the navi wheel is AWESOME! i use it all the time. i just wish that it was enabled in more parts of the phone.

multimedia key is the same--it brings up the now playing page on the cool new multimedia menu. And i do wanna saw a few words out the new multimedia menu. the current "application button" (looks like a yin-yang). brings up the menu of all the applications. some people are confused by this and the multimedia button, as you can also access these things from the multimedia button. The difference though, the application button allows you to access by application. the multimedia button seems to be arranged around content. so i think it is kind of neat that nokia has 2 different arrangements for accessing functionality on the phone.

These are the same:
1: Voicemail
2-9: shortcuts to address book (you need to set these up first)
0: Web
#: Switches between General and Silent modes

This doesn't work:
To see the time when the keypad is locked without unlocking, just press and release the power button.

Usually what i do is just press any button, and the screen displays very dim, but remains locked. but is bright enough for me to see the time

Facebook comes to the Nokia E71 and E72

2009-11-30T23:18:00.000-08:00

The Nokia E71 and Nokia E72 now has a Facebook application, available right at the Ovi Store.

The application is pretty nifty, and lets you use all the basic features of Facebook.

There are still a couple things missing like the Facebook “like” feature, etc but hey atleast there’s finally an official app now.

It’s basically a non-touch version of the S60v5 Touch app.

To download the app, go on over to the Nokia Ovi Store on your Nokia E71 or Nokia E72 and search for “Facebook” to find the application.

No doubt more S60v3 devices will get the application soon.

Nokia 5730 express music - Review

2009-10-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

The consumer-focussed sister phone to the successful Nokia E75 has now appeared and we tracked one down to explore what's different, what's good and what's bad. Is the 5730 really a case of 'fashion over functionality'? Or is it one of the most feature packed, and yet relatively cheap smartphones in the world?

Comparisons with the E75

The very first thing you should know about the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic is that 98% of it is identical to the Nokia E75, the side sliding business smartphone that debuted in Spring 2009 and which has been reviewed extensively here on All About Symbian (reviews part one, two and three + long term review) - it's tempting to simply think of the 5730 as the 'consumer' version of the E75 and, indeed, it's fairly easy to summarise the differences between the two: see the table below listing the 'advantages' of each, relative to the other. However, there's more to it than this, as we shall see.

All of which does seem like quite a list, and indeed there's a lot to discuss below, but don't let the table above kid you into thinking that these aren't, at heart, the same phone. If you look at the positioning of all the ports and side keys, if you look at the qwerty keyboard layout and spacing, if you compare audio and multimedia results, if you look at the recesses for ribbons and mechanism on the underside of the main keyboard, you'll quickly deduce that the E75 and 5730 are twins, separated at birth and led down slightly different life paths.

It's slightly odd that the 5730 XpressMusic has appeared so much later than the E75, and galling considering that there's nothing cutting edge in its firmware that might provide a clue for this timing - after all the 5730 still has Nokia Maps v2 and the 'old' version of S60 Web. There's not even an Ovi Store link. Clearly, the 5730 was designed and specified concurrently with the E75, but the timescales for either production or marketing slipped and then the summer break got in the way. Well, that's my theory anyway. (One compensation for the wait is that a digital compass got added to the GPS chip in the meantime, of which more later.)

But almost all potential buyers won't have seen an E75 in the flesh, so for the bulk of this review I'm going to treat the 5730 standalone, as a smartphone in its own right. For the guy or gal picking this up on a modest monthly contract in the High Street, what are they going to love and what are they going to hate (if anything)? I will put in some E75 comparison quips where needed, but I'll try not to let these dominate!

The Nokia 5730 XpressMusic

Essentially, the 5730 is a candy bar S60 smartphone with a hidden side-sliding qwerty keyboard. Such side-sliders aren't totally new to the High Street, with devices like the budget LG KS360 leading the way, bringing full qwerty to the masses. But the 5730's keyboard is in a different league. It's got four rows of characters, meaning that most symbols don't need shifting, and the key spacing is large for a phone. In fact, it's just about the perfect mobile keyboard for typing while standing up, using both thumbs, and it's lot faster than that in a typical Blackberry.

And it's the keyboard (and the main keypad) where the styling of the 5730 starts to hit home, both in a good and a bad way. The key legends are all printed in a 1980's-esque dot matrix font, adding a unique character to the phone. In bright light, readability's not too bad, but in murky conditions (say, a badly lit office) it can be hard to see which key is which. Compared to the striking clear white key legends on the E75, it's tempting to dismiss the 5730 XpressMusic out of hand, but doing that misses half the point of the phone.

This is aimed at the 15 to 25s market, targetting those with enough money to afford the 5730 and to also be able to afford the time and money (pre-raising a family) to have a night life. And it's at night that the 5730 XpressMusic shines. Almost literally. The dot matrix font, when backlit in a dark pub or club, looks extremely cool and is about the right visibility for bashing out texts, instant messages or social network status updates. In addition, the media control keys glow attractively and the translucent red strip around the 5730's frame catches spot lights and also glows, rather warmly. So, while it's tempting to lambast the design team for producing something with style over function, you can at least see how it might work in a typical user's (night) life.

Staying with the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic's keys, there are several aspects of note (other than the already mentioned opinion-polarising font):

* The number pad has discrete keys, which is good (the E75 has plastic strips, each with three 'keys'). And they're all domed for easy finger location. But, as with the E75, cramming the keys into such a small area does make for cramped input. Luckily, the presence of the qwerty keyboard means that such a restriction is easily forgiven.

* The d-pad has the lightest 'feel' of any that I've ever used. Which either makes it a delight (I'm in this camp) or a right royal pain (Rita el-Khoury's in this camp), with some finding that a direction gets pressed when you simply mash down on the centre. It all depends on the size of your fingers and whether you're using the pad of your thumb or the thumbnail - yet another personal choice for this polarising phone!

# The function keys (left and right) are at a level of at least 1mm below the surface of the screen, meaning that each appears somewhat sunken. As a result, you again have to approach them with the thumbnail rather than the pad of the thumb if you don't want the surrounding keys to get activated.

# The music control keys are large enough to hit accurately when you're looking at the phone, but they take some getting used to for controlling music playback 'unseen', e.g. when the phone's in your pocket. A degree of physical demarcation would have helped here - maybe a slight doming of each key, or perhaps a raised dot in the centre of each?

The gaming keys, on a plastic rocker above the screen, are quite firm to press - for sensitive gaming, they're a little too 'hard' in their feel. The keys (circle=A, square=B) only light up and respond when you're in an official N-Gage game, but it's quite cool when they do - with the 5730 held in landscape mode, with the d-pad on the left, the gaming keys are perfectly placed for traditional gaming, e.g. Fire/Jump/Strike.

The main qwerty keys are ever so slightly textured, giving good grip when needed.

The main display is the same as that on the E75 - limited to 2.4" diagonal by the form factor and the need to fit in a numeric keypad on the front of the phone. Visibility is good though, with the transflective backing making it easy to read even in direct sunlight. The resolution's the 2007/2008 standard QVGA and, while this looks a little small compared to some of the smartphones being released, it's fine for a 2.4" screen and it'll be fine for the target market here.

On the 5730's left are flush-covered ports for microUSB (for connection to a desktop, for filling with music, principally) and microSD, an improvement on the weird covers on the E75, which stick out awkwardly. Also good to see is the inclusion of a 8GB card to get new users started. Indeed, for many casual users, 8GB may be enough for all their needs. On the downside, extracting the microSD is quite tricky, harder than on the E75 because of the extra 1mm width of the plastic casing - the card is just that little bit further inside the hatch and is hard to grab hold of.

On the 5730's top is a 4-way (i.e. smartphone) 3.5mm audio jack. Supplied in the box are a great set of stereo, in-ear (complete with spare rubber seals) headphones with hands-free microphone pod a third of the way down the main cable. Perfect. Sound quality is very good through these headphones (though E75 owners should note that this device sounds identical through the same headset, more evidence that the internal electronics are the same.)

On the device's right are a volume up/down rocker (which also works in Photos, to zoom in and out) and a functional two-stage camera shutter button.

As with the E75, there's the (fairly unique) option to charge in two completely different ways. Either via the supplied 2mm mains charger, or via microUSB, from either a data cable or (indeed) a microUSB mains charger. You can even plug in both at the same time, though the 5730 doesn't actually charge twice as fast! It's good to have this dual charger compatibility and a very flexible arrangement.

Bringing up the rear - oh dear

Turning the 5730 XpressMusic over brings several more points of note, most of them bad. Most obvious is the one piece plastic back of the phone, which hooks into the right side of the device and then clicks into place in 'landscape' fashion - don't worry if that sounds tricky, as Nokia helpfully attach a sticker to every new phone, with a diagram! On the plus side, the matt plastic is immune to greasy fingerprints and it's also very light. On the minus side, presumably in order to keep enough tension in it to keep the cover in place, Nokia has bowed it slightly, meaning that the 5730 is at least 1mm thicker than it needs to be - in fact, there's enough space inside the bowed cover that the battery physically rattles if you shake the phone. I've stuck a folded Post-It note in there to pad out the battery a bit.

Also reeking of 'designed this on a Friday afternoon' is the way the 5730's loudspeaker is muffled by the cover. The device's speaker has a pretty good raw frequency response, as can be heard in the E75, which positions a nice little metal grille over the right spot, with plenty of tinkly cymbals in music and crisp voice overtones in podcasts. The 5730 XpressMusic's solid plastic back cover has no such openings, other than a little sound leakage through the extreme top right corner, completely ruining the frequency output from the speaker. There's a simple fix, of course, more DIY(!), and (risking Rafe's wrath) I'm going to be taking my drill and making my own 'grille' of holes - watch this space for photo proof 8-)

Last, but by no means least, on the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic's rear is the camera, identical in specification to that of the E75 and more than its equal in terms of quality. Which is saying something, since the E75 has just about the best 3 megapixel camera I've ever seen in a phone. The 5730 adds a Carl Zeiss-branded lens, bringing slightly sharper detail and slightly better colours. The difference is marginal, to be honest, but it can be seen. There'll be more on the 5730 XpressMusic's camera in part 2 of my review, but in the meantime, have a look at these blow-ups of the same sunny scene: the E75's photo is on the left, the 5730's on the right. Note how the red play equipment is redder, the green leaves are greener and the blue sky is bluer. The railings are also slightly sharper, if you look closely enough.

Although not quite capable of semi-pro photos and dubious for printed blowups of more than 7" x 5", 3 megapixels, combined with this lens and sensor, is certainly enough for good casual photography. As you might expect, the unit struggles in low light, but even here it performs a lot better than, for example, the camera in the Nokia 5800 (and sister devices) and miles better than the mountain of 3mp camera phones from many other manufacturers.

Wireless matters

The number of aerials in each phone that comes out these days just goes up and up. In the 5730 XpressMusic we have GPS (complete with an integrated magnetometer - i.e. a digital compass), an FM radio, Wi-Fi (b and g variants), quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G. Some people have reported network reception problems in the E75, but I've seen none in either that device nor this one - signal strength has been excellent.

I also had no problems with GPS lock, when taking Nokia Maps 2 out for a spin. Yes, version 2, a little disappointing, although plugging the 5730 into Nokia Maps Updater on a PC upgraded things to Ovi Maps 3.1 and brought me bang up to date for free. I'm guessing that an official Ovi Maps 3 update will slip into an upcoming firmware.

Sadly there's no FM Transmitter, something which I'd been starting to take for granted in recent S60 smartphone launches. Still, at the current £250 and at the predicted £200 price point, it's fair to say that something had to be left out. Having GPS and Wi-Fi and Carl Zeiss optics in the camera are already most welcome!

Nokia 3G Netbook with a-GPS and 12 Hour Batt Life Time

2009-08-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

Strictly speaking GSMArena.com is not the place to source information about netbooks or laptops in general. But when the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer decided to debut their own netbook product we just couldn't stay "hush".

The new Nokia 3G Booklet is Nokia's take at the oh-so-popular netbook segment. Since we're all part-time computer geeks (besides being cellphone know-it-all's) we can't really stay indifferent as Nokia unveil their first portable computer.

But without further ado, have a look at those shots and if you're impressed enough we'll just give you the key technical features.

The Nokia 3G Booklet is based on the well known Intel Atom platform, but it's also the first netbook of its kind to feature an HDMI HD video output. Not that we would bet on the little Atom fella playing serious HD stuff, but still having that output is a nice another step into turning them netbooks into media canter PCs.

With battery life of up to 12h it's surely one serious contender as your workday sidearm. As the name suggest, the Nokia 3G Booklet has an integrated 3G/HSDPA modem - Wi-Fi goes without saying. Another interesting feature is the built-in GPS receiver, which will successfully team up with the Nokia Maps application.

The Nokia 3G Booklet has got a 10-inch screen and measures only 20mm in thickness. It weighs 1.25kg and there's a front-facing video camera and Bluetooth.

Mugen Power 2000mAh battery for Nokia E75

2009-08-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

One of the downsides of the Nokia E75 design is that the presence of the qwerty keyboard has meant that there's less 'thickness' available for its battery. As a result, Nokia have had to use the 1000mAh BL-4U, with a third less capacity than the 1500mAh BP-4L that normally powers most Eseries phones. Now, it's true that optimisations in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 mean that the E75 doesn't pull down as much power as, say, an E71 or E90, and that 1000mAh is easily enough to see you through a day of moderately heavy use (especially as you won't be watching much video on the smallish 2.4" screen), but you will have to charge it each night if you don't want to run out halfway through the next day.

If you spend a lot of time on the road or like to go hiking (or similar), away from charging power, then a new option to you is to fit the after-market Mugen 2000mAh battery, purpose built for the E75. As the capacity suggests, this should keep you going for twice as long, and over a week's testing I can verify that this is about right. I went from Wednesday to Saturday on a single charge, with my usual smartphone usage (texting/PIM/music/podcasts/camera/GPS), though I was careful not to waste power outright and didn't keep a data connection active the whole time, for example. I also use 'Offline' mode overnight.

So, with frugal use, I can see this battery giving the E75 a week of operation, which is quite impressive.

The downside, as you can see from the photos, is that the 2000mAh battery is larger. Over twice as thick as the original Nokia battery, which is curious:

Still, Mugen also supply a replacement metal back cover, which hooks into the standard cover latching points. A thicker phone means that you may need a new E75 case - or car cradle. And it means a heavier phone, which may be an issue for you (and the line of your jacket).

The other downside is the cosmetic angle. The replacement cover produces a huge 'bulge', plus the primitive finish isn't as eye-catching as the original textured cover. Now, it's important to emphasise that this is mainly a fashion thing: in the hand, the bulge actually helps use, since the fingers of your hand nestle around it - it makes gripping the E75 easier. But put the phone down or wave it around and the device will look a little 'odd'.

Straight out of the packet, the Mugen battery was fully charged, which is a nice touch. I did have an issue inserting it into the E75 at first, because the battery contacts were so 'new' and stiff. I loosened them slightly with a small screwdriver and then the battery slotted in fine. One other small hardware note was that the replacement back cover didn't fit perfectly - the latches were slightly oversized, meaning that the cover wasn't retained quite as tightly as it should have been. Not a huge problem, but, well, it's very obvious that the E75 has been accessorised!

Only you'll know whether the Mugen 2000mAh battery is right for you - it's a specialist item to be sure, but it does function as advertised and, on a camping trip (for example) might be an investment that saves the day.

Nokia N97 firmware updated to v12.0.024

2009-08-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

A minor firmware update, version 12.0.024, has been released for the Nokia N97. The updates fixes a number of bugs and improves performance and stability. The firmware is being made available through both Nokia Software Updater (part of PC Suite) and OTA on the device. The firmware is currently available for SIM-free models; as usual the availability of the firmware will vary by market and device variant.

A bigger firmware update, which will add significant additional function to the device, is expected to be made available in September or October. For example, this may include the Skype software that was announced at Mobile World Congress this year. We may hear more details at the upcoming Nokia World conference at the begining of September.
Details

The N97 device manager software is most easily accessed by entering *#0000# into the phone's dialer. Choose Options > Check for updates and follow the on screen prompts.

As with any firmware update we would recommend backing up the device before applying the update. While user data is preserved during N97' firmware updates, it is better to be safe than sorry.

Facebook App on Symbian !

2009-08-15T17:16:00.001-07:00

Symartic, developers of ExtGPS, have announced that they will soon be releasing Symabook, a Facebook client application, for S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition. The application allows you to update your Facebook status and view your news feed, friend list and photos. Symabook has a custom UI which is designed to allow you to view photos more easily and make the best possible use of screen space.

Nokia E55 - Review

2009-08-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

The E55 is the latest addition to the business-focussed Nokia Eseries line up, with a twin sister in the form of the Nokia E52. The only significant difference between them is the keyboard - the E52 has a standard 12 key numeric keypad, but the E55 offers a 'half-QWERTY' keyboard.

The E55 and E52 are now starting to become available in select markets - the E52 is now available in the UK at a price of £230 and the E55 will become available later this month at a cost of around £250. As usual, availability and pricing will vary from market to market. In general though, the E5x devices are competitive entries into the mid tier business market.

Both the E55 and E52 run on Nokia's latest Symbian hardware platform. This includes a combined GPS and compass (magnetometer) sensor, and updated cellular radios (quad band GSM and triband WCDMA). There's 128MB of RAM on board, with about 56MB free after boot up, which should be sufficient even for demanding users. The single CPU is clocked at a rate of 600MHz, but as we've mentioned before, looking at pure processor speed is something of a distraction. Nonetheless, in common with other recent Symbian devices, there are no speed concerns. Performance moving around the UI, opening applications and in general operation is very impressive.

Similarly, the software platform is a cutting edge release. The new 7.1 version of the S60 browser is present (previously seen on the N86), as are the usual Eseries tweaks (smart dialling, a business software bundle and updated Contact and Calendar applications) and the phone ships with the latest version of Nokia's Ovi services including Maps 3.0, N-Gage, and the latest version of Nokia's email software. There's some firsts for Eseries too, including Home media, Nokia's UPnP client/server software.

A first glance at the E55 draws the eye immediately to the keypad. This is the first Nokia device with a 'half-QWERTY' keyboard, which has 20 individual keys, with most letters sharing a key with another letter. This type of keyboard is not new, the 'SureType' keyboards of the Blackberry are the most obvious existing examples, but it is something of a departure for Nokia.

The advantage, over a full sized QWERTY keyboard, is of course that you can fit the keyboard into a smaller space. It is also much easier to use one handed; it is equally comfortable to use in thumb-keyboard or one-handed mode. In a design sense, it is a halfway house between a 12 key numeric keypad and a full QWERTY keyboard, but the overall performance, especially the speed of entry, is much closer to a full QWERTY keyboard than it is to a numeric keypad.

The keyboard can be used in either multi-tap mode or in predictive mode. In predictive mode you hit each key once and the prediction software works out which was the most likely intended letter. It works best if you type a full word as the software uses context (just like T9) to increase the accuracy of the 'guess'. I found that the vast majority of the time the prediction software was accurate, and, even when it's not, a correction is a single D-pad press away.

The keyboard itself has been very well designed. The individual keys are angled downwards from the bottom to the top (as on the E75's cover keypad). This means that the bottom of a key is always slightly higher then the top of the key below it. This helps prevent mis-hits and improves the overall accuracy.

Some will pick up the new style keypad quicker than others and there's obviously going to be a learning curve. Ultimately, whether you're comfortable with a half-QWERTY keyboard is a personal decision.

As a QWERTY device, messaging is a clearly a key focus of the E55. Nokia have, rightly, been criticised in the past for a poor email software experience on their Eseries devices. The main fault lay in the Messaging application UI, but there was also some missing functionality. However, in recent software releases, as first seen on the E75, Nokia have made very significant improvements. There's a whole new email client UI, an improved Microsoft Exchange client (includes sub-folder and HTML email support), and, through Nokia Messaging, the ability to get a virtual push-email service for any existing POP3 or IMAP account. The purchase prices of the E55 and E52 include a lifetime (of the device) subscription to Nokia Messaging.

Mail for Exchange and Nokia Messaging, together with the excellent email set up wizard, combine together to create a very powerful email solution for the E55. Just as the launch of the E71 saw Nokia improve the Contacts and Calendar software, so the launch of the next generation of Eseries devices - the E52, E55, E72 and E75 - sees a massive improvement in email capabilities.

The E55 is a svelte phone; the specifications will tell you that it is 54cc in volume and has dimensions of 116 x 49 x 9.9mm. This compares to the the E51's volume of 61cc and dimensions of 115 x 47 x 12mm (and bear in mind the E55 has a 0.2 inch bigger screen) and the E75's volume of 69cc and dimensions of 112 x 50 x 14.4mm. However, without seeing it in person, it's hard to really appreciate the size.

What's even more impressive is that Nokia have managed to fit in a 1500mAh battery into the E55. Once you take t he battery out, it is hard to see where Nokia have put all the hardware that's packed into this phone - it almost seems to defy the laws of physics. Clearly the secret is in the compromises - single speaker, EDOF-based camera, combined radio chipsets and so on, but nonetheless it is a truly impressive achievement.

Concluding thoughts

As I mentioned in our N86 review, the current hype around touch tends to obscure some great non-touch devices. The E55 (and its sister the E52) are good examples of this. A combination of skillful industrial design, comprehensive functionality and a price point that is half that of typical high end devices combine to offer a package that is excellent value for money. In the full review, we'll look at the device's capabilities in more detail, but in general the only real sacrifice, compared to high end devices, is around the camera and video capabilities, and even these are still reasonable.

Those looking at upgrading from an E51 or similar device will find much to like in the E55. The extra screen size (now 2.4"), smaller volume, thinner design, improved performance, upgraded software and additional multimedia functionality, offer plenty of reasons to upgrade. The choice between traditional keypad (E52) and half QWERTY (E55) is a welcome bonus.

The maturity and functionality of the software is worth highlighting. Symbian and S60 has come in for a lot of criticism recently, primarily as a result of S60 5th Edition. But such criticism tends to ignore S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, which together with Nokia's service software, offers a best in class experience on non-touch phones. Non-touch phones may not have the same buzz around them as touch phones, but they do remain the dominant interaction mode for mobile phones.

While the Eseries do have a business focus, the lines between enterprise handsets and consumers handset are not as they once were. The addition of consumer orientated features across the Eseries range, most notably in the area of multimedia support, has helped to blur the lines. With a 'good enough' camera, basic video support, a 3.5mm AV jack and a comprehensive range of multimedia software, the E55 has much greater consumer appeal than the earlier Eseries devices. There has also been an increasing realisation that personal and business lives intermingle. Indicative of this is the 'switch mode' feature that was introduced in the E71 and is present in the E55.

The multiple colours and half-QWERTY keyboard of the E55 bring to mind the Blackberry Pearl, which was among the first enterprise phones to enjoy crossover success. In the last few years, QWERTY-equipped phones have become more popular amongst consumers, who appreciate their messaging abilities, not for corporate email, but for text messaging, instant messaging, social networking updates and the odd personal email. While the E55's software bundle remains business-dominated (Quickoffice editing version, Intranet, Advanced Connection Manager, Traveller, WiPresenter), it is notable that Nokia has also included both its own Ovi Contacts IM solution and a version of Microsoft's Messenger with the E55. Indeed, with the inclusion of software and services like N-Gage, Home media, Photos, Video center and Music store, it's almost as if the current Eseries approach to differentiation is to give its user everything that the consumers get, and then add in a couple of specifics. The effect of this is to re-inforce the impression of value for money, which we highlighted above.

In positioning terms, the Nokia E55 may find itself squeezed between its Eseries companions. For those looking for the entry level Eseries device, the E52, with its standard keypad, may be a better choice. Those looking for a cheap QWERTY might be tempted by the E63 or the E71 (especially after its price falls after the introduction of the E72). On the other hand, given that it has the latest software and hardware, the savvy consumer would do well to look carefully at the E55 (I suspect there may be many a techie eyeing up the E55 as a 'secondary' phone). Ultimately though, the E55 is about giving Nokia's Eseries customers more choice - it gives people a halfway house between the traditional phone-centric Eseries (E51, E52) and the higher end QWERTY-equipped devices (E63, E71, E75).

How to convert TS to any video formats,edit ts or ts mac

2009-08-15T01:05:00.000-07:00

The MPEG-2 TS Converter is an excellent TS Converter to convert MPEG-2 TS format files. The TS Converter can convert .ts files to all popular format files including avi, wmv, wma, mpg, mp3, mp4 and other common formats respectivly for iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP and other digital players with perfect quality and fast conversion speed.

Video_TS Converter is a TS File Converter which can convert the files in Video_TS folder and extract audio from .ts files. The TS Video File Converter supports converting .m2ts, .mts, .mkv, .flv, .mp4 and other supported files.

iSkysoft Video Converter is a professional TS Converter, we can free download and freely enjoy the TS files on iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and other different players with its' help.
TS Converter for Mac is a powerful TS video converting software for Mac users, it's a Mac MPEG-2 TS converter and a Mac MPEG-4 TS converter.

TS Converter for Mac can convert TS, TP, MPEG-TS, M2T videos to popular video formats like AVI, MOV, MP4, FLV, WMV etc.

With this Video TS Editor, you can freely Trim Video, Split video, Add video effect, Apply transition, etc. How to edit TS videos with this TS Editor? Don't worry. Just free download this TS Editor and refer the following guide.

Firstly, Free download and install the TS to WMV Converter and then launch it until the following interface appears.

And then do as the following steps.

Step 1: Load TS files by clicking

Step 2: Select WMV as the output format and use the default folder to save

Step 3: Start converting

Click to start converting TS to WMV automatically.

As you see, just three steps, we can start converting . So easy to convert.! Moreover, with the TS to WMV, we also can enjoy the favorite TS videos on iPod, Mp4, iPhone, etc. They are expected to explore. Free download and have a try.

DOWNLOAD FILE here

How to Upgrade your Firmware

2009-08-15T00:45:00.000-07:00

First of all you need to backup your data:

Backup:

* Connect N81 to pc using cable.
* Open Nokia Nseries pc suite in your pc (you have already installed it, right?).
* Once you decive is connected click on content copier.
* Then you are ready to do a full backup, mass memory and phone memory (you can select this choice from settings menu ) of your device.

When finished you can do "dangerous" step....

Upgrade your firmware:

* Connect N81 to pc using cable. (if you haven't done it before..)
* Open Nokia Nseries pc suite in your pc
* Once you decive is connected click on Nokia software updater (tools menu, is the last one on the top)
* Wait until software have recognized your phone
* If you have already do backup, connect charging unit to your phone and go on..
* Read instruction remaining e follow it... Very simple..

Remember, don't disconnect device during upgrading, and leave it under charge.

Nokia N95 and N81 codes and shortcuts

2009-08-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

N95 and N81 codes
*#06# ............ IMEI number (International Mobile Equipment Identity)
*#0000# ......... Firmware version and date, Phone Model and Operator Variant
*#92702689# ... Life timer (W A R 0 A N T Y) - Total time your phone has spent sending and receiving calls.
*#62209526# ... Wireless MAC Address (M A C _ W L A N)
*#2820# .......... Bluetooth MAC address (B T A 0?)
*#7370# .......... Format phone (R E S 0 ?)
*#7780# .......... Factory Reset (R S T 0 ?)

Note:
Format phone restores phone to as if it was out of the box. Retains firmware version and operator Variant changes but wipes all applications you have installed. Does not format the memory card so any apps on there may reinstall once powered back up again.

Factory Reset resets all settings to defaults but keeps any applications you have installed and photos etc. Both need the Security code, which, by default, is 12345.

Another way to format some symbian phones: Power off phone. Press and hold Green, * and 3 and keep them held whilst powering on and for a few seconds after, if kept pressed this formats without asking for Security Code confirmation.

Shortcuts
N95 picture viewer:
2 – Scroll up (when zoomed)
4 – Scroll left (when zoomed)
5 – Zoom in (12.5%/25%/50%)
6 – Scroll right (when zoomed)
8 – Scroll down (when zoomed)
0 – Zoom out

Press the Power button briefly to bring up the list of profiles to select one.

Press and hold (in Standby):
Right selection key: Voice commands
Multimedia Key: Now Playing
1: Voicemail
2-9: shortcuts to address book (you need to set these up first)
0: Web
#: Switches between General and Silent modes - not supported by all Operator Variants (when composing messages will switch between character and number input when held down)

Tips
If your operator does not support normal SMS delivery receipts (like UK O2) put *0# at the beginning of a text message to get a receipt (the recipient will not see it)

12# (etc) in standby will dial the number held in location 12 on your SIM card address book.

When texting using T9 predictive text you can generate smileys by pressing the 1 key twice or three times and modify the smiley using the * key:

Pressing 1 twice :) then * > > :* > .. > ., and so on
Pressing 1 three times :-) > :-( > ;-) > :-* > ... and so on.

The 0 key gives you a space, then 0, then a carriage return.

Here hassan test of this codes>

The factory codes: *#XXX# definitely do work on the n81--these are codes that work on all nokia devices (and i did have to use the *#RES0# to fix the mess that Mail For Exchange created )

The short cuts for picture viewing are different, as now you have the gaming keys which are used to zoom in and out. also don't forget the navi-wheel. the navi wheel is AWESOME! i use it all the time. i just wish that it was enabled in more parts of the phone.

Multimedia key is the same--it brings up the now playing page on the cool new multimedia menu. And i do wanna saw a few words out the new multimedia menu. the current "application button" (looks like a yin-yang). brings up the menu of all the applications. some people are confused by this and the multimedia button, as you can also access these things from the multimedia button. The difference though, the application button allows you to access by application. the multimedia button seems to be arranged around content. so i think it is kind of neat that nokia has 2 different arrangements for accessing functionality on the phone.

These are the same:
1: Voicemail
2-9: shortcuts to address book (you need to set these up first)
0: Web
#: Switches between General and Silent modes

This doesn't work:
To see the time when the keypad is locked without unlocking, just press and release the power button.

Mobiadapter - USB to Phone

2009-08-01T22:51:00.001-07:00

So you're out and about with your smartphone and you bump into a friend or colleague who happens to have some important documents with him on USB flash disk. But.... how on earth to get the files from the disk to your phone? It's a common enough scenario but one which has been insoluble. Up to now.

Thinking about the issue, you'd normally have to press a laptop or similar into service, mounting the USB flash disk on that and then cabling up your phone using its 'Mass storage' mode, then copying files from one 'disk' to another using the desktop's OS.

Or you could just use the Mobidapter:

Finished in polycarbonate, this unique little widget solves exactly this problem, letting you mount USB disks as if they were standard microSD memory cards (or miniSD if necessary, using a mechanical adapter) in a phone. Most phones don't have microswitches on their card covers, so it's easy enough to insert the Mobidapter and get the electronics recognised, as shown in these photos. In use, you simply 'see' the disk as a memory card and can copy files, do backups, even install software onto it or from it.

BUT. And it's something of a big 'but'. I worry. I worry a lot (as my wife will tell you). The weight of the Mobidapter isn't significant, even with a flash disk inserted, in terms of applying strain to the microSD card slot and connectors, but with the assembly plugged in, I was very, very nervous about bending the adapter up or down - damage the card slot in any way and it's back to the repair shop for the phone, etc.

It's also vitally important to remember that this is pretending to be a memory card and will, in most phones, need to be 'pressed in' slightly in order to pop it out, i.e. using the spring eject - you can't just pull the Mobidapter out, as is tempting. And it's probably an excellent idea to apply the needed force to insert the USB disk into the Mobidapter before inserting the latter into the phone card slot.

Look, the Mobidapter works tremendously well, copes with up to 32GB (the SDHC specification), works up to 70 degrees C, seemingly doesn't need any special driver software - it's perhaps the ultimate conference accessory for grabbing interesting bits from USB disks. I know for a fact that I could use it, with extreme care, and my phone's card slot would survive. But I worry what would happen if used roughly or insensitively. The Mobidapter documentation doesn't warn about this, sadly - maybe gentle use is considered obvious?

The Mobidapter is also rather expensive, at £33 inc VAT. Regardless, if, after seeing the photos above, a light has gone on in your brain, then yes, you'll want one anyway. Even if just to save the day at the ABC Corp event in six months time.

Quickoffice 6.0 Update

2009-08-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

In the light of last month's announcement of the Nokia E72, which includes the full Quickoffice 6.x editing suite, and of yesterday's news for S60 5th Edition phones, we took time out with Phil Spencer, Director, Busness Development at Quickoffice, to get to the bottom of what exactly has been announced so far for current S60 and Quickoffice users and what's coming up.

Steve Litchfield: Following the recent announcements, what is happening to your S60 products?

Phil Spencer: Quickoffice have been longstanding business partners with Nokia, delivering our office products directly to the S60 platform and to users of S60 smartphones since they first began shipping. More recently, Quickoffice and Nokia have worked closely together to agree a way to provide existing and future Nokia S60 users with easy updates to the latest Quickoffice functionality.

Is Office editing still relevant as our phones get smaller and smaller?

Yes, we believe Office functionality is becoming increasingly important to S60 users on the move. The ability to reliably view and edit office documents with complete confidence, including the latest Office 2007 file formats, is a common use case. Nokia and Quickoffice want to ensure S60 offers a 'best-in-class' mobile office experience to its current and future users in order to further cement its position as a leading smartphone platform.

You're changing things at Quickoffice, I hear. How are these changes being rolled out?

We are ensuring that users of currently shipping Nokia S60 phones have an easy upgrade path to the latest Quickoffice release.

For the following devices: Nokia E51, E52, E55, E63, E66, E71, E72, E75 and E90, we've worked with Nokia to be able to provide users with the latest Quickoffice 6 viewing and editing release, free of charge. From the middle of June 2009, to coincide with the Nokia E72 launch, users of these devices have been able to get the latest Quickoffice 6 releases (including today's latest update) as free upgrades via Quickoffice’s on-device delivery channel called Quickmanager™, part of the Quickoffice application.

For Nokia devices that ship with Quickoffice viewers only, the latest Quickoffice 6 viewers are now also available as a free upgrade via Quickmanager. Users of such devices can update their Quickoffice viewers for free with Office 2007 file support or, as before, optionally purchase the latest editing version as an upgrade.

How do users get these updates?

Users can get their free update immediately in Quickmanager. Quickmanager is Quickoffice’s secure software delivery catalog, built into every Quickoffice product. So, all users have it on their phones already. They just need to launch Quickoffice and select ‘Quickmanager’ or ‘Updates and upgrades’ from the menu. Users will be responsible for any network/data fees (if applicable – e.g., if they do not use WiFi) they may incur in the download process, but there will be no additional charges from Quickoffice to receive these updates.

Over time, the latest Quickoffice version will also begin to appear in Nokia firmware updates for various devices, but the updates will always be available in Quickmanager too.

Can you recap Quickoffice 6's main benefits, for new readers?

The latest Quickoffice 6 release adds many great features over the older versions that most users will find in their S60 handset right now (typically Quickoffice versions 4.1 or 3.8). These features include more advanced document viewing and editing (where applicable) functionality, ZIP file support, password-protected file handling, Excel 2007 chart viewing, multiple usability enhancements and much more. A particular highlight is support for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint ’97 through 2007 file formats.

The latest release available from today is a brand new update to the previous Quickoffice 6 product on offer – this version now adds the ability to view PowerPoint 2007 files for all users. Users of the Eseries devices listed above who already took advantage of their first free update from 15th June onwards might also like to visit Quickmanager again and download the very latest editing build again, also for free.

Another highlight of the newest update is support for editing on S60 5th Edition devices such as the Nokia N97.

Will the update be available in all languages?

Currently, to ensure we can reach as many users as quickly as possible, these first free updates are available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. A fully-localized update will follow in the near future (there is no fixed date, but users can check back in Quickmanager if they wish to receive this later).

What about future versions of Quickoffice?

The idea behind this new approach from Quickoffice and Nokia is that the latest viewing release will always be available as a free upgrade to Nokia phones which include our viewers, regardless of what version is in their phone’s initial firmware.

Certain Nokia devices will also ship with the ability for users to always receive the latest editing versions as well (as long as the device is still shipping). Other devices will ship with the latest editors available at that time, and users will be able to purchase further editing upgrades if they wish to receive the latest versions. Exactly what Quickoffice updates users are entitled to receive on each device will be made clear in the device's product literature, and will also be carried through to the Quickmanager offers tailored for each device.

What about users of non-Nokia S60 phones?

Right now, the changes here are the result of work specifically between Nokia and Quickoffice and are aimed at Nokia’s S60 phones only. We’ll continue to offer Quickoffice product upgrades and support to other S60 device users exactly as we do now. For example, the latest Quickoffice 6 release (which now supports editing on S60 5th Edition devices) is also available for Samsung Omnia HD users to purchase.

Nokia 6760 / Surge

2009-07-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

The newest device here, the 6760's the lowest specified and rather plasticky, but will still appeal to some because of the useable slide out qwerty keyboard, rivalling the E75 and 5730's, and the very low price. The camera's not a brilliant one though and there's no Wi-fi, a deal breaker for some.

Compiling the above information, it strikes me that there's no runaway winner in the 'QWERTY on Symbian' stakes. The newest two devices are also two of the lowest specified and with lowest build quality. The E90 should have been top of the pile and should have remained there, even today, but its firmware remains frustratingly forgotten. The E71 is a contender but the use of the older S60 3rd Edition FP1 lets it down slightly. The E75 is the best of the crop for me because of its large keyboard, decent camera and FP2 under the hood, but as noted above, the E75 does have its downsides too.

5800 gets ver. 30.0.011 Firmware

2009-07-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

The Nokia 5800 has just gotten its v30 firmware update (actually v30.0.011). It's currently available Over The Air (*#0000# from the home screen) for some product codes, including my APAC one, as a 4MB download. Perhaps not the 'mega' update that many people had thought was coming, tying in with the upcoming 5530 XpressMusic, this is still a recommended update, bringing bug fixes and performance optimisations.

Do a backup of your data before the update, just in case, but the User Data Preservation system should mean that all your data, apps and settings will work properly after the update.

Hard and Soft Reset for Nokia N70

2009-06-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

Soft Reset

The reset will restore all the phone’s settings to factory default.

*#7370#

Hard Reset

Please make backup before applying this type of reset, since it will restore the phone’s settings as well as erasing all the data in the phone memory.

1. Switch off the phone.
2. Press CALL + * + 3 + ON simultaneously until the phone is completely started.

note: The default password is 12345. You need to press and hold the key until the number appear.

Hard and Soft Reset for Nokia 5800 express music

2009-06-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

Soft Reset

The reset will restore all the phone’s settings to factory default. You need to use the dialer to enter this code.
*#7370#

Hard Reset

Hard reset only works if you had previously updated the phone to v20. Please make backup before applying this type of reset, since it will restore the phone’s settings as well as erasing all the data in the phone memory.

1. Switch off the phone.
2. Press GREEN + RED + CAMERA + ON simultaneously until you see the “Select Country” option.

note: The default password is 12345. You need to press and hold the key until the number appear.

Nokia N86 8MP - Review

2009-06-21T03:01:00.000-07:00

The N86 follows a well worn path; it is a device with a smartphone blood line stratching back a few years into the mists of history... The advent of the Nseries brand set Nokia on the road to the multimedia computer; devices that aimed to converge multimedia functionality and mobile phone into a single device. Its first flowering may have been in the N70, but it was with the N95 that the idea came of age. The N95 introduced the dual slide form factor and went on to become one of Nokia's most popular high end devices ever. With its integrated GPS and five megapixel camera it broke new ground - while such items may seem standard now, there was a palpable sense of amazement at the N95's launch in New York.

The N96 and N85 followed in the N95's dual sliding footsteps, but they didn't manage to capture the imagination in quite the same way. The N96 faced criticisms for being under powered (partly misconceived perception, partly reality), while the N85 didn't seem to add a great deal, aside from an AMOLED screen. Both devices had their own design issues - enough that there seems to be a popular consensus feeling that the N95 never quite got the successor it deserved. So does the N86 change that?

There's no simple answer here. For one, the competitive landscape has changed. Touchscreen phones have arrived by the bucket load since the introduction of the Apple iPhone. The entry of Apple and Google has shaken up the market and given the incumbents plenty to think about. However, I think its important not to get carried away and to understand the context. While touchscreen phones do get the lion's share of media and consumer attention, they are still out sold by the non-touch screen devices. Nokia has faced increased competition from RIM (Blackberry Bold and others), but, outside the enterprise space, it has continued its near total dominance of the non-touchscreen smartphone space. And, at the same time that it has faced massively increased competition at the high end, it has pushed S60 further now into the mid tier with devices like the E63, 5320, and 5800 XpressMusic.

So the N86 arrives in a different world to its predecessors; this alone means it is less likely to match the success of its illustrious predecessor. However, there are still plenty of people who have hung onto their N95 and are looking for a replacement, or those who don't want to go the touch route and are looking for a powerful consumer-focussed phone. Does the N86 deliver for them? As we'll see in this review, I think the answer is yes. The N86 is as close as you'll get to a spiritual successor to N95 and it is a really top draw consumer smartphone. There are really three main reasons for this - one, a significantly improved camera, two, a stylish and high quality design, and three, a mature* software platform that delivers an array services straight out of the box.

* Though much of the platform is mature, note that the early v10 firmware on the N86 has a few glitches - these will, in true Nokia fashion, doubtless get addressed soon in a firmware Over-The-Air update.

In the first part of this review, we're going to give you a general overview and mention some of the phone's highlights after a few days of use. We'll be examining all areas in more detail in subsequent reviews once we have had a chance to get some more real world usage under our belts, so treat this as our first impressions assessment.

Hardware

As noted in our earlier feature, the N86 8MP hardware specifications, camera aside, are not very different to the Nokia N85. The only really notable difference is the addition of a stand on the back of the device and a 21g increase in weight. If you're coming from the N95 or N96 then there are some more significant differences: the AMOLED screen, FM transmitter, RDS with the FM radio, and increased battery capacity. That said, as we'll see, the camera is a major upgrade and, just as importantly, there have been a number of tweaks to the design and materials of the phone.

As with the N85, the AMOLED screen really makes the N86 stand out if you put it next to a traditional LCD screen. AMOLED screens are becoming less unusual (e.g. i8910 HD), but it is still great to see this superior screen technology (in most, but not all, light conditions) being used. The key advantages of AMOLED are a brighter screen, increased colour range, improved contrast ratio and reduced power usage. The QVGA resolution will disappoint some, and it's a definite potential weak spot. Technical limitations means that S60 3.2 is stuck on QVGA, but that will change with the first Symbian Foundation release. On the other hand, it is also reasonable to argue that without physically increasing the size of the screen there's limited value in increasing the resolution. Smaller screens make sense on non-touchscreen devices - it's one of the prices you pay for true one handed usage.

The N86, at 149g, is a heavy phone, which makes it less pocketable than a device like the N79, but it does have the benefit of giving a reassuring feel of solidity, similar to the E71, and adds to the overall impression of superior build quality. It's well weighted in the hand, in either open or closed modes. Together with the redesigned keypad, this means that it feels less bottom heavy than previous dual sliders. The slide mechanism, which is spring assisted, is excellent and feels like it will stand up to long term usage. Nokia have had plenty of experience in designing dual sliders over the years and it's one of the areas where the N86 mostly obviously benefits from its ancestry. As with the N85, the slide operates on two 'runners', which should provide good long term stability. I would rate the slide on our N86 review unit as the best so far - there is still a very small amount of movement/give, but it's much reduced from the average N95.

The N86 shares the same design language as the N97. Design is a subjective area, but I would rate the 2009 Nseries design language as a significant improvement over that of 2008 (N78, N85, N96). There's still a sense of sleekness and minimalism, especially when the slide is closed. Previous double sliders never seemed to make full use of the space below the screen - instead there was always a Nokia logo just below the screen. Thankfully this has now been moved to the top of the screen, with the control cluster making good use of the extra space and consequently feeling much less cramped. Furthermore, the control cluster now has individual physical keys for each control (rather than the flat plastic sheet seen in the softkeys, S60 key and cancel key on the N85), a particular highlight is the angled home key, much easier to hit, and arguably as visually appealing as light up keys. The multimedia key has been removed, a decision which will evoke mixed reactions, but one that does makes things less cramped. The D-pad has been enlarged and is less stiff, which makes it more comfortable to use. All of these factors add up to make a control cluster that's easier to use.

On the lower slide, a similar change sees a move away from the flat keys of the N85 and N96 to individual buttons for each number key. The buttons are reasonably spaced, have good tactile feedback and a decent amount of travel, although, as with most sliders, they're still somewhat cramped along the top row. It didn't seem to make much difference to my raw text entry speed, but the changes do improve the perception and there's less of a learning curve before you get comfortable with the keypad.

The top slide has seen as similar redesign. The individual keys are far easier to use - it's possible to use them 'blind' (e.g. when the phone is in your pocket and you want to skip a music track). Thanks to the extra illustrative icons, it's also clearer what they can be used for. The media playback functions have always been obvious, but the image zooming and N-Gage controls generally required you to read the manual before you discovered them.

On the back of the device, the camera slide follows the same design as the N85, a square block on runners. Fast and easier to use and, together with improvements to the camera software start up time, should give a better chance to capture those quick snaps. It's surrounded by a stand which lets you place the angled phone, in landscape orientation, on any flat surface. It's useful for watching videos or showing off a slide show. There's a small micro switch on the stand which, via an entry in the phone's setting, means you can specify a specific application to start when you open the stand. It defaults to Photos, but Clock might be a viable alternative.

There's a key lock slider on the left of the device (slightly awkward positioning, arguably), and camera capture and volume control buttons on the right and all of them have been improved from earlier models. The microSD slot is on the lower left hand side of the device, but you need to take the back cover off to access it. Given the size of memory cards and the N86's 8GB of internal memory, it's a sensible choice, as it removes a flimsy slot cover and reduces the number of openings for dust.

The battery used is the BL-5K, rated at 1200mAh, and this should be more than enough for typical use. It's the same capacity as that in the top-rated N95 8GB but it doesn't have to power a hungry LCD screen backlight - OLED displays are much more efficient - I'd expect most N86 owners to be able to go a couple of days of normal use, at least, between charges.

There's more good news in the materials that make up the N86. The entire front of the device is covered by tempered glass and it looks fantastic. No more indented screens or dust traps here. It should also prove more scratch resistant than the plastics that have been used on other Nseries devices, although I wasn't brave enough to carry out any real tests. A hard plastic makes up the edges of the device, while the back is a single piece of plastic which is removed to access the battery and SIM card slot. Crucially, this plastic has a matt finish which makes it much more grippy and less likely to attract finger prints that the shiny plastics on the N85 and N96.

As you'll have probably guessed from the above, the overall build quality is excellent. In the Nseries line, Nokia seemed to have made gradual improvements over the years, but both the N86 and N97 are big steps forward. The build quality of both devices seemed to more closely match what you would expect from their respective price tags.

Camera (stills)

With the 8MP appended to its name it is no surprise that it is the standout feature of the N86. It is the first 8 megapixel (3280 x 2464) cameraphone that Nokia have produced. However, as we've commented in the past and as Nokia were at pains to point out at the launch in Barcelona, cameras are about a lot more than just the raw megapixel number. With the N86 there are several key factors that are more important that the increase in megapixels: increased sensor size and sensitivity, optimised Carl Zeiss optics, variable aperture and improved software algorithms. Let's work through these in turn.

As with other a number of other Nokia devices, there's a Tessar Carl Zeiss lens in the camera, but as the first 8 MP device Nokia did suggest that extra time and attention had gone into the N86 (typically other camera modules are shared across multiple device). As a senior Carl Zeiss executive said to me at the N86's launch, 'we wouldn't put our brand on it, if we didn't think it was a good camera'. Essentially, Nokia and Carl Zeiss have worked together to provide a good an experience as possible within the physical constraints of a mobile phone and within certain cost constraints.

Nokia says the size and sensitivity of the sensor has been increased. This physical increase in the size of the sensor and improved sensitivity means that it is able to capture more incoming light (photons) over a greater area. This gives the sensor more 'information' to work with and consequently results in higher resolution and potentially higher quality pictures.

The N86 boasts a variable aperture, which means the size of the aperture (optical diameter) can be varied. The N86 has three settings: F2.4, F3.2 and F4.8, other phones typically have a fixed aperture (Nokia's are generally at F2.8). Varying the size of the aperture means the amount of light let into the sensor can be changed. Higher F numbers mean a smaller opening and, as well as letting in less light, this can give sharper images. The overall effect of this is that the N86 can produce higher quality photos over a greater range of lighting conditions. While the most noticeable difference will be in low light conditions (where camera phones typically struggle), the N86 will also take better photos in very sunny conditions (sharper). We'll put this to the test in the coming weeks.

In addition to the usual Nseries mechanical shutter, Nokia have also included software that does 'automatic motion-blur reduction'. Nokia have also continued to refine their software algorithms in general and, as ever, these play an important role in the final results. Going hand in hand with this are improvements to the camera software performance; camera start up time, shutter lag and shot-to-shot times have all been improved.

Also on note in the camera department is the inclusion of a wide angle lens (28mm) lens. This means that the N86 will capture a greater area compared to a standard lens. In captured images you'll see extra material on the left, right, top and bottom of images.

The best way to demonstrate what the camera can do is to show off a few samples:

The Camera application has the usual assembly of settings, including a customisable toolbar and geo-tagging, but the new highlight is the panorama mode. This functionality, a result of Nokia's acquisition of bitSide, automatically stiches images together to produce a wide panoramic image. A bit gimmicky? Maybe, but it does manage to produce some decent looking results:

We'll look at the rest of the Camera application and camera peformance in more detail at a future date. To kick things off, in the next few days, we'll publish a brief photo comparison, which sets the N86 against the N82, N97 and i8510, specifically testing out the crucial low light and night scenarios.

The N86 has a "Third generation dual LED flash", meaning that it's brighter than previous units, but the proof will be hopefully seen in our test photos and ongoing detailed review. Nokia continue to persevere with dual LED technology rather than Xenon for their flash units, quoting size and power efficiencies - you'll have to wait for our tests to see any illumination penalties incurred.

Video

Video capture on the original Nokia N95 was stunning for its time, taking the market leading VGA capture (at 30fps) of the niche N93 and putting it in a much more standard, mass-market form factor. The N95 8GB and N82 inherited the same camera and set up Nokia's reputation as the best video capture phones in the world. Unfortunately, the N79, N85, N96 and N97 all featured a different camera that was pre-focussed, in video mode, on infinity, making them not suitable for close-up videos of family and friends, all of whom would appear somewhat blurred.

The N86 8MP has, thankfully, a camera along the lines of the original N95's with a focus of around a metre or two. In good light, this means a depth of field that extends backwards towards the horizon and gives the best of all worlds. You can see the clarity of video from the N86 here in a test video shot in sunlight. Note also that the audio is as clear and of as high quality as we've come to expect from Nokia's Nseries.

With a gap of two years since the N95, you might have expected Nokia to have progressed beyond VGA capture, but this is something of a technological sweet spot. If you increase resolution further you start increasing the file sizes of movies way beyond the current 20MB/min, requiring more and more storage to save files and requiring more and more processor power to encode and manage them. As we've seen with the Samsung i8910 HD, it's easy to mess up in this area (frame rate drops, audio problems), but I would expect to see Nokia announce a phone with 720p (HD) recording at some point, possibly MWC next year, when the electronics, processor power and storage equations have all been solved.

In summary, video capture is as good as, or possibly a bit better than, that from the N95 and N93 - there are certainly no focus issues as we've seen (disappointingly) even in the recent N97.

Software

The N86 runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 on Symbian OS 9.3. This is now a mature platform and a known quantity. For some this will mean the UI feels a little dated and unexciting compared to S60 5th Edition or other touch UIs, but for others this familiarity will be welcome. S60 3rd Edition increasingly seems to face criticism for being out-dated or slow. That really isn't fair, as the N86's overall performance is very good and, while it may lack the glam and glitter of recent touch interface devices, it often gets the job done faster. The core functions remain accessible for new users and, for the moment, its phone centric approach addresses a broader market than the tablet/Internet-centric approaches typical of touch screens UIs. It's no accident that it remains the dominant UI on non-touchscreen open mobile platform devices.

If you're moving up from Feature Pack 1 (e.g. N95) you'll notice a very definite performance boost both in overall speed and battery life time (in addition to the savings from having an OLED display). The addition of the central softkey, easier multi-tasking and other usability tweaks all make life easier in day to day usage; while technologies such as firmware-over-the-air updates and improved support for multimedia and Internet standards add significant functionality.

The standard S60 software applications, such as Contacts, Calendar, Messaging and the 'Office' software suite are all present. As an Nseries device, the N86 also has a number of extras, including UPnP support (via the Home network application) and Internet radio. The N86 makes full use of the new standard Nokia iconography set, which does its job in providing functionality clues and consistency, such that you hardly notice it (as it should be).

A nice touch is the updated welcome application that helps you set up your phone. As before, it links into the Settings wizard (set up operator settings and email) and Switch (copy contacts and other content from another phone) applications, but it now also includes a few extra stages. These include the ability to set the phone's name (for Bluetooth), customise ringtones, and set wallpaper and themes. Not only does it allow an extra degree of customisation from the outset, it also introduces users to fact they can customise their phone.

Nokia's development of Ovi software and services continues apace and the N86 gets the full treatment. Ovi Maps, N-Gage, Nokia Messaging, Music Store are all pre-installed and offer a consistent and rich level of service experience that competing manufacturers will find difficult to match. There are still plenty of holes (music DRM, application usability concerns, operator intransigence, user education, resource-heavy PC software, incomplete single sign on, and so on), but Nokia's vision of an extra service layer is starting to come into focus.

The most recently launched service, Ovi Store, is not pre-installed in v10 on our review device, but is likely to be added in later firmware and should be available via Download! or direct from the store.ovi.mobi site. Nor are other Ovi services, such as Sync, well promoted, but that's probably a good thing as they need to go through another development iteration.

Ovi Maps 3.0 (previously Nokia Maps) is installed out of the box (the first phone thus equipped). As we mentioned late last last week, Ovi Maps 3.0 is a big step forward from Nokia Maps 2.0. There's still room for improvement, but I think it's comfortably past the 'good enough' point and well on the way to 'very usable' territory. The sync to the web version of the Ovi Maps is a particular highlight, even if it's not immediately obvious. Generously, Nokia include a six month drive license (Europe) and a lifetime pedestrian navigation license (worldwide), which has a total value of about £35. Once the drive license has expired, you'll have to pay to renew the license, but, as with earlier versions, non-navigation functionality remains fully operational.

The N86 also features the N-Gage games service out of the box. The central two keys, on the top multimedia slide, act as 'a' and 'b' buttons in games when the phone is held in landscape mode. Around 15 trial N-Gage games are installed by default (into the 8GB of internal memory) and an activation code, redeemable against any game, with a value of £8, is included in the box.

Also pre-installed is Nokia Messaging, which significantly improves the email software compared to earlier S60 devices. Email is now also much easier to set up, a shortcut is provided off the home screen and, in most cases, you should only need to supply your email address and password, the rest will be done for you.

The standard S60 Music player is present, which has evolved into a usable, if unexciting, application since the days of the N95. The Nokia Music store is easily accessible and well integrated with the phone's music library. Purchased music comes in WMA format with DRM protection, but it looks likely that by the end of year this will have been switched to DRM free MP3 files.

Around 10 tracks are pre-installed (varies by market), which is a nice touch as it lets you play around with the Music player before syncing your own music or purchasing from the Music store. The integrated FM transmitter gives an alternative (and more universal) option for playback, in addition to Bluetooth A2DP. With Podcasting, FM radio and Internet radio applications, the audio software suite remains comprehensive and a definite highlight. There's nothing revolutionary going on, but as soon as you switch on the device for the first time it is ready to go.

We'll cover specific parts of the phone's software in more detail at a later date, but as noted above it's very much a known quantity. You can read the relevant sections of our other recent hardware reviews to get further insight.

Conclusion

At £400 (initial launch price, SIM-free), the N86 falls firmly into the 'expensive' category. Against devices like the N82 or N95 8GB, which are approaching the end of their lives (and have price cuts to match), it may look even more expensive. However, both of these devices were more expensive than the N86 when they first launched. In terms of top end Nseries devices, the N86 is, comparatively, one of the best value.

The big issue for the Nokia N86 is that it faces the prospect of launching in the shadows of this summer's big touch screen heros - the Apple iPhone 3GS, Nokia N97, HTC Magic, Samsing i8910 HD, and HTC Touch Diamond 2. However, while the hype may be elsewhere, the fact remains that the N86 is a very impressive, even desirable device. As the latest evolution in Nokia's dual slider form factor (and as a true multimedia powerhouse) it has something of a 'classic' feel, but it also benefits greatly from the maturity of a device with ancestry.

At one level, it all comes down to whether you want a touch device or not... However, that's not an easy question to answer. It may be tempting to go with the new technology just for the sake of it, but you may then find yourself wishing you had stayed with non touch devices.

If you're looking for a consumer-focussed, non-touchscreen smartphone, then I think the N86 is a very strong contender and is, arguably, the best device that money can buy.

Nokia N97 - Review

2009-06-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

OK. Take the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, now well known and loved. Add:

* a larger screen (3.5" rather than 3.2")
* 32GB of internal flash memory (yes, 32 GIGABYTES)
* a functional slide-out qwerty keyboard
* a mechanical d-pad for game playing
* a more sensitive resistive touchscreen layer
* a much better stills camera (5 megapixels, large aperture)
* a metal screen surround, with higher quality buttons and better build quality generally
* microUSB charging
* a compass
* a bigger battery (1500mAh, rather than 1320mAh)
* a new, much better widget-based homescreen
* N-Gage applications, the Nseries image gallery and other associated applications
* improvements to Web, with kinetic scrolling

... and you've got the N97. That's quite a list of improvements. The big question is whether the improvements are worth the extra £200 or so that Nokia are asking for the N97, SIM-free. Arguably yes, I've been impressed so far (a few caveats below not withstanding), and with many people eventually getting the N97 on contract, in which case it will be 'free', the price issue will all but go away.

What follows is my initial tour of the Nokia N97 and my thoughts along the way. Over the next two weeks, we'll have further review parts, looking in more detail at every aspect of the N97.

In the hand, the N97 adds a few extra millimetres in width (allowing for the larger screen), in height (ditto) and in depth (due to the qwerty keyboard), but the overall device is still great to hold, with the bottom of the rear face curved downwards to both provide a natural handhold and stabilise the N97 when on a desk being typed on. It's still quite a bit narrower than other competing full-face devices, e.g. the iPhone, but the difference from the 5800 is enough that the N97 feels less of a touchscreen phone and more of a miniature tablet computer.

One with a rather well hidden secret. There's a hinge mechanism (with struts apparently made from a metal alloy, thankfully) and the screen slides and tilts up, as shown above. The thing is - the build quality of the mechanism is so high that it takes a few seconds for you to even work out which way the screen slides - the fit when closed is that tight. Some great mechanical design here and one which I'm sure Nokia has patented. HTC and Apple, to name but two, will be eyeing up this design enviously. It brings to mind the great Psion palmtop designs of old and, like the Psions, there's a ribbon cable allowing the magic to happen while keeping data flowing to the screen. However, we're talking a ribbon cable with more maturity and suppleness than the clumsy component in the Psion - so I don't anticipate ribbon cable problems here. Here's a shot of the cable itself:

One side effect of the stable and sturdy hinge is that the space available for the qwerty keyboard is rather restricted, in terms of rows of keys. A further restriction comes because of the need for a mechanical d-pad (needed for compatibility with all the N-Gage games). And then, because of the sliding mechanism, the keys are constrained vertically as well. The end result is a keyboard that's constrained into a rectangle measuring only 85mm by 20mm, with key travel being only a millimetre.

It's all a far cry from the Psion Series 5mx, an old device which, ostensibly, this has a lot in common with. Qwerty keyboards have been steadily declining in size and usability in portable devices - the N97's is only slightly quicker to use than the on-screen 'virtual' qwerty of the Nokia 5800. In part, the lack of speed is because of the size, but it's also because of the weird layout imposed by only having three rows: the space bar is shuffled off to one side, for right thumb use, for me the single most frustrating element of the design - in fairness, you do get used to it, but having to relearn where the most commonly used key is located is annoying.

Another design element which would have been trivial to fix is that the current key legends are comparatively small. They look clear enough in the photos, but use the N97 in real life in average light and your eyes have to be pretty good to always see which key you're about to hit. Larger letter legends would help enormously here, Nokia. Changing the key layout and then making the legends tiny is not a good combination... It's worth noting that in, low light, the keys are backlit beautifully and the experience is transformed, with no visibility problems.

To re-iterate what I said in the podcast yesterday, the Nokia N97 is better seen as a touch-screened Nseries device that happens to have a d-pad for gaming and a miniature qwerty keyboard for ad-hoc use, rather than as a crossover upgrade from an E90 or E71, both suited to much longer text entry - coming from either of those smartphones you'll probably be frustrated by the keyboard here. It's fine for short text messages, but writing anything longer would drive me crazy.

The other effect of the hinge is, of course to angle the screen, Psion Series 5-style, so that it's automatically at a good angle for viewing when sat at a desk. I found that using the N97 in this mode, with the screen raised (as in the top photo here) was fairly practical, even though you have to brace the device slightly for finger taps in the top half of the screen.

The screen is still TFT LCD and with a resistive top layer, of course, but the N97's component is of much higher quality than that in the 5800 XpressMusic, with the result that it's slightly more responsive to finger taps and drags, and with there being significantly better contrast outdoors in bright light - although the TFT does get harder to see the more you angle the screen into the sun, it stays clear for much longer than the 5800. This is especially valuable when taking photos or video, as the chances are that you'll have the sun behind you. Of course, a transflective screen (such as on most traditional S60 phones or on the Apple iPhone) would have done even better - maybe making a resistive transflective screen is a problem? Anyway, perhaps that's an option for a future device - I don't think many people will be too disappointed by the N97's screen overall.

The cameras in Nokia's Nseries smartphones haven't really improved much since the classic N95 - the specification has remained identical, while we've seen minor variations in colour handling and video focus. We now have dual LED flash, which is obviously better then single LED, but light years short of the Xenon flash on the N82 and 6220.

In use, stills results are excellent and even better than those from the N95, with slightly better colour accuracy, to my eyes at least. Here's a sample photo from the N97 from this morning:

There will be much more on the camera side of things in a future review part. Video capture is at the same spec as on the 5800 - with no initial focussing yet again and with focus set at infinity - I much preferred the N95/N82 style capture, focussed at a metre or so and aimed at making people in focus rather than the distant background, but I guess it depends on what you want to shoot. Those looking for initial focus in video mode will perhaps be looking at Samsung's i8910 HD instead. Here's a brief (overcast but bright) video clip shot on the N97 in its default widescreen mode - again, wait for my review part for detailed samples in wider light conditions.

Of special note is that the sound levels in recorded clips are too low. I'm really hoping that this is a software issue that can be fixed in firmware - maybe levels were set low so as to cope with people recording video at concerts, or maybe the automatic gain control is just not working right yet?

Also of note in the N97 on the hardware side is the huge 1500 mAh battery, the same one as in the E90, E61i and E71 - it's a proven power source and it's good to see here. Battery life shouldn't be an issue.

In terms of processor speed and general performance, the core chip runs at almost 20% faster than that in the 5800, resulting in a speed-up that's noticeable. Everything's that bit snappier and most of the time I had no complaints about the speed of S60 5th Edition. Free RAM after boot-up (and after all homescreen widgets had loaded) was 46MB, but I'd expect this figure to rise in future firmwares, up into the mid 50MB range, at least.

Is 50MB or so of free RAM enough? This is an argument that could run and run. 95% of users will have no problems, but power users will start hitting the limits in normal use. For example, running up Web (with a big page loaded), the N-Gage client, Music player, plus the Ovi Store and a few PIM applications - a not unreasonable workload after a few days of use) - results in some of the initial loads (Facebook, AccuWeather, etc) being closed down, to save memory. As the firmware is tightened up by Nokia, I'd expect the free RAM to rise and these minor issues to go away. Yes, Nokia could have stuck in another 128MB of RAM, as Samsung did with the i8910 HD, but there are cost and battery life implications. A tough one to call.

Taking a long hard look at the software bundle in the N97 is something that will take us a few review parts to get through. However, here are some of the standout highlights, bearing in mind that this is a 'first impressions' piece:

Homescreen - never mind the schizophrenic mess that is the 5800's home screen, the N97 nails it here. Mixing live social panes (e.g. showing current Facebook messages, Hi5 and more...), live weather (via AccuWeather) for your actual location, application shortcuts, email and more, you'll never have used the home screen so much. Great job. GREAT job. And a single side swipe removes all the widgets, for both privacy reasons and so that you can admire any wallpaper. Very neat. I dearly, dearly hope that this homescreen also finds its way to other Nokia S60 5th Edition devices...

Web - as Rafe already reported in detail, Web now has kinetic scrolling, plus other enhancements, such as defaulting to full-screen view once a page's HTML has been parsed.

Maps - although still v2.0, it now works in landscape mode as well. Hopefully this can be retrofitted to the 5800 in the next firmware.

N-Gage - the client for this is built-in (at least on our retail review model - this may vary according to markets) and all N-Gage games that I tried seemed to work fine. No doubt there is room for fine tuning here, not to mention games which actually use the full screen, but it's a start.

Nokia Drawing - a new, simple utility that lets you do quick sketches. More on this in due course.

Quickoffice - as usual with Nseries devices, it's the viewer only, v4 (so no Office 2007 file compatibility), though an editing version is/will be only a paid upgrade away.

Third party bundle - from JoikuSpot to YouTube to Amazon to AP News to Qik to Boingo, Nokia has sensibly rounded up some of the best free apps and widgets and pre-installed them. About time. With the Ovi Store also now in the firmware, more users than ever before will finally get to grips with third party software.

Pros
* Super screen in most light conditions
* Great build quality
* Mature camera system
* Powerful battery
* 32GB of flash memory
* Good external buttons and d-pad
* Terrific homescreen 'live' widgets
* Good third party application bundle
* Kinetic scrolling in Web, Ovi Store and other Webkit-based apps

Cons
* Fiddly, non-standard qwerty button keyboard
* Video camera focussed on infinity rather than on people
* Relatively low RAM
* Cam-based hinge with ribbon cable - however strong, there's the possibility of breakage, failure and dirt/dust ingress - better treat the N97 nicely, everybody!
* No TV out cable supplied in the box
* Immature firmware (typically true of any phone)

Am I excited by the Nokia N97? Yes, on the whole it offers a huge step up from my current 5800 XpressMusic, with comparatively few disadvantages. Do I want one? Yes, definitely, I'm a true geek and this packs a frighteningly large amount of technology into such a small box. Is it the perfect Symbian smartphone, one that will please everybody? The usual answer: No. Camera fiends will be looking for 8 megapixels and above, preferably with Xenon flash - for them the N82 is still the best real world camera-toting Symbian-powered smartphone. Email and office fanatics will be looking for a much better (and more standard) qwerty keyboard (see the E90 comparison photo below - the E90 still reigns supreme here, among Symbian phones, at least). Music fans will find the 5800 XpressMusic better and louder, or might prefer the dedicated hardware music controls on the potentially underrated N96. But between these extremes, there's a space in between where the N97 will do almost everything many people will ever ask of it and will do them very well indeed.

The original N95 was a watershed device that opened people's eyes to what was possible in a world of uninspiring options. We've mentioned the N97 in the same breath in our podcasts, but I'm starting to think the comparison isn't that appropriate. The world of large touch-screened smartphones is itself fiercely competitive these days, and many of them rock a qwerty keyboard too. Will the N97 stand out? It's certainly a desirable bit of kit and, with significant firmware and feature love from Nokia in the next 12 months, might well have the staying power that the N96 seemed to lack.

Nokia E75 vs E71 - Form Factor

2009-05-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

One thing I have found myself thoroughly enjoying on the Nokia E71 over the past 5 or 6 months that I’ve been using it daily, is the form factor. Up until the E71, I had never liked the concept of qwertys and I was pretty much agnostic about form factors. But day after day, I started realizing that my views were changing about both statements: I was starting to be dependent on qwertys, and the candybar qwerty form factor was easily becoming my favorite. The E71 changed me, as it did with many of its owners I’m sure. I noticed that because I’ve had a lot of devices in my hand in the past months (N96, 6210 Navigator, N85, N82 to name a few), but my SIM card couldn’t remain in them even one day: it was instantly flowing back to the E71. The E71 is solid, sexy and most of all slim and very well built.

It is with these assumptions in mind, that I found myself opening the E75’s box and looking at the device wondering: how long will my SIM card last in it? Knowing the long list of similarities between the E75 and E71, on a hardware and software point of view, the main difference between them remained the form factor. So how did I find it?

First of all, I want to point one thing out: the E75 that I received is a french version and hence has an AZERTY keyboard, not qwerty. My E71 is also azerty, mind you. But, there are some differences between both, mainly affecting the punctuation, characters, and numbers placement. For example, some punctuation marks are appended to the Fn button and hence can be accessed by long-pressing the corresponding key, but the period and the question mark are appended to the Shift key, which means that I can only access them by clicking Shift then clicking the corresponding key. Whomever designed the Azerty on the E75 should be shot in the head. Seriously. I still find it counter-intuitive to type on the keyboard, and I still make mistakes all because of that.

For the past 6 days that I’ve had the E75, I had to relearn the placement of all the keys, all the numbers, all the letters. It’s stupidly annoying, and it reminded me why Qwertys suck. There is no default key placement, an issue that we never face on T9 keypads. The 12 keys are always there at the same place, and the appended alphabet is always the same no matter what device you have, no matter what manufacturer made it. We need that standardization for qwerty.

First impressions

At first, I kept sliding the full keyboard, even to type the smallest word. I guess I was too obsessed with the E71. But a few hours later, I found it increasingly easy to type those small words on the keypad, and to only slide the keyboard for full sentences or paragraphs.

For someone self-confessed as an E71 addict, the full keyboard on the E75 took me some getting used to. I was easily able to type fast on it, probably as fast as I do on the E71, with all the keys offering some awesome tactile feedback, but I wasn’t comfortable. The keyboard is double the width of the E71’s, the keys are also a lot bigger and very flat. This means that my fingers had to travel between each key and the next one, a problem I don’t face on the E71.

Six days later

To answer my first question on how fast will my SIM card fly back to the E71, I’ll say that for 6 days, it remained in the E75. That, by itself, is an achievement that the E75 should be proud of. Very proud of. Over the course of these 6 days, I got used to the weird key layout on the E75’s keyboard, as well as to its width and the width of it’s keys. Now, it’s second nature to type on it, and I no longer feel uncomfortable doing so.

The form factor of the E75 also draws some attention from passers by. Everyone assumes that it’s an ordinary phone, until I slide out that full keyboard, the sounding click of the slide resonating when it’s open, then I get some glances as if I did something very Sci-Fi’ish.

Another thing I have noticed over the 6 days, is that although I still prefer the landscape layout on the screen, I have missed the portrait layout which shows a bit more lines and hence a bit more information. The portrait mode is something the E71 doesn’t offer and I like that the E75 gives me the choice. One thing to add is that I haven’t disabled automatic screen rotation on the E75, something I always do on other devices. This is probably due to the fact that on the N96, N85, N82 amongst others, landscape orientation feels forced as the keypad is still in portrait. With the E75, I always have the option to slide open the full keyboard and start typing while still holding my phone horizontally.

On a negative note, one major annoyance I have with the form factor, is the lack of a d-pad, softkeys and menu button on the slideout qwerty. It’s really annoying to have to go over to the top slider each time you want to control the d-pad or select something. I got used to it but it’s still counter intuitive in my opinion.

Another negative thought is that you HAVE to hold the E75 with both hands in order to use the qwerty, and it is impossible to type with one hand. I tried doing it but I failed. On the E71, it’s very very easy to type with one hand.

Which is better?

Many people have asked me if I like the E75 better than the E71, or not. To those I answer, that by the importance of the form factor alone, they’re just different. I like them both, in a different way, and I can see myself using them both. The E71 feels more at home in my commute-filled life in Paris. The E75 would be awesome if I am leading my always-behind-the-wheel life in Lebanon: I text a lot while I drive, and T9 is way safer than qwerty as I’ve memorized the layout. Watch out for tomorrow when I shell out the ins and outs of hardware differences between the E71 and E75.

The Nokia 5800 already supports multitouch

2009-05-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

The Nokia 5800 is criticised by some for being a single-touch device that can only register one finger press at a time. But is this actually true? Not quite. With a bit of clever interface design the existing 5800 hardware is already capable of registering two simultaneous screenpresses at once, and you can see how this works in the full story below (you can even try it for yourself, and there's a video of a 5800 game using it). The reason this is worth mentioning is that Nokia is already using a more limited version of this method in their just-released Maemo 5 SDK, which is the latest version of the platform they use on their internet tablets. If Nokia's already using it there, it seems very likely they could use it on their S60 devices too.
How multitouch on the 5800 can work

This example might seem pointless because it doesn't do anything useful, but that's because the QWERTY keyboard hasn't been designed with multitouch in mind. Apps designed for multitouch would use it properly and do stuff that is useful.

The purpose of this example is just to de monstrate how the 5800 detects keypresses, so you can see how multitouch could work.

The beauty of this example is that you can try it out yourself on your own 5800. Just start an application that uses text entry and select the full screen QWERTY keyboard. Now, do the following...

Hold down Q, and the Q button lights up:

Hold down P, and the P button lights up:

Now, hold down P and Q simultaneously, and the button directly between your touches lights up (either R or T, depending on exactly how you're pressing Q and P):

All you need to do to have a simple multitouch interface on existing 5800 hardware is interpret touches exactly between two controls as simultaneous presses of both controls.

You might be thinking that this is silly because people could activate multitouch by accident if they do a single touch between two controls. However, there are ways to avoid this problem.

You could then tell the device to only record multitouch when another button is already active. This means that if someone touches the screen between two controls it won't activate multitouch by accident, because no other button was active at the time the touch happened. In theory this would prevent multitouch working with two truly simultaneous touches, but you would very very rarely put both fingers onto two parts of a screen at exactly the same time, it's far more likely that you would touch one part first and then another part. Also, application interfaces could be designed to discourage truly simultaneous touches.

You could also design apps in such a way that there's no point in touching the area between them, for example a racing game could have all the controls at the sides of the screen with the middle used for displaying the race itself.

The benefit of this technique is that it requires no extra hardware, and it could work with even the cheapest touchscreen devices, though it may require more careful planning of where on-screen controls go. This is old news really, many developers are already using this method, but most people don't seem to realise that this is possible.

This isn't as flexible as "true" multitouch, as it wouldn't be directly recording the true position of the two touches, but that probably doesn't matter much because the user wouldn't have to ever know how it works. Clever and careful design of app interfaces can make this method function in a way that is virtually indistinguishable from traditional multitouch.

The extra care needed for interface design may make life more difficult for app developers, but the much wider range of devices they could reach would provide them with far greater sales potential. Very few devices do support true multitouch, so any technique which allows multitouch on all touchscreen devices is potentially very valuable indeed. It would also make simultaneous development for multiple touch-based platforms much easier.

Nokia are already using this method in the recently-released Maemo 5 SDK using the name "two-touch", where you hold down your finger on one part of the screen while touching elsewhere in order to activate a status menu: the interface would be registering two simultaneous touches, which is multitouch (of a kind, at least). Nokia could just as easily implement this technique on future S60 touch interfaces, and app developers can already use this technique for 5800 games and applications right now if they want to.

There's more though. As I indicated a few months ago, the timing of the keypresses and their 'release' could also be used. Extending the thoughts above, I can see how the user might:

1. press and hold the screen at 'q'
2. 0.2 secs later, press and hold the screen at 'w'
3. 0.2 secs later again, release the screen at 'q'
4. finally, release the screen at 'w'

There's more than enough information here for the touchscreen driver to pass on coordinates as appropriate, effectively giving multi-touch (more like 'dual touch', since handling three spots at once might get too hairy!) on a non-multi-touch, resistive virtual keyboard. In this case processing the text input "qw", even though both letters were held down at the same time for a while.

Is there a technical reason why this technique wouldn't work?

How to Remove scratches from your Phone's Camera Glass

2009-05-02T04:34:00.000-07:00

You'll remember from last year that, through over-zealous attempts to wipe off dust, the camera 'glass' (actually plastic) on my Nokia N95 8GB had actually gotten more damaged than if I'd left the dust on (I suspect). Despite normally being kept immaculate in a case, after three months of use, this is how the camera cover looked:

Although I proved that this had little effect on most photos, it was still galling to have damaged this most important part of my phone.

However, the scratches concerned were tiny and I had the gut feel that they could be polished out easily enough. 'Polishing' here is taken to mean very lightly abrading the surface to bring the level of the top surface of the transparent plastic down to so that the scratches (i.e. the tiny, shallow grooves where dust particles have gouged in) become part of the surface, restoring a nice, clean and smooth cover that doesn't mess with the light coming into the main (glass) optics of the camera below.

But what to polish with? Screen cleaner? No, that would just add a layer of polymers over the top of the scratches. Toothpaste? That's been said to do the trick, but there are so many varieties - do I use 'Whitening' paste? Following a recommendation on Twitter, I bought some 'Displex' on eBay. Costing £3, including postage, this claims to both polish out small scratches and (if necessary) fill in any deeper ones in a useable way.

Displex comes as a small tube of creamy liquid (enough for about 1000 applications!) and a lint-free cloth:

Now to work:

1. I followed the Displex advice to mask off the surrounding plastic with tape, just in case.

2. Adding a couple of drops to the camera 'glass', I firmly rubbed the Displex in with the cloth, using a circular motion, for about 30 seconds.

3. Almost all the scratches were, somewhat magically, gone. I repeated the treatment with another couple of drops and another 30 secs polishing.

Here's the result:

Rather impressive, I think you'll agree. The virgin phone did, apparently, have an extra, anti-glare coating applied to the 'glass', and the polishing action has removed most of this, but I've noticed no difference in terms of photo quality.

As ever with this sort of tutorial/feature, I'm eager to gather data points. Have you tried something similar with one of your camera phones, and if so, what were your experiences?

How to make video calls on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

2009-04-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

The 5800 has a built-in secondary camera in the top right corner of the front of the phone, which is mainly intended for videophone calls. You can make and receive video calls very easily, in fact they're almost as easy as ordinary calls.

Video calls will only work if you're in a 3G or 3.5G network, so make sure you can see the 3G or 3.5G logo under the call signal bar in the top left corner of the screen before attempting to make a video call.

Note that video calls usually cost more than ordinary phone calls. If you're unsure how much they cost, ask your phone network operator about their video call charges.

How to make a video call to people in Contacts (the address book)

1. From the main standby screen, select the Contacts icon (the person icon).

2. Double-click on the person you want to call.

3. Select "Options".

4. Select "Call" and then "Video Call".

How to make a video call to people who aren't in Contacts

1. From the main standby screen, select the Dialler icon (the keypad icon).

2. Enter the number you wish to call.

3. Select "Options".

4. Select "Call" and then "Video Call".

How to customise the main menu on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, including folders and sub-folders

2009-04-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

How to customise the main menu on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, including folders and sub-folders

You can customise the menu system on the 5800 by changing the menu type, by moving icons from one place to another, and by creating folders and sub-folders.

How to change the menu type

1. Go to the menu system by pressing the white menu button.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Change Menu View".

4. Double-click on the menu type you want.

How to move icons around the 5800 menu system

1. Go to the part of the menu system where the icons are that you want to move.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Drag the icon you want to move to the place you want to move it.

5. When you've finished moving icons, select "Done".

How to move icons to another folder

1. Go to the icon you want to move.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Select the icon you want to move.

5. Select "Options".

6. Select "Move To Folder", then choose the folder you want to move the icon to.

7. Select "Move".

8. When you've finished moving icons, select "Done".

Useful Tip: You can move icons to the front page of the menu system by selecting "Root Folder" as their destination.

How to create folders and sub-folders

You can create as many folders and sub-folders (folders within folders) as you want. These are useful if you want to organise icons by particular themes, and can bevery useful if you've installed lots of new applications.

1. Go to the part of the menu system you want to create a folder or sub-folder.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Select "Options".

5. Select "New Folder".

6. Give the folder a memorable name, then select "OK".

7. When you've finished creating folders, select "Done".

How to delete folders and sub-folders

1. Go to the part of the menu system that contains the folder you want to delete.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Select the folder you want to delete.

5. Select "Options".

6. Select "Delete", and then "Yes".

7. When you've finished deleting folders, select "Done".

Lock Info on Nokia 6230

2009-03-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

Ask:
Was wondering if there's any way to know if my UK Orange contract phone is locked to the orange network? I could enter a code into my old T610 that'd list whether it was locked or not.

Just as once my contract ends I fancy sticking an O2 PAYG SIM in it till a decent phone shows up on the market. Don't wanna stick an O2 Sim in it the now and find I've locked the phone..

Answer:
Simply insert the new simcards, and then if there is, "Sim locked", or something, enter one of these codes:

#PW+948732764774030+1#
or
#PW+903772524224571+2#
or
#PW+381576102032673+3#

Free 3GP Video Converter for Nokia

2009-03-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

Free 3GP Video Converter. Convert 3GP video files recorded with your cell phone to more common PC video formats AVI or MP4 or back other video files to 3GP. Extract audio from 3GP video files.

Convert 3GP to AVI, 3GP to MP4, 3GP to MP3 audio and back AVI, MP4 and others to 3GP.

This free 3gp converter contains no spyware or adware. It's clearly free and absolutely safe to install and run.

Download File Here

Nokia USB problem

2009-03-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

Ask:
I have this Problem. I got a usb cable that came with a card reader i bought and i used it to connect may 6300 to my Pc. I installed the drivers which i got from the nokia website, the ones right here http://europe.nokia.com/appmanager/U...p-windowState=
,and used The PC Suite to transfer some games. everything went fine. but the next day when i powered up my computer i got a Bsod saying something about a faulty driver. i used the lask known good config that worked to load windows, and when i plugged the data cable and the phone the pc i didn't even get the new hardware message. i tried to plug it into another Pc and it also didn't work. But the phone gives me the message about the usb being plugged. Please help me solve this problem.

Answer:
You might need to reinstall the Nokia PC Suite, download it from the site and try it again.

Free WeatherBug released for the 5800 and S60 5th Edition

2009-03-20T06:01:00.000-07:00

Just released in the Nokia 5800's Download-Widgets folder is the free WeatherBug, offering worldwide weather status, forecasts and radar animations, all (optionally) keyed to your GPS location. As the folder suggests, it's implemented as a (Web Runtime) widget, in similar fashion to AccuWeather, released last month in the same folder. How many more ways do we need to find out what the weather's going to be like tomorrow? Screenshots below.

YouTube goes native for S60 3rd Edition

2009-03-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hot on the heels of their new Mobile site, YouTube has now also released an official (native) S60 client application. It is compatible with most S60 3rd Edition phones. The video quality is good, and looks to have been optimised for QVGA screen resolution. There's a basic interface to browse and search through YouTube's extensive video catalog. All videos are shown in full screen, but widescreen videos are shown in a 'letter-box' format. Read on for more information and screenshots.

The application allows you search for videos, or view lists of the top rated, most viewed and most recent videos (as seen on the web version). Choosing any of these loads a list of videos with an image 'carousel' at the top of the screen. You can quickly browse through the available videos, viewing both a thumbnail, a short description and miscellaneous information about the video.

Selecting a video opens and starts playing it in landscape orientation. Pressing any key shows the standard YouTube controls. You can then change the volume, play/pause the video or jump forward and backward through the video.

You can download the application by visiting m.youtube.com in Web and following the download link near the top of the page. However, currently the application appears to be restricted to Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The client is not currently fully compatible with S60 5th Edition (Nokia 5800, you can't enter search text, and other issues), but it is safe to assume this will change in due course, in addition to other countries being supported.

Power users may like to bear in mind that the interface is relatively basic when compared to donate-ware Mobitubia. For example there's no way to 'Save' clips, but for most users it will be more than sufficient.

Handy Shell - Review

2009-02-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

Since the dawn of time (ok, about 1995), developers have been looking to replace the default home screen of PDAs and smartphones. Epocware's new Handy Shell seems pretty comprehensive for S60 and so we asked Ewan to install it on his main device and run with it for a week...

Handy Shell is scary, cute, not scary, powerful, easy to use and pointless all in the same breath. By the end of this review, you'll be able to choose the two words that apply for you (- if you want to pretend to skip to the end, I'd choose 'powerful' and 'easy to use').

Epocware think the regular S60 standby screen is missing functionality, so they've decided to replace it. And tweak the application launcher. And the task bar. Basically they want to give you a swiss army knife to replace the cutlass of the regular S60 experience. It's a mighty challenge, but they are more than up to it.

Now, on with the mighty review.

This used to be the bread and butter of third party application scenes in the past, but there again in the past the people with smartphones (or PDA's) were the tinkerers, hackers and programmers in the world. Those people are still there (albeit significantly outnumbered by regular users) and that means applications like Handy Shell are always going to be around as well.

And it's a good thing too, because Handy Shell ups the flexibility of your S60 smartphone by a significant factor. It's not for everyone, and there will be a lot of you arguing that the S60 interface doesn't need changing.

Split over three information screens, Handy Shell pulls S60 away from being a 'making calls and running applications' platform to 'making calls, organising your information, and running applications.'

First up, and the screen that's effectively the main screen of Handy Shell, and replaces the active stand-by, is the 'today' view, with four main strips of info - Clock, application shortcuts, phone settings and Calendar. The clock takes up most of the width of the screen, although by using a constant sized font (all characters are the same width) it makes it feel a little clunky, although it does hark back nicely to an old fashioned digital clock. It's a pity there are no formatting options for the clock.

It would be sensible to think that most people loading Handy Shell have done some customising on their own phone's desktop, so the inclusion of a standard set of six application short-cuts in the next strip is both welcome (after all, it's something people are already used to in the customisation stakes) but at the same time do I really need to put in my favourites again? Is there no way to read what I already have during the first run of Handy Shell and populate this with my own picks?

The next line is probably my favourite - the phone settings. This is a quick glance/quick change on a number of features on your phone, mostly around communication. A single tap on the Bluetooth icon will toggle your Bluetooth on or off (or you can change this to launch the Bluetooth application if you so wish), and alongside this you have icons and numerical cues for your missed calls and unread SMS and emails, finally finishing on quick change icons to alter your chosen ringtone profile or overall phone theme.

All these strips (and those in the other views as well) have their own customisable settings, you just pop into the Settings dialog, choose the view, and then choose the part of the view to alter. I get the feeling that this modular approach runs through the entire program, so it would be an easy matter to add a view of another application to any screen. In fact, Epocware have done exactly that in building a view of Handy Weather into Handy Shell's desktop and bundling a one year subscription to Handy Weather in the registration price of Handy Shell.

It's important to realise that each element in Handy Shell might seem a bit 'is that it?' when taken on its own, but it's the glueing of them altogether into a single package and making them all relatively easy to access that makes Handy Shell so useful. Think of it like a multi-bladed Swiss Army knife - nobody carries just a pair of tweezers with them, but with that knife you'll always have one when you need it - just like some of the icons in Handy Shell.

Tapping on the right soft key lets you cycle through the three views of Handy Shell, and after the Today screen is the Applications view, a 3x4 grid of applications that you can set up and shuffle around. It's no surprise that this feels a lot like the regular S60 application launcher, and with some careful thought, you could probably get 95% of your regular smartphone usage launching from this screen. The one feature that's missing here is using the keypad to fast launch an icon. As the keypad is also 3x4, matching the matrix on the S60 home screen, pressing a number on the standard S60 applications menu launches the one whose icon is in the same relative place on the screen. Handy Shell is missing this and I found my thumb erroneously hitting the keypad to launch something on numerous occasions.

Asking for folder support in this screen would be a step too far, even though I like the idea of ditching the S60 app launcher completely - the point here is to have your most used applications shortcutted, not all your applications. Still, it is Handy Shell, not Handy Shell Around The Popular Bits. You've got full control over what applications to add, and you can edit them or move them around as often as you wish.

I did like the dialog screen to choose the applications - rather than the radio button screen that S60 uses, where you have to scroll (a lot), you can just start typing the name of the application and Handy Shell will search as you start to type.

The contacts view works in pretty much the same way as the applications view - 12 slots to put in your favourite contacts for dialling. If they have a thumbnail graphic that is used, alternatively a nice font is used to get as much of their name in as possible. One thing missing here (perhaps a bug, or earmarked for the next release?) is some intelligent context awareness. If I'm on a contact and select 'New... [SMS] Message' from the menu is it wrong to expect Handy Shell to pre-populate the message editor with the correct phone number? What's weird is that if you select 'Create Message' on the top level menu, it does pre-populate the editor. Curiouser and curiouser.

Alongside the views is one of my favourite features of Handy Shell - the quick dialler. From the standby screen of a vanilla S60 phone, hitting the keypad simply racks up some numbers to dial. Not with this application though. It starts searching the contents of your smartphone to try and work out what you are typing. It will scan phone numbers to match the numbers you start to enter; or take the T9 spellings to a match up a name you are typing from your address book; or use that same T9 spelling in your list of applications. Looking to start the podcasting app? Just start typing P-O-D... and the app will be listed. As will the number for 'Podium Computing' from your contacts, or any number starting 663. It's quick, simple, easy to understand, and I love it. This is an application in its own right, and if I were to lose Handy Shell, I suspect this is the part I would miss the most. [NB. this functionality is also available in some other add-on utilities, most notably SkyeQuiKey - Ed]

It's also the reason why I can't 'speed dial' an application to launch, as pressing number keys starts the quick dial part of the program - it's a tough call, but I think I prefer this quick dialling once the muscle memory forgets about pressing number keys.

Handy Shell also replaces the 'task bar', normally accessed by holding down the Applications key on your smartphone, with a full screen system overview. Here, as well as seeing (and being able to jump to) the running applications in a full screen view, you'll also get the time and date (so now it's only ever one keypress away) and details on your free RAM, storage and memory card space.... something that the true hacker [Ewan looks sideways at Steve] is always looking at on his phone, but seems to be less and less critical as smartphone specs improve.

For all the complexity that Handy Shell offers, there will still be times where you need to duck into the regular S60 interface, and thankfully Handy Shell is not a jealous program. You tap the Applications key to get into Handy Shell, but while in the shell if you tap it again you will be taken to the regular S60 standby/Applications screens. How this works can be subtly changed via the settings.

There is a touch of jealousy, though, because I really can't see a way to switch Handy Shell off. Once it's installed and running, it's just there. Yes you can toggle everything off, but the Task Manager is always there, and it's going to pop up when you hit certain keys (depending on those settings). The only 100% sure way to do this is to take off and nuke it from orbit remove the application from your handset altogether. But that makes sense. If you have Handy Shell, it's because you want to be using it, not switching it on once in a while for kicks. It's either on or off. (Luckily a regular uninstall of Handy Shell will shut it down correctly and let you remove it cleanly, should this be needed)

And to be honest, there's no reason for it not to be on. While it does add significantly to the productivity potential of your smartphone, it's not unduly complicated in what it does or how it does it. By spreading the main functions over three screens which you can easily switch between, all the information has been given room to breathe, and it actually makes your smartphone easier to use. Sure, the set-up takes time, and getting your head round a new way of working takes a bit of time, but if Handy Shell was to appear on a bog standard any-OS smartphone and be the core method of running things, I think it would be up to the job. Part of me is really looking forward to a touch-enabled version of this on the 5800 at some point next year [hear that Rafe, I'm reviewing that combination... now get me a 5800 - Ewan].

For all the faults I've mentioned here, Handy Shell has a fearsomely large job to do as a full replacement for S60's core UI feature, and it's only when you sit back do you spot the little touches, such as the smoothness when you switch between portrait and landscape modes, the display showing the time of your next alarm call (and not just a little bell), the preview of unread SMS messages as you scroll your cursor over the icon, the 'new' menu option giving you access to your Contacts, Calendar, To-do list and said alarm clock, having 'lock keypad' on the menu... There is a lot going on in here.

Handy Shell isn't just a great addition to S60, it pretty much rips out and replaces all the launching and thread management of S60 that users see. To a certain extent, that's reflected in the price of $45, which may raise some eyes. I think it's a perfectly fair price for something of this scope and breadth... and stability. I've been really working Handy Shell hard and not yet experienced a crash or system slowdown. With a full 14 day demo available for free before you need to register, anyone using their smartphone for more than just calls and messaging should seriously consider running this little gem.

Exclusive: Nokia N82 v31 firmware now online

2009-01-29T18:58:00.000-08:00

Nokia Software Update now has firmware v31.0.016 available for the Nokia N82, weighing in at 118MB. The N82 has UDP, but best to back up anyway, just in case. I had a few issues, now resolved - the firmware is safe to upgrade to. See below...

In my case, after upgrading, I hit lots of hangs (all involving Nokia Maps), requiring battery-out-restarts, so I used *#7370# to wipe the internal disk back to 'factory' status and rebuilt everything, to no avail. Maps is still misbehaving, hanging after launching and answering the 'Go online' question. I'm not pleased.

[Later] Turns out there's a wierd bug in Nokia Maps, whereby if you don't have a working SIM AND non-Wi-Fi data connection the first time Nokia Maps starts, you'll get the hang and problems I describe. Putting in a valid SIM (I initially only had an old, zero-credit one in since I was trying to set everything up using Wi-Fi) and making sure 3G data was all working seems to have solved the problem. Phew.

Mobitubia is behaving erratically, this may relate to something broken under the hood or it may be that YouTube have changed their formats again. Will report back on this.

Watch this space for a changelog. Mainly bug fixes, I suspect. Note that v30 firmware was already protected against SDK 'hack' tampering, so v31 here is for other reasons.

So Nokia is world's biggest computer maker in 2008

2009-01-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

So yes, its time for yet another instance of mobile phones taking surprising victories in the digital convergence battle. I reported the general trend in my previous posting, and the conclusion that when only considering "smartphones" - even by that tight measure of these new "pocket computers" - the numbers have tilted this year, and now for 2008 the world's biggest computer maker is no longer Hewlett-Packard or Dell, it is Nokia.

Today I dug up the various numbers as best as I could (using Gartner, Analsys, IDC, Apple). I included all PC sales, all smartphone sales, all stand-alone PDA sales, and estimated also mainframe and mini computer sales into the total, and arrived at a total computer sales figure for the last four quarters (from October 2007 to September 2008) of 465 million. Note that PCs account for 300 million of those, so when we add the smartphones we are going about 50% bigger in the overall picture. But I think it is a fair measure to include smartphones (see below).

So here is the breakdown according to my analysis of the biggest computer makers in the world in 2008:

Nokia 64.1 Million units 13.8% market share
HP 55.2 Million units 11.9% market share
Dell 43.8 Million units 9.4% market share
Apple 35.0 Million units 7.5% market share
Acer 30.8 Million units 6.6% market share
Lenovo 22.1 Million units 4.7% market share
RIM 19.8 Million units 4.2% market share
Toshiba 12.9 Million units 2.8% market share
Others 181.9 Million units 39.1% market share

Total 465.5 Million units 100.0%

THEN I NEED TO MAKE A COUPLE OF NOTES

First note on Apple. I also was very generous with Apple, I not only added their official numbers for Macintosh PC and notebook sales, and iPhone sales, but also the iPod Touch is another equivalent "pocket computer" and could be considered a PDA just as easily as a media player. Because it includes the ability to download applications and otherwise is a valid computer, only very small, I am including it.

But Apple does not release iPod breakdowns in sales, and no analyst is supplying them either. So I made a very rough estimate - and simply because there are four models of iPods available (Touch, Classic, Nano and Shuffle) - I attributed one quarter of all iPod sales to the Touch. I am pretty sure that is way too much, considering that the Touch is at the top end of the price range and costs nearly five times as much as the cheapest Shuffle - but with these numbers Apple would be fourth biggest computer maker. It is relatively close to Acer, so if my math is badly of, then Apple may fall down one peg. The distance to Dell is too much that its extremely unlikely that Apple would be the third biggest.

Second, a note on Nokia

Nokia numbers are only the smartphone sales as reported by Gartner and Analys. So the mainstream Nokia phones, from low cost phones to featurephones, are excluded. The above count is only for smartphones. Also I have not included the Nokia non-phone devices (their media players and internet tablets) even though these could also be included, because I don't find those numbers reported. With them the Nokia number would be marginally bigger still.

Third on the full 2008 year numbers

Note that my analysis can only include reported numbers so obviously I cannot report on the current quarter until those numbers are formally released. But I believe the actual numbers will be very similar to these, because of the overall economic downturn. So it is very likely that the actual fourth quarter 2008 numbers are not as much above their 2007 numbers, as the earlier part of the year has been. With companies the need to slash budgets has been severe, so its likely that corporate purchases of PCs is particularly hard-hit this fourth quarter. With residential purchases, the laptop or PC is quite an expensive gift, so my gut says, that types of gifts are going to suffer more in Christmas sales than smaller gifts. And this is likely also to affect smartphones. So at least the percentages will be very similar after the fourth quarter 2008 numbers are released, the aggregate number may end up a couple of percentage points higher (or not) for this year. None of the companies will move significantly on their rankings based on fourth quarter performance and Nokia's lead is now insurmountable for this year.

FINALLY, WHY IS A SMARTPHONE A COMPUTER

Some might argue that every mobile phone is a computer (as its guts are of course managed by microprocessor) and that can be justified. Almost all modern (non-smartphone) mobile phones do have a browser and far more than half of new phones this year have Java and can accept downloads of content and things such as games. Those who use this defintion will probably know that Nokia became the world's biggest computing device manufacturer back in the early parts of this decade, selling more phones (ie "computing devices") than all PC makers put together. But by this definition should we also consider the Playstation a computer and our home DVR/PVR (hard disk drive recorder for our TV, like TiVo or Sky+). We could then add our microwave and coffee maker while we're at it..

I think basic mobile phones should not be considered computers. But smartphones - that is a totally different matter. In my long posting for the holidays, I celebrated 50 years of computers in Finland and in it I also made comparisons of the performance of computers and that of smartphones. A modern smartphone has all the elements traditionally considered key parts of a true computer. It has a CPU, memory, storage, an input and output system. A smartphone has a standard operating system which allows users to download and install applications (software). Not just content, but actual applications.

The dictionary definition of a computer says the device can be programmed, and the common usage today means it can accept applications to be installed by the user (this was not the common usage in the 1970s, in the era of the mainframe when the PC emerged; at that time common usage was a programming language compiler and all programs were coded in something like Fortran or Cobol or Pascal etc. None of us normal users bother to use a programming language today on our PC). The definition says can be programmed and a normal phone does not accept user-installed applications, but every smartphone - by definition - does. It fits the definition just as well as a supercomputer.

And if you're thinking "but the phone is a toy, its not a "proper" computer, then do recognize that the top end smartphone of today (like my Nokia E90 Communicator or N82) has the specifications that match essentially all critical components of a supercomputer from only some 20 years ago, the Cray 2. For example the processing speed of these top smartphones runs roughly in the 1,000 MIPS range (millions of instructions per second). That was the speed of the Cray 2. Its earlier sibling, the Cray 1, had a speed of 150 MIPS. A top end Nokia managed that speed three years ago.

Note I am not arguing that we have a "real supercomputer" in our pocket. But I am arguing, that the smartphone fits all the definitions of a computer by what it is, and what it can do. And by its performance, it will match the performance of the most powerful computer on the planet from two decades ago. Or more close to everyday people, will match the performance of an entry-level laptop only five years ago.

There are smartphones that use the Windows operating system (modified for mobile phones) and the Apple iPhone uses a variant of the Macintosh OS/X operating system. There are smartphones that use Linux the third of the main computer operating systems. I think it is perfectly valid to consider smartphones as computers today. They may be small, but they are computers in every way. To discriminate against them, to me is as dumb, as if someone in the 1980s had said that we should not count the personal computer as a "real computer" and only mainframe computers should be included in statistics of computers.

HOW IS IT USED?

So then you might say, ok, it has the performance of an old computer, maybe, but its use is as a phone, so it should be considered a phone, not a computer. I think this is a tricky angle. What if you have an old desktop computer that sits at home, connected to the broadband, but you have your newer laptop on which you do all of your regular computer activities. And you have reconfigured your desktop with Skype to be your phone, and you only use it as a phone. Did the computer stop being a computer now because its primary use is as a phone? No, it is still a computer.

But consider this. The most common use, the so-called killer application for a PC today is internet access. Do we use a smartphone for internet access? Yes we do. Look at an iPhone, massive internet access, both over 3G and on WiFi. The smartphone is USED like a computer is used. For many iPhone users, the internet access is the most desired feature, far more important than voice calls, so it is, for those users, primarily a wireless internet access device. Totally replicates computer use, and there is even the study earlier this year that about half of iPhone users are migrating computer use away from their laptops and onto their iPhones. Its no fantasy of mine. An iPhone is for many of its owners, a partial (or even complete) replacement of a computer. If it replaces a computer, and it fits the computer's definition perfectly, should it not be called a computer then?

And take a common application used on personal computers today, email. Now a smartphone, Blackberry. Across most of its users, the Blackberry is the preferred and primary email device. The first evidence of email usage shifting away from laptops to Blackberries was reported back in 2001 and has been consistenty reported this whole decade. Another computer use, that is clearly perfectly capable of being done on a smartphone. Its not just that it is capable of performing like a "real computer", a smartphone is so good at it, that many people are shifting their computing use away from desktops and laptops to smartphones like the iPhone and the Blackberry.

And I haven't even started on the Developing World, where mobile phone based internet access outnumbes PC based internet access by as much as 10 to 1. Where a smartphone is often the only way to have any computing ability at all, within a reasonable budget - and where landline based broadband is non-existent, or intermittent, and often frightfully expensive. Talk to users in the Philippines or India or Kenya or South Africa, that can a smarphone be a computer, and they'll mostly say, that it not only can be, it is.

WILL NOT STOP USE ON BIGGER COMPUTERS

And please don't misunderstand me. I'm not singing alarms of the "end of the PC". Just like the fact that mobile emerged as a new mass media channel, did not end the previous six media, just like the internet did not end the previous five or TV end the previous four mass media. They all just adjusted for the newest form. The same is true of smartphones and bigger computers. We will not stop using laptops and big government etc uses will not stop with mainframes and supercomputers.

What the smartphone now allows, is for some computer use to migrate to it. It really does make sense, that heavy email users love their Blackberries. It is better for many uses of basic email, than a PC. The same will happen with many other uses, like the iPhone which is a particularly well used camera to upload pictures to Flickr, ahead of many major digital camera brands with their SLR versions; and ahead of all other cameraphones. Its particularly good at both easy capture of pictures - and easy uploading (to Flickr in this case). With a digital camera, we usually have to go the extra step of moving the pictures to our PC, and from there upload to Flickr. But it can be done direct from a smartphone, and apparently iPhone users are very prone to doing so.

This kind of usage will be seen on smartphones. Probably lots of videos, so YouTube watching (and uploading videos from smartphones, in particular those with DVD quality videocameras like my N82) will be very suited for smartphone use. But note, its not a particularly pleasant environment for editing pictures (no mouse for example, and in editing pictures you can never have too large a screen ha-ha). So for editing our images, if we have one, we will prefer to do that on a PC.

So please don't misunderstand me, even though some users of the Blackberry or iPhone are shifting behaviour away from the PC, that is not going to shift the majority of PC users to smartphones. It took laptops 23 years to replace desktops as the most sold form of PC this year, and even so, the installed base is predominantly desktops still in 2008, and will continue to be for a few more years. The PC has at least a decade, proably two, before the smartphone could hope to reach it in size of the installed base.

AM NOT ALONE

Also this is not something only "Silly Tomi" would think of. Nokia has been calling its N-Series not mobile phones, but since 2005 already - for three years - they've called them "multimedia computers." Apple calls its iPhone their variant of the netbook. And that is also what the Economist concluded in its big celebration of the Personal Computer anniversary issue. So this is becoming an accepted view, that smartphones are indeed small, pocketable palmtop sized computers. But real computers, yes.

It is a question of size only. The smartphone is the most personal of computers, it fits in our pocket, we carry it everywhere. It should be counted in the total numbers of computers. And with that change to how computers are counted, yes, this year for the first time, Nokia becomes the biggest maker of computers in the world, Apple jumps to fourth place, and RIM hits the seventh biggest maker slot, ahead of Toshiba who invented the laptop. You can quote me on that..

MORE INFO

If you new to the mobile space and want to understand the scale of the mobile telecoms industry (of which the smartphone is a major growth element), I have released my widely referenced annual review of the industry size. It was also given the (tied for) best blog recognition by the last Carnival of the Mobilists for the year.

If you're already headed into the smartphone space, in a post-iPhone era, and need to understand how to build compelling services for mobile, I have a good primer for you, including the seven unique competitive advantages of mobile in the article on the 7th mass media channel.

And if you are dubious of this claim, or unsure how to feel about smartphones - should they, or should they not be considered computers, for that I wrote an update to this story, examining five eras in computers with a good comparative table, which may help you understand what the trends are, and how consistent (or inconsistent) the smartphone is in those trends.

From: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2008/12/so-nokia-is-wor.html

The N95 : After a year with my Dad

2009-01-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I gave my Dad a Nokia N95 for Christmas. At that time, I thought it was the best phone out there, and only the best would do for my old man.

What I forgot, however, was that my Dad is REALLY tough on his gadgets. He crams them into his pockets full of keys or coins, he tosses them around. After remembering that vital fact, I was worried about how the N95-1 would manage under such "tough" conditions.

So I present to ye, pictures of the N95 after it survived a year with its toughest user, that I know.

The first thing you've probably noticed already, is that the weak battery compartment is taped on to the thing. This usually wont be a problem, unless you change SIMs alot like my Dad and have to open the battery compartment a lot. The plastic hinges at the ends were really brittle and broke off early on.

Next !

The camera still works fine. The lens protector has worn quite a bit. A lot of the silver paint has come off, and there's dust in the lens opener slide mechanism.

But the good thing is, the lens protector did its job well. The lens was still fine, but had a little dust in it though. Still fared a lot better than if it didnt have a lens protector.

When it comes to keys, the chrome on the side zoom in/out (aka volume increase/decrease) buttons have completely worm off.

Oh dear.

The chrome under the pencil button and "C" key have now also worn away.

The slider's also become a little harder to move up or down. A lot of dust has accumulated in the sides of the slider mechanism.

Apart from that, the phone still works fine ! The flash works, the camera works. The firmware hasnt been updated, and my Dad has no intent to update it (mostly cause he doesnt even know how to begin with that operation). Mechanically or software wise, nothing has gone wrong with the device at all so far.

Clearly a testiment to the N95's product quality. Heh, maybe Nokia should hire my Dad for its product quality testing.

From: http://zomgitscj.blogspot.com/2008/12/n95-after-year-with-my-dad.html

Graphic Acceleration on Mobile Phone

2008-12-15T19:26:00.000-08:00

Having heard many a user refer to 'upgrading' from (for example) a Nokia N95 8GB to an N85, I thought it worth examining an important way in which all is not necessarily positive when going from an older phone to a newer one.

Yes, the N85 has USB charging, the N79 has theme-switching backplates, the N96 has a DVB-H receiver built-in, and so on. But none of these, and, as far as I know, neither do the even newer 5800 XpressMusic and N97, have the same oomph under the bonnet as the 'classic' generation of S60 3rd Edition devices: the Nokia N93, N93i, N82, N95, N95 8GB and E90. All of these had dedicated graphics acceleration, thanks to the Texas Instruments OMAP 2420 chip used in their design.

Graphics acceleration is where a piece of software (e.g. a game) calls a standard OpenGL routine (to calculate and draw a particular 3D vector, for example) and, rather than the main phone processor having to do all the sums long-hand, the built-in graphics hardware, built from the ground up for this sort of job, leaps into action and does the work in a fraction of the time.

The end result, for the user, is that many games (e.g. Oval Racer, FIFA 07, Quake, Global race, Crash Bandicoot, Panda Manda, Knights of the Dark Age, to name a few) run smoother and faster, videos play back with no glitches (handling a wider range of resolutions and bitrates without stuttering) and graphics-heavy applications run without problems (e.g. Mobitubia, the YouTube client can play back videos smoothly at the same time as downloading them as fast as possible).

It might help to put the scale of the difference into some sort of numerical perspective. Running SPMark, a standard benchmarking tool, on the Nokia N82 (as representative of the 'classic' line, e.g. N95), the N78 (as representative of the latest non-accelerated S60 3rd Edition FP2 phones) and the N96 (different in its own way since it has a STMicroelectronics chip that's dedicated to audio and video playback), we discover the following scores:

The helicopter demo simulates a commercial game pretty well. Run Oval Racer, for example, on your chosen S60 handset, and you'll see very similar frame rates to the SPMark test. On the N82, N95, etc, the game's gloriously smooth, with textured graphics right, left and centre. On the N78, N79 and N96, etc, it's sluggish and much, much less fun.

Why has Nokia changed the chipset they're using for their top end smartphones in such a detrimental way? With games and multimedia being hotter than ever in the handheld and phone world, surely more graphics power and not less would have been the way to go? The N95 has almost TEN TIMES more graphics power than its successor, the N96.

So far, RealPlayer has been tweaked enough that many users many not notice that their phone is underpowered, and N-Gage games have been written specifically to not depend on the presence of hardware OpenGL acceleration, i.e. they have been written to the lowest common denominator. So few people have noticed that the Emperor's not wearing any clothes.

Nokia will of course say that the internals of their phones were changed because of cost issues, it's all about building to a price and a specific market segment. But I have a feeling that, in the face of competition from the graphics-accelerated Apple iPhone, this chipset downgrade decision will come home to bite Nokia where it hurts most.

Is it too late to stop the rot? I hope not. I really, really hope that Nokia are even now preparing a flagship or two with just as much power as the Nokia N93 of over two and a half years ago and the N95 of 20 months ago. Care to comment on all this, Nokia? Is it too late to solder in a graphics chip into your 2009 flagship, the N97?

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 15 Dec 2008

PS. Incidentally, the latest Samsung S60 phones, the i8510 and i7110 also have an OMAP chipset, the 2430 (I won't bore you with the differences between the 2420 and 2430). Let's try the i7110 at the SPMark test:

So, performance that's not quite as good as that in the 'classic' Nokia S60 phones, but within striking distance. For one thing, the OMAP 2430 isn't quite as capable as the 2420, and we also perhaps have to factor in that the i7110 and all Samsung's other S60 phones are on early firmware - there may yet be optimisations to come... But still a heck of a lot better than any of Nokia's hardware from 2008/2009.

Nokia: Running in molasses

2008-12-15T17:28:00.000-08:00

Every time I think about Nokia and Symbian, I can't help picturing a man knee-deep in molasses, running as fast as he can. He's working up a sweat, thrashing and stumbling forward, and proudly points out that for someone knee-deep in molasses he's making really good time.

That thought came to me several times during a briefing day that Nokia and the new Symbian Foundation held recently in San Francisco. A recurring theme was a deeply earnest discussion of how big and complex their business is, and how proud they are that despite the complexity they can make forward progress. For example:

Charles Davies, CTO of the new foundation, pointed out to us that Symbian OS has about 450,000 source files. That's right, half a million files. They're organized into 85 "packages," all of which have been charted out in a diagram that will be posted soon on the foundation's website. Davies was proud that the diagram is in SVG format, so you can zoom in on it and see that "this is an architecture that's not just a plateful of spaghetti."

The diagram looks a bit like a plateful of very colorful spaghetti (although in fairness to Charles, that's true of every OS architecture diagram I've ever seen). Anyway, the big takeaway was how huge the OS is.

Davies talked about the substantial challenges involved in open sourcing a code base that large. He said it will take up to another two years before all of the code is released under the Eclipse license. In the meantime, a majority of the code on launch day of the foundation will be in a more restrictive license that requires registration and a payment of $1,500 for access. There's also a small amount of third party copyrighted code within Symbian, and the foundation is trying to either get the rights to that code, or figure a way to make it available in binary format.

Those are all typical problems when a project is moving to open source, and the upshot of them is that Symbian won't be able to get the full benefits of its move to open source until quite a while after the foundation is launched. What slows the process down is the amount of code that Symbian and Nokia have to move. I believe that Symbian OS is probably the largest software project ever taken from closed to open source. If you've ever dealt with moving code to open source, you'll know how staggeringly complex the legal reviews are. What Nokia and Symbian are doing is heroic, scary, and incredibly tedious. It's like, well, running in molasses.

Lee Williams, Nokia's software platform SVP who is moving over to become head of the Symbian foundation, picked up on the theme of massiveness. He said the OS is on 200 million devices, with 200 device types shipped and another 100 in development. With support for five different baseband modems, seven different processor architectures, symmetric multiprocessing, and a broad set of displays, "your options are dramatic and huge."

This sort of infrastructure is needed, he said, because IT, telecom, and the Internet "have merged almost completely.... It's the perfect storm of convergence. There's almost nothing it can't eat or it won't use." He compared its importance to the creation of movable type, color palettes, and the Renaissance.

He noted that some people think the Symbian Foundation is a response to Android and other competitive moves, but said the company can't move that fast, and actually the change was in the works long before Google announced its software.

At dinner, I had a chance to chat with one of the Nokia managers. He was kind enough to let me play around with a pre-release N97 (more on that below), and the discussion gravitated to the iPhone. He told me how excited he is by the many new products Nokia has in the labs but can't talk about yet, and expressed some frustration that people don't understand why it takes time for Nokia to respond to changes in the market. He described Nokia as a giant ship. "It takes a long time to turn it, but when we do..." he said ominously, and then reminded me that Netscape once had a lead over Microsoft before it was crushed.

The problem with talking to the folks from Nokia is that you're never sure what they believe vs. what's the official story they're trying to put out in the market. They're disciplined enough that they can stay on message quite well, and in most conversations they focus on talking about what they're doing rather than asking for feedback or getting into a two-way conversation.

So I'll assume that Nokia was being serious. In that case, let's look at some financials from 1997 (Netscape vs. Microsoft) and 2007 (Apple vs. Nokia):

Don't worry too much about revenue and net income; those are usually tied up by the ongoing operations of each company. The line I want you to focus on is cash. That is your ammunition -- the extra resource available to fund a big marketing campaign, or a new product development program, or an acquisition of an innovative new technology. Microsoft had 46 times more cash than Netscape in 1997, and it wasn't seriously threatened in any of its other core businesses. It could, and did, spend Netscape into the ground.

Apple has about the same cash hoard as Nokia. Much more importantly, Apple can focus that cash on a narrower battlefront. Its situation relative to Windows is relatively safe. Although Microsoft can never be ignored, it is innovating so slowly that Apple can take some profit from its PC business to fund other things. The music player business is also stable; although it's not growing like it used to, no one has come close to matching the integration of the iPod and iTunes. So Apple is free to spend huge wads of cash to establish its new iPhone business. It can pick the countries and vertical usages it wants to dominate, and as long as it doesn't do too many things at once, it can outspend almost any competitor.

Nokia, on the other hand, has battlefields everywhere:
--In mobile phones it's fighting Samsung, LG, and SonyEricsson, and a badly wounded (therefore desperate) Motorola.
--In entertainment smartphones it's fighting Apple.
--In communicators it's fighting RIM.
--In OS it's fighting Google, Microsoft, etc.
--In online services it's fighting Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.

Source: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/12/nokia-running-in-molasses.html

Get Connected with a Bluetooth Keyboard

2008-12-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

The most central compromise involved in choosing a smartphone is whether to go for something with a qwerty keyboard or not. If you do want one, then you've got to accept some compromises in device size and screen to keys ratio. Or else be prepared for something that folds or hinges somehow. And even then, at the end of the day, you've got a solution with much smaller keys than you're used to - let's hope you've got small and nimble fingers...

One solution to this dilemma is to use a Bluetooth wireless keyboard, as shown above. Folded, the keyboard (the Nokia SU-8W is used here, perhaps the best and most compatible of any of the breed) is still relatively large, but you don't have to have it out all the time. It's best kept in the car glovebox or briefcase, etc, ready for when you really need it.

So you've bought the SU-8W (or similar) and have them on the desk in front of you. The first thing to note is the way the left side of the keyboard has an extending and unfolding stand, as shown below. I'd owned this keyboard for a good week or two before I even noticed this feature.... Blush.

Also note the battery hatch on the back. Go stick in two AAA batteries while you're there. They'll last for ages. In my experience, we're talking months on a single set of two, so don't worry too much over the cost. And if you don't use the keyboard much, a set of AAAs has been known to last two years.

The next thing you need is the Nokia Wireless Keyboard application/driver. It's built into almost every S60 phone of theirs, but in a few rare cases you may need to grab it from the Web. Install it in the usual way.

One you've got this loaded, turn the SU-8W on by holding the red power button in for a couple of seconds. The green and blue LEDs should flash intermittently. Now go to 'Find keyboard' on the utility's menu. This is going to lead you through pairing up the specific keyboard with your specific phone - I'm guessing you could do the Bluetooth pairing manually, as you would any other Bluetooth accessory, but when the Nokia utility does all the work for you...?

After scanning for, and finding (after a few seconds) your keyboard, you'll be prompted to enter a passcode. There's nothing magical about this, just make up any number. It's only a temporary thing to make sure that the right phone and right keyboard get paired.

After entering the same number on the SU-8W keyboard and pressing 'Enter' (on the keyboard itself - and watch the function key - it's needed for entering numbers), select the language model that you've bought and you're done.

You can check that it all works by going into (for example) Notes and starting to type. Like magic, isn't it?

From now on, connections should be automatic. You can check this by turning your keyboard off (press and hold the power button for a few seconds again) and waiting. After a short wait, the 'Disconnected' sign will appear on the phone screen. Now power the keyboard on again and wait. Again, after a few seconds, you'll be automatically 'Connected' again. This is because the Wireless Keyboard utility sets up home in RAM (it will auto-start when the phone is power on, by default) and is always watching and waiting for this particular Bluetooth connection.

TIP: If you do go for the SU-8W, note the extra keys that match up to those on your phone:

Left function key and right function key (near the bottom right of the keyboard) do exactly as you'd expect, and can be a time saver when the phone itself is perched on the foldout stand

Arrow keys - these function exactly as d-pad up/down/left/right

D-pad centre (the blue dot) - simulates pressing in the phone's d-pad

S60 menu key - brings up the main S60 applications menu, again as you'd expect

Messaging (the blue envelope) - switches you to Messaging

PC Suite 7.1 available

2008-12-11T18:03:00.000-08:00

So PC Suite's working OK on your PC at the moment? Better not rock the boat. But in case you fancy doing just that, or if things have got rocky and you think a fresh install might do the trick, note that there's a new non-beta version of Nokia's PC Suite now available, v7.1, with the previously beta Communication Center product built-in. If you do install, let us know how it looks!

Skyfire in the UK - now it's official

2008-12-09T06:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, so many of us have been playing with the new proxy-based, video-friendly, S60-native browser Skyfire over the last few weeks. It has now gone official though, with links, press release extracts and an official Skyfire FAQ below.

"December 9, 2008 – Mountain View, CA – Today, Skyfire officially announced that their mobile browser is available in the UK, giving consumers there easy access to the only mobile browser that makes browsing on a mobile phone just like browsing on a PC. Skyfire lets users experience the “real web” to access and interact with any website built with any internet technology, including dynamic Flash, advanced Ajax, Silverlight, Java and more – at the same speeds they are accustomed to on their PC. With this free downloadable browser, for the first time, users can:

watch any videos from the real YouTube and BBC iPlayer as well as live broadcasts of sporting and current events,
stay connected with their friends on the full-feature PC versions of social networks like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and Twitter,
listen to any Web music service like Last.fm, Live365.com and ShoutCast.com,
shop on websites like eBay and Amazon,
use any popular website like the BBC, Google, Yahoo, etc. -- just like they do on their PC.

“We are fully committed to user experience and speed. In fact, so much so that we have opened a data center in the UK to ensure that consumers there have the best Skyfire performance and experience. We’ve also customized the Skyfire start pages of for the UK consumer to include their most popular websites like the BBC, Bebo, eBay.co.uk, and Amazon.co.uk.” said Bhandari. “Prior to launching in the UK, we ensured that Skyfire runs on the most popular Nokia E or N Series phones that are so prevalent in the UK. We’re excited to give these UK Nokia users an iPhone-like browsing experience, but even better with Flash supported and unmatched speeds.”

Skyfire Technology

Skyfire’s patent-pending technology is the foundation of Skyfire’s unique ability to support all web technologies, both current and future, at speeds comparable to the PC. With Skyfire’s proprietary technology, supporting any new web standard becomes a seamless user experience without the need to upgrade to new releases. This technology allows Skyfire to support real web browsing while saving precious bandwidth and reducing processing power and memory needed on the phone.

Skyfire Beta

Skyfire launched their beta in the US in February 2008, and now the beta is active in the US, Canada and the UK. The award-winning mobile browser runs on Windows Mobile (both touch and non-touchscreens as well as VGA resolution) and Symbian Series 60 (3^rd edition) phones. To read which phones Skyfire runs on, see www.skyfire.com/about/beta. Users can download the free mobile browser at get.skyfire.com from either their PC or mobile browser."

Python for S60 1.4.5 is now released.

2008-12-09T05:03:00.000-08:00

Python for S60 1.4.5 is now released. This is an officially signed release.

You can download the release from the usual place in SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...roup_id=154155

This release runs on S60 2nd edition (and all FPs) and 3rd edition.

The release includes:
- source code
- device binaries for 2.0, 2.6, 2.8 and 3.0
- emulator binaries for 2.0, 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 and 3.1
- emulator binaries for armv5 (RVCT)
- documentation PDF.

The release is officially Nokia signed. The capabilities for the PythonForS60 component are "ALL -TCB -DRM -AllFiles", so the DLLs are usable with almost all applications as is and thus there is no longer a need for a separate unsigned-freedevcert version of this package.

The script shell package is signed with the user-grantable capability set (ReadUserData WriteUserData NetworkServices LocalServices UserEnvironment). If you need more capabilities, you need to obtain a devcert and sign the unsigned_testrange script shell package with it. The UID for unsigned_testrange script shell package is updated with untrusted range (0xE0000000...0xEFFFFFFF)

Changes in 1.4.5 from 1.4.4:
----------------------------

Feature additions:

* Added the possibility to run Python code in threads that weren't started by Python itself, by adding the functions
InitializeForeignThread() and FinalizeForeignThread() to the
CSPyInterpreter class. For details see the section "Python/C API
Extensions" of the API Reference.
* Added timeout support to globalui module.
* The positioning module has been made safe to use from several threads.
* Support for the "description" field has been added to the calendar module.

Note: The UIDs for officially signed 3rd edition packages (1.4.x) are different from the prereleases (1.3.x). The 1.4.x releases have UIDs assigned from the protected range, while the 1.3.x releases had UIDs from the unprotected range. If your software depends on the UIDs it may need changes. Especially note that it may not be possible to directly upgrade an application package that embeds a 1.3.x runtime package into a new version that embeds a 1.4.x runtime package without removing the old runtime package first.

The UID changes relevant to application programmers are as follows:

- PythonForS60 package: old 0xF0201510 new 0x2000B1A0
- PythonScriptShell package: old 0xF0201515 new 0x2000B1A5

All users are recommended to upgrade.

This release is the same as 1.3.11 in that ***you need to install both the PythonforS60 _and_ the PythonScriptShell package to get the same functionality as before on 2nd edition. ***

Bug reports, patches and feature requests are welcomed in the usual places:

Bugs: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?grou...55&atid=790646
Patches: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?grou...55&atid=790648
Feature requests:http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?grou...55&atid=790649

Yes, really - if you find a clear bug file it in SourceForge. That's what we track regularly, not every thread in the discussion board. If you post a bug report only in the DiBo, we might miss it.

When filing bugs, include the device you used, its firmware version (you can see this by entering *#0000# in the idle screen), the PyS60 version and a minimal test case (if applicable).

Happy hacking!

20 Reasons Why Nokia 5800 is better than Apple Iphone

2008-12-09T04:13:00.000-08:00

We get lots of requests to compare in detail Nokia 5800 with Apple Iphone 3G. Here are some reasons we believe Nokia 5800 is way ahead than Iphone.

1) Size
The iphone is bigger in size and uneasy for one hand grip. Nokia 5800 is designed to fit well into your hands. Being smaller in width, its easy to operate single handedly.

Iphone size: 115.5 X 62.1 X 12.3 mm
Nokia 5800 size: 111 X 51.7 X 15.5 mm

2) Weight
Iphone is much bulkier than Nokia 5800. Nokia 5800 is 25g lighter than Iphone in weight.

Iphone: 133g
Nokia 5800: 109g

3) Screen Resolution
The Iphone has 3.5” screen while Nokia 5800 has 3.2” but the resolution of 5800 is far more superior to Iphone.

Resolution:
Iphone: 480 by 320
Nokia 5800: 640 by 360

4) Storage
Iphone comes with two options- 8GB & 16GB internal memory. Nokia has a more flexible option to offer 8GB with micro SD card which is expandable upto 16GB. Nokia owners can expand memory size according to needs which the Iphone guys can’t do.

5) Input Methods
Iphone: Finger only.
Nokia 5800: Finger, stylus, plectrum, handwriting recognition.

6) Features
Apple Iphone has lots of missing features like cut and paste function, saving email attachments, no support for third party headphones, ringtones, applications, many software bugs and other technical glitches. Nokia 5800 Tube has no such issues plus many more amazing features included.

7) Colors
Iphone: Black for 8 & 16 GB, White for 16 GB only.
Nokia 5800: Red, Blue and Black.

8 ) Battery
Nokia 5800 provides upto 35 hrs of music playing time against Apple Iphone which claims just 24 hrs. Overall battery power (talktime/standby) is also about 30% more in Nokia 5800. What more, 5800 has a removable battery which Iphone lacks.

Iphone: 5 hrs talk-time, 300 hrs standby, not removable.
Nokia 5800: 8.8 hrs talk-time, 406 hrs standby, removable battery.

9) Camera
Iphone: 2 MP, no flash, no zoom, no additional camera.
Nokia 5800: 3.2 MP, Flash, 3x digital zoom with Carl Zeiss lens. A second camera in front is available for video calling/conferencing.

10) Video Calling
Iphone: No Video calling possible in Iphone.
Nokia 5800: Video calling is possible.

11) Video Recording
IPhone: No option for video recording.
Nokia 5800: Video recording is included.

12) Music Service
Iphone: Paid service with Apple Itunes Store. You pay and download music to your Iphone.
Nokia 5800: “Comes with music” service is bundled with Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic phone by which you can download as much music as you want for 1 year- FREE!!

13) Voice Dialing
Iphone: Not Available
Nokia 5800: Available

14) Voice Recording
IPhone: Not Available
Nokia 5800: Available

15) Web Browser
Iphone: Webkit based Safari browser, no flash available.
Nokia 5800: Webkit based browser, supports flash lite.

16) FM Radio
Iphone: Not Available
Nokia 5800: Available

17) Bluetooth
Iphone: Bluetooth is available for just handsfree, no file sharing possible.
Nokia 5800: Bluetooth available for handsfree and file sharing is possible. Better audio quality on bluetooth in 5800 with A2DP technology which Iphone lacks.

18) Messaging
Iphone: It does not support message forwarding, multiple SMS deletion, sending SMS to multiple recipients and multimedia messages (MMS).
Nokia 5800: All the above is possible plus it has MMS ver 1.3, message size upto 600kb, and automatic resizing of Images for MMS.

19) Price
Nokia 5800 is hopefully unlocked (without any contract) and will sell much cheaper for just £219 in UK which is equal to 279 Euros or $385.

Apple iPhone 3G, on the other hand, with contract in US comes for $199 & $299 for 8 & 16 GB models and the plans with AT&T are way too expensive. Unlocked Apple Iphones sells for around $800 on Ebay.

In other parts of the world, the 8GB unsubsidized Iphone model costs 499 euros ($700) in Italy, 350 pounds ($620) in UK, $700 in India. Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic is expected to sell around the world for about $400 or below.

20) Experience
Nokia: Ages of experience, hundreds of success stories and dozens of smart handsets in current portfolio. Nokia has about 40% market share with the No.1 spot with no close competitors. Certainly the king when it comes to brand value, service and experience.

Apple: First phone ever launched by Apple is Iphone, no prior experience in the telecom market. It’s a novice in the market with a very less market share despite having millions of Iphone sold.

Verdict:
Almost all the major brands around the world like Samsung, HTC, LG, etc launched their touchscreen smartphones with a hope to beat Apple’s Iphone. No-one came close to Iphone when it comes to looks, style, feel and features.

This is the first time a tech giant like Nokia has hit it hard with its first true touchscreen smartphone. Nokia 5800 is a real Iphone killer with way ahead features, perfect looks and great price. Bravo Nokia, Well Done!!

Source: http://www.tube5800.com/20-reasons-why-nokia-5800-is-better-than-apple-iphone/

The N95 classic hits v31 - a final hurrah?

2008-12-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

Yes, the Nokia N95 Classic has had a firmware update, to v31 (from v30), two years after the phone was first available. Impressive. Screen proof and any observations below - a whopping 140MB update. More later (if I can spot any changes!) and the usual cautions over backing up to memory card (blah) and this not applying to network-branded devices (blah) apply....

Initial indications are that this just contains bug fixes and the closing of hack vulnerabilities. Anyone spot anything else?

More here later...

What’s up with Friend View!

2008-11-30T21:54:00.000-08:00

Hi all! We are very grateful about all the feedback we’ve got during Friend View’s first three weeks of public experience in Beta Labs.

We have been reading feedback thoroughly and discussing it in the team. There have been many questions and we have been answering as many as possible, some through e-mail and some by replying to comments on the Beta Labs’ Blog and even in some other blogs. Unfortunately, it is not possible to answer to each and everyone, so through this new post we’ll try to clear some common concerns and questions that have arisen since Friend View’s Beta Labs launch.

Client update

A new S60 client has been released already. Updates should come automatically when you start the application on the phone.

This update has some small fixes, probably not very visible to many but meaningful nevertheless. Some fixes were requested by our users, as e.g. supporting T9 and adding the same zoom keys as Nokia Maps for E71 & E90, among others.

Web version improved

There is already a mobile version of www.friendview.nokia.com for downloading the client. Now, when you go to our home page from your S60 browser you’ll be able to instantly download and install Friend View to your phone. Since last week we’ve also done some small fixes in the web UI in general.

FAQ & concerns

Maps & Cache: Friend View does cache maps in your phone’s memory card, so they are not downloaded more than once (unless you clear the cache yourself). There sometimes can be some slowness of the previously cached maps shown on screen, and this has led to a possible misconception about the loading of maps.

Also, as some of you have noticed, we’re following the Sports Tracker look-and-feel in order to share map content. Our map content cache is shared with this version of Sports Tracker. This is the reason why Friend View maps are different than Nokia Maps, which may be on your phone already.

Location & Standby: If you have Location Sharing ON, your GPS (precise location) or Network-based (approximate location) are updated to the server and shared with your friends periodically. And while Friend View is in the background (or standby mode), your location is still updated but this happens less often. In this way your phone saves battery. So far, Friend View does not load information from the server while it is kept in the background, it only updates again when it comes to foreground (a blinking icon on top-left corner indicates searching network) . Your location might seem old , when the application comes from background to foreground, until the foreground application re-acquires your position from GPS or network based location.

Keep up with Friend View

We are working on more improvements and considering your ideas and requests. There is still a long way to go, and we’ll hope to keep hearing your comments to make Friend View more fun and interesting.

Let us hear from you!

GPS-Action 1.0 for Series 60.3: Alarms and actions depend on your mobile location

2008-11-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

With GPS-Action your mobile will become even more smart: it will fire alarms and perform different actions depending on your geographical position (GPS). Available also for devices without internal GPS, basing on Cell ID positioning! Version 1.0 released 25.11.2008

Bored with alarms firing in the wrong place? GPS-Action will fire reminder exactly when you reach the target place, no sooner and no later! Depending on your geographical location GPS-Action will fire alarm, open the application, change profile, launch the website, open a document or a certain application for you. Bluetooth status change included, of course.

No more time lost with GPS-Action: your mobile knows the right time and right place!

General information:

GPS-Action software sets automatic alarms and performs different actions according to the GPS and Cell position of the mobile phone.

You can launch the application, which you have selected, launch the desired document or change the profile or a Buetooth status of your mobile phone when achieving some geographical position.

Application may fire alarm and display a custom note as soon as you reach your destination.

All actions are performed without any user interaction, only using the location based information.

You have no GPS inside your mobile? No problem! GPS-Action works also with CellID information that is available to all devices without GPS module.

Nokia native landmarks are included automatically into the application.

Easy to use software

GPS-Action is very easy to use. You need to undergo only three simple steps after installation:

* Adjust software settings: here the main thing to adjust the way of geo-positioning: based on GPS, Cell location or both ways. Also you should define your working days and alarm sound volume here.
* Create your own landmarks (if you have your Nokia landmarks already, this step can be omitted): your target places where you want the alarms to be fired and actions to be executed are called landmarks. You can define landmarks as your current place, add landmarks from ready Nokia Landmarks (for devices with built-in GPS) or define landmark coordinates manually.
* Create alarms and actions schedule based on the landmarks: during this step you set type of action and alarm to be executed, as well as alarm frequency, minimal playtime, condition and corresponding landmark.

GPS and Cell ID positioning: available to all S60.3 devices, also without GPS.

There are two types of location positioning: GPS positioning and Cell positioning. GPS positioning is very precise. It is achieved via satellite and it is available for the devices with built-in GPS or external GPS-receiver. This location type has its drawback: connection to the satellite is not possible through walls. So if you are inside, your GPS position will most probably not be retrieved.

For this case, and also for the devices without built-in GPS receiver, we have the second positioning type: location by Cells. Cells are available at all GSM operators, it is the mast where your mobile is receiving the information about the GSM network and your mobile operator. This info is available everywhere, where the GSM network is available. However, the CellID positioning is not so precise. As the GPS positioning, sometimes cells are situated far from each other, so the area for your landmark can be vast enough

Key Features:

* Alarms and actions performed silently, as soon as the geographical target is achieved
* Recurring alarms and actions with many scheduling conditions
* Variety of actions include: change profile, change BT status, open document, launch application, launch website.
* Action frequency can be restricted for the case you are approaching the same landmark more then once
* Time range for the action or alarm can be restricted, you will not be bothered at night.
* Two types of geo positioning: based on GPS and Cell information
* Available for all Series 60.3 devices, even to those without GPS receiver.
* Full synchronisation with native Nokia Landmarks
* Minimal alarm playtime can be set, as well as personalized alarm note
* Customizable alarm sound for every single alarm.

Registration Information:

The trial version of the software is limited for 10 days. The full version of the software is obtained by a license code provided upon purchase. The license code is based on the unique IMEI provided and the application can be used exclusively on the device it is licensed for. The license cannot be retrieved and applied to other devices.

You can buy the application also directly from the application menu in Options- Buy. You will be taken to a secured online page of SymbianGuru where Credit Card payment can be done.

Please make sure that the trial version of the GPS Action Series 60.3 is installed on your phone and you like its performance. The Full Version will have exactly the same performance, so please try before you buy.

We do not grant any money back guarantee for the software you purchase.

Support:

We will be glad to support you at support (at) symbianguru.com if you have any questions or concerns. We are always glad to hear from you!

GPS-Action: Place-dependent actions

2008-11-30T19:01:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Symbian Guru (the developer, not the blogger) for introducing a new genre of S60 utility. GPS-Action uses GPS and/or cell ID to fire alarms, switch profiles, open applications, etc. according to where you are rather than the time of day. So, for example, you could be reminded to look for a particular product the next time you get to the shopping mall. Lots more other examples and information at the main GPS-Action page.

"With GPS-Action your mobile will become even more smart: it will fire alarms and perform different actions depending on your geographical position (GPS). Available also for devices without internal GPS, basing on Cell ID positioning! Version 1.0 released 25.11.2008

Bored with alarms firing in the wrong place? GPS-Action will fire reminder exactly when you reach the target place, no sooner and no later! Depending on your geographical location GPS-Action will fire alarm, open the application, change profile, launch the website, open a document or a certain application for you. Bluetooth status change included, of course.

Key Features:

* Alarms and actions performed silently, as soon as the geographical target is achieved
* Recurring alarms and actions with many scheduling conditions
* Variety of actions include: change profile, change BT status, open document, launch application, launch website.
* Action frequency can be restricted for the case you are approaching the same landmark more then once
* Time range for the action or alarm can be restricted, you will not be bothered at night.
* Two types of geo positioning: based on GPS and Cell information
* Available for all Series 60.3 devices, even to those without GPS receiver.
* Full synchronisation with native Nokia Landmarks
* Minimal alarm playtime can be set, as well as personalized alarm note
* Customizable alarm sound for every single alarm."

Nokia N79 Review

2008-11-29T03:36:00.000-08:00

Putting the Nokia N79 (metaphorically) next to the original N73 is instructive - not only has the specification dramatically improved in the intervening three years, it's smaller, sleeker and lighter and is a testament to the onward march of technology. Putting the N79 next to the N78, it's closest living relative, is also instructive, in that the N79 is smaller and higher specification again, and with a more normal design to boot. Rafe's commented at length on the positioning of the N79 and N78 in the article linked above, so I won't repeat it.

Another interesting comparison is putting the new N79 up against the year old N82 - as two of Nokia's leading 'candy bar' form factor smartphones, both still in production, it makes for an obvious 'which one to buy' moment. However, referring back to Rafe's comments again, the N79 is pitched much more at the mass market, with its XpressOn covers, white iPod-like front and NaviWheel, and with its diminutive size. While the N82 was pitched fairly squarely at photo-and-video-centric power users, a market which it continues to serve well. So I won't go into more depth in terms of an N79-N82 comparison, apart from the little spec table added as 'Appendix A' at the bottom of this review, which will give you a quick overview of the N79's relative specification plus points compared to the (now very well known) N82.

In fact, despite the lack of heavyweight features like the hardware graphics acceleration, the list of Nokia 'toys' (FM transmitter, NaviWheel, keylock, dual LED flash) that's now integrated and taken for granted in such a mid-tier smartphone is really rather impressive. But how well have they been integrated in the N79 and how well do they all perform as part of a whole?

N79 - The hardware

At only 15mm thick for most of its length, at 97g in weight and at only 74cc in volume, the N79 is commendably small, considering what's packed inside. Whereas the N82 always seems a little over-sized compared to the average High Street candy bar, the N79 slips into the hand or pocket just perfectly and, if this is where monoblock phones will end up, it's a pretty good 'sweet spot' in terms of compromise between screen/key size and overall bulk.

As witnessed by my tour of Nokia's test centre at Farnborough, responsible for testing N78 and N79s (in particular) to destruction, the N79's hardware is pretty robust. Any creaking of the case when pressed is minimal and, given what Nokia put it through, there's just about zero chance this thing will break, short of dropping it from a great height or running it over in something very heavy.

The display's 2.4", as on the N82 and N78, but very clear in all light conditions, including bright sunlight, an area where some modern devices [FX: Steve looks at HTC...] fall down horribly.

The much-hyped Xpress-On covers are a bit of a gimmick, to be honest - yes, it's cool that the phone's theme changes automatically to match, but a) you won't spend much time looking at the back of your phone and b) the theme change may override a favourite theme you've set manually. In fact, even sticking with just the one cover, it's annoying enough that even a simple removal of the back cover (to change a SIM card, for example) is enough to revert the N79 back to its 'matching' theme. Thankfully, this behaviour can be turned off in 'Settings'.

The control and numeric keys are a bit of an acquired taste - Nokia continue to experiment. Here, the function, call and hang-up keys are all raised, N82-style, with the S60 menu and 'c' keys recessed in between and with the infamously useless 'multimedia carousel' key offset to the left.

The numeric keys don't have much separation between them, in terms of feel and I didn't like the way the critical bottom row has been squeezed in at the very bottom - pressing '*' or '#' is almost enough to fire the phone from your hand in response to the necessary pinching action. In common with the N79 and N82, the N79 has an approach to key backlighting that means that under certain conditions (here it's half/dim light) the key legends effectively become invisible, with the backlight just counteracting the darkness of the legend in such a way to render them unreadable:

All of which I can live with though - the strangest thing about the N79 design is the d-pad. After getting used to phone d-pads in which the outer 'ring' is raised, it's a big shock to use the N79's 'inverted' arrangement, with a central dimple that's raised a good 1mm above a flush (to the control surface) outer ring. It certainly makes the design point about the d-pad centre being the 'third/central function key', but it will take some getting used to. The outer ring is a full 'NaviWheel' here, interestingly, so you can cycle round applications or photos by circling your finger around the central dimple, a system that works well enough without really being as convincing as the original iPod control wheel, the device that started the craze.

Around the N79's perimeter are:

* a 2mm charging port (not a huge problem, although clearly USB charging will be used more in future devices)

* a wonderfully elegant combined hatch (with retained flap) for microSD (a 4GB card is included with each device) and microUSB connectivity

a keylock ley (a trend first started on the Palm Treo, I think, and one which I heartily approve of - it's so much quicker to flick one key than fiddle around manually activating an S60 keylock with left function + '*' or using the power key shortcut)

* a 3.5mm audio jack (also enabled for TV out, although there's no cable for this in the box, and in practice a bug in the early firmware means that photos aren't passed through the TV out system correctly - Nokia, work needed here!)

* the power key

* up/down rocker (for call volume changes, for photo zooming, for music volume changes, and so on)

* camera shutter key

* stereo speakers (positioned as on the N82, at either end of the right hand side, for use when the phone is in 'video mode', and as loud as those on the N95 and N82 and of quite decent quality)

The exterior keys on the N79 are very well made, again backing up what I saw at Farnborough. The back cover is plastic, of course, complete with theme-changing microchip, and is something of a fingerprint magnet, though thankfully you won't be looking at the N79's rear too often, so this isn't really a problem.

The 5 megapixel camera is well protected with a manual sliding shutter. Opening this starts the Camera application, closing it closes the app, etc. Very convenient and quick when you've simply got to grab an important snap. Camera is much the same as in all other recent S60 phones, with the addition that you can now 'Customise toolbar', taking off adjustments that you find yourself not using or just re-jigging the order of the toolbar functions, a tweak which is very useful indeed.

The dual LED flash works well, as documented here, although clearly not up to Xenon levels. Photos taken in daylight come out well and are comparable to those from the flagship N95 8GB and N82. Here are some samples, click each to download or open full-size:

Video capture is not so satisfactory. Detail in this mode isn't as good as on previous devices like the N95 and N82. Here's a comparison of frame grabs from video of the same scene (weak winter sunshine by the duck pond), with the N79 first and the N82 below:

A noticeable difference. The effect is more dramatic if you try and film something closer, such as a person in front of you. Again, the N79's video frame grab is on top, the N82 below:

Now, we know that there's no focussing in video mode in any of Nokia's S60 smartphones. A shame, but there you go. Instead, on the N82/N95/N93 Nokia preset a sensible focus that, in good enough light, means that the depth of field is from about 1 metre to infinity. For some reason, the focus seems messed up on the N79 (and N96, if you remember) - I'm really hoping that this glitch can be fixed in firmware, otherwise I simply can't recommend the N79 to anyone hoping to capture video on the go.

Being able to flick on the dual LED unit as a 'video light', for evening videos doesn't work well. If your subject is close enough to be lit then they'll complain strongly about the 'dazzling' light into which they're forced to look - I know, I've tried it. And then there's the aforementioned focussing problem, meaning that if the subject is close enough to be lit then they're also close enough to be out of focus.

The presence of a biggish (1200mAh) battery is very welcome and should mean that no new user gets caught unawares by a failing battery, as was the case with the N95 Classic. A 4GB card in the side means that there's plenty of space for getting someone started on the data front too. Particularly interesting was the decision to pre-download SIS files for a dozen or so of the most popular N-Gage games onto the card, ready for installation without the user having to find and download them. With flash memory so cheap, this makes a lot of sense, though letting the user install them to 'C', i.e. the internal disk, makes less sense - with some N-Gage games being tens of Megabytes, a new user could quickly get themselves into trouble. So why not force all games to install to any disk other than 'C'?

Once powered up and running, the N79 is as familiar as any other S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 phone. The fade-in, fade-out, swirl things all around transitions are fun for the first hour but then it's good to turn them off to speed things up - unfortunately, Nokia has rather buried the setting for this - it's in 'Tools|Settings|General|Personalisation|Themes|General|Options|Theme effects' - whoever decided that this was the place to stick this toggle should be shot at dawn.

The other thing that you may want to change quickly is automatic overriding of the theme system - just change it to 'Ask'. The built-in, back-cover-matching themes are decent enough, but it's annoying when you've set up something else and the theme reverts simply because the back cover slipped off and had to be put back on. With the display at only 2.4", I found visibility the main problem, just as on the N82, and so I plumped for my old favourite 'White revisited', shown here (just to be boring) in the screenshots.

There are no surprises in the basic S60 application set. Nokia Photos and Video Centre have taken over from Gallery - largely a positive change, though there are still a few bits of functionality that need to be ported over from the old pre-FP2 system. Some web sites have reported that zooming into a photo takes an eternity, but with the latest (v10.046) firmware I had no problems at all. It was my first experience with the new FP2 'smooth zooming' functionality, but that aside there's little to report.

Nokia Maps is v2.0, of course, there's the Music store widget. Music player itself is unchanged, producing great quality output from files of decent bit rate. The headphones supplied are broken into the 'phones themselves, plus a wired remote, also with a 3.5mm jack, a flexible system that means you can work your audio in any of several different ways. There's A2DP if you want to go wireless and, following in the N78's footsteps, an FM transmitter, offering a second way to ditch your wires.

Designed for use in a car, this works extremely well (in my tests, up to 2 metres) to get your music from phone to car stereo (which even displays 'Nokia' as the RDS station!) without any messing around with adapters or standalone transmitters - a very cool addition and with surprisingly good sound quality.

A 'SW checker' icon in the 'Applications' group turned out to do the same job as the old '*#0000#' from the standby screen, with the addition that, this being one of Nokia's new devices with Red Bend's Over The Air upgrading system built-in, you can check for updates automatically on a schedule of your choice and install any updates seamlessly without loss of data. UDP (User Data Preservation) also seems to be present for Nokia Software Update installs (from a PC) - I tested this and my data and installed applications weren't touched.

Rather confusingly, 'App update' is also present and it's not at all clear which applications are covered by this separate over-the-air system - perhaps there will be a list of approved applications which are kept up to date. Time will tell.

Although video playback was comprehensive (even down to handling WMV and FLV files, for example), proving that there's some decent video decoders in the N79, there's no 3D Graphics Accelerator, as on the more expensive N95 and N82. This isn't a problem for all the N-Gage games, none of which expect acceleration, and it's not a problem for most third party games, but the N79 does come a cropper where you try running just a little too ambitious on it. For example, the racing game Oval Racer runs like treacle on the N79, and the YouTube client Mobitubia stutters along in a way that makes it almost unuseable. I'm presuming that these two applications make use of graphics acceleration.

The status of TV out on the N79 is up for debate - it's advertised as having it but there's no composite AV cable in the box (unlike on other Nseries TV-out-compatible handsets) and, when you do plug it into a TV, photos aren't shown at VGA resolution - rather, the QVGA screen of the device is simply echoed. I'm assuming that this is a firmware bug and that this will be fixed.

Two things which are built-in and fully working are Wi-Fi (always good to see this on a mid-tier phone) and GPS. Contrary to other ill-informed reviews from around the Web, the GPS in the N79 is very fast and as sensitive as on any other Nokia S60 phone. Where casual reviewers talk about slow lock-on times, they almost certainly haven't set up Assisted GPS properly - it's vital to assign this a working data connection for grabbing its satellite data from. Nokia must share some of the blame here - a first-run wizard asking the right question would help avoid similar misunderstandings in future. In practice, I was getting lock times of under ten seconds from a warm start.

Nokia Maps comes with 3 months trial of turn by turn voice instructions, so that's an extra £20 or so value built-into the N79 purchase price. Maps 2.0 may not be the best satellite navigation system for S60 but it's very flexible and does the job most of the time. Most importantly, perhaps, its maps and data are free all the time you're not using the application for road navigation.

Connectivity is, as you would expect, excellent, with 3.5G data, Wi-fi (not always a given in mid-tier phones) and subtleties like UPnP, should you need it. Nokia's implementation of Wi-fi is rarely the best performing, but then the aerial has to be very small to fit the device, so a compromise clearly has to be made. Overall performance is good once you've turned the theme transitions off. Free RAM is 72MB, plenty for even the very hardest of uses. There's 76MB of free flash memory on the internal (C) disk, enough for most of your non-game third party applications.

Looking at the N79 at launch price (over £300, SIM-free) and then at the N82 (for example), currently at less than £300, makes the N79 seem over-priced, but I'd expect its SIM-free price to come down to the £250 mark within the first three months, once the early adopters have had their fill. Looking at Nokia's Nseries candy bars, the N79 is a lot better than its predecessor, the N78, but it's arguably quite a bit worse than the N82, making the N79's price look incongruous. But, as I say, this will come down quickly and won't make much difference when buying the N79 on a modest (£25 a month) contract.

Despite its current failings (poor video capture, fiddly keypad bottom row, lack of graphics oomph), the Nokia N79 is packed with toys and will be a good introduction to S60 3rd Edition FP2 for new users. Moreover, it's extremely robust, rather fashionable (with the cover gimmick) and will provide an awful lot of people with a reliable day to day gadget-packed phone.

Opera Mini 4.2. get it now

2008-11-26T20:38:00.000-08:00

New in Opera Mini 4.2 (quoted from Opera themselves)

* Skins - Personalize Opera Mini by choosing a new colorful skin. We have reintroduced the popular skinning feature from Opera Mini 3.
* Performance - Opera Mini 4.2 can use our newly established server park in the US. This means significantly faster page downloads for our users in the Americas and Asia-Pacific region. Users in the rest of the world will also experience faster page downloads since we’ve reduced the load on our other servers.
* Video - We are working to make video content available on more phones through Opera Mini. If you have a new Sony Ericsson or Nokia phone, the chance is high that you can take Opera Mini for a spin on m.youtube.com.
* Sync your Notes -The handy Notes functionality from the Opera Desktop Web browser just got more portable through Opera Link. All of your notes are available in Opera Mini directly from the Bookmarks menu.

You can download Opera Mini 4.2 on your phone by directing its web browser to mini.opera.com