Steve and I have had the Samsung i8510 (a.k.a. the INNOV8, in some markets) for the best part of a week, putting it through its paces. In all honesty, it's too early for a full review because there are some things needing to be attended to by Samsung, but what Steve was really interested in was how well the screen, 8 mp camera, focussing camcorder and DSP-powered music playback performed. I hope you'll be interested too.
Guest contributor Nick Anstee signed up to be one of the first to get a Nokia N96, as part of a limited 'wildlife' run. Read on for his first impressions of the N96, after a couple of days of intensive playing, plus photos of the device and some really nice photo samples taken on the device.
You can't fault posts like this, listing some of the top recent Python applications written for S60-powered phones. Whether you're after some very useful example code for your own Python masterpiece or just some ideas for cool freebies to install and use, from a GPS tracker to game controller to equation solver, this is a good starting point, as will be the hosting Croozeus PyS60 Applications section, as it accumulates the results of similar choices and postings. In each case, there's full source code.
Nokia's 70,000 euro game concept competition closes tomorrow (8th of September) so you'd better get your skates on if you want to take part. They're not looking for any actual code, all they want are detailed ideas for Symbian, Java or N-Gage games optionally including mockup images and/or video too. Note that the competition is only open to professional development companies, private individuals cannot enter.
Several sites are reporting that a BBC iPlayer application will soon be available for the Nokia N96. Some N96's will ship with the application preloaded, but it will also be available for download from the BBC website. The application will support both the downloading and streaming of BBC TV and radio programmes. Read on for more.
Some folks are gonna love this. Others will hate it. But Handy Shell is coming, taking over the whole S60 standby/menu/control key schema and making it remeniscent of a Windows Mobile home screenadding new functionality. Ricky Cadden's been playing with the Handy Shell beta and you'll find his thoughts and screenshots right here.
Shazam have been at the music recognition game for a while - and we look here at the native S60 version of their flagship Shazam ID utility, which samples music snatches from the radio and then lets you know where it's from. Ewan's been trying to catch it out but ended up quite impressed.
An updated firmware, v30.0.015, has been made available for the Nokia N95 classic. Updates include the latest versions of Nokia service applications (Nokia Maps 2.0, Share online 3.0), inclusion of the full N-Gage client and smaller updates to a number of applications. The updates also adds automatic screen rotation to the N95 classic. Read on for more details and screenshots.
Nokia yesterday announced it has started shipping the Nokia N96, which means it will become available, SIM-free, in shops over the next few weeks. Availability via operators will take a little longer; the UK launch on the 3 network is scheduled for October 1st. The N96 is a high-end Nseries device with a focus on mobile TV and video (large 2.8 inch screen, video stand, DVB-H receiver, and preloaded movie content). It also features a 5 megapixel camera and integrated GPS. Read on for more details.
There's a new episode of Sauna Talk on the N-Gage developer site, where once again host Arnold Faber discusses mobile gaming with Nokia's Miikka Skaffari while not wearing any clothes.
Samsung will be taking up Nokia's offer to bring the last of the Symbian Shares under the Finnish roof (reports Reuters). With Nokia now in receipt of acceptances from all the shareholders, they will gain 100% control of the company, and will be able to implement the Symbian Foundation plan, and we suspect a major reorganisation of the Symbian staff.
...In which I am impressed by a couple of examples of superbly 'joined-up' applications from the iPhone world. Can the Symbian ecosystem compete? What advantages does the iPhone have to help the creation of joined-up apps and is there hope for similar software for S60 users? Comments welcome - can you think of any similarly impressive Symbian examples?
And I thought it was just me. James Burland's written an eloquent rant about how he keeps wanting to go back to his trusty Nokia N93, which still outperforms allcomers on the video recording front (stereo sound, optical zoom). With photo and video capture being critical to many people's phone use these days, is he right to criticise Nokia's direction? Although agreeing with him in a way, I'd also point to GPS, larger screens and 3.5mm audio output as modern boons.
Ah - you see, Nokia do keep tweaking their apps and compatibility lists after all - the E71 finally has a proper version of Nokia Internet Radio made especially for it. (via the E71 blog)
As you may have already seen, Google has launched a new web browser for Windows PCs called Chrome. According to their comic PR site, it's based on the WebKit open source browser engine, which is also used as the browser engine in the Symbian S60 browser and OS X Safari browser. WebKit currently powers the default browsers on Nokia, Samsung and Apple smartphones as well as Macintosh computers, and Google is taking it onto Windows PCs as well as its own Android. It seems there's now a potential for WebKit to dominate almost every major computing platform, could this be game over for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer?
Rafe gives his first impressions of the Nokia N79, along with detailed analysis on exactly who it will appeal to and where it fits into Nokia's burgeoning Nseries range. The hardware is the main focus as Rafe takes an early look at a prototype of Nokia's latest Nseries 'candybar' handset.
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