Recent News Headlines - Hardware
Never too old for a wedding - a Day in the Life of the Nokia N82
David Gilson turns blogger in this 'Day in the Life of the Nokia N82', bought by him for camera duties and becoming his tool of choice for an all day wedding event. Read on for his impressions of this three year old device and its Xenon flash, sample photos and even a battery report - it seems that rumours of the N82's demise have been greatly exagerated...
The sadly flawed Symbian world top-end line-up - looking to the N8
In this feature, I've been taking a long hard look at the top-end smartphones in the Symbian powered world over the last three years, pointing out their flaws and frailties, and - where appropriate - pointing out what should have been done to fix things up. Yes, Symbian has been cracking along with record momentum in the mid-tier, with Nokia trouncing the iPhones, Blackberries and Android phones in terms of raw unit sales, but Symbian's partners have been scoring rather a lot of own goals in recent times. And what of the 2010 Symbian^3 crop, such as the imminent Nokia N8 - will these suffer a similar fate? I'm optimistic...
The Qi standard for wireless charging now defined
The Wireless Power Consortium has now finalized the interface definition for a low-power specification for charging devices wirelessly. The exact details will be published publicly on August 30th. The specification is currently limited to 5 Watts, more than enough for all USB-charging Symbian-powered phones. Devices that want to comply with the standard will have to pass third-party certification before the manufacturer is allowed to use the 'Qi' logo on the device or its packaging.
AAS Insight 128 - TnP, Symbian DevCo and Nokia Q2 results
In All About Symbian Insight 128, we open with a round up of recent news including the formation of the Symbian Developer Cooperative, the retail availability of the Nokia C6, news of the i8910 HX7 firmware, and Nokia's Conspiracy for Good. Rafe talks about his experience with Track and Protect and Ewan asks whether Symbian needs a reference device. Finally we talk over Nokia's Q2 2010 results. You can listen to AAS Insight 128 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
HX7 on the i8910 HD gets Qt built-in
There's a surprise release from arch-Samsung i8910 HD-modder HyperX and his helpers today, in that there's a brand new version of HX7 out this morning. In addition to all the other customisation and battery saving goodness in HX7, the QT 4.6.2 Symbian^3 QT libaries are now integrated - seems like this device is edging towards to the Symbian^3 spec of devices like the Nokia N8?
Defining the Smartphone - part 2 (testing the definition, head to head)
As mentioned in part one of my Defining the Smartphone feature from earlier in the week, the very word now encompasses a surprising range of hardware, with some claiming that the older phone-like devices are outdated when compared to the modern capacitive touch slabs and that the former shouldn't even be called smartphones. In this, part two, I attempt to quantify the various attributes of two of the extremes from the smartphone world, I take the latest evolution of Nokia's classic S60 slider form factor, the N86, and pitch it head to head with the current highest rated Android smartphone in the UK, the HTC Desire. Will my own smartphone definition hold water?
Dust to dust... a capacitive Nokia Care Point story
Having used a Nokia X6 for a few weeks, I became painfully aware of a few dozen dust particles and the odd small hair stuck under its capacitive screen. Read on for an explanation of how they got there and what was needed to both remove them and stop dust encroaching in the future.
Nokia Conversations addresses "buttons on smartphones"
They might have well started flying a kite in lightning, because this is going to raise some eyebrows. Nokia’s latest blog post on the Conversations site starts out with “My name is Ian and I prefer buttons on my mobile phone.” You can probably guess where the conversation is going, because many people believe that the only form for a smartphone is a touchscreen slab. It should be a good debate!
Does Symbian need crowd pleasing reference hardware?
Following on from Steve’s discussion earlier this week on discontinued smartphones, it’s been interesting to watch the reaction from other publications around Google’s Nexus one no longer being sold, and how it was a failed experiment and customers will only buy devices from the High Street. Regardless, it's a path I think Symbian should think about going down...
C6 appears on sale at Nokia UK store
Nokia's latest Symbian^1 device, the C6 has appeared on sale at Nokia's UK store. The C6 is a touchscreen phone with side-sliding QWERTY keyboard, featuring the same homescreen widgets as seen on the N97 and N97 mini. It was announced back in April along with the C3 and E5. The emphasis of the April release was to 'democratise' the market by bringing unlocked handset prices down to a more affordable level. Therefore, we're a little surprised at the £289 price tag on the C6. Of course, prices on the Nokia UK store are typically higher than 'street' retail prices, but this is still different from the £230 price tag we expected.
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