S60 Open to new features

Again great news about our Internet Radio for S60 open source project. We have now integrated 2nd Edition support into the release. Binaries are also available separately for all versions. This release includes all the known fixes, including the one in 3rd Edition that was discussed in here not so long ago.

Big thanks to all who have contributed so far, it's highly appreciated! Please keep sending comments, fixes, etc.

Internet Radio for S60

-Jukka

S60 Theme Studio has been updated. New features include fixes for 3rd Edition, and some enhancements in theme creation. This tool can be used to create themes for any one of the S60 Editions. I'm curious about the new 'morphing theme', can anyone show an example?

S60 Theme Studio 3.0 for Symbian OS

-Jukka

I can't believe I have not written about Orb yet in this blog. Well, if you have been paying any attention lately you already know how cool it is. So I'll go directly to part II :)

My colleague recently told me how he uses Orb. His problem was that his favorite Internet radio station is only broadcasting a Windows Media stream and he cannot listen to it in his car. The solution? He hooked up his S60 phone to the car stereo system with a cassette adapter. Then he would just open his Orb page, and start listening to the station through car stereos. The Orb coolness here is that he doesn't have to care whether his S60 can open a WMA stream (it can't), Orb transcodes the station on-the-fly to something his phone can handle.

Orb is free and works with Windows XP and any Web-enabled phone. How do you use Orb?

-Jukka

Another proof that 3rd Edition doesn't kill all the cool apps for S60, SmartMovie is now available for latest generation of S60 devices.

Feature-wise I didn't notice anything different, version history says only:

3.20 - Port to Symbian S60 3rd edition

Now, if you Lonely Cat Games people are reading this, share your comments about the porting process?

Download the demo version

via: My-Symbian

-Jukka

Our beloved and newly re-designed S60.com let's the news casually drop in a form of PDF white paper: S60 and Flash Lite – an emerging global ecosystem.

Flash Lite 2 will be available for wide implementation in devices starting with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1.

The paper is definitely worth a read for other details too. First devices based on S60 3rd Ed., FP1 are yet to be announced.

via: Biskero (Thanks!)

Update 22.5.06:
Another new white paper available, titled Flash Lite: Visual Guide.

-Jukka

Just noticed Mobile-review's mighty detailed N93 review. They are adding a photo-specific part later, should be interesting. If you want to see some comparison photos right now, check out comment by Apoc:

Camera battle N93 vs. K790i vs. N80

Sample No. 1
Sample No. 2
Sample No. 3
Sample No. 4

Cheers,
Apoc

And here is my own "artistic" N93 shot from the woods.

Update 25.5.06:
And here is the promised photo-specific part, with LOTS of pictures including the "battle" of 3MP phones.

-Jukka

Ivan lets us know that Nokia's Lifeblog application has been updated, but only for 2nd Edition FP3 based devices ie. N70, N90 and upcoming N72. This version should fix installation problems (see Ivan's earlier post).

Nokia Lifeblog

via: Ivan Kuznetsov

-Jukka

YouTube has announced the possibility to upload videos directly from mobile phone to their service. At first this sounds great, hot videos could appear on the web just few minutes after they have been shot. This is really the way of the future, be it good or bad.

YouTube's approach leaves something to desire however. They are using MMS message as the carrier for videos. While this makes uploading very easy (I guess) for the average user, it also makes the videos "MMS quality" ie. quite bad. S60 devices are quite passable camcorders these days, but MMS imposes quite heavy restrictions on the length and parameters for the video. For the average (non-S60) user this might not be an issue since the video quality of his/her phone is bad anyway.

The good news? As a user of S60 3rd Edition you don't have to care since you can just browse to YouTube site with full Internet browser and upload the video from there. No need for conversion and the quality (or lack of it..) is preserved. I tried it, works without a hitch!

What do you think, which approach is better?

-Jukka

Update 17.5.06:
Google Video has now also direct upload from their site, should work like YouTube.

It's E3 showtime, and Nokia has opened a special N-Gage E3 site which is also a blog!

Head on to the site for details on next generation of N-Gage games (hence the title), pictures, videos and so on.

Nokia N-Gage E3

-Jukka

Last time I wrote about PC Suite upgrade, there were lots of feedback about various installation problems. The update for PC Suite is now ready, go get it at www.nokia.com/pcsuite.

Fixes to component registration problems during the installation of PC Suite 6.8

Update 25.5.06:
Another update! Corrections seem to relate to security and conversion of music to AAC.

-Jukka

In case you didn't make it to the event (like me), HP people there are producing a videblog. Videos are taken with a camera phone, and are thus mobile-friendly. In fact, I have been watching some of the clips in my N91. They drop to phone's hard disk almost real-time via the Nokia Podcasting application. Sweet :)

MobileMonday Global Summit

-Jukka

Nokia N93 is the first S60 device to have hardware accelerated OpenGL ES 1.1 support. Forum Nokia has published a plugin for S60 SDK:

This early technology plug-in for S60 3rd edition SDK for Symbian OS, for C++, enables the development of OpenGL ES 1.1 applications with N93. N93 is the first Nokia multimedia computer with HW accelerated 3D graphics/OpenGL ES 1.1 support. This plug-in enables the full usage of the native 3D graphics features supported in N93. The content of this plug-in will be a part of S60 R3.1 SDK.

Download it, and give your comments!

-Jukka

Jouni wrote last week about Nokia Podcasting, a cool 3rd Edition add-on coming soon. Gizmodo was fast to point out that it cannot actually podcast, but is merely a podcatcher. Now, that puzzled me since I have seen the podcasting features already some time ago. Luckily, Gizmodo also got a reply from the Podcasting product manager, and he set the story straight:

The naming was intentional. In the near future, Nokia will offer a full mobile Podcasting solution with higher quality recording capabilities (and smaller file size), editing, uploading capabilities, and more.

-Jukka

Steve over at AAS has revised his practical guide on shooting with Nokia N70 and N90.

Good stuff, and remember these tips apply to all S60 3rd Edition devices that have a camera, Nokia 3250 being the only exception. From the recently announced trio of devices, N72 and N73 share the same video capabilities with the rest. In addition N73 has a video stabilization feature, but I haven't yet seen it on real life. And as Steve points out, N93 will then take the camcorder performance to a whole new level with "near DVD" resolution and 30 frames per second. And the evolution won't stop there, at least D1 is still needed to really talk about professional shooting.

-Jukka

Great news, as reported by AAS.

OggPlay for Series 60 V3

Here is a brief promotional video clip shot with Nokia N93. It has been edited, but the quality is real. Click on 'Continue reading..' to see it.