We at Symbian-Life Blog would like to announce the winners of the Audials Mobile Contest, which was being held on Symbian-Life Blog.

Congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to all of you for making this contest a great success.

For those of you who did not win, don’t worry, Symbian-Life Blog has many more contests lined up, so all you got to do is keep checking the site regularly.

I will be contacting the winners of the contest shortly. In case I do not get a reply in the stipulated time, I will pass on the prize to the next person.

here is a printscreen of the random list generated,

Image courtesy: http://richd.com/images/2007/android-rendered.jpg

In a rather shocking development, Nokia has disclosed that it will be outing a touch screen device by the end of September 2009. This is a huge change in strategy for Nokia. We, at Symbian-Life Blog always thought that something was going to happen when Nokia and Google were talking phones and OSes earlier this year.

However, with Maemo being present, we were a bit skeptical. However, it seems that Nokia has gone the Android way. It still remains to be seen how all the OSes Nokia has, will be used by it to further its market position.

Currently Nokia uses the follwoing OSes on its phones:

1. S20 (the basic phones)

2. S30 (basic phones with colour screen and radio/bluetooth)

3. S40

4. S60

5. Maemo (Internet tablets)

With Android, it will now have 6 options. What will happen of the S60 platform now is a question that will be on our minds. Keep looking at this space.

Our friends over at Nokia Mobile Talk, who were among the first to break this news, seem to already know the fate of S60. What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know…

Yesterday saw Ovi Maps graduating from a beta application to a proper application. Nokia Maps has now become Ovi Maps Mobile. This means that from now on future GPS enable devices of Nokia will have Ovi Maps installed in the phone.

A press release gives a lot more details about Ovi Maps Mobile (OMM).

The latest version of Ovi Maps application for your device is enhanced through additional features and services, opening up a new world of possibilities with better maps than ever before: high resolution satellite and terrain maps – both in 2D and 3D views – 3D landmarks for over 200 cities, rotation, tilting, night view, and fly-overs and fly-throughs. Ovi Maps on the device offers also enriched POI information by Lonely Planet, Michelin and Wcities, as well as a weather service that provides 24 hour and 5-day forecasts. Walk from one place to another using WALK, our pedestrian navigation with routing optimized for those on foot, providing better orientation in a city or outdoors. Or use DRIVE, our fully fledged car navigation with enhanced safety and real-time traffic information such as safety cameras and speed limits, lane assistance and localized road information like signposts, providing the largest service coverage in the world.

With Ovi Maps on the web, www.maps.ovi.com, you can also search for addresses and POIs, find places and save them into Favorites, and organize them into Collections. Check the weather situation and preplan routes for walking or driving – and then save them. Your places, collections and routes can also be synchronized over-the-air between Ovi Maps on your compatible mobile device and Ovi Maps on the web.

The latest version of the Ovi Maps for your device is available for download at www.nokia.com/maps.The Ovi Maps Beta on the web is accessible at www.maps.ovi.com.

Below are a few screenshots of Ovi maps in action,

We would also like to remind our readers that we have a contest going on Symbian-Life Blog, where you could win 3 activation codes for Audials Mobile. So hurry, contest closes 5th July, 2009.

We are up with another contest where we are giving away 3 activation codes to the Audials Mobile application. We are  pretty sure that this is a great application for your XpressMusic or for that matter any S60 device. This application allows you to search for your song on the internet and then download it for free. This download is legal, so you don’t have to worry about any cyber crimes department cracking down on you. We would like to thank the people at Audials for creating this application for the S60 phones.

This time we will giveaway 3 activation codes. Everybody can join to this contest, simply by commenting on this post. The regular price of Audials Mobile is right now GBP7.90 (promo), normally it is GBP12.90  but by getting in this contest you can get it for free.

To join the contest you only need to:

- Comment in this post, saying something like: “I am in”, “I want to get a MyPhone App”, simply comment;

-On the comment you must put a real e-mail so that we can contact you

…that’s it.

Rules:

-You are able to comment more than one time, but your e-mail will only count once.

-We will get the 3 winners using random.org and we will ‘printscreen’ the result and post here in the website.

-Those winners who don’t answer to our e-mail notification in 1 week lose automatically the opportunity to win the app, giving the chance to others and so on.

Dates:

-The contest starts from now and will end at 5th July 2009 at 8:00 PM (Indian Standard Time – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata).

-The winners will be posted in the website by  6th July 2009 (we will not reveal e-mail address of the winners, just the first half of their email address, i.e the name). So stay tuned.

We would like to thank Audials for giving to our visitors and readers this great opportunity. Now just comment! Best of luck!!!

Audials Mobile works with all cell phones with Symbian S60 3rd and 5th Edition

I was just sitting and watching something known as the television and as soon as the episode was up, it was back to my E75 just doing one of those random things we do on the internet, when we got nothing to do. I hit ‘Search’ and typed news, looking for nothing in particular, and Google News it was. After having read a few articles here and there on the happenings, I hit the Science and Technology section, there was an article on the N97 and below that another article on the N97 being a worthy contender to the iPhone. This article spoke a lot about a many things and it got me thinking. I thought it best to rant them out for you all to read.

The N97 comes at a point for Nokia when a lot of things have changed in the mobile industry. What seemed like a battle of only handsets and megapixels has slowly, with the advent of the iPhone escalated to something more. the iPhone has brought many features previously unknown to us, multi touch and phones were not used in the same sentence, UI – suddenly became a huge differentiator, materials became important.

Then came the rush to overturn the iPhone, Samsung, LG, HTC retaliated with a slew of devices, each claiming to be one up on the iPhone. Nokia trusted it’s flagship – the venerable N95, there were many video comparisons and countless blog posts about the two.

Then Google came not with a phone but with an Operating System and changed the rules of the game. Suddenly with the advent of Android, there were many foundations which were formed to take on the might of Android and Google’s marketing prowess. LiMo Foundation, and a few more, then Nokia decided to make Symbian an open source platform and created Symbian Foundation. In between all of this it is the ‘app store’ which became the next weapon to sharpen the divide between iPhone and the others. Soon every phone manufacturer had to have an app store or be looked down upon. Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, RIM – they all launched their ‘app stores’.

So what has changed in the last two years? Firstly, the UI has become extremely important to everyone. How easy is it to work with? What else can it do for me? These are the questions people are asking their dealers and the phone companies. The need for it to be Open Source has also never been louder!

Design which was the only thing is now of prime importance, since the physical object has to close the gap between the real life and the digital life. A candy bar, a clam shell, slider are just not enough… It has become increasingly important for manufacturers to give more in the same form and give new devices in new forms to their customers yesterday.

App Stores, an idea that many people thought of, but only one could exploit successfully. Even if you think the apps on iPhone don’t make sense and their tight controls on what goes out and not, it still remains a success story. Other companies also have their own versions of the same idea and you have some independent ones as well.

Internet, which was not so important a few years ago, is now suddenly something everybody (OK, a lot of people!) wants on their cell phone. Internet innovations have spilled over to phones, and there is an inherent need of having a mobile friendly version of it. People’s needs have evolved. They want to be able to do things with their cell phones on the internet. Share, explore, learn and be informed, they want it all.

Features, they were there earlier, but now are even more pronounced. The megapixel war has only escalated; entertainment features are a deal maker and breaker; hardware additions like WiFi, GPS, etc are a must for smartphones and feature phones. A rather nice development here is a rather large consensus for a few components like 3.5mm audio jack and USB in its many iterations. There’s more but I can recall only these off hand.

Environment, this suddenly is the topic that everyone is discussing. It is now an equally important feature for prospective customers. many of them want to know if their next purchase is going to be a power hog or a power saver. Being green was never so important!

With so many factors emerging and becoming powerful decision helpers many companies are taking up their positions. Each wants to be known for one particular feature that makes them better than their rivals. Every one is gunning for a niche category. Nokia being the biggest has clearly shown that it wants to be number one in them all. It can be also, but only when it can be better than Apple, Samsung, Android, Microsoft and many more combined. In the struggle to be this mammoth amongst giants from other areas, it has released the N97.

The N97 is in many ways like the ‘One’ ring in the movie “The Lord of the Rings”, with this device Nokia aims to rule them all. To what extent it will succeed is something only time will tell, simply because the churning has only just begun. The ring has just been forged. There is a lot more to come. So keep your ears to the ground!

We’ve just come across a blogpost by the author of www.adityasphones.wordpress.com, where he shows us the steps to be followed on how to get Nokia Messaging to work on your device (E75), if you could not get it to work the first time or if you are having problems with the native email client on the E75.

If you have an E75 and want to use Nokia Messaging and not the native email client, then go and have a look at his post.

He has given a complete list of steps involved. Don’t worry, you don’t need to hack into the phone. The steps are very simple and you will have Nokia messaging working in no time.

Here is the link to the post: How to configure ‘Messaging’ on your E75

]]> http://symbian-lifeblog.com/2009/06/configuring-messaging-on-the-e75.html/feed 0 http://symbian-lifeblog.com/2009/06/configuring-messaging-on-the-e75.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/symbian-lifeblog2/~3/BZghn-3kzFU/e72-with-a-usable-secondary-camera-option.html http://symbian-lifeblog.com/2009/06/e72-with-a-usable-secondary-camera-option.html#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:01:56 +0000 Aditya http://symbian-lifeblog.com/?p=1864

This just in! We have just learned that the E72 will have secondary camera option available and a ‘Panorama’ mode will also be available.

As you all know the E66 and the E71 had a front facing camera, but one could not use it at all. It was only usable when you wanted to make video calls.

This time around, Nokia Eseries people have heard the customers of these phones and provided the prospective customers of the E72 with the option of using the secondary camera (front facing camera).

Kudos guys, for listening to your customers.

(Source: http://s60blog.com/2009/06/nokia-e72-comes-with-secondary-camera-option/ )

N-Gage’s game title kitty continues to grow. The latest addition to it is the AMF Bowling: Pinbusters.

There are 12 characters, each having their own distinct style, in 3D venues across the world. There are 3 gameplay modes like Quick Play, Precision, and Duckpins. You also can play this game on the N-Gage Arena, which means that this game supports multiplayer action!

Downloading it is simple. Open N-Gage application on your phone and go to the store and download it on your phone. Or you could also go to the your country’s N-Gage portal and download it. You might also be able to download it in future through Ovi. Just so that you know, the game installation file is 19MB and is only a 7MB installer file on the device.

(Image Courtesy: www.Zomgitscj.com)

So if you like bowling, don’t waste any time and download it on your phone today!

P.S. Today, www.zomgitscj.com celebrates its first year!, On behalf of all the readers and everybody at Symbian-Life Blog, I’d like to wish ZomgitsCj a very happy first birthday! My best wishes to my dear friend CJ for becoming so successful in his endeavor.

QuickOffice, the very popular office application that almost all phones (S60) have on their phones is up for an upgrade. The people at QuickOffice made an announcement that QuickOffice was being upgraded for free to v6. This free upgrade however is only for Eseries users, specifically E51, E52, E55, E63, E66, E71,E72, E75 and the E90 device owners only. So if you have QuickOffice installed on any of these phones, start the application and go to QuickManager and then select upgrades.

This upgrade which costs about US $35 is being offered free of cost to all users of the above models. The best feature of QuickOffice v6 is that it fully supports viewing, creating and editing Microsoft Office 2007 documents like Excel, MS Word or PowerPoint. So get your free upgrade today!

Yesterday it was raining phones from Nokia’s end. I had recently made a post of how I thought Nokia was losing it. I still stand by it, but yesterday seemed to have dampened that a bit. Finally we’re seeing some ‘new’ phones.

Nokia did something that that came as a pleasant surprise to many of us, even though we knew that it was going to happen sooner than later. Hot on the heels of the N86 and N97 release, came the launch of the Nokia E72, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and the 3710 fold.

Each of the handsets belong to a different category and serve different customer segments. First up is the Nokia E72.

The E72 is a successor to the wildly popular and successful device, the E71. The design of the E72 is very much similar to the E71’s original body, there are changes however, the bottom row of buttons are now different, notice how the characters and space key are different.

The E72 features a 5MP camera sensor and an optical Navi-pad. As you can see, the E72’s front design is similar to the E52 and the E53, this is the new design that the Eseries has gone for. Further improvements include a 3.5mm audio jack, S60 3rd edition with FP2 and an updated email client. All of this in almost the same dimensions as the E71.

The E72 is expected to begin shipping late in the third quarter of 2009 at an estimated retail price of EUR 350 ( US $484 i.e. INR 23,000 ) before taxes and subsidies.

Fone Arena’s Varun has a complete spec sheet of the E72 for you to check out.

Next up is the 5530 Xpressmusic, this device was photographed in the wild about a few weeks back, I first got scent of it through Varun of Fone Arena fame. He had written about it and even stated that it may be the successor to the 5800, I knew it wasn’t so. Yesterday I was proved right. The 5530 is the 3rd S60 5th edition device to hit the markets. The 5530 XpressMusic comes with a 3.2 Megapixel camera, 2.9? Touchscreen with tactile feedback, 3.5mm Audio Jack and  a 4Gb microSD card. The 5530 is  a cheaper alternative to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and thus does not have GPS and 3G.

The 5530 Xpressmusic follows the legacy of the 5800 and has almost similar specs, so you can expect to find a 3.2MP camera and WVGA video recording et al. The device is also expected to hit the markets late in the third quarter and is expected to be priced at an estimated retail price of EUR 199 ( US $275 i.e. INR 13,000 ) before taxes and subsidies. Looks like the Samsung Star and LG Cookie have competition now!

Last but not the least is the 3710 fold. The 3710 fold follows in the design footsteps of the popular CDMA handset, the Nokia 2505. This device however is a GSM phone. The 3710 fold  comes in at the  INR 10,000 i.e. US $200 segment. It is a 3G enabled device sporting a new design with artistic patterns.

One can clearly see that it is equipped with a 3.2MP camera sensor with flash along with that there is also a photo gallery application that lets you browse your pictures easily. A secondary  camera is also present on the inside if you have video calling available in your country. The phone operates on the S40 platform and has a 2.2″ QVGA display, presence of A-GPS is an added bonus. A stereo music player and radio completes the specs. For detailed specs, click here.

Expect this device also to hit the markets around the same time as the above two devices.

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