Traditionally, low-end handsets were neither excessively large nor small. Nokia’s C5 is a smartphone which treads where no smartphone was before – can it size up?

First of all, our usual shoot-out against the Treo 680:
nokia c5 vs palm treo 680 Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs palm treo 680 2 Nokia C5 review   size

The X1 is about as large, but thicker:
nokia c5 vs xperia x1 Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs xperia x1 2 Nokia C5 review   size

Nokia’s N96 is a lot fatter, but less long:
nokia c5 vs nokia n96 Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs nokia n96 2 Nokia C5 review   size

The XM5800 is similar:
nokia c5 vs nokia 5800 Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs nokia 5800 2 Nokia C5 review   size

The Palm Pre is shorter but wider:
nokia c5 vs palm pre Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs palm pre 2 Nokia C5 review   size

Next up: HP’s baby iPaq:
nokia c5 vs hp ipaq Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs hp ipaq 2 Nokia C5 review   size

Finally, a look at a Sony Ericsson Vivaz:
nokia c5 vs vivaz Nokia C5 review   size nokia c5 vs vivaz 2 Nokia C5 review   size

In the end, the Nokia C5 is comparatively small. It should fit most pockets…

Tune in soon to find out more about build quality!

If you have app stores, you have astroturfing – this age-old rule has been valid ever since the first ESD opened its store and added a rating system.

Unfortunately, the recent FCC rules for online news services also affect astroturfers. The New York Times (a questionable source for mobile, but usually OK on legal matters) now reports that the FCC has settled a case against a PR firm which openly admitted to writing reviews for its clients:

The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday that a California marketing company had settled charges that it engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees write and post positive reviews of clients’ games in the Apple iTunes Store, without disclosing that they were being paid to do so.

Even though small-scale cases of astroturfing are unlikely to be noticed, better move your server to Panama if you plan larger campaigns…

 Nokia C6 01 leaked againEven though the Nokia C6 still isn’t available everywhere, we have already seen its successor (with an improved 8MP camera) pop up on a Nokia web site.

Twitter user umopobarkan now shares the image on the left – he claims that it shows the C6-01, which, according to him, will run Symbian^3.

Given that the current revision of the device fared very well in our review (except for the camera), the successor could be quite a hit…

Don’t ask me why – but sometimes strange facts can just be fascinating. And, if push comes to shove, you can use questions about scientific trivia to embarrass adversaries at courts, in meetings, etc.

symbian-freak user DJNJ posted a list full of Nokia trivia – it has been floating around the net for some time:

1. The ringtone “Nokia tune” is actually based on a 19th century guitar work named “Gran Vals” by Spanish musician Francisco Tárrega. The Nokia Tune was originally named “Grande Valse” on Nokia phones but was changed to “Nokia Tune” around 1998 when it became so well known that people referred to it as the “Nokia Tune.”

2. The world’s first commercial GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-supplied network, by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a Nokia phone.

3. Nokia is currently the world’s largest digital camera manufacturer, as the sales of its camera-equipped mobile phones have exceeded those of any conventional camera manufacturer.

4. The “Special” tone available to users of Nokia phones when receiving SMS (text messages) is actually Morse code for “SMS”. Similarly, the “Ascending” SMS tone is Morse code for “Connecting People,” Nokia’s slogan. The “Standard” SMS tone is Morse code for “M” (Message).

5. The Nokia corporate font (typeface) is the AgfaMonotype Nokia Sans font, originally designed by Eric Spiekermann. Its mobile phone User’s Guides Nokia mostly used the Agfa Rotis Sans font.

6. In Asia, the digit 4 never appears in any Nokia handset model number, because 4 is considered unlucky in many parts of Southeast/East Asia.

7. Nokia was listed as the 20th most admirable company worldwide in Fortune’s list of 2006 (1st in network communications, 4th non-US company).

8. Unlike other modern day handsets, Nokia phones do not automatically start the call timer when the call is connected, but start it when the call is initiated. (Except for Series 60 based handsets like the Nokia 6600)

9. Nokia is sometimes called aikon (Nokia backwards) by non-Nokia mobile phone users and by mobile software developers, because “aikon” is used in various SDK software packages, including Nokia’s own Symbian S60 SDK

10. The name of the town of Nokia originated from the river which flowed through the town. The river itself, Nokianvirta, was named after the old Finnish word originally meaning sable, later pine marten. A species of this small, black-furred predatory animal was once found in the region, but it is now extinct.

If anyone of you knows who originally put this list together, I’d appreciate a comment…

2a LG: mass production of flexible e paper startsE-Paper is not a new technology – devices using it (think Kindle) have sold hundreds of thousands of times in the last years.

So far, these screens were immovable and monochrome. According to PCWorld, the mass production of (transformable) color e-paper devices will start very soon:

The company expects to begin mass producing 9.7-inch color and 19-inch flexible e-paper, according to an SEC filing it made on Friday. E-paper, or electronic paper, is a display used in e-readers on which text appears as it would on printed paper.

So far, the slow response time has made the display technology useful onbly for e-readers (see a sample device in action here) – let’s see what hardware designers will cook up next…

TrollTech / Nokia is obliged to update Qt frequently – if it doesn’t do so, an old contract causes them to loose a group of rights to the product.

Due to that, a steady stream of updates has come out of the company for the last years. TrollTech now announces the following:

Qt 4.7.0 RC1 is now available for download from the Qt Download Page. Source packages (.zip and .tar.gz format) and binary packages (for Mac Cocoa, Mac Carbon, MinGW 4.4.0 and Visual Studio 2008) are available.

Note the naming change of Mac packages compared to Qt 4.6.x has been repeated in this second beta. This reflects the fact that Cocoa is now the primary Mac platform for Qt. Binary packages for Carbon will be discontinued from Qt 4.8 onwards, but will continue to be shipped for the remainder of the 4.7.x series.

The purpose of this release candidate is to provide quality stabilised code that is ready for the 4.7.0 final release.

For those using the public git repository, a “v4.7.0-rc1″ tag will appear soon.

Keep us posted how it does – given that Qt 4.6.3 has made many widgets work badly on Symbian, I wonder how version 4.7 will play out…

P.S. They have also released a Symbian package, which can be obtained here:
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2010/08/26/qt-470-release-candidate-available/

In Austria, we say that the damaged one doesn’t have to pay for the people laughing about him. This also is true in the case below, which we reprint from Eldar Murtazin’s:

The matter all stems from a series of live feeds Nokia was transmitting when introducing the N8 to the Chinese market. Apparently one of these feeds, on Sina.com, was hacked and replaced with a porn film. Or was it? You see the whole drama is supposedly just an internet rumour according to Nokia who say that it was started by a lone blogger (perhaps standing on a grassy knowle?). The thing is though that Nokia apparently cut the stream off early and issued an apology with the usual corporate blather saying they’ll investigate, etc. Or was all of that part of the rumour too? At any rate the matter has done something useful for Nokia, it’s created a bit of attention for the N8, something the handset itself seems incapable of.

Some things are too good to be true…

Nokia’s C5 can best be described as a smartphone which dares to thread where no smartphone was before: it is – IMHO – the cheapest Symbian phone to date. Nokia obviously had to cut corners…but is the device still acceptable?

First of all, a look at the box. It looks similar to the one we have seen on devices like the N97 mini, but has a lighter shade of blue:
 Nokia C5 review   unboxing

Opening the box immediately reveals the phone:
 Nokia C5 review   unboxing

The layer below is surprising: Nokia includes a wallwart and a headset, but omits the data cable. Michael Hell, on the other hand, reports finding a 10cm cable in his sample unit:
 Nokia C5 review   unboxing  Nokia C5 review   unboxing

Finally, a look at the included documentation. Surprisingly, the manuals are decent – and a Nokia Maps ad is around, too:

 Nokia C5 review   unboxing

In the end, the omission of a data cable from some editions of the phone clearly marks a new low in terms of “smartphone accessories”. If I were Nokia, I’d ditch the headset instead…but given the comparatively low price of a simple MicroUSB cable when bought online, I am not too worried…

Even though Carbide remains a superior choice for very large products due to its multithreaded build, many developers use Qt Creator as debugger / cross-compiler.

Version 2.0 has been out for some time, and Nokia has now graced the world with 2.0.1. Their official announcement describes the new release as following:

We have been working on improvements mostly in the editors and debugging areas. Czech and Japanese translations have been updated and added back. Also, thanks to the folks at developpez.com, Qt Creator 2.0.1 now has a French translation. Thanks to all the translators for their hard work. Qt Quick support is in this branch still marked “experimental”, albeit it should now mostly “just work”. On popular request, Qt Creator 2.0.1 ships with the QML visual editor which can be used for simple QML files, but needs to be explicitly enabled.

Interested users should hit the URL below for the change log – the significant changes make the updating effort look worthwhile:
http://qt.gitorious.org/qt-creator/qt-creator/blobs/2.0.1/dist/changes-2.0.1

 Sony Ericsson Vivaz hits AT&TRumors of a Vivaz on AT&T have been around for months. Many carriers got their fix – unfortunately, the version on AT&T has not seen the light of day as of this writing.

AT&T has now announced the device officially:

* AT&T* and Sony Ericsson today announced the Sony Ericsson Vivaz™
* Capture HD video(1) or high resolution photos with 8.1 megapixel camera
* Available in the vibrant Galaxy Blue or for a limited time at www.wireless.att.com in the attractive Venus Ruby
* Vivaz comes complete with a 3.2″ nHD 16 million color touchscreen
* Exclusive for AT&T customers for $79.99, with a two-year service agreement and after a $50.00 mail in rebate, on September 5 in AT&T company-owned retail stores and online at www.wireless.att.com

Given that the device has scored very well in our reviews, the only issue to keep in mind is Sony Ericsson’s sometimes-spotty customer care which depends completely on their local partner…

If you remember my posts from the past, I frequently stated that Nokia’s decision to go after Eldar Murtazin was extremely wrong – being based in Russia, he has nothing to fear from foreign governments AND now has extra motivation to go after the company.

He has now posted a pretty long preview of a preliminary Nokia C7, which – interestingly – is said to have a fix-focus (!!!) camera:
nokia c7 review Eldar Murtazin posts Nokia C7 preview

His final verdict is positive, and furthermore announces a successor to the C6:

In C series we have Nokia C6 with QWERTY keypad, but it costs a lot and is not very attractive. Unfortunately, we should not expect any OS update for the model as Nokia C7-01 (imagine this index) will appear in this capacity. It can be announced in the first quarter of 2011. This will allow Nokia to sell Nokia C6 and launch Nokia E7. It looks that Nokia C7 is the main model on Symbian^3.

Those who are accustomed to Symbian and know this OS will find the model attractive. It offers few interesting games, austere and outdated interface. Taken together it means that Nokia C7 will not attract new customers, but Nokia fans will choose it quite consciously. After all it is the best value for money on Symbian S^3.

Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-c7-en.shtml

Over the past weeks, developers all over the world have enjoyed seeing their content being sold on Ovi for the cool price of 0 Euros.

Aggression has funneled up on Forum Nokia, and the company has now responded. In case anyone of you has missed the email announcement, find it below:

The reporting system for Ovi Store has shown incorrect information for the amount of revenue generated from July 3rd to August 8th, in some cases showing zero. This error affects both operator billing and credit card transactions for all content sales globally. The reporting error in our system has prevented publishers from seeing how much revenue they have actually generated based on their content sales during this period, however all revenue associated with publisher store transactions were retained and payments will be made accordingly.

We apologize to any publisher that has had issues during this time and the good news is that we have an update on this reporting issue. As of August 9th publishers can again view all downloads and sales for content items in Ovi Store.

We have identified the issue and are making the necessary changes to ensure this does not happen again. In parallel, we are working as quickly as possible to resolve the reporting issue and to make all of the transaction information from July 3rd to August 8th available to publishers. We will update you of the fix by Friday, August 27th.

Keep us in the loop about your sales, folks!

As usual, Nokia has released a group of images of its newly-released device.

Take a look at the images below – in case you have slept under a rock for the last 14 days, consider yourself made aware that you are looking at a Nokia 5250 :-) :
0 Nokia 5250   press image gallery 1 Nokia 5250   press image gallery 2 Nokia 5250   press image gallery 3 Nokia 5250   press image gallery 4 Nokia 5250   press image gallery

Stay tuned for a review as soon as we get our hands onto this box!

We have seen loads and loads of images of the Nokia 5250 in the past – Nokia has just made the device official.

They describe it as following:

Battery life is also excellent. The device will last up to 18 days in standby or up to seven hours talktime. If you stick to music, then it can play for 24 hours without stopping.

The 5250 runs the Symbian^1 operating system and offers GSM/EDGE communications over four bands and GPRS for data. It has a 2.8-inch TFT screen with a 16:9 apect ratio and a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. On the back, there’s a 2-megapixel camera, with Ovi Share installed to let you upload your snaps to the Web. Eminently pocketable, the device measures 104mm x 49mm x 14mm.

Before taxes and operator subsidies, the Nokia 5250 will cost just €115 and is expected to ship in the fourth quarter.

A batch of images will follow shortly – stay tuned…

PocketGear definitely isn’t too popular among developers – especially as the folks have shown a few very stupid stunts in the past.

Nevertheless, venture capitalists seem to be more convinced of their ideas. Mobile Business Briefing currently reports the following:

… mobile apps store PocketGear has secured US$15 million in ‘series B’ funding, with investors including Trident Capital, BlackBerry Partners Fund and TomorrowVentures, the personal fund of Google’s Eric Schmidt.

This should be especially interesting for all developers planning legal action over their recent bork-ups – if you plan to get cash, go for it now!

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