TamsS60 - the S60 Blog

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/