Hannu Viitala has just released an S60v3 port of his C64 emulator called Frodo – the program can now be downloaded from the author’s web site.
However, the free distribution version does not emulate the C64’s sound system completely – while this has no implication for the performance of games, it nevertheless means that you won’t hear anything when playing: the sound engine is called Bilbo and is made available after a donation….
Nokia recently announced a cooperation with Renault – the two have ganged up recently, and announced a (limited edition) vehicle called Sandero Nokia that comes with a Nokia N95 for navigation.
Here are a few images of the car and the phone – for me, it looks like a stock N95…
P.S. Can anyone of you explain me what’s so cool about a microcar with an integrated phone?
The folks at buy.com have just revealed further information on the WiMax edition of the Nokia N810(pictured below):
The preorder page over at buy.com’s states a price of 431.99$(479$ list) – in case anyone of you absolutely must go WiMax, give them a click here.
In case anyone of you is particularly interested in developing widgets for Nokia’s new WRT runtime, a free webinar could be helpful to get up to speed quickly.
The announcement below has all the info – if you joined in, please let us know how it went!
“Practical WRT Widgets Development for S60″ – Forum Nokia Webinars
Join us in this webinar, where we will take a practical look at how to
develop widgets for the S60 platform, by developing and testing our very own
widget application using tools available on Forum Nokia web site.Presentation time: approx 60 minutes.
This session will be presented successively at these times:
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
1.00 pm Sao Paolo, 5.00 pm London, 7.00 pm Helsinki,
12.00 pm New York, 9.00 am San FranciscoRegister
here
When seeing the Nokia N81 8GB for the first time, users sometimes wonder where the keyboard is. Does it even have one? Read on to find out more!
First of all – the N81 is a slider phone. The slider concept was made popular by Palm’s Tungsten T; and has seen diminishing popularity ever since. Nokia nevertheless chose to revive it – the keyboard is slid out at the bottom. Its keys are well-lit and have decent pressure points; however, I feel that the N71’s keyboard is better:
The top of the slider contains the classic S60 keys and also a few music-related keys. These music keys are a bit too small for my taste, and also are almost invisible due to poor lighting. The image below was made with long exposure to compensate:
Finally, two gaming keys are at the top of the screen. They are non-functional most of the time – starting an N-Gage game lights them up:
The back of the device contains the 2MP camera and its LED. Sliding off the back let’s you access the 1050mAH battery and the SIM card slot. Nokia omitted the memory card slot from this phone due to its internal memory…
The top of the device contains a 3.5″ headphone jack, a power button and a slide key. Palm Treo users will know this thingy – however, Nokia’s version does not silence the phone. Instead, it toggles keyguard…
The bottom of the box contains a weird sync port and Nokia’s standard power connector:
The sides of the box contain speakers and camera buttons:
In the end, the Nokia N81 8GB is a well-done phone. Even though some of the keys are small/not well lit, the box nevertheless is a solid slider phone. The memory card slot is gone due to the 8GB of internal memory; IR also is gone. Nokia finally integrated a 3.5″ headphone jack; but still didn’t go MiniUSB – there still is a bit of room for improvement…
We already heard about the Nokia E71(successor to the E61 and E61i) some time ago – the following three weird pictures have now popped up on the internet(bloggers all over claim that they originate from this Chinese web site):
Anyways, the images are said to show the E71 and a so-far-unknown Nokia E66. Little specifications are available; except for battery capacity data(E66 1000mA;E71 1500mA). Also, a poster claims that the devices will NOT run FP2…
Finding information on programming Symbian devices is not easy – thus, a group of lecturers at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg in Austria have decided to share some of their own stuff on a web site called symbianresources.com.
Definitely head over to their tutorial section – it’s worth it!
The folks at Symbian-Freak’s have obtained the following images from a Chinese web site:
As of now, nothing is known about the box – I personally predict that we are looking at yet another UIQ powered phone here(compare the UI to the recently-released G700 and G900 devices).
Stay tuned for further information…
As the G700 recently got FCC approval, I felt like posting the following article from the last CeBit. It sheds a bit more light onto what to expect from G700/G900 – enjoy:
First of all, here are a few comparison shots showing the G700 next to a Nokia N71:
The sides of the phone are rather plain, the (rather thin) stylus is docked into the top-right corner of the phone:
Here’s a shot of the phone’s menu screen:
This Google Video gives you a quick overview of the G700 and it’s calendar application(made in great hurry – sorry for voice and handling glitches).
The G900 essentially is a red version of the G700 with a better camera(5MP, autofocus). Here are a few shots showing it next to our classic size comparison phones:
The sides of the G900 match the G700’s almost 1:1:
Last but not least, this link takes you to another Google Video looking at the G900’s operating system and a quick look at the notes application.
In the end, these two boxen are very solid entry-level handhelds. Sony Ericsson’s development team did an insanely great job at making the device controllable without the touchscreen – in fact, I can envision that many users will never ever use the styli to navigate around their phone.
As great as they may be for Sony Ericsson’s market share, I am very skeptical about their impact on the struggling UIQ third-party ecosystem. This device is very similar to Palm’s low end devices – many users purchase these devices and never ever install any third party applications…
So far, Nokia’s N76 managed to get loads of headline space due to its great skill at loosing bits of paint. Anyways, a blog called JAMPB has posted the following photo of a white Nokia N76:
According to them, this “peeling beauty” is intended for Asian markets only and is said to look “nice”(until the paint starts to come off)…
P.S. We are currently expecting a reply from Nokia’s press department on the authenticity of this story!
Mike Trujillo, the project manager of Carbide, has just informed us about the availability of a free update for Carbide.c++ version 1.3. The change log is as following:
We will be providing a patch to Carbide.c++ v1.3. The beta form of the patch (v1.3.1) is available now.
To get this you can update your product using Update Manager in your IDE:
* Help –> Software updates –> Find and Install
* Select Search for new features to install and click NEXT
* Select Carbide.c++ Update Site and click FinishMany bug fixes and a few minor enhancements to the product are available:
* Bug reporting tool plug-in that will allow you to report bugs to the Carbide Bugzilla site directly from the IDE
* TRK Improvement – a pretty useful utility that checks the TRK connections and validates that the user has the most recent version of TRK
* ABLD support - we added support for a number of ABLD options that were removed in v1.3
* Select an MMP or BLD.INF file and right click –> ABLD. Select options for target, export, resource, etc)
The folks at Nokia’s have just announced a new S60v3 powered phone that will be part of Nokia’s XpressMusic lineup – let’s all welcome the 5320(pictured below):
Here is a quick preview of the specs(emphasis by me):
Featuring a dynamic design with 3G social entertainment capabilities, the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic delivers exceptional music and web 2.0 access. With the innovative new voice-controlled Say and Play feature, consumers can merely say the name of a favorite artist or song to automatically play it. Offering an array of additional features, the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic device includes dedicated XpressMusic keys, a 3.5mm audio jack, up to 24 hours of playback time, an audio chip for hi-fi sound quality, extendable memory up to 8GB, HS-USB for fast music transfer and HSDPA for fast access to data.
The full featured Internet browser, access to Ovi and Nokia Search 4.1 allow users to find and share media content and information with ease. In addition, dedicated N-Gage gaming keys and landscape view deliver a true gaming experience, while HSDPA provides fast access to N-Gage, which will be available for download. The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated retail price of 220 EUR before taxes and subsidies.
I personally feel that this device is a potential strong seller for N-GAGE applications – people who managed to get their games into Nokia’s gaming framework can definitely expect a nice bit of extra sales.
As for the common S60 developer, I feel that he will not benefit much from this device. Customers getting devices such as this one are very unlikely to use third-party software; and if they do, it’s usually cracked stuff anyways…
What do you think?
The Nokia N81 8GB’s package was gigantic – but how big is the actual box? Are we looking at a Goliath box like the ipaq 210? Or is this yet another ’supermodel’ phone where the keys are waay too small to press? Read on to find out!
Our first contender is the Palm Treo 680. The N81 is a bit slimmer and a lot less wide – in extended state it is significantly longer:
HP’s baby ipaq(the rx4240) is a bit thinner, but also a bit wider. When expanded, the N81 is much longer:
The Nokia N71 is a lot fatter, but rather similar otherwise:
QTek’s 8500 is much slimmer, but a bit wider:
Finally, here is an image of an Apple iPod touch next to the N71:
In the end, the N81 8GB is comfortably sized…and a tiny bit smaller compared to most other S60 phones. But is the device usable? Tune in soon – part three of our review is all about usability!
The folks at Proporta’s and PPCTech’s will not be too happy about this announcement – Nokia now tries to go for a piece of the lucrative “external battery” market with its DC-8:
Currently, little information is available on this AA-battery-muncher; except that NiCD/NiMH batteries(number is unknown) can be charged inside the device with the standard 2mm connector.
P.S. For completeness’s sake: the product’s web site is here…
All C++ developers will rejoice to hear that Penrillian has finally ported its uSTL library to S60v3. Cutting a long story short, the so-called Standard Template Library is a collection of routines that significantly help C++ programmers(as they contain loads of code that’s needed often).
Penrillian themselves describe their product as following:
Penrillian is pleased to announce the free availability of an open Standard Template Library (STL) for Symbian OS. This has been one of the most common requests from Symbian programmers looking for a ready-made set of common classes to speed the development process.
The library is a port of Mike Sharov’s uSTL implementation. It has the particular feature of generating small object code sizes – an important requirement for most Symbian OS applications.
The library provides a subset of the full C++ STL standard library, along with some features to improve usability for Symbian OS. The additional features include:
* Easy interchange between Symbian OS Descriptors and std::string UTF strings
* Using User::Leave for memory errors.Penrillian is making the new STL available as a free download from this website under the MIT Licence (virtually no restrictions on use). The latest release has been tested on both UIQ and Series 60 Edition 3 devices.
Documentation about installation and use of the the port is available with the release; there are many good books available on using the STL with C++.
Get the library file here:
http://www.penrillian.com/content/view/82/73/
