Recent News Headlines - Hardware
Camera Nitty Gritty - Flash Colour Spectrums
In part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 of this series, Steve Litchfield looked at specifics of camera performance in the phone world. Now AAS guest writer Dirk Snoyt takes up the theme of camera phone flash research and gets all technical on the theme of colours. If you'd like to suggest a topic for us to cover next in the series, please comment!
The first production N85? Head for Italy!
Somewhat annoyingly (for those of us outside the country), Italy seems to be the very earliest recipients of production Nokia N85s - here, p@sco brings us a traditional unboxing and test photos. See also Rafe's N85 hands-on for more on what makes this device special.
The E90 Communicator hits v300!
Hot off the press, the Nokia E90 has had another big firmware update, to v300.34.84. There's now Maps 2.0 in the firmware, plus many other improvements. Changelog below. [Update: looks like this new release knocks out Blackberry support. If this is important to you then don't upgrade!]
Nokia E90 vs Asus EEE PC 900 - The Microlaptop vs the Minilaptop
The EEE PC portable computer range has received a lot of coverage over the past year partly due to its low price but also partly due to its small size. How does Asus' minilaptop compare to Nokia's microlaptop, the E90 Communicator? All About Symbian's Tzer2 is about to find out, in an article with somewhat predictable outcome but plenty of interesting insights along the way, including Download! being held up as a relatively good example of how to do things - for a change.
The N96 moves to v11.101 firmware
Nick Anstee reports that there's a new firmware, v11.101, available through Nokia Software Update, for the N96. (Product code 0568238, at least). He's encountered problems though. Nick will comment below on changes and status of his device!
How to: Keep your data and survive a repair or firmware upgrade
In which I explain perhaps the all round best way to keep your data safe and your disruption to a minimum when it comes to repair, replacement or firmware upgrade time. I also propose it as a possible way to restore operation to a 'broken' phone. Comments welcome if you've lived or died by a variety of backup and restore procedures. Can you add to this feature?
The N96 gets the Gadget Show treatment
The UK's Gadget Show remains a respected review source, even if they don't go into quite the tech detail that AAS does... in the latest Web TV episode, Jon Bentley goes into reasonable detail on the Nokia N96, covering the improvements over the N95 while also being disappointed by the slow speed overall, by the poor Wi-Fi reception and by the lack-lustre BBC iPlayer.
Show 66, the N85, wonder phones in Japan, and an N95 body-cam
Possibly my most link-packed news post ever, but.... The Phones Show 66 is now live, with a video preview of the OLED-equipped Nokia N85 and video of the 5800 XpressMusic in action (Hi-res version RSS feed). It sparked comments on YouTube too, with Paul commenting that in Japan they have phones like the SoftBank 920sc, with OLED screen, 3x optical zoom AND Xenon flash. I'm impressed. And viewer Micky turns out to be making videos of his own, prototyping a wearable N95 body-cam. And I haven't even had breakfast yet...
Nokia N79 support site goes live
The upcoming Nokia N79 has now got a support site available at Nokia.com, including the full manuals and user guides in many different languages. As always this may or may not indicate an imminent release, but Nokia devices are usually released within a few weeks of their support sites appearing.
The Best Smartphone Camera in the World
In the latest part in my phone camera series, I put the five top camera-equipped smartphones to the test, evaluating their still photo results under a variety of scenarios (landscape, night, dim, macro, etc). Which really is the best? And will the winning phone be made in Finland? I look at the Nokia N82, N95 and N93, plus the Samsung G810 and i8510... [WARNING: Broadband essential, the article includes a fair number of example images]
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