Nokia N82 Blog

A New Project

2009-02-04T22:48:00.001+08:00

I'd just like to announce that I've embarked on 2 new projects - S60 Developer, which hosts widgets and applications I've developed for the S60 v5.0 platform - for all those switchers who moved to the new Nokia 5800XM (or those thinking of getting one!), and A Background Daily (which is not up yet) - providing high quality wallpapers for most popular desktop and mobile resolutions.

It's been great writing this blog and I hope you'll enjoy my new projects!

Notice

2008-09-10T21:04:00.000+08:00

~~Due to personal reasons, I will not be available for the next few days - so there will be no blog posts until next week. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.~~

Looking back at the blog, it's been quite an achievement building it up from virtually no visitors/day to getting an army of 400 odd subscribers (according to Feedburner). However I found it extremely hard to commit to the regular updates for the blog, and especially in view of the current situation where I will be attending university in a foreign place, and so I regret to inform all subscribers that the blog will be suspended indefinitely. It's been a great and valuable experience since I've started, and I apologise to all readers that I have affected.

N-Gage offers free games download

2008-08-13T00:16:00.003+08:00

Grrr I do envy those UK residents; the latest N-Gage announcement from Nokia promises to offer 120,000 copies of the N-Gage game FIFA 08 to UK residents who own the new N-Gage compatible smart phones (N95, N82, N81, etc).

To further promote their N-Gage next generation mobile gaming service, Nokia is giving away 120,000 FIFA 08 licenses to any UK resident in possession of a compatible Nokia device (N95, N95 8gb, N81, N81 8gb, N82), until the end of August 2008.

Lucky devils. And this happens to be a marketing strategy by Nokia too...

Nokia released today a series of CCTV-style films documenting the amusingly absorbing effect of mobile FIFA 08.

Shot undercover on London’s tube network, each of these videos captures the bemused reactions of passengers witnessing a man so engrossed in his game that he does anything in order to avoid any disruption to his match. The aim of these short films is to drive viewers to www.n-gage.com/fifa08, a CCTV-bank-style site where you can watch any of these six videos at your leisure. From here you can download N-Gage, buy a Nokia N95 8gb or, if you already have the N-Gage application on your mobile, go straight to download your free FIFA 08 license.

Enough about that. If you're a UK resident just visit N-Gage (www.n-gage.com/fifa08) and redeem your free game before it's all out!

Nokia to offer pilot scheme, restricting beta apps release

2008-08-12T02:58:00.000+08:00

Yep, you read right. Nokia is offering a brand new pilot scheme for interested users who wish to participate in product development - basically put, it means that if you want to try all of Nokia's latest beta software and stuff like that, you've got to sign up to be a participant, as it won't be released for public downloading.

The difference to Beta Labs is quite clear cut. Beta Labs can share applications, content and services for trial usage to thousands and hundreds of thousands of users in an open platform. Nokia Pilots program is in contrast allowing Nokia’s different development teams, who’s work is still classified and in many cases not made public, to share their ideas with Nokia Pilots. Having said that, there is a need to restrict the access to this type of material and content. Thus, we require in some cases non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s) with Nokia Pilots.

What makes it worse is that even if I join, I probably won't be allowed to talk about it on the blog. A real shame - I know many readers are very curious about the latest apps and developments on their smart phones and N82s to see how they can make the most out of their device.

But then there's also this...

We are giving a few selected participants the chance to participate in real product development. What we mean by few is that we match our Nokia Pilot candidates interests to the different projects we are working on. In cases where the interests and Pilots user profiles match we will invite you to dedicated arenas where we are able to share information we would otherwise not be able to do. As a Nokia Pilot, you will become an advisor to our development teams from around the world. Nokia Pilots program offers an opportunity to be involved in the design, development and/or testing phases of concepts, products and/or services

Sounds like a brilliant way to get rid of the extra time on your hands. And it's a big chance to actually contribute to Nokia and the Symbian platform too...

Official recruitment starts in September of this year - just keep an eye on this page.

Oh yes, and Nokia: please don't give up Beta Labs and just focus on the pilot scheme - Beta Labs is winning over a lot of potential users as well as making us consumers feel that you're actively developing and supporting for our smart phones.

Nokia Chat Updated

2008-08-11T23:52:00.002+08:00

For those using Nokia Chat, here's some good news - it's been updated to a new version, with some big bug fixes as well as power consumption problems.

Naturally quite a bit of small errors have been eliminated after the releasing of the previous version. Problems resolved list contains fixes to some voice message related malfunctions and should resolve some connectivity related problems. Especially the battery lifetime should be improved from past in situations when the app is set to “Automatic” connection mode and you are in between WLAN and Cellular network often. In the comments, there was a note that someone got error when entering the Phonebook - this shouldn’t happen anymore.

Depending on demand, there's probably going to be support for offline messaging as well in future versions. Now all we need is some cross-platform lovin' with Google Talk/MSN/AIM/ICQ users, and this app will be complete...

Cramming more music in to your N82 [Part 2]

2008-08-11T23:35:00.001+08:00

In the last few days I decided to try out my last post of converting my entire music library and putting it on my N82, as I will be leaving for university soon and having my entire music library in my pocket does make the long plane trips much shorter.

So here's how the Music Player looks when the initial loading screen is done:

The worst part is when you turn your phone on first thing in the morning and waiting for the Music Player app to finish loading - it takes much longer on average to get songs playing.

Update:
So here's my first impressions on cramming 2700+ songs on the N82:

First things first - loading the Music Player app from a cold boot (turning the phone on using the power button) takes roughly 15 seconds or so. The 'Loading' bar keeps moving before you can see the number of songs and podcasts you have on your phone.
Clicking on 'All Songs' in the main menu takes a very long time to load - something like 10 to 20 seconds, depending on whether you're opening the list for the first time since you turned your phone on.
Loading a particular song becomes a nightmare. If you select a song to play, it takes about 10 seconds before the music player menus are accessible again. The phone lags for about 10 - 15 seconds before you start hearing the song play in the background. In some cases, you may not be able to fast forward or pause the music as the menus are lagging - you may have to wait up to a total of 30 - 40 seconds before being able to access them again.
Skipping songs also becomes problematic - the menu lags for up to 30 seconds, during which you cannot skip the song as the controls don't respond. It doesn't happen every time but it does happen often enough to get you pissed off.
Searching for a particular song takes a while, as character input becomes extremely laggy while having something like over 2500 songs in the list. Instead of snappy word input expect something of a 1 second lag as the character changes from 'a' to 'b'.
Lastly, your phone may get random 'System Errors' while executing and running the Music Player app, thus crashing the application (but not the entire operating system).

So that's more or less the experiences I have had while using the Music Player app in the last 2 days. Its totally degraded my music experience on this Nokia flagship; I suppose the N82 (or the N95 for that matter) wasn't catered to play this many songs in mind. But again, I'm sure many readers have a library that's much larger than the one I placed on the phone, so what were Nokia thinking?

You can expect me to take most of my songs, save for about a couple hundred, from this phone. So what's the point of a 32GB microSDHC card for this phone in the first place?

Cramming more music in to your N82

2008-08-06T21:04:00.003+08:00

I don't think I'm the only one around who uses their Nokia N82 as their portable music player, their point-and-shoot camera, as well as a phone. Yes, I know, it can be used in many other ways too, but that's not the point. The point is that with a 8GB memory stick, I can probably fit 1500 songs in the phone, before running out of space for taking photos and storage for other stuff too.

What, only 1500 songs, despite compressing the music files to 128kbps, MP3 files?!

It so happens that there's another format to optimise your music on the N82. Instead of transferring MP3 files over, next time you might want to consider eAAC+ files (.m4a). AllAboutSymbian has a great article introducing users to the eAAC+ format and how you can fit plenty of songs easily on a 8GB stick - so you can basically take your entire library out when you're out of town. I quote:

My collection of mostly 320 kbps encoded mp3's (some are 192 kbps) on my home PC requires about 26 GB of diskspace. Converting it into eAAC+ at 48 kbps reduces it into 4.65 gigabyte. Not bad for 'good' not excellent rated compression. We are talking here about 9 days of continuous music.

It just seems too good to be true.

Update: I've decided to do a complete, in-depth review of this trick on my N82, so you can head over the Part 2 to see how well it fares in real life and decide whether you do want to shrink your entire music library in to your smart phone.

Exchange ActiveSync for the N82

2008-08-04T14:24:00.002+08:00

The E-series blog has a great post about Nokia's E-series phones and how it works with MS Exchange ActiveSync. While the E-series is targeted with business users in mind, I see some of them (as well as more casual users) still demanded for business features found on the E-series on the N-series phones as well, such as the N95 and the N82.

The installation file for Mail for Exchange that works on your N82 and N95 (and probably the whole cohort of the N-series phones) is available from Nokia's Business Software directory.

Viewpoint: Skyfire and Opera

2008-08-02T12:09:00.003+08:00

Jessica Dolcourt from CNET has a fascinating article about Skyfire's new Symbian S60 beta and what this means to the current browser war that's in the brewing for us S60 users.

While I tend to agree to her analysis, I personally don't think Skyfire would appeal to enough users to be able to stand up to Opera's new Mobile Browser v9.5. I point to a number of reasons why I think Opera Mobile would win despite Skyfire:

Exclusivity = excludability - Many users won't get the chance to try the browser out for themselves, and thus Skyfire won't be able to win over a lot of current Opera users who wish to try the browser out for themselves. Furthermore, the trial is only limited to US users; to put it bluntly, the number of S60 users in the US numbers much fewer than in Europe and Asia, so not a lot of Symbian users get to know about the browser in the first place.
Number of beta testers accepted - not a lot of users are accepted in the beta programme, as opposed to Opera Mini's beat programme where all users could just download and share their experiences and bugs. And "many hands make work light", so shouldn't Skyfire open up it's programme to a larger number of users?
Opera Mini - with it's worldwide success and huge number of users, this app has elevated Opera's status to a very high level. With a choice between Opera Mobile and a new browser in the market, I think most users would opt for Opera simply because of their past experiences with Opera Mini.

Despite all this, it's a win-win situation for all S60 users. There's been rumours from Opera's camp about Flash integration, and Skyfire supports both AJAX and Flash in it's browser (or it will by the time the final version is released).

What do you think of the two browsers?

Transit Directions now available for S60 Google Maps

2008-08-02T11:42:00.002+08:00

Google Maps users can now get another boost - another formerly exclusive feature on the Blackberry and WM editions of Google Maps is now available to us. Quoting directly from The Official Google Blog...

Transit directions on these platforms work just like they do on the BlackBerry version of the app (watch the demo video). Simply bring up Directions from the main menu and you'll see a second tab labeled Transit (or Public Transport), where you can request a route using only public transportation. You'll receive a number of alternatives that take you (car-free) to your destination. Transit directions are available on Google Maps in more than 50 cities. So whether you live in or are passing through Zurich, Ottawa, Bordeaux or Chicago -- and plenty of places in between -- you can have Transit schedules in your pocket at all times. Stay tuned as we continue working with transit agencies to support more and more cities across the globe!

You can download the newest edition of Google Maps by using your S60 browser and surfing to www.google.com/gmm.

Watching DivX Movies on the N82

2008-07-30T23:41:00.002+08:00

I'm pretty sure everyone who've had the experience of watching videos have heard about DivX: it's a codec which allows for compression of video files to maintain a very high video quality, while being a fraction of their original counterparts; and hence making it a very attractive option for putting on portable video players and mobile phones alike.

Although Nokia's smart phones by default don't support DivX video files, DivX themselves have offered a solution: DivX Mobile. While DivX Mobile is still formally a beta software (it hasn't reached version 1.0 yet) and you need to register with DivX to get an account in order to download the app, it's well worth the time as you can then convert your movies and TV series (using DivX Converter) from your PC to your phone.

Here's a few tips in getting you started for converting and viewing videos on the N82:

Because the N82 doesn't have an extremely powerful processor, it can't handle stuff like 480p or 720p high def videos. Keep it simple - it only supports a resolution of 320 x 240, so you can opt for videos at a resolution of 320 x 240, along with a video bitrate of roughly 200kbps and an audio bitrate of about 128kbps. More is fine, but just remember that because of that small 2.6" screen, you're not likely to see much improvement in video quality even with a higher bitrate.
If you're gonna be watching quite a few movies or videos in a day, you'll probably need a charger for extra juice. DivX Mobile is rather hungry for juice when it comes to viewing videos, and even though the developers have worked on optimising the battery, don't expect it to be able to last 1 whole day if you're going to be using the WiFi/HSDPA, sending a couple of texts, a few calls, an hour of tunes and a few hours of videos.
There's no need to create a specific folder for your DivX content - you can just dump all your video files in to the folder on your memory stick named "My Videos".

So that's about it - you can click here to get started right away!

Skyfire Browser for S60v3

2008-07-29T00:28:00.000+08:00

Here's a bit of good news for the US users of the Nokia N82 - Skyfire, an alternative browser for the WM platform, has now opened up its beta program for S60 users. The only requirement is that you need to have a US number (I have no idea why, given that the Nokia presence in the US is so insignificant compared to Europe and Asia); so namely I'm quite pissed off I can't sign up for the beta program.

Skyfire is a competing browser to Opera Mobile and the defualt S60 browser. It's one of the most anticipated browsers as "...supports the same web technologies that PC browsers support, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Ajax, QuickTime, Java, Windows Media, and more."

Configuring Nokia Chat IM on your PC

2008-07-28T23:03:00.002+08:00

So far Nokia Chat is limited to working exclusively on Nokia S60 smart phones; but Nokia is changing that now with a step-by-step instruction manual on how to set up instant messenging software Psi, Adium, and Pidgin with Nokia Chat.

Not that I find it that useful right currently - how many of your friends do use Nokia Chat? But at least its a step in the right direction in promoting its own IM service.

Nokia N82 Sample Photos

2008-07-28T15:25:00.000+08:00

If you're wondering whether the Nokia N82 camera is really as good as it sounds, then you're reading the right thing! I've recently created a Nokia N82 album on my Flickr account, so you can take a look at the quality of photos the Nokia N82 captures and delivers. There's also a group just for Nokia N82 users to post their photos so the whole world can see.

Enjoy!

Nokia Internet Radio Review on the N82

2008-07-28T10:59:00.005+08:00

Sometimes your tunes just won't cut it for you - you've been a few days without loading on some new music, and the old songs are feeling quite bland; simply run Nokia's Internet Radio app and you can search and listen for new tunes from a wide variety of radio stations via GPRS/3G/3.5G/WLAN.

It's interface is similar to that of the S60 music player; you get to choose from your favourites, existing stations, as well as last played in the opening menu. The tiered structure is virtually the same as the S60 music player, so there will be no surprises if you've used the music player before.

The play interface also bears a striking resemblance to the Now Playing menu of the S60 music player, albeit just without the album art. Perhaps Nokia may integrate radio logos in to the player soon?

What makes this player really great is the fact that if you can't find your own local station you listen to at home - you can always add it in manually. This means you aren't restricted to listening to what the radio links offer you, but also stations you or your friends may host with their PCs, a huge music collection, and a nifty app (i.e. Shoutcast or something similar).

It's much better than streaming radio links currently offered by certain radio websites, as launching the stream under Realplayer disables autolocking (even if you KeyLock), doesn't let you multitask (if you minimise the stream the audio stops automatically) as well as leaving the standby screen on all the time, which greatly reduces the battery life of the phone. In contrast, Nokia Internet Radio continues to play even if it's running in the background, so you can surf away happily and respond to those text messages whilst listening to your favourite radio shows.

The software from Nokia is currently free, but make sure you have an unlimited data plan or something of similar nature if you're gonna listen to the radio alot. After all, you don't want to end up selling your house or something just to pay off your Internet bills, right?

DIY flexible, yet useful, tripod

2008-07-25T19:46:00.004+08:00

My thanks to Arturo, who tipped me off on this rather quirky but useful Gorillapod tripod modded with the Nokia DT-22 tripod.

The end result is a really flexible tripod, capable of taking photos in any environment.

You can purchase the Gorillapod off manufacturers Joby, and the Nokia tripod directly from Nokia.

Tip: Getting your N82 to stand on its side

2008-07-22T00:06:00.000+08:00

Understandably, since the Nokia N82 isn't a proper camera, one wouldn't expect it to have a tripod screw on the sides of the phone. However, since it IS the king of cameraphones, one would expect it to be able to balance on it's sides to take those group photos with a timer on, or simply to take those night shots. It's one of the major complaints from most N82 users to Nokia, and there is no fix for it...

...well, until LonelyBob published a post on his blog on his neat trick.

Cheers to LonelyBob's discovery; hopefully he's found some companionship using this excellent trick.

A Desktop Stand/Dock/Cradle for your N82

2008-07-21T20:31:00.002+08:00

Nowadays you would expect a smart phone to come with a plethora of accessories, and there's certainly a huge variety to choose from for your Nokia N82, but strangely there are few cradles / docks / stands for the smart phone, both from Nokia or 3rd party manufacturers. I'm comparing this with the abundance of accessories and addons for the Apple iPhone, which may be slightly unfair as the iPhone has been around since last summer; but don't we at least expect a bit more accessories, seeing that Nokia is THE leader in the smart phone market?

I've been scouring the web for quite a while looking for something to place my Nokia N82, and this was what I could find:

This dock is owned by the authors from The Nokia Guide earlier on in the year. The cradle is apparently from the Nokia Flagship Store, and it's labelled as the Nokia Phone Holder NK007044.

The above is a product manufactured by Boxwave and is on sale at Amazon.com. Apart from serving as a dock for your N82, it also provides a slot to charge spare batteries, should you have the need to. It costs US$52, and it's available on Amazon. On the other hand, if you don't need to charge spare batteries, you can get it for US$33 from the manufacturer Boxwave themselves.

Now this one might appeal to readers from the UK. It's an eXpansys Desktop Stand as well as Battery Charger for the N82, and it's going for GBP 20. It looks simple but elegant and it definitely fits in well with the Black N82...

And lastly we have one which seems more or less a rip off of the Boxwave desktop stand. On the plus side though it's only GBP 10 (VAT inclusive) and the price is definitely the most attractive of the bunch.

So that's more or less the docks compatible for the Nokia N82 that I could find. I'm sure there are many more from eBay, but they seem to be much harder to locate. In any case, I haven't ran across any of the above accessories in mobile phone accessories shops (as opposed to the iPhone dock which is readily available in those stores).

Pizero's High Quality S60 Themes

2008-07-19T12:03:00.002+08:00

If the themes that you're using are starting to look a bit dull, sure you can hit Google and do some searching for new themes, but chances are that you'll end up installing a bunch and deciding that they were, at best, of mediocre quality.

Compare it with a theme like this (only an example):

You'll be surprised how hard it is to find a good theme that doesn't have any sort of colour clashes, poor choice of colours, hard to read colour scheme, etc. So thats why it's great to see theme creators such as PiZero (who is one of the more notable names in the S60 field) with his simple and soothing themes for the masses.

Most of his themes are free (such as the one above). However, you can also opt for the "Premium Themes" costing at US$10 (or 6 Euros). These themes are more stringent in terms of standards:

Lightweight themes (less than 100Kb)
Default icons by Nokia
PiZero’s style combined with higher readability
100% SVG Themes
Compatible with all The Symbian 3rd edition phones, including Nokia E90.

Personally I would recommend this theme named "Silvery"; simple and easy on the eyes, without any of those fancy stuff prevalent on themes you find on other sites.

Picasa Web Albums goes S60 Friendly

2008-07-19T01:07:00.004+08:00

Every week more or less goes by with at least one article on major tech websites saying "so-and-so" service or blog has gone iPhone friendly, but how often do you hear that for the Symbian S60 platform. It's rather ironic as the S60 remains as the leader in terms of the smart phone marketshare worldwide, but the iPhone gets all the attention and support for web services and applications (simply think Meebo, Facebook, Google Talk, and countless other services that I don't need to name).

So when something goes S60 friendly, I think I'll make it a definite blog entry until the day comes when a major service or application goes S60 friendly on a weekly basis. This week the special service is Picasa Web Albums offered by Google... (http://picasaweb.google.com on your S60 browsers everyone)

No, it's not a half assed port to the S60 platform - it actually utilises the AJAX support one can find on the S60 v3 platform to get from one photo to another, as well as resizing the photos to fill your screen, regardless of whether you're seeing it in portrait or landscape mode.

It's rather surprising that Google decided to offer this for S60 platforms. Yes, I understand the "need" to make one specific for iPhones, but did you finally, FINALLY understand the potential of the S60 platform and the fact that many, MANY more users that use this smartphone platform? (Just to let others know that there are 100 more times S60 users than iPhone users)

In any case, I would shrug and say "better late than never". Let's hope this means that Google will eventually convert their entire suite of services to be S60 friendly, along with some major AJAX support, while all the S60 users can release a beastial roar of triumph in the background.

Nokia's Presence in USA

2008-07-18T15:40:00.002+08:00

Every time someone mentions "Nokia" and "USA" in the same sentence, you can't help but wonder why the Finnish mobile phone firm is the undisputed No.1 manufacturer in virtually every market, save the US one. Is it because Americans don't have a need for smart phones? Doesn't seem so, with the iPhone selling like hotcakes over on that side of the Atlantic.

The PhoneBoy Blog has an article about the development and progress of Nokia within the US market. The author happens to be working for Nokia, so he's able to shed some light from within the company on the barriers the phone firm faces in the US, as well as outlying the options available for Nokia.

Generally it seems as though the problem is mostly due to the US Carriers:

On T-Mobile.com, for instance, of the ~30 phones listed for sale, three of them are ours and they are generally lower-end phones.
On Sprint.com, of the ~30 phones listed for sale, NONE of them are Nokia phones.
On VerizonWireless.com, of the 35 phones, two are Nokia.
On Cingular.com, of the ~45 phones, three are Nokia.

It doesn't seem likely the average consumer would walk in to Nokia Flagship stores (I'm sure there aren't that many around), purchase an unsubsidised Nokia top-of-the-range handset, then getting a phone plan from the carriers.

And then there's the problem of carrier customisations if the carrier was to sell it via their company stores. The locking, the carrier approved firmware (which incidentally cripples the main features of the phone), which then leads to few numbers of the phone sold, which at the end of the day means no firmware updates.

Hopefully a proper European carrier can go over and sort out the mess.

Opera Mobile 9.5 for S60 Preview

2008-07-18T12:09:00.002+08:00

Nope, I don't happen to own a Windows Mobile smart phone to do a review of this, but CNET's already got a video review of the highly anticipated Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1. While it's still a WM exclusive app, we can all expect something similar in the coming weeks when the Symbian S60 version will be released.

And if you think that's not enough, then go check out PhoneArena's impressive review as well. Here's one of the big issues though in the beta:

...we must note one of Opera’s biggest drawbacks – it cannot visualize flash videos. In the new version of Safari, available in the iPhone 3G, at least YouTube videos are recognized and are opened in a separate application. We hope that Opera will fix this mistake and add the option to preview any flash object in the browser.

If that problem is fixed, then I think I can safely conclude that it will be THE browser of choice on the S60 platform. Not that the S60 browser is bad - it's quite good in fact - but simply the ease of use and the features the browser offers simply blows the S60 browser away. Consider the fact that Opera Mobile 9.5 supports tabbed browsing; on the other hand, the S60 browser effs up all the time when you're dealing with multiple tabs - so that's already a huge advantage. Couple that with good AJAX support and we've got eBuddy or Meebo right there. And perhaps even iPhone's good looking Facebook page.

Expect more news from me when it's released for us S60 users.

Nokia Email to rival Blackberry's Push Email

2008-07-18T00:05:00.000+08:00

So just last week Nokia released their own service, aptly named Nokia Email after deciding to pull the Blackberry Connect from their newly released E-series (Business Series) phones.

The new service allows for Push Email, supporting both the POP and IMAP protocols, whilst retaining the old SMS/Text messages look that you find in your inbox. It's currently in beta right now (probably why it's free), but you can surely expect to pay a price for it in the future.

Strange that it currently supports the Nokia N81, the N95, the N73, the N80, but no N82. Surely a mistake on Nokia's part? But when it's out for the N82, you can expect a long review on this potentially huge app.

Nokia N82 Telescope for Sale

2008-07-17T23:09:00.004+08:00

If you've read my article on the optical zoom for the Nokia N82 then you shouldn't be surprised to know that there are a lot more optical zooms out there for the Nokia N82. Normally I wouldn't write a follow-up article because it's essentially reporting old news - but this one had to be mentioned; it's a bloody telescope for your N82 smart phone.

Snap this...monster for US$22 from eBay. At first I thought the optical zoom in the original article was ridiculous enough but evidently this one beats it without any dispute at all. No word on the power of the optical zoom but I'm definitely betting that it's better than the 6x offered from the one I reported on previously.

On an additional note, it seems rather strange that I've never seen these on sale in local mobile phone stores, even though most of the sellers are listing that it's shipping from Hong Kong. Any readers from Hong Kong that can point me in the right direction?

Thanks to reader n82rox who pointed this out to me!

Flash Themes for Nokia S60

2008-07-16T17:56:00.003+08:00

Having previously owned Sony Ericsson "dumb" phones, the main feature I miss from those devices is the support for Flash-based themes. I'm not saying that I'm dissatisfied with the S60 theme selection - there are a lot of quality themes to choose from - but I miss some of the customisation power that you could have in the menu in the Java based SE "dumb" phone series.

Since the Nokia N82 (and the N95) supports Flash by default, I've always wondered whether both devices would support Flash (based) themes - clearly not a lot of people demanded this, as I could only find a few, in contrast to S60 themes which can easily be located online.

Below is an example of a Flash theme found online (this one's called RVD Evolution):

A demo is also available on Youtube to cover the theme in a more detailed aspect.

The Flash theme is actually a Flash content which acts as an overlay on top of the normal S60 interface screen. Simply go to File Manager and open up the Flash theme widget and you can start using it immediately. What makes this great is that you can now have alternative interfaces to the S60 interface without modding your system files, or doing anything which could potentially void your warrant. You can also use it conjunction with other apps such as AutoKeyLock to make it more convenient to use...I'm not gonna continue, the possibilities are endless.

You can get the above Flash theme from RVD Evolution or do some intense Googling online.