The folks over at the Beta Labs are really turning it on. Close on the heals of Nokia Communication Center and updates for Maps, Location Tagger and others comes a new beta - Nokia Step Counter. It allows us to count our steps and determines the distance we covered and then computes the energy expenditure. An option to compare our activity levels on different days by looking up the summaries stored is also there.
As the name suggests, it counts the number of steps you take by analyzing how you ’shake’ your phone. The idea beind the application is that since most people have their phone with them everywhere they go, it is natural to use the accelerometer in an S60 product to track your daily activity.
AAS reports that Nokia has temporarily removed Windows Vista from the compatibility list for the Nokia Software Updater. My reaction? Its about time they did that. A lot of us have been having trouble updating our devices on a Vista machine. I almost bricked my E90, fortunately things worked out after a little hit and trial and the same Vista machine made it work. Here’s the error people generally get, infact Antony had written about it earlier.
For someone new to S60 and Firmware upgrades such ‘not so pleasant experiences’ would go a long way in making them not trust their Nokia devices and PC applications. However, what is good to see is that Nokia has taken notice and are acting on it.
I’m sure the support will be back soon, till then we wait; and yes, look for XP machines!
We heard about the Liam and Dora a while back and it finally looks like they will be a reality soon. Infact, as soon as tomorrow if the buzz floating around the blogosphere is to be believed. Meanwhile feast yourself on the lovely looking devices, the E66 looks slick!
The E71 on the other hand will have a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, GPS navigation, built-in WiFi and HSDPA network support and all of this in a 112 x 57 x 10 mm body. 10mm - Wow! Jump below for pictures.
The folks over at Beta Labs have been keeping busy these days. They have just released a new PC application called ‘Nokia Communication Center‘ which is a new simplified concept for managing messages and contacts in Nokia PC Suite. The good news is that it works with all Nokia devices that are compatible with PC Suite. The bad is that because its an early Beta it might have certain issues. From what I’ve seen of it so far, I like it!
Meanwhile the Nokia Text Messenger gadget for Windows Vista which fetches you the latest text messages from your connected Nokia device and displays them in the sidebar has also been updated.
Also, the wonderful Location Tagger has also received its last update.
Furthermore, the Nokia Channels application has also been reloaded and rebranded and launched as Nokia Headlines. A complete rundown of all the above below.
The N82 with the killer looks is in the house. It is just BEAUTIFUL and at this point I will shut up and let the pictures do the talking. Loads of shots below.
A little while back I wrote a N82 and N95 8GB comparison to pick out a winner and although close but the 8GB won. When we look at the Eseries for a flagship, there is only one device looking us in the face, the E90. While Nseries has a tendency of churning out flagship devices at a quick clip, this isn’t quite the case with Eseries. Traditionally Eseries has been all business with poor cameras, the old pop port, not so great music and so on while the Nseries has been all of that and then some more. When the E90 came out, it bridged this gap, at least theoretically with a 3.2 auto focus camera, stereo speakers, A2DP, GPS almost everything that one looks for in a music phone. But is it enough to make a long time Nseries owner jump ship?
This post pits two unlikely phones, flasgships of two different series against each other and we try and pick a winner.
Nokia Conversations caught up with Danial Dhondt, designer of the upcoming N96 and Joeske Schellen, designer of the soon-to-launch N78. In this series of two videos, they chat about the collaborative process of designing Nokia devices and what goes into giving a phone a sense of identity.
In the second video, they talk about the role of sustainability in design and how the smallest design details can often be the most significant ones. (Video after the break)
Zach from over at SiMo brings news that Psiloc has just released one of the most useful apps you will ever see, Psiloc Connect. What is does is something that should have been implemented already - access point prioritisation i.e. the phone will use access points in the order you choose without having to manually select them each time. For example I can setup the phone to use my home WiFi as the first option, if not available my neighbour’s WiFi (;)), next my operator’s data (3G, EDGE or GPRS) connection and so on in any order I so choose. For this to happen we were supposed to wait for FP2, however Psiloc has decided to make that option available now and that too for all existing S60’s. (According to Ricky, E61, E61i users will need to wait and the company is working on a solution)
It simply creates a new access point called ‘Psiloc Connect’ that you will need to set as default for all/any application(s), set the priority in the settings and you are good to go. You can select more than one WiFi connection also for say times when you want to make the phone check for your home and office WiFi before moving onto operator data. You can even stop the operator data from being used in case you are roaming or due to any other reason. All in all a highly customisable nifty utility.
The application is available from the Psiloc store, and costs US$15.77 (EUR9.95). More screenshots below (courtesy of Zach).
I just came across this great freeware text editor called DEdit by Juriy Bakunin aka JBAK, the same man who brought us JBAK Taskman. This is perhaps the best text editor available for S60 today and offers some remarkable features such as find and replace and the ability to edit more than one file at once. It also allows us to save texts with almost any type of character encoding, highlight the line in which we are editing, configure the appearance and font of the editor and so on. DEdit also includes the ability to select various types of text, bookmarks and other advanced features that I myself am discovering. As a handy feature it also remembers a history of used files.
I’m not sure all of you will remember the widget that allowed us to keep track of the Urbanistas as they travelled the world. For those who do, I am sure you will agree with me it was pretty slick. Now here’s the good news, as part of Nokia’s ongoing Urbanista project, they have re-released the widget that the original Urbanista diarists used as they travelled about, only this time anyone including you and me can use it.
Basically, the widget, combined with a GPS enabled handset and the Sports tracker application allows us to track and upload our movements, tagging places with images as we go along. Say, for instance, you’re travelling around Barcelona on holiday, you can upload where you are as you go, your device streaming GPS data to Sports tracker and then to the widget placed on your blog or Facebook or any other social network profile. You can also take a picture of a place (Sports tracker will attach a GPS tag to the image) upload it, and the image will be shown on your widget, on your blog/profile, attached to where the image was taken.
I love it. It adds a completely new dimension to presence. Friends/family sitting back at home will be able to place you live on the globe every single minute you want them to. They’ll be able to see what route you took, where you’ve been and what’s more if you take pictures/videos along the way they’ll even get to see the place you’r visiting through your phone. It’s perfect right from grabbing a few snaps on a bike ride through the country to touring a major world city.
