Nokia updates Ovi store: much appreciated

Well, finally Nokia updated the Ovi Store in a big way. Using the Ovi Store on my 5230 use to be a hassle. When I knew what I was looking for, there was no problem, but when I looked for something new.... well that was a challenge. You know when you look at the apps list and you press the "Load more items" button, then you scroll down, and press the same button again... Well let's say that after doing that a few times, you finally find some app that sounds good. So you want to check it out and you go into the description of that app and you either install it, or you don't... Well, when you press the Back button, SURPRISE!! You're on top of the apps list, and you have to scroll several screens down to get back where you were before. That's gone with the new Ovi Store update. Now when you press back you go exactly where you were when you decided to check that app out. So you can continue looking for more stuff.
Another thing is that now you get a 60 days offer to get some premium apps for free. I got Doodle Jump, Shazam Encore and Farm Frenzy for free, which is very cool.
Another thing I noticed is that many premium apps have now a Lite version which is free. They are pretty limited, but it's better that just a few days of trial.
Well, this update is certainly welcomed and long awaited.
Good job this time Nokia!

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How to use Nokia N8 on holidays

First of all, I want to say that I use Ovi sync religiously, to synchronize everything(contacts, calendar, notes). The synchronization saved me when my phone had to be reflashed at Nokia care. I was up and running in a few minutes thanks to the synchronization features. Now on to the N8... I like to stay in touch with my friends trough Facebook, so in the holiday season, I roam the gift stores and take pictures of interesting gifts, and upload them to Facebook instantly using the official app. Then I post messages on the walls of my friends who are interested in these special findings. I send pictures to my wife and other people I know, if I know they're looking for something I find. I use my phone to take pictures and videos of my baby boy when he starts "acting up" :) and shared them via Facebook or upload them on Youtube so all my friends can see him. I also take videos of my colleagues playing various Wii or PS games during lunchbreak, Guitar Heros featuring programmers is a bliss :). I would fill the N8 homescreens with all the widgets that I'd like to use like communities, weather, rss feeds, phone notifications, because I'm the kind of person that doesn't want to miss anything that's happening. I use Nokia situations(best app I've seen this year) for any situation possible. I've setup a profile for when I'm at home (using the GPS locator, coolest thing ever), for overnight, meetings and for when I'm visiting someone.

That's how I'd use the N8, besides the daily Ovi Maps useage, Point and Find augmented reality and other God knows how many apps I use every day. I should tell you that I charge my phone almost twice a day :D because of this heavy usage, so the N8 would really come in handy, have more battery life than my Nokia 5230.

That's it :)

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SPB Weather review

The weather app is probably the most used application on a mobile phone. Various applications and widgets can be used from many providers that preset the data in their own way. Some may seem strange, some may seem familiar. The SPB Weather application is a native Symbian application, unlike other widget applications for Symbian out there, so it runs fast and clean. What I like most about this app, is that it keeps the Symbian UI experience, while providing more usability than most Symbian apps(and I'm talking about the ones provided by Nokia).

You can see the weather conditions for multiple cities, in case your business takes you on the road often. The main screen provides a summarized view of the current weather conditions showing current, morning, day and evening temperatures, and a short forecast with minimum and maximum temperatures for the upcoming days. Side swiping goes to the next city.

Main screen	Detailed view	Forecast details

Tapping the current conditions opens up a detailed view of the current conditions. This view shows the current temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure and wind speed for the time of the last update, as well as the humidity and wind speed for the rest of the day.

Tapping on the short forecast for one of the following days opens up a more detailed forecast of that day, split by times of the day, forecast which includes the temperature, humidity and wind speed. If you want to go to the next day or the previous day, simply swipe right or left on you screen.

The options menu of the main screen allows you to add or remove cities, change the measuring units, or schedule periodical updates. You can change the measuring units from metric to imperial, and you can also add a new city or remove the currently selected one.

SPB Weather options

The application also has a layers view of the globe, where you can choose to see the clouds over the globe, the temperature overlay, and the rain overlay. This is a pretty neat feature because the globe that is displayed is 3D and can be rotated to see any region of the globe. Of course the cities you have selected are shown as pinpoints on the rotating globe. When you use the cities layer, you can also see the forecast for the cities in a popup box. You can zoom in on the globe and can press the play button and see the an animated forecast.

SPB Weather layers

Bottom line is, this weather application has everything you could ever want in a weather app. You can give it a try at the SPB Website.

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How to get portrait Mini QWERTY on Nokia 5230

Since I bought my Nokia 5230, I've been looking for a way to get a portrait QWERTY keyboard for it. The default input method is always full screen, which is obtrusive in both ABC and landscape QWERTY mode. Imaging having to enter a captcha text on you phone with the browser being hidden by the text field you're trying to fill. But hey, the solution comes from... NOKIA. They developer Swype for S60 input method, which can also be used a a mini QWERTY keyboard.

First you need to download it from the Swipe for Symbian Beta labs website.

Then all you need to do to configure as in the following screenshots. First in the Swipe settings panel, the open the Advanced panel (see screens):

Swype settings panel	Advanced panel	The result

If you don't get the mini QWERTY keyboard after this configuration you need to select it from the input selection when the ABC input type appears.

The best part of it is that you can use it for Swype as well as mini QWERTY at the same time. I discovered this app a while ago, but it had some major bugs that caused crashes, but now it seems stable enough for day to day use.

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Nokia plans progressive updates from S^3 to S^4

Nokia revealed on October 21st that they plan to update the current S^3 OS in terms of features and user interface to the upcoming S^4 in a series of firmware updates. This is a good move for Nokia because before this press release most people thought that S^3 devices will not be getting S^4 in the future.

Here is Rich Green's interview where he explains Nokia's future software strategy.



I asked the Nokia press services people what will happen with the current S^1 devices and here is what Mark Durrant wrote me:

"We will offer updates to S^1 but the UI of S^1 will not evolve into the new Symbian.

Our focus for the new Symbian is on touch capable devices, building on the current S^3 and evolving to the look and feel planned for S^4 in a series of steps using Qt / Qt Quick.

For applications written in Qt, these can already be installed to S^1 devices using the Smart Installer."

This answer clears things up, as the initial press release stated that Nokia concentrates all the efforts into the new Symbian platform.

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SPB Mobile Shell, in depth review

I shortly reviewed the SPB Mobile Shell a while back as I was very surprised of what it can do for my Nokia 5230.

I decided to write a more detailed review, and the guys at SPB were kind enough to give me a license.

SPB Mobile Shell is a replacement of the default nasty Nokia homescreen. It can also be a replacement for the entire Nokia menu.

The SPB Shell is a collection of useful apps like weather, contacts, agenda and a shipload of widgets for any purpose you can think about. Most of the stuff you can add to your homescreen, widgets or shortcuts, can be customized. You can change their theme and size.

Homescreen	Smart dialer	Contacts

The digital clock widget is one of the most useful widgets available in SPB Shell. When in large mode, it shows the current date (with day of week and all), the next alarm you have set and of course the current time. Clicking on the widget opens the SPB clock application which shows the time for three cities of your choice and the next alarm set. One cool thing about choosing a city is the T9 enabled search trough the available cities. Clicking on the current time opens the S60 default clock app.
There is also an analog clock widget for those who want a classic look for your homescreen clock.
The search widget is also one widget that I frequently use, because on an S60v5 device, searching something on Google or Bing consists in opening the browser app, searching for the search engine bookmark, wait for the page to load, enter the search text and press the search button. These 5 actions are replaced by a click on the widget, entering the text, and pressing ok.

The contacts application that comes with the SPB Shell makes you forget you are using a Symbian phone. It has very good kinetic scrolling, which is also available throughout the application, and allows you to call or text somebody in two clicks, unlike the default S60 contacts app. The T9 search available is beautiful and it doubles as both search for name as well as search for phone number.

The contacts app has two more sceens, the call log where you can see the incoming and outgoing calls, the day and time they were made as well as their duration.

Favorite contacts	Launcher	Tiles view

And the favorite contacts screen where you can add as many favorite people as you like, thanks to the vertical scrolling available here. In the favorites panel you can also change the size of each contact to give some people more importance than to others. The favorite panel of the contacts app also has a carousel view that can be used to swipe trough your contacts and allows you to set custom ringtones and change the contact's picture.

The launcher app groups the apps available on your device by their purpose, for example Multimedia apps in one place, Internet stuff in another place, quick access to system settings using the Tools group, creating emails and SMS using the Messaging group and quick access to Calendar, Tasks and Notes using the Organizer group.

The tiles view shows all the available panels of the SPB Shell on a grid view. You can easily find everything within this view, from the contacts app, homescreen, settings, launcher, in one word everything.

Carousel view	Homescreen contacts and pics	Agenda/Calendar

The tiles view can be switched to the carousel view which also shows the same panels as the tiles, but in more details, and you can easily swipe through them.

Some of the best things that can be integrated into the SPB Shell homescreen are contacts. Each contact can be added as a widget on the home screen, with size varying from a small, yet thumb friendly size, to large, half screen width icon. This way you can call, SMS or email your favorite persons in two clicks.
One cool thing that a family man such as myself can't live without is the picture frame widget. This widget shows you a scaled down version of an image of your choice. I for one have two pictures, one picture of my wife and one of my kid on my homescreen always. The picture frame comes in many flavors, but I prefer the paper ones because the frame has the same size regardless of the orientation of the picture it shows. Another thing is that if you click a picture frame SPB Shell opens a picture viewer app that even allows you to see a slide show of all the pictures in the same folder as the one you just clicked.

The Agenda app is configurable and can show from 2 up to 4 weeks. The days are shown in both grid and list view at the same time, and the list view also has shows the weather conditions for the next days. The list view allows you to easily add a new meeting just by clicking the button on the left side of the list view item. The Agenda widget, available for the homescreen also highlights coming events and shows the next alarm you have set.
The tasks widget is an easy way to see your current tasks all in one place, and allows you to see all available tasks, or create a new one in just two clicks.

Bluetooth switch	Weather forecast	Weather conditions

On a Nokia S60v5 device, switching bluetooth on and off can be a pain. Luckily SPB Shell offers a bluetooth widget(amongst other connectivity widgets), that allows you to enable your bluetooth in discoverable of invisible modes with two clicks. Turning off bluetooth is just one click away. The widget also displays the status of your device's bluetooth.

Another must have is the incoming items widget which shows you how many missed calls, messages and emails you have in one glance. There are also separate widgets available for calls, messages and emails, if you don't like the all in one line incoming items widget. Just one click on the item you want shows you the list of missed calls or opens up the system application to manage the messages.

One more useful thing that I really like is the backlight widget which allows me to quickly change the intensity of the phone's backlight. Normally I keep my backlight intensity at 50%, but this gets really handy when I am outdoors and I want to do something with my phone and I need to set the light to 100% (because my phone does not have ambient sensor).
Backlight switching in two clicks.

Another app that is very handy and widely used is the Weather app. The weather widget also comes in different sizes, from a small icon showing the current temperature to a screen wide widget that shows you the current weather conditions including the atmospheric pressure, wind speed, humidity as well as a 4 day forecast with high and lows. When you click the weather widget, the integrated weather app opens.

This app has to panels, one for current conditions and one for a detailed forecast. The current conditions panel is kind of self-explanatory while the forecast panel gives you a detailed forecast that includes the probable temperature and weather conditions for night, morning, day and evening over the next 4 days. The weather can be set to automatically update at 30 minutes up to 4 hours intervals.

Of course I also use shortcut widgets that can link not only to installed apps, but to any file on your system too.

There is also a media player widget which controls your music player application, and tones more or widgets.

I described in this review only the widgets that help me out throughout the day.

SPB Shell eats up about 10MB of RAM on my phone, but I'm still left with 36MB, which is more than enough for me. The consumed RAM can be decreased if you use less homescreens. I use 5 screens and they're all full of widgets.

Bottom line is, the SPB Shell changed my phone in a very pleasant way and I don't think that I'll ever give it up.

You can give it a try at the SPB Software website.

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Samsung S8530 Wave II announced

Samsung announced the S8530 Wave II, a true successor, of the S8500 Wave. The new Bada phone comes with basically the same hardware as the S8500, but sports a bigger 3.7 inch SCLCD screen instead of the 3.3 inch Super-AMOLED of the Wave.



This new phone really dazzles me because it's obvious that Samsung wants to take Bada into a direction non-business related. The fact that the Bada developer challenge top 300 apps you can hardly find 10 business related apps, is testimony to that orientation. So I ask myself this question: "Why offer a big screen phone, that will have a heftier price, and obviously pointed towards business users, when you plan to run a gaming/entertainment platform on it?"
I understand the success of the S8500, compact, fun to have, lots of games work well with the hardware acceleration, but a 3.7 incher isn't gonna pass that well with the teenagers.
Well, Samsung knows better what they want to do with it. Only time will tell if they were right to run Bada instead of Android on this phone.

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Samsung I5500 Galaxy 5 first glance

Many people have been looking for a compact phone, small enough to not be a burden in the pocket, but powerful enough to play the smartphone game. So here it is, the Samsung I5500. This phone looks like a S3650 Corby copycat. It inherits the good looks, shape and size of the Corby, but packs Android 2.1 and a more than sufficient 600MHz CPU. The Android specific keys have been added to the Corby design and also a little bit of chrome around the edges, as well as on the menu key. The I5500 packs a 2.8 inch capacitive display, with a 240x320 resolution. The downside of the resolution is that there won't be many apps available for this low resolution.



This new intelligent Corby joins phones such as HTC Tatoo or Xperia X10 Mini in the run for compact size smartphones market, but it may win in the price category. All the connectivity is there, but the camera seems to be the same as the Corby's 2MP shutter, which is one of the downsides of the phone.

But the Corby similarities stop here, and the Android experience begins.

The TouchWiz interface is present and the phone feels like any other Samsung Android, but scaled down to size.

A downside of the Android running Corby is the on-screen QWERTY keyboard, which is pretty hard to use. A classic alphanumeric keypad is more likely to be successful on this phone.

All in all, this may be yet another Samsung hit, if it gets updated on a regular basis, because with every new Android release, the UI gets faster.

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Noka 5230 overclocked to 800MHz

UPDATE: A it turns your HyperX only managed to "overclock" the CPU speed reporting. He did however overclock his Omnia HD to speeds up to 1GHz, from the original 600MHz.

A famous modder HyperX has managed to overclock the Nokia 5230 ARM11 434MHz CPU to 800MHz. Using ROMPatcher Plus he manages to set the speed of the ARM11 CPU to variable speeds from 250MHz, which means a very long battery life for those who don't need much processing power, to a stunning 800MHz for the hardcore users. However, it's a big probability that your CPU's life will be very short if set at 800MHz so a more friendly value of 600MHz is advised. No one knows for sure what the maximum speed of this ARM11 is, but many suspect it's 680MHz, while others think it's 528MHz. Anyhow, 600MHz is a big improvement for the 5230's users.
This first successful overclocking raises the question of weather the Symbian bootloader was cracked to achieve these values, and if so, what's next? Android on Nokias maybe?
Here is the video where HyperX demoes not only the overclocking but the Nokia C6 firmware running on his Nokia 5230.

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Bada developer challenge results

The Bada developer challenge results have been published. Most apps selected were games and entertainment apps. This seems a little weird, but it looks like Samsung wants the Bada OS to be an entertainment/gaming platform. That's OK, but I for one thought that Bada was about more than that. As I said in a previous post, Bada is gonna be as good as the Samsung Apps will be, and if you want a gameboy-like-phone then it's OK, otherwise you may want to take another look at Android, iOS and Windows Phone. This is a huge letdown for me. As I read in the challenge forums, there were hardly a handful of apps that are productivity related. So if you plan to buy a phone for business use, you better look elsewhere. Even though Samsung announced a Bada powered QWERTY slider, I don't see how gaming would make sense on such a device.
Anyway, if that's where they're going with Bada I wish them good luck. Even though I was planning to develop some more productivity apps for Bada, I have to let it go, because clearly this isn't the audience Samsung wants for Bada phones.

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Nokia World reveals three more S^3 smartphones

Besides the N8 which was already announced, Nokia showed up with 3 more S^3 smartphones.

The Nokia E7 is a 4 inch nHD resolution QWERTY slider, with AMOLED touchscreen, 8MP camera, HD video recording, HDMI and a 16GB internal storage. The 4 inch screen is IMHO too big for the nHD resolution (360x640), but the target audience may not care too much.

Nokia E7


The next one, the Nokia C7, is a candybar smartphone with a 3.5 inch screen, which seems more appropriate for the nHD resolution. It;s got only 8GB of built-in storage, but it's expandable, unlike the E7, trough an SD card slot.

Nokia C7


The last of the bunch is the Nokia C6-01 which is the cheapest of the bunch, with only a 3.2 inch screen, and it's a bit thicker than the the C7.

Nokia C6-01


All three smartphones run S^3 and most probably have 680 MHz CPU's on board. This, for me, means that Nokia is trying to pull another fast one on it's users, because they launch these phones with these specs, while the S^4 OS that they'll release next year has a 1GHz CPU requirement. So, are you willing to spend 300-400 Euros on a phone that will be outdated in 6 months. I wouldn't.

Update:
On October 21st Nokia announced that their Symbian will be an evolving OS, meaning that there will be no more S^3 and S^4, but only Symbian, and the current Symbian(formerly S^3) will receive progressive updates until it reaches the user interface originally planned for S^4.

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Nokia forum experts bashing clients - continued(2)

As I wrote last month, I tried to get a reaction from the Nokia forum officials, regarding some threads where people were treated badly by some forum "Experts". Initially I thought that something will happen because I got an answer like "I'll investigate this" from Nokia Ron, who seems to be the forum administrator. As you can see from the link below, I did not.

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?208497-moved-Discussion-on-moderation-policies

On the other hand I got some responses from more "Experts" and "Champions", some of which were also involved in the threads that made me start this awakening campaign for Nokia.

In the above mentioned thread, Mr. Lucian Tomuta (ltomuta) assured me that the thread I first mentioned to them was a singular incident and they learned from it.

Well, that's not entirely true isn't it? I showed this guy another thread where he and his fellow paladins had the same attitude, same disrespect and same gang behavior towards some more users.

Guess what, he now refuses to continue the discussion. How about that! Isn't that the Nokia way! When something bothers you, close your eyes and it'll go away. Good job boys! Keep it up!

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Samsung Wave the best rated phone on GSMArena

Today's GSMArena rankings (September 1st 2010), show the Samsung Wave rated at 9.059 our of 10, with 51,399 votes. The Wave if followed by two more Samsung phones, the Galaxy S at number 2 with a rating of 8.800 and the Omnia HD at number 3 with a rating of 8.748.



The other phones in the top 5 are the HTC Desire and the HTC HD2.

It seems there is a growing interest for Samsung phones, especially the Bada-powered Wave, which should help Bada grow a pretty decent appstore in a short while. With the Bada Challenge simulator submission phase, I expect a shipload of apps to hit the Samsung Apps website as soon as the results with the first 300 come in on September 16th.

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Nokia forum experts bashing clients - continued

Here is yet another thread where the Nokia forum "Champions" and "Experts" ganged up against one user.

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?110366-Windows-Mobile-For-NOKIA-Cell-Phones

This kind of behavior seems to be very common on the Nokia forum. No wonder they don't attract any developers for Symbian apps.

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Nokia forum experts bashing clients

A few weeks ago I saw a post on the Nokia forum, where a guy called Lucian Tomuta (you may remember him from a demo video for N8), and another guy who's name I do not know but who's forum nickname is wizard_hu_, nearly bit some poster's head off when he started a thread about porting Maemo for Nokia 5800.

The original thread was this, which was closed about a year ago:

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?178368-Nokia-5800-maemo

I was blown away by the attitude of these two guys towards the user that started the forum, and now a year later I thought I would bring this behavior to Nokia's attention. Here is what followed:

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?208497-moved-Discussion-on-moderation-policies

These guys simply don't care about the respect a customer should get. Here is a taste of the conversation:

Q: So really why there is no port of maemo for 5800 ?

A: Why would there be one? Would its existence make any sense from the majority-of-5800-users' point of view? Do you often change the OS on your washing machine? Or on the microwave oven?


When I started to point these things out, I got one official answer from the forum administrator who said he'd investigate this(which I really appreciate, finally someone was actually willing to solve this problem), and then some more attitude from the "washing machine" guy.

We'll see how it goes. I'll keep everybody posted.

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Samsung Galaxy S accesories

Samsung launched a full set of premium accessories for the Galaxy S flagship. The line of accessories include a desktop dock, a vehicle dock, a charger for secondary battery, various carrying cases and a video streaming box.

The desktop dock

The desktop dock should be used with the Desk Home app. It will turn the smartphone into very capable media player and allows making hand-free calls.

The vehicle dock and cases



The vehicle dock has an additional USB connector for charging while the leather/silicon/neoprene cases don't need any explanation, bearing the Galaxy S logo. They look excellent and should keep you phone safe from bumps and other incidents.

The battery charger

The battery charger comes with an extra 1500 mAh battery and allows you to charge it and store it outside the phone.

The streaming box

The streaming box is named Samsung WMG160 Wi-Fi HD. The box gives you the ability to stream movies, music and photos from your Galaxy S to a HDTV device. The Samsung WMG160 connects to the HDTV by a cable connection, while the streaming is done over the Wi-Fi network (DLNA). It's practically a DLNA adapter for HDTV with the option to playback multimedia files from the built in storage or memory card.

Original article from GSMArena here.

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Symbian 3 impressions

Even though it was shadowed by the release of Android 2.2 Froyo, Windows Phone 7 and Bada at this year's MWC, Nokia released their new OS, Symbian^3. The first smartphone to wear the new S^3 suite is gonna be the new Nokia N-series flagship, the N8, which apparently will also be the last N-series Symbian powered device.

The Nokia N8


The video shown by Nokia at MWC 2010 demoing the S^3 unveils a multi-touch capable platform, with a multi page widgetized homescreen, which is a step forward for Nokia.



However, the S^3 user interface looks and feels like an overhauled version of the old S60v5. Maybe the OS behind the UI has been rewritten, but the user experience on S^3 won't be much improved compared with the S60v5 user experience(multiple homescreens aside).

Nokia fanboys may claim that it's a revolutionary OS, but it's not. S^3 is so far behind Android it can't even see it's antennas.

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Samsung Galaxy 3 and Galaxy Apollo : The constellation grows

After putting out the brightest star in the Samsung constellation, the Galaxy S(tar), Samsung now enriches the Android solar system with two more brothers. The Galaxy 3(I5800) and the Galaxy Apollo(I5801). The I5801 is only available for Orange however.

The Galaxy 3 I5800


The Galaxy Apollo I5801



These two phones don't offer the Super-AMOLED display, but they still pack the Touchwiz 3, which is my opinion is the thing that enriches the Android user experience.

With all the connectivity features required by modern smartphones, and the 667Mhz CPU, these two smarties pack a heavy punch in the low-end smartphone world. They both have capacitive touchscreen, which I think is a must when it comes to Android phones and Touchwiz phones too(feature or smart).

Both phones come with document editor and DivX/Xvid support built in making them full-fledged media phones.

Even if the display resolution is only 240x400, the Touchwiz interface makes these phones worthwhile.

The 3.2MP camera is also a good camera for low-end smartphones, if you look at the competing products that usually pack a 2MP camera.

The bottom line is this: you can't ask for more in a 200 Euro phone, mining that most of the phones in this price range offer much less.

Here's a full review of these two phones courtesy of GSMArena

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Samsung Wave wins European Social Media Phone 2010-2011

Samsung strikes again at the EISA awards, this time with Galaxy's older brother, the Wave. The Bada powered smartphone gets the European Social Media Phone 2010-2011 award.



Quote:

The Samsung Wave capitalises on the current interest in smartphones by providing means and applications for social media environments. The Wave is the first device from Samsung with the Bada operating system in connection with an Apps Store. Behind the stunning 3.3-inch (8.38 cm) AMOLED touch screen there is a powerful 1GHz processor. Amazing connectivity provides Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. Audio/video features include FM radio with RDS and an excellent 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording and LED flash. The Samsung Wave is thin and very designed, featuring a metal chassis.


Official award page here
European Social Media Phone 2010-2011 - Samsung Wave GT-S8500

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Samsung Galaxy S wins EISA smartphone 2010-2011 award

The EISA (European Imaging and Sound Association) awards are out! Good news for Samsung, the Galaxy S has taken the lead! This year's EISA Smartphone 2010-2011 award goes to the brilliant Samsung Galaxy S!



Quote:
Based on the Android operating system, the Galaxy S is a ‘jewel in the crown’ for demanding users wanting to be connected, entertained and updated on the move. It is equipped with a huge 4-inch (10.16 cm) AMOLED, 800x480 pixel touch screen providing an exceptional viewing experience. The on-board 5 megapixel camera is without flash, but with video recording of 720p. Interconnectivity brings together Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi with DLNA, a hotspot function and AllShare which allows content to be shared between the mobile and Samsung TVs and Blu-ray players. It’s a well made device that should capture the attention of every mobile phone lover.

As I write this post the EISA website(first and third link below) is barely working because of the high traffic caused by these awards.

The best smartphone of the year product video

Original article on GSMArena here

EISA website

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Samsung Galaxy S first impression

After the launch of the Wave, Samsung hits the market with another high end Super AMOLED device. The Galaxy S is the first Android flagship released by Samsung, and it brings Android to a whole new level. The Touchwiz integration is seamless and brings the power of both Touchwiz and Android together in one unforgettable user experience. I've played with the Galaxy S for about half hour and it really impressed my socks off :). I'm a fan of Touchwiz, but when you combine it with Android you get the best of both worlds. What I like about it is that this is not just a phone for geeks, like the Nexus One for example which looks like a mobile desktop, but a phone for everybody. The Touchwiz makes the phone look like a user-friendly feature phone, but the Android power is at your fingertips.


It has 7 homescreens by default which is a lot of space for keeping your favorite widgets all the time. The menu of the phone along with the user interface look like Samsung pride and joy, Bada. And this is a good thing, because Bada is the most intuitive platform I've seen so far. However, the Galaxy S has a clear advantage over Bada, the Android Market, which provides thousands of apps for this beautiful phone.

The Super-AMOLED display is the brightest display in the industry, and even though I've tested this phone in broad daylight I did not encounter any readability issues. The phones looks sleek, even if it's not a full metal body, and runs fast and smooth.

Samsung's choice of colors for the UI and the icons really helps the Super-AMOLED screen to get noticed. Even if I am an adept of screens between 3.2 and 3.7 inches, this phone didn't bother me at all.

Another thing that increases the user friendliness is the Swipe text input. It takes a minute or two to get used to, but once I was there it was very hard for me to go back to conventional typing.

It has Bluetooth 3.0 which shows that Samsung is thinking about the future.

The only downside of this phone is the lack of camera LED flash. That should have been there for this high end phone, but the lack of it isn't a showstopper.

Another thing I really like, and this goes for most Samsung smartphones, is the integration of the DivX/Xvid video player, which I think every phone should have. Same goes for document editing. The large amount of internal storage also makes this phone a must-have.

The connectivity is all there, 3G, WiFi, A-GPS, BT 3.0, everything you need. The in-call audio quality is also very good.

Here is a video review of the Galaxy S.

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SPB Shell review

For Nokia's S60v5 users there are little options to customize the homescreen. Only the latest phones like C6 have widgetized homescreens, but not even these come close to the level of customization expected in a smartphone.

Here is where the SPB Shell comes in handy. It's a bit pricey (29USD) but it changes the whole user experience of S60v5 phones. SPB Shell offers a bunch of useful widgets like weather, birthdays, missed calls, sms and email, analog and digital clock, connectivity features, music player and links to any app installed on your phone. Here is how the default homescreen looks like.



You have two layouts available, one called Lifestyle and the other called Professional. Each of these layouts offer up to 5 different homescreens. Each lifestyle have different wallpapers. The latest SPB Shell version can be configured as portait, landscape or autorotate. The landscape view however doesn't look that good, so I for one keep my SPB Shell on portait only. It would be nice to have a fullscreen shell, but I guess such an option will be available on future releases.

Choosing widgets is pretty straightforward as you can see in the below screenshot.


Every widget, as well as links to the applications can be customized, or as they say, "skinned". The predefined widgets usually have normal looking skins or professional skins. These skins also come in different sizes, varying from a thumbnail to a halfscreen widget like the weather one in the next screenshot. Same goes for the clock, tasks and calendar.



The shell also comes packed with a contacts application that is far better than the default one, coming with T9 search and it's a lot faster that the S60 one.

The shell has a panels and a carousel view that can be used to find any screen available in the shell.

The bottom line is that if you give this shell a chance, you may end up never wanting to leave it.

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Samsung Wave first impressions

The first time I saw the Wave I could not believe that someone actually made a phone that is exactly the phone I dream of at night :). The size, the build, the screen and the metal body are exactly the kind of things that I look for in a phone. I thought then "if it would run Android, it would be the perfect phone". But it didn't run Android, so I was a little disappointed, at first. Then I saw a demo of Bada and I realized that it isn't just "another OS", it's an OS with a bright future ahead(if properly backed by Samsung). Then I heard about the Bada developer challenge, and decided to give it a try. I managed to get a running application and submit it in about 4 days. You would think "what the heck, if it's a simple app, you can do it in less than 4 days". Here is the funny part: the Bada SDK is written in C++ and I am a Java developer with no experience whatsoever in C++, so for me it meant a lot.

Back to the Wave. This phone didn't impress me just by the looks, it also impressed me with the hardware specs: 1GHz CPU, 512RAM and 2GB of storage out of the box is no little thing. the Super-AMOLED display is also a gorgeous thing to look at, the viewing angles and brightness of this thing is unbelievable.

Now, I have to confess that I was so inspired by the Wave, and I like it so much that I actually enlisted in the Bada developer challenge with the hopes of getting in the first 300, and getting a free Wave. The challenge will end on August 31st, and I'll know if I won a Wave by mid September. I'll keep you posted.

This post may be biased by me liking the Wave so much, but I'm sure that the readers who know this phone will agree that once you've seen it you can't be objective anymore. Those who didn't meet the Wave yet, you should. Here is a video:

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Samsung Bada impressions

There is just one thing that comes to mind when I say Bada(Ocean), and that word is flow. Why flow? Because with this OS, everything seems to be right where you need it to be. That was my first impression on Bada. Having used Touchwiz before (2.0) I was a little skeptic, but I was quickly charmed by Touchwiz 3.0. Samsung sure learned a lot from the criticism Touchwiz 2 received. No more widgets overlapping, no more moving widgets instead of swiping to the next homescreen. Touchwiz 3 is lightyears ahead of other Touchwiz version in terms of usability and even looks.

Now let's get on to the OS. Bada has everything packed in, all the apps you'll need, excepting a decent navigation app. The UI is simple and straightforward, I thing it's even simpler than iPhone's UI. It has the looks, friendliness and speed of a high-end feature phone packed in a smartphone platform.

However, the best thing about Bada in my opinion is the development platform. I managed to create a working app in a matter of days, having no knowledge or experience with neither the platform nor with the C++ language it uses. The development learning curve is very quick and the emulator is just brilliant.

Minding that a smartphone OS is as smart as it's application store grows, let's hope Bada's application store manages to round up a decent number of apps. The Bada Developer Challenge is a good start. Copying a successful model is not a bad thing and I'm glad Samsung did it.

Final conclusion: Judging from the developer's standpoint, there is nothing holding devs back from writing apps for this platform. Very easy to use SDK with a very good emulator means fast application development. This platform, if properly promoted and maintained, can be IMHO a powerful iOS and Android contender. The best part is that Samsung plans to run this platform not only on the high-end S8500, but also on lower tier phones that might just get the "smart" badge.

UPDATE:

Here is a demo of S8500 running Bada.

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Nokia 5230, owner's review

I was a little disappointed at first when I received my Nokia 5230, because, out of the box the UI was very slow. Then, after a hard reset it started to work properly. I don't know why Nokia ships this model with the presets it does because all they do is cast a bad light on the phone itself, which doesn't do the phone justice.

First thing I noticed was the outdated S60 UI. Looks like an 80's car compared with iPhone or Android's modern looking UIs.

The second thing I noticed was that I had better inter-application integration on my previous phone, a Samsung 3650. That was somewhat solved when I installed the SPB Shell, which completely changed the Nokia's user experience, but I'll cover the SPB Shell on another post.

The third was the Ovi Store. I was looking forward to downloading and even purchasing apps from the Ovi Store. The first apps I downloaded were free and I felt pretty good about my phone. Then I noticed that the 5230 had no document editor, which I believe every phone should have (even my old Samsung S3650 had at least a document viewer). The only software that I found on Ovi for document viewing/editing was QuickOffice, which is free as a viewer, but paid as an editor, and it's very overpriced. Same goes for the pricey PDF reader.

Another thing that I would expect a smartphone to have by default was an AVI player, and again the 5230 let me down. No video player here, not even a paid one. And it's not like it's impossible, the Samsung Omnia HD has one, so why doesn't Nokia have one.

The telephony is brilliant, I have now the best signal I ever had, and the best in-call audio quality. I you get passed the outdated look of the applications, you'll find quite a useful bunch packed in this model. The calendar app is very good, and if you download the Mail for exchange app from Nokia (I fail to understand why it doesn't come with the phone) you can synchronize your phone's calendar, contacts and tasks with your Google account, but only after you visit Google's mobile Sync page, where there is a detailed tutorial on how to get things working. Maybe Nokia wants to shove the Ovi services down your throat instead of Google's.

What I liked most about this phone, was the speed of Java apps, which sometimes are as fast as the Symbian native ones.

Another plus of this phone is it's camera. It's only a 2MP camera but it is able to record VGA resolution videos and it's the best 2MP camera I've ever seen. It takes brilliant photos in broad daylight even in poor light conditions. Maybe that's because the phone processes practically every photo it takes. That increases the time between two snaps, but provides a quality that will make it worthwhile.

The GPS reciver seems to take some time before it gets a lock on your location. Comparing the two nav apps I've installed, I found Ovi maps to be more accurate than Google maps, but it was only a matter of 20 meters.

In conclusion, the Nokia 5230 is a phone that surpasses the expectations of the 130 Euros I paid for it.

UPDATE:
Here is a video review of the 5230

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First post

Hello,

This blog is gonna be about mobile technology. Mostly I will write about phones, short reviews and opinions.

Enjoy

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