Google has yet again updated a service they provide, this time the mobile optimised homepage has undergone a overhaul and now resembles the iGoogle personalised homepage page. This is a welcome addition and it gives us the ability to add Gmail and a host of other services. Here are a few screenshots.

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The latest v20 firmware on the N95 and firmwares of certain other phones have removed the Themes icon from the main menu and it is only accessible from Tool>Settings and so on. This is inconvenient for those who frequently change their themes or people new to S60.

So in case you want the Themes icon back just install this small utility called ’Themes Launcher’ created by Sittiphol Phanvilai.

Download!

Update: If you do not want to install, Ish’s comment might help!

Although a simple refresh of the “Add New Services” option should bring up all the three services namely Ovi, Vox and Flickr up I still cannot get them on the phone OTA without me having to put that extra effort in. Where’s the glitch Nokia?

Anyway there is a very simple solution to the problem, just download the respective configuration (.cfg) file and send it to the phone and save it. Now the services will show up.

Download:

- Ovi Share

- Flickr

Still, we shouldn’t be having to do this!

AAS reports that Google has released a native search client for S60 devices. The client is not available in all the countries yet, so it might not show on your browser unless until you go to mobile.google.com on your phone’s browser. A big issue is that it uses the now almost extinct pencil key to launch directly and doesn’t follow the plugin approach like Ovi and Nokia’s own search. But here’s to a start.

Head over for screenshots and more!

For downloading the various country maps you need to install Nokia Map Loader, something quite improved since the first version but still only works if you download and install .net framework. It also happens to be windows only. Nokia Maps allows downloading maps over the air but is limited to the region you are in, it doesn’t allow you to download a particular country completely over the internet.

But now now you can get them across without having to install anything on your computer or theoritically if your phone has WiFi or if you have unlimited 3G you can download put maps into use without even touching a computer. Great if you are out of town, on a mac or with a Linux system.

This website allows you direct downloads of maps of all countries and here Martin explains how it works. The Map Loader downloads the maps as a zip file from http://static.s2g.gate5.de/maploaderzip/0.0.7h/[NUMBER].zip to a temp folder, and then unzips the content to the memory card. [NUMBER] is an ID, each country has its own. After some analysis and hex parsing one gets to the download links.

Once you have downloaded the maps, unzip, and drop them into the appropriate folders on your memory card. The folder structure is cities with a subfolder called diskcache filled with subfolders called 0 to 9 and a to f, i.e. /cities/diskcache/0 to /cities/diskcache/f.

You can download maps for entire continents, individual countries, or individual regions within some countries. Download sizes range from one megabyte (Gibraltar) to over a gigabyte (europe or america). You’ll need a 4 GB card to fit the entire planet.

 Note: I am not too sure if they are the most recent ones available though, still very useful!

It has been a few days since I got back from Barcelona and the N96 product launch and I have been thinking about it more and more. Will it work? Won’t it? What might be the reasons for its failure or success? In this post I will try and give a run down of all of that and compare it to some of the Nseries devices already in the market.

The N96 is expected to be out in Q3 at about 550€ unsubsidised. Now what that means is that the price of the current crop of Nseries will continue to fall till then on launch the N96 will be at least 100€ more expensive than any other Nseries on the market. Does it have enough to get the consumer to spent that little more? Lets have a look:

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AAS had reported a few days back that Nokia Maps has hit beta 2.0. The new application came with a new Map loader version 1.3.5. You can download Nokia Maps beta 2.0 and the Map Loader here. I had expected some sort of data update for India with the new map loader but it didn’t happen immediately. Today I just found the the map data for India has been upped from the earlier 21 MB to 24.1 MB.

I don’t have the details of the data that has been updated and I sincerely hope that we do get a big update sometime soon since Nokia has already launched the Navigator in India.

The sucessor to the N73 is out and it is truly a fine mid end device. If the design doesn’t appeal to you its another matter but apart from that it will be very difficult to find fault with the N78. As the product manager himself said with the N78 they weren’t trying to do cutting edge stuff, just get the basics right and focus on the core user experience.

The N78 has several additions to it, the AGPS, 3.5mm jack, the 1200 mAh battery and so on. It is in these small yet definitive changes that it derives its strength from. The biggest factor for me apart from the AGPS is the music quality being upped to the N91 level.

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I have just had hands on time with both the devices and a meeting with the product managers of both devices. They were kind enough to answer everything we wanted to know about the respective devices. In this post I will go over my initial impressions of both devices while trying to incorporate all that I learnt talking to them. More shots here.

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Sorry for the delay but here they are, live shots of the N78 and the N96! The complete flickr set is here and a few random pictures are below! 

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